Confessions of a Klingon Curmudgeon: Middlin'

We are in the thick of it. I am in the thick of it.

During this process I have closed one show. Since my last post, I have rehearsed and performed in another show, conducted an apartment search, moved most of my stuff into said apartment, have been looking for work to apply for, applying for said work, auditioning, doing a one-day shoot, and working a couple of small, short-term jobs.

I'm having a difficult time figuring out if Life is getting in the way of my passion or if it's simply the struggle of the juggle. After all, I did just spend the last two years of my life living where I work, doing something I love doing with a person I enjoyed doing it with.

This process of reacclimating to so-called real life has been throwing me curves aplenty.

The lines started to freak me out a bit. One of the original creators of A Klingon Christmas Carol is still involved with its production in New York and he made the effort of sending out an APB to former and current SQuja's to form a support network. The most important piece of advice: "You will hit that point of saturation and panic." The second most important piece: "We'll give you support when you need it."

The first wall was being off-book for Act I. I was panicking and had no idea how it was going to happen. The load of nannying I have been doing for temporary work means that I have not been able to dedicate as many daytime hours to working lines. But it happened. I plowed to make it happen, things happened that gave us an extra day. And I passed!

But then this week we were supposed to be off-book for Act 2. Lots of lines. A lot more lines. I was not off book. Cue next wall, enter stage everywhere. [note: one week later, at the time of this editing and posting I am still not off-book, but I have one more scene to go. I'm not perfect on the other scenes yet, but I'm off book. That's something.]

I've been growing out a VanDyke for the show and I've made it through the first wall with that. It didn't start to look decent until after week four and I'm going on week six right now. I was worried that it wouldn't come in very well at all. Instead, I have learned that it's growing beautifully and evenly and I even have these cool individual grey hairs growing along the chin; the last time I grew out any part of my facial hair, I didn't have that. Going grey is an adventure to me.

It still looks a little funny. Not only because I usually shave, but because it's not as neatly sculpted on the sides. I wanted to make sure that I have enough to play with for Klingon Christmas Carol, but it also turned out that after years of applying and modifying clown makeup, I happened to subconsciously determine the borders of my face bush using principles of lines of facial movement.

Look for humor hard enough and you will find it.

Confessions of a Klingon Curmudgeon: Toddling Along

I'm nearing the one-month mark for the Klingon Christmas Carol rehearsals and I'm neck deep in the mixture of excitement and concern that I won't have enough time. I'm already two pages off book. Or is it "only two pages . . . "? I have no way to gauge, so I'm simultaneously feeling good and feeling jittery. I've begun spending more stolen moments learning lines and running them under my breath at many given moments throughout the day. My housemates (the short way of saying "married home-owning benefactor friends who have let me stay in their spare room for low, low rent since I've returned from Japan in June") have even become subject to the results of this casting. Sure, they're both familiar with the theater and rehearsal, with running lines and such, but sometimes the wife quips about how the guttural sounds of Klingonese make her think some demon is huddling in a corner of her house. #NotAllKlingons

I can understand her interpretation. The Klingon language is a harsh-sounding language in which one must mind glottal stops, enunciate the tlh, and distinguish the Hs and ghs. The q and Q distinction is not as challenging, but a cold or a sore throat can turn simple attempts at speech into a battle of wills against the small muscles in the back of the throat. Three days of rehearsal and a rescheduled voice lesson turned into a uvular crossfit session after which not-talking felt more delightful than usual. It still remains a bit of a challenge not to make everything sound angry, even if I am Scrooge. That tone and sense is coming more easily through dissection of the words, where the root noun or verb can be smothered under a dogpile of suffixes (suffices?) and object-subject reflexive prefixes. These are things you grow accustomed to ignoring in everyday use of your mother tongue.

Linguistic challenges notwithstanding, this undertaking is packed with moments of pride. For the first time ever, I — a regular shaver and baby-faced, angular-cheeked daywalker — will be growing out facial hair for a role. Even as I've aged, I have never truly shown a natural talent for growing facial hair. Shaving was as much of a preference as it was a professional convention, but every so often, I become curious about how well I could grow it out if I tried again. My hope is that by the time the show opens, I will have sufficient facial hair to live up to the Klingon norm of adult males having facial hair. That way, I won't have to deal with spirit gum and I can also have another small victory to boost my ego: "I grew out facial hair for a role! I have now done the physical transformation thing!"

I've even taken to the pedantry of referring to my growth as a Van Dyke instead of a goatee. What's the difference? Glad you asked! A goatee is just on the chin. A Van Dyke is the one that's commonly called a goatee, but it's a goatee with a corresponding mustache element, as explained here. My girlfriend isn't too crazy about it and I'm having a heck of a time dealing with the itchiness. I just have to keep reminding the both of us that it's for a good (read "marvelously geeky") reason and it'll be gone before Christmas. I even offered to begin a "BeardBeGone" countdown just for her. It's tough enough with the distance, I don't need facial hair to come between us. We shall overcome. *sniffle* In the meantime, I've gotten to surprise people with the new look and it's a lot less jarring for them (and for me) than if I showed up without my dreads. I'm not ready to part with those yet.

The theater space is coming together and all the cast is working hard. Fight choreography has been set and we have regular language sessions. Blocking and scene work have begun and we're actually making this thing happen. I wish I could go back in time and tell younger me that this is happening, but I'll just have to experience for him.

Confessions of a Klingon Curmudgeon: It Begins

". . . We would like to offer you the part of SQuja'."

The breath left my body as I was sitting in my parked car, a bit late for a meeting. My heart raced. Tears welled up in my eyes. I was sitting in my car, Lando, laughing and almost on the verge of tears because I landed the lead in _A Klingon Christmas Carol._

I was elated that the show was returning to the Twin Cities for the first time in four years. I wanted to be in the show since I first saw it and was simply appreciative that I could audition for it. I didn't care which role I got — I just wanted to be in it. I never dreamt that I would be cast as Scrooge in one of the most marvelously up-my-alley shows that exists. This feels much bigger to me than the Guthrie Theater's annual production.

After a couple of weeks of keeping it quiet I was finally able to tell everyone. Actually, before that I did tell my girlfriend, my family, my best friends, and a friend in Chicago who was engaged in a now-successful Klingon pop songs Kickstarter (a podcast interview is here)— but social media was out of the equation. The best part about it for me is that I have something I can invite friends to come see and it's in the same city or at least the same country.

I've been in rehearsals for about three weeks now, but I only just now thought to chronicle this experience. I was aching to return to writing and eventually get paid for it again and this seemed as good a time as any. I'm receiving scads of support and nerdy elation novas (or "novae", I suppose) from friends and family and it's a large part of my happiness right now as I'm working on settling back in the Twin Cities.

I suppose you could say this is my version of The Voyage Home.