Hey team. The world is sucking currently. It has been for a while as I’m sure you know. It feels funny to publish this but I’m not really sure what else to do. Protests and petitions are good for the community and good for the soul. Still, there’s so much we do not have control over, so most of the time I’m keeping my head down and doing what I know how to do. Hope everyone this reaches is safe and well.
♥
Last month my friend Sophia asked me to host her puppet cabaret. It was happening on May 4th, so the theme was Star Wars. Puppets, Star Wars, comedy. I chose to accept. Working with a theme is very helpful. Because I perform live so infrequently, I use my scarce bookings as fuel to write new sets. 6-12 minutes of fresh material that I can sweat out the week before I know I have to be on stage. I don’t really know any other way to get myself to write in this form. I have a procrastination problem, which we’ll get back to.
I went for a run and worked out that I would host in character as Lando Calrissian, who’s one of the guys in the Star Wars movies. I’ve had an affinity for Lando for a while. He’s very suave and cool obviously, and can rock a cape, but also he’s misunderstood. There’s a loneliness and determination to him that I find compelling. Additionally he’s one of the few Black characters in the movies. In high school I dressed as Lando for Halloween but somehow wasn’t able to score an invite to any parties. Almost a decade later, people paid money to see me done up like the leader of Cloud City.
A few days before the show I pitched the Shoestring puppet group my idea. Between acts I would do a one man play about Lando’s loneliness, aging and an unwitting act of incest. To be clear, the incest was alluded to in an actual Star Wars movie. And there’s also lots of other incest in Star Wars that is never interrogated. The story would begin with Lando in the theater, then eventually he’d go home and get a DNA test result that sends him spiraling. He’d then go to a club, get faded and do other things, get into a spaceship and maroon himself on a desolate planet. Shoestring had two responses. The first, does it need to be entirely about incest? The second, it seemed too complicated. The second point was totally correct. When I did the show, I learned that every puppeteer has some kind of table or other obstruction to hide behind in order to perform as their puppet. So my job is to yap while they set up. Meaning if I had to put up my own set they would need an additional time-filler for me—and I needed that time to tell the story! So I changed the concept to have Lando go through his crisis entirely inside the theater. And that crisis did still have to do with incest, but that reveal was moved to the final act. I went on stage six times over the course of nearly two hours. Here’s a particularly amusing act, exclusive to this newsletter.
Sophia’s sister, my good pal Grace, flew in from New York to record the show. She stayed at my apartment and her fee was making Lando’s outfits. Now it’s time to confess: preparing for this show brought on one of the worst bouts of procrastination I’ve ever dealt with. And by no means does that reflect my level of interest in the show. I was flattered by the invite, beyond excited to do it and wanted more than anything to do a good job. But because of my past experiences with writing, memorizing lines and making props and other assets, my brain knew exactly how long it would take to be show-ready. Although I felt pressure, that knowledge shook my laziness awake. The show was on Sunday. I pitched on Tuesday. By Friday night my set was still not typed out. I cooked dinner for myself and decided to watch Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. I don’t have powerful nostalgia cravings often but when I do, I indulge them. It felt incredible to watch that movie on Blu-ray. Grace arrived earlier than expected the next morning so we went to breakfast, bought some costume materials and chatted for a few hours. Then I shut myself in my room to work on my script. I also needed to edit two videos and put together sound files to send to the tech person at Color Club. We had movie tickets that night, and by the time we left I had practiced two of the six parts, sent my sound effects and not touched the videos. Also Grace could not get the sewing machine working, so there was no movement on the costumes.
Most of the preparation took place in the hours before the show. I knocked out the videos first thing in the morning, then did run-throughs and revisions of the script at the same time. I was working on a prop on the way out of the door, and practicing my lines on the car ride to the theater. Had Grace not been there, or if anything unexpected came up, I wouldn’t have made the deadline. But the costumes got finished too, and they were way better than they needed to be for my silly act.
I didn’t get to watch most of the show because I was hiding/cramming backstage, but once I was done I caught the last puppeteers and they were spectacular. I now know there are many amazing puppet acts in Chicago. If you missed the show and you live in the area, definitely follow Shoestring Puppets and try to catch the next one. As for me, I don’t have any upcoming dates booked but if you want me I’m an easy get. And I promise to come prepared.
Thanks for reading! I wrote a whole other entry about performing live inside my first draft of this one, so hopefully I’ll have occasion to share that soon. Next time: summer staycation!
Love,
Eric