whirlwind end to Madrid

I'm sorry I hadn't felt much like blogging during the final days in Madrid, partially because I was just so damned busy and exhausted everyday (or too busy playing cards) and also because Irwin came out here and he is, to my knowledge, the only person who was consistently checking my blog in the first place. I will try to back track a bit -- but also at this point I have no idea what day it is, or how much time has passed.

Gearing up towards tech in the theater was a kind of nightmare. The theater was understaffed and limited, and also with the huge misunderstanding about what was going to happen there in the first place, and not having the cooperation of the Artistic Director of the theater, everything kind of came to a screeching halt.

Dealing with projections was a fucking nightmare. I have truly learned my lesson here. I am not a technician, I am not specializing in video or computers or anything at all, but somehow I became responsible for the video images in our piece, which meant that I had to give a shit about the way things were set up. The placement of the projector could never be solidified/set, which meant that EVERY SINGLE DAY the projector had to be tested and re-set, and images re-adjusted for that day's set-up. Never never never again. Here is Valerie, dealing with the same thing,
In the evening after a long long tech day during which not much occurred, we had to attend the opening ceremony of the World Congress. The venue of the congress had to be changed at the last minute (?) or at least I had not been aware of this change since 3 weeks ago, so by the time we located it, the speeches had already begun inside. Outside there were these awesome stilted puppets, representing historical figures from Spanish history.
There was a reception with booze and apps afterwards, but by the time we got out of there, all the restaurants were closed (plus it was Monday, so most places were closed anyway) and I had to go to bed without dinner that night. This was not the first or only night this happened.

The next day (Tuesday) we had another tech day. These tech days I can't remember what we did except wait around. I think there may have been some attempt at running, but actually I don't think so. Emilya had scored us all tickets to the hottest show in town, so we all tried to get out shit together to go. Juan and Esther look at the map and discuss the closest route to the theater as Kevin looks on, disconcerted.
This was the show we saw -- by a pretty famous theater company, known for their spectacle. This particular piece was about (and in fact emulated) the 2002 Chechen takeover of a Russian theater. Drawing parallels to Russian history and contemporary acts of terrorism -- it would have been an interesting piece if the surtitles weren't so difficult to read, and if there were a further point to be made in the script, besides the comparison and attempt at humanizing the terrorists.

These last few days I found great relief in card-playing with the b-boys. I guess it started when I was getting a picture file from Liam in his room when he pulled out a deck of cards, and then it was over. We played many games, but in particular one called Pest (a lot like UNO) and another unnamed game which requires a lot of gesturing and speed. Good times. Every night Abdel would stumble home around 2am with stinky feet and join the game at hand.
On opening night, we were called for a run at 6pm. During the day I went shopping with Liam -- or more like I helped Liam shop for a suit, which he purchased at ZARA.

Backstage before opening night. his was after I'd had another crying fit in the courtyard over the insanity of it all, and just pure exhaustion.
The boys' dressing room.
And after the show:
We went out for drinks, and that was very nice, but again we ran into the problem that all the restaurants closed before we could get a proper meal. So much to my dismay, I ended up having to eat this nasty sandwich we got out of the vending machine at the youth hostal. Supposed to be salami and cheese or something??
The next day (Thursday) was our day off -- and Irwin arived in Madrid. After moving into another hostal in a different part of town, we met up with some folks for some "site-seeing".

Liam in the Metro.

The boys in front of the Palace.
Liam in air.
Juan dry-humping an ice cream cone.
After the boys spent a good couple of hours taking photos of themselves doing all sorts of tricks in front of monuments, they were thirsty. So we stopped at this tourist trap of a cafe where a Coca Cola was 3.50 Euro ($5US???).
Later this afternoon we went to the Reina Sofia and saw some Dali and Guernica, but by this point Irwin's jetlag was geting to him. We took a nap and then later went to an awesome Basque tapas place. (Pics of this on Irwin's picasa page).

The next day, before the show, we met up with Juan and Esther and kevin for lunch. But before that, we stopped at this bakery for coffee, and I noticed how small the holes in the Spanish bagels were!!!!! wtf?!
Our call was 6pm (for a 9pm show?!) so Irwin came with me to the theater and then sat across the street with his beer.

Backstage, Vita on headset calling the cues...
After the show, there was general chaos in getting everything out of the theater, showing up at the reception sponsored by the Croatian Embassy. All of us were staying another full day for the post-mortem, except Juan who was leaving the next morning. So after playing a round of cards,
We went out until he had to catch a taxi to the airport at 4.30AM. We tried to find a club to go dancing, but everything was gross or had a cover, or overcrowded or whatever, so we just wandered around and went into a Dominican restaurant that had 1E beers.
Esther & Juan hugging goodbye.

I was also so sad to see Juan go -- he had been my buddy during this whole trip. It's hard to believe that i won't be able to just walk downstairs and knock on his door, have lunch with him, or drag him across the floor in a big piece of fabric.

Saturday morning Irwin and I had churros dipped in chocolate for breakfast. Sickness.
I went over to give Robert a massage, and then we headed to our last supper at Extramadura -- the same place where we had our first dinner together. Andres & Gunther.
In the evening, we caught a part of the closing ceremony of the Congress. Sylvia and Esther.
Paloma & Sai.
This was to be our last night all together! Paloma, Esther, Kevin, Irwin and I went all the way to the youth hostal to pick up the boys, who we knew would need some persuasion to come out with us. Paloma in the elevator.
When we got to the youth hostal, they were like, no we're not going out. I couldn't believe it. I took a picture of them sitting on their beds, thinking that this was how I was going to remember them.
Robert was watching The Simpsons.
But somehow, miraculously, we got them to come out with us -- and the bar was kinda far away too, we had to take the subway! But they came. yeay!


At a bar near Reina Sofia, we had a last round of drinks. I said goodbye to Valerie.Group photo.
Half of us went to go dancing, but I was beat. I bid Robert and Liam farewell at El Brillante.
Irwin and I got our midnight snack here -- their famous calamari sandwich. It could have used a bucketload of tartar sauce. I was like "tiene salsa de tartar?" but they did not understand.
The next morning after 3 hours of sleep we got up to take the high-speed train to Barcelona. I was so fucking bleary-eyed and sad and delirious...
Some pics of Barcelona at night:
Amazing Celta Bar pulpo:
Irwin trying to cure his hiccups.

I have Rihana's song "Umbrella" stuck in my head, and it won't go away.
It will take a while for me to make sense of all that happened to me in the last 2 weeks. Only two weeks?!?! Unbelievable. It felt like a year, honestly. It's amazing how much can happen in such a short period of time...

I spoke too soon

Well, let me just say that the challenges in this piece have not much improved. We open tomorrow, believe it or not, and the whole thing feels bizarre, absurd, magical at times, but just really.... like... weird. Most of the logisitcal problems stem from poor communication and misunderstandings from the theater venue. And the artistic disappointments come from the directors not coming from a collaborative theater-making background. Today there was drama galore. I don't even want to get into it.

Suffice it to say that being here has forced me to do things i would never ordinarily do. Drink coffee twice a day, drink wine every night, stay up til 4am and get up at 9am. Not a sustainable lifestyle...

no photos worth posting. mostly of people in the theater.

WOW possibly the worst day ever

Today, was so nerve-wracking and frustrating and compounded with a lot of different things and overwhelmed by a lot of shit, I spent a good hour or two crying, which was actually great because I hadn't had a terrifically good cry in years. Juan was with me while I was crying on the street, so I'm sure about a dozen Spanish people thought we were breaking up. ha.

Then just as I was getting finished crying in my room Liam (one of the b-boys helping me with video stuff) came knocking on my door. Embarrassing.

Anyway, why so frustrating? Our first scene (made by the U.S. team) was conceived and re-conceived already a few times, and the latest incarnation was very much influenced by conversations with the Belgian Valerie who is handling video for the whole show, and who supposedly know how to use Isadora. She showed us how she can manipulate video and images in projections, changing their positions and sizes as we went along. The other day we had a really frustrating rehearsal because essentially all rehearsal was moot without being able to be in the theater with the projector in the correct placement. Today finally we have a chunk of time in the theater, the projector was in place (sort of) and suddenly we discovered different limitations to the video and use of Isadora. I srsly wanted to blow my brains out. We go into tech in 2 days, our first show is in 4 days, we have not DONE this scene for real, EVER, and what the fuck am I doing in this place in the first place? I had one of those crazy like flashback-life-collapsing moments... I was remembering all those stressful times with the WOW company, working in a foreign country, and being with a tight group of amazing artists, and how much LOVE is born out of working in the theater, and how heart-breaking it is to have art be so imperfect and ephemeral, and how much people grow apart... I think about so many people I've met who really changed me or moved me, and now I have no idea where they are... And on and on... I feel so lucky, and so cursed, and just so full of intense like.... I don't know what to call it.

I have always worried about how intensely I experience my emotions and thought that I'd pretty much had it under control, but today I felt like I was back being 23 years old again. This is a difficult project led by people who have never led such a project before -- the raw energy and magic of th ensemble is so immense and ineffable -- and there seems to be no way to aptly capture this thing, this amazing, magical wonderful electricity of a group of people (a community) -- this thing that is the reason why people do theater in the first place, and the thing that also disappoints people so much and causes them to leave the theater.

I think we have some possible solutions to the video problem, but again I feel uneasy at being responsible for video images when I am not a video or visual artists perse. Oh well. So it goes in Madrid.

I will leave you with some pics of the stupid night we had last night, going dancing in an Irish pub, and tonight, this amazing bookstore around the corner, which is also a cafe and a bar and a club at night.




Ok time to edit more video.

feel like month #2

I'm utterly useless and non-existent without the internet, eh? It was down for 24 hours and I couldn't communicate with anyone except the people directly around me. It used to be like that for everyone. What happened?

I can't even keep track of all that's happened. Anyway a lot of this and that, the directors imposing, the other resisting, I do not feel that this is a piece that is being generated collaboratively, but rather being cobbled together somewhat collaboratively. I do not feel that there is an agreement about what it is trying to be accomplished.

Went and got paella with a group, two nights ago. Excellent! Sylvia and Paloma, the Spanish contingent.

Then we went out for fancy ice cream. Here is Abdel -- the life and baby of the production. Serisouly this guy is NON STOP energy -- a walking, continuous youtube.
Valery in rehearsal yesterday.
The "internet cafe" we are making off stage. We are supposed to be always on stage surrounding the action...
After rehearsal, Marco & Liam hanging off a tree.
I feel utterly destroyed in the mornings. Physically and otherwise.
Wish we could have started in a place BEFORE concept, BEFORE choreography, where everyone who is going to BE on stage could have met on stage just as they are/were. Strip away the skill sets.

Must run to rehearsal now. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Hell to Heaven in a day

Before I bore you to death with details of artistic strife, I will show lovely portraits of the artist teams from each country except for the U.S. team which you've seen plenty of already. Here are the Germans, from left to right: Kevin (opera singer), Jochen (composer), Esther (opera singer), Gunther (yes the one and only), and Frank (opera director).
The Belgium team -- Valery! One person, awesome video artist.
From Cameroon: Andray, Evelyn, and Valery.
Spain: Paloma & Sylvia -- who is an amazing actress.
From the Phillippines: Sai (dancer) and Ruell (musician)
So. I don;t know, an incredibly frustrating morning rehearsal -- discovering the limitations of the technology & video... and just dealing with the weird structure of this project in terms of decision-making... These "collaborations" with directors... like... may I quote one of my own plays and say, yes "theater is not a democracy" for sure, but also there are ways to organize in a way that still respects and encourages creativity, rather than suppressing such. The Europeans seem to conceptualize so much, they don't trust the real live on-the-feet solutions. It's a shame, actually...

Anyway, in the morning I thought I might murder someone or myself, and the afternoon was frustrating in certain ways as well, but in the evening we went out for the first time with the German opera singers, both 26 years old. We had a great lovely time at La Musa restaurant, which was actually some kind of weird Asian fusion place that served... venison. Ah, but before dinner, we went to a bar next door and had a drink. Everywhere, the red wine is delicious.

Juan holding what I thought might be a bagel but was not, I don't think...
Kevin the German opera singer, Juan, and Valery.
Kevin and Kevin the opera singer, when we were checking out the bathroom area. There was like a tunnel of bamboo curtains.
Venison.
on our way home we ran into two of the b-boys having a smoke, and then we crammed ourselves into the little elevator. Robert, who can do AMAZING things, and Liam, who can also do AMAZING things, and Valery, who is a stand-up comedian as well as an actor.
some moments i am like what the fuck am i doing here?? and other moments, i'm like (as Juan is practically ALL the time...) this is amazing and wonderful.
my shoulders hurt, i have bruises and wounds all over my feet and legs. another day tomorrow of artistic strife and the test of the human spirit. good night.