Self-involved smalltalk:
I've completed 7 horror Features, won The PAGE with my first, then added wins from Shriekfest, FilmQuest, Las Vegas Screenplay & Festival For Horror on 6 different scripts,
have 33 Finalists, 1 current Option.
Stephen King awarded me a short story through his groovy&gracious Dollar Babies program, and the film I
co-wrote and associate-produced with a Bafta-nominated DP and multi-award-winning director is out there with 6 wins and a dozen finalists due to their vision and skill.
I often collaborate, tho I’m recently writing more work on my own. I mention it because I really enjoy and think I shine in that process, although in-my-backyard-with-a-beer is my favorite version of the initial story breaking procedure, ah must admit. I most often craft very visceral stuff, but won a major award for a Short without blood and finaled with two that were only conversation, which made me smile.
I completed a solo Feature Screenplay about too-smart college kids creating a new God, set at Lincolnshire's
Harlaxton Manor, my heart's home. Its backdrop of Fibonacci, The Holographic Universe, and the swear-it's-true purpose of Biblical prayer & sacrifice were makin’ mah brain bleed, but I survived ... and then decided it needed to be a Novel, since ain't nobody letting me play in the $100M dollar range, and I'd already cut a whole sublot that neeedz to go back in.
- Most recently I finished a women-led paranormal Feature Screenplay as a metaphor for Domestic Abuse, with a talented co-Writer, which is out there winning awards.
And how are you?
Some of my Anime Voice Work is listed at AnimeNewsNetwork if you'd like to click on this banner:
earlier lives:
John Stothers' magnificent "Pilgrim"
Metsys
... with the truly great J.R. Gallaway as Dream-Metsys
Only continue if you want Baroque opera wryly examined by a vetted singer, or are under a witch's spell.
I've sung New Music in 14 Workshops in NYC and LA, from jazz-opera ( John Grace Ranter will get a blurb below) to rock (Pilgrim is a truly-great example), to more traditional musicals where I was lucky to lead casts as Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Lee Masters and even Bela Lugosi.
But my wife Wendy and I met doing Baroque opera with Measured Breaths Theatre.
Rob Press was director and guiding vision behind the troupe, which specialised in operas from 1600 to about 1750 (two of which were American premieres - I'm only the second person in America to perform Leone from Handel's Tamerlano professionally), translated into English, and given a decided political or societal-critique slant.
Amadis, the beautiful Lully opera in which we met was originally meant as a paen to Louis the Sun-King's reign, wherein the prologue told of the awakening of two gods who have been awaiting the arrival of a great hero. Not finding him when they rise, they take the story "back" 100 years to the former glory of the hero Amadis, and tell his story. The opera implied that here was a hero of which the French could be proud (totally mythical, by the by), and didn't he remind you of someone strong and proud who rules today, yea, yea, go Team France. ... France was, unfortunately, headed for a very big wake-up call.
-- In Rob's fevered brain, this became a setting for the Reagan-Bush era. The gods (Wendy and I), asleep on the floor in each others' arms as the audience filed in, finally awaken, and after waiting impatiently for the hero to appear, take the story back to a mythological time: the Old West, filtered through American TV. All the dances become Square, the duels become gunfights; evil sorcerers in leather chaps and bandanas abound. A last fun note in a too-complicated-to-relate plot: while mine was the leave-it-alone-it'll-come-home side of this mad omnipotent duo's dsyfunctional personality, Wendy's Urgande cannot keep from continually influencing the story. Eventually, my character (Alquif) abandons the play in a huff and goes up to sit in the orchestra. ... But the longer he's away, the crazier Urgande becomes, until she slaughters everyone onstage. Alquif runs back in, too late.
They at last agree to bring everyone back to life if Urgande can just please kill that evil sorcerer ... at which time they have celebratory standing metaphoric sex over the body, bring him back to life so they can kill him & do it again, and once again.
Five Seasons of various Baroque resonant silliness, lauded by The New York Times, Village Voice, Opera News, The Nation.
Seen any GOOD opera lately?
This is a rehearsal-photo from the Magic Circle Opera Repertory Group's
premiere of California-based composer Ken Guilmartin's gorgeous settings of
Wm. Blake poetry, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Magic Circle chose a grand canvas of the banks of the Thames during the Victorian era for the piece (Guilmartin's iconigraphic works would fit well in diverse settings), replete with the homeless streetlife you'd find there.
My character, The Just Man, was the moral tether for the show, an exciting choice considering I decided to play him as an alcoholic, heroin-addicted woman-beating pimp. Wendy played the 1st Prostitute, one of our 4 times acting together in NYC workshops of New Music. We were very lucky to premiere the piece, and I still use one of the songs at auditions in which I want to hurt people.
I also performed in Mr. Guilmartin's Garcia-Lorca based opera, where I sang a passionate, emotionally-charged song to my wheelchair-bound lover whom I then killed with a hidden switchblade to gasps of horror from the audience. Cool stuff.
And then there's Johnny.
The shots here are PR from an outstanding jazz opera called John Grace Ranter, written by the dynamically talented Michael Sahl with lyrics and keeping-our-characters-honest by psychiatrist Margaret Yard.
Ranter's a cult leader remanded to an asylum for observation. While there he heals the patients, falls in love with the head nurse, and blows it all to Kingdom Come. Great and complex jazz (and some country) licks with lyrics you'd best buckle-up your brain for.
All of this was shaken, not stirred by the legendary Tom O'Horgan, original director of JCSuperstar, Hair, Lenny, et al. The time spent developing the piece in Tom's beyond-eclectic living room in sight of The Twin Towers, and then taking it to off-Broadway are some of my favorite memories in all of music, and pushed my growth while in the welcoming shadow of an extraordinary man and visionary.
Oh. We had "Wanted" posters of "Escaped Cult Leader!" plastered on lamposts and telephone poles around Manhattan. A group I was walking with overheard a concerned passerby say "that's the guy" to their partner. Big (possibly evil) smile.
That patient there is Joe Fox, a pulitzer-prize-nominated journalist and terrific compatriot.
I told you to run.
You have only yourself, to blame.
Eugène Lepoittevin (1806 - 1870)
