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Thursday, June 9, 2022
Pirates Murder Shakespeare
First posted February 23, 2020:
We had a five person show ready to go then lost two pirates at the last minute and had about six hours to rewrite the scripture for three pirates and rehearse intensely to absorb the new script whilst unlearning the previous version. For a moment we considered canceling the gig but one should never run from a challenge.
We did it. We slayed. Slaying is what we do. Shakespeare might disagree. My crew might disagree but i think we killed it. Well, except for that one thing. That one horrible thing. . .
The thing: i, Bullet, forgot a line of dialogue. Fact. Truth. i did. And not just any line but a crucial, pivotal line of exposition without which the rest of the show made no sense. Realizing my unforgivable misdeed i tried to correct it by inserting, awkwardly, the requisite information into an ad lib a few seconds later but that just wasn't graceful or effective. no, the show was weakened, considerably, nigh irreparably, by my incompetence. Me, an experienced performer who should have reasonable skills by now. Apparently i don't. i hadn't screwed up this bad since i was a youngling thespian struggling thru Hurlyburly in Ted Harris' acting studio 30 years ago. That one was forgivable though. Everybody f**ks up Hurlyburly the first time they do it. Those thousand lines about "stuff" and "stuff on top of stuff" and "more stuff" all sound alike and it's easy to lose your place. Rabe probably wrote the d*mned thing just to torture actors.
But this thing i'd adapted myself, proudly breaking the eight minute record set by Skinhead Hamlet
by cramming the entire tragedy into four short minutes. i had no excuse
for mangling it to this magnitude. It was my show;
director/actor/writer (with Shakespeare, of course). No other
explanation: i'm just a sh*tty actor. i'll own it.
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| "No more pirating! It would be too great a loss to the arts!" |
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| "The potent poison pearl is. . . something." |
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| Wrote it, directed it, have no idea what's happening here. |
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| Michael Rayner. |
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| The technologically, photographically proficient Scot Nery took this himself. |
Screams from Rehearsals
Joe was never in town long enough to learn complex sword choreography so we had to include this same sequence in every single show. We decided that captain should be too cool to get into more than one fight per show anyway. Here's Joe versus Bullet. This same fight would eventually be Joe vs. Ed, Joe vs. Alexandra, vs. Samantha, vs. Ozero. You get the picture. He was great at it though:
Pirate Invasion Long Beach 2019
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Afterward, we made our weary way to Dock 3 to board my favorite tall-ship, the American Pride, seaworthy again after a few years. Once at sea, we performed a quick skit in which world traveling adventuress Kendra Guffy joined us to deliver a couple lines and slap Ed's face. Mary Widow videoed this one and caught somebody really laughing at the "Quantum Pirates" joke which has validated me as a true writer of comedy!
Fifty-thousand people attended Pirate Invasion this year! The event was featured on multiple television segments and Imagine Pirates were in a couple of newspapers.
Bullet was wanted -but so were his friends.
(Pirates hang together. Swing one, swing all!):
Main-stage show:
Ship show:
Friends and Co-Pirates:
The Brothers Galahvan.
Captain Mark of the Aqualink.
Kendra and Mary Widow.
Everyone but me.
All for Rum!
More to come...
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