Stuff about the play.

I am playing Daniel Johnston in a play called Life is Happy and Sad, based on a single tape-letter he made for his best friend while he was living alone in Austin. I have never acted before, never even considered it.

I have no choice but to start in the middle, because the middle is where I’m at.

Wednesday night I was photographed for a local magazine article.  I can only hope that they don’t go with any of the photos in which I look like a gay hustler standing in a doorway, waiting for a car to slow down.  I believe I’m also going to do a brief interview on Saturday.

We got some work in on the second act, which is pretty much all music, after that.  I was completely exhausted, though, and Jason (the director/writer) was good enough to let me cut out early.  Got home in a walking coma and fell asleep watching Glee.  That show could be so much better than it is.  Still, though.

Yesterday: much better! Felt like two hundred and fifty bucks.  My shift at work slid by so easily that I didn’t even realize it was time to clock out when it was.

I had listened to the tape on which the play is based on my bus ride to work. It was helpful to get back to Dan’s version of the thing after having internalized and performed it from “my” perspective for so long. And I think that’s what led to last night’s “breakthrough” (Nodler’s word, not mine).

The way the play is structured now, Act 1 is pretty much an uninterrupted monologue with a song or three here and there.  Act 2, as mentioned, is pretty much all music with a couple of scenes of talk.  Jason had been kicking around the idea of restructuring: plopping the Act 2 songs into the Act 1 talking in places where they’d make sense. Of course, I was open to it if it was effective, so we gave it a shot.

By the time we got to the second spot where I was to stop talking and start playing, Jason nixed the whole idea. Just like that. The monologue was going so smoothly and so effectively that interrupting it to play songs felt unnatural. Jason was genuinely thrilled by my work and came as close to gushing as I suspect I’ll ever see him. It was really nice. And performing the monologue felt better and more fun than it ever has.

A good night’s sleep played no small part in all of this.

Later, we pushed through the songs in Act 2. Also felt great/free/natural. These songs are so great and so much fun to play, and I am of course getting more comfortable with them with every rehearsal. This brings us to the second minorly major moment of the evening:

the last full song before the curtain call is a desparately sad and beautiful tune called “Going Down”. It comes after a bit of a peak and just crashes crushingly. I nailed it last night, and when I looked up…

…our stage mager was on the verge of tears. Literal tears. There were three of us in this big empty black theater, and I had made a virtual stranger cry by singing. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.

Here’s the song in question.