Tag: Theatre

  • My Least Favorite Part

    One of the goals that I set for myself this year was to submit my work to more magazines. I sent out a bunch in 2023, and sort of fell off the wagon in 2024, and that is why I am hitting the ground running in 2025. Well, at least relative to my situation. My goal was to send out to ten different magazines this month, and today, I accomplished it. Not an enormous step, but a step none the less.

    And as I was reading issues and guidelines from new magazines and journals, I started to feel like I did when I was acting, and going out on auditions – which was nervous, a little anxious, and also a touch of faked confidence. I mean I got work, but like all actors, I struck out more often than not. I accepted that it was part of the business, but I never learned to enjoy it. I have friends who love to audition – get in the room, try stuff out, see what works. They like the challenge of it all.

    For me, auditioning was the necessary evil that I had to go through to get what I wanted, and that was rehearsal. I loved every part of rehearsal. The table read, getting there early, making new friends in the cast and crew, learning how each other works, the discovery of the process, the bad days, and the good days, and that feeling of at any moment it could all go off the rails but somehow always magically came together. Not always, but most of the time. Performance was extra, the icing on the cake. Rehearsal was the fun of work. And I really do miss that.

  • Thoughts on Diane (Unedited)

    (This is a follow up on my post from Monday, which dealt with the passing of my dear friend and mentor, Diane Simons.)

    As this week has gone on, and I have reflected on the time that I spent with Diane, I am filled with overwhelming gratitude. For a very important five years of my life, I was guided by and witnessed the creativity, kindness, compassion, optimism and love that Diane filled her life with.

    Working for her out at Hip Pocket Theatre has defined what I view and expect when it comes to leadership in the arts. She was selfless in that regard – the theatre was the thing, and not her. She supported all of the artists that came through the doors, and never wavered in her optimism in that place. No matter what the challenge was, and we faced some pretty serious one, she had faith that we would all make it though the other side. Having spent so many hours with her, I saw her get angry enough times, but she never let that dissuade her from optimism. That and she cleaned the bathrooms before every show, which is still my yardstick when it comes to people I work for in the arts; would they clean the bathrooms in their own theatre? The answer for 90% of them is no. Diane was committed to doing whatever was needed to be done to make the show happen.

    She also taught me what it means to be an artist. How important it is to get out every idea, and see what sticks. To never limit yourself, or say that something can’t be done. She taught me to collect ideas and influences, and the importance of have a notebook, or a sketchpad near you at all times. That art is giving and sharing and encouraging creativity not only in yourself but in others. That fostering creativity begets more creativity and what you put out you will get in return. That being an artist is fun, but it’s also hard work that can be a lot of fun. I can hear her in my head, “Hell Matt, just give it a shot.”

    But what I find myself coming back to often this week was Diane and her family. Her husband and her two daughters. Oh, how she loved them. If you mentioned any of them in her presence, she would just light up. She was so proud of the women that her daughters became, and how unique and individualistic they were. She so loved being their mother, and was excited about what they did, and loved being a part of their lives. But her husband. “That man,” she’d say, and you could tell and feel how much she loved that man. She would get all giggly and flirty when he was around. Theirs’s was an epic partnership; they co-founded Hip Pocket Theatre, but they also taught theatre to thousands, and created a family of artists. They forged a community out of their love.

    And I am just heartbroken for them. They loved her so.

  • A Visual Language

    Last night, my daughter told me how she has started learning about mime in her school theatre class. Just so happens that I have had some mime training, and done a respectable bit of mime work on stage in Texas and NYC. We had a fun bit playing “being trapped in a box” and “throwing a ball” to each other. Then she asked me is it was possible to do a whole show just in mime? I told her it was, which she found hard to believe.

    So, I started looking for an example to give her, and the first idea I had was to show her a silent movie; Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last” or Buster Keaton’s “The General” or “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” Not exactly mime, but physical enough to move a story along.

    Instead, what I showed her was Jacques Tati’s “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” which is just a sweet, sincere gem of a movie. Though made in 1953, this French film plays like a silent movie, with Tati playing the character of Mr. Hulot. Tati was a trained mime who transitioned to the French film business, and this movie was the best example to show my daughter how mime can be used to tell a story. Though it is French, there is very little dialogue in it, and what there is are just easy to read subtitles. For the best explanation of this movie, I suggest reading Roger Ebert’s review in his Great Movie series.

    And the kid got it. I mean, it did take her a minute to understand that no one was going to talk, and that though it was a comedy, this wasn’t a belly laugh, slapstick comedy. But she saw how jokes were set up, how you could read what someone was thinking about their facial expression, or how they put their hands on their hips and what that might mean when the front door is left open. And how you knew Hulot was a good guy because he was patient with a dog sleep in the road, and a gentleman towards the young woman staying in the hotel. She learned quickly, or maybe she already knew it, to pick up no what each person was doing, and how those actions help explained they type of character they were.

  • This is What Dad Does

    I got to do something last night with my daughter that I have been looking forward to for years. We went to a presentation of four works-in-progress puppet shows. The venue was Dixon Place down in the Lower East Side, and the showing was part of their Puppet Blok series. And, it was a school night, so this was a very special occasion. My daughter got to experience the world of puppets that I had been in, and meet some of the people I have been working with for over 15 years.

    The kid has known since forever that puppetry was the “thing” that I did in New York, but for most of the time when she thought of Dad and puppets, she was thinking “Muppets.” Slowly, as she’s grown, and I have shown her videos, and pictures of the type of work I was involved in. Some of it was traditional puppets, and some of it was mime, and other shows were more about movement and physical theatre. I never did marionettes because that is a hard skill to hone, and those guys are crazy.

    Last night, the kid got to have her first experience in seeing what it was that her father did. And I was especially happy that we chose last night because two good friends were showing their work, and both of them are very talented women who I have worked for. I wanted my daughter to see women being themselves, out front, creating art, and leading their projects.

    I was also a little nervous that the kid would get bored with the show. I learned a while ago that just because something is important to me, doesn’t mean it will be important to her. I’m not looking for her to want to become an artist or a performer. I just would like for her to have an appreciation of the arts, and the creative process. And works at this stage can be rough, very much “in progress,” and still a ways from a final form.

    But I needn’t have been concerned. She got it. She was into it. She was a great audience member as well. All four of the pieces engaged her, and lead her not to ask a bunch of questions, but to tell me how each piece made her feel. At the talk back after the show, she was a little shy to give her comments, but she whispered them to me, and I spoke up for her. Yeah, she got it.

    And it was a late night. We were riding the D train home, and she snuggled up next to be with her show program in her hand. I’m pretty sure she had a good time. I got what I wanted, which was to share a part of me with the kid.

  • School Performances

    My kid had a school performance this morning. It wasn’t a play; it was a review of songs. Each class came out on stage and did a song. I must say that the program was run very smartly and efficiently. It started on time, and ended early – of all things. I give all the credit to the theatre and music teacher; they did an outstanding job. I would say that a great many professional theatre artists could learn a great deal on running a show from these teachers.

    As I sat in the back of the house, I can’t deny the sense of beaming pride that shone off of me. The wife too, and, well, all the other parents there, too. Oh, parents are such a subjective, unreliable audience. Our opinions cannot be taken seriously. Yes, we would applaud our kids burping the National Anthem.

    I began to wonder, and I know the answer is yes, but even going all the way back to the 4th Century BC, were Athenian parents also swooning over their kids as they performed in Dionysian Festival of Theatre? When the chorus of children filed out on stage and began to recite lines backing up Oedipus, there must have been mothers and fathers beaming and bragging about how amazing their child was. Even when masks fell off kid’s faces, and the deus ex machina locked up stranding an actor in the air, those parents still spoke about how their kid was just as good as Thespis.

    Yeah, sure, the more things change, the more the stay the same – a truth that cannot be avoided in this situation. I always knew that when I became a father that eventually, I would be in a school auditorium watching my kid on a stage with other kids, half of them desperately not wanting to be up there, performing something – and probably not well.

    But not today. No, my kid was awesome on stage. She is a naturally talented performer.