Hava Happy Hour / Sunscreen & Tomatoes

This month I look forward to taking to the stage again with April Hava Shenkman for her HAVA HAPPY HOUR - Imagine The Judy Garland Show directed by Fellini.

It was a pleasure to share in the special birthday fun of THE HAPPY HAPPY REBEGIN DAY CELEBRATION. Now I return to the stage to share two songs alongside several special guests. It all happens 8:30pm at Spirit Studio Silverlake, 2601 Hyperion Ave. LA, 90027

For more details visit the Facebook invite page


In honor of the event, here is one of the very first collaborations April and I created, back in 2005! A crazy little romp of a piece called SUNSCREEN & TOMATOES. It's a pretty sick and twisted, yet wild bit of fun satire on relationships and the stereotypical differences between men and women. Plus it was just a good time getting all sloppy and crazy on stage!

A Perfect 20! The Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival 2013

This year I was pleased once again to have edited the promotional video trailer for the Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival. It's a wonderful organization that produces a fantastic festival of solo performing artists. It was a challenge to pack all that amazing work into 1 minute for airing on television, but I think I captured the essence of its diversity!

Additionally, what was cool for me, is that this year the festival is held at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center's Renberg Theatre. I just so happened to have been the venue's first ever Production Manager of the Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Department back in 2001-2002, back before I really got into being a performing artist myself!

Cosmic ReBirthing Pains

So I have heard from several different friends who are experiencing an unusual amount of worrisome feelings and a general sort of depression about the state of world affairs and the future. Certainly it is normal to experience such feelings during January and February, following the big holiday-end of year blitz.

However, a lot of challenging “stuff” happened in the past few months and the issues seem to keep piling up. We are faced with some pretty daunting and depressing global issues. There are some very heated debates and differences of opinions about where to go and what to do.

In many ways we may feel disappointed that there wasn’t some tangible and dramatic shift of energy during the much emphasized end of the Mayan Calendar. What we experienced though on Dec 21, 2012, was one culture’s method of marking time - and our cultures have so many creative ways of marking and measuring time. The Mayans apparently measured a rotation of the galaxy (how they did it so precisely is a marvel to be sure), and while so much more was mythologized around that event, the basic thing that occurred was that the alignment of our planet with the sun made it seem that the sun was positioned at the dark center of the milky way galaxy - in what they considered the birth canal. So it was like experiencing a cosmic rebirth.

If that is the case…we must remind ourselves that any form of a birthing process is painful and difficult. A human birth can take hours or days. A cosmic rebirth…who knows how long the process really takes, but certainly it wouldn’t be simple. It requires a lot of work and effort on our part. I don’t have any firsthand physical birth experience, but they say you have to push and to bare down and breathe, etc.

The same ideas apply within our spiritual lives and as we grapple to find and sustain happiness. We can’t get by with mere illusions and delusions that may have helped us get by in the past. We can’t wait around for a savior, or aliens, or magical miracles to do the work for us. We can’t be complacent. We CAN contribute and create miracles by staying focused and committed and by transforming these ill feelings into something productive and useful. We may have to trick ourselves at times to shake off our worries and fears to move forward with some momentum as the issues pile up.

There is a mountainous obstacle of life to climb. Our culture has to “get over itself.” The key is to enjoy the process and journey as much as we can. We’re all part of a big experiment, and while more and more of it looks pretty complicated and devastating toward the point of collapse, we have to try out new things, keep doing things that are playful, keep doing things that are Foolish and could lead to new possibilities. We will constantly go through periods of forgetting and remembering these processes. The great thing is that so many people are remembering and sharing and moving together.

I remember some teachings from the tantric perspective, that the womb to an unborn child is like paradise. But it can’t stay in there forever. Birth, requires destruction, a removal from the womb, which leads to the creation of a new life in a new world, but the transition is painful and brutal. A baby cries for a reason — it’s paradise was just taken away. But over time, we’ll learn to breathe and accept this strange, new world. It may not be the warm, comfy, dreamy, womb….but it holds many treasures to behold and many opportunities to create. Nothing is created without destruction, but we want to be sure what we create is worth what we lose in the process.

Hopefully more of us wake up to what we are losing and do something about it, and that we are consciously creating some beautiful things to keep us going and to keep us sustainably happy, not just deluded and distracted - but it all serves a purpose! We don’t live forever. Our time here is short. And that may truly suck, but it sucks even more to miss out on what little bit we have. And if part of that is feeling down, then make it be the greatest fertilizer and fuel for the next adventure. The simple things can offer the biggest rewards. The biggest reward can be experiencing the simple relief of just being in the moment of now unfolding into now, now, now, now…

so
if you ever feel unlucky
remind yourself;
out of all the
millions upon millions
of determined, strong-willed, competitive, focused,
fierce, bold, adventurous, awesome…
sperm
that struggled against each other
while seeking out that most cherished
prize of the egg --
you were the lucky one
who hit the jackpot.

so go ahead and enjoy
spending your fortune!

The Night to NOTE 2013

Ode to the Divine Fool at Theatre of NOTE

It was exciting to perform once again at The 18th Annual Theatre of NOTE Performance Marathon and proved to be a good experience for presenting some new material with R. SKY Palkowitz and honoring the many years of creative collaboration we've shared. Hard to believe it was 10 years ago when we did our first Theatre of NOTE marathon!

Here are some of the pictures from that evening. I performed two songs, "All the World's A Stage" with Sky's assistance and then followed it with a costume change and the speed vocal workout of "Ode to The Divine Fool." Then Sky performed her brand new piece, "Myth Amerika" where I played the announcer leading her through a very twisted satirical take on beauty pageants and where our country is at socially and politically.

Thanks to our dear friend, Orit Harpaz (www.OritHarpaz.com) for the photos/documentation!

 

We met some new fans and divine fools afterwards!