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Category: Personal

Homer’s Butoh-fu Prologue

Homer’s Butoh-fu Prologue

I am the story itself Exhausted flesh Hung on this walking wandering bone I recite now not To you in the presence of my voice The fourth wall is there Just behind you the generations just beyond you yet to be The true audience watches us gather For the story of this flesh Blind to its fate Blind to its origin Yet the grape seeks to know its vine As the vine seeks to know its wine Flesh most divine…

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Magnificent Opening Night

Magnificent Opening Night

To use the adjective of our playwright/director, our most talented actress was luminous last night. We also received today some kind words and lurid expectations of What She Knew from the impresario extraordinaire himself, Trav S. D., in the current issue of  The Villager. I am luridly expectant at the prospect of seeing “What She Knew” — playwright and critic George Hunka’s retelling of “Oedipus Rex” from Jocasta’s point of view. In this production, the “First of the Red Hot…

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Community

Community

One’s-Self I Sing One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine, The Modern Man I sing. Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words…

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The Road West

The Road West

After a year’s absence, I return to Rat Sass and the theatrosphere only in trepidation.  With good reason I suppose.  I have barely put my toe in the water and already Collide Flinch labels me mentally unstable.  (It’s so tempting to get into pots and kettles, tits for tats, with theatrosphere’s reigning Queen of Hysteria, but I digress.) The contrary persona of Rat Sass that I developed through my interactions in the theatroshpere may, just may, have run its course.  …

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Hello loyal readers,

Hello loyal readers,

Has it really been a whole year? Thanks to all who have written me personally over this time asking about my neglect of Rat Sass. Well, I’m back. I think. We’ll see anyway. Although over the last year I have briefly visited the theatrosphere by writing in the comment sections of other blogs, for the most part I haven’t been following the beast too closely. From my initial browsing, I think not much has changed in this fiction. The narrative…

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Avant Yarde Event Monday Evening

Avant Yarde Event Monday Evening

Eat, meet, and greet New work by TravSD and Katherine Adamenko 6pm-9pm: Potluck Barbecue and Performance Monday, August 25 The Avant Yarde 214 Dean Street (Between Nevins and Bond) Brooklyn Performance/reading will be approximately 40 minutes long. FREE admission with your favorite barbecue item or prepared dish to share. Please RSVP to Gabriele as seating is limited. ****************************** Sea / Herself: The (De)volution of a Beauty Queen SEA / HERSELF dances down feminine archetypes to unmask the authentic self. Hidden…

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We all still wish they all could be…

We all still wish they all could be…

I am mostly with E. Hunter in her theory about sex and geography. How is sex geographic? Or maybe it’s atmospheric? More likely. I can only speak for myself, but the humidity of the south really does have a positive effect on one’s libido. I’ve confirmed this theory with exactly one other southerner who also agreed that California can be rather dry. Ahem. But I think she needs to add that nobody can represent the essence of wet dreams better…

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Subtext to Text

Subtext to Text

I have noticed that I am beginning to develop a new relationship to blogging. I am finding my comment writing in others’ blogs just as challenging, if not more so, than the writing of my own posts. I have taken partial lead on this from Mac Rogers. The SlowLearner is also slow on blog postings but he is often present in comment sections of the theatrosphere with his pointed questions. I have been thinking of the comment sections of the…

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On the Lex-Train to Gómez-Peña

On the Lex-Train to Gómez-Peña

By angel I mean shaman I mean crazy fuck. But these human souls who speak in tongues with an ancient voice go mostly unheard today. That’s because most flesh has transformed in recent years into its new function as portable media player. On the subway trains the riders all believe their iPods are unique to their identity. But mass communication is becoming mass transportation is becoming mass media. And the mass no longer hears its flesh, its tongue. Their identities…

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On the A-Train to Gómez-Peña

On the A-Train to Gómez-Peña

On the subway to see the lecture yesterday I was part of the captive audience in the train car. The goofy looking homeless guy was pulling a small kid’s wagon. He seemed to be speaking in tongues, but then a moment later, he started singing in tongues. Sweetly, insanely. He was an angel after all. I knew that only later. I knew that only after he had left the train. If only I could find his performance again. I would…

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Launch Party for New York Theater Review 2008

Launch Party for New York Theater Review 2008

New York Theater Review 2008 Officially Greets the World Tonight Friday, April 11 at Drama Book Shop 250 W. 40th St. Manhattan 6-8pm Editor Brook Stowe will be reading from the bloggers interview section of the journal in-between performance excerpts from the plays. The NYC bloggers interviewed are Blindsquirrel Bloggings (aka Johnna Adams), Obscene Jester, sharkskin girl and Tweed (aka T. Nikki Cesare & Steve Luber), The Playgoer (aka Garrett Eisler), Jason Grote (aka Jason Grote), and your friend Rat…

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Awake From Your Slumber!

Awake From Your Slumber!

Our current project with Theater Rampe Stuttgart in Germany commissioned a new script from Austrian author Andreas Jungwirth. Outside Inn examines how capitalism has infiltrated into the most personal parts of our lives. In the passage below the character Paul, inheritor of the “family’s” business, relates a conversation in which his father-in-law, the legendary corporate CEO known as “the German,” explains where “we” are going next. “Kalowski has been silent the entire time. Suddenly he asks me to listen. Kalowski…

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I Trusted You

I Trusted You

I am presently writing for the next issue of New York Theater Review. More like, I am trying to write. The medium feels totally alien to me. How do you write about the theatrosphere for a journal that won’t be published until this spring? I already need to ammend partially what I said three weeks ago in my State of the Union. But instead of blogging on this subject as I normally would, I will be writing on it for…

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Food for Thought

Food for Thought

I often visit the Tree Untangling from fiber as living flesh Serpent tongue Eve’s inner ear wishes Whispering sweet nothings Washing away memory of earlier gods She tastes Adam’s apple Flesh so like yet so unlike her own This is not transgression this Is life seeking its own godhead Swallowing its own tail Elmer and Bugs, Sylvester and Tweety, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Looney Toon Socratic Method Hunt and pursuit but never any capture Also Strindberg’s eternal war…

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