Something to crow about
I just got in from “ASAP Fables,” Moving Arts’ entry in the first annual Hollywood Fringe Festival. In our show, randomly assembled teams of Moving Artists created 8-minute fables built around a witches’ brew of strange ingredients
- a randomly chosen animal
- a randomly assigned location within Hollywood United Methodist Church
- a moral to the story
- and an impossible assignment.
In our case, we were given:
- a crow
- the chapel
- the moral “Nobody cares that you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy”
- and the assignment to “Fill the sky with your beauty.”
And, you had to work in the quote “Be who you are, and say what you feel” (from Doctor Seuss). And you couldn’t spend more than ten bucks on your show. How much did we spend on our particular impromptu play, “Reach for the Sky?” Ten bucks. Glad the budget wasn’t nine, because we would’ve had a problem.
More about how we accomplished this, and about the overall event, tomorrow. This morning I taught my workshop, ran an errand, then got over to the church to figure out some last-minute logistics on our show with my three scene partners, then performed the show seven times. As a miserable crow, this meant lots of running around and cawing on my part. After that, it’s now time for drinks. So tomorrow I’ll let you know what we did.
But here’s my favorite audience line of the evening. One of the people who came to see the show was an older gentleman who’s been following us around almost since our inception 18 years ago. I saw him in the first group that came in and later in the courtyard he was waiting to talk to me.
“Hi, Walter,” I said.
He looked at me and said, “Lee. I didn’t recognize you at first.”
“Yeah. It’s a lot of makeup.”
“No,” he replied. “I think since last time I saw you you’ve put on weight.”