Big Gay Dogs and the occasional exploding apple...

The latest show I’ve been working on, “3boys” a new play by the relatively young playwright Becca Schlossberg and produced and performed by a crew of Drew University folks has had it’s opening in the NYC Fringe Festival, and is now more or less done its run. It was a tricky show, but one which allowed me to really test some of my theories about the nature of violence on stage, as well how best to communicate something very specific with that violence. I think it worked.

I’m not going to pretend that the effectiveness with which my stuff is landing (reviews and commentary on the show are glowing) comes solely from my work – that’s unrealistic and silly. Rather this is a deft and sly script directed with a steady hand by the Madeleine Parsigian. We came to an early agreement about the style and meaning behind the movement of three humans pretending to be dogs onstage, and furthermore how to make sure that movement communicated the feelings of anger and denial from barely contained homosexual impulses.

Not being gay or a dog, I was a little unsure of how best to proceed, but she knew first and foremost, dudes romping around on all fours would be dumb. I agreed. Dudes who behaved as humans and evolved into more canine gestures and movement as their “human restraints” break down depending on the emotional charge of a given moment is better. But since dogs bite and throw all their weight around, and humans tend to punch, kick and use tools (and their thumbs) meant we had to find ways to safely keep these actors from knocking each others teeth out on each other and the floor.

I had to first choreograph this in my head as humans would fight it out, and define very clearly the emotional impulse that was the impetus for each movement. Once I had defined what the impulse was for one character and then the impulse for an opposite character’s reaction, I had to define how a dog reacts to the same stimulus, and then how to translate that back to a human. Finally I had to split the difference and make it safe, replicable, and cool to view. A tricky and risky plan, since if the fighting looked too human it wouldn’t work and if it looked like people playing “dog” it would take away from the impact of each moment.

After long hours of watching dogs and wolves attack various things on video and a few tumbles with a dog being trained to find cadavers and guard against humans, I came up with some cool stuff, and I was able to get our actors to understand where this was coming from, what it could mean and how to do it safely. I’ve been rewarded on this particular project by a lot of good reviews, and a lot of good feedback from peers. I’m calling it a win.

If there’s any kind of supernatural force guiding the path of the righteously good theater experience, 3boys will see some more action somewhere down the line, or at least the production team that brought it to life will get the chance to explore more work with profit and exuberance.

Next up I’m appearing in “Endless Summer Nights” with Boomerang opening in mid September, and while this hack of a playwright (Hi Tim! – Tim, for the non Tim readers, is a director, writer of the play and the man behind Boomerang Theater Company) couldn’t be bothered to craft a single solitary moment of violence in his otherwise touching and humorous look at a couple on opposite ends of a strange continuum, I’ve been given the chance to design a special effect for another show running as part of the same repertory season, “Venus Observed.” At some point in that show one character shoots an apple held in the hand of another. Sooo… I got to make the rig that makes the apple explode as if shot.

A quick youtube search will show you lots of high speed camera footage of apples being impacted by bullets. You’ll notice that the apples seem to virtually explode. A high velocity projectile, even the relatively low mass of a bullet transfers a ton of energy to it’s target upon impact. In the real world the primary cavity bored by the bullet, is next to invisible as the shock waves are transmitted through the apple. Almost instantly, the skin of the apple ruptures as the interior of the apple is pulverized and turned into liquid secondary projectile sprayed in almost all directions.

Yummy.

However, as you can guess, there isn’t much I can do to safely and repeatedly detonate an apple onstage, in an actor’s hand, both without covering everyone in a 15 foot radius in apple goo, and also potentially harming the actor with flying chunks of high speed material. I opted for an effect that is a little less realistic, but is safer and gets the point across. By prepping the actor with a C02 charge and the appropriate fittings, and pre-setting a bored and cored apple on stage, the C02 charge can be triggered simultaneously with the “gunshot” and the apple explodes leaving the apple in the actors hand (also containing the fitting) and spraying “apple shrapnel” in two directions, to actor’s left and right, clear of himself and depending on how big we want the effect to be onstage, leaving a massive hole blasted through the center of the apple. Safe, repeatable and actor controlled. Compressed air to the rescue folks, once again. Come see the Boomerang rep season beginning on the 11th of September. An exploding apple in “Venus Observed”, me acting in “Endless Summer Nights” and hey why the hell not, since I don’t like to be bored, I’ll just pop up once or twice in “Uncle Vanya” too.

Lest you think I’m done after this, so far I’ve got tentative plans to appear once more in the Vampire Cowboys monthly Saloon, courtesy of writer Crystal Skillman as she crafts another wacky adventure. From what I hear, it’ll be a fun one. Beyond that – my horizons are clear for now. Just in time to begin forging prop knives over the winter courtesy of lessons learned from Wayne Goddard’s “$50 Knife Shop.”