May 16th, 2009
For the last two weeks, I’ve been in Los Angeles. Actually Santa Monica. Actually Marina Del Ray.
A gang of us from SITI Company have been making a new show. It is a new version of Antigone, written by Jocelyn Clarke. We’re working at the Getty Villa which is just up the coast from where we’re living. Where we’re living is two blocks from Venice Beach.
I’m spent quite a bit of time in Los Angeles over the years, and have come out to this area just to visit the beach, but I’ve never spent this much time here. Although we’ve been so busy with the show I haven’t had that much time to myself, I’ve taken a few walks around and done a bit of running.
It strikes me that the climate, fauna and even the architecture of this area is remarkably similar to areas of Japan that are very familiar to me from childhood. This is a bit weird. I mean, this is Venice Beach. We’re talking Muscle-Beach and paddle-tennis and literal beach bums waking up under huge swaths of graffiti. Sand in everything. Despite the clear differences between almost any part of Japan and California beach culture, I have moments when a smell wafts through the air here that transports me back to my childhood in a powerful way.
It’s not just the ocean. Even though it is the Pacific one.
I think a lot of this is botanical.
I think a lot of this is neurological.
Powerful nostalgia in places we’ve never been…
I fly to Shanghai in the wee hours of Monday morning. Never been there. Wonder if I’ll remember it…
Tags: Japan, Los Angeles, SITI, Travel
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April 9th, 2009
I’m in Tempe Az. It’s SITI Co’s last of three residencies here. We will be performing Under Construction, next Saturday.
However, this week, we’re rehearsing Who Do You Think You Are. We will be performing WDYTYA at the Kranert in Champaign/Urbana in a few weeks but this is the only chance we’ll have to rehearse it.
We’re also doing workshops during the day with the ASU MFAs. Some of which were in Eurydice earlier this year, so it’s good to be back in a room with them.
But what I want to blog about here, briefly, has nothing to do with any of this. It’s a new thing that I’ve been doing online.
This is in addition to the Yelping, Chess With Friendsing (free on iPhone), Bright Kiteing and Twittering that I’ve been doing. If any of you know what those things are and care to join me…
My point here today has to do with the fact that there are certain things that humans, any human, are better at than computers, any computer. Combine this with the fact that we have more data coming into the world of astronomy than we know what to do with and you get Galaxy Zoo.
If you go to Galaxy Zoo and register and go through a bit of a tutorial process you can classify galaxies. You’re looking at actual images of galaxies and making basic decisions about what you’re seeing. This data you provide is cross referenced with other folks choices looking at the same images and what emerges is a fairly accurate/useful sorting process. This is not a game. It’s active, citizen science.
So I leave it open in a tab on my Firefox and every once in awhile I’ll just stare at stars and sort them. It’s kind of meditative and it’s also contributing. Busy as I am, I can work on our sharpening picture of the cosmos. This makes me happy.
Tags: Arizona, Science, SITI, Under Construction, web 2.0
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March 25th, 2009
So we’re up and running and the show is kind of fantastic and fun and we’re having a great time with it.
Here’s my hero Chuck Mee talking about the show:
YouTube
The national press hasn’t descended upon us yet. Isherwood will probably write about us in the Times but in the meantime here are two local reviews:
Courier Journal
Leo Weekly
We may be posting some footage that I’m shooting on a FlipCam during the show on YouTube at some point soon. In any case I’ll keep y’all posted here. If you’re in driving range of L’ville come on down! We’ll also be doing it in Tempe AZ, and Champagne-Urbana IL once we close here.
K. Nuf for now.
Tags: SITI, Theatre, Under Construction
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March 9th, 2009
I’m in Louisville with SITI Company working on UNDER CONSTRUCTION, and it would be hard to be happier with a work at this point! We’re having a BLAST and this big messy mass of theatrical pleasure that we’re working on every day is my favorite thing in a LONG time. Of course I say that about everything I work on. Sue me. But this is really quite special I think. It is exactly where I want to be right now on so many levels.
And I think a lot of people are going to hate it.
And I think a lot of people are going to love it.
And that feels about right.
To paraphrase Tom Nelis, talking about the actual play from inside the play: This is the way we’re doing it and we think this feels wonderful.
Anyway there’s a blog. Check it out.
Tags: SITI, Theatre, Under Construction
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March 1st, 2009
I suspect that the most common sentence used to start blog entries is some variation on: “I haven’t updated this blog in awhile.” I know I’ve written a few. I’m trying to avoid writing it again, but it’s been two full months since I’ve shown my face here. So here I am.
I really meant to blog about the inauguration, and the Oscars but I didn’t.
What I’ve been doing in the meantime,
I’ve been in Tempe/Phoenix Arizona directing a production of Sarah Ruhl’s EURYDICE. It was a so-called “site specific” production. Here’s a review.
While in AZ. I did a lot of hiking in the Superstition mountains/wilderness. This activity took up all the time I would have spent blogging etc.
I’ve been watching Barak Obama get inaugurated and start his term. I still choke up almost every time someone says “President Barak Obama.” I have also discovered that I wish I was Malia or Sasha. Not that I am that unhappy with the life I have, but man, wouldn’t it be GREAT to be one of those girls?
I’ve been getting more active on Twitter. If you know what it is, I’ve also started using Brightkite to update both Twitter and Facebook. I’m also using Yelp more and more and I’m actually writing reviews. Check out the new Yelp window on this blog (scroll down on the main blog page, it’s on the right).
I’m now in Louisville KY rehearsing (as an actor) Chuck Mee’s UNDER CONSTRUCTION with SITI Company. More on this later…
Ok. So that’s it for now.
Tags: Arizona, Barak Obama, blog, Hiking, SITI, Theatre
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December 18th, 2008
Although I said I wouldn’t be announcing here every time I add a YouTube clip to my “project,” I have been asked by certain powers that be, to do so.
So, “Leon’s Things 3″ is up. You can see it along with all the other Leon’s Things vids at:
www.youtube.com/cudface
Go wild.
Tags: Leon's Things, web 2.0, YouTube
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December 11th, 2008
I live a few blocks from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. This is a huge complex that is essentially two ivy-league medical schools (Columbia and Cornell) and a cluster of Hospital units. It is considered one of the most comprehensive university hospitals in the world, and is currently the largest private employer in New York City. People like Malcolm X, Richard Nixon and Jim Henson died there. It’s where Sunny von Bülow “vegged” out.
NYPH has a palpable demographic impact on this area of the city. If I walk south from my apartment, I see people in scrubs. And it feels less like I live in the Dominican Republic. I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about this. The NYPH vibe is a bit snotty and “white.” I like the fact that Dominican political candidates come to my hood to campaign for elections that are happening on the island.
Fort Washington Ave, cuts right through NYPH. So there is a stretch of it where you are basically in the Hospital. One of my options for bike routes down town takes me through that stretch and from time to time I see things that are poetically potent.
There was one a few years back that has etched itself in my mind:
There’s a small courtyard/garden at one point. Sitting on a bench I saw a young doctor talking very quietly and carefully to a man in a robe with his head in his one remaining hand. The evident struggle in this man to find a way to keep going after the amputation of his arm was shattering. And the struggle in this young doctor to find a way to cut through the futility of words…. It was just a moment, but I can’t shake it. Of course it might have been nothing. It might have been a life-long amputee with the flu listening to his son explain why he’s quitting medical school. But the image stuck.
Then a couple days ago, while waiting for a light to change:
I watched a hearse negotiate some construction to pull up to a door on the side of one of the buildings, around the corner from the bustling main entrances. I see ambulances around there a lot, and I wondered if this hearse was unusual. If I just haven’t been noticing them. Or again if it was nothing. In any case, the image is sticking…
Tags: bicycle, New York City, philosophy, Poetry
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December 8th, 2008
My recent foray into YouTube has resulted in being asked to produce a video for the SITI Company’s holiday fund-raising campaign. In the interest of spreading the word: click here.
Tags: Holidays, SITI, YouTube
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December 3rd, 2008
For a number of years now, I have been wanting to find a framework to create video work to post on YouTube. I don’t know if it’s vanity or just the desire to participate.
It’s clear to me that the idea of a “blog” is at least a step in the direction of democratizing the idea of freedom of the press; Who cares about freedom of the press until everyone has a press. A blog is a press, and everyone (pretty much everyone) has one.
But YouTube is taking this idea to the next level. Essentially YouTube is saying that everyone can be a TV channel if you want to. As someone who pays attention to things like television, it was vaguely disturbing to me that YouTube had taken away my ability to throw Molotov Cocktails at the networks from a safe distance. YouTube changed the conversation from “You media elites are a bunch of idiots!” to “Piss, or get off the pot!”.
So I’ve decided to piss: Leon’s Things
It’s a fundamentally silly idea, but I’ve got at least 15 of these things planned out on paper. Hopefully I’ll become better at producing them as time goes on. I do need to find something, other than a drunken monkey, to light them. A big part of it, is that I don’t want to spend any money on these things. I may someday. But for now these are zero impact projects. I have time right now to do this, so I will. For the time being, I will not use any music or other material to which I don’t own the rights. And I won’t be a shill for any company or corporation. If someone wants to sponsor me and support these things, that’s their own folly. I’m not going to pursue it.
I see/feel a clear difference between what I’m trying to do with this blog, and what this YouTube thing is, so I’m not going to collapse them into each other. If you want to keep up with the YouTube thing, subscribe to it in YouTube. I’m not planning on announcing it each time here. Apples and Oranges.
Thanks.
Tags: Blog biz, media, Televison, YouTube
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