The Ruckus gets ready to TELL IT...

Game on.

On Vagueness, Specifically: Looking forward to Tell it & Think it & Speak it & Breathe it.

Think about your favorite song. What makes it great? Is it the tune – a particular riff or chord progression that elicits something in you? Is it the lyrics - something poetic, or clever, or insightful, or silly that you’ve never been able to forget since you first heard it? Maybe it’s the production. Or the way the singer sings with a particular emotion or nuance. Maybe intellectually you realize the song’s not all that great, but it takes you back to a time and place that you remember fondly, as so many songs do.

There are many ways to create a great song. What I’m writing about today is the simplest and arguably the laziest of ways, but also one of the most effective. I’m talking of course about vagueness.

Human psychology 101: Most people, whether they’ll admit it or not, think of themselves as the center of their universe. They see other people and events not independently, but in relation to their own selves and lives. I am no different. It’s why I (usually) don’t leave the house dressed as a slob. It’s why I can’t watch a baseball game without bias. It’s why I’m bothering to use semi-proper punctuation and spelling in this blog.

Please, don’t think of this as a bad thing. We spend every hour of every day with ourselves. We should see the world through our own individual filters, albeit not exclusively.

To bring this back to music…

When a song’s lyrics are intentionally vague, it creates a whole handful of blanks for the listener to fill in with experiences from their own lives. Let’s take an example from my teenage years, Smashing Pumpkins’ Bullet With Butterfly Wings:

Despite all my rage / I am still just a rat in a cage

Imagine it’s 1995, just after dinnertime, and 13 year-old Johnny is blasting this song from his 5-disc CD player in his room loud enough for it to echo throughout the house.

When Johnny listens to this lyric (repeated twelve times throughout the song), he thinks, “I’m trapped within my parents’ house and suppressed by their rules. I’m stuck in school five days a week. None of the people who are supposed to be teaching or caring for me understand me, so it’s hopeless. The girl I like won’t talk to me. Most the kids at school are jerks. I have to endure this for another five years. That’s over a third of my life so far. My God, five years is a long time. I’m unhappy, but powerless.”

When Johnny’s mom, downstairs washing the dishes hears the lyric, she thinks, “I’m trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who no longer appreciates me. I cooked him dinner. He wolfed it down without so much as a ‘thank you’ and left me to wash the dishes. We scrimped and saved so we could buy our son a really fancy 5-disc CD player and he still will barely speak to us. And he’s going to ruin his ears. My responsibilities as a mother and a wife won’t allow me to make any drastic changes in my life. And somehow I’m turning 40 next month. My God, 40 years went fast. I’m unhappy, but powerless.”

When Johnny’s pet rat, listening from within his cage hears the lyric, he thinks “Yup, that pretty much sums it up. Even if I did escape - an owl’d probably eat me. Did you know that a pet rat’s average lifespan is 2 to 3 years? My God, 2-3 years is short. My God, 2-3 years is a long time to be in a cage. I’m unhappy, but powerless.”

What’s never actually explicitly stated in the song – or really even alluded to – is what Billy Corgan is so upset about. Did his relationship with a friend or loved one fail? Does he feel like his life lacks meaning? Did he lose his car keys?

This is, of course, one example in an endless sea of vague song lyrics. The jilted lovers have it:

And I’m here to remind you / of the mess you left when you went away

-Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughtta Know”

The ones doing the jilting have it too:

The b*tch went nuts

-Ben Folds’ “B*tch Went Nuts”

The hippies have it:

I wasn’t born to follow

-The Byrds’ “Wasn’t Born to Follow”

So do the yuppies:

I eat too much / I drink to much / I want too much / Too much

-Dave Matthews Band’s “Too Much”

The rockers have it:

You can’t always get what you want / But if you try sometimes you might find /

You get what you need

-The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

The rappers have it:

Life’s a b*tch and then you die / That’s why we get high /

Cuz you never know when you’re gonna go

-Nas’ “Life’s a B*tch”

Those crying quietly at home have it:

You’ll be loved, you’ll be loved / Like you never have known /

And the memories of me / will seem more like bad dreams /

Just a series of blurs / Like I never occurred / Someday you will be loved

-Death Cab for Cutie’s “Someday You Will be Loved”

Those crying their drink orders in the clubs have it:

I gotta feeling / That tonight’s gonna be a good night

-Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”

I could go on - and honestly, it’s hard not to. But you get my point. To make a song profound, you can come up with something brilliant – or you can create a framework for the listener’s own insights. After all, what could be more meaningful to you than something you thought of yourself?

My examples are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg - so I’ll leave it to you, bold commenters. What songs have or had a profound impact on you simply by letting you fill in the blanks with your own feelings?

This is the first in a series of music-related posts by David Hornreich (a FOTruck) in anticipation of The Ruckus’ Tell it & Think it & Speak it & Breathe it – a night of plays in which David will be participating in some capacity or another.

Pay no attention to the veritable gentleman's tallywags....

Not exactly using lyrics in an unexpected way, but not far off the mark. I really like the Fornication Sidearms, but when it comes to punk I prefer The Mismatch-of-Colors-or-Patterns.

(via Boing Boing)

Meanwhile, in the travels of the Ruckus...

We of The Ruckus are spread like butter through the rocky crevices of these United States. We've got one in Florida, one in California, two in New York and a whole slew of FOTrucks in every nook and cranny you can imagine. (FOT•ruck |fôtrək| (noun) - a word just in this minute coined by Allison Shoemaker that indicates a person or animal that is a 'Friend of The Ruckus'). While I wish they could all serve the cause in person, their lives have taken them elsewhere. In the case of company member and logo-bearer Seth Miller, he's ended up in Brooklyn, the land where skinny jeans go to die. (Nothing but love for you, Brooklyn.)

What is he doing there?

Seth, along with fellow FOTrucks George Frye, Mark Jaynes and Joe Stratton, are Not Blood, Paint. They're killer. You can find them on iTunes, MySpace, YouTube, and a bunch of other places -- and last week, their album 'Pure Electron' was reviewed by The Deli Magazine. They've "created a new breed of rock that is at times earthy, at others cerebral while remaining melodious and true to its roots." Awesome, right? You can read the whole thing here. We're proud.

You may have also heard them in the pre-show music for HEIST PLAY, if you were in on that action. It's the one with the phrase 'you and your opposable thumbs' in it. Difficult phrase to miss.

What else is Seth up to? Well, you can check out his work as a playwright in October/November as a part of 'TELL IT & SPEAK IT & THINK IT & BREATHE IT.' You can have him serve you food, if you're rich and live in New York City. Or you can send him emails and beg him to visit, if you're the Chicago contingent of The Ruckus.

Also, Seth? You owe me a rewrite. Love, Allison.

Next time, in 'Meanwhile, in the travels of The Ruckus...': Ghafir Akbar and the mysteries of Sarasota. Hint: great weather! MFA candidates!

From director Allison Shoemaker

Neal Starbird makes a last minute costume change. He has my full support. I always thought HEIST PLAY was a little like 'Eraserhead.'

From Bridget Dougherty, stage manager

Last night, we got to hang out in an alley and sand down furniture. Oh joy. The Old Style and show tunes made it worth it. A little. Mostly the Old Style helped. A lot.

So if you wanna see what the finished pieces look like, you better get to HEIST before it closes.

Here’s a sneak peek at the awesome bars that got delievered to us early this week by our set designer (and owner of a really pimp truck) Clay Barron.

Can you tell I like to read blogs with pictures? In normal life I quite prefer books with out them, but there is something pretty about seeing them on the computer screen in the middle of the blogs. When I was a kid, reading books of scary stories (specifically “Scaries Stories to tell in the Dark” by Alvin Schwartz) I would never place my finger in between pages that had freaky pictures on them because in my head the pictures might come alive and hurt/kill me.

How could this pic not scare you?!? It is intended for ages 9+. I was and still am a wimp. Stephen Gemmell’s illustrations are so freaky. The stories fail to scare me now (I’m not THAT much of a wimp still), but the images remain awful.

This is the story by Alvin Schwartz that goes along with it. No wonder I was a morbid child.

HAROLD by Alvin Schwartz

Thomas and Alfred were two best friends. Whenever it got hot, they would take their cows up to a cool, green pasture in the mountains. Usually they stayed there with the cows all summer. The work their in the mountains was easy, but really boring. All they did was tend their cows all day. They would return to their tiny hut and night. Every night they ate supper, worked in the garden, and went to sleep.

Then one day, Thomas said "Let's make a life-size doll. We can put it in the garden and use it as a scarecrow." There was a farmer they both hated named Harold, so they decided to name the doll Harold and make it look like him. They made it out of straw and gave it a pointy nose and tiny eyes, like Harold's. Day after day, they would tie Harold to a pole in the garden to scare away the birds. They brought it in the house every night. Sometimes, they would talk to it, saying things like "How's it going?" And the other would say in a weird voice "Not good." Of course, Harold wouldn't appreciate it. When they were in a bad mood, they would even curse at him or kick him.

A while later, when Thomas was taking out his anger on Harold, Alfred swore he heard the doll grunt. "Did you hear that? Harold grunted!" "Impossible, he's just a sack of straw," replied Thomas. Alfred dismissed it, but they both stopped talking to it, kicking it, or even touching it, they just left him neglected in the corner of the room.

After a while, they decided nothing was to be feared. Maybe a few bugs or rats were living in the straw. So they went back to their old routine. Every day, they would take it outside, and bring it back in at night. Then they even started treated him badly again.

One night, Alfred noticed something that scared him. "It looks like Harold is growing." "I was thinking the same," answered Thomas. "Maybe it's just our imagination. I think the elevation is getting to us." The next morning, they saw Harold stand up and walk outside, climb onto the roof, and he stayed there all night. In the morning, it came down and stood in the pasture. They got very scared and decided to flee. They took their cows and started heading back down for the valley. After going only a mile or so, they realized they had forgotten the milking stools. They knew they didn't have the money to replace them, so Alfred forced himself back to get them. "I'll catch up with you later. You just keep moving." After walking for a while, Thomas looked back at the hut and did not see Alfred. What he did see, however, horrified him. He saw Harold, on the roof of the hut, stretching out a bloody piece of flesh to dry in the sun.

From playwright Mitch Vermeersch

It would be difficult to imagine film noir without the smoking. The cigarette is a visual element of the films as quintessential and recognizable as the fedora or the silhouette.

One reason for this is the clever way in which directors used cigarettes for elegantly crafted character moments. In Jules Dassin’s beautiful film Theive’s Highway, Valentina Cortese produces a cigarette she hopes Richard Conte will light for her. He declines. Ignoring the fifteen or so matches that have been lit and held out to her by hopeful male patrons, she takes the cigarette from his mouth and suggestively lights her own smoke off the burning end of his. These are the moments that characterize film noir. It would be difficult to imagine the stalwart noir detective without a burning cigarette firmly planted in his countenance. The same goes for the lusciously villainous femme fatale. What else is she going to do with those sexy, gloved fingers?

But what would it look like if you were forced to remove the cigarette from the noir film? Humphrey Bogart walks into a bar from the street and takes a seat alone amid the swirling maelstrom of greased hair and wild dresses. There is a rhumba band playing and people are dancing but he is too solitary and world-weary to dance. The bartender brings him a glass of dark dark liquor as he surveys the room for the crook he’s tailing, all the while looking out for the girl who’s tailing him. He is a man at once within and detached from the room. To calm himself he reaches into his jacket pocket and casually pulls out his pack of… gum. He lets a stick dangle coolly from his lips, tastes the soothing menthol soon to fill his mouth with minty freshness… sounds silly doesn’t it?

My point is that to take the cigarettes out of film noir would be like taking the color gels out of a theater. You could get along fine without them, but the aesthetic of a lot of plays would likely feel very awkward. However in this city, as in many others, they’ve taken the smoking out of everything. Including the theater. See a production of Glengarry Glenross and the masculine, hard smoking real estate agents (if they’re lucky) will be exhaling electronically controlled water vapor or (if they’re not lucky) thin rolls of bubble gum candy wrapped to look like Marlboro Reds. Because Heist Play is inspired and informed by the world of film noir, to remove the smoking from the world of the play would have felt somewhat unjust. Thusly, we’re forced to find creative ways to portray smoking, and you’ll have to forgive us for any gaps in the authenticity of our substitutions.

Personally, I am a stickler for authenticity when it comes to things like this, but I can’t bring myself to argue with the reasoning behind this obstacle. There are many good reasons why so many major cities have instituted smoking bans. There are many good reasons not to smoke. Noir films were made at a time when smoking was a much more accepted and universal habit. Today, children come out of the womb familiar with the inherent health risks. There are, however, those of us who still enjoy it, and the culture of smoking today is much different than in the days of noir. In non-smoking cities like this one, smokers gather at regular intervals outside public buildings in small congregations. At once within and detached from the population, these congregations meet to talk about nothing in particular. They are united only by the individual enjoyment they get from partaking in a particular vice, an enjoyment not unlike the kind I feel watching noir movies, films populated by lonely characters whose flaws and personal interests set them apart from the public at large.

Desire for a particular vice sometimes forces you to be creative when it comes to getting your fix. It is this desire that occasionally sends me on extensive searches for hard to find noir titles. It sends smokers out of doors to find small, secluded corners where they can smoke among those who share the same interest. Vice breeds a strange congregation, but it’s a congregation that, like most, is ever willing to welcome a newcomer. Smokers light smokes for other smokers today the same way they did in the days of Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe.

And so when Heist Play opens on Sunday, you will find me standing outside the Side Project Theater smoking to calm my nerves during the act breaks with a handful of people who find enjoyment in the same silly activity as myself. That cigarette will end, the way all cigarettes do, and I will head back inside to take my place among a crowd of people united only by the strange enjoyment they get from watching a cast of actors tell stories onstage with fake liquor, plastic pistols, and bubble gum cigarettes.

Come see Heist Play. The space is small and tickets are going fast.

From director Allison Shoemaker

When people make ‘noir-esque’ movies today, what they mean is that they look like film noir, or the dialogue is similar in rhythm and cadence -- essentially, they’re talking about style. There are a lot of remarkable movies that fall into this category. I was entertained as hell by 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ and ‘Brick.’ ‘L.A. Confidential’ and ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’ are both beautifully shot and incredibly evocative of the genre. Here’s the thing, though: when film noir movies were being made, it wasn’t just about the style. That was a huge part of it, yes, but so was moral ambiguity and characters that refuse to inhabit a world in which one can be truly good or purely evil. The movies we now call film noir were about failed redemption, about what it is to be unable or unwilling to assert your own destiny and avoid damnation. They were about the clever banter, certainly, but also about what happens in the air between the words. When I started to think about what contemporary examples we have of that fundamental aspect of the noir tradition, a scene popped into my mind.

At the risk of sounding like an entry in ‘Stuff White People Like,’ I have to say -- I think The Wire might be the best show in the history of television. At the very least, it’s the closest thing to film noir we’ve seen this decade. As a result, it’s been on my mind a lot lately. (Fellow fans can listen for the theme song in ‘Heist Play’.) A lot of factors went in to making The Wire what it was -- talented writers, a devoted, adventurous and mostly unknown cast, a network brave enough to produce a show where the most heroic character is a gay stick-up boy who only robs drug dealers and lives by a code. This is a show you actually have to learn how to watch. You expect it to be one thing, and it’s not. It’s more. It’s a novel. It’s an epic.

I can’t exactly say I’ve stolen things from ‘The Wire’ for ‘Heist’, but it has certainly informed my work. When Katie Canavan and I started talking about Dietrich, we talked about cops who want but aren’t sure how to be more, and I was thinking of poor Beadie Russell. When Josh Davis was working to find how exactly Nick is altered when he’s drinking, Jimmy McNulty was swimming in booze through my head. When I talk, or rhapsodize, really, to my cast about the amazing things Mitch does with language, with such simple words and the great meaning they convey, I think of that scene where D’Angelo Barksdale teaches Bodie and Wallace and Poot about how chess works using the drug trade to communicate the ideas, and the total lack of expression on each of their faces as they begin to talk about the pawns. And when I want to remind myself to think about the remarkable things you can do with great characters and great actors, I think about that amazing scene in season one when McNulty and the Bunk go to investigate a crime scene that was royally botched by the first set of police who looked it over, and figure the whole damn crime out, and talk it through and figure it out, and they only ever say ‘f*ck’ and its many derivatives. Talk about inventiveness.

*

We’re a few days out from opening now. We’re close enough to opening that I am just now getting around to writing this thing I’ve been so stoked about writing. We’ve found the props (or most of them) and fitted the costumes and taped the floors. We’ve emptied a 12-pack of Old Style and need to empty many many cans of Coors Light in the next few days (for props, I swear). We’ve gotten it done. It’s a terrifying and exhilarating feeling.

It’s been a real privilege to work on ‘Heist Play’. I’ve known many of the people involved for many years, and hope to know the new ones for many more. (Katie Canavan stole my blog idea -- but how many Odes to Starbird or Melton or Stulik can one blog take? Anthem of Hornreich and Dean, perhaps?) We of The Ruckus are so fortunate to be working with such a remarkable cast and crew, and I can’t wait for the world at large to see the remarkable work they’ve been doing. I’m proud and inspired and humbled and wildly entertained. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.

Last but far from least, I’m so lucky to be working elbow to elbow with Mitch Vermeersch again. In a world of style-but-no-substance, Mitch creates these truly original plays that never fail to surprise. In ‘Heist Play’, Mitch gets to convey his love of film noir through Nick, and the passion and fascination he feels is so clearly conveyed that it cant’ help but be contagious. His braveness in breaking rules of structure and in allowing characters to be ugly people who do ugly things has created a genuinely unique work of art that has inspired me to be better and do more, and has done the same for our remarkable cast. I can’t wait for ya’ll to see it.

Back to work. Oh my wow, I hate and love scene changes. But mostly hate. But mostly love.

Down to the Wire

Submitted by Katie Canavan

It’s that time again. We have a scant few days. We are all working hard and it feels like it just might not make it. Everyone is stressed. It’s almost 100 degrees in our rehearsal space. We are adding costumes and props and sets and lights and music and dancing and it is a bit overwhelming.

This is my favorite part of the process.

Don’t get me wrong, this is also the most horrible part of the process. The most stressful part. But this is what will make everything more satisfying on Sunday night. This is why we do what we do. I cannot think of anything better than telling a story with little more than ourselves, some lights, and a few pieces of wood to sit on.

And this story is a pretty good one. So please come join us. If not on Sunday, then on Monday. Or Tuesday. Or even Wednesday!