Your Travalanche Daily Digest for October 27, 2026
10 hours ago
Friday, July 25, 2008
the poet and the adman
In The SF Chronicle today, there was an article about this new cable TV show called "Mad Men." I don't have a TV, so this was the first I had heard of it. The reviewer was extrenely keen on the show, whose protagonist is a Madison Avenue cat in 1960 who is oblivious to the fact that the world is changing around him, but senses that something is not right between himself and his world. The reviewer relates this one incident in which our hero is hiding out in a bar at lunch time, and has an exchange with a guy sitting there reading a book of Frank O'Hara poems. The main character suspects he's been snubbed when the guy with the book tells him he doesn't think he would like it-- admen don't go in for poetry, right?
It's funny, because in the class I am always insisting that students find visceral ways to describe what they (as their characters) are pursuing in their scenes. I explain that the viscera are the intestines, the guts. And that I want people to speak as plainly as they can about what they are pirsuing. We try to avoid what I call "Oprah talk." But getting down to a visceral way of talking about their scene work can be elusive for people. This is inevitable, because getting visceral means getting real and getting crucial (the CRUX), and it has to be earned. But recently I found myself telling the students that if they wanted to get visceral, look at the language of advertising, of taglines. "Got milk?" "Think different" "You're not really clean until you're ZEST-fully clean." Or my very own "Because a killer instinct is a terrible thing to waste." The folks who come up with this kind of copy meant to send millions of people running to the store to buy whatever the product in question is know that they have no choice but to be direct, simple, visceral. Failure is the alternative. I think that in advertising there is a powerful understanding of the efficacy of language, especially plain language, but because we are all immersed in it, it can be hard to perceive. But all of this is to say that the adman and the poet, who also understands (we hope!) the visceral potential of language, are really just two sides of the same coin.
--Mother of Invention Acting School
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Saturday, June 14, 2008
Jennifer Jajeh's one woman show in NY Fringe
Longtime Mother of Inventioner Jennifer Jajeh, who happens to be Palestinian, is taking her one woman show, I Heart Hamas, to New York. She will be presenting her work as part of the Fringe Festival there. More information at
http://www.ihearthamas.com
Congrat Jennifer!
A
--Mother of Invention Acting School
----
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Mother of Invention acting classes in Los Angeles
Starting in October, I will be offering classes in Los Angeles on Wednesday nights, as well as the Monday night class in San Francisco. See the calendar page of utteracting.com for more information.
http://utteracting.com/
---Mother of Invention Acting School
Thursday, April 24, 2008
my take on sarah marshall
I haven't been to a movie in eons, but the promotional stuff for Sarah Marshall piqued my interest, I thought it might be a good bet. And it was. It's not the greatest movie you'll ever see, it has its share of cliches and implausibilities, but I did want to mention that I thought Mila Kunis was fantastic. I hadn't seen much of her before, and I thought she showed a high level of skill and honesty in bringing some rawness to a raunchy comedy. Check it out.
A
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Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Jeremy Shortlived
Longtime MoIer Jeremy Mascia is acting in this thing called ShortLived, sort of a playwright's reality show. Info below.
I'm in a play called Shortlived; after a successful debut last weekend I would like to let everyone know about it.
(press release)
PianoFight Productions presents a night of fully staged, short plays, by a myriad of writers, where each piece is scored by the audience. The two lowest scoring pieces are then replaced two weeks later by two brand new fully staged shorts. The writer who's script(s) receive the longest run / highest raw score will be offered a four week run of an original full length play, to be produced by PianoFight, in Studio 250 at Off-Market.
The opening piece to every performance is an actual audition of someone we've never met, to become a member of PianoFight's company.
- Line-ups and results will be posted on pianofight.com
- Anyone who brings a script to be considered for "ShortLived" will only pay half price to see the show
- Someone from the audience could end up being a writer for "ShortLived"
- The audience will choose the writer of a full length PianoFight production
- All submission of all formats/styles (under 30 pages) will be considered
- So far, all writers have responded to submission calls on CraigsList
- Go fuck yourself.
- Just kidding. Wanted to make sure you were still paying attention
Contributing Playwrights:
Megan Cohen, Richard Ciccarone, Geneva Lorraine Fiore, Luz Gaxiola, Brett Hursey, Ashley Perryman, Rob Ready, Chelsea Sutton, Dan Williams and more to come …
Starring:
Bennie Bell, Diana Brown, Christy Crowley, Victor DeLucie, Heather Goddard, Stefanie Goldstein, Nina Harada, Jennifer Jaleh, Kat Kniesel, Jeremy Mascia, Eric Reid, Rob Ready, Farrah Saunders, John Steen, Dan Williams and more to come …
Directors:
Gabi Patacsil, Rob Ready, Eric Reid
Audience Reviews:
"I thought that the event was a highly creative one. The plays were mostly excellent (two, I thought, were mediocre), but the audience got to vote on the plays! Nice involvement. I thought they were thoughtfully staged and acted as well." 4/4 stars
"Hilarious! Super acting to boot! Can't wait to see it again in a few weeks to see how it has morphed." 3/4 stars
Hope you all can make it out (i don't want to be voted off just yet), or if you have a short, contribute.
More info: http://pianofight.com
Tickets at brownpapertickets.com
OK, have a good one.
jeremy
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