Gideon Productions

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Thursday, May 13, 2004
So, you want to produce a play in New York that features you as an actor? Okay, first thing you gotta know is, as soon as anyone hears that they are gonna *ROLL THEIR EYES*, brother. These are the funniest notices I get in my inbox...

**********
Presenting a new drama by New York's own Guy Youneverheardof

"A Criminal Be-Havior"

Starring
Guy Youneverheardof
Reallyhot Girlontheverge*
Guy's Collegeroomate

What happens when a young woman responds to scorn with *SEDUCTION*? Find out in "A Criminal Be-Havior"

"Startling" says the New York Post
"Powerful... Obsessive" says the Oneonta Picayune.

Produced by Guy Youneverheardof
$15 tickets, $14 with this email notice! Get your tickets now!
**************

And if you go see the show, you're astonished that the Girl On The Verge is actually super hot, super talented, and willing to wear a tight white tank top and no bra and is also willing to make out with the playwright. In two years this girl is gonna be on TV, and Guy Youneverheardof isn't gonna have to change his name.

So, be prepared for the fact that writing, producing and acting in your own play is actually a recipe for derision. How do we avoid that? Well, the Mac Rogers plays we've done actually feature Mac being humiliated, usually with his pants off...

...and we try to feature actors and actresses that have more talent than star power. But, nevertheless, we do get made fun of when we do it, and rightly so.

We generally don't really care. People seem to love the shows, so let 'em roll their eyes.

The second thing you have to be prepared for is a conflict of interest. For instance, as a guy interested in the company making money, I don't really care if we make it into the fringe festival with this show. The show has already built a tiny following, it will play in any theater in America and we have a booking agent who knows that, and the Fringe will make us lose money. But as an actor and a New York Theater dude, I want us in the Fringe really bad because it means reviews and *relevance* in our world here. So, you'll have moments where successes are just failures and failures are just successes, but in different clothes.

The third thing is, you won't do some of your jobs very well.

I'm fairly certain I'm calling for a line in this picture, and Mac is suffering a thousand little deaths in the background while saying to himself "My WORDS! My precious WORDS!" We're just actors right here, but since we've spent so much of our time trying to be other things outside of rehearsal, sometimes we drop the ball once we're in.

And you have to ask yourself as a producer, would someone else do this better? The immediate answer you have to accept is "yes", no matter how nuanced and rad you think you are, there are other actors in the world who are as good as you are, and if all they had to do was think about the acting, they would be better.

Although no-one involved with this project, and that includes other producers who have offered to buy the show off of us, can imagine this project without Jordana as Lucretia.

One more thing you have to deal with, you can't get mad at the producers for saving money on cheap-ass rehearsal space. Every actor would love to have a real theater in which to rehearse, but every producer would love to have our hook-up...

The Astoria Performing Arts Center has been extremely gracious in allowing us to rehearse in the building they share with the church next door. It's usually a day care, but at night there's nothing happening there and, as long as we return everything exactly as we found it, we can rehearse there as much as we like. I can't tell you how amazing it is to have space here in Astoria, with all the props in the back of my car. This show couldn't have happened without their generosity, and y'all should go check out their show running now.

And, if you want to feel better about how you spend your time, check out the day care schedule for these kids...

Y'know, once I'm done with story time, then lunch time, then bathroom, then nap time, then snack time, then another visit to the bathroom, then song PLUS story time, I feel like the only thing to do next that makes any sense is free play.

Of course, the producer side of me cringes at those words... Posted at 12:52 PM by sean williams

WE'RE BACK!!!!!!!

Monday, May 10, 2004
I'm going to go in to the whys and wherefors later, suffice it to say, we have secured our first engagement for the Lucretia Jones Mysteries outside the city of New York. We go up May 21 and 22 at the Bristol Valley Theater in Naples, New York.

We are psyched as all get out. We've scheduled six rehearsals and one run through up at the space, which may seem like overkill to you, but we *sucked* the last time we tried to do the show without enough rehearsal, and we are never going to do that again.

Okay, we didn't suck. Everyone loved the show. But we didn't feel like we had done the best possible show we could do, and it isn't even that we are perfectionists or anything, there just is too much theater in the world to waste your time doing it badly. Here we are at our first rehearsal back.

Don't we look like we're having fun?

I'll be honest, that was at the end of the rehearsal. Mac is flirting with the Marce, our fearless leader is eating cookies and Jordana is going over the marriage certificate she had just received in the mail from her nuptials last weekend. Which, it turns out, were also my nuptials. The theater is a dangerous place, if you want to avoid nuptials. Here's a real rehearsal picture.

Yes, that's Beethoven's death mask over Mac's head. He's good luck. And yes, Jordana is still eating cookies. But that's sort of how we do things.

So, we're back and better than ever. Much business to discuss anon, I want to see if I can actually sort of chart this process a little better this time. Posted at 10:55 PM by sean williams

Gideon Productions

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