inspiration, move me brightly

  Just met with Cathy Sorbo the playwright & director and novelist, Andrew Ritzinger, who coincidentally lives in my building.. to talk about "Love Bomb" which I am auditioning for the role of Christina on Wednesday 12/14. Ah! Inspiration! It sounds like a very fun & interesting project for me to be involved in and it's so wonderful for me to meet other people in the theater community who are NOT from AraKus Productions BUT are manifesting their own stage productions in stages just ahead of where I'm going to be.

  You see, I figure I'm karmic-ally investing by being willing to act or be mutable in molding someone else's masterpiece then... Of course I thought I had a mutually beneficial arrangement with Jeremiah Johnson before I agreed & signed on to do the what ended up being a 1 1/2 year project "Aeterno Elementum" but now instead of paying any kind of attention/focus or offering some motivational support he is instead begun writing his next heavy metal opera with BJ Becker (my lead actor for the role of the Old Man and intended editor/co-playwright) collaborating.. kinda stole my thunder in more ways than one! (he's my supposed partner aka part time lover) Oh but this blog is about the creative process though you can't take drama out of the process of dramaturgy nor can you ever have too much experience, same as publicity!

  Have re-entrenched myself into the script a bit! Beginning to develop more depth to the characters, seeing them come to life more in my head and adding individual idiosyncracies so that I know them well enough to be able to write the additional scenes where the story sums up or skips and I don't have any Goethe written/translated dialogue to use as basic framework. I've been particularly successful in developing the Old Woman's character who I've decided is a distant ancestor of me and my mother only she's slightly crazier. She not only talks to herself but she does it when others are present as well as if she's vaguely aware that the audience is there and therefore sporadically narrates her inner dialogue for them breaking the 4th wall (looks into the camera) which confuses all of the other characters except her husband who is quietly well aware of the trans-dimensional bridge forged from their humble fairy tale. Essentially she's mildly OCD with schizo tendencies. The Prince is a closet narcissist which is why he's so melodramatic, all or nothing. Then as I might have mentioned previously the Will-o-the-Wisps are literally flaming as in pretty, and witty, and GAY! :D

  Ah! Just got a call from Simon Clark, my ex and will be stage & lighting director as he was for AE IV, of Stageworks Productions offering me a paid gig at some Robert DeNiro appearing event which is again precisely what I needed to get my confidence back up and ready to MANIFEST MAGICK ~ 

Ho! Mitakuye Oyasin... All my relations!

www.asraiya.com

I originally wrote this in my personal blog published on 7/21/11 but I realized it should be reprinted here since he adequately states what this project means to me...

this is life.. not just a photograph

Life is ridiculous! I'm currently stressing out of my mind trying to put together the most inspiring, believable, responsible, and effective application for the funding of an art project while the US government is approximately 2 weeks away from being completely broke... In the meantime I myself, who is also generally broke, am ignoring that fact to the extent of blowing off the few rare opportunities that actually have presented themselves this week to make enough money to comfortably live through this process (beer, cigarettes, food etc.. what? I'm an artist and I'm stressed!).. Why? Because it's a calling! Because I'm a fatalist.. Because it's not about me! Apparently I want to save the world more than I want to live on it.. Why? Because it's not worth living on if none are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of their fellow man. That is the calling! That is why this art project to me has precedence over everything.. Because I believe it has the power to effect changes so great that it will stir awake a dormant level of the collective consciousness causing an evolutionary leap in the social art experiment, bridging the aspects of ourselves that tend to have a magnetic force field pushing against them. I know this project will make me whole. I know that if I lead a whole life by example others will follow suite. Why? Because I have a dream.. and in a world like this one sometimes a dream is the only thing you have that makes a single lick of sense therefore it is the most sensible gift to give no matter how unrealistic it appears against the background of everything else. Dreams happen for a reason and mine most often really do come true but not from wishing upon a star, but by being one! Every man and woman is a star forever blazing a path to eternity.. even when a brick fucking wall has been built in the center of it, just got lay it down. When there's nothing left at hand, still got to lay it down. Will you then get the funding for your art project? I don't know, I think I need to lay down and nap... but I'm not tired! I'm not dead yet! The time is at hand!

me as MeMe the Mime

Cerebral

I offered a link to this blog on one of the grant applications I submitted suggesting the judges panel could monitor my progress working on this project and then have posted nothing on it since. Sigh.. so much of the work is simply cerebral. I rely heavily on the process of creative envisioning! That's not a cop out but a fact. I'd say close to 90% of every artistic endeavor I take on I do in silence and in solitude, the other 10% in active collaboration. This project is going to require a lot more action but with a date set of Summer 2012 I'm still in the process of visualizing how the whole thing will go down. It's going to demand the assimilation of every single idea and experience I've ever accomplished and encountered my whole life long! For 2 years now I've been deeply contemplating this story and how to ambitiously bring it to life. The set design alone is FAR from a simple matter to take on.

Recently my partner and I went to see a production of Camelot put on by a local operatic community theater. The performance was adequate, I'm not a fan of this particular rendition of the story that focuses mainly on the love affair of G & L.. but the costumes and set was donated by a professional production company which awarded me several aha moments in how to stage the raising of the underground Temple to the surface at the end of GSBL. That was something I was so far sweating quite a bit. I also talked to my friend Michael Folger who plays the Green General in Aeterno Elementum and he agreed to play the role of the Gold King for GSBL. So the scene of the Temple has begun to crystallize and take form in both my mind and manifestation!

me w/Michael in AE

Also Jeremy Veleber from Arakus and I were talking about L-wire possibilities the week before last at band practice. He's a software engineer and he believes he can reprogram the controllers to offer more options than the standard solid on, marquee, & strobe and agreed to assist with the Will-O-the-Wisps costumes which I'm super excited about! The next major challenge is determining whether the Green Snake will be performed by some sort of aerialist/acrobat or a giant puppet? As well as should the Giant be a laser projection like I saw in the Broadway touring production of Spamalot (the cow trebuchet) which is how I originally imagined it.. or have my friend Just Sage play it on stilts? That one entirely depends on what kind of budget we have to work with...

The script will be shared as soon as I've completed it! Trucking along bit by bit.. Stay tuned! So say we all.

Heartsinspyre Entertaiment Associates

Woo Hoo ~ I just applied for my business license & insurance plus I found a fiscal sponsor so I can apply for More Grants :D  Figure I'll eventually be good at it.. practice makes perfect?

More to come about my 4 Culture app... For now I've got to go make an appearance at some kind of video shoot where my presence has been requested. Oh ~ check me out in the Seattle Times photo blog at my Mardi Gras gig down in Pioneer Square!

Say good by to meat... and a prayer for peace.
On the 11 o'clock news here too ~
http://www.king5.com/home/Seattle-hosts--117631253.html

transformational theater

"Transformational theater has as its goal the metamorphosis of the human soul, the reintegration of that part of us which is separated from the divine. In his great play Faust, Goethe alludes to the mystery of metamorphosis as having to do with Divine Love and the Eternal Feminine - the latter considered as an active Power of Celestial Redemption. Moreover, the ancient mystery schools chose mystery drama as a path of initiation for those who earnestly strove for higher knowledge and divine redemption. 

The theater was and may again become a place of moral inspiration, a sacred temple, a source for personal transformation where the Power of Celestial Redemption transforms souls. Through transformational theater one may experience a flash of clairvoyance, an awakening of conscience, an arising of an innate sense of truth and justice. Engaged in a drama of spiritual awakening, the actor/actress may become a priest/priestess, a vessel for sacred magic through the power of the Word, and may penetrate through the veil of illusion to perceive the archetype of the human being in metamorphosis, thus experiencing the cosmic drama of humanity in evolution."

from http://sophiafoundation.org