First thing's first, Hamlet Isn't Dead is making a movie! Slowly. But surely. Comedy of Errors is the next of Shakespeare canon for us to tackle, and eighth in our effort to produce them all. (#sevenshowsandamovie) Chelsea Lupkin is directing, as yours truly takes on a 'director of photography/assistant director/literally anything that needs to get done' role. Now that the weather's cleared, we're scheduling principal photography, and it's going to be...just swell. We're really excited to show off Travis Klemm and Nathan Luttrull as both Dromios and both Antipholi respectively. That's right! Due to the magic of
Then, on May 17th, I'll be playing the part of Don Pedro in For Love and Duty Players' production of Much Ado About Nothing. My good friends Sam Morrice and Ross Hamman will rock it as Beatrice and Benedick, but there's a catch. This festival is called "Shake-in-a-day", which means we only have twenty-four hours of rehearsal before we go onstage in front of, what I can only assume will be, a ravenous audience. Now...my last endeavor into the realm of "twenty-four-hour Shakespearean challenges"...didn't go as smoothly as anticipated. But I'm sure this will be different. As soon as I learn my lines. Which I will totally do. Soon. ...I promise. I hope.
The biggest news, and the lede I'm totally burying, is my role in Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth in June. This is a bigger deal than I realized when I signed on, and it will receive its own blog post soon. Suffice it to say, it's one of the most challenging roles I've ever had to face, it will go up at the historic Chelsea Hotel, and...yes, Mom, it pays. Like...proper money. Proper adult job money. Not Harrison Ford money, yet, but it's a good step.
Then, Hamlet Isn't Dead keeps rolling along. We've got a birthday celebration coming up in June, Love's Labour's Lost goes up at WestBeth in July, and we've been asked to teach a Shakespeare workshop at the Pine Street School in August. The HID word is spreading, and the HID word is good.
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| This picture has nothing to do with anything; there were just too many words without a picture break. Ok. Continue. |
In and among that, I've been seeing lots of theatre: most notably, Playing with Reality's Rocking Dead, starring the effortlessly brilliant Kevin Percival and a troupe of equally-amazing storytellers. It's an immersive dance party on a boat with zombies. I...really can't make it sound any more appealing than it already is. I don't even like to dance, and I had an outrageously good time. Please, if you're local, get your tickets to this experience. Run, don't walk. Then, when you're on the boat, walk again, because zombies have surprisingly acute hearing.
Megan and I also recently saw Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at Juilliard. It was directed by Stephen Wadsworth who directed me in the Figaro Plays at the McCarter last year, and who is most likely the closest living example of a genius I can cite. And I got to hug him! In fact, half the Princeton cast was there, and we all had a nice little mini-reunion. The opera was great, and it even used the exact same costumes and set pieces from our production. Talk about flashbacks. I kept shifting in my seat going 'That's my cue. Do I need to enter now? No...no, just watching. Sorry.'
I've also gotten back in the habit of writing. I'm on my way tonight to my first meeting with a Writer's Group, though I'm not sure what to anticipate. I'm bringing in a few pages that will be read aloud and discussed and...yeah, I'm more than nervous. I'm bringing them a copy of Forsythe, a sort of 19th century English romantic drama I've been working on. I'm also about to dive back into editing Attack! of the Killer Man from the Sun!, and I've just started a new piece about a football player who falls in love with a football. ...I need to find a better synopsis for that one, but, yeah, that's the gist. It's all about objectum-sexuality and Animism and I'm going to stop talking about it now.
I'm also working on a movie in May that has three Orange is the New Black stars signed on to it. And I'm doing fight choreography for two of Hudson Shakespeare's shows in July. Did I already make a 'when it rains it pours' reference? And it's not that there isn't lots of exciting things to say about both of those projects; it's just that I've only just remembered to add them to the list, and my fingers are starting to cramp.
Other than that, it's been Pathfinder with the Percivals (it's like D&D in a vaguely unidentifiably different way), teaching improv and creating controversy with Red Carpet Kids, and typing out excessively long blog posts as diary entries to remind me of the chronology of my extensive and confusing To Do List.
Hopefully some of this was enlightening or engaging. It's difficult to remember what I've talked about with whom, since I come by my busyness hereditarily. Many of the above topics will be receiving their own dedicated blog post sometime soon. Thank you all for your love and support. It's wonderful to hear from you, in big ways like phone calls and Skype sessions, and tiny ways like Facebook Likes and appearing in your dreams (you know who you are).
It's gonna be a busy season, but it looks like I might have some free time round about August. Who'd like to join the betting pool on how many days it'll take to fill that time slot? Good money's on yesterday.
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| Don't worry, I'm fine. This is just how I sleep now. |
I'm David Andrew Laws, and I can be reached by:
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