Posts Tagged ‘entertainment’

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The puppet and the puppeteer

Friday, June 19th, 2009

In improv we sometimes talk about the puppet and the puppeteer, where the puppet is the character you’re playing on stage, alive and in the moment, and the puppeteer is the actor part of your brain, subtly pulling the strings from up above the scene, where you have a broader view of the story and where it’s going, its characters and relationships. This concept has translated pretty much directly for me to scripted work… one director I worked with was fond of the expression “do that thinking actor thing”, and that’s worked its way into my own vernacular.

Tonight’s performance of Fiddler was probably the worst I’ve had so far in the run. Other than borking the end of my song (something I’ve managed not to do since preview night), both the puppet and the puppeteer were completely on the fritz. My reactions all felt forced and insincere, and most of them came either a moment early or late… I even caught myself telegraphing, something I almost never do. Buh.

We’ve got two more performances, tomorrow and Sunday. I’m going to be working tomorrow as well, as we are in mega-crunch mode on my project. They’ve blocked off traffic on the street on my office, though, as there is a Solstice Parade with naked bicyclists who will be going through there. Should be interesting to try to get stuff done.

All this week has been the International Festival at Unexpected Productions. Between work and theatre I haven’t been able to attend, but I made it out last Sunday to the opening night barbecue, which was really interesting as it took place at a legitimate mansion, the kind I had no idea existed in Seattle.

The story behind it is that a divorced couple haven’t been able to sell it for the past two years or so, and about ten friends who are part of an improv/film ensemble found it on Craigslist and decided to rent it at about $6 thousand a month. The place is an incredible tribute to excess, boasting such features as a swimming pool/jaccuzzi with a retractable roof, a giant koi pond, a movie-theatre style projector screening room, a whole roof patio, a full second floor bar/lounge with a grand piano, an incredible ivy-covered gazebo, a walk-in wine cellar, a full-sized kids’ climbing playground with swings and slides, an outdoor pizza oven, and a barbecue that’s so large it has a fridge inside it. I felt like I was in an episode of Entourage.

Probably the best feature, though, is that it’s directly overlooking Puget Sound, with a view of the water from every level that’s worth a million dollars on its own.

I spent most of the evening flipping burgers for people, as I was incredibly hungry when I got there and it seemed if I didn’t then there would be no food for anyone. It was still a great time.

I will be very glad when my project at work wraps. It’s been late nights every night this week; yesterday I didn’t get home until close to midnight. It doesn’t help that there are all sorts of traffic conundrums, such as the 520 bridge opening last night (something that’s never happened to me before), stalling me from getting home for about an additional 20 minutes. The bridge is closed all weekend so I’m going to have to detour around the lake, not to mention the parade and the naked cyclists.

A breather will be welcome…

Dan.

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Mother fungus

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

Been a busy week. Work, improv and Fiddler rehearsals occupy most of my time. I’ve been having trouble sleeping regularly and I worry that it’s going to tire me out, but on the whole life is good.

Friday my Theatresports team dethroned the seven-time incumbents (although their roster admittedly changed up quite a bit from week to week). It wasn’t a particularly deep show but it was a good show, and I might have had the spotlight moment with my portrayal of an obsessive birthday clown that spontaneously combusted. I reportedly managed to cause my other team members to break, as well as myself at one point. We’ll be back in one form or another this Friday, so that’s something I’m looking forward to.

Saturday was Improvise Your Own Adventure and I again shared the lead role… this time was a lot rougher than last weekend, though, even though my lead partner was one of the sharper and more inspired improvisers I know. We weren’t making so many of the elementary mistakes (freneticism, too many offers, not enough listening), but we got mired in solving the problems at hand and I know I didn’t let myself be sufficiently affected by the things happening around me. That’s mostly the perfectionist in me talking, though… by all accounts most everyone in the audience still had a good time and was able to follow and enjoy it, even if it wasn’t up to our own personal standards.

One of the neat things about working with Unexpected are the occasional gigs that come our way. It’s how I wound up going to Austin, Texas expenses paid for a week last August. It’s also how I wound up pretending I was part of a flock of flamingoes darting around town promoting Woodland Park Zoo. Clearly the level of quality and dignity of these gigs run the gamut… this Friday I’m signed up for one that definitely falls at the flamingo end of the scale, inasmuch as I’m mostly doing it just because it’s something weird and different I will now be able to say I’ve done. Basically some dance studio is having a big gala event at the Sheraton… this year’s theme is The Wizard of Oz, and in the ragtag cast of performers they want to have wandering around and posing for pictures with them, I have been asked to play a flying a monkey.

So in the company of Dorothy, the Scrarecrow, Lion, Tin-Man, Glinda and the Wicked Witch I will be hopping and screeching at the Sheraton while everyone around me is sipping drinks, eating hors d’oeuvres and trying to have a good time. Don’t worry, I’m sure there’ll be plenty more pictures than I’d like.

The worst part is probably not so much even the general indignity of it all (my dignity is something I’ve never paid too much of a premium on), but that the costume they have for me is pretty cheesy and horrible… I went to try it on yesterday and it’s way too big, and looks like a bear costume that got shoehorned into be a flying monkey suit. But hey… how many software engineers can say they were a flying monkey at some big gala event? That’s right.

After the fitting I hung out with Jay and Cheryl from Unexpected (who are also doing the gig and were there as well) and we went for lunch with Jay’s three-year-old daughter, who is possibly the most adorable three-year-old on the planet and on Jay’s persuasion told us the line she’d heard Bruce Willis say when watching Die Hard with her daddy (unaltered by him, and what she actually claimed to have heard): “yippie-ki-yay mother fungus”. I nearly died from laughing.

I helped a friend from Unexpected test out an iPhone application for the store Archie McPhee (purveyor of such legendary items as pirate bandages, remote control laderhosen and inflatable fruitcake) and now have a $50 store credit there as thanks. Unfortunately I’m not sure what to spend it on… it would require either buying more of their inexpensive crap than I want, or paying quite a bit more for something more substantial. I’m not aware of any expiration date so I’m in no hurry, but I welcome suggestions!

EDIT: Watch the video on the inflatable fruitcake page… that’s the guy from Unexpected that got me the gift certificate.

Dan.

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Reek of delish

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

People seem to still be downloading iProv, which is cool. The Seattle Festival of Improv Theater is coming up, and I may try to promote it there. I’ve started work on a casual game in the meantime… it’s coming along well.

I’d been away from Unexpected a couple of weeks, and when I came back to play this past weekend I was amused to find a certain photo printed out on the managing director’s desk, with the caption “UP alum Joel McHale gives Dan Posluns a noogie”. It never takes much of an absence for me to feel the nostalgia when I return.

My washer finally got repaired today, nearly two weeks after I first set out to have it fixed. The repairman missed our first appointment because he was sick and I was never notified. He came two days later and identified the problem, but it required ordering a replacement part. He was supposed to come back with it on Monday, but phoned and told me it had arrived busted and they were going to have to order another one. Finally, today, I was able to do laundry again and stop smelling like a hobo.

In the end the affair cost me nearly three hundred dollars, with about half of that just for a new dial control. Admittedly cheaper than buying a new washer, but not enough to keep me from feeling really jilted if anything else goes wrong with it.

The Superbowl was this past weekend, and for someone who’s normally not very entertained by football, I found it enthralling. In fact, the game was probably more interesting than the commercials, which were an unusually paltry crop this year. Some were worse than others, but the one that angered up the blood most was the one that was criminally ignorant of some of the most fundamentally basic geometry:

Someone at the party was following Wil Wheaton on Twitter and I think he summed it up best: “It’s like a million geometry nerds cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

My parents sent me a very excellent birthday gift I meant to blog about some time ago. One part of it was a bottle of the jalapeno vodka my grandmother’s brother brought with him in his most recent (and in all likelihood final) visit from Russia. Unlike normal vodka (which is normally pretty flavourless and used mainly as a mixer), this stuff has a really nice, mild taste to it that makes it great for shots. Plus the jalapeno sitting at the bottom of the bottle is all kinds of awesome.

The other, far more valuable part was a package of slices of the salami obtained from the St. Jacob’s Farmer’s Market, which is more than an hour’s drive west of Toronto. This is an aged, all-beef Mennonite salami that is unlike anything else – I need to keep it shut up in a cupboard or my entire condo will reek of delish. I’ve been rationing it carefully but I’m already more than a quarter of a way through the stuff. My parents had to sneak it across the border (beef is prohibited) when they drove down to Florida for their vacation and shipped it out from there. It took nearly a month to arrive, and I had assumed that it had been confiscated by the post office (since it had a Canadian return address on it), but it was a very pleasant surprise the day when it turned up.

I could use more pleasant surprises! Get on that, blogosphere.

Dan.

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An endearing habit

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

I normally take a shower every single morning, but every five years or so I get it in my head that I would really like a bath. Today was one of those days, in no small part because I was quite hung over and exhausted from a Friday night down at Unexpected doing Christmas Carol, Theatresports and heavy drinking (in that order).

As I crammed my just-average frame (I’m 5’9″) into a tub that could barely contain it I realized that whether it’s outdoor (entirely possible) or indoor (not unless I win the lottery or marry a duchess or something) I want my next home to be capable of sporting a jacuzzi or some other form of hot-tub. It would see a lot of use.

We had an informational meeting on the assessment my condo complex is supposed to be levying for repairs to its exterior. The vote only passed on the stipulation that 15-year group financing was secured, which so far the board has been unable to obtain. They still think they will be able to, but I am pretty sceptical. I wish I had more confidence in the people who want to invest my entire life’s savings.

I read America’s Finest News Source every day, and I’ve been amused lately by a little running gag they’ve had since shortly after the election, featuring still-president Bush in a number of separate, unrelated slapstick news briefs of the National Lampoon variety – individually unremarkable but to an avid reader like myself just what the doctor ordered:

Wahaha.

Speaking of high-brow humour, A(n Improvised) Christmas Carol was reviewed by Seattle’s Child Magazine, and I received specific kudos on my nose-picking. I’ve had that audience suggestion for “an endearing habit” a couple of times now, and it’s uniformly a big hit with everyone, to the point where I’ve actually had audience members come up to me after the show and tell me what an incredibly brilliant improviser they thought I was because of it. I never imagined my success in the world of theatre would boil down to my ability to commit to picking my nose. I’m trying to see it as a positive thing, but it does shine a somewhat disquieting light on all the years I’ve spent studying and honing my craft.

The show is going well enough, though, and I’ve made arrangements to celebrate my birthday down at the theatre. There is an open Evite online (in case I missed you!) and you can even get discount tickets to both Christmas Carol and/or Theatresports (both of which I will be playing in that evening). Or you can just come and hang out at the bar afterward. I feel badly that I’m not available to have a proper, separate party, but my love of UP and my friends there runs deep, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Except perhaps an indoor jacuzzi… one of those really nice ones.

Dan.

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American Thanksgiving

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

American Thanksgiving was good. I had far too much to eat at a friend’s place, and four days off of work was pretty awesome, but between late-night shows and a couple other parties I probably didn’t rest quite as much as I should have.

Christmas Carol had its opening weekend and it went pretty well. I’m still figuring out some of the more fundamental nuances of Crachit… I’ve never felt particularly good at improvising in these kind of fixed character roles, and while I think I’m doing okay I know I’m capable of a lot better. The rest of the cast is great though (Fred Northup plays a dynamite Scrooge), and I look forward to getting there as well.

There was a snafu with my green card processing. It looks like it’s back on track, but my road to immigration has fallen behind by about seven precious months as a result. I’m pretty unhappy about that, but at least it’s taken care of now and I should be able to keep a closer eye on it in the future. Not having my green card yet makes me anxious…

My DVDs of the second season of 30 Rock arrived some time ago, and I am blasting through them in my spare time. The show is rather silly but the jokes are tight, and I love it… it’s basically my new Scrubs. My favourite character is Tracy Jordan, whose lines are the most absurd and the best written. I also adore the guest appearances by Will Arnett.

My birthday is on the 19th! I’m startled by how soon that is. I want to have a party, but I’m doing Christmas Carol every night that weekend. Maybe I can do something down at the theatre, or failing that a brunch on Sunday or something.

There’s nothing much else new to report. We’re entering the rainy season, and my place is in pretty desperate need of cleaning. And I was walking from my car to my condo when the entire box of Duraflame logs I was carrying ripped and sent them flying everywhere and me toppling in what I thought was a rather impressive slapstick, if only there had been anyone to witness it. Other than that, same-old same-old.

Dan.

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