Not doing anything Thursday?--check out Holland Productions' kickoff

Got this from Krista.

Holland Productions is kicking off their 2009/2010 season with a benefit at Kitty O'Shea's. I can't make it, I have rehearsal that night, otherwise I'd be there. (Okay, now there's a reason right there to go!) If you're not doing anything and want to hang with some really good people and support live theater and new voices in Boston, here are the details.


Kitty O'Shea's
131 State St.
Boston, MA US

Thursday, September 24, 7:00PM

Help Holland Productions kick off our 2009-2010 season and raise money for our upcoming show, Kid Simple: A Radio Play in the Flesh by Jordan Harrison (October 30th - November 15th at The Factory Theatre)! Join us for a night of food, fun, and live entertainment.

Raffle on great items including those donated from The Friendly Toast, Good Vibrations, Rotary, Hypothesis, and the SpeakEasy Stage Company!

Bid in our live "Date Holland Productions" auction.

$10 at the door (includes a raffle ticket)
Cash bar

We'll see you there!

About Holland Productions: Holland Productions believes in honest theatre; theatre that engages the heart, cultivates creativity, and dissolves boundaries. We believe that theatre is truly a collaborative process and we strive to create work where all those involved, from actor to audience, can bring individual experiences to explore. It is our goal to provide a forum for the ideas of contemporary playwrights and a channel for the female voice. Through smart, sensitive, and stimulating theatre Holland Productions is committed to challenging the complexity of reality.

About Kid Simple: A Radio Play in the Flesh: Moll, a girl who invents things, wins the science fair with a machine for hearing sounds that can't be heard. But when a shape-shifting Mercenary steals the invention (and her heart), she must embark on a quest to save noise as we know it. In a quirky fable of innocence and experience Moll crosses chasms and rafts rivers into a world where sound is always more than what meets the ear.

Dumb joke

My mother came from a big family due to my grandmother being hard of hearing.

At the end of every day, grandpa would say to grandma, "Well, do you want to go to sleep or what?"

And she'd say, "What??"

The Longest Way

Check it out. This guy walked for a year--4646km through China and recorded the changes to his face--actually his whole head and deameanor. Really cool soundtrack and editing.

The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

Deadstring Brothers--Sacred Heart

Saw Deadstring Brothers over the weekend at the Middle East for the Rolling Rock Beer-B-Q sponsored by Bloodshot Records. Yeah, I actually went to something by that name. Five bucks and a bunch of bands including Graham Parker and Bobby Bare. Jr.

Anyway, despite the lousy sound system that plagues the Middle East (and always makes me think twice about forking over even such a paltry sum because you know it's gonna sound bad) I was glad to get turned on to these guys.

Wikipedia says their sound is reminiscent of the Stones Exile on Mainstreet. Okay. Yeah, I've always liked it when all those English musicians incorporated the U.S. South into their music.

Here's their MySpace link.

It Might Get Loud--great flick about the creative process

It Might Get Loud is one of the best films I've seen in a long time. I was hunkered down in my seat and was so quiet--wasn't fidgeting because of my back--that Sue thought I was asleep. Nope, just really absorbed.

Take three guitarists at different phases of their lives: Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin, The Edge from U2, and Jack White from The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, put them on some couches and let them talk about their guitars. Pretty simple concept.

What you get, though, is a lively discussion on the creative process from artists, one who is solidly ensconced in rock and roll's history, another at the height of his creative path, and a youngster, well on his way but still feeling his way along. What you get is a deeper appreciation for each one of these musicians and their body of work, and how they individually used their guitars to share what's inside them.

Jimmy Page is peaceful and almost avuncular, looking back on his life with The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin. He reminisces on what IT was like. The Edge talks mostly of not only how he works, but why he plays and writes. Jack White talks about his roots and how he's constantly going back to them.

Check it out if you're into music or if you're in any way involved with the creative process.

Just Another Day in Red Sox Nation

Yep, that's yours truly delivering eggs to Dot. The director, camera operator, and the rest of the crew did a great job.


Spec RED SOX commercial; directed by Paul Van Wart (Werk Bros., LA)

Casting by Kevin Fennessy, Kevin Fennessy Casting, imdb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm...

Category: Comedy

Tags: Red Sox Yankees Suck comedy Dot Dwyer John Grenier-Ferris Jae-Omo Zubhuza Rob DiNinni Bradley Van Dussen Avery Hatch

The Low Anthem kicks off west coat tour

An email alert from The Low Anthem gives good news to all those people on the West Coast.

Here it is:

Greetings friends from your tired, sweaty LA road dogs.

It has been our pleasure to play shows for you this summer, all across the midwest, east coast, and New England. But, you may ask, why this coastal bias? When will we make the westward trek? The same path our forefathers traveled so many years ago? When will we cut the bullshit and smell the redwoods? And you may ask, when will we walk down Cannery Row and Sunset Boulevard? When will we cross the mighty Rockies, and swim in the Salt Lake?

Well, my friends, the time has finally come!

We proudly announce our first ever WEST COAST tour this fall in late October and November. We will share the road with compadres Blind Pilot, a fabulous band from Portland, Oregon, best known for playing beautiful organic music and touring on road bikes. If you're schooled in the secret arts of Facebook, do not tarry to use your well-oiled fingertips to let your friends in far away cities know about the tour.

And for those in the fine city of Providence, RI we have a very special hometown show for you to kick off our West Coast tour. On Thursday, October 15 we will be playing the historic Avon Cinema on Thayer Street. The show will start at 8:30 PM with Death Vessel opening. Advance tickets can be purchased for $13 at the Avon during box office hours, or on our website.

Also, we will be playing a show next week at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, MA on Thu, August 27 with our dear friends, Surprise Me Mr. Davis. The mutually agreed upon theme is anything goes - Mr. Davis will be playing our songs, we will be playing theirs, and eventually all inhibitions will fall by the wayside and who knows who will be getting up on stage together. Davis is the frankenstein band of hometown boys The Slip and Nathan Moore, and recently, Marco Benevento.

And for our old-growth friends in the rest of the Northeast, we will be at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY on Wed, August 26 w/ Surprise Me Mr. Davis. Then, we return to Philly to play a FREE concert for the WXPN Artist to Watch series in Kennet Square (Sun, Aug 30). Thanks to everyone for all your support!

Love to all!

Jeff, Ben, and Jocie


New web news:

TLA on Twitter! http://twitter.com/thelowanthem

Daytrotter

New York Times Popcast

Time Out NY Video

Baebel

FALL TOUR DATES
Go here for tickets

August 26 Brooklyn, NY Bell House ^
August 27 Fall River, MA Narrows Center for the Arts ^
August 30 Philadelphia, PA Kennet Square FREE - WXPN Artist to Watch
Concert

(IN EUROPE FOR SEPTEMBER)

October 2 Austin City Limits
October 15 Providence, RI Avon Theater!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 17 Seattle, WA Chop Suey
October 18 Portland, OR Lola's Room at the Crystal Ballroom
October 19 Eugene, OR WOW Hall*
October 21 San Francisco, CA Great American Music Hall*
October 23 Los Angeles, CA Troubadour*
October 24 San Diego, CA Casbah*
October 25 Tucson, AZ Plush*
October 27 Austin, TX The Parish*
October 28 Dallas, TX Granada Theater*
October 29 Houston, TX Bronze Peacock at HOB*
October 30 Baton Rouge, LA Spanish Moon*
November 2 Tallahassee, FL Club Downunder*
November 3 Orlando, FL The Social*
November 4 Atlanta, GA The Earl*
November 5 Nashville, TN Mercy Lounge*
November 6 Asheville, NC University of North Carolina*
November 7 Norfolk, VA Attucks Theater*
November 9 Carrboro, NC Cats Cradle*
November 11 Washington, D.C. The Black Cat*
November 12 Boston, MA Paradise*

* with Blind Pilot
^ with Surprise Me Mr. Davis

Viva la Vinal Festival in Somerville this weekend

And speaking of Audrey Ryan, she sent this out to to her email list the other day.

Free music; you can't beat that.

Here's the body of her email:

So this weekend is Viva la Vinal Festival 2009, lots of FREE music and fun so come bring your blankets or chairs and spend an evening in a beautiful garden setting…

Friday August 28 & Saturday August 29 from 4-10:00 pm
(rain date August 30)

In the garden at…
The Somerville Community Growing Center
22 Vinal Ave., Somerville (near Union Square)
www.thegrowingcenter.org

Please come join us at this annual neighborhood event as we celebrate the Growing Center and our local artists and businesses.

• Live world, folk, bluegrass, Americana, and singer-songwriter music from local artists
• Children’s music by Charlie Hope on Friday August 28 from 4-5 pm.
• Raffle featuring prizes and gift certificates from local businesses such as the Sherman Café, Hub Comics, Grand, Precinct, Block 11, the Independent, Cantina Mexicana, and many other local Union Square businesses.
• Concession stand with affordable snacks and beverages to help benefit artists and the garden.

The festival is free to the public and all ages are welcomed. Donations are
accepted to support the event.

To check on weather cancellations please call 617-320-0538 or visit
www.thegrowingcenter.org and click on ‘calendar’.

Viva la Vinal Schedule 2009

Friday August 28th, 4-10pm

4:00-5:00- Charlie Hope (Children’s music)
5:00-5:45- David Wax Museum (Somerville folk-Americana band)
5:45- 6:30- Abbie Barret (Somerville folk-country artist)
6:30- 7:15- Akshara Percussion Ensemble (traditional Indian music)
7:15- 8:00- Dan Blakeslee (Boston indie folk artist)
8:00- 8:45- The Accident That led Me to the World (Northampton folk)
8:45- 9:30- Jennifer Greer (Somerville indie pop singer-songwriter)

Saturday August 29th, 4-10pm

4:00-4:45- Julie Dougherty (North Shore folk singer)
4:45-5:30- Chuck Muldoon (Portland acoustic instrumental guitarist)
5:45- 6:30- Rakiya (Cambridge world music band)
6:30- 7:15- Audrey Ryan (Somerville indie rock singer-songwriter)
7:15- 8:00- Danielle Miraglia (Somerville folk-blues singer)
8:00- 8:45- Seymour (Portland indie folk band)
8:45- 9:30- The Points North (Boston bluegrass folk act)

Rod Picott and Amanda Shires--a great opening act

There's nothing like a really good opening act. One that surprises you. One that you can put on your list and watch and start buying their music and you can say I knew them when--and that when was when they were an opening act.

I first heard Bobby Bare, Jr. when he opened for Lucero. Audrey Ryan opened recently for The Bittersweets, and she's a local musician worth learning about. Of course, there was this English country singer who opened for The Cowboy Junkies who actually stopped mid-song because he said he wasn't singing the right words, though I don't think anyone had noticed.

Last night we went to Club Passim to hear Paul Burch. There's always a silver lining to every dark cloud, and not working very much lets me spend a lot of time on Facebook. Wait, that's not really a good thing, is it, even under the auspices of "looking on the bright side." But I was hanging on Facebook yesterday and Club Passim gave two tickets to the first three commenters, so I found myself on the Red Line into Cambridge. And that's how I heard Rod Picott and Amanda Shires.

I guess they met up in Austin. He's from Maine and she's a fiddle player from Lubbock. Now they live in Nashville and play together sometimes, and now they're touring, joking last night that they are calling their tour the 100,000 mile tour or something like that. I guess they're driving around, starting from Nashville, in an old Jeep, and they'll end the tour when the Jeep rolls over 100,000 miles. Anyway, their music--I'm new to them but I think most of what they sang was written by Picott, though there's one murder ballad that Shires wrote--their music can be called kind of country ballads--stories about real life people and heartache with a bit of wry humor tossed in.

She's got a blistering Texas twang voice that she uses with mischief; his is more gravel and barbed wire, but they sound good together, the differences in their voice complementing the other: hers pulling his out of the funk and his keeping the songs serious.

Nice surprises. Check them out if you're looking for some real country tunes.

Structural Engineers needed in Boston

One of my Facebook friends wrote to me with this.

These are tough times for everyone. If you know anyone who is a structural engineer, pass this along. Or even better, just pass it along; let's get viral. Maybe someone will get work out this.

Here's the job:

I am currently looking for Structural Engineers (ES1) to work for my client in lovely Boston, one of the biggest names in the transportation industry. Must be PE and a minimum of 1 year of experience. Work is across Massachusetts, depending on projects.

If you know anyone.... thanks!

Everybody Knows--Dixie Chicks

This song has been rattling around in my head for a couple of days.

I think it's a quintessential trait of a person born in the United States to think that they can reinvent themselves, move somewhere else and start a whole new life, regardless of the past. It's steeped in our popular culture, and is becoming more prevalent as fame transcends talent in our collective psyche. Having been subject to enough people in my life who played judge, jury, and hangman, I can fully appreciate this.

But you can't run from the past. Yeah, the past is done and gone, but it would take a colossal, psychotic effort--repression worthy of Sam Shepherd or Tennessee Williams--to pull it off. And there's a big difference between nuts and nutty. Nutty is okay, but run like hell from nuts.

Anyway, no matter how crazy the person, there are still cracks, and the past will seep in somewhere and do it's work.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is turn around and face the past bearing down on you like a herd of half-crazed wildebeests. It's gonna hurt, but once the herd passes, you can (hopefully) dust yourself off and resume your journey.




Tell me now if you came sneaking up behind
Would you know me and see behind the smile
I can change like colors on a wall
Hoping no one else will find what lies beneath it all
I think I hide it all so well

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows
Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows

Looking through the crowd
I search for something else
But every time I turn around
I run into myself
Here I stand
Consumed with my surroundings
Just another day
Of everybody looking
I swore they'd never see me cry
You'll never see me cry

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows
Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows

You say I'll pay the price
That's the chance that I'll take
Though you may think I'm telling lies
But I just call it getting by

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows

Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows I am just barely getting by

Sugar Mountain--Neil Young

Up until only maybe two years ago, if you had asked me how old I was I would have paused and run a number line through my head, matching the line against reality. There would have been a click somewhere around 17, but then I'd fast-forward to my real age. Somewhere in my psyche I honestly believed that I was still 17. Or that life stopped at 17, or that I stopped growing then...or something.

Now, I feel my age. Not old. Just my age. My real age. And there's something very satisfying and something right and real about all that. I'm at a place in my life and it's here and it's today.

And I love this song, and it's feeling trying to go back, of trying to live somewhere where you're not.

Oh to live on, Sugar Mountain. The nostalgia, the sweet feeling, for sure, but also the sadness and the melancholy.





Oh, to live on sugar mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You cant be twenty on sugar mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.

Its so noisy at the fair
But all your friends are there
And the candy floss you had
And your mother and your dad.

Oh, to live on sugar mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You cant be twenty on sugar mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.

There's a girl just down the aisle,
Oh, to turn and see her smile.
You can hear the words she wrote
As you read the hidden note.

Oh, to live on sugar mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You cant be twenty on sugar mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.

Now you're underneath the stairs
And you're givin' back some glares
To the people who you met
And its your first cigarette.

Oh, to live on sugar mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You cant be twenty on sugar mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.

Now you say you're leavin' home
cause you want to be alone.
Ain't it funny how you feel
When you're findin' out its real?

Oh, to live on sugar mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You cant be twenty on sugar mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.

Oh, to live on sugar mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You cant be twenty on sugar mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.

Whister in the Dark staging a reading of my play!

I got some great news Friday night in an email.

Whistler in the Dark, as part of their Whistler Wednesdays stage readings, accepted Red Dog for a staged reading, scheduled for March 3, 2010.

I'm so excited (and honored) to have my play accepted by a group who is giving new voice to theater in Boston.

Stay tuned.

Ah, the blogsphere

Ah, the blogsphere.

I used to write on this blog sometimes five and six times a day. I was steeped in the digital world, but more so, I was sitting in a cubicle bored to tears most of the time with thoughts and ideas and impressions rattling around in my head and this space was the best outlet for them.

But more and more I'm just living life right here in the "real" world. Not that I'm still not fascinated by the digital space. I still am, probably more than I've ever been. It is my little window to the world. I'm still unemployed, and while for some crazy reason I'm really not worried--how can you worry about something that is so far out of your control, like this financial crisis, as the Europeans so eloquently call it? It's like worrying about the weather. So, while I keep myself so busy sometimes it's almost laughable. I'm out of work yet there still aren't enough hours in the day for me to get everything done, from looking for work to taking care of the apartment and the meals to writing and continuing to just improve myself as a human being. Yes, that last one takes up a lot of time and energy. (That's a joke, son.)

And sometimes I feel a little guilty that I don't write here more. I know there are followers; some people subscribe, some people lurk, and others drop by occasionally to see what's up in my life--idle curiosity, perhaps, but it's nice that people are thinking of me. Just as I think of people in the periphery of my life.

It's not an excuse for not writing here, but I'm busy trying to figure out what to do with my life, how to do the things I want to do, how Sue and I can live our lives the way we want to. There are classes I'm considering including more acting classes and writing classes and auditions. Thursday I have a job interview for contract work that I have to prepare for, which would be great if I could land it because it would be the kind of work I used to do before I quit freelancing and went back to the agency. I loved the freelance life, the freedom, the stimulus from meeting new and interesting people, and learning about new subject matter and details for things I already know about.

Red Dog is out in a few hands now, hopefully being read and not just taking up space on a hard drive somewhere. It's at a few theaters for consideration for readings, and I'm hard at work on another play now that deals with all my favorite themes: abandonment, trust, family. That's all I'm going to say right now, because you don't want to show something to the world when it's still in such a formative state. The air seems to shrivel things. But I'm just as excited about this play as I was about Red Dog. I love the pure joy of simply writing.

And right now I have four pieces of chicken marinading in the 'fridge that I'll cook on the grill later and put back in the 'fridge for a meal later of cold chicken and salad when Sue gets home. I tell you, when she walks through the door, my heart just sings, and I love seeing the look on her face, too, when she sees me. I say I'm lucky, and she says she's lucky.

I try to keep things open. For the longest time I had my Facebook page closed up only to friends. But then it occurred to me that one of the things I like so much about the digital world is the idea of its openness. Again, that shared experience that we all have, whether we want to admit it or not. Being closed is not the way to go in the new world, and so I opened my page up to the world, and have had some good results. I've "met" new people, musicians and artists and actors and others in my field and though we've never met face-to-face we've shared ideas and personally, I've learned and grown from them.

But openness can be a bit creepy, too. There are those who will always abuse anything. I have a lurker on this blog, someone in Australia, and all the signs of a creep are there. He hits the blog pretty regularly, and he seems to be searching for anything relating to Sue. For a while he'd keep going back to pictures I posted of her and used the keyword, lanka, as in sri lanka where Sue lived for awhile. It was weird to see the connections. I removed the pictures, and it seemed when he realized they were missing he immediately used the keyword "sex" to look for things on my blog, which I thought was a rather poignant, primal, word association. Now he sits on the blog for a good hour, pouring over the posts date by date. Anyway, this is the dark side of the Internet, and just like all new things in the world, we have to adjust and learn, which is the one thing I love doing.

As I started with this post, ah, the blogsphere.

Time Bandits play at benefit for Parkinson's Disease at Marlboro Fish and Game

Yesterday, just off Rte. 495 North, heading west on Rte. 20, through three sets of lights and a right onto Boundary Street, and after a scant 50 yards turning right onto Elm Street before going a quarter-mile onto Muddy Lane, a good thing was happening in the world. Good people go together for good times and music and food to raise as much money as they could to fight Parkinson’s Disease. It was at the Fish and Game Club in Marlborough, Massachusetts, a place not many people frequent. It's a small club made up of people who are not members of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Symphony, or Club Passim. They enjoy hunting and fishing and family. The lead singer of the band, Time Bandits, a group of friends who play '60's and '70's covers, organized the benefit because one of her parents has Parkinson's. So Time Bandits got a gig (it was their first or second, depending on how you look at things) and it was a beautiful summer Saturday and I wish I could have spent more than the hour and a half that I did spend there because it truly was fun: Fun to see the band up and going, fun to see people enjoying themselves in a very simple way with food on the grill including pulled pork made by the lead singer, and kids having fun, particularly one who's father is the drummer in the band and it must be amazing to see his father playing, and it's even more tender to see the unadulterated love the little boy has for his father, and to see my friend, Joan, wowed by her husband (he's in a real band, she confided to me) who she hadn't seen play yet.

Sometimes the world is pretty simple, and when it is, I love it.

Check it out.

Growing up, and the importance of not owning a Blackberry

My father used to tell me to stay in school so I didn’t have to do what he did for a living. He was blue collar, and unloaded trucks for his whole life. He came home dirty and tired every day, and never made more than $10,000 a year. Ten thousand a year was squat even back then when a loaf of bread cost a quarter. So, I went to school and worked in offices most of my life, and didn’t come home dirty and tired like he did. And he would have said I did all right for myself.

And now I tell my kids the same thing my old man told me. Go to school so you don’t have to do what I do. Or more, what I did. I always had good jobs, until recently anyway when this depression has pulled the rug out of every one in five worker. (Those are my numbers and I don’t have any proof of them other than I what I can discern from the media.) But I worked for a lot of companies that I really didn’t like, didn’t like a lot of the people or what the company stood for even though my father would have thought they were pretty cushy jobs.

All this comes to mind as I talk to my two daughters about their summer jobs, and about money. One daughter loves her job, but doesn’t make any money. The other one hates her job, but makes good money. Sounds like the plot of a fairy tale, doesn’t it? And the one who doesn’t make any money decided to buy a Blackberry and be an adult and wants to start paying bills, and the other one texted me the other day to say she now understands why I hated sitting in cubicles all my life.

I said to the one who bought the Blackberry that paying bills isn’t all what it’s cut out to be. That what most “adults” do is simply work to pay bills. All that hard work goes to taking money in one hand and handing it off to someone else with the other. And the more money you make the more you buy (or in the recent past—charged) and you got into a terrible millstream of simply working to keep your head above the water. I told the one working in the cubicle I guess it was best she learned that lesson for herself, as much as I hate knowing she has to learn that lesson.

I wish I could simply put my two kids on a path that I felt was best for them, but we can’t live other’s lives for them, even our kids. The point on this path both my kids are on is pretty standard for white middle-class kids raised in the suburbs. They start out pretty much buying into the status quo--or what used to pass for the status quo. I’m afraid I’d freak my kids out by telling them it’s all gone now, just like I used to tell them the reason not to drink or do drugs was because we know where those roads lead. Be creative, I told them, and make new mistakes. If my kids were really smart they’d do that now: forget jobs and school and bills and Blackberrys and sit back for awhile on some mountaintop or some beach somewhere and figure out where this new world is going, then go there and meet it coming around the bend. But of course, that’s easy for me to say. It’s always easy being an armchair quarterback.

Son Volt--Medicine Hat

Today, one of my Facebook status lines was that I think I'd take Jay Farrar over Jeff Tweedy.

This song is the reason I said that. I had just heard it, and while I love a lot of the innovation that Wilco did/does, I guess deep down I'm just a traditional mofo. I love good, clean, solid American roots music. And I love Farrar's voice.




There will be droughts and days inundated
Unveilings free from saturation
Departures raised with no masquerading
There will be teachers that die by their own hand
Pundits that push headlong for atonement
Friends and followers devoted to living
There will be watchers that ply for new confines
Those committed to society's circles
Unwary cogs with no cadence of virtue
There will be right
There will be wrong

Drop of the hat, and it's already started
Just like that, and the deed is done
What I'd give for that hat to be medicine
The time is now to be on the run

There will be machinations unforeseen
Sleepwalking sense from a bad dream
No promenade walk in the parkway
There will be catchwords filled with infection
Circulars to prop up occasion
No golden mean to prop up the footsteps
There will be levels on high hills that appraise
There will be unchanging certainties
Barometers that follow the stampede
There will be right
There will be wrong

There will be signposts of indication
Semaphore go signs and warnings
Hailstone halos and country-blues wailings
There will be strains that break out of straight time
To pave with grace different roads to the same place
No consequence to repay what's been given
There will be layers of means to an end
Drawn-out days before resolution
Dregs will rain down from all directions
There will be right
There will be wrong

Don't keep NXR's Shh quiet. Great new theater in Boston.

I checked out Shh!, New Exhibition Room's latest production, free at Playwright's Platform. Go see it, and not just because it's free, which is amazing. Normally you'd be shelling out somewhere around 25 bucks for theater of this caliber.

Shh! examines censorship. It's all, as they say in this Web 2.0 world, original content. NXR auditioned an ensemble and together they collaborated to write and make this show. Original content, to my way of thinking, is the way to go in this world. I mean, do we really need another production of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas? How about breaking some new ground, people?

Shh! is not the end-all word on censorship. I don't think they meant it to be that. Shh! is a series of skits that are very fast-paced, high-energy, and very entertaining with the idea of censorship sometimes obviously and sometimes-not-so obviously holding them together. Sometimes the role of censorship in our society is right out there, as when Shh! lays out the history of censorship in America. And sometimes it's a bit more subtle, as with a series surrounding a nudist, that seem to address the idea of self-censorship. Almost always, though, Shh! goes for the humor, which makes for a very entertaining night. Shock isn't the intent here at all.

Since it is theater and it was written by the cast and producers, Shh!, as you'd expect, has quite the liberal viewpoint toward censorship. Except for one skit where a conservative suburbanite gives a quiet, impassioned, serious argument towards censorship, never does Shh! explore whether censorship has its place in our lives, which might have been an interesting take, given the obvious talent that appears in the show. One wonders what the ensemble, given its obvious intelligence and creativity, would have come up with when challenged with that question.

Bottom line? Go see it, and not just because it's free. At the very least, Shh! is highly entertaining. Prepared to be entertained (there's that word again), and maybe shocked or challenged depending on your own sensibilities.

NXR represents some of the new, younger voices in theater that seem to be growing in the Boston area. Just like years ago when young comics like Jay Leno, Steven Wright, Denis Leary, and Lenny Clark were honing their skills at area clubs and later defined the Boston comic, groups like NXR seem to be doing the same with their performances. If anything, for free, you just might see a bit of Boston theater history in the making.

Shh! is free, but you still need a ticket to get in. Get them here.

The Grateful Dead--Mexicali Blues

This song always makes me smile. It's just a guy/tequila-drinking/dusty boots kind of song.

New Exhibition Room: Shh!! -- orignal theater in Boston

From Nora Long, one of the founders of New Exhibition Room in Boston.

Hey Everyone I know (pretty much)

I wanted to take this opportunity to personally invite you to my theatre company’s first show. We’ve worked fairly hard over the last 6 weeks to make a quirky, frenetic exploration of censorship. Everything in the show is true or an abstraction of something true, so I think the show is equal parts hilarious and terrifying. There will likely be nudity, gratuitous violence and definitely adult language and content, so this might not be the best show to bring grandma to. It would be great to see you. For those of you who are too far away to come, I thought you might be interested in what I’ve been up to.

Also, it’s free, it’s T-accessible, and there will be cookies afterwards – what more could you ask for in a night at the theatre? Get tix here.

You are, of course, welcome anytime, but it would be particularly awesome to have some friendly faces (and voices) in the house opening weekend (July 9-11). A few members of the press will be coming, so we want to make sure they see the best possible show, which is, in large part do to the audience.

In addition to the show, there will be a reading of a new play each Saturday at 4PM. The writers include John J. King, Theo Goodell and Rachel Kelsey. These readings are also free, and a great opportunity to hear some new work by some of the most talented local writers we know.

Feel free to forward this email around.

Hope to see you there.

Lots of love,
Nora

PS. If you haven’t seen it already, my baby sister made a couple of killer videos of our rehearsals. Check them out.





New Exhibition Room presents Shh!
July 9-25, 2009
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/69085