Hello, how have you been? Here's what I've been up to.

Hello blog. How long has it been? It feels like ages. Writing has been proving itself to be challenging! (What, writing? Challenging? Never) For a while, when I felt a surge of creative energy, I'd be putting it into my podcast. Other times, when I felt the need to write, I'd be paralyzed by the impossibility of authentically communicating everything I was experiencing, which was most definitely a by product of my Shakespeare and Company experience (which if you're thinking about doing you should still totally do, don't get me wrong).

In the months, oh wow it really has been months, since I've gotten back I've spent a lot of that time in rehearsals for She Kills Monsters, the ass kicking New England premiere of Qui Nguyen (a New York based writer and artistic director of Vampire Cowboys, a post modern theatre company based I think in Brooklyn) bad ass new play. I'm using that language to describe it because it's highly appropriate to the tone of the play. Which you'll find out if you see it when we open on April 13th!

Oh wow, a huge part of that journey has transpired, and I haven't been writing anything about it. Well let's fix that! So, in the show, I play Chuck Biggs but my homies call me DM Biggs, cause you know, I'm big where it counts (this is a quote from the show) as in my BRAIN! Not because I'm fat.

OK done quoting. A big part of the action of the show transpires in the world of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure concocted by the protagonists now deceased younger sister, which she's playing in order to better understand her now dead sibling who she never really got to know in real life. And in order to play Dungeons and Dragons, you need a dungeon master, or DM, who basically is the guy who rolls the dice for the characters and bad guys not being played by the players, and generally sets up and runs the world of the game through descriptions and charts and so on and so forth. So that's what I do! It's pretty fun. Chuck is a riff on the archetypal "nerd" we all conceive when we think of someone who'd be into that stuff, which I was as a younger person and still am in a very passing extent (I'm totally down to throw down on some board games any time anyone wants to) to the point that in our cast and crew of about fifteen I probably have the most knowledge about what it's like to actually play Dungeons and Dragons and how it works, or at least I'm most willing to talk about it and explain things. Which has been complicated somewhat, by the fact that the play wright really isn't interested in the actual mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons and more so in telling a compelling story. Which I'm totally on board with! But we've also tried to reconcile things and sometimes it's complicated.

But that's another post on the dramaturgy of the play, the sort which I've been known to write and maybe will at some point if you ask nicely. This is about my experience acting. So yeah, in case you didn't know me as a sixteen year old and chances are you didn't, I was very awkward, very intellectual, very cerebral, capable of vicious sarcasm for no good reason (some things never completely leave you), and into some pretty geeky things. I also had a pretty hard time functioning, just in general, being all of these things tended to leave me rather lonely and isolated. Oh and did I mention how insecure I was? That too.

Initially, it was tempting to bring those elements of myself into the character of Chuck. Except, Chuck isn't that kind of nerd. I think a lot of ways he's written to be almost the inverse of the nerd that many of nerdier types were, and the awesome self image of our selves we wish we could have inhabited, funny, self confident, joyous, has an easy time talking to girls (he primarily interacts with Agnes who in the world of the play and hey in real life too is an attractive twenty something) etc. He's also oddly mature for his age, at certain moments, and surprisingly self aware at others.

Arguably, he actually has his shit the most together of anyone in the play AND he gets a lot of the funniest dialogue AND he gets to wear a super cool cape. Basically, this part has been awesome to play. And it's been awesome to work with Company One, which has been one of my professional goals of late, because they do really cool stuff really consistently (and for a non union company in Boston, pay pretty well). They also bring in really cool directors, like Shira (hi Shira!) and Rob who's our fight director (hey wassup Rob) both of whom have done cool stuff other places and are bringing all kinds of awesomeness to the show, which I can't wait for you to see.

The show has been really challenging to put together, it feels like every other scene is a gigantic set piece of fighting or dancing or puppetry or some combination of those but I think the end result with lights and sound and everything else will be spectacular.

She Kills Monsters! Opens April 13th. Go here for tickets and stuff: http://www.bostontheatrescene.com/season/iShe-Kills-Monstersi/

Next time on I Think Therefore Iambic: I'll try and talk about the work I've been doing on my physical instrument since I got back from Shakespeare and Company, and maybe about my guitar playing, which I've been meaning to do as well.

Review! Uncle Vanya at Apollinaire Theatre through November 6th (putting on my critic's hat for once)

Well, hello! Lately I've been thinking about reviews, seeing as I just opened a show and my cast mates and I have been hoping that someone would come over the river for a second time to give our revival of Uncle Vanya a write up, and move us closer to the goal of a sold out run like last time.

So I thought to myself, "I have a blog, why don't I review the show?" Normally, I don't use this space for theatrical criticism of local work, because being a part of the local theatre community and inevitably having personal relationships to someone or something or some aspect to any given production I see, I can't hope to be critically objective. Nor do I want to be when I go to the theatre. I always go into a show, no matter what it is or who I know in it or what I know about it, really wanting to like it, right? Don't we all want to see something worthwhile? Especially when we have friends involved! Then you have even more impetus to authentically enjoy the work! Well, I'm friends with everyone in the Vanya cast and crew, and getting to watch them work night after night through rehearsals, tech and now performances with an audience and all that entails... it's simply a delight. And it deserves to be written up in review form, so that's what I'm going to do, throwing any and all pretense of critical objectivity right out the window where it belongs.

Thus far, audience reactions have been uniformly, profoundly positive, as they should be, because it's a beautiful production. Comparing the current iteration of the production to last year's, is apples and oranges. And I say that with a strong sense of objective conviction. But I can say assuredly that the performances of my compatriots from that previous version, Ron Lacey as Astrov, Ann Marie Shea as Marie, Kevin Fennessy as Telegin, Ann Carpenter as Nanny and Erin Eva Butcher as Sonya, have only grown deeper with time and continue to grow new, subtle and wonderful levels of meaning while also shifting to accomodate the new energies brought by Kate Paulsen as Yelena, Jack Schultz as the Professor and Diego Arciniegas in the title role. I've seen these performers go through the process of first rediscovering everything about the previous production while also exploring everything new brought by the additional cast. Whom for their part have enhanced the existing frame work of the production by bringing their new discoveries which then combined with the expansion of the work laid out... is simply breathtaking. I wrote previously of how conscious this time around of the play's sense of breath, and how perfectly laid out every beat of the story is. Danielle Fauteux Jacques has explicitly directed each and every beat of that story, and Chekhov's poetic contrasts and flawed characters feel as modern as the moment we are living in with her skilled and subtle hand.

This is to say nothing of the production's design, with elegantly constructed, period accurate costumes by Toni Bratton Elliott, effective sound design by Emily Ledger which takes advantage of the buildings natural acoustics... which brings us to the productions most novel and perhaps brilliant aspect which ties all of these parts together, it's site specific staging with set designs by Nathan K. Lee which make you feel the three dimensional weight of the estate around you as you travel from room to room.

Guiding you on this journey, and periodically serenading you, while making occasional appearances in the action... is Mike Handelman. Who is writing this blog post (it just got meta). It's all pretty effective, the whole effect of him playing music through the preshow, leading the audience from room to room and acting as the bridge between the audience and the world of the estate. And you know, he does an OK job at it. Alright he's pretty good. (I can't give myself too high praise, now can I?) (Oh no I accidentally gave myself most of a paragraph)

This is truly a marvelous and unique piece of the theatre the likes of which have never been seen in Boston to my knowledge. It is truly a once in a lifetime production... revived! And maybe made even better. Miss out at your own risk, last time the run sold out quickly and it's due to do so again!

PHEW that was really difficult. Just like, coming up with different adjectives for everything and stuff... that's the last time I try to write a review. But I felt it was necessary to celebrate the work being done in this production by my friends, the cast and crew, and I feel a review is a fitting extension of the experiential nature of this blogging endeavor. Wouldn't you agree?

Well that's my exercise in self promotion. Oh if you want tickets, go here: http://www.apollinairetheatre.com/productions/productions.html