Yes, I spend a lot of time moving things from one place to another.

.mov files or .mp4′s or .jpegs.

Cameras or lights or computers.

Bills or forms or junk mail.

As I move things from one place to another and try to find the proper way to file, to organize, to contain, I have to remind myself sometimes to enjoy the things that don’t fit into a category.

Your Story – 071111 from KBH Media on Vimeo.

Father, Son and Son

Your Story 070411 from KBH Media on Vimeo.

1. Fast or Slow?
2. What is your favorite color?
3. What is your favorite thing to eat?
4. Hard edges or soft edges?
5. What is your favorite room in your house?
6. What is your favorite flavor of Ice Cream?
7. What is your favorite piece of music?
8. What is your biggest fear in life?
9. What celebrity would you stalk?
10. What's your favorite movie?
11. What piece of music would others say best describes you?
12. What is your least favorite activity?
13. Cubs or Sox?
14. What is your favorite animal?
15. Who would you most like to have cook dinner for you?
16. What is your favorite place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there?
17. What is your favorite phrase?
18. Who is your favorite Beatle?
19. Dog or Cat?
20. What is your favorite joke?

Of course, you can adjust this list to fit your needs and ask some questions that will better work for your interview but it’s a fun way to just get the ball rolling.

And it works great for capturing outtakes, too!

June 5, 2010

I did a post on the strawblog a few weeks ago about this rebirth or revolution that I’m feeling thrust into. It’s hard to explain really and I’m still trying to put my finger on it.  That’s one reason why I had to come home when I found out my high school drama teacher, Carol Ann McAdams, and stagecraft teacher, Pris Benson, announced they would be retiring after 40 years of teaching together and there would be a celebration in their honor. I had to come home.

I tried to remember the last time I was on this stage and I couldn’t bring it to mind. If I had to guess it was for closing night of Anything Goes. The reason I can’t remember? Because I was in HIGH SCHOOL!!! I had no idea how good we had it. We were teenagers acting on one of the nicest stages (complete with fly system) that I have ever worked on. And I’m still acting 17 years later.  But I digress.

I had to come home even though I’m in the middle of producing a fundraiser event for my theatre company that I’ve been a part of for 11 years.

I had to come home even though we start rehearsal today for the remount of Red Noses, one of the biggest hits we’ve ever had at Strawdog.

I had to come home even though I’m struggling to get a video production company off the ground.

Wait, wait, wait. Even though?

No.

I had to come home because of all those things.

Home is where it all begins. And this is where it all began. My first taste of everything theatre had to offer. The family. The escape. Belonging to something bigger than oneself.

Chicago is my new home but this was my first home.

Artists focus on the art.

Administrators focus on the business.

The board focuses on money.*

Then, there was a conversation on twitter around Jax’s question:

“What is a term for a pro artist who also has a day job, as distinguished from, say, an insurance salesman who likes to tap dance sometimes?”

Different people had different thoughts about how you define it. I thought it was a fascinating question. Mostly because that would sort of define my life over the past 8 years.

Also, August Schulenburg wrote about the context of the world in which we live. Read his post…it’s worth it.

And much political conversation of late has been more and more about the endagered Middle Class and the growing divide between the “haves” and the rest of us. Irony.

All that is to say that I think a great majority of us producing theatre art (from the Box Office staff to the Actors) are the middle class of theatre. We aren’t the administrators at the big regional houses or the Tony Award winners. But we are also not the folks just punching a clock and coming home to tune out the world.

We have dedicated ourselves to theatre. Fighting tooth and nail to make it all work.

I don’t want to get rich and famous. I just want to do something I enjoy and take care of my wife and family.

The same way I’m not into naming things Black and White, I can’t really say we are Blue Collar or White Collar. It’s a new Collar. But, yeah, what do we call it?

*(I wasn’t a part of any conversations about board but…I like threes.)

So there has been a bit of conversation recently regarding Twitter and Theatre and whether or not the two go together like Chocolate/Peanut Butter or Chalkboard/Fingernails. The 2amt discussion got mentioned in You’ve Cott Mail yesterday, which stirred up another round of conversation.

Tweet like it’s 2010!

My take? Stop talking about it and DO something about it.

I’m trying to use twitter to facilitate more storytelling at another upcoming 360 Storytelling Event that is happening this Sunday (August 8th, 2010) at Strawdog Theatre.

The idea being that if you use 140 Characters to share a thought it will give someone in the room (or online watching) an idea for a story.  So help keep the conversation going in a constructive way. The theme is Color. Use the hashtag #360st. I’ll read a few tweets in between stories to help create conversation. That’s what twitter is all about, right?…Conversation?

This post is written in hopes of wrapping up the “360 Storytelling @ Strawdog Theatre: A Multi-media Storytelling Event,” an event that occurred at Strawdog Theatre Company on May 14, 2010. (and to publicize the next one on Sunday, August 1st, 2010.)

The Creative Side (Dreaming It Up)

I had been intrigued by the idea of doing one of these 360 Storytelling events as soon as David J. Loehr had first brought it up on twitter.  But the way our late nights at Strawdog have been working for the past few years, I knew we needed more structure than an open ended evening of inviting people to talk would give us. This was later confirmed but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The Plan (Figuring It Out)

I had no marketing budget and thus was planning on using social media to get the word out. And I thought it might be fun to use social media to talk about social media and thus, a theme (and to some extent a structure) was born: Social Media.

So I asked for help. Using social media.

A few ‘plants,’ if you will, to make sure we had something to present on the night of the event.

Being the video guy that I am, I did some video interviews locally asking people about social media. I then asked some of my twitter friends to answer the same questions and submit their own story via video. Staying true to the 360 form, I made three 360 second clips, which would be my beginning, middle and end of the evening.*

But the big leap was that I wanted to take it to the community that had created it.

So I set up a Ustream account to broadcast it.

Online.

To the World.

The Tech Side (Getting It Done)

I ran into some problems burning the guest videos to DVD. The solution was to play them straight from my MacBook to the projector. So now my old laptop became the “broadcast” computer. I did a test run the day before. No problem.

The night of the event, however, the laptop (for reasons unknown) would not connect to the Internet at Strawdog.

Our bartender, Tim, had a small netbook that would connect but it didn’t have a camera and would not accept my Logitech web-cam. Don’t you love troubleshooting?

Then out of the darkness (literally) comes Michael, our stage manager for the mainstage show, who had recently got a new MacBook that he was very proud of. He let me use it and seemed happy to see his new computer being put to such good use.

So, I logged into Ustream via a borrowed computer with the onboard iSight camera pointed towards the microphone and started broadcasting.

“This whole thing is weird.” (Getting It Going)

Once most of the logistics got worked out, it was 20 minutes past ‘go’ time and I finally started.  Being frazzled by all the tech problems, I forgot to introduce myself.

Or the event.

Or all the people that had helped get us this far.**

So it was a bumpy start and not too many people shared stories. One of the first folks to the microphone, Brian, started with, “This whole thing is weird.”

Which actually helped to break the ice.

A little.

Remember, at the beginning of this post, I said I knew we needed more structure? Well, we needed more structure, at least at the beginning. People were ready to watch. They were not ready to share. After a few videos and some stories, I decided to take a break and a majority of the room left.

The Happy Ending (Wrapping It Up)

The few that came back after the break were…“in it to win it.” People began to share stories and it was great. Being a few beers in at that point, also helped to loosen people up. Chelsea shared that she had found out via facebook that Anne Bogart, an idol of hers, had discussed Chelsea’s facebook status update. Monica told a story from Iowa via Skype. I’ll have to do a separate post on that later. But the best part in my mind was that someone who had never been to our theatre, Pearl, told a story about the joys of getting birthday wishes from distant friends. Two nights later, she came back and saw our mainstage production and asked how to get more involved at Strawdog.

Coming Soon (Doing It Again)

So the theme I’m going with for this one is Black&White because I’ve lately been on a tear about trying to get people to find the middle ground and stop seeing the world in black and white. But also I really like black and white photography. And my first car was white with black interior. This could go a lot of different ways.

I’m setting up my own dedicated wireless connection using the Clear service.  I’ll be using my Sony Mini-DV camcorder running into my MacBook with a analog (RCA) to digital (firewire) converter to broadcast. If you’d like to upload a video story for me to show, you can send me the link and I’ll show them. Also, I’ve got a few stories lined up to get the ball rolling.

To tell a story:

Come to Strawdog (3829 N. Broadway) at 6pm this Sunday, August 1st.

or send me a link to your video.

To watch online:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/somestorytelling

To be a part of an experiment:

Tweet anything with the words ‘black’ or ‘white’ and the hashtag #360exp.

*the three videos I created along with some other 360 Videos can be seen here.

**Special Thanks to: David J. Loehr – Davidjloehr.com, Dave Charest – DaveCharest.com, Rebecca Coleman – Artofthebiz.com, Travis Bedard – Cambiareproductions.com, Chris Ashworth – Figure53.com, Scotty Iseri – Scottygotanofficejob.com