RENT. Two.

The second time I saw Rent was a few months later.  On Broadway.

I don’t remember a lot of specifics from that performance.  I was there as part of an NYU group again, although we had paid for tickets this time (probably through a steep Ticket Central discount).   I don’t remember who I was with–my roommate Jed, maybe?   We sat in the last row of the theater.  The stories were further away, distanced–yes, we were physically distanced from the performers, but also there was a disconnect from what was happening onstage.  The show was swallowed up in that big space.  It no longer felt like something I had ownership over–it was this big pop culture beast now, this phenomenon, and everyone was getting to participate it…and to make matters worse, I was as far away from the action as one could possibly be.

It was probably during this performance that I really started to see the major flaws in the piece, especially in the second act.  The first show had swept me up in the euporhoria of it all–the last 30 minutes or so could coast on what had come before.  This time though, with the distance and the new crowd, there wasn’t a huge wave to coast on.  The show was still damn good, especially in the spots that worked, but the overall effect was less than expected.  I started to doubt the show.  I wondered if maybe I had been unfairly caught up in the emotion at NYTW.  Maybe the show wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I don’t remember if I purchased the cast album before or after seeing the Broadway production, but the cast album is certainly my freshest memory of the show–I imagine it’s most people’s freshest memory.  It’s a great damn CD.  I lost it in one of my many moves, although it might still be at my parents’ place somewhere.  I’m pretty sure the CD is what kept me connected to the idea of that show, kept the memory of that magical first time alive.  Even with the CD, my memory was kind of shaken.  I’d recommend the show to friends wholeheartedly, but I harped a little more on what was wrong.  I think the magic slipped out of my mind a bit.

And then…the movie.

Danny Hoch is Back.

(Danny Hoch is a great artist and one of the reasons that I do what I do. He’s also a friend. I support his work wholeheartedly. I’ll be seeing this show in Brooklyn–you should see it whenever it rolls through your borough.  Also note–I’m keeping this post on top for a few days to spread the word, but I’ll have all kinds of content throughout the week.  Read past the first post.  And now, a note from D. Hoch himself. )

What up NYC Family! It’s been a while since I last performed here at home in NYC and I got a new solo show that opens at the Public Theater in November. But THIS WEEK I start a little tour of the boroughs with the show and ALL PERFORMANCES ARE FREE. I’m gonna hit the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn in three neighborhoods that are being hit hard with changes, namely the South Bronx, LIC and Williamsburg.

It would be an honor to have you there and support. Of course if you wanna wait until the Public Theater so you can support my pocket, then I won’t be offended if you wait until November. But the boro joints promise to be hot, and there are also a few post-show discussions.

Warning: The language is strong, and there is absolutely NO LATE SEATING. They will NOT let you in, even if you get there 5 min late. No exceptions.

Please nobody ask me for free for free tix because the TIX ARE FREE TO EVERYONE. But you MUST reserve them. NOT here on Facebook, but you can reserve tix at hhtf.org or at this link:
https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/107/1222869600000;jsessionid=7A7E4BBB3E70AD4CA3B3EC59A94CAEF3.app4

For group tix, contact Mike Primo
michael@hhtf.org

The performance schedule is:

Oct 1-4, Bronx FREE
Oct 6,7,9,10 Queens FREE
Oct 11 Brooklyn FREE
Nov 7 – Dec 14 Manhattan (Public Theater – Not Free

Hope to see you all at one of the shows this fall.

Danny
(representin’ P.S. 220, J.H.S. 157, LaGuardia H.S.)

RENT. One.

It’s 1996, probably February sometime.  I’m in the second semester of my first year at NYU.  I’m part of the Gallatin Scholars, a group that gets to go to cultural events as part of our scholarship package.  We get tickets to this show at New York Theater Workshop.  We sit in the front row.

Let me back up for a second, actually.  My original plan when I came to NYU was to study acting and psychology, but when I get to New York City, I see the life of the student/actor, and I know it’s not for me.  Luckily, I’m in a flexible program; I decide to transition into a more broad-based approach to my studies, with a steady helping of theatrical education as a basic structure.  I’m studying the History of Drama and Theater, mostly dramatic literature, just sort of starting to understand that there’s a whole lot more to the theater world than the stuff they teach you in college.

So I’m excited when we go see this show at NYTW.  I’ve heard about it.  There’s buzz, although at the time I’m not quite aware of exactly how much buzz there is.  A few weeks later, the show would hit the cover of Newsweek.  At the time, this doesn’t seem all that unusual to me.  It also kind of doesn’t seem entirely unusual that this is a show about young people in the neighrborhood I happen to be sitting in–there’s lots of New York theater about New York, right?  So we sit down, and the theater’s kind of small (compared to Broadway, but big compared to lots of the Off-Off houses I was just starting to discover), and the stage is HUGE (feels like the stage is as big as the house), and we’re in the front row, and the lights go down.

And it takes a little while for it all to get going.  The first few songs have fun moments and rock guitar, silly humor (in the form of Mark’s mom on the answering machine), an incredibly sweet meet-cute (between Angel and Collins), some sexiness in the form of Daphne Rubin-Vega (a brief aside: years later, I’d meet Daphne whil working for Joe’s Pub.  I attempted to introduce her to our staff, including our graphics designer, who was a good friend of mine.  I completely — legitimately — forgot my friend’s name while making the introduction.  Daphne has that kind of presence.), and a lot of goodness going for it, but it hasn’t yet blown me away.

And then…it blows me away.

I’ve said this before, and nothing will shake my faith in it: the first quarter of Rent is pretty good, the last quarter is pretty terrible (seriously), but that half in the middle, starting with “Today for You” and ending with “I’ll Cover You (reprise)” is remarkable, incredibly, devastatingly good and relevant and important and powerful.  It hit me there in the theater, and it stays with me to today.  I can’t even express what it is, but that middle chunk gets it right, so right — it’s the kind of thing that musical theater could be and can be and should be, the kind of thing that In The Heights and Passing Strange got right in chunks and pieces, the kind of thing that Crazy for You did as well as anything I’ve ever seen, only with more heart, more real soul, and more of the voice of a group of people who actually exist.  That middle chunk of Rent is a time capsule, and it was a time capsule from the moment it was created — it gets that world right, or as right as you can get it in a musical theater context.

So it’s 1996, and they’re singing La Vie Boheme, and Maureen is mooning Bennie (and they’d go on to get married in the real world), and I’m maybe ten feet from her ass, and she pulls up her pants, and I swear she winks at me.  And then it’s intermission, and I’m shell-shocked, not from the bare ass, but from what I just saw — something that felt real to me, and was full of emotion and subversion on some level, even though it’s a big musical and therefore how subversive can it really be?  But it is, and they’re singing about stuff that I don’t even know what it is but I know that in the fact that they’re mentioning it, it’s important, and I’ll come across it someday (and then last year I finally read Vaclav Havel, and lookie lookie: it leads to a name for my blog) and it’ll impact my life when it does.

And then they line up across the stage at the top of Act Two, and it’s “Seasons of Love,” and I swear they’re a foot away from me, and Taye Diggs spits on me (in the act of singing, of course), and I’m right up close in their eyes, and they’re singing this song about dead friends, and it’s written by their dead friend, and they’re singing it for him — you can see it, they’re singing that song for Jonathan Larson, and I mean — how am I ever going to settle for creating theater that isn’t founded on that close a relationship?

And also, there in the middle of it, there happens to be one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever see — and it’s a gay couple’s story.  And you have to realize that I’m 18-years-old, coming from suburbs (not far from Mark’s mom’s house, actually), and I’m only now meeting my first gay friends, and as a straight boy/athlete from the burbs, you’re not exactly conditioned to expect to be moved to the core by a gay relationship — but there it is, in front of me, and Collins sings the “I’ll Cover You (reprise),” and good god, it’s maybe the most beautiful moment I’ve ever seen onstage.

And it ends, and I’m shaken, and everything has changed, yet I’m still not sure that anything has changed beyond me, if you know what I mean.  I’m still not quite understanding the cultural significance of what I just saw.

A few months later, it moved to Broadway.  So I saw it again.

(I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.)

Hip-Hop and The Election.

My mom sent me this link.  It’s about hip-hop and its relationship to the upcoming election.  The article itself is interesting, even with a couple of statement I disagree with (including the myth that hip-hop has “political roots”).  The real jewel here though is the featured video section, with various MCs and hip-hop figures speaking about politics in general and Obama specifically.

What’s really interesting is that in the middle of all the positivity, you’ve got Ghostface expressing his disinterest in the whole process on the grounds that “your vote doesn’t count anyway.”  You can always count on Ghost to speak his mind.

Letterman on McCain. Not Vice Versa.

Comments, me, tomorrow.

Obama on The Economy.

I won’t comment here either until tomorrow.

Couric Interviews Palin. I Do Not Comment.

I’ll wait until folks have checked it out, then I’ll comment.

Or in other words, I’ll try to find ya some and I’ll bring ‘em to ya.

Another Thought on American Psycho.

A Broadway musical?  Really?

The more I think about it, the less I see a real Broadway audience for that show.  It’s an awesome book (from what I hear) and a fun movie, but it is (a) beyond dark and (b) super absurd, neither of which really seem to bode well for mainstream audience approval.  I could imagine them consistently filling a small downtown space, but Broadway?  Are they going to try to sell this on the basis of the eighties songs?  If they do, they could have a mini-disaster on their hands.

This Week In New York Theater: These Musicals Are Getting Ridiculous.

1.  I think I really liked the American Psycho movie.  It started off kind of bizarre, and well, it stayed kind of bizarre, but by the end, I started to understand the tone.  I’m hoping to finally read the book someday.  Then today I read this.  We have to be reaching the saturation point of movies turned musicals soon, don’t we?  I mean, between this and Spiderman, the whole concept is starting to take turns that no one could have predicted.

And actually, these are the musical projects that I’d rather see.  It’s not hard to make, say, Crybaby or Nine to Five into a relatively straightforward musical.  American Psycho on the other hand–that’s going to require some darkness.  It’s going to require a subversion of the form.  Could be interesting.  Could be a disaster.

2.  If you read the comments, you’ll have seen that we got a “confirmation” on the casting of Josefina Scaglione as Maria in the Broadway West Side Story, supposedly from one of her friends in Argentina.  Of course, this is the internet, so I don’t believe everything I read, but it does seem a little more likely today than yesterday.  In discussions with Mandy (one of the loyalist readers ever), we  came to the conclusion that we’re not huge fans of that casting decision.  I’ve never seen a Maria that I’ve been really impressed with, vocally or stage presence-wise.  I hope they make a strong choice.

I might add to this post throughout the day, so check back.

My Puppy Had Six Teeth Removed.

Technically she’s not my puppy, although I once had what could be considered partial custody of her.

And technically she’s not a puppy, as she’s almost nine years old.  9 in dog = roughly 65 in human.

None of that matters.  She had six teeth removed yesterday, including the four front bottom teeth.

Now, when you’re a dog, your four front bottom teeth are pretty damn important.

This is true for most animals.  Humans, for example, tend to suffer greatly upon the loss of their front four teeth (NOTE: this statement is pure conjecture), as it interferes with, you know, eating.  And smiling.  And probably some other stuff I can’t think of right now.

Dogs though, and especially domesticated dogs, and especially my puppy, rely on their four front teeth for eating, yes, and smiling (she smiles, I tell you), yes, but also for playing, which is the way she spends most of her life.  When I saw her today, she tried to bring me a ball to throw to her, but couldn’t bite down on it.  Then she batted the ball with her nose, but couldn’t make it go where she wanted it to go.  So she gave up.

A little while later, I watched her negotiate one of her rope chew toys.  She couldn’t bite down on it, which ruled out any kind of tugging game.  Her best and only option seemed to be to isolate individual strands, lick them, play with them, slowly see what she was capable of doing without pain.  It was all kind of sad, really.

I’m watching all this, and there’s sadness, and there’s awareness of mortality (both hers and mine), and helplessness, and a million other feelings, mostly on the sad side, although the whole thing is, on some level, kind of funny, or at least the part where she was drugged up last night and kept randomly falling down is kind of funny, although even that is kind of scary and messed up when you think about it.

But you know what were the three things my puppy did the most tonight?

She wagged her tail.  Constantly.  She threw herself on her back for belly rubs.  Repeatedly.  She licked my face.  Mercilessly.

Even in the face of what was unquestionable the worst, most fundamental suffering of her life, she was happy, she wanted to be happy, and she made herself happy.

I’m always happy to remember to learn from my puppy.