NEW ROOF FOR THE GAS STATION

Even though I was told that this repair to the Gas Station had been done a few weeks ago, it wasn't. But now, it's done and it has added new ideas for artists who opt to show in the Gas Station ..  It was interesting to me to see the current show, Venus of Adams Square by Jana Charl has been carefully wrapped by the workers who were sealing the roof of the building.  

The interesting thing to me is that this adds new dimensions to installations by making the windows translucent and lighting from within.. or from out side the building.   This adds a really special look to the current artist's vision. 

 Congratulations to the City of Glendale for making this space secure and ... hopefully.. impervious to the weather. 

Michael Sheehan

Adams Hill

 

AT THE SOUND OF THE .... "TONE"....

SUMMER SOLSTICE.. 2017

I was about to post this on Facebook, but it's long and I usually skip over long blurbs that others have posted.. So inviting you to see this in a slightly more user friendly way, this is what I started to write:

"I have no idea the political leaning of every one who may see this. I would call to all of us to focus our attention on the fact that name calling and ad hominem attacks are mostly the method that more conservative folks cling to. 

FB is a terrible place for meaningful debate, of course. I repeat the term 'tone' that references those people and am grateful that they continue to do express themselves in nasty ways. It's obvious where they stand. Finding a way to harmony and reason isn't much fun when you can ridicule someone and get a bruhaha going.. But. I love to see the not so liberal folks jump up and down and wave their hands. We see you. Thank you."

Left handed slaps at those more conservative folks probably are not fully understood by them. Limbic reactions are never thoughtful.  We all do it, of course.. I hope that the more liberal of us would take a step back and see that calling #45 names and ditto for those who support him, really only show how little ammunition we have.  I compliment the mud slingers from the Right because I like knowing who they are.  I'm not keeping a list, but pointing out to others the obvious lack of understanding they have is a goal.

What we forget and I've mentioned this in the past.. is that those name calling  mudslingers  must really believe what they believe.  The sincerity of #45 I have a hard time with because his 'tone' that sets the tone for all of his followers.. is nasty and rude. When you have all the money, that gives you (you think) immunity from everything.  We'll see how this goes, won't we?

I remember privilege!  It was years ago when my high school class had created a float for the Homecoming Parade.  One girl in the class was from a very well to do family. Her father, a prominent physician, loaned us his brand new Cadillac to pull the float with .. and.. and..  "I" got to drive it. I got to pull the float.  Dean Fritzler was the robot on the float who got messages from a computer predicting the Wildcats victory!  but..that's not the privilige part.. that part was.. 

That I.. 

coming from humble means got to pick up the Caddy from the place where the doctor had had it detailed for the parade and instead of driving directly to the site where we had the float ready for the parade that day, I circled down town and waved to the simple folk with a Queen Elizabeth/Rose Queen wave and slowly enjoyed the luxury of status (the Cadillac). "Hello, peasants..."

That car smelled great.  My moment as a rich guy was impressive to a sixteen year old.  Like the guy in the Monopoly game who owns all the good property and is just enjoying raking in the dough from the other poor schmucks who didn't buy or couldn't..  I felt superior.  I'm pretty sure that #45 feels that every single moment of the day.  I'm not ashamed of how I behaved.  I didn't insult anyone.  And, I was only sixteen! 

The point being that finding ways to dissuade the followers of the current administration from the current downslide can't be by executing tit for tat.  Harmony is about finding a way to communicate in a civil way.  (Now I'm preaching.. and I'll stop).. but smart folks understand that coming together for the common good is effortful.  Ranting, to me, a waste of time. 

Let's hope that reasonable people come to the fore and that our country will survive with a minimum of loss.  

michaelsheehan

June 20, 2017    

I COME TO BURY CEASAR

 This play closes today!  The Stage Manager is not credited initially, but here we have other essentials:

Julius Caesar

Off-Broadway

Play

Tragedy

• Public Theater/Delacorte Theater
• Mid- Central Park at 80th Street, enter the park at 81st & CPW or 79th & 5th, New York

SYNOPSIS: In William Shakespeare's tragedy of political ambition, corruption and betrayal, Roman senators Brutus and Cassius lead a group effort to assassinate the powerful Julius Caesar, then battle with Mark Antony over control of the state.

Directed by Oskar Eustis

Starring: Tina Benko, Teagle F. Bougere, Eisa Davis, Robert Gilbert, Yusef Bulos, Gregg Henry, Edward James Hyland, Nikki M. James, Christopher Livingston, Elizabeth Marvel, Chris Myers, Corey Stoll, John Douglas Thompson, and Natalie Woolams-Torres

Scenic design by David Rockwell
Costume design by Paul Tazewell
Lighting design by Kenneth Posner
Sound design by Jessica Paz
Original music and soundscapes by Bray Poor

Show Times: Tuesday - Sunday @8pm
(Some days vary - see site for details)

publictheater.org/Julius-Caesar

• Running Time: 2 hours and 5 minutes, with no intermission
• Playwright: William Shakespeare

June 18, 2017

The flap at a recent performance of Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar by the Public Theatre in Central Park points up the importance of Art.  I'm posting my response to Mark Binelli's well phrased account on Facebook of what happened when not one, but two members of the audience created a disturbance at the play.  I've asked for Mark's permission to repost, but have not heard back from him. If it's here when you read this, he's not declined my request.  I think his report is brilliant.  

Me first:

Thanks to Marlene Hajdu and to Mark Binelli. I often refer to 'tone' when it comes the the 'right' v. the 'left.' Hating politics as I hate the word hate and all politics and... (did I get close to R and J?) .. Binelli's articulate essay of his experience of Julius Caesar in Central Park has the tone of an educated and thoughtful person. 

No one wants #45 dead. 

The  beauty of Theatre and especially the absolute control of this production by the Stage Manager, who, I hope will be credited as this unfolds... is a testament to the power that ART has to bring our lives to Life.

Mr. Binelli.. if you see this.. or any of his friends.. please credit this Stage Manager and at the next performance of this Public Theatre play, encourage the audience to rise as one and applaud.

For those not actually 'in' the theatre. The reason that the performances you attend work (or may not work) with timing and flow is because the Stage Manager calls the show. Unsung and not always appreciated (does the name Simon Legree ring a bell? ) this wonderful production will now have more audience and more attention than could ever have been expected! Please Stand. Applaud! Be grateful for Theatre! 

Now this from Mark:

Why Alt-Right Trump Activists Couldn't Disrupt Shakespeare in the Park
What it was like to be in the audience during Friday's production of 'Julius Caesar'
By Mark Binelli

There are two types of clowns in Shakespeare: clever fools who speak truth to power (King Lear's court jester, Feste in Twelfth Night) and actual idiots, written to be laughed at, who spew malapropisms and wind up magically transformed into asses. The alt-right agitators who interrupted Friday's Shakespeare in the Park performance of Julius Caesar fell squarely into the latter category. While they may have failed in their primary goal of activist mischief – I happened to be sitting in the audience and can attest that the brief disruption merely added a frisson of excitement to an excellent, already electric production, so, thanks for that, dudes – they did manage one neat trick, turning one of Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedies, ever so briefly, into a comedy.

Certain segments of the Right have been stirred by news reports of this Caesar, in which the assassinated Roman emporer has been recast as a Trump figure. (There are also visual references throughout to Ferguson and Occupy Wall Street.) Charges of liberal hypocrisy were promiscuously levied – "The Left doesn't like it when their tactics are used against their 'expression.' How many wd storm stage if 'Obama' was stabbed?" Laura Ingraham tweeted – though, as many have pointed out, an Obama-like Caesar had been offed in a 2012 production of the play at Minneapolis' esteemed Guthrie Theater, with no attendant fuss. Beyond that, to interpret Julius Caesar as somehow pro-assassination is both illiterate and ahistorical. As the British critic and Shakespearean scholar Frank Kermode once wrote, "Shakespeare treats [Brutus] with delicate sympathy, but cannot have thought his act a right one."
Still, with news of the production breaking so soon after Kathy Griffin's gross, unfunny mock-beheading of Trump, a misreading – willful or otherwise – of director Oskar Eustis' intentions was inevitable. But any good-faith critic of the show who actually sat through it would have to admit there's zero celebration of violence in the staging. Indeed, quite the opposite: the gory stabbing of Caesar-Trump (subtly played by Gregg Henry) was horrific, eliciting audible gasps from the crowd; a woman sitting near me covered her face.
Seconds later, a woman dressed in black rushed onto the stage. It wasn't clear, at first, if she was part of the show – throughout the performance, actors in street clothes portraying members of various mobs erupted from the audience – but the deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes gave her game away. "Stop the normalization of political violence against the right!" she cried, ignoring what she'd presumably just seen, an opposite-of-normalizing staging of violence that had left the audience stunned. I'm guessing she'd assumed members of the liberal New York crowd would all be laughing and high-fiving and clinking champagne flutes at the fictional death of the fictional Trump, and that she'd timed her outburst for maximum buzzkill. The audience did cheer as she was escorted from the amphitheater by security. (She was subsequently revealed to be Laura Loomer, a blogger for a Canadian alt-right website.)
As the commotion unfolded onstage, a man sitting in the section to my left stood up, holding a camera phone, and began screaming, "You are all Goebbels!" He meant Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, but hilariously, he mispronounced the name so thoroughly, many people were simply puzzled. Turning to my friend, I whispered, "Why is this guy calling us gerbils?" His name turned out to be Jack Dogberry – oh wait, I'm sorry, Posobiec – an online conspiracy theorist who has promoted lies like PizzaGate. Charmingly, he would later post on Twitter, "I 100% pronounced Goebbels the correct American English way. Sorry, kraut-lovers."
He was escorted out, too, and the show went on. Later, he'd lie online about witnessing "a Manhattan crowd roar with applause as President Trump was stabbed again and again on stage" – 100 percent false. (It's here I'll note that Posobiec has been granted White House press credentials.) We did roar with applause, however, after his ouster, when the disembodied voice of the stage manager came over the intercome with the perfect cue, pointing the cast to the line that comes right after the dying Caesar's "Et tu, Brute?": "Actors, please, let's start up at 'Liberty! Freedom!'"

 

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

June 17, 2017    sixseventeenseventeen.. 

I used to write in a journal almost every day.. the kind with no lines.. so I'd sometimes sketch with my limited sketching..  today. no sketches.. 

It's a day that feels close to the end of days.  Dear friends on FB are discouraged and I, with too many projects that clog the pipeline and lead to ennui and no production.. sit here. wondering. 

Communication, as was pointed out in a semantics class that I am ever grateful for.. is about confirmation.. I send.. someone responds.. or doesn't.. which is a double edged sword.  Being ignored is a kind of response, but it's really not nice.  If someone is done with us; it would be good to hear that they are just done.  Of course, it may be that their device is not working, no signal or that they had their snail mail stolen or the mail truck burned to the ground.. or something.  

I've been complaining about the usurping of communication by the now well established 'tweet.'  That the man in the highest office in the land.. in the world?  'tweets' is indicative of how low we have fallen.  I think of great minds who wrote with the most elementary of writing devices. The Egyptians had papyrus and brushes or pens.  Cuniform on clay was used over four thousand years ago!!  Imagine Shakespeare with a quill and parchment or Virginia Wolfe with her lap tablet and maybe a pen and ink bottle?  The physical labor, even writing cursive or printing early in school for me was a chore, but expressed a hidden part of me. Typing! How easy this is because my mother insisted that I learn to type...

And now.. we go beyond to voice recognition! Hey Google! 

  A friend whose life is consumed with texting advises that we won't go back. Nothing I can do to stop 'progress..' as though abbreviations like 'u' and such are now a way to express ewe or you or yew?  No going back.  Do you have a fountain pen? Mont Blanc!?

The beauty of the long form: long hand.. cursive script.. is that it expresses something that is almost akin to voice and to even being face to face.. gone from school, I understand.. Mostly, I print.. but can write in cursive.. hah.  Remembering letters from a girl when I was twelve whose feminine hand was remarkable and sexy and kind.  And, today, years later...  a woman whom I still love with all my heart.. her fine hand : familiar ..  welcome, buoys me up. 

All those chores I mention, I should be on to, but here we are, my keyboard and I.. just cranking out a light weight complaint and longing for a letter with handwriting and even the most mundane message.. hello.. I miss you..  

Joni Mitchell's..  'we can't return, we can only look behind from where we came.. '  How do you make a zen circle on a keyboard?  There's probably a way, but the smell of the ink.. the mental preparation with brush in hand.. The single stroke.. one time only.. one of a kind.. starting dark and serious and then fading to a whisper..  in the circle game. 

michael sheehan

glendale, california.. 

FAIR'S FAIR

With the completion of Kent Twitchell's latest mural depicting the iconic Los Angeles artist, Ed Ruscha, I learned today that the scaffold company hired to deliver a scaffold to facilitate the 'shadow' on Kent's mural failed to deliver the right construction scaffold! They then wanted to charge 30% more for what I presume is the proper one.  Another scaffold company will be hired.  

I was going to 'out' this scaffolding company, but instead will tell about one of my favorite TV shows that features an old friend, Robert David Hall.  David is a fine actor and musician.  He's overcome tremendous problems to continue with his career on camera as well as in the land of Voice Overs.  The show is called CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.  

  

CSI could stand for something else, but I've decided not to mention it.  It's hard enough to get big projects like Mr. Twitchell's done without being hobbled by unscrupulous providers of services.  Right? 

Kent Twitchell / Photo by Marie Rooney Hardwick

There will be a gathering to celebrate the completion of Kent's tribute to Ruscha and to bid on silent auction art items to benefit mural efforts at a party at 

The American Hotel / Al's Bar 

 Saturday June 24th  /  5 until 8PM

303 Hewitt Street, LA, CA 90013

CSI? Forget about it! 

 
 

FINDING GEORGE LAKOFF

June 12, 2017

I so dislike politics.  Really.  Discussions are attempts to manipulate and debate with a stone wall is useless.  

Facebook is a source of information now and then and this is important.  

  

For years, I've understood that we fall basically into two 'sides.'  Conservative/Liberal was the subject of an experiment done in  England a few years ago where brain scans were done on a number of students.  Half declared themselves to be left leaning (liberal) in their beliefs and the other half: conservatives.   The brain scans showed that the more conservative leaning students had larger amygdalas than the more liberal students.  The amygdala is the part of the brain that tells us to react emotionally.. fight or flight! Limbic reactions!  Thus, if we want to move to a conclusion, more conservative people ... in this study.... were more likely to behave in a 'reactionary' way because of the size of this part of their brains.  

The article link below that chronicles the work of retired UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff, spells out in really simple terms what is happening in the United States today and why #45 was elected (sorry. it was the danged electoral college, not the actual vote of the voters! ) .. 

I get impatient with 'explanations' by really intelligent guys like Dr. Lakoff.  But, this makes total sense to me and I've seen what he discusses personally in people I know.  The strong patriarch rules in our society. Period.  Scary. 

Take a look at this and see if ideas come up that may change the way that liberals go about being liberal (fat chance?).. sink or swim?  Fascinating information.  Pass it on...Looks like a copy and paste deal.

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/05/02/berkeley-author-george-lakoff-says-dont-underestimate-trump/

Memory Lane

June 11, 2017 

Many years ago I took refuge in Garden Grove, California. On the run. It was the death of a young man that helped me find safe haven.  Hyperbole?  Well, a little.. but how often to you get to use the word 'hyperbole' with the exception of the dark days we now face in the United States?  

But, that's another issue.  

Room E5

This room has changed a bit on the outside but it is, indeed the place where I taught my first class in the magical arts of Theatre.  I can still see some of the kids who tolerated my being very new and helped me survive.  Being on the run can take a lot out of a guy.  E5 is now called by some other designation, but it'll always be 'E5' to me.  

Yesterday, I returned to school and found it a bit changed.  The highlight of the day was walking back into the cafeteria where my students and I often did our shows.  It was not easy coordinating with the cranky old plant supervisor, Art Murphy. Anything that a teacher did that disturbed his routine was a nuisance and he made no bones about being annoyed.  It was HIS campus and it was all he could do to tolerate the teachers, let alone those pesky students!  I wandered to a table spread out with memorabilia. A woman with white hair was perusing some artwork made from gourds.. or were they ceramics?  I teased a student who was spending a lot of time looking at them because a couple of the pieces had lids that fit only one way.. like the top of a Jack o' Lantern.. I called them 'aptitude tests.'  She didn't believe me! 

The woman and I chatted briefly.. she had graduated from this school. I  taught here a couple of years after she had graduated.  I then noted that her name was familiar to me.  She was the older sister of one of my most loyal students!  I was suddenly completely overtaken with emotion.  Her sister died of cancer many years ago, but the feeling of the loss of this special student overwhelmed me and the moment of pure emotion was incredible.  Hyperbole again? .. not if we take 'incredible' to mean overwhelmingly deep and special.. it was that sort of moment. And, for a bit we stood and wept together ... mourning again, the loss of this girl whom I will always remember because of her loyalty to the Theatre program and to me.  

Wandering the campus and seeing the camps of former students was pure nostalgia. I walked the halls and remembered a kid who had an asthma attack coincidentally as I was driving my VW bus down the hallway actually on the campus after hours. He just fell down in front of the bus!  He lived.   

Room H2

After my first year  our drama room was moved to the opposite end of the campus where we created a very makeshift theater.  

The room I always wanted, a large workshop space at the south end of the campus was denied to us, probably because the administration really had no interest in helping the program grow.  Politics? I remember the principal asking me one day in a little walking chat, "Mr. Sheehan.  Are you going to be one of the students or one of the faculty?"  Had I been more mature, I might have been able to respond, "I didn't know we were taking sides.  I just want to be a part of good education."  At the age of 26, it didn't occur to me to say that. 

Garden Grove has changed considerably over the years. We all have. My brief teaching experience literally saved my life.  I want to find out the name of the teacher who died ... whose place I took.  I want to send a thought into the Universe that I am grateful. 

The trees next to the "H" building are now huge. My kids and I made a movie based on Dr. Seuss's Horton Hatches the Egg.  Mary Hamm played Maizie, the lazy bird, sitting in one of those trees. Linda Tyler, Bonnie Palmer and Hope Friedman played the elephant hunters.  Barry Reddin played Horton and I got to play the elephant bird. 

Memories help us.  A student has just given me the teacher's name who preceded my time at school.  Joseph Christensen.  If you know anything about him, please let me know. 

 June 11, 2017