Rock Saber / No Shame January

The Asheville Fringe Festival "La Zoomed" by this week and while I would have liked to have seen everything, my limited college life budget necessitated that I only pick one of the three tickets. The ticket I chose was the featured one act, "Rock Saber," written by my friend Julian Vorus. I met him through No Shame Theatre where he frequently performed his own special brand of poetry, much to the delight of the No Shame crowds. A few months ago he started a series of short plays at No Shame which eventually become the play "Rock Saber." Put simply, I have never seen such a brilliant evening of pure and tightly focused energy. The play didn't seem to be about anything in particular, but there were many things you could take away from it. The script was excellent and funny, and the cast knew how to sell it. Of particualr interest was Darren Marshall as Big Paul, who doesn't say much, but when he does, look out. I think I shall forever wish to keep that theatrical moment in my memory. I think, most of all, this play happily reminded me the electricity of the downtown art's scene. I am so excited to see, espcially the theatre community, building it's artistic vocablary and community of writers and artists. As I said before, this play originated at No Shame, which might give you a good hint of where a good place to see this sort artistic growth in action might be.

Speaking of No Shame, the January No Shame came and went. As I have previously reported, I did the song. Let us just say that things did not go quite according to plan. I think I made it work though. To endeavor to descripe what happened would be a futile effort on my part, so you shall have to wait for the video to come out on Google. As for the rest of No Shame, this I spent in a daze, thus I shall not endeavor to report upon it. Febuary will be better, I am sure.

Yours dazed,
Nathan H. Adams

Oedipus for Kids!

I recently saw the opening night of Zealot's production of "Oedipus for Kids!," which was a part of the Catalyst Series. The Catalyst series is an outreach made by North Carolina Stage Company where smaller theatre production companies get a chance to perform in their space. "Oedipus for Kids!" is a musical in which a fictional children's theatre company attempts to stage a musical version of "Oedipus Rex" for kids! (Pretty straight forward). Conventional (non-professional) theatre wisdom dictates that going to see a show's opening night is a bad idea. Community theatre does not have the benefits that allows professional theatre more immediate polish (such as a preview period, extended rehearsal time, etcetera). I had to go against this convention for the simple reason of my insane pace of getting ready for college made it necessary to go see the show early if I was going to see it all. Fortunatly, I needn't have worried. The show was wonderful. My friends (and cast mates in "Titus Andronicus") were excellent. Rae Cauthen, Greg R-Gassler, and Joseph Barcia really knew how to sell the story of "Oedipus" to us "children" in the audience. I felt that in some ways the comedy and vocal work could have used some fine tuning, but it did not detract from enjoyment of the show. I look foward to the next show produced by Zealot, and I really appriciate their thoughtful selection of material for the Asheville audience. It is very nice to see such a quirky New York musical straight from New York here in Asheville stimulating our artistic vocabulary. Ladies and gentlemen, the musical is not dead, you have just stopped visiting. Thank you Zealot.

MontRunyon

Sometimes, walking the streets of downtown Asheville, I create a fantastic sense of location. I transport my self to a place that exists in my fantasia and lay it over my rather 2+2=4 sense of the world. I feel myself come alive with an idea, something from deep in my personal ball of light. The ball of light that we all know is there, and that which we see by, but we cannot look at, because it blinds us with its brilliance. The world I want, intersects with the world I have, and the feeling created is bliss. In the musical "Guys & Dolls," the overture is actually a choreographed piece called "Runyonland." The musical takes the wonderful world of New York presented in the stories of Damon Runyon, and turns it into an exciting whirl of the type of people who are a part of the everyday, and in doing so, makes them not everyday. But today they were a part of my day. As I was driving to the library, I saw a man pushing a hand truck full of paper. He nodded to a passing stranger and smiled as he pushed his hand truck over the sidewalk. It was at this moment that I was apart of Runyonland, or, in this town, MontRunyon. The world of those happy people using the light to the rhythm of that fantastic music suddenly filled me, and I was a part of it.

This fantastic sensation only lasted for a moment, for I was soon brought down by the realization that the man might actually have been grimacing at the weight of pushing his hand truck, and opposed to smiling at the beauty of the world.

But maybe, he was.