Attacking the audience?

The Conway Corner

The staged readings of Aurolac Blues by Saviana Stanescu and Self at Hand by Jack Hanley on Monday night at Manhattan Repertory Theatre went well...except that an audience member fainted and an ambulance had to be called in the middle of the performance. During the second part of Self at Hand called Tastes Like Robot, I was reading a particularly gruesome passage involving a man refilling with peanut butter a section of his leg that he had cut out, when I heard the rustle of a metal chair from the audience. Unsure of what happened in the dark in front of me I continued reading for a moment. Then I heard a voice say we had to stop. We brought up the house lights and indeed someone had collapsed from their seat.

The audience member is fine, don't worry. But we were all quite concerned at the time. After regaining consciousness, he dry heaved into a bucket for a while, so it was hard to tell exactly what had happened to him. He was then moved to the hallway, where his condition worsened, and it was determined that it was necessary to call an ambulance.

Self at Hand is a play that makes the most callous listener squeamish. Its vivid poetic language is as outright gross as it is deeply metaphoric. I perhaps expected a few audience members to leave during this play, but I certainly did not expect it to overwhelm someone's capacity to remain conscious.

After a discussion between Martin Denton and the two playwrights to distract attention from the emergency situation, we continued the reading where we left off, with the peanut butter. Ryan was accompanying the audience member onto the ambulance, so I jumped into his role in the final part of Self at Hand.

Since No. 11 is beginning its next endeavor, Jet of Blood or the Ball of Glass by Antonin Artaud, an advocate of the audience's visceral involvement in the work of theatre, a Theatre of Cruelty, often interrupted and implemented as attacking the audience, the real question at hand for me is when an audience ought to be attacked and to what extent. Certainly, aiming to make an audience member faint on its own is not a worthwhile objective, but when would it be justified to make an audience faint? Outside of New York City, there are possibly those who, as an audience to the way Ryan cradled his boyfriend in his arms after he fainted, would themselves faint. Should such a scene be presented to such an audience? Women wearing corsets used to faint whenever they ascend a flight of stairs. Ought one to make such a women ascend many flights of stairs in order to make clear the absurdity of the device restricting their breathing? Artaud does not have a social agenda such as these examples present, rather more of a spiritual and cultural agenda. But, the question reapplied to the context of the Self at Hand reading bares asking, and of course one would respond, "well, people should see what they want to see, but not be made to see anything they aren't interested in seeing." Of course I can't force all of New York City to come see No. 11's plays. Although if I had the means...

I guess we are banking on those unsuspecting few, who stumble into the theatre for a night of fun, and wind up having an experience they were not interested in having. They will be most affected. I cannot help but wonder whether theatre that pushes boundaries isn't aimed at those accidental few, rather than those who are accustomed to its ideas. Maybe theatre isn't for theatre-goers? Ought one's gag reflex to be jostled by an unfamiliar stimulus, such as a description of peanut butter spread into a wound? I don't think the audience member wanted to faint. Nor would most. But nor does the corset wearing woman at the stop of the stairs, yet she will faint following her routine ascension of the staircase. It requires our proposed incessant ascension for her to remove her corset out of fear of death. Will she love her protruding stomach because it is her savior, or maintain the attitude she bore towards it when she wore the corset? She would most likely only adopt the attitude of acceptance if the experience of multiple ascensions was prompted by her own interest in being involved in it. But there remains a possibility she will love her stomach after the multiple ascensions, were she to accidentally be required to ascend many a' stair. So, ought Self at Hand to be performed for an audience member, given that it will make him faint and he'll have to leave in an ambulance? I think it may be contingent upon the coinciding objective of the performance...

But I've run into some difficulty here, and I think you'll see why. There is a collision between someone's free choice what is good for them. I would not necessary say that Self at Hand was good for the audience member who fainted. He would most likely say it was gross and he wishes he hadn't gone to the reading. But what would the audience member say to the hypothetical woman who faint when she saw him and Ryan embracing, and wishes she hadn't gone to the reading? I'm not saying the audience member ought to become accustomed to descriptions of bodily mutilation by enduring many evenings of fainting. But, should the visceral experience of violence lead to a new discovery, then it may be justified. Not actual violence...we won't go there. In the realm of art, is revolution possible and justifiable? The vicarious investment in an affective experience, by the accidental few who do not expect it, may lead to an unpleasant public loss of consciousness, but there is also the possibility it could lead to a woman accepting her belly fat. Hmm...is it worth the fall? To be honest, I'm not sure yet. A definitive component of our current culture is prevention: insurance, preemptive war, enhanced security, etc. So, especially in the context of such emphasis on surety, I think the theatre could use a little of the unexpected.

Written by Mitchell Conway

The Conway Corner

I went to another scam today.

At 7:00 at night, on the 12th floor of 500 8th avenue, I arrive at "One Source Talent" because I received a call from someone who had somehow received my information, and said they may be interested in representing me. I was told I would meet with the office director, Temur, and that my invite number was 34294. They even called in the middle of the day today to confirm I would be coming to meet Temur. The twelfth floor has a hallway with a number of people lining it, waiting outside of suite 1210, with a sign next to the door that says "One Source Talent." In addition to people my age, there a number of mothers there with young children.

Now, I thought this was a scam going into it. I got a funny feeling from the phone call. I am confused by the large number of people, but the sign looks somewhat legitimate, being three dimensional and mildly shiny. A man opens the door and says to line up so we can begin. I wait, then receive a clip board with an application on it from that man. The clipboard was lined up with a pile of clipboards along the front desk of this office, which is a gross pale yellow. I am directed down a hallway, past a strange room containing a children's table and chairs, a room with a man sitting at the desk wearing a black scarf and grinning at me as I walk by, and another little office with a desk, until I get to a large screening area with a TV playing some movie. A woman in the screening area directs me to take a seat along with a number of other people and fill out the form I've been given. I'm hesitant about how much information to give, since I suspect some funny business, but the form asks no more information then you could get from my facebook profile. Below my personal information is a little paragraph, stating that "I, in good faith, am present with the objective of finding representation for myself as an actor/model..." or something weird like that. The 'in good faith' was weird, and there was also a clause at the bottom, saying I "consented to be filmed and/or photographed" during the screening process.

The movie playing in this screening room has the volume blaring, and my hearing is quite poor, so if I thought it was loud it must have been damn loud. I ask the woman if I could turn down the volume and she says, "not now." That's the same tactic the scientologists used when I talked to them in the subway and I asked for them to explain how the 'theaton meter' works. "We can talk about that later," the woman said, moving on to discuss why I need to buy the book Dianetics. There is never a 'later.'

I sign at the end of this paragraph with my real name, but using a different signature then I normally use just to be careful. I hand the clipboard to the woman at the front of the room and sit back down. Now, I know that this is a scam at this point. There is little doubt in my mind. I feel like I'm wasting my time. It was stupid of me to go there in the first place after I suspected something from the phone call. So, I walk up to the woman, who is now joined at her side by the man who had been grinning from the desk in the first office, and I say, "Listen, is this a legitimate thing? If this is a scam, just tell me now and I'll leave, because I'm going to be very angry if I find out that it is." To which she responds, somewhat nervously, but keeping her cool, "no, this is real." After which the grinning man says, "if you aren't comfortable waiting, then just leave now." To which I say "no, I'm fine waiting." He gives me a quite frightening fake smile beyond his standard plastered-on-grin and I return to my seat.

I think about what I can do in this situation. I could yell to this whole room, over the blasting movie, that this is a scam and they should leave now. I could go up to each person and tell them, so the woman at the front does not hear me saying it. But, before I can keep thinking, the woman has already called me next. There were a number of people who had hand in their clipboard a duration before I hand in mine, but apparently I deserved to skip the line. I watched the grinning man walk out of the room I was about to enter, grin at me, and he is followed by a quite young man, of about fourteen, who asks me to come inside. A girl of around seventeen is also in the room, and they ask me to stand against a wall which has measuring tape on it. The boy says, "five feet ten inches," which he writes on my clipboard, and then the girl takes my picture. Then the girl says, "is this phone number the best way to reach you?" "Yes, that should be fine," I say, thinking of what an idiot I am for even putting down my real phone number. Then the boy says, "Okay, we'll be in touch." I walk slowly out of the office, plotting how to deal with the situation. People notice how exceptionally slow I'm walking, and the man who gave me the clipboard at the start asks, "are you alright?" "Yes, I'm fine," I say, actually quite upset. I stroll, still slowly, out of the office, and stand thinking in the hallway for a few minutes. Maybe I should go back in and ask for Temur. Was the grinning man Temur? I showed up fifteen minutes early, did that mean I joined the cattle call group when in fact I should have waited until 7:00 for the time of my appointment? Then I could have really confronted someone about this! Or now, I could still go back to that screening room and start yelling. But, realizing there was nothing logically I could do, because I have no real evidence, I sadly wander to the elevator. A man with a tie arrives next to me waiting by the elevator, and I say to him, "did you think that was a scam?" "What? I work in an office up here," he says confused. Then a well made-up and well dressed girl who looked like she could have been interviewing/auditioning arrives at the elevator. "Did you think that was a scam?" I ask politely. "I work there," she says without smiling. "Oh. Well is it a scam?" I ask with honest accusation dead into her eyes. "No," she says looking at the ground. We ride down the elevator in silence.

I thought of at least twenty clever comments to throw at her, but none of them were really any good because I didn't have much of a basis for seeing this thing as a scam. It has a website, they had that sign out front, and although the office lacked many of the normal decorations of an office there was a feeling about it that was just wrong. There was that strange room with the children's table and chairs that could have been a photography room of some sort. That's what these scams usually do. They say they want you to join up with them and if they are smarter than to just say, "okay, now give us some money to represent you," then they have a more elaborate scheme where they say you need to get a 'comp card' through their photographer in order to start getting work. I went to one of this type of scam before, when I actually got through to a second stage instead of giving myself away as suspicious in the first. Apparently my headshot wasn't good enough, and I needed this other thing. Bullshit, of course.

Anyone know any legal action that can be taken in this sort of situation? Please let me know what you think should be done about this. I intend to keep going to scams until I think of a good way to expose them.

Written by Mitchell Conway

The Conway Corner

I've decided to post some of the sounds I made for We Three onto the blog for you to download:

Mattress Discounters 1
(0:11, 111 KB mp3)

Mattress Discounters 2
(0:14, 150 KB mp3)

Mattress Discounters 3
(First sound in the play, 0:14, 147 KB mp3)

Mattress Discounters 4
(sine wave chorus, 0:13, 135 KB mp3)

Pills Sound
(0:41, 433 KB mp3)

Strange 1
(2:09, 1.25 MB mp3)

Strange 2
(3:33, 2.06 MB mp3)

Strange 3
(1:01, 623 KB mp3)

Strange Arabic
(5:20, 6.73 MB mp3)

Strange All
(1-3 and Arabic together, with some other unused sounds, 5:20, 6.74 MB mp3)

Motion Picture Soundtrack
(preshow song, 2:04, 974 KB mp3)


The Mattress Discounters and Strange sounds 1-3 I created using static and sine waves and messing with them in various ways. Sorry that some of the Strange sounds have a bunch of extra space at the end of the track. I used various sounds of pills and sped them up and put them on top of each other to create the Pills Sound. Strange Arabic is an Arabic Techno song, "Moi Et Toi" by Abdel Ali Slimani on the compilation album "Arabic Groove," slowed down quite a bit, and with a few other tweeks. NTI alumni will get a kick out of that. Motion Picture Soundtrack is a recording of me playing the Radiohead song, overlayering a bunch of guitar tracks.

I know these aren't songs you would put onto your ipod, but I figured I would make them available since I have them laying around. I put up the time and size of the files, just so you know what you're getting yourself into. In most cases they aren't very large. Let me know if you come up with any good uses for this stuff. You never know when you'll need some spooky noises. Or you just might be a Mattress Discounters junky.

I'm working on some stuff for the shadow play right now that may be more appealing to the ear. I'll throw some of it up here once it's more developed.

Written by Mitchell Conway

The Conway Corner

Hey! Everyone notice the staged readings "11 Celebrates 10" that we're doing to for the 10th anniversary of the "Play and Playwrights" anthology series? The dates are posted on the main page of the website. We really hope you can make it some of them. They're all free!

But we also want your feedback. What more information could we provide for you on the site that would make you more interested on our readings and our other endeavors? Please comment on the posting with your suggestions!

The new piece No. 11 is creating has a lot to do with shadows. My last semester at Skidmore I was in Carolyn Anderson's Advanced Directing class, and most of my first projects with that class revolved around shadows. So I'm going back to my resources for inspiration. I've been taking "Jung on Evil" and "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" on the subway. Carl Jung has a lot of great quotes about his conception of the shadow as a component of the psyche. Here are some good ones:

"The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real."

"...it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil."

Also, Jung references a good quote from Faust, after he has confront Mephistopheles:

"That was my other side, my alter ego, my all too palpable shadow which can no longer be denied."

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is lengthy, and will require a great deal further study before it becomes truly useful. As of now, I see a lot about the shadow of ignorance. A huge part of ignorance is fear of death, which one should not have. Death and life are one. Learning how to die is a major mission of life which is often ignored in favor of the enjoyments of life. In the West, we usually think of shadow as associated with death. But their shadow is an attitude towards life. To see a difference between life and death, means to forever remain in the cycle of life. The life-death cycle, which are one, is negative, and the goal is to be liberated from it. Light is the pure reality beyond this shadow reality of life and death. I guess as Macbeth would put it, "life's but a walking shadow."

Some people on blogs do this music playlist thing, so here's what I've been listening to: "Shadowplay" by Joy Division, "Hidden Shadows" by Herbie Hancock, "Pictures At An Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky, "Blue in Green" by Miles Davis.

I know I am all over the place. Sometimes it feels like I'm grabbing at everything with the word shadow. But I'm really trying to think about what shadows mean to people. Beyond exploring about they mean to me, and asking others, I feel the need to build up these references to the idea. Jung's shadow is quite specific (or quite vague considering it is a supposed component of the quite indefinite psyche), and the Tibetan’s shadow is very different, but there are many shadows to look at. I should probably look at my own on the wall for a while longer.

Written by Mitchell Conway

The Conway Corner

I've been auditioning a good amount here in the city, and I'll pretty much audition for anything. I go from waiting around at AEA (Actor's Equity Association) for a Broadway show and never ever being seen one day, to disorganized unpaid student films where I'm the only auditioner the next. So my first or second week in New York, I got an e-mail from a student film maker who seemed really excited for me to have sent him my headshot and resume, and sent his script as an attachment.

I believe whole-heartedly in going into an audition prepared to the point of bleeding, but that doesn't mean I always put it into practice. I was busy working on We Three, auditioning elsewhere, and going to my real job, so I only read the first scene of this film script. It consisted of a scene involving some character I would be playing and his friends at Coney Island riding the Cyclone. I was excited about the prospect of filming at Coney Island, but not excited enough the go to the next page of the script.

Anyway, I told the director I would meet him in Union Square one day. I waited around for a while, and after calling him incessantly, he finally answered and apologetically said there had been a mix up and he thought we had agreed to meet a different day. So we then arranged to meet after I finished working in Williamsburg one afternoon. I trot over to the Roebling Tea room to conduct the audition/interview without any idea what I was doing. Normally a director will make sure to say 'bring a classical monologue' or 'there will be sides at the audition.' I had no clue.

I'm a little early, so I take a seat and order a sandwich. Shortly, a tall, thin, quite gay, twenty something in short shorts recognizes me from my headshot and sits down across from me. After the obligatory introductions he asks how I liked the script. Maintaining my cool, I mention how I'd be interested in filming at Coney Island, and how I thought the dialogue was distinct yet genuine. But, not wanting to reveal my neglect, I smoothly transition into my own endeavors with No. 11 and so forth.

After humoring a number of my tangents, the director says, "Well. I just want you to know that everyone else who I've talked to has been really passionate about this script. Do you have any other thoughts you'd like to share about it?" I realize that I'm about to slip and fall in a mound of horseshit. All I have to cling to is my previous nonsense about the script being genuine, and liking Coney Island.

The director has obviously picked up that I have not gotten past the second page of his masterpiece and says, "You know, I met with an eighteen year old earlier today. After a few minutes, I realized that he hadn't even read the script I send him. So I asked myself, 'why were we even meeting?' " He waited expecting some type of response from me. I let out a short panicked laugh, and said something like "Huh. Yeah."

The director out of nowhere asked where I had been before this meeting. I responded that I was just a few blocks away at a real estate office where I worked. He responded, "Well, good. I'm glad I haven't made you go too far out of your way." Luckily for me at this point the director took the initiative to close our interview/audition, and said he would give me a call. Without bothering to wait for the check for the tea he ordered, he handed the waitress cash on the way out. I finished my sandwich.

At the rehearsal for We Three that night I told my fellow company members about my experience that afternoon. After which Ryan asked, "What was the film called?" I said, "Glory Holes." The company burst out in laughter while I smiled in confusion. I had no clue what a 'glory hole' was, but apparently everyone else did. Barely holding back his feverish giggling, Ryan informed me that a glory hole was a whole in a bathroom stall through which men stick their phallus and engage in felatio with other men anonymously. Upon further investigation, we discovered that the script was about precisely this matter. The character I was auditioning for ended up having anonymous oral sex in the bathroom at Coney Island, featuring my penis rather prominently. Its involvement was intricately described in the stage directions. I am left wondering what the remainder of my audition would have consisted of, had I demonstrated familiarity with the material.

Embarrassed, and a little terrified, I learned my lesson. Acting is pornography.

Written by Mitchell Conway

The Conway Corner

Has everyone seen the cool pictures like these that are online? Check them out here: http://krosemanphotos.smugmug.com/gallery/5705395_NTFXr#351947987_Ei6Hv

Written by Mitchell Conway

The Conway Corner

"A man can do what he wants, but not want what he
wants." -Arthur Schopenhauer

Woody Allen asks Annie Hall at a party with all of her friends in attendance, after hearing their respective careers and coinciding artistic endeavors, "how come all of your friends are on their way to becoming someone else?" I look around and see a city overloaded with people who have artistic endeavors. I'm one of them. We, No. 11, are some of them. Everyone wants to express themselves creatively, but nobody wants to pay them for it. Or not enough people want to pay them. Me. Us. Not enough people want to pay us to do this thing we do. Yet. I don't mind being on my way to being someone, because everyone is always in the process of becoming, but I don't like the possibility of being stuck in some first stage of becoming. I want to at least have a ticket to get on the train, even if its too full more me now. The ticket line is just so damn long...Maybe its a good thing that more people are expressing themselves artistically. Sadly for me, the result is a lack of need for someone to express for them and provide a vicarious experiece. I want to create theatre, and I don't want it to be my secondary vocation.

But, that is how most 'actors' live. They are on their way. I'm on my way. But we, No. 11, are on our way, and we'll get there. And then where will we be? Hopefully, we'll be able to define ourselves by what we want, and have that be what we are.

Written by Mitchell Conway