More pictures and blood evidence forthcoming. . .
Friday, August 5, 2022
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.
"No more pirating! It would be too great a loss to the arts!" |
"The potent poison pearl is. . . something." |
Wrote it, directed it, have no idea what's happening here. |
Michael Rayner. |
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 the 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!
Safety Last (part 1): Finding the Sense of Danger
"Nobody ever went into battle shouting: 'Give me safety or
give me death!' And neither shall we go on stage preoccupied
with our physical well-being. The show is bigger than any of
us, so if you're more concerned about your own survival
than about performing a great show, then you're on the wrong
pyrate crew! Safety is not worth dying for, and it's
not worth the show dying for..."
more to me than my own life. So it's certainly worth more
care how many of you get hurt or killed,
Lazarus: Hours away from a great performance. |
In those early days our pirate look was not even passable. |
A week after that i cracked Wolf's nose with a belaying pin (not intentionally). He had to wipe with his sash and snort blood before each line to finish the show. A couple days later i stabbed Lazarus during rehearsal, into the back of his hand and out the palm. It was bloody. He had a gig that night with his band and went onstage with a wad of cotton taped to his palm and a maxi pad over his knuckles. They were punk rock so nobody noticed.
For the first dozen shows someone got hurt in every single performance yet we always got more applause than the other acts so we began to suspect that, like a NASCAR race, certain people watched us just hoping to see a wreck.
But after we'd done it enough times it started going smoothly. We'd adapted to the complications of blood-wet slippery stages and stepping over the dead during combat. (the dead always had their eyes open in terror that a weapon would land on them) We also got comfortable with the sword choreography and this was not a good thing. It didn't seem as piratey when everything worked. The fights were tighter, even graceful, but the audiences weren't gasping or cheering as much. The verbal jokes still got laughs but something intangible was missing. We had evolved into a polished theatrical troupe and polish did not work when you were a pirate.
Winifred, Lazarus, Severine. |
"i know it, man. i know."
"We're just a bunch of actors now. I don't feel like a pirate anymore."
"Maybe we need a new show."
"We can't do a new show. I finally have my lines almost memorized." (by "memorized" he meant able to remember that he had a line when it came up, not so much able to deliver the line correctly)
"The jokes still work. It's something else..."
"It's the fights. That double-cutlass thing used to be the sh*t, but it doesn't pack a punch anymore. It looks like choreography."
"That's because we don't screw it up like we used to."
"That's what's wrong with it! When you look too rehearsed people realize they're just watching a show. There's no sense of danger unless you f*ck up once in a while so it looks like a real fight."
"Sh*t! We should drink before the shows, so we're sure to f*ck things up."
"Good idea!"
Naturally Lazarus thought it was a good idea, he'd never done a sober show yet. Still, i resolved to test this theory (strictly for science) so at our next show i stealthily downed a few jiggers of rotgut rum just minutes before stagetime. i was discreet about it because i'd always discouraged the cast from over imbibing.
The show began with a three on one fight against our captain, Jaimie Bellows, with him prevailing and vanquishing us. The liquor crept up on me thru those first moments. i couldn't tell what effect it had on my swordfighting but it sure well worked on my mind. i felt GREAT! Like a true pirate, completely in character. This was awesome! The only thing that went wrong in the whole show was a squib not breaking, nobody even got hurt. What a triumph.
"Helluva show!" said Lazarus.
"What a show," said Bellows. "Now we can get a drink, finally!"
"Umm, yeah," i said. "Let's get a drink." i was already four sheets to the hurricaine but i presumed they couldn't tell. (they could tell but i was too drunk to tell that they could tell)
Severine wasn't fooled. She began shouting at me: "What the hell were you doing, going onstage drunk?!"
Had i been sober at that moment i would have realized the futility of trying to explain it to her but, alack, in my diminished state, i tried: "i thought the show might look more natural if i wasn't so sober."
"Well it didn't. You forgot half your lines!"
"You're exaggerating. You're a pathological exaggerator.."
"And you totally grabbed Winifred's ass in your scene with her."
"i don't remember that." If i had done that i regret not remembering it.
"Oh yeah, and you scared the hell out of Cabinboy." It had been Cabinboy's first show with us. (We called all the new recruits Cabinboy until we came up with proper pirate names for them).
"Why? What's his problem?"
"When his squib didn't break he was afraid you were going to stab him for real just to get some blood in the scene."
"He's right. Blood is very important for this show. Next time i will stab him to get that blood. He moved out of the way this time." i meant that as a joke, of course, (no, honest, it was a joke).
"You should go talk to him and tell him he's safe. He thinks you're mad that he didn't let you stab him. Now he's afraid to do the next performance."
"No, he isn't."
"No, he really is! You need to talk to him."
"Balls to that! i'm drinking."
i staggered off toward the bar. Severine followed. "I need a drink too…"
Cabinboy didn't show up for the next day's performance.
Severine. |
Bellows got us gigs like the CutThroat Island screening and the Redondo Beach pier opening but we also did a few non-piratey things like histrorical festivals and faires. i really hated the faires. They always contained at least a few meddling, busy-body, "safer-than-thou" types. (Lazarus called them "safety-nazis"). Sword performers who held to a narrow opinion of how things should be done and were hostile to anyone who deviated from their orthodoxy. These were broadsword/rapier/etc. fighters. As pirates, we used different weapons hence we did things diferently. We didn't criticize them for being different but they sure came after us.
At those events we could measure our success by the amount of hostility we got from the other performers. We quickly realized that whenever someone told us how bad our show was it was usually because our show went over better than theirs had, it was just jealousy, so if we came off stage to the rebukings and admonishments of other artistes we knew we'd done well.
Some criticisms were reasonable, like: "Maybe you guys need to rehearse more." i would respond by pointing to the Brethren of the Coast placard next to the stage and asking, "Does that say 'Refined demonstration of thespianic skill?' No, it says: 'PIRATES!'"
Sometimes the older sword performers would try to lecture us, affecting superiority and then boring us with "safer-than-thou" platitudes and suggestions -like "Never drink before a performance"- that would have only weakened our act until it sucked as bad as theirs had.
We pirates felt that, as long as the audience didn't get hurt, the performers were adults who could decide for themselves what risks we were willing to take by getting onstage with one another, we could only blame ourselves for our injuries so it wasn't anyone else's concern. But these "lecturer" types presumed that we were trying to do what they did: polished proficient swordfights. They were wrong; we were pirates and there is no polish or gracefulness in piracy. It was they who wanted what we had: the fun of performing.
One memorable "Safety First" crusader insisted on condemning us for recklessness after we'd done a particularly successful show. This guy got so angry that Lazarus and i couldn't resist antagonizing him, we eventually made a sport of these perpetually outraged busybodies. This fellow berated us for several minutes, seriously shouting things like: "Your whole crew is dangerous and you shouldn't be allowed to perform anywhere, at all, ever!" i again pointed to the placard. "Does that say 'Polished demonstration of the proper and gentlemanly techniques of swordplay?' Well, does it? No. It says: 'PIRATES!'"
"Well I'm reporting you for drinking!"
"Dude, we're pirates. PIRATES!" He just didn't comprehend it.
"You're the most unprofessional group I've ever seen!" He was furiously mad even though we'd given him no provocation other than winning over an audience he had failed to, and our cheerful demeanor (which we knew would get his goat). He finally stomped away, probably to yell at somebody else he disapproved of. There's always somebody who'll try to make you feel bad about feeling good. F**k those people.
Bellows asked: "Who's he going to report us to? The Temperance League?" Lazarus said: "Let's get a drink!"
We never discovered what that guy's problem was but i will speculate that he suffered from a bad case of Pirate Envy.
The lessons to be learned from this: 1: There is no polish or gracefulness in piracy. 2: If Patrick Henry had demanded "Give me safety or give me death!" nobody would remember him today.
Godspeed!
Thanks to Jessica Black Photography for several of the pictures here.