it's just theater. (jesus christ.)

David Greenspan: A Few Words About Little Lord

I met Michael Levinton when he was working as a producer at Target Margin Theater. During that time I saw his play, Balabustas, an adaptation of Women at the Thesmophoria – by far the funniest, most outrageous adaptation of an Aristophanes play I have ever seen – wonderfully vulgar, madcap and clever. Michael directed and acted in the production – and was such an engaging performer, David Herskovits and I cast him in Target Margin’s production of my play, Old Comedy – where he turned in a infectious performance as a very macho Hercules and very tart prostitute. When he founded Little Lord, I performed in his terrifically cheeky adaptation of Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland. 

If clever and cheeky was all Little Lord did it would be worth supporting simply for the good fun it provides. But (oh my god I am so) THIRST(y), Michael’s fanciful yet faithful production of Eugene O’Neill’s early play, Thirst, was not only irreverent, it was startlingly serious and moving – and emblematic of the company’s dedication, resourcefulness, intelligence and theatrical ingenuity. Little Lord’s upcoming Pocahontas promises to be great fun and splendidly subversive.

Michael and his cohorts deftly combine avant-garde techniques associated with companies like Target Margin and traditions derived from theatre of the ridiculous. It’s work well worth watching and well worth supporting.

Sincerely,

David Greenspan

Be our Pocahontas! Feed our show! donate directly to our upcoming show campaign HERE

Little Lord is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purpose of Little Lord must be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

“MUNDUS NOVUS SPECTACULUS, FOR YOU! FOR YOU! FOR YOU!” No really, we made it for you.

SO, we’ve got a little glimpse of Pocahontas coming up, at Little Theatre at the not so little Dixon Place on October 8th. October 8th happens to be Columbus Day, or Discoverers’ Day, or Indigenous Peoples’ Day, or Day of Americas, whatever you want to call it. All of those work for us.

Michael and I have been working on a script. What does “working on a script” mean? It means I go to Michael’s house and we eat a lot of food, read early American melodramas and burlesques, make poems as if they were puzzles, using vocabulary we brainstormed in our residency at the Bushwick Starr, look at lots of old paintings, and if a joke makes us crack up, we keep it. Oh, and sometimes I record myself talking to myself in the bathtub, and Michael records himself talking to himself while he drives, and then we put that in the play. True story.

For this showing, we wanted to start with the beginning of the play and the “discovery” of America. Remember back in July when we were kicking around the phrase “to find a mundus novus?” Well, then we found this gem:

This is Johannes Stradanus’ America, in which Amerigo Vespucci awakens a sleeping America.  History lesson time: It was actually Amerigo Vespucci who was the first man to “discover” America -Columbus thought he’d found Asia. WHOOPS! That’s why today we say, “Fuck yeah, America!” and not “Fuck yeah, Columbia!” Anyway, the inscription on the piece says:

Americus rediscovers America. He called her but once and thenceforth she was always awake.

Spooky right? That’s a naked feminized America being awakened by European discovery. It’s kind of gross and kind of pervy, plus it’s old-timey and has Latin engravings and maybe some cannibals in the background, so obviously we went nuts for it. 

Then we read The Odyssey, particularly the parts where Poseidon keeps trying to drown Odysseus. Just FYI, The Odyssey is way more fun when you read it aloud while switching between Irish and Baltimore accents.

Then we were thinking about sea monsters like this:

But really I was thinking about this:

Then we were like, should there be a mermaid? Yes. No. Yes. No. Maybe?

By the way, did you know that there is a difference between sirens and mermaids?

Mermaids are like this:

Sirens are like this:

Crazy, yeah? So, right now, there’s NOT a mermaid, but mermaids plus mundus novus makes me think of this:

Only sometimes I get that song confused with this song:

(If you read this whole blog post, you will find a mashup of the two at the end.)

ANYWAY, then we looked at a lot of pictures like this:

That’s Columbia. And this is the Landing of Columbus:

And then we ate a lot of food. This is the night before Yom Kippur. Delicious.

And that’s how we wrote this part of the play! So, please come to Dixon Place on 10/8 at 7:30pm, and see the beginnings of our pretty little Frankenstein monster of a show. Yes, Pocahontas will be there, too.

Oh, you might be wondering, “oh my g——-d, you guys, when will you ever put on the full production of this play?????” The answer is: MARCH! We’re on the Bushwick Starr’s website, along with some other very fine people, so it’s totes official. 

And now, a mashup:

Well, I didn’t say it was good mashup. See you at the show!

xoxoxo,

Laura von Holt

Associate Artistic Director

Day 12: It’s the Day of the Show, Y’all!

After three weeks in residence at the Bushwick Starr, it was time for our showing. We’ve been thinking about this play since 2009, and have done so much research, that by the time our residency came around, we’d kind of forgotten what show we wanted to make in the first place. So, we used the residency to distill the materials and sources we’d collected, and found a new way to connect to the material. We became very interested in America’s obsession with museums, and explored the way Americans use museums to display and personally connect to history. And so, what we created by the end of our residency was a kind of museum: a museum of our process, a museum about the story, and a museum about exploring the ways we might tell the story, complete with artifacts and cranky tour guides and weird rules and all. (Scroll down after this post to read more chronicles of our residency.)

***

Saturday afternoon was hot and steamy, and the weather app on my iPhone kept saying scary things like “feels like 106 degrees!” Still, we had air conditioning, cold beer, icy punch, and frozen fla-vor-ice, and about 45 hot and steamy people who made lovely party guests and an even lovelier audience. A tour of our belated birthday party for America and our burned museum:

We had very American decorations and served nostalgic American fare. Michael’s boyfriend put gherkins on the baloney sandwiches because he is an American genius.

This is Leah, modeling the spread. Actually, she was acting in this moment, but this is a fun way to show you all the food and decorations. One of the things we like to do is create a specific environment. We also like to display a lot of deliberate theatrical stuff in front of a lot of everyday crap. Is that a fridge behind your set? Nothing to see here, nothing to see here! MOVE ALONG!

We displayed artifacts from our burned museum:

That’s baby Uncle Sam and John Smith’s map of Virginia. Fancy!

Some sources from our library. Don’t touch them. Or read them.

And then we put on a show!

All hail Donya Washington, descendant of George Washington, now appearing as the magical talking mammy tree.

Here we are, trapped in a large pot filled with the state of Oklahoma. (What? We had to put in something that sounded “experimental.”)

I am Pocahontas, she of the 3-legged braids.

And see these beautiful Spirits of Patriotism? Those costumes started the show as table decorations. Behold, the magic of theater!

And here are some of the comments from our feedback forms:

Thanks once again to the Bushwick Starr for hosting us, to the people who came to play with us, to our cheerful interns for their help, and to all the people who came to the event, and especially to whoever left all those $20 bills in the tip jar. Somehow, we always manage to hang out with just the loveliest people.

Now it’s time to re-group, and plan the next round. Stay tuned.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

xoxo,

Laura von Holt, Associate Artistic Director

Day 9 & 10: We’ve got a script!

After a weekend off, we re-grouped on Tuesday with a rough draft of a script. It’s a lovely-funny-weird little playlette, and somehow incorporates a lot of the things we’ve created over the past few weeks. We play a lot with language, and even more with form, and somehow we’ve created a playlette that’s also a museum. Because we love museums. You know what else we love? Showing our work! Living the dream! If you’re around, please join us on Saturday from 3pm-6pm as we show our work and celebrate Happy Belated Birthday, ‘Merica! There will be beer, vodka punch, baloney sandwiches and bonnets!

Here’s a lot of Pocahontas books. Fuck yeah, research!

Here’s a lot of stuff for the showing and party…

…and here we are, rehearsing in bonnets. Like you do.

AND, here is another sunset. I will miss these a lot. Incredibly big sloppy smooches to the nice folks at The Bushwick Starr for giving us the opportunity and space for our work, and the opportunity to see these sunsets. It’s been so nice to look at America while we’ve been talking about the old gal. 

Well, I’m off to meet Michael so we can buy a lot of baloney and flav-or-ice. I’ve never had flav-or-ice. It sounds exciting, and strange. Just like America! 

xoxo,

Laura von Holt, Associate Artistic Director

Day 8: America is fucked up, I sincerely love America, and hey, there’s an elephant in the room!

me: to continue….

the expected thing to do would be to make something ironic about native americans, or be really sensitive, or try to be really authentic like New World Colin Farrell authentic.

the unexpected thing to do would be to ask a native american theater group what is the most offensive way they could imagine this story being told

and then do like half of it

or like pause the show and be like, and now we have real native americans here to tell their own story

and then be like, ok thank you for coming

and now

tiger lily does her dance

Michael: it’s not really so much about audience expectations i care about

if anything we’ve learned these past few days, it’s about how “personal” everyone’s perceptions of american history are

and how it’s all about how these personal stories get told

and how fucked up and dirty and messy and complicated and dark they are

so less about catering to an audience perception or expectation, i think it’s really good that we are exploring our own fucked up attitudes towards this material

wanting it to be easy

or wanting to run away from it

not being forced to be responsible

not get bogged down in being pc

not taking the easy offensive way out

and how does all of that get processed by each of us individually? and filtered? and what does that then generate?

me: and then does it get simplified and made into a myth

Michael: i don’t know if we need to simplify

i think the act of making this into a 90 minute piece of theater is simplifying enough

or at least constraining enough

me: no we don’t, I was just thinking about the way other myths get simplfied

Michael: i think they are being simplified by the way that we are perceiving them

or if not simplified, as least reduced to the essence

then those get layered to create something fraught with complications

me: mmm hmm

Michael: is that a good mm hmm? or a “not really sure what you’re talking about” mm hmm

me: that’s a “interesting” mm hmm

Michael: i mean fuck the story. if we call it pocahontas, then it’s about pocahontas even if there is no pocahontas, just us struggling with the idea of pocahontas

me: i get what you’re saying 

ooooo

Michael: pocahontas is the elephant in the room

me: like what if we fuck the story, fuck pocahontas, fuck john smith and then otehr things happen

Michael: or more exactly, the chick in the shower

peeling ears of corn

me: HAHA

so then are we just making up our own story?

Michael: I have no idea.

and BLACKOUT

a scene for our showing has just been written

i now need to go pay bills and write a contract

me: i need to go help the people exercise

Michael: we are doing good things

good american things

we should be proud

me: I am very proud of our american things

Michael: I AM ERICA!

me: I AM ERICA!*

So, that’s what that is, very transparently. In sum, we are considering the elephant in the room, and we love, love, love America. Here is another beautiful picture of a beautiful American sunset. AMERICA! 

xoxo,

Laura von Holt, Associate Artistic Director

*You may remember this sentence from previous blog posts. Somehow in one of the exercises, “America” became “My name is Erica,” and now when I say things like “I AM ERICA!” I am filled with a great sense of national pride. OMFG, I can’t stop loving America.

Day 7: Monuments, Histories and “My name is Erica”

Last night, we split up into three groups, took more words from our brainstormed lists, re-translated them and distilled them further. Each group took a bunch of these distilled words or phrases, and used them to create descriptions of three kinds of machines. They were: The Disassociator Machine, How To Tell The Truth, and How To Make Blossom Tea. From these, other groups interpreted these machines as landscapes. Then we switched and interpreted them as historic events, and finally, as monuments.

The monuments ended up being really creepy - cats spinning in a coffee percolator, a giant TV with the head of a green goddess, and a large diaphragm case that opened to reveal Mars that played a track of “My name is Erica” on repeat. Yikes! What have we done???!!!!  Apparently, our collective unconscious regarding America is really dark, a little fucked up, and pre-occupied with space exploration and zombies. Interestingly, together the monuments commemorated the full cycle of a civilization: origin story, revolution/transformation and destruction. 

What’s different about envisioning museums versus momuments is that museums are collections that tell part of a story, and much of the story is in the details, and the way the spaces and experiences are designed. Monuments, however, represent larger themes and events. I’ve often stared at the Statue of Liberty and other monuments and wondered, why the heck did they decide to make that, and why did they put it there? And now I know: no one really knows what they’re doing when it comes to monuments, but it all seems very tied to the feelings and themes of the era in which the monument is created. Also, people are weird, it’s hard to cut into stone, and feelings and history are messy and ugly. Thus, we have a lot of ugly monuments, and it’s impossible to capture all the complexity of people, countries and cultures in a durable figure, but we still try. Plus, it was really nice of those French people to give us that lady with the crown and the book by Ellis Island. I don’t think they had FedEx back then. I bet it was hard to ship.

So, that was our Monday night. Also, the sunset was gorgeous!

It’s fun to peek out the window and look at that crazy landscape of monuments. Here’s lovely Das taking a look.

And here’s me, Michael, Sarah and Jane, making shadow pictures on the wall with the twilight. I think we’re spelling out “Little Lord.” Or maybe we are showing our bodies as monuments to our own histories.

xoxo,

Laura von Holt, Associate Artistic Director

Day 6: A Playwriting Experiment

On Sunday, we took some of the material we had distilled on Saturday, split into two groups, and tried to write a play. We had four groups of notecards: one set we could use for dialogue, one to make characters, one that had to inform/become the actions and events of play, and one that had to be used as the rules of the world of the play. It was pretty hard to write a play with only, oh, thirty words of dialogue, but it made us be very creative with our stage directions. Each play was also assigned a title. Below are my favorite excerpts from each script:

“The Only Thing to Fear Is Fear Itself”

As they speak, they raise Chorus Leader to a God. She is now God B. This should look identical to God A on the pillar, only with people as the pillar.

She raises an iPhone 5.

CHORUS:

Internet.

SIRI says “Famous”

CHORUS

(repeats with reverence)

Famous.

ACT FIVE

They raise God B on their shoulders.  She manifests a feather boa from her vagina.

Any play where the iPhone 5 is raised to the level of deity is okay by me, and of course Siri’s prophecy would be about fame. Also, we are totally keeping that thing about God manifesting a feather boa from her vagina and using that in some play, somehow, somewhere. That’s a given, obviously.

“We Hold These Truths To Be Self Evident”

Setting: A large pot filled with the state of Oklahoma.

This was something written on a card, that at first I thought was crazy, but is one of those stage directions that could be interpreted in an amazing way - both metaphorically and theatrically. Also, once you have the state of Oklahoma in a pot, what do you do? Start filling it with water was the answer. Dramatic tension, people, dramatic tension is key.

There was also this character description:

Hollow Glory: A phantom, and the Goddess of Orgasm. Elemental. Intoxicating. Elegant. Weathered. Non-American.

Sounds like the type of character who would pull a feather boa out of her vagina, no? Weird how these coincidences happen.

And then there was this stage direction at the end, which I L-O-V-E LOVED:

The Statue of Liberty reassembles herself and floats away to New York.

Oh, and both plays were told to include this line:

SHITTY ON ITS FACE.

I’ll just let you imagine how we worked that in.

Here’s a picture from last week, when we moved rehearsal out to the roof because of the heat. Meg and Dan were reading each group’s invented Wikipedia entry about Pocahontas, and Sarah and I gave presentations on Jamestown versus Plymouth. We read by the light of our iPads and iPhone flashlight apps. Spooky.

xoxo,

Laura von Holt, Associate Artistic Director

Day 5: “To Find a Mundus Novus”

We’ve just finished Day 5 of our three-week residency at The Bushwick Starr, where we’re developing material for our un-titled show about Pocahontas and the founding myth of America. At each session, we gather with some trusted friends and collaborators and spend our time sifting through 400 years of source material, brainstorming ideas, and seeing where our collective imaginations will take us. 

Today, we took random selections from these categories of assumptions/questions, shuffled them around, and reinterpreted and translated them. Then we re-shuffled the translations, and ended up making three pieces of text, made from random phrases, kind of like writing with magnetic poetry. From these texts, we created three different scenarios of museums, complete with maps and gift shops. You probably didn’t follow all of that, because I barely did and I was there. But the point is, we re-shuffled/re-translated assumptions, and what we got were some lovely, dark, weird and incredibly poetic scenarios. The images and phrases sticking with me tonight are these:

So, that’s what we thought about today. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.

Also, when it gets too hot, we move our sessions out onto the rooftop. Yep, we’ve got sunsets, rooftop access and interns. It’s pretty sweet. Thanks, Bushwick Starr!

xoxo,

Laura von Holt, Associate Artistic Director

Meg and Dan’s take on the story of Pocahontas

In 1690 an all-male group of English explorers arrive in Jamestown in order to reap the benefits of the New World.  A power struggle emerges when the royalist Lord Billingsly attempts absolute rule over the other men and instructs them to pillage, steal, and exploit the natives for all they are worth.  John Smith, enamored with the country he sees before him and disgusted with Lord Billingsly’s pursuits attempts a coup.  With a group of trusted allies he sets off for a more righteous exploration of the land.  However, to the natives the damage has been done, and in a case of mistaken identity, he is kidnapped and enslaved in the Powahawken village.  Appalled by the actions of both her tribe and the strangers, young Pocahontas, a girl of only 11 years, risks all in the name of a future peace.  At the moment the tomahawk begins to fall, she throws herself between the executioner and John Smith.  Valuing this act of bravery, and the wisdom of innocence, both the natives and the English have a moment of understanding and peace.  Their bond is forged in the righteous execution of Lord Billingsly, and peace prevails throughout the land.

Eileen’s take on the story of Pocahontas

Time: 1615
Place: outside Jamestown settlement in Virginia
English commercial merchants have just survived one of the most trying years of their lives, in the new land of Vir-gin-I-ay. The intrepid group has survived mosquitoes, horrible weather, and their own crown’s poor planning. They have suffered many hardships, and just when all hope seemed to have faded, in walked their saving grace: a young Powhatan Indian girl named Pocahontas. Pocahontas, the daughter of the Powhatan chief, helps the English grow crops, hunt, and defend themselves against the harsh climate. Follow the adventures of the Englishmen and their headstrong, brave, and clever guide, POCAHONTAS.