10/23/13

Shows for shows about shows to show you the shows

ATTENTION NEW YORK CITY: Tomorrow night, Thursday 10/14, B0DYH1GH will be part of this fantastic live talk show at Participant Inc. hosted by ShaneShane and Heather Litteer.

GOOD MORNING, QUEER NEW YORK!



AWESOME PROMO VIDEO YOU HAVE TO WATCH:



Also appearing on the talk show are my favorite crooner soul sister Nath Ann Carrera, as well as SINEGLOSSA and BRUNO ISAKOVIC. Everyone involved is performing at the Queer New York Festival, and we're all so excited.
------------------------------
GOOD MORNING, QUEER NEW YORK!
--a very late morning news show--
------------------------------
hosted by actress, chanteuse and downtown club legend HEATHER LITTEER and songwriter, party hostess and video artist SHANE SHANE.

THURSDAY, October 24
Free and open to the public
5:00-8:00 PM
Refreshments served

Participant Gallery
253 East Houston

This interview on Thursday is also in preparation for B0DYH1GH's new evening-length performance at La MaMa on Sunday 11/3 at 5:30pm. We've put together an evening-length show called ALIEN AFTERLIFE. and I really hope you can come! We'll have new songs and new outfits. It's going to be a very special night, for many reasons. Secret reasons, too. You'll see.

Yesterday I got up at 5am and went to the gym and listened to Millie Jackson. I've been reading this book The Soulful Divas, which is obviously fucking amazing (though for some reason the author, who's totally read to filth by basically all of the aforementioned divas) refuses to be out as a queer person, it's obviously a totally queeny romp. I love it. I read it when I'm eating dinner. I read it when I'm on the toilet. I read it when I'm smoking cigarettes, waiting for someone to come over. So I just read the chapter on Millie Jackson and forgot how much I love her. How genius she is, truly.



Something about being known as a bad girl, right? Being known for a foul mouth. The rapping, the stories she told becoming at one point what she was more known for than her singing. Content versus form? I'm really into the idea of rapping, onstage. Of inhabiting the seemingly impossible position of being the Other Woman, too.

I am trying to make a new show that's sort of a cabaret show. I'm kind of worried about it, but I'm also excited. In the way where, if everything was falling into place easily that would mean I'm not pushing myself. Not to be a snob, but if it's freaky-- if I'm freaked out and uncertain, I'm headed in the right direction. I know it!

After the gym yesterday I went to work and Kept It Together and then after work I went to a script analysis class at this Meisner studio where my friend teaches. They were discussing Ionesco's The Lesson. I loved Ionesco ever since I did The Bald Soprano in high school. Fran Liebovitz: "The girl in your class who suggests that this year the Drama Club put on The Bald Soprano will be a thorn in people's sides all of her life." (Metropolitan Life/Social Studies). I didn't suggest it, my friend Miriam did. She was never a thorn in anyone's side. I sort of am? Just saying: Fran, maybe not this time ok.

Anyway I read The Lesson in preparation for class and I was not expecting to be into it. But we talked a lot about acting technique, about how to relate to people onstage. The difference between an action and an activity. A transition and an adjustment. I'm so into this stuff. Acting theories. It's almost more fun that the actual acting part? Should I go back to grad school? It was pretty fruitful and inspiring, but did kind of make me sad that I seem to only make work by myself. I guess that's only for right now, and there are a lot of really good reasons why things are like that right now. I mean: yikes. But one thing my friend was talking about was the idea that you don't rehearse as a way to entertain. Rehearsal is not a bad performance. It's not for the viewers. It's so you figure out how to do what you need to do. That was good to hear. I needed to hear that. Also, the idea of playing against someone. That you can't play a role in a scene as "I am trying to be ___" You can't act "to be". You can act "I am trying to make the other person fall in love with me. I am trying to seduce them. I am trying to convince them to love me. I am trying to flatter them. I am trying to teach them a lesson." That was a subtle distinction that seems pretty important to me. We also discussed this Tolstoy quote:
“One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that . . . Men are like rivers; the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself—while still remaining the same man.”
Delightful professor asked us initially to acknowledge the inherent sexism in the "man" of this quote, noting that in Tolstoy's native Russian, it was almost certainly "person" rather than "man" and that the sexist interpretation lies with the translator. But, again, this is on one hand a sort of woo-woo thing of us all being the same or at least similar, deep down. But it's also a useful concept for artists (not just actors). We want to think that there are more or less immutable truths about ourselves and other people. Things which we can rely on, which we can know. Know, in the sense of control. But of course the actual knowledge, the actual traction, the actual control (as such) comes from the understanding that it's all temporary, it's not real. I was really struck by this quote but I'm doing a bad job of explaining it. Maybe I don't need to explain. Maybe you already get what I'm saying.

This dark morning (Captain!) I am again so in love with this video of young Autoclave!



So gorgeous. DC prog rock. How funny. I always think they were so far ahead of their time. I wish there would be an Autoclave reunion. Or a Casual Dots reunion. or a Slant 6 reunion or a Quix*O*Tic reunion. I wish all the bands would get back together. Zombie music festival.

No comments: