How High to Climb?

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Tomorrow night will be the very first time I perform THE MOBY DICK DIARIES, the whole sheebang. It’s also the first time I perform at the Exit Theater in SF.

Guess what?

Downstage the Exit Theater has a ladder attached to a pillar that goes up to the ceiling. It’s maybe 20 feet up. During the dance finale, I’ll climb up that pillar to the imaginary “crow’s nest” and look out over the ocean as part of my dance finale.

How high should I climb? Five feet? Ten feet? Fifteen? Twenty?????? Yowza! I haven’t decided. I’m excited to find out myself!

These days I wawhale alonelk around feeling like the first time I dove off the high dive at the Porterville Plunge–heart-expandingly thrilled and knee-buckling terrified at the same time in the same body.

No matter how much I’ve rehearsed, the show doesn’t exist until it’s in front of an audience.  Speaking of audience, who do you know that needs a little nighttime excitement in their lives?

Please tell them about the show. And please join me for this super-charged premiere of THE MOBY DICK DIARIES Saturday the 13th or Friday the 19th.

“Andrea Mock’s The Moby Dick Diaries looks especially intriguing.”
Theater critic, Jean Schiffman, ARTS/SF Monthly

Grab your tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2912061.

 

First Love, First Death, First Masterpiece!

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Click the link to view the trailer for “Call Me Ishwhale“– the dance finale from THE MOBY DICK DIARIES.

Hi Friends,

Last year I told you about my workshop production of The Moby Dick Diaries at The Marsh in San Francisco. After a metric ton of buffing, polishing, and major permitted remodeling (OM effen G, ladies, and gents, please put two hands together for my patience-of-Job directors!), the show lunges towards its adrenaline surging, lung-pounding premiere, May 13th and 19th.  

TMDD is part of the Yes To Everything Series curated by producer Mary Alice Fry. Last Sunday, theater critic Jean Schiffman wrote in the SF/ARTS monthly, “ The Moby Dick Diaries looks especially intriguing.”

YAY for me!!!

No, wait. Seriously. Everybody’s show “looks especially intriguing.” Slap some color into the cheeks of your imagination by checking out these descriptions:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2912061

If you buy a ticket online, I get 15% of the proceeds!

Here’s the updated description of my show.

THE MOBY DICK DIARIES, set during the Trump election, is an updated, semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical account of how—growing up in Porterville—Andrea Mock ended up as a Berkeley modern dance choreographer.

Your basic white girl, a goat-roper, LEE WEST, reads then decides to choreograph Moby Dick as her ticket out of her depressing, drought-stricken, California town. Blowing her off course is her eco-warrior boyfriend, DAVID MONROE, who demands “What good is Art if we all fry from global warming?” LEE’s answer is Call Me Ishwhale, a modern dance for Porterville’s Got Talent talent show. Her dance doesn’t save the earth, nor her relationship with DAVID but does save one quirky girl from a life trapped in a stifling town. Lee discovers in her bones, the joy of creation and the self-agency and strength to prevail in a romantic conflict of wills which becomes her rite of artistic passage.

The story is told with a metric ton of mime, movement and, dance with original music by composer, Victor Spiegel.

Director: Leonard Pitt

Developed With: David Ford

Performance Consultants: Mark Kenward

Deborah Eubanks

Original Music: Victor Spiegel

TICKETS: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2912061

 

The Year of Scaffolding

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For most of my life I’ve been a DIY, live-off-the-land-hippie, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kinda gal.

Rebuild two car engines from a book. Check.

Build a geodesic dome cabin in the wilderness without electricity or running water which led to contracting amoebic dysentery and the attendant vomiting/diarrhea in the outhouse. Check.

Knit stupid sheep-smelling beanies from hand-dyed, hand-carded wool. Check, check and double-check.

No mas. Been there done that I am soooooooooooooooo  especially done with that, my friends, when it comes to The Moby Dick Diaries. The reason why is simple.

You wouldn’t climb Mt. Everest alone, would you?

What I’m saying is making a solo show is a helluva undertaking not to be done without proper guides, equipment, colleagues and oxygen. And that oxygen comes mainly from conversations with people of the solo performing ilk. Like you.

Research says that people want to hire and work with people who fit in. No matter how competent or incompetent.

The problem with artists is, they never fit in. Our job is to stand out, to fight squishing in which is lonely life  unless you have fellow artists to stand out, talk to, and compare notes with, be weird and unique together.

This year I’m dubbing “The Year of Scaffolding” i.e. accountability to the people who spur me on in my goal to become the best solo performer and writer I can be…especially for the Edmonton International Fringe Festival, August 17-27th.

To whit:

  • twice monthly solo performer career support group meetings
  • weekly class with David Ford
  • weekly rehearsals with Mark Kenward
  • weekly get-togethers at Artis Cafe with Irene to get feedback on six pages of the novel
  • The Field with choreographers and performers Vangie King and JoAnn Sleisker at Luna Dance to cherry-out the dance finale in Act 4. Can’t wait. So much fun!
  • sporadic blog interviews with solo performers/directors/dramaturgs/designers whose work I love and admire.

As regards this last (but not least!) bit of scaffolding, my first interview will be with Josh Korbluth. Lucky me gets to dig for the golden secrets Josh uses to create his wildly warm, funny, humane piece about the Zen Hospice Center where he’s the artist-in-residence. I’ve been lucky enough to see his WIP improvs twice. I can’t begin to say how deeply affecting this show is.

Watch this space.