liminal space
A smart, fair, and not uncritical dispatch from Site:Lab’s “Night of Pythias” on April 13. Just what I’d been waiting to read. The lack of a vigorous critical culture is one of the disappointments of living in a city like Grand Rapids — it can feel like we do this work in a vacuum. (Honestly, I wanted someone to come in and scrutinize. It’s the only way an experiment can get sharper, better). And there’s nothing I love to read more than a lacerating review.
At the same time, no doubt, there are benefits to an art culture with no reviewers, no gatekeepers, no judges. Namely, that I can “direct” and collaborate (still not sure what the word is for what I contributed…I’ve been going with “executive produce”) with Site:Lab on a project this size, with zero experience at the helm.
Kevin, the critic, walked through the whole space and even watched the entire performance. I’m in total agreement that the event was as much a signal flare as a fire: there might have been lines down the block to get in, but the next one, and the next one after that, should be even better. Building out from a core concept, in our case the environment of a failing secret society, proved to be a great model for distributed participation.
Jeremy Robinson, Pythias III
Oh and I just bought one of the Pythian “Founders” portraits (made by Stafford Smith and his photo class at GVSU) for myself, for my birthday.
the cream sweater
I actually hesitate to post this because I feel like I am aiding and abetting terrorists. On the other hand, I have no other documentation of the film actually happening:
Daniel Radcliffe, caught by the paparazzi on the second day of shooting Kill Your Darlings on the streets of Brooklyn.
He’s such a professional and hard worker — never late, never complaining (even when wearing layers in 70 degree heat), and basically running sprints everyday with this film schedule. He’s used to shooting 1/8th of a page of screenplay a day on the Potter films. We’re regularly shooting five.
I’m back in the city for a run of days, to be present for the “action sequence” and help make it run smoothly. As you might imagine, it involved books. And if all goes well, it will be EXCITING.
“my roommate’s gay. yay.”
Just finished the Tyler Clementi bias-trial article (“The Story of a Suicide”) from a few weeks back in the NYKR by Ian Parker. It’s a terrifically precise and reported article, with this satisfyingly complex slant that falls between positions, neither against Dharun Ravi or for him. I was at dinner recently with someone complained that she couldn’t quite identify Ian Parker’s “bias” in the article — and I wondered why that would bother her. Certainly if the bias were more clear, then she might have rejected it for *being* biased. Are we in such a death-spiral of journalism that neither subjectivity nor objectivity is preferred? Isn’t that one of the reasons we read good long-form? Like Didion, Parker’s piece is shifty and complicating, impossible to essentialize; Clementi suicide, for one, seems to come from nowhere — unpremeditated and not out of fear or victimization.
I read the NYKR for sentences like this one:
“The enduring false belief that Ravi was responsible for outing Tyler Clementi, and for putting a sex tape on the Internet, can be seen as a collective effort to balance a terrible event with a terrible cause.”
I will accept praise from anywhere
I think I just took to heart some praise about my writing from “GE Front Load Washer” in my comments section.
Six weeks out
So this is what film production is like: back in NYC for the weekend to do a final revise on the screenplay with John, the director, before production in Mid-March. It’s like being in the air traffic control tower on Thanksgiving during a white-0ut. John is working the charm offensive in what appears to be a dozen directions: casting, locking production talent, location scouting, soundtrack… Cable internet drips. Time Warner is called, called, and called again. Fridge has Fresca and left-overs and emergency hummus. Suddenly, we need to restore a scene from, like, twelve drafts ago. Where, pray tell, do the twelve-ago drafts live?
At least it’s pouring rain out. Nobody’s going anywhere.
All Hail P-S
I’ve wanted to work on a Site:Lab — this tremendous public art rave (I know, weird, but it’s the best I could do) curated by this fellow Paul Amenta that happens here in Grand Rapids about three times a year – ever since I went to the spectacular “Land of Riches” one at the Old Public Museum.
The one thing about Grand Rapids: it’s never crowded. You never feel like you’re in a crowded space. EXCEPT at Site:Labs, where Paul oversees dozens of individual artists, classes, collectives etc. who put together site-specific work. “Land of Riches” was so elegant and composed — rooms upon rooms of smart, sensitive re-imaginings of what a museum does. You had to to be there, and that was the OTHER cool thing about it: you, having to be there. It was a one-night Brigadoon of art and socializing.
The next one is April 13, downtown. And I think we’ve got something that many folks will want to plug into. I have been sworn to secrecy because I’ve always wanted to swear to it. BUT here are some pics of the space: 111 Division.
Second floor ballroom
111 Division
The Third Floor
On WGVU
it is raining chunks of the 1970s. Another RUST interview. I am trying to sound enthusiastic, not hyper. There is a fine line!
@ the studios of WGVU
Trove
On the way to pick up my Fancy Pants from the dry-cleaners,I passed the window of the used bookstore in Eastown (well, one of two right next to each other, weirdly), and the Issacson Steve Jobs biography in the window caught my eye. Somebody gave that badboy up?
It was $35, mine for only…marginally less than that.
I also picked up Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice, which I’ve been meaning to read. I feel like there’s a story in white flight in Michigan — it’s what eroded the schools which eroded the cities which eroded the tax base which led to everything else. For a long time, I’ve wanted to tell the biography of a house, in Detroit, and the series of concessions and sacrifices that might lead a family (or families) to abandon something that size. I live on a block with four empty homes, here in Eastown — two boarded up.
Maybe we should do the piece IN THE HOUSE? David Hancock style?
“In a way, I interviewed ghosts.”
Listening to the Catalyst Radio/WYCE/The Rapidian interview I did last week about RUST. I’m always surprised by the sound of my own voice — surprised might be the nice way to put it. I think they even edited out the space between the words. To cram it all in? Either way, I sound very much INTO IT. I don’t know that I will ever master nonplussed. But Linda, the host, did a great job incorporating the original songs and even the documentary sound from “From Dawn Until Sunset”, the 1937 GM corporate film we use in the show…
just back from Louisville, having seen “Basement Story” in The 10s — the show of the finalists for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre.
Oh but first there was the Swerving Off The Side of the Road, at mile 10 on I69, the night before. Black ice, scourge of the highway. I was just innocently tipping shrapnel from the peanut bar wrapper into my mouth when the car started to fishtail. A very long second ensued as I swerved and ended up in a ditch on the side of the road for an hour.
And I wondered: Is it okay to check Facebook while stranded, roadside, in the dark during a blizzard?
(yes)
And at what point do you call your mother and tell her?
(haven’t yet)
The following night, having had my fill at Proof and seeing my old friend Kiki and her fiancé for a drink, I swung over to the theatre. Now, the show started at 10:30 pm, isn’t quite at the 11pm Sleep No More level, but still. That’s late. However, my furnace was nicely warmed by the second Old Fashioned that accompanied me to my seat. Along with my friends Brian and Brian.
The show was really strong, with a couple of definite contenders in the mix. “Hero Dad” by Laura Jacqmin was this prismatic look at parental responsibility, an interesting triptych really, and maybe the smartest. “Advanced” by M. Thomas Cooper, about cavemen arguing in Lincoln/Douglas style, got huge laughs and was really winning. I have to remember the benefits of absurd costuming while writing.
The totally charming, perhaps-shall-I-say-it?-Beiber-banged Sean Mellot did great in “Basement” — I loved this magician-table-cloth swipe he did with the sheet over the bureau. He told me he was nervous having me in the audience, but it didn’t show. I was super happy: this is as realized as this show will ever be, probably, and I didn’t wince once at the writing (which happens).
One of the best aspects of the show was the total variety: 22 actors, no repeats, in 7 shows. Each one was a pilot episode. Crashed afterwards, even though the fresh-faced Apprentice Co. invited me to the after-party. Sean, if you’re reading this, congrats. You were as good as I could have hoped for. Now just be aware Colin might be paying a visit to your room at night…
End Of the Line
By some twist of fate I’ll never quite understand, a spanky four-page excerpt of RUST appears in The New York Times in this Sunday’s magazine. I’m sure most readers thought, WTF? A play in the pages of the Times? First time ever. But I will happily take unprecedented as an adjective.
Fingers crossed this gives the play a chance to find new audiences…
listening, II
Alex Hamel and Jared Wekenman finally uncorked one from the RUST soundtrack. “Flying” is the first track to debut from the original underscore they composed — and it’s terrific. Just the right tone and tempo. The full album is out in April 2012, but they released this snack now. These two are so incredibly talented, I wish I had the bank to keep them working all year.
listen to this
S. Carey, All We Grow.
It’s been awhile since I’ve had that distinct pleasure of discovering a new musician. Carey apparently loved Bon Iver so much, he tracked him down on tour, convinced him to hire him as a drummer, and then released this album, which is, admittedly, Ivery. But in the best way. It’s got minimalistic, Reich-ian pulse percussion, moody atmospherics that I love, and that gentle, unpressured singing style that Bon Iver uses. Can’t rave enough.
building the basement
As a playwright, I’ve been lucky to work with some incredibly smart and talented people. (The others shall go unmentioned.) Gavin Witt from Center Stage gave me tools from the future, and I couldn’t even find the handles. Lisa Rothe made the warmest, most relaxed room I’ve ever been in. Sean, Jen and Martin from Working Group teach me something every time we get in a room. Scott Mellema told me to swap scenes 24 and 25 in RUST and it made all the difference.
But the folks from Actors’ Theatre of Louisville are in a class above. I guess I knew they treated playwrights well (The Humana Festival of new plays happens there in March), but I never had actually had a chance to BE one of them. ”Basement Story”, this 12 minute monologue play I wrote, opens there next week in a weeklong run of 10-minute plays (whoops, it’s only like 8 pages long!) call The Tens. They are finalists for the Heideman award, the National 10-minute play contest.
I’ve been Skype-ing into rehearsals this past month — not nearly as weird as I thought — and working with director Sarah, dramaturg Molly, actor Sean, and various production folks, and every step of the way I feel like they are, and I use this expression with only a half-understanding of its deployment, LOVING ON IT. In the first conversation we had, Sarah asked, “What’s the worst possible production of ‘Basement Story’ look like?” Because she wanted to make sure to AVOID it.
They even constructed “tower of drawers” they built in the scene-shop for it! This is a 10 minute play, and a bureau DIED for it. Can’t wait to see it in action. I’m headed down next Friday to the ole stomping ground.
Backhanded
Fifteen minutes ago, I had no idea who Steve Donoghue was. My loss. Because the fellow not only read both John Sayles’s new novel, but Chris Adrian’s and Murakami’s AND EVEN Dick Cheney’s memoir — along with dozens of other new releases for a Best and Worst of 2011 list. He’s an unstoppable reader, unafraid to be brutal and also full of enthusiasm, which is why when I came across his take on the Atlantic Fiction issue, I was nervous. “Hackneyed” was the operative adjective in the search results for my story. He has tough, incisive observations to make about all the stories in the issue, and somehow knowing that I avoided his knife feels less like praise and more like mercy.
“The best story in this issue also springs from a hackneyed plot: Austin Bunn’s “How to Win an Unwinnable War” is about young Sam, child of divorce, who compensates for the fractured nature of his home life by obsessing about the precise mechanics of nuclear war. Conservatively, in my life I’ve read 50 short stories with the exact same premise, but I don’t begrudge that – it’s a good premise, and I don’t fault writers for going straight to good premises. But I expect compensations – the lazier the premise, the more energy I expect from the execution.
Bunn doesn’t disappoint. In fact, he seems to make a dare out of not disappointing, by crowding his work with as many short story cliches as he can think of – the slutty divorced mother, the bluff, oblivious dad, the wacky professor, the caustic wheelchair-kid, etc. – and then somehow making the whole thing feel original and gripping, as poor inarticulate Sam tries desperately to get what he needs from the clueless adults all around him:
“Every Goliath has a David,” the professor said to him.
“Who’s that?” Sam asked.
“Just a kid,” the professor said, “who changed history.” Though this was his way of making Sam feel better, stories like this one only made him sick to his stomach. He doesn’t want to change history, just outlive it.
Identity complex
In sixth grade, I went through a period of reorganizing my room every month. Moving the bed, the desk. Trying to find the right arrangement of myself. My “identity complex,” my mom called it.
It’s been eight years since I dusted my website and I realized, austinbunn.com didn’t need dusting as much as a tear down. I went through a LiveJournal phase, as did every other Korean schoolgirl, and I’ve imported most of them here because hoarding is fun. I was late to Facebook, and honestly, it feels like the mall to me. And I grew up in New Jersey.
But I’m going to try out this hybrid of blog and info and backchannel and pics. See what happens. I have the inestimable writer and performer Sean Lewis for turning me onto WordPress (and I guess thanks to Matt Slaybaugh for getting Sean on it), and somebody named Todd who designed the damn thing and gave it away for free.
It’s on.
Yep.
Live, On Stage, One Night Only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m hitching my star to, like, ten other stars this Saturday night, here in GR.
Bands, dancers, graphic designers, beer, + me, doing a 14 minute solo performance. It’s a personal, science-y exploration of failures in memory.
I write these things, I sound design them, and then I ask myself: how did I get cast in this? I AM NOT AN ACTOR.
Then I realize, it’s okay because it’s my life.
A
Anyone who isn’t confused doesn’t really understand the situation. – Edward Murrow
a great overview, by a novice radio reporter, about becoming an embed long after everybody thinks they know what it means to be an embed.
sad, beautiful
The story of the death of a husband and wife, written by a daughter. A terrific article on the costs of medical interventions late in life.
urban IQ
“Art criticism is a form of city-building, quite as much as urban design, architecture or community activism. It is a contribution to urban intelligence, a strengthening of the public space in which citizens meet and recognize each other as parts of the civic whole.”
John Bentley Mays, a critic based in Toronto
(via Kevin Buist)
Too Critical? Or Just Right.
This weekend, I had the weird experience of catching one of the BEST art exhibits I’ve ever seen and one of the WORST performances. It’s made me think a lot about Grand Rapids and the place of criticism in city (and my) life.
Saturday afternoon, I went to this exhibit inside the OLD public museum here in GR, an abandoned building that had been left to the stuffed animals in dingy dioramas. A very Michigan type space. But it had been converted brilliantly into a huge art space with a wild and super-creative projects. See story below.
But that night, I saw the West Michigan Gay Men’s Chorus and was, honestly, shocked. The singing was fine — and the second act was actually campy and fun. But the first act was just awful and in a way I found myself struggling to describe.
It was gay pride anthem after anthem (with titles like “Diversity” and “Are We Not Your Family?”) that I’d never heard before and hope never to hear again — songs written with the white-keys only. A projector lowered over the chorus and, with absolutely no sense of irony, proceeded to show pride flags and clip-art referencing hate crimes (Microsoft Paint scrawlings on school buses). The projections alone seriously subtracted from the point of the show, the performers themselves. The songs were heartfelt but uncreatively arranged, with a wall of melody echoed by the hammering piano, muddying the voices. In the era of “Glee,” this kind of singing, I think, is bound for extinction or reboot.
And I left, thinking: maybe I’m just a critic by nature. Or maybe I’m not gay enough. Or maybe I have taste, but I don’t think I was alone in that concert hall. The artistic director of the chorus needs to know that first act was bad. And it hurt me, aesthetically, a velvet dagger to the heart.
I moved to Grand Rapids in the fall of 2008, and I’m was disappointed in the city paper, maybe like we all are now. Every paper thrives on features and previews of cultural events, but they’ll always be puff pieces. What I miss most are genuine critical voices: funny, arch, specific voices. Just this morning, when I read another four-star Grand Rapids Symphony review (you know the concert’s a dog when it’s given 3 ½ stars) or a kindly, three-star review of the Actors’ Theatre latest “The Drawer Boy” (which I saw the same night), I decided to do something about it.
I’ve decided to WRITE the reviews I wanted to read. And I posted them on this civic-journalism experiment we have running here called The Rapidian. This may be professional suicide on my part but here I go.
A truly excellent city culture can only develop when strong, thoughtful critical voices develop with it.
Hencewith:
Review: “Michigan Land of Riches” exhibit
Review: “The Drawer Boy” at Actors’ Theatre
Review: West Michigan Gay Men’s Chorus
“20 years of reinvention have seeped into the city’s blood.”
A good article on the revitalization of the Grand Rizzo. The takeaway: we have the benefit of Founding Fathers (Dutch, natch) who wanted to spruce up the place. The rep is that West Michigan’s dutch community is cheap — well, blond and tall and Calvinist and cheap. You wouldn’t think that from the $ poured into the cityscape.