A little talk about Comedy as a genre of theatre and how the structure of it has changed through the centuries.
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Here’s a link to Christopher Booker’s great book: Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories
There’s an old adage that one should not lose sight of the forest for the trees. It basically means one shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture. This certainly true of fringe touring.
I have been traveling around to present my shows – ones I write and perform myself – to “fringe” theatre festivals all over North America in the last several years. I have observed within myself, and in others, how difficult it can be to keep the real reasons one is at the festival in the first place in mind, especially once one is in a new city and in the midst of a big arts festival. A fringe fest can feel overwhelming sometimes.
In this episode I talk about how difficult, but how necessary, it is to keep one’s eye on the prize. Once at a festival, after travel and preparation and all the energy to get the show up on its feet, the impetus is to relax a little. To retreat a bit away from the less fun responsibilities (or opportunities) which are often the real reasons for even coming to that festival. I cover the uncomfortable importance of marketing, of choosing to network and of maintaining a really high production quality among other tips and techniques.
A professor I had as an undergraduate recently passed on. I considered him a sort of indirect mentor on mine. He had quite an impact on me.
This episode is dedicated to John Weckesser (1941-2018).
[NOTE: This episode was originally released March 2, 2018 via SoundCloud. I am re-releasing the first season of episodes here on this site.]
This past year I read a range of books about organization, minimalism and civilized living. These seemingly disparate volumes come at it from different perspectives, but all explore living a curated, intentional, ordered lifestyle.
[NOTE: This episode was originally released January 1, 2018 via SoundCloud. I am re-releasing the first season of episodes here on this site.]
Books mentioned (note… affiliate links):
I had what I thought would be a good, quick, rather easy idea. I would apply the superhero movie Thor: Ragnarok to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s three questions for subjectively evaluating a piece of art. It turned out not to be so quick nor so easy to put this particular episode together. Special thanks to Judy the librarian on this one.
[NOTE: This episode was originally released December 3, 2017 via SoundCloud. I am re-releasing the first season of episodes here on this site.]
In this episode, I riff on why now is the right time to build a personal home library of physical books.
[NOTE: This episode was originally released November 10, 2017 via SoundCloud. I am re-releasing the first season of episodes here on this site.]
In this episode, I talk about how artists need uninterrupted spans of time to do focused creative work. And I mention what I’m doing nowadays since I don’t have uninterrupted spans of time.
[NOTE: This episode was originally released November 5, 2017 via SoundCloud. I am re-releasing the first season of episodes here on this site.]
