On The Road with the Street Theater!

Well! Well! Well! We've done it again! The Street Theater is on its feet and running all over New York. Going to all 5 Boroughs. We've already done the Bronx, Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan. We're due to go to Sunset Park, Brooklyn on Saturday, and Travers Park in Jackson Heights, Queens on Sunday.

You know, it's really funny. You really have to know who you're writing for. We opened on 1st Avenue and 10th Street on Saturday, August 4th. We had a good 200 people (low estimate) in the audience. We were an instant "hit (you never know for sure if you've reached your target 'til you bring it out to the Street)." A very fine friend of mine, saw the show and came over to congratulate me, after. She told me the show was fabulous. But she also told me, that the start of the show doesn't really work, until we get to the High School scene. Well, the start of the show is all about a local Gang and how they steal tire rims and are now going into the Bath Salts business, and in this section, one of he members gets kicked out of the Gang because he objects to hard drug selling and all the bad stuff that comes along with it.

The next day, Sunday, August 5th, we went to St. Mary's Park in the South Bronx. And guess what this audience was crazy happy about?! The beginning! All the Gang stuff, the young kid's courage in the face of peer pressure. So there you have it! They loved this kid, and they loved the young gang members who were bulldozed by the new Drug Kingpin. So it goes! Some people (community activists) love the whole section in Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street part of this, rather rambunctious musical. Others love the ending, when all our neighbors turn into reps of different Countries that have immigrated to New York.

My mother was an Immigrant, who came her steerage, with the animals and the cargo, in 1905. She became an American Success. But as a Doctor in New York, she did many House Calls and treated many patients, and gratis, delivered many babies during her long life. And I was lucky enough to hear all the stories of her struggles, early in life. She always let me know her opinions of immigration which were; this is where the future health of this country lies. And be sure, that after much angst, many will cross the line of poverty. And we need to help as much as we can, to give them the leg up they need, to make that leap. She remembered free, 7-day a week libraries. Free colleges (she went to Hunter) and the wonderful Theater she was able to see, for nothing and close to nothing (Eve Le Galleiere's Civic Repertory Company, among others) Hooray for Free Theater! Our Street Theater is indeed admission free, 99% Reduced Fat, or, You Can Bank On Us! That's the title for this Summer's Show! All singing! All dancing! All brainy Vaudeville! Street Theater allows our audience to love our hate it. It has a non-captive audience. It breaks that 4th wall with a giant kick and audience interaction is a good part of its joyous creation.

A breath of fresh breeze in a Hot, Muggy Summer, it takes us out of the cement and steel that holds us in, so much, in this city. This City in which I was born.

We've got a bunch of shows still in front of us. We're going to Staten Island. We're going to Tompkins Square Park. And more and more! I just can't wait! Here's the schedule:

Saturday, August 25st - 2PM - Brooklyn
Sunset Park at 44th Street & 6th Avenue

Sunday, August 26th - 2PM - Queens
Jackson Heights, Travers Park at 34th Avenue between 77th & 78th Streets

Saturday, September 8th - 2PM - Manhattan
Tompkins Square Park at East 7th Street & Avenue A

Sunday, September 9th - 2PM - Manhattan
Washington Square Park

Saturday, September 15th - 2PM - Staten Island
Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway & Wayne Street

Sunday, September 16th - 2PM - Manhattan
St. Marks Church, East 10th Street at 2nd Avenue

Writing the Street Theater

Hey! I just realized it's Bastille Day!

I'm sitting here on the screened-in porch of my trailer just outside Germantown, NY. I just finished the Street Theater play for this year. The porch, by the way, was built by Mark Marcante, and rebuilt by him this Summer. He is the Production Director of TNC and a leading actor in the Street Theater company. The roof caved in this Winter due to a heavy accumulation of snow. He had built it 4 years ago and the roof is all screening, except for the crosspieces of wood. So it's held up pretty well, I'd say. It's a Godsend to me since we have no air conditioning and I like to write outside at night when the trailer is like a Hot Tin Box. It cools off pretty well outside, up here, at night. But around 5:30pm the bugs come out and even with Eucalyptus oil slathered all over me and smelling like a Vicks Vaporizer, it doesn't really stop them. And as the night progresses, it gets worse.

We are situated in the woods and a little creek behind and a cemetery across the road in front. So I have quiet, to write, which I do, morning to night, and sometimes morning to night to morning. I'm writing with a deadline, so my notes and papers are scattered all over the place. There's a library in the town itself, about a 7 minute drive from the trailer and it's got computers and almost no one using it a lot of the time. The town itself only has 1 store and a little post office. There doesn't seem to be anything written yet about Zuccotti Park and the Occupy Wall Street Movement, but it's in and I put a hold on a book they will be getting called "The Rise of Labor." It'll be after the fact, but I'll read it anyway. However, there's lots of pictures and articles on the computer, and we had a member of OWS come talk to us (the cast) as part of our two-week workshop we do just before I go off to isolation land. Don't get me wrong. A screened-in porch is not a panacea. The Bugs get in. The Gnats and the Noseeums. But when you're writing it takes a lot more than that to "bug" you. No wonder writers are so into themselves. I include myself. When you're on a roll, the house could burn down and you really wouldn't care. Afterwards, oh, yes, but while the muse is upon you, the rest of the world goes away. And, of course, you need time to dream.

My process is usually this. I write, I fall asleep in the chair, pen in hand, I wake up an hour later, or 10 minutes later, or 60 seconds later, and I write. Sometimes I remember my dream. Sometimes not. It doesn't matter. You are working on the play during sleep. Argue with me if you will. Let good writers let me know how it is with you.

At any rate, "99% Reduced Fat, or, You Can Bank On Us" is finished. The Book and Lyrics, anyway. Now it's up to Joe Banks to set the music. He's been e-mailed all the lyrics but we've only got three weeks to get this baby on the Boards. There are 3 A.D.s and myself taking notes during the Workshop, and I always have an Alumni Meeting a week before the Workshop, where the Wonderful Street Theater actors from previous years, talk about the issues of the Day. I tell them this year's theme, and they go off from there. They know I'm looking for Humor and Satire. They undersrtand the process. One of the A.D.s takes notes and so do I. These notes are irreplaceable. They are my inspiration. I will have written the play's synopsis even before the Alumni Meeting, but ideas come out of that meeting, and lots more from the workshop improvs. Great characters emerge. One actor came up with a really super character. A Sanitation Worker named Willy. I think maybe next year, he will be the Hero of my play. This year, the hero is a young member of a gang who leaves that life to become a community activist. It's loosely based on the life of Chino Garcia, and the founding of that great Cultural Center on the Lower East Side, CHARAS, which was the Focal Point of the Lower East Side for so many years, until Mayor Giuliani had the building sold right under our noses. You know who it was sold to? The same guy who owns the new Nets Stadium in Brooklyn. Bruce Ratner. The neighborhood was so up in arms about it, he was never able to develop that old school building on 12th Street. The Neighborhood stopped him at every turn. Rallies, picketing. There is still hope that the Lower East Side consortium can buy back the Building and make it back into the true Cultural Center that it was. Chino's CHARAS co-founder and partner was murdered during the fight to save the building. A coincidence, maybe. But that's not the feeling around here.

Chino, who is still a community activist, came and spoke during that 2-week Workshop. The workshop also has other activists come and speak. Also, this year, two teachers, because the kid hero of our play is mentored by an old teacher of his. In that workshop, we teach Commedia, Clowning, Voice production, Modern Dance, Improvisation, Theater games, Microphone use, Juggling and Stilt Walking, as well.

At any rate, I've finished the play. Now, we've got to get this baby on its feet. It's Saturday, late morning. The last song got finished early this morning. I've got a little breathing time 'til tomorrow when I drive directly to TNC, with the finished script. The A.D.s type it up. Monday, I go over it, line-by-line, with Jon Weber, one of the A.D.s, looking for lines left out, incorrect words, etc., and Tuesday at 6pm, I read the entire script once. I learned that at Lincoln Center when Arthur Miller used to read the new play of his, aloud, once at the start of Rehearsals. That way, you get a real sens of the writer's intent. Also, it's the only time the actors will get an overview of the play, since we only have three weeks to get it on and we'll be rehearsing out of order and probably have Music rehearsals in one theater while we're doing scenes in another and choreography in a third. We open Saturday, August 4th at 2pm, outside TNC on East 10th Street at 1st Avenue. See you then. Writers (only the good ones) let me know your process. It'd be good for people to know how very hard a writer has to work, to write something that people can just pick up and read or see, in an hour or a day or a couple of days. Of course, we always expect you to think about it for a long time to come, and I guess that's work too, isn't it!