Theater on YouTube and in Long Island City

YouTube Follies

Something I forgot to mention was that the Institutionalized Theater, an affiliate with this very press, presented two one-act plays at The Bowery Poetry Club at the end of August. Gay Play, written and directed by this self-same web editor, was unfortunately not recorded for posterity⎯but the other piece, Slump Boat Sway, was filmed on some sort of cheap digital camera and is now available online. The monologue was directed by (presumed Corresponding Society member) A.E. Wilson and features performances by Lonely Christopher and MK Chillemi. Although the image is pixilated to the point of abstraction and the sound quality is so poor it sounds like I have a serious speech impediment, interested parties are yet welcomed to check it out at the following links: Part I, Part II, & Part III. And since I am on the subject of video clips of Institutionalized performances that are available on YouTube, I might as well mention some older material as well. The following clips are from our very first show (which was a scrappy endeavor that ended up the subject of at least one major scandal) that culminated in a cacophonic madhouse of a dramatic event called Morning Morning, conceived by Corresponding Society member and Poem Shop writer Robert Snyderman. You can watch the end here: Part I & Part II. It’s peculiar how much stuff ends up on this YouTube. Somebody even took the time to post a video of me tripping over a difficult poem after somebody set a camera flash off in my face at a Small Anchor Press reading a while back (though I won’t post the link to that out of embarrassment). Of course YouTube is all well and good, but I would recommend UbuWeb, an archive of avant-garde materials managed by Kenneth Goldsmith. PennSound, directed by Charles Bernstein and Al Filreis, is also a tremendously valuable resource.

With Golden Thread on One End



This isn’t really related to matters of the Corresponding Society or its affiliates, but certainly worth mentioning. I am currently working as an Assistant Stage Manager on a play, presented at The Chocolate Factory (it’s in Queens!), titled 1965UU. It’s by Mac Wellman, directed by Steve Mellor, and stars Paul Lazar. The show is basically a monologue; the text is quite dense and linguistically tangled, but it still manages to be playful, marvelously humorous, and ultimately profoundly ruminative. The show is running Thursdays through Saturdays until October 4th⎯go see it. For the occasional reader who (for whatever inexcusable reason) does not live in New York City (it’s okay if you don’t live in Queens, Queens is weird), I wholly recommend picking up a copy of Wellman’s collection The Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds (from which 1965UU is adapted). The book is among the few that make me feel a little better about the state of contemporary short fiction (the only other two that occur to me right now are selected bits of Gary Lutz and Girl with Curious Hair by the recently departed David Foster Wallace). Working with the likes of Mac, Steve, and Paul has been a really exciting and beneficial experience for me. Here’s a picture of Paul in costume as the ingenuous Dr. Ravenello: