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Posts Tagged ‘pirate’

• Melon Head: A Tale from a Ren Faire Actor

Posted in Outside NYC, Theatre & Performance, tagged , , , on September 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

A Frequently Asked Question about my time in the Renaissance is: “Did they feed you?” Did you eat nothing all summer but turkey legs and fried dough? Perhaps the subtext of this question, which I didn’t realize until now, was “Are you going to come back to New York a blimp? (then you can play the Nurse in R+J!)” The answer is no. No, they did not feed us, no I am not a blimp. But they did give us eating guidelines. We could eat Snickers bars “back stage” but were mandated to eat “period food” any where patrons might see us. Yep, we called it “period food” and that didn’t mean chocolate. “Period food” is food that was eaten in 1585. Like parsnips…though I never saw anyone eat one of those. Think carrots. Bread and Cheese. Melons!

I had it in my head that eating an entire melon (cantaloupe) by myself had grand comedic potential. Just sitting, a half in each hand, shoveling the pulp into my mouth and spitting out seeds- that image looked funny (in my head). I imagined swallowing a seed and having a nervous breakdown about a melon tree growing in my stomach. What I neglected to consider was how time consuming eating a whole melon is. I sat down to eat it and would get interrupted after only a few spoon fulls. This was rather inconvenient- I was without the use of both hands, each occupied with melon rind- but looked pretty funny. A pirate running around with melons in her hands? I don’t know what she’s doing, but it looks ridiculous.

I ran into Sir Francis Drake, my character’s huge unrequited love, whilst in this predicament: both hands full of melon. In his presence my character is usually rendered some what speechless; unable to string sentences together, babbling incoherent confessions of love. A patron took pity on me and tried to help me communicate with the man. She decided the melons were only distracting me and that I needed to get them out of my hands. So, unknowingly, she asked Sir Francis to hold them.

Sir. Francis. Drake. Holding. My. Melons. SirFrancisDrakeholdingmymelons!! Oh Lord did my character freak out. And how funny a thing is it to say “SIR FRANCIS DRAKE TOUCHED MY MELONS”? I ran around for quite some time telling EVERYONE. In earnest. Not in a “haha I realize the double entendre I’m pulling here”. No. In “Look at these slices of melon, MY melons, and look where HE touched them!” complete sincerity.

At some point it clicked in my head that I could take it to an extreme level. When such a realization happens, an improv performer can’t say no. I took my head scarf, and begged “Mistress Geraldine, the best hat maker in 12 towns” to make me a hat. A hat out of the melon (which I had carefully scraped clean of pulp for the purpose). Hesitant though she was, I got the melon rind tied onto my head. Babbling about the touch of Sir Francis Drake seeping through the melon, through my head, and through my entire being, I wandered around for the rest of the day with a melon on my head garnering stares, double-takes, bewildered looks, and guffaws. My favorite reactions.

This may have been my most brilliant performance moment of the summer.

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• Pangs of the Pirate Hearted

Posted in Outside NYC, Theatre & Performance, tagged , , , on September 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I’m running around the forest searching, hoping to see a flash of red, a glint of gold brocade, the blue-green iridescence of a peacock feather. It is the proper time of day (I just sneakily peaked at the 20th century watch hidden in my pouch), he should be free, should be in the area, and should be hoping for someone to play with. Through the sea of T-shirts, sundresses, and flip-flops, he does stand out. Most hands clutch turkey legs or plastic beer cups, his is more likely clutching the well crafted sword attached to his belt. His jerky and abrupt movements are made to look like (unto) an action hero and as such he’s pretty impossible to overlook This very point is proven as he comes charging up the hill, the angles of legs and arms so specific it’s comical.

Now that I know he’s here, I immediately change direction and act like I don’t. Coy Consequence Wailes (my character) is not, but completely oblivious? Oh yar. In faith, the pirate in me is madly in love with this man. So much so that sometimes she can’t even say his name. After all, he is Sir Francis Drake, and if there was any celebrity “bad boy” in 1585, this “hero of England” was It with a capital I.

My entire day is unscripted. My entire day is me roaming around “the shire”, thirty acres if Bumble Fuck. There are 30 other actors roaming these parts. That’s one actor for every acre (coincidence? I think so.) We are all running around hoping to bump into one another because that makes for a scene. We know our relationships with each other, how our characters feel about each other, maybe even how they interact together. We aren’t floundering. There’s an outline. Anything can’t happen. But also anything can. In all our minds percolate ideas for adventures and comedic scenes that we can play out for the patrons of the faire. Not only that, this is interactive theatre, ultimate success is when the audience gets in and actually plays with us.

When Consequence meets Sir Francis, it’s often my favorite part of the day. She’s a 12-year-old girl and he is Justin Bieber (or Justin Timberlake or John Lennon if you need generational translation). She’s a pirate and he’s a knight. It’s 1585. No cameras, no security, no twitter, no Seventeen.  It’s theater, plays are written about the most extraordinary days of people’s lives.  So I aim to make every performance day the most exciting day a pirate could ever have, which means she meets Sir Francis Drake and some days he even invites her to join his crew.

Now that I, the actor, have spotted my scene partner and know her search will be successful, my pirate can start looking for Sir Francis. Hopefully I can get a patron to help me.  John Cadwell! The renowned look-out, Is it even so? Oh Master Cadwell, I have heard of tell that you are the greatest look out that ever sailed the seas. That you can spot land from a greater distance than birds can fly. Word has it your eyesight is unparalleled! As a fellow sea dog, Master Cadwell, I Consequence Wailes, were hoping to beg a boon of thee.

I’ve just turned an audience member into  John Cadwell, master look-out, the very person I need to help Conny spot Sir Francis Drake. After an entirely unhelpful description He be the most beautious knight in all the world! His golden locks to shine like Apollo himself! His face does wear the many adventures of his life and he do look so fearsome and braverious! Teehee!- I’ll mention he’s wearing red and has black gloves and my John Cadwell will hopefully take the cue to say, “You talking about the guy right there? Which cues my freak out because O-M-G (“God’s my life” in 1585) I am totes not ready to actually meet him! Do I look ok? I haven’t washed my vestments in over a month and I think there’s blood on them from the guy I killed last week! But maybe that’s good? I look brave? Worthy of his crew? Squee!! How do I approach him!?

Usually I’m told to “Just go talk to him! Say ‘Hi.’” If my John Cadwell has had a couple of beers and is “in his cups” (drunk) I might get “Shove your tits in his face!” Some patrons get really into it, “Well, you both work at sea- you have that in common- talk about shared interests.” One even went so far as to make up background for his character, “Oh, yeah, we were on the same ship once, I know him. I’ll put in a good word for you.”

This all leads to the inevitable dramatic climax. Consequence meets her hero. Often meeting him causes her to lose control of her sentences and spew ecstatic, incoherent, babbling that some one must translate. She’s even fainted a couple times (I’ve gotten great at staged falls)- the ferocious piratess who has slain hundreds of men without batting an eye, defenseless in the presence of the one she loves.

On the very first day of the faire, I had no idea what to expect. We’d rehearsed for a full month, I knew my character, knew those of my fellow actors, but no amount of rehearsal could prepare me for exactly what it would be like interacting with actual patrons. Hoping “John Cadwell” says “Haha, okay sure, that’s me!” and not, “No, my name is Mark. I’m an accountant.” and if you do get shut down like that you can play it off well.

I started the day nervous as hell, clammy hands and heart pounding in my chest- the works. I ended the day wearing a melon rind on my head. Like unto a hat. This got me cred with the veterans of the cast. “The best thing I saw on opening was Consequence Wailes with a melon strapped on her head. You are fearless and you crack my shit up.” A complement like that’ll help ease my nerves any day.

So how did I end up wearing a melon as a hat? We’ll get to that tomorrow.

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• I’m a Pirate, Read My Bl-ARGH

Posted in Outside NYC, Theatre & Performance, tagged , , , , on July 20, 2010 | 2 Comments »

I must confess, I haven’t been myself lately.

I’ve been a different wench entirely:

Allow me to introduce you to her. ……………………………………………………………………………

They call me Consequence Wailes. My mam did leave me below the decks of the pirate ship The Albatross, like Moses were left in the rushes of the Nile. My wee babe self was not discovered until the ship were well at sea. There be no turning back, so it were decided my wailing self should be tossed overboard, for there be no place on board ship for a prattling child. Yet no man could do the tossing. All did harbor an inkling deep in their bosoms that they may have done the fathering of me. And so I were not cast down to the briney bottom, but instead have sailed on sea, by the mercy of Poseidon, all my short life.

The crew of The Albatross did call me Consequence, for I were a “consequence” of their philandering. As prattling babes do, having no use for words, I did wail muchly. I myself were a part of the captain’s orders. “Raise the sails! Larboard! Starboard! All hands on deck! Consequence wails!” And so that be the only name I do know, Consequence Wailes.

Indeed, thou shalt remember such a name, for it shall go down in the catacombs of history. For (as thou dost witness above) I, Consequence Wailes,  did walk the plank and did not die. As thou mayst know, this be a task no man, beast, fish, frog nor bird hath e’er done in all the history of the world, yet I, Consequence Wailes, did do it. I did look into the face of death, and I did laugh. HarHarHarHar Death!

Yes, dear readers, this is how I spend my weekend in Bumblefuck. No picnicking in Central Park, no street fairs, no Broadway shows, no clubs on the LES. From 10am-7:30pm Saturday and Sunday, I am Consequence Wailes. She is quite energetic, a bit bumbling, very school-girlish, and I’d like to think, rather hilarious. Generally at her own expense. She was raised by pirates, that explains most things and answers the frequented question: No. I am not a sexy pirate. Consequence is most often called adorable,  even when she tells people she stole her miss-matched earrings from the bodies of two dead men.  So it seems I’m an adorable pirate. Who ever heard of such a thing? Hilarious, no? Hardyharharhar.

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• Good News and Bad News

Posted in Hard Times, Survival Jobs, Theatre & Performance, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 21, 2010 | 6 Comments »

There is Good News and there is Bad News, to the extreme on both ends.

Fortunately the Good News happened first. Other wise I might not have made it through the week.

Us new New Yorkers get asked “So why did you move to New York?” all the time. It is often a precursor to the discussed What’s the difference between the East Coast and West Coast? My answer is generally “Theatre.” Yes, I am an aspiring actor, in case you forgot, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you had. I’ve been doing much more aspiring than acting these days. And honestly not too much aspiring even. With ENT bills still haunting me and Mahattan rent, making money has been my #1 priority for many months. I’ve assistant directed a play and been on a handful of auditions but I have to admit it’s been on a hobby level. Which I’m okay with- putting off pursuing my dreams for a bit is fine, plus I’m pursuing my dream of living in NYC which is impossible without money. It’s all relative.

We artists are obsessed with “selling out”, “failure”, “giving up”.  Right, these fears only plague artists.

Any how.

On Monday, 7 minutes before the end of my desk-job work day, I received a call from the only audition I’d been on in April (maybe I’d been on 2, but I don’t think so) offering me a part. A paid part. An offer to pay me money to do what I love.

You want details? It’s an offer to be a part of “the oldest full-time professional acting troupe of any Renaissance Festival, and the inspiration behind many interactive entertainment groups in major theme parks across the country” to quote the website. The part is that of a female pirate, “piratess” (yes, there were pirates during the Renaissance just ask wikipedia, and yes, female pirates did exist, though rarely: it’s legit) in a band of 3 pirates out of 30 actors in the over all ensemble. The contract is from June 1-August 16 with the festival only on weekends, meaning the rest of the week is devoted to rehearsal annnnd basically summer vacation because it’s all in upstate NY, 6 hours away from NYC and they provide company housing (and board on the weekends). Spending a summer pretending I’m a pirate, swimming in Lake Ontario, star gazing, hiking, and other “middle of no where” (as we refer to it in NYC) activities; free rent, and a weekly pay check? Or sitting at a desk from 9-5 on beautiful sunny days, dreaming of evenings spent doing all the million awesome things there are to do in this city in the summer and weekends at the beach? Not too much of a contest. I will sorely miss Shakespeare in the Park, roof top bars, outdoor movies, my friends, etc. etc. But trading in the Administrative Assistant title for that or Professional Actor? That’s my dream right there. And June 1st, it looks like it will be coming true- I signed the contract (!!! contracts scare me) but have yet to receive my counter signed copy, so it’s not 100% official.

My reaction to success surprises me. I would imagine myself ecstatic at such an offer, shouting from the rooftops  with glee. It’s much more mixed than that. There’s fear in such success, disbelief, worry that it’s too good to be true.  In this particular example- worry about subletting my apartment for the summer, being unemployed on August 16, telling my office I’m leaving. I guess that makes me a grown up.

Now the bad news.

I decided not to tell work immediately that I was leaving. Wait for 3-4 weeks notice. My superior recently gave me a wink while talking about previous people in my position, how long they stayed on for, and how nice it would be to have someone stick around for a couple years. I could have told her right then and there I wasn’t planning on doing that, but instead pretended it might be an option, and now that I wasn’t even getting past my 6 month mark I felt a little bad. Not that I had signed a contract here or anything.

On Friday however, I learned that quitting my job was nothing I would have to worry about. Because on Friday I was, abruptly, never-saw-it-coming, no-kind-of-warning FIRED. I’ve never been fired before ever. It was shocking to say the least. Everyone who is in the office on a normal basis was about as shocked as I- or so I’ve been told. My firing was in the hands of the Big Boss Man (with the Prostate Problem) who is, as I’ve mentioned, almost never in the office. He had never reprimanded me previously, never mentioned I was doing an unsatisfactory job and needed to improve or face consequences. Maybe it’s because he found my blog, but I highly doubt it.

I’ve been told I was let go because my sales reports had too many detail errors. I can’t deny this, but will say the majority of these errors were because he demanded the reports prematurely, expected me to understand things with no explanation, or because the creator of the report told me it was “ready to go” when it wasn’t. I trust people and don’t read minds. It’s all an extremely aggravating reason to loose a job.

To add to it? They told me I could stay on until the end of the month (April) and needing the money, I accepted. So, as I type I am still behind my desk. Fuming as it is Administrative Professionals Day and no one gives a shit about me. It is awkward as hell working here knowing I’ve been fired. Talk about no motivation. I mean, what are they going to do? Fire me? And no one is talking about it. It’s this huge elephant in the room. I’ve named him Marvin. Marvin the Elephant is the only one in this office who understands me.

Whatever. I was going to quit any way.

So here I am, 8 more days stuck at a desk, 1 month of unemployment, a summer of professional acting, and then…who knows. I have a 4 month plan- that’s more than I can usually say.

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