Jamie Jobb's Backstage Pass: July 2019

The Marsh Studio Theater, San Francisco

photo by Marilyn Berg Cooper

Stand-Up Drama:

Writing On Our Feet

by Jamie Jobb

“Don’t make the audience fear for your safety!”

When a director delivers such a rehearsal note to an actor on stage, the performer must do more than merely “pause”. That moment also demands the thespian question his very occupation of the role at hand. Especially since I’m the Fearsome Actor who also functions as the Fearless Playwright – the one who wrote those very words which now can’t be spoken without risk of audience trepidation.

While “stage fright” might be a problem at certain times for uncertain performers, it’s NOT my problem here at all. I’m simply too dizzy to stand and deliver my lines. My rhythmic momentum gets muddled by this constant spinning inside my head.

I’ve been diagnosed with Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV), which becomes pronounced in the dim dramatic light we find ourselves hereunder. My affliction is caused by floating calcium carbonate crystals disrupting the fluid-dynamics of my inner ear, falsely perturbing my balance. BPPV is a natural result of aging, and one main reason old folks like me move so slowly.

It doesn’t help my mind to know that the story my mouth is trying to tell is all about vertigo. In fact, my short one-man play is called “Vertigo Blues or Gravity’s Got Me Down”. Perhaps the title is too prophetic for earthquake-prone San Francisco? Just thinking about vertigo makes me dizzy. And the fact that I’ve suffered a pair of concussions over the years also compounds my performance problem.

I know elder stage actors who’ve been forced to quit because vertigo makes them feel unsafe awaiting cues in dramatic backstage darkness. Now that my awful truth has exposed itself in rehearsal, I dare not scare my audience in performance. So it seems my script needs complete revision, if not total removal from the playbill.

“The light in this place is so bad,

It’s makin’ me sick in the head.”

– Bob Dylan

I’m one of eight “performing playwrights” each working through our own material in this workshop on the mainstage at The Marsh, an incubator of lively black-box theater in San Francisco’s vibrant Mission District. The Marsh is a creative breeding ground where individual writers like us can stand upon our own Truths in a solitary-yet-safe performance setting. Our audience understands our one-person shows are works-in-progress. Our director prefaces performances with that caveat, so everyone knows what to expect from us: original unfinished works.

We’re two weeks from showtime and next week is our “final dress” rehearsal. I’ve been shaping my script for three months in a pair of workshops led by two of The Marsh’s foremost solo performers – first with Dan Hoyle in December, then with Charlie Varon in spring.

Stephanie Weisman, David Ford and others who operate The Marsh were wise enough to buy the building in 1996 before San Francisco’s 21^stCentury real estate boom negated establishment of any such 12,000 square-foot art center in this now upscale neighborhood.

Begun thirty years ago as a casual Monday night storytellers gathering at the Hotel Utah and various North Beach haunts, The Marsh slowly evolved into a non-profit organization eventually settling into its residency on Valencia Street – a huge two-story space consisting of three stages, a comedy club, cafe, youth theater and dance studio – all within the San Francisco facility alone.

In the East Bay, The Berkeley Marsh has plentiful space for events and conferences with its own cabaret, cafe and mainstage one block from UC Berkeley. Both venues are supported by an active and savvy audience, many of whom also are writers and performers themselves. Monday Night Marsh continues to run in San Francisco while Berkeley offers “Tell It On Tuesday”.

The Truth I’m seeking to tell here all alone on the San Francisco mainstage involves a life-and-death tale about a balance-challenged septuagenarian walking his geriatric dog in the tall hills above their small town. The climax comes when the senior recalls falling backward, heels-over-head, down a steep embankment … while living to tell his story.

“Theater is rhythm.”

– Dario Fo

Vertigo hits me the moment I walk onto the mainstage in Hoyle’s winter class and it continues to confront me in Varon’s spring workshop. Whether that’s intuition or coincidence, it doesn’t really matter. From the perspective of improvisational playwriting, we take our impulses and run them into plots.

My problem is I’m trying to act like I have vertigo while I actually do suffer that debilitating affliction – and it’s not a condition or emotion the actor in me can control like say, being “drunk”. No eye-movement or warm-up exercises I try seem to abate the sustained dizziness rattling around my head.

Jamie Jobb as Ray Rogers, Team Roper

videograph by Terry Porter

An actor who stumbles onto a stage after consuming two pints of Jack Daniels can act so drunk he won’t be able to perform drunk at all. Likewise, an actor experiencing vertigo on stage can’t be expected to hit marks and land punchlines with any semblance of coherent timing. This becomes obvious when I study rehearsal video, where I can objectively see myself missing cues and baffling my lines. The Truth, indeed. As Varon points out: “Verite is tough.” Yes, and vertigo feels, from the inside out, like being drunk without the alcohol.

“Whenever I’m acting, I’m not necessarily clowning.

But whenever I’m clowning, I’m always acting.”

– Geoff Hoyle

Dan Hoyle doesn’t teach frequently but when he has time to offer his pop-up workshop, his one-week notice is short and sweet: “I'm teaching a short four-week class on my process starting next week. Info and Details here. Feel free to reach out with any questions. All best, Dan”.

Luckily I got into Dan’s San Francisco workshop both times he offered it with such abrupt announcement. His performance schedule doesn’t allow him much time to teach. In sixteen short years with Varon as his director, Hoyle has crafted an astonishing dramatic career with seven full-length works all based upon people he meets in his travels. His titles reflect his wanderlust: “Circumnavigator”, “Florida 20 04: The Big Bummer”, “Tings de Happen”, “The Real Americans”, “Each and Every Thing”, “Border People”. I’ve seen each-and-every one of those incredible solo shows, so I know Dan’s The Man when it comes to capturing compelling stories.

Overseas, Hoyle has entertained audiences in Ireland at the Samuel Beckett Theater-Dublin, in Wales at the Taliesin Art Center-Swansea, in India at The Park-Kolkata, and throughout Nigeria at Abuja, Bauchi, Calabar, Lagos, and Jos. Beyond The Marsh mainstages, Dan has performed at Berkeley Rep, Aurora Theatre, Joe’s Pub, Culture Project, Portland Center Stage, Playmakers Repertory Company, Baltimore Center Stage, Cleveland Playhouse, Mosaic Theater Company (D.C.) and Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia).

Dan calls his craft “The Journalism of Hanging Out” (see “Tale of Two Sport Writers” previously in this space). Hoyle bases all his stage characters on actual folks he meets and interviews. His working process is a serious matter of spending the necessary time with these potential subjects of his dramas.

Dan’s Dad, Geoff Hoyle, grew up in England so he was influenced by the UK’s music-hall tradition (see Funny Bones - 1995). Geoff also went to Paris, to study Corporeal Mime with Étienne Decroux in the 1960s.

“If you shoot a mime, should you use a silencer?”

– Steven Wright

Corporeal Mime closely follows the footsteps of commedia dell'arte where loose improvisational “scripts” were devised by actors on foot to be recalled later in performance as “lazzi”: situations, dialogues, circumstances, recurring characters, rhymes, gags, plots, subplots.

Luckily for San Francisco, Geoff Hoyle relocated here after his Paris studies. And he helped spread mimecraft among those active in The City’s bustling “guerrilla theater” scene at that time. San Francisco Mime Troupe had been a lone outpost for “silent” stagework in 1975 when Geoff joined the Pickle Family Circus and fellow world-class clowns Bill Irwin and Larry Pisoni.

From the Mime Troupe’s portable stage and the Pickles’ solitary sawdust ring, physical comedy went viral on outdoor stages in the Bay Area ... exerting its influence on Theater of Man, Antenna Theater, Trenchmouth Productions, Video Free America, Theatre Makers, Teatro Califas, Mundial Sisters, Campo Santo, Lunatique Fantastique, as well as famous Union Square busking mimes Shields and Yarnell.

San Francisco’s sensational soloist Dan Hoyle

Dan Hoyle studied theater with a civic twist at Northwestern’s famous drama department, where classically attuned playwright Mary Zimmerman helped fine-tune young dramatists. Following his father’s career track, Dan Hoyle adapted commedia and Decroux techniques, particularly public gait recognition as his departure point for character development.

A forensic law enforcement tool, “Gait Recognition” considers a person’s footwork as individually unique as her fingerprints. Hanging out in plazas and coffee shops, Dan observes how people walk and otherwise move in public, before he ever attempts to occupy that character’s voice and story. Both Hoyles tap into characters by observational mimicry focused on footwork.

“I work off of people I meet. Start with a voice or a walk

or a gesture or a speech tic, a phrase used frequently.

At some point, I take over as an actor and writer

and I let those characters live inside my imagination,

But first I have to become them and believe

that I am them to write in their voice.”

– Dan Hoyle

Dan’s first class involves a lot of performing like ballerinas reflected in the mirrors of The Marsh’s upstairs dance studio. This is where Dan discusses his process of working in front of his own reflection and standing up as he “writes”. His classes always begin with a series of standard actor’s warmup routines focused on centering, relaxation, breathing and gravity.

Improvisation is commonly understood to mean two or more actors mixing it up in the moment, making up situations in their heads, a dialogue of “Yes, and … ” But what if only one person is on stage? For the solo performer, improv is something else: a way of writing that taps into an actor’s currency of the moment. All alone with whatever amuses the author, like a stand-up comic working up “bits”.

Hollywood’s first writer/director, Preston Sturges, wrote his screenplays on his feet, improvising dialogue in character voices while a secretary furiously transcribed. Lenny Bruce also wrote while standing (more on him below). Hoyle follows that time-honored ad lib tradition.

Also, Dan helps those of us who have trouble getting “off book” (remembering our lines!) by introducing us to his technique of “pseudo-memory” … If we know our Story better than our Text, we won’t have trouble “remembering” it on stage.

“Vertigo Blues” is developed during a dozen weekly workshops on The Marsh mainstage. Those of us who’ve had the privilege of standing here know this is hallowed ground. Our feet can’t miss feeling the aroused pulse of past performances by singular talents Geoff Hoyle, Marga Gomez, Josh Kornbluth, Robin Williams, Don Reed, Brian Copeland, Lori Holt, Mark Kenward, Merle Kessler, Wayne Harris, Rick Reynolds, Sebastian Boswell III ... in addition to our workshop leaders, Dan and Charlie.

Varon’s “Rush Limbaugh In Night School” set the standard for solo performance on the West Coast when it opened in 1995. Charlie followed up with “People’s Violin”, “Soup of the Day”, “Rabbi Sam”, “Feisty Old Jew”, “Life Gone Viral” … as well as his prank lecture known as “The Visiting Professor of Pessimism.” (Hear his work here)

Marsh Theater mentor Charlie Varon

videograph by Jamie Jobb

Luckily for performing writers like us, Varon has been offering his seasoned advice for three decades in these eight-week workshops which culminate in a public performance at The Marsh, each performer allotted 15 minutes alone on stage. Hoyle’s pop-up class has yet to include a performance night.

“Trouble is our friend.”

– Charlie Varon

Throughout our weekly workshops, Charlie and Dan reiterate these rules/reminders for solo performers, who tend to forget them wandering in moments of improvisation. Effective solo performers must remember to:

Slow down; don’t rush,
Turn out to face audience,
Jump cut; don’t force transitions,
Move downstage; get close to audience,
Be loud enough,
Say more with less,
Pause at proper points,
Let punchlines land,
Trust that humor will expose itself,
Pick Four Spots to stop on stage,
Set our feet,
Stand and deliver.

Varon’s assistant director Kenny Yun also reminds us to maintain our narrative voices in present tense to give our stories currency. Also, Kenny prompts me to break out of my tendency toward “logical” or linear writing – replacing my lists of “topics” within a scene with more surprising delivery choices, gestures and sounds instead of spoken words.

The goal of a playwright should be to make

a paragraph a sentence, a sentence a phrase,

a phrase a word, a word a gesture … and a gesture a look.”

– Dan Hoyle

In “Vertigo Blues” I’m attempting to portray a female doctor, a burial insurance salesman, “my wife”, “myself” and a dog … the story being a fiction based on current facts of my BPPV and our aging Tibetan Terrier. In tonight’s workshop, we’re two weeks out from our Monday night performance. Now, after five months work on my difficult story – with lots of help from both Charlie and Dan – I have to face facts: my script won’t work for me as an actor in service of myself as the “performing playwright.”

Much of my allotted workshop time has been spent discussing how my Actor could “occupy” vertigo without having it completely undermine my Playwright’s intention. Unfortunately, we know “The Judgment of Solomon” – my “baby” can’t be cut in half to separate performer from playwright. The only way to “disguise” my vertigo is to prevent it – I must NOT move around so much on stage.

But here’s where matters get tricky for the vertigo-impaired performer: Getting up. Getting down. Bending over. Moving my head around. Turning. Crossing stage … any quick reorientation of my head aggravates my vertigo.

Finally, I realize the only way I’m going to be able to perform in two weeks is to sit down on stage and act like Mike Daisey or Spalding Gray. Although I know to perform my story while seated will remove, quite literally, The Legs from my show. Recall that old Broadway boast: “That Show Had Legs!” Thus it had “A Good Run”, despite The Actor’s Blessing: “Break a leg!” Hell, I just wanna "Shake a leg, not break it!"

Performing while seated runs counter to the Decroux/commedia movement-based approach to theater which started me wandering this path in the first place. My piece is based on the movement, but I can’t do it justice!

Too dizzy to perform “Vertigo Blues", I’m forced to resort to an old script I developed in a 1998 Varon workshop, “Hitched Up Real Tight”, about a rodeo team roper who picks up a famous hitchhiker in Big Sur.

I had performed the piece two decades ago, so it involves extensive rewiring to bring the facts forward to match current political events. Originally the bit involved a satirical road trip and a sendup of Bill Clinton, who faced an embarrassing Impeachment Inquiry at the time. Our audience is unaware of that fact, so it assumes my work involves a current Impeachment Inquiry. View that final twelve-minute performance clip here: https://youtu.be/P-NhaU8bogU

“Say nothing, and plenty of it.”

– Perry Mason

Lenny Bruce mugging for the cops

The Solitary Soloist

and Lenny Bruce

Anyone who listens to Lenny Bruce long enough can become convinced that the humor of the 1950s “sick comedian” was a stark harbinger that aroused the following decade’s protest movement. But ears attuned to theater cadences may hear a stronger statement from Bruce’s bombastic stage presence. It’s no stretch to consider him The Absolutely Modern Forerunner of Solo Performance, the first author to step on stage into a soloist’s shoes with total commitment to his own truths.

Bruce often talked about writing on his feet, developing ad-libbed comedy routines through repeat performance before an ever-changing live audience. Bruce stood there alone and proved one person could craft compelling stage stories with impressionistic voices, authentic characterizations, guttural sound effects, sudden jump cuts – the full onomatopoetics of theatrical improvisation.

“First place, I don’t write.” said Bruce. “I create everything that I do, you know. I never actually sit down ... but I’ll ad lib things on the floor and then they’ll become bits, right?”

Of course, Bruce was not performing stand-up drama – his shows reckoned with no dramatic arcs. However, by stand-up comedy standards, Lenny’s monologues were quite impressionistic compositions of word jazz. Listeners today may marvel at how easily Bruce brought his scatological one-man dialogues – often in conflicting ethnic voices – into his “sick humor” on stage.

Singular raconteurs of the time – particularly Danny Kaye and Victor Borge – also could command an audience alone, but they were song-and-dance men, while Bruce was the glib hipster who wisecracked alone before opening new pasture for fantastical funny folks like Jonathan Winters, Joan Rivers, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and every other solitary soloist who stretched the limits of “stand up” comedy as on-going discipline-in-progress.

YouTube offers plentiful postings of Lenny Bruce “in performance”, but they’re mostly audio recordings of live concerts with no running video. Those are certainly worth a long listen, particularly while netsurfing. But here are a few rare video clips where we can actually see Lenny’s lightning-rod “foul mouth” in action:

Lenny Bruce on stage in concert (six parts)

https://youtu.be/-yUTZm5s_G0

(9:56)

https://youtu.be/cL9JFenmGgc

(9:16)

https://youtu.be/IkZBgztK9sE

(9:20)

https://youtu.be/1RcKLPnwV38

(9:35)

https://youtu.be/5has3FafIC4

(9:16)

https://youtu.be/UDA_4fA-4qk

(9:53)

Steve Allen Show appearance (April 5, 1959):

https://youtu.be/G3QgxmiBfNY

(13:04)

Another Steve Allen appearance (date unknown):

https://youtu.be/WroZsYrmKFk

(15:08)

Hugh Hefner interview on Playboy Penthouse (1959)

https://youtu.be/dh09K-4R69I

(22:55)

“Comedians often talk about getting punchlines down

to as few syllables as possible. But the best punchlines

are often no syllables. They are just looks and gestures.”

– Dan Hoyle

Some Very Funny Stand-Up Dramatists

Solo performance assumes myriad forms. In eight decades of singular showmanship after World War II, many individual actors/writers/comedians/impressionists/dancers/musicians/monologists have stretched the edges of performing alone on stage Note that many folks listed below do not perform material in dramatic arcs, but offer more episodic fare. They are included here to inspire solo performers working in various dramatic forms before a live audience.

Danny Kaye: “Royal Command Performance” (1948)

Victor Borge: “Comedy in Music”

Dario Fo: “Mistero Buffo”, “Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas”

Whoppi Goldberg: “A Lesson for Everyone”, “The Spook Show”, “Direct from Broadway”,

Jonathan Winters: “Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters”

Hal Holbrook: “Mark Twain Tonight”

John Gielgud: “The Ages of Man”

Ian McKell e n: “Acting Shakespeare”

Patrick Stewart: “A Christmas Carol”

Lily Tomlin: “The Search for Signs of Inelligent Life in the Universe”, “Not Playing With a Full Deck”

Carol Burnett: “Laughter and Reflection”

Phyllis Diller: “Goodnight, We Love You”

Joan Rivers: “Live at the Apollo”

Laurie Anderson: “Happiness”, “The End of the Moon”, “Dirtday”, “Home of the Brave”

Stacie Chaiken: “What She Left”, “Looking for Louie”, “The Dig”

David Hare: “Berlin”, “Wall”, “Via Dolorosa”

Steven Berkoff: “Shakespeare’s Villians”, “Actor”

Anna Deavere Smith: “Fires in the Mirror”, “Let Me Down Easy”

George Carlin: “Life is Worth Losing”, “Jammin’ in New York”, “What Am I Doing in New Jersey”

Richard Pryor: “Here and Now at the Saenger Theatre”

Mel Brooks: “Live at the Geffen”

Gilda Radner: “Live from New York”

Billy Crystal: “700 Sundays”

Joy Behar: “Me, My Mouth & I”

Bea Arthur: “Just Between Friends”

Jenny Allen: “I Got Sick Then I Got Better”

Andy Kaufman: Carnegie Hall – Milk and Cookies

Chazz Palminteri: “A Bronx Tale”

Rich Little: “Live at the Laugh Factory”

Tracey Ullman: “Live and Exposed”

Dave Chappelle: “For What It’s Worth”

Richard Lewis: “Concerts from Hell”

Steven Wright: “A Steven Wright Special”

Jerry Seinfeld: “I'm Telling You for the Last Time”

Penny Arcade: “New York Values”

Rick Reynolds: “Only the Truth is Funny”

"Weird Al" Yankovic: “Strings Attached”

Dana Carvey: “Straight White Male, 60”

Jason Alexander: “An Evening with Jason Alexander and His Hair”

Elaine Stritch: “At Liberty”

Margaret Trudeau: “Certain Woman of an Age”

Eve Ensler: “The Vagina Monologues”

Elisa DeCarlo: “Cervix with a Smile”

Eddie Izzard: “Dress to Kill”

Craig Ferguson: “Bing Hitler”

Chambers Stevens: “Desperate for Magic”

Ronnie Marmo: “I’m Not a Comedian … I’m Lenny Bruce”

James Whitmore: “Will Rogers’ USA”, “Bully”, “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry!”

Ed Asner: “FDR”, “A Man and His Prostate”

Ed Metzger: “Einsten: The Practical Bohemian”, “Hemingway: On the Edge”

Margaret Cho: “Notorious”, “I’m The One That I Want”, “Revolution”

Spalding Gray: “Swimming to Cambodia”, “Monster In a Box”, “Terrors of Pleasure”

Carrie Fisher: “Wishful Drinking”

Lorenzo Pisoni: “Humor Abuse”

Mike Daisey: “Invincible Summer ” (incredible clip about “thinking on your feet”!)

John Leguizamo: “Freak”, “Ghetto Klown”, “Spic-O-Rama”, “Mambo Mouth”,

Billy Crudup: “Harry Clarke”

Danny Hoch: “Taking Over”, “Jails hospitals & hip-hop ”, “Some People”

Sonya Kelly: “How to Keep an Alien”, “The Wheelchair On My Face”

Sarah Jones: “Bridge and Tunnel”, “Surface Transit”, “Women Can’t Wait’

Kimball Allen: “Secrets of a Gay Mormon Felon”, “Be Happy Be Mormon”

Max McLean: “C.S. Lewis on Stage”

Charles Ross: “One Man Star Wars Trilogy”, “One Man Lord of the Rings”

David Hansen: “I Hate This”

David Drake: “The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me”,

Sean Cullen: “Erotic Laser Swordfight”,

Sharon Abreu: "The Climate Monologues”

Pnina Gary: “An Israeli Love Story”

Aaron Davidman: “Wrestling Jerusalem”

Rick Miller: “MacHomer”

Jack Lane: “Wisdom of a Fool”

Tanya Barfield: “Without Skin or Breathlessness”

Stefanie Preissner: “Solpadeine is My Boyfriend”

Randy Bowser: “Karloff”

Jeff Robinson: “Live Bird”

Stevie Holland: “Love, Linda: The Life of Mrs. Cole Porter”

Barry Morse: “Merely Players”

Gloria Idahota Williams: “Monday”

Abdelkader Benali: “Yasser”

Bryony Kimmings: “I’m a Phoenix, Bitch”,

Tim Etchells: “Sleeping Through”, “A Broadcast/Looping Pieces”

Nigel Charnock: “Resurrection”

Wendy Houstoun: “Haunted, Daunted and Flaunted”, “Happy Hour”

Bobby Baker: “Drawing on a (Grand) Mother’s Experience”,

Mike Pearson: “The Lesson in Anatomy”

Janice Perry: “Naked at the Met”

Jim Meskimen: “Jimpressions Show”

Rhys Darby: “This Way to Spaceship”, “Imgine That”

Chris Sievey: "Frank Sidebottom at Kazuko's Karaoke Klub"

Mike Nichols/Elaine May: “An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May”

“I don’t do sketches from memory.”

– Bob Dylan

San Francisco Soloists

These talented folks often perform alone, primarily on stages in and around San Francisco which has developed its own unique brand of monologue storytelling:

Geoff Hoyle: “Geezer”, “Lear’s Shadow”, “Feast of Fools”, “The Convict’s Return”

Bill Irwin: “On Beckett”, “Texts for Nothing”,

Josh Kornbluth: “Love and Taxes”, “Citizen Josh”, “Haiku Tunnel”

Charlie Varon: “Rabbi Sam”, “Ralph Nader is Missing”, “Life Gone Viral ”

Marga Gomez: "Latin Standards", "Not Getting Any Younger", "Memory Tricks"

Rita Moreno: “Life Without Makeup”

Lori Holt: “Colette Uncensored”

Ken Ruta: “Oscar Wilde: Diversions and Delights”

John O’Keefe: “Shimmer”, “The Man in the Moon”

Dan Hoyle: “Tings de Happen”, “The Real Americans ”, “Each and Every Thing”

Wayne Harris: “May Day Parade”, “Mother’s Milk”

Don Reed: “East 14 ^th Street”, “Kipling Hotel”, “Can You Dig It?”