Yes, it’s been a rather lengthy hiatus.  Yes, I’ve dropped the ball for the past couple of months.  But we’re back.  And by we, I mean I am back.  Over the summer I’m going to do my best to be a little more consistent with the newsletter.  Most of my writings are now going to be found on my new website:

www.joshhornbeck.com

The site has just, as of a few hours ago, launched.  I’ve just added a collection of short plays that you can read online.  The performance rights are available for anyone who would like to produce any of the pieces.

New pieces as of June 11, 2006:

Short Plays  (www.joshhornbeck.com/playsthething.htm)

How’s the Weather?

I Was a Stranger

Introductions and Misplaced Desires

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Only You Can Save Thanksgiving!

The Wanderer

What You Will

What’s the Point

Yearning

Please check out the new site and recommend it to anyone you think might get something out of the pieces posted online.

Until next time!

Josh Hornbeck

1/2

Live Theatre

By Josh Hornbeck

ACT Theatre

Seattle, Washington

Story is an essential part of the human experience.  We laugh it off and tell ourselves stories don’t matter.  Stories are for children, right?  After all, it’s just a story.  But throughout our culture, everywhere we look, we are bombarded by stories.  Obviously, story is present in the novels we read and the movies we watch.  It shows itself in the ways “Reality Television” is shot and chopped to follow a narrative arc.  The most fascinating news segments are ones with a compelling story attached.  Story is built into the very fabric of who we are as men and women.  It’s said that everyone’s got a story, and in Martin McDonagh’s latest thriller, The Pillowman, the Irish playwright examines just how powerful stories can be.

An immense grey obelisk fills the circular stage.  No matter where you are positioned in the audience, all you can see is concrete and barbed-wire, obfuscating our view.  This square monstrosity so dominates the small theatre, it’s impossible to think of anything else.  We begin the play, wondering whether we’ll be able to see the action, whether this obstruction on stage will prevent us from knowing some essential detail of the play, some moment of terrible import and insightful illumination.  When the wall is lowered (much as the curtain is raised for most productions), the audience breathes a collective sigh of relief.  There are no more walls, nothing to keep us from full knowledge of the story and its themes – nothing physical anyway.

The stage is spare – a stool, a chair, a filing cabinet, a waste-bin – and a young man sits alone, blindfolded.  After a moment a silence we hear a massive metal doorway open and close.  Two men in suits enter.  One of them speaks to the young man in the blindfold.

“Why are you still wearing that?”

“I assumed you didn’t want me to take it off.”

“Well take it off.  You just look stupid.”

The two suits are policemen.  The young man tries to cooperate but has no idea why he has been detained.  He comes and goes from work.  He looks after his ‘challenged’ brother.  He writes stories.  There are over four hundred of them.  He assumes that there must be something in one of his stories that is offensive.  Something that criticizes the police or the government.  “Fine,” he says.  “Let me know what I’ve written that’s offensive and I’ll take it out right away.”

But the officers don’t tell him what he’s done wrong.  Instead, they read the stories confiscated from his apartment.  Fairy tales.  Children’s stories.  But they’re even grimmer than the darkest of fairy tales by Grimm or Anderson.  Children are killed with razor blades in apples.  A man chops off a little boy’s toes.  The stories are dark and twisted.  And as the officers read them, the young man expresses pride in his little literary masterpieces.

Slowly, they come to the point.  There has been a series of murders.  Children have been killed through brutal and vicious means – all echoing the circumstances of the young man’s stories.  So the young man and his handicapped brother are their only suspects.  And as the stories are told, truths are made evident only to become hidden once again.

ACT’s production of The Pillowman deftly manipulates the play’s air of confusion and obfuscation.  The towering obelisk which dominates the stage in the pre-show and intermission is the most elaborate visual method director Kurt Beattie employs to keep the audience wary of what is being revealed and what is hidden.  Throughout the play this theme keeps recurring.  The officers interrogating Katurian, the writer, tell him that his brother, hidden several cells away, has already been beaten and tortured into confessing.  When he finally is allowed to see his brother, the siblings slowly circle around the truth, hiding and revealing in equal terms.  One of Katurian’s stories features a boy whose parents keep a dark secret hidden behind a locked door.  Another features a man in prison for a crime he doesn’t know he’s committed.  Truth and secrets are central to the play and the block is a strong, visceral design element that adds yet another layer of secrecy.

Once the obelisk is lowered, once the set becomes this stark, empty space, Beattie is forced to rely on the strength of his actors and the power of McDonagh’s script.  The cast is comprised of four actors; the two police officers, Katurian and his brother.  Matthew Floyd Miller, playing Katurian,  has the hardest role to fill.  He’s not only been placed in an extreme and emotionally exhausting situation, but also must tell one story after another in such a way that we, the audience, get sucked into these short, brutal folk tales.  And his performance is exquisite.  Mesmerizing.  We hang on Miller’s every word, seeing the stories as he paints pictures for us with his voice and nothing more.  Both Denis Arndt and R. Hamilton Wright bring a real exuberance and – dare I say it – joy to the roles of interrogator and torturer.  Wright, a fixture in the Seattle theatre community, gives one of the greatest performances of his career, managing to be funny, brutal and sympathetic all at once.  The weakest link in the main cast is Shawn Telford, filling the role of Michal, Katurian’s brother.  Mental handicaps are both the easiest and most difficult roles to play.  Occasionally Telford delves beyond stereotype and caricature, but more often than not, his Michal just feels like a grown man pretending to be a little kid.  However, this casting deficit never takes away from the power of the play and the other performances.

The Pillowman is a grim play, but it is full of rich and surprising humor.  McDonagh’s Irish temperament come out in full force as talk of murder and execution and torture and dismemberment are all accompanied by a hearty and somewhat disturbing dose of laughter.  At times we laugh because we are surprised by what we’re hearing.  Other times the verbal wit and banter between the characters transcends the mood and the subject matter.  It would be all too easy to miss the humor and the wit, presenting the play as a shocking and grim parable.  But Beattie and the cast deliver on McDonagh’s tone marvelously.  It’s a play about child murders and yet, it may be one of the most enjoyable times I’ve had at the theatre.

The play finally comes down to stories (every character tells at least one during the course of the production), examining their power and influence.  Do stories really have the ability to change lives?  Katurian believes that stories shouldn’t be used to say anything – to make any kind of statement.  But even with his lack of purpose and direction, he finds that his stories have spoken to people, whether he intended them to or not.  So even if he didn’t kill those children, if his stories inspired their deaths, is he any less culpable?  And what about the stories themselves?  Will they live on after he goes?

By Josh Hornbeck

My roommate doesn’t do his dishes.  And it isn’t just a plate and a fork here or a bowl and a cup there.  No.  The sink is perpetually littered with his dishes and his dishes alone.  Six or seven bowls he used for maybe two meals.  Five glasses stacked up over just two days.  It’s a veritable explosion of ceramics and silverware.  I try to strain my pasta, but with no free space in the sink to place the strainer I, by necessity, hold the strainer in one hand the steaming pot of boiling water in the other – a recipe for pain and suffering – and find myself with second degree burns up and down my arm.  If I want to fill up my Brita water-pitcher, I have to hold it at a right angle to the faucet or risk breaking one of my dishes that my roommate has decided to appropriate into his cooking extravaganzas.

I, of course, have yet to voice my frustration.  I know most people wouldn’t stand for it.  Most roommates set very clear boundaries and ground-rules for living at peace with one another.  But I have a problem with confrontation.  I hate making waves.  So I do everything I can to show my displeasure without actually saying – simply, honestly – “Aaron, do your dishes.”  So I let his dishes pile up in the sink and fastidiously wash my own the moment I use them.  My steaming bowl of pasta sits on the counter while I scrub the pot and scour the strainer.  I refuse to allow my plates even a moment’s respite in hopes of shaming my roommate into culinary cleanliness.  But it doesn’t change anything.  His dishes remain undone.

As much as I want to scream at him and throw his dishes across the room, I can’t.  While on the one hand it would probably relieve a portion of my frustration and hostility; on the other it would leave me with gaping holes in my tableware.  But more to the point, I know why he leaves them undone for such long stretches of time.  As much as I want to condemn and vilify his procrastinatory impulses, I can’t.  I understand them all too well.

Here’s how it goes: Aaron arrives home from work and, tired and hungry, cooks his spaghetti and meatballs, his mixed vegetables and French fries.  Utilizing all the necessary pots and pans for his gastronomic endeavors, he adds a few plates and bowls to complete the menagerie and plops himself down in front of the television to watch C-SPAN or BookTV.  After an hour or so, the adrenaline of the day has subsided so that he can barely transport his plates (notice the plural) from the living room to deposit them in the sink.  The momentum which carried him through work to the preparation of a veritable feast has fully dissipated, leaving him with the desire to do nothing more than tuck himself into bed.  He always hopes to get to his neglected chores at some point the next day, but he inevitably wakes up with just enough time to throw on some pants and a sweater and head out the door to work.  Thus, the infernal cycle is repeated over and over again throughout the week.  Each day the dishes remain unattended the more insurmountable the task becomes.  Even though doing his dishes right away would have only taken him a few minutes, he deferred the task and each day he puts it off just means it will take him that much longer to finish.

The truth is – as infuriating as my roommate’s slovenly habits may be – we’re more alike than I’d care to admit.  While I may not procrastinate when it comes to washing the dishes or cleaning the apartment, I find myself putting off activity time and time again in a multitude of other arenas.  I constantly avoid making and returning business calls (mainly because I hate the phone), I refuse to return emails and set up meetings, and – most damningly – I don’t even touch my writing most days.

I’m okay when it comes to writing for a specific purpose with a specific deadline.  All of the plays I’ve written for work have been finished on time, ready to go by the first day of rehearsal.  Granted, I normally wait until the last minute to start writing, which means I’m frantically typing for twenty-four straight hours until I finally reach the “The End.”  But I still get it done.  And I get it done on time.  Even if I am half asleep while my actors are reading through it for the first time.

The real problem comes with all of the personal writing I need to be doing.  I have a slew of stories I want to write and finish and send out.  But without a firm deadline, I keep putting them off, thinking I’ll start on them tomorrow.  So I watch some TV, do a little reading, and go to sleep.  The next day dawns, full of good intentions, but by the time I wake up, check my email, eat breakfast and get moving; the day’s already half over.  I psych myself out and, believing I don’t have enough time to get any substantial work done, I just sit on the couch, watch some TV, and the cycle repeats over and over again.

If it was just the stories I was writing, I think I might be able to work up the gumption to get back into them from time to time (although, now that I think about it, that’s probably not true – I’ll always find some reason to put off my work).  But in trying to produce a newsletter every other week, film reviews and essays keep building up and remain empty files sitting on my desktop, taunting me day in and day out.  And every time I see a movie or watch television, I create a word document for a review that will never be written.

These reviews and stories and essays and playscripts hang over my head, the very knowledge of their existence oppressive.  Whenever I sit down at my computer, ready to start working, eager to get back into the writing I’ve put off for so long, all I can think about is the sheer volume of pieces I’ve left undone.  I don’t know where to begin.  I don’t know how to begin.  There are so many pieces I haven’t started.  Do I start with the film reviews?  Do I start with the stories?  And if so, which stories?  And so, overwhelmed, I just turn off my computer and turn on my TV.

I know that really isn’t helpful when it comes to feeling overwhelmed.  After all, I just keep putting off the pieces I have to write and they just keep piling up and I keep feeling more and more behind.  But it’s hard to break out of those patterns, isn’t it?  When you look at the heap of dishes waiting to be cleaned, the multitude of piece unwritten, it just seems so daunting and insurmountable.  But Aaron still has to get the dishes done.  And if I really want to be serious about my writing, I have to sit down and write.

This was the first of the three episode arc I ended up watching.  Looking back now, it was a really wonderful episode.  I was just a little confused by some of the major changes that had taken place in the two episodes I missed.  Elliot begins to fall for Keith.  Their favorite patient takes a turn for the worse and isn’t going to recover, so a grief counselor is called in to help her accept the inevitable.  Both Cox and J.D. think the counselor – played by Dave Foley of “Newsradio” and “Kids in the Hall” – is a moron.  But they end up going through the five steps of acceptance just as much as their patient.  And for the first time, Cox really begins to treat J.D. as an equal.  Not as funny as their quirkier episodes, not as moving as their more touching episodes, it was still a beautiful look at the characters dealing with the pain of death in the midst of life.

Once again, a sitcom has captivated my attention and interest.  Not too bad, considering it’s a form I’d completely written off a few years ago.  But “Sons & Daughters” is yet more proof that there’s still life in the American sitcom.  A single-camera show, sans laugh track, “Sons & Daughters” is a partially improvised comedy about Cameron Walker and his insane family.  In the first episode, we find the family preparing for their mother and step-father’s twentieth wedding anniversary.  The day of the party, Wendell – Cameron’s step-father – confesses to Cameron that he’s thinking of leaving his wife.  Cameron isn’t quite sure how to handle this information and begins to talk it over with his wife and his sister, even though Wendell asked him to keep quiet.  The show isn’t quite as over-the-top as “Arrested Development” could be, but its subtle comedy warms the cockles of my heart.  Plus, I loved the moment Cameron’s children drew a Hitler-mustache on their racist great-aunt.

This episode had maybe one of the greatest opening sequences I’ve seen on television in a long while.  A building and continuous piece of music underlined everything as we jumped between Starbuck prepping the pilots to rescue the freedom fighters back on Caprica, the President and Baltar preparing for their impending debate, and the chief twitching on the floor.  The atmospheric mood is broken when the chief snaps and begins beating the crap out of one of his technicians.  And the rest of the episode lived up to the art and intensity of those first few minutes.  The chief is sent to a counselor – a priest – and confesses that he’s worried he may be a Cylon.  Baltar isn’t doing well in his race against the President, but when the pilots discover a habitable plant with an electrical-cloud-covering – which would prevent the Cylons from discovering them – he advocates abandoning the search for Earth and settling down on the new planet, laying down their burdens.  And his arguments gain traction with the voters.  Starbuck and her pilots arrive at Caprica and meet up with the resistance fighters, only to be cut off from their ships by a Cylon attack force.  I can’t wait for the next part.  Of course, that means we’ll be at the end of the season and I’ll have to wait another three months before I get my next fix.  But that’s okay.  A show as good as this is worth the wait.

I was honestly a little under-whelmed by the prospect of a special two-hour night of “24.”  Don’t get me wrong, I like the show.  I just wasn’t expecting a terribly momentous television event.  By the end of the first hour, I felt justified in my apathy.  Sure, we keep moving right along with the story.  The terrorists try to release some nerve gas in a hospital.  Jack shoots a woman in the leg.  Rudy’s missing keycard is starting to become more of a plot-point than just a minor inconvenience.  But by the end of the first hour the only thing I was glad of was the fact that we were one hour closer to finishing the season.  However, they pulled it out for the second hour of the night.  What an intense and shocking episode.  Terrorists breach CTU?  I mean, I know we’ve had moles in place before, but terrorists have never had the guts to launch such a major attack on the anti-terrorists themselves.  And when poor little Carrie got herself killed by the baddie, I knew things would start to go downhill.  I just didn’t know how bad it was going to get for our heroes.  Everyone’s trapped in a couple of rooms Chloe was able to seal against the nerve gas.  Kim is back (sans cougars) and Jack has to try and keep her and Audrey alive for the rest of the day.  Tony’s awake (have I ever told you that Tony’s my favorite character on the show?) and trapped in the medical wing.  And (SPOILER WARNING) poor Edward died.  It was maybe the most emotional moment on the show since the second season when the old CTU director sacrificed his life to save everyone.  Edward dying while Chloe watched on – helpless to save him.  It was touching and heartbreaking.  And the final time clock was silenced in respect for the dead.  Beautiful.

I had one of my former students (how weird is it to say “former students,” huh?) chastise me for complaining too much in the last issue of “The Writer’s Block.”  While I tried to explain to him that it was a part of the style and tone of the newsletter, it got me thinking.  Maybe I have been too self-effacing and ironic in the newsletter.  So, as an exercise, I’m going to do my best to be as confident and un-ironic as possible during the course of the following issue.  (We’ll see how well that works.)

The first issue of quiet SHORTS is selling well.  We’ve even sold out of our first print run.  So you’d better get your copies of the arts journal while you can.  It features some great stories and wonderful poetry, beautiful visual art and intriguing music.  I’ve written a few of the pieces inside (after all, I am one of the founding directors of the company) – one looking at fast-food art here in America and another examining the enduring qualities of Citizen Kane, the greatest film of all-time.  I have to say, I think I’ve written two amazing pieces of cultural analysis.  I may end up being one of the most influential thinkers of our time if I’m not careful.  So pick up your copy at www.WhosGotYourEar.com/quietshorts1-1.htm.  You won’t be sorry.

Well, that’s all I have to say for this issue.  Enjoy the witty banter of my letters, the thoughtful analysis of my film criticism, and the insight I’ve brought to the Academy Awards.  Enjoy – as if you had any choice.

Josh Hornbeck