Burning Down the House
Wherein I Come Back to Find the Place On Fire: Flying back into LAX I saw the plumes of smoke rising off of the Angeles Mountains. Then on the ride back to my place from the airport I could see them drifting upwards like volcanic ash.
I woke up at 4:30 this morning because I am still on Chi time and for some reason I was waking up at 6:30 over there. So I went for a long run. The sky looked like it does in Fallout 3. However, there are fewer super mutants around.
I wonder when it’ll stop. People have gotten hurt, property has been damaged. We are cloaked in all-day sunsets: The incoming light is weird and orange. It would be pretty if it weren’t for all the carnage. What a welcome home.
What true happiness looks like.
Some of the best things I’ve ever eaten have been eaten in Chicago: Hot chocolate at the aptly named “Hot Chocolate” in Wicker Park; Hot Doug’s; pizza. The last night I was there on this trip we went to a Hawaiian place. I had the grilled spam/fried egg/brown gravy plate. Horrifying: Yes. Delicious: Yes.
It’s a great city for eating. They really know their food there. I don’t know whether it’s because of the midwestern culture of comfort, or because it’s a necessity for enduring harsh winters. There’s something that they’ve got that we don’t have over here. I wish I could put my finger on it.
The show’s coming along great; the actors are wonderful and we’ve found some really great things in this play. What’s funny is that the theater used a photo of our friend Kim’s mom (Kim and her mom both being Cambodian) as a projected background during the reading of the play that we did last year; now Kim’s mom has found her way onto the actual show poster (see right)!
I was worried that Kim’s mom might be upset about this, but she seems to be getting a kick out of it. This is good since her image is now all over Chicago.
Chicago: I love you. I would come to live with you, but I need to take meetings here and I need to keep my cholesterol low.
Also I don’t think I could ever leave LA. I love the spirit of the people here, and how we live among the ruins of a glorious and art deco past.
Los Angeles, you’re even good when you’re on fire.
Hot Doug’s Revenge
We went back to Hot Doug’s, the landmark Chicago hot doggery where dreams are encased in sausage form and devoured by a hungry and happy clientele. The line came out the restaurant and around the block. We waited 45 minutes to get in, which was exactly like waiting for a ride at Disneyland: It feels like forever, but you forget all about it once you strap yourself in.
The foie gras hot dog.
I ate a foie gras hot dog. I went into this thinking it was a joke — “ha ha, it’s a foie gras hot dog!” — but let me tell you, my friends: This thing is no joke. It was one of the best hot dogs I’ve ever eaten, perhaps the best. Easily the most decadent.
A sausage made from duck and foie gras. Truffle aioli. And a slathering of foie gras on top. This hot dog was actually banned in Chicago during a short lived city-wide foie gras ban, but Hot Doug’s courageously went on serving it anyway. It is a hot dog that sticks it to The Man — a hot dog for rebels.
It was so, so, sooo very good. It cost $9, but I felt like the restaurant had gotten the short end of the stick. I would’ve easily paid twice as much for this thing.
So I ate three hot dogs: A plain Chicago style dog just to set my palate. It was good, crisp, fresh, nice. Then I split a Paul Kelly (Bratwurst soaked in beer) and a Marty Allen (beef, pork, garlic) with Tim — just to see what all the fuss was about with the specialty dogs. I’ll tell you this: It’s all about the sausage. The sausage is what makes it.
Then the best for last: The foie gras dog. It was amazingly good — creamy foie gras paired with the best parts about eating duck. Salty, a little tangy, but no greasiness. Just a really nice, decadent treat. Oh, plus cheese fries.
You’re all right, Chicago. You’re all right.
Sippin From an In-N-Out Cup
Mad Props: Hey guys, how about a tour of our props table? Come with me and take a look at the motley assortment of objects that the actors will imbue with magic, like unicorns would if they had hands.
“In-N-Out” Cup: The play has a scene where one character is “sippin from an In-N-Out cup”. There are no In-N-Outs in Illinois, so we currently have this cup with the phrase “IN-N-OUT” taped to it. It even has an artful little arrow drawn onto it too. Also note that the cup’s day job is at McDonalds.
For the actual production it will be replaced with real In-N-Out cups so that ex-West Coasters can giggle and whisper “They went to In-N-Out!!” when they see it. I hope my paychecks aren’t pieces of paper with the word “CHECK” taped to them.
Condoms: Every play must have condoms in it, and they must be used. This gives the play a sense of action, and it makes the play inherently sexy. And as Anton Chekhov once said, “If in the first act you have hung condoms on the wall, in the following one they must be used. Otherwise, they shouldn’t be hanging there.” He also pronounced the phrase “nuclear vessels” as “nuclear wessels”. He was a funny guy.
Dungeons and Dragons Stuff: Yes, there is a scene where Dungeons and Dragons is played. We have this rulebook and some D20s and D10s. The protagonist of the play has 46 hit points and his armor class is 6. His alignment is Chaotic Good.
No Gun: Even though this play has an Asian gang member in it, it has no guns. All my previous plays have had guns in them. This other play I’m working on right now has a crossbow in it. For me, a play without a gun is like a George Rodrigue painting without a blue dog. But for some reason this piece has no guns. I don’t know why. Maybe I should write one in.
Cookie Jar With Human Skull Inside: This is the most important prop in the show — in a sense, the fifth (or perhaps the sixth?) character in the play. As you can see, the jar is not the final jar, and the skull is not the final skull. We’re currently using a skull from one of our early hominid ancestors. It turns out that having bone matter made out of packing tape was an evolutionary dead end.
And that’s it for now — more soon.
Historical Artifacts
Field Trip: Victory Gardens arranged for the company to take a trip down to the Cambodian Heritage Museum run by the Cambodian Association of Illinois. This was a welcome break from hanging out in a rehearsal room all day.
I got there an hour early so I could walk around the neighborhood which is apparently called Lincoln Square. Chicagoans: I’m an out of towner, so please bear with me. Your place names are strange and unusual to me — I’m from California, and more used to the Spanish names of saints.
Anyway, this is what I love about any big American city: The streets are a pastiche of good things from all the corners of the earth. While I was waiting around I got a chorizo torta. It cost $3.50. It came with chips and two types of salsa, and it was gooood. I consumed it with dos Diet Cokes. Across the street there were a couple of Korean joints — those will be investigated on a later trip.
So we all met up at the Cambodian Heritage Museum, took the tour. Saw artifacts of everyday life in Cambodia — much of which has changed very little in the last few hundreds of years. A huge wooden rice grinder, sickles and baskets — most people are still subsistence farmers. Industrialization and globalization have arrived on the country’s doorstep, along with all the good and ill they bring with them.
What was most touching to all of us was when our guide — a man in his sixties, maybe my father’s age — told us the story of his own life under the Khmer Rouge. He was a school teacher before them. But during their rule they worked him in the fields like so many others were literally worked to death.
And then, slowly, haltingly, he told us the story of how he was caught by Khmer Rouge soldiers and accused of stealing food.
To punish him, they used pliers to pull out his teeth.
It’s when someone is telling you their own history — their tragedies, the everyday pieces of their lives — that history itself becomes personal. To write this play I had read facts and statistics, autobiographies. But it wasn’t until this moment that I had heard someone’s story of survival told to me in their own voice.
It’s something I’ll never forget.
It made everything real for me. Because this play is about personal history and how it’s told — about how it’s passed from person to person so that we can understand something about the past. Maybe not quite understand evil — who could? But maybe we might begin to understand how people can endure evil, and what we can do to confront it.
And here was this man, our guide, who had somehow survived when two million others had died. Who somehow made it all the way from Cambodia to this huge American city, for better or worse. But he had survived, and had become a teacher once again.
So it was a pretty good day. Because it reminded me of all those who died, but also let me know that others lived.
And they continue on, telling their stories.
Bodies Moving Through a 3D Space
The First Day of Year Zero Rehearsal: We’re going from lines in a script to people actually moving through a three dimensional space, laughing, yelling at each other, trying not to knock anything over.
That’s one of the big differences between theater and other storytelling mediums: There are live people acting onstage in front of you, and it imparts a special kind of energy to the audience.
It’s like the difference between listening to music on an iPod and seeing your favorite group play live. The difference between watching a comedian on TV and seeing him/her in person — there’s this massive energy that you feel from seeing a live performance. You’re witnessing intensely private moments. Peoples’ lives are changing before your eyes. It’s a powerful thing — almost like a physical sensation. And you’re sharing it with the people onstage, the other people in the audience — you can feel their energy too.
But to make this happen, we’ve first got to figure out how we’re going to move these human beings around on stage — how we’re going to dress them, light them, set up the space in which they’re going to play.
Costumes, Sets, Lighting, Audio: First day of rehearsal usually includes a design presentation where we get to see lots of cool things:
Costumes — It’s always amazing how lines in a script can inspire a talented costume designer to sketch out looks for fictional characters. One special line in the play about Banana Republic informed a whole bunch of design choices about a certain character. Pretty cool!
Sets — This is one of my favorite things: When a set designer brings in a tiny model of the set. Tiny chairs, tiny tables. Ours has amazing elements that evoke the imagery of places as distant to each other as Choeung Ek and Long Beach’s Cambodian community, and brings them together.
Lighting — Great lighting can create moods and effects; transitions, show the passage of time. I’ve been told this play is a particularly “cinematic” one — it moves quickly and deals with a lot of imagery. Light and darkness play a big part in this, so great lighting is essential.
Audio — Holy crap, the music. Hip hop, Southern Californian culture, and the Khmer language converge incredibly in the music selections. They’ve also engineered audio/sound effects that come from their natural sources (i.e. a car radio’s music comes from the car radio itself), and have environmental sounds too.
And there you have it. Lines on a page are coming to life in 3D space. The key word is “life” — as in life lived before your eyes. A live performance, transmitting energy by live wires.
Plus someone gets beat up over a cheeseburger.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
