Booya, Baby!

Another review, this time in the Baltimore Sun. And they thought the show was "excellent."

The review also said, "Boyer is hilarious in his three roles."


So -- come see it -- Bay Theatre, Annapolis, playing through Nov. 8. Get tickets before they're gone!

Headline: Best In Show

According to the review from the Bay Weekly, Bay Theatre's production of Sylvia "is as puppylicious as Bil-Jac liver treats."

Also:

"Rounding out the cast is Peter Boyer . . . . He is Tom, a proud dog owner who brings the subtle one-upsmanship of the mommy wars to the dog park. He is Phyllis, Kate’s canine-phobic friend and confidante. He is Leslie, an androgynous therapist and marriage counselor. As all three, he is marvelous."

Our first review, from The Capital:

"The Bay Theatre Company kicked off its eighth season last weekend with a real dog of a play - and it's howling good."

"Peter Boyer, who has the challenging task of playing three roles - a dog park buddy of Greg's named Tom, Kate's friend Phyllis and an ambiguously gendered therapist the couple visits named Leslie - adds a deft hand to the comedic romp. He's funniest as Phyllis, whom he makes into a slightly off-kilter society maven. It reminded me a bit of Mrs. Drysdale in "The Beverly Hillbillies," only funnier."

Click either paragraph to read the whole thing . . . they liked the other actors, too . . . .

I Shaved My Legs For This?!?

Yeah, apparently I did. That's a new experience.

For the character of Phyllis (in Sylvia), I am wearing a knee length skirt, (sheer) hose, and heels. As well as a bra, a nice blue top, scarf, wig, pearls, ear rings, and a few other bits of jewelry.

I have been told that I look damn good in heels. The woman who said that also said she was jealous.

Chronicles of Chronicles

I now have 3 different projects going on, 2 of which I've talked about a little bit beforeOne: Sylvia , in which I play Tom / Phyllis / Leslie, @ Bay Theatre in Annapolis. Two: A Spell of Cold Weather, which I'll be directing, @ Red Branch Theatre in Columbia. Three: A Chorus Line, in which I'll be playing Zach, at Howard Community College.

Yeeha, yo.

The Dog Ain't The Only One Chewing The Scenery Here

Sylvia opens Oct. 2 at Bay Theatre in Annapolis! I've got a guy who lives vicariously and metaphorically through his un-neutered dog! I've got your socialite who shows off her size 12 heels and her occasional Freudian slip! I've got your ambi-gendered psychotherapist!

And that's just me! There's 3 other people in this show, playing 3 other characters, and one of 'em is an anthropomorphized dog!

Bye Bye, Bunny Rabbit

Sculptor Barry Flanagan passed away.

The NY Times article described him as "a British sculptor who abandoned the idiosyncratic arrangements of common materials that characterized Postminimal sculpture."

I prefer how BF describes himself, as “an English-speaking, itinerant European sculptor.” That's much better. He was fun. He was mischievous.


I worked for a sculptor for a summer as a teen, and am an occasional sculptor myself. One of my favorite places in DC is the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden, and one of my favorite sculptures there is his Thinker on a Rock. So here ya go:

More Theatrics

Rehearsals have been going on for a week-and-a-half for Sylvia at Bay Theatre. If you had seen rehearsals on Wednesday, you would have seen me walking around in a rehearsal skirt and 3+ inch heels. Women's size 12, by the way.

New gnus: I'm set to direct A Spell of Cold Weather, by Charles Way, at Red Branch Theatre in Columbia, MD. That'll show in December.

Life Goes On

Recent casting: I'll be in Sylvia at Bay Theatre, which'll run from October 2 - November 7. I'll be playing the characters Tom / Phyllis / Leslie. That'll be: a man / a woman / a hmmm?

I'll also be teaching an acting course at Howard Community College this fall.

Jenny and I recently took a trip to New York City (roughly $40 in various tolls, maybe next time we'll take a bus!) to make a quick visit to a stage combat workshop, where we visited some fightin' friends, took care of a little fightin' biz, and got certified in CPR. Isn't that romantic?

And comets just might really really have brought the building blocks of life to Earth. Muy interesante . . . .

Face Time

Okay, here's the deal:

A month ago, while I was walking home, I was attacked.

The whole story gets long and complicated, but at one point I was running for my life, literally -- chased, and soon outrun, by a man in a ski mask who said, "I'm going to kill you," and he took a swing at me -- hitting me in the forehead with the butt end of a pistol, opening up a 4 cm gash in my forehead -- I kept running, he for some reason did not -- I called 911 on my cell, had a difficult time seeing from the blood in my eyes.

I eventually talked to a police detective, and at one point I asked her, "Do you think this has anything to do with gang violence?"

She said, "I wouldn't be surprised."

So -- I had to get stitches, internal ones which will dissolve away over time, and external ones which came out after a week.
_____________________

The physical and psychological wounds as a result of this were ugly and horrible. But both wounds been healing, and now that a month has passed I feel like I'm getting my face back, and my self back.

A couple of doctors have told me that the scar should heal to the point that it's almost not noticeable (the tremendous blood supply to the forehead, which can make gashes particularly theatrical, also makes them more likely to heal well). My hope is that the psychological scar will work the same way.

I'm not naive, though -- I know I have to be proactive about it.
______________________

I couldn't write for awhile, because I felt like if I simply posted the more light and trivial sorts of things I usually post that I was, in a sense, denying something very important. So here you go. I might revisit this subject, but now I can get back to light and trivial.

It hasn't been all clouds. I've received a huge amount of support from family and friends, and there is no way to express how tremendously important that has been. Especially Jenny. I have the best woman in the world.

Lots

I'm in a Capital Fringe Festival show: Captain Squishy's Yeehaw Jamboree. Written by a couple of friends of mine, Chris Davenport and Nick Greek. Imagine, if you will, the TV show HeeHaw reenacted by an insane asylum. That's not specifically what it is, but that's a good way to describe it. We open on the 10th.

Went to Ohio twice -- once for the opening performance of Tecumseh!, then a couple of weeks later for a reunion. Good times had by all at the reunion, and performers from many seasons previous came out of the woodwork. About the show itself -- it is still a great, great thing, and you, yes I mean you, should go see it.

Demetrius Thomas -- I talked to him on the phone recently, and, yah, he made it to the reunion. He has made a substantial, though not yet full recovery. Mentally, all's pretty well. One leg is giving him issues that's really screwing with his mobility. There's understandable frustration, but also a great appreciation for all the little things in life.

Jen's off to another 3-week stage combat workshop now. So it's me and Sadie at home again.

a bearable lightness of being

This is Sadie.  Short for Sadist, because of how she used to bite down too hard when she had her puppy teeth.
__________________

It's been way heavy lately. A series of frustrating and unsuccessful auditions (as well was a few auditions I didn't get called about that I don't understand). And then something outside of me really shook me:

On the day before my 39th birthday, someone very close to me passed away.
I won't go into details on this, except to say: The world is a better place for having her in it.

And recently I performed an Iago monologue for an audition. Just awful. Horrible. I said all the words right, but there wasn't anything behind it. I couldn't bring it. I just didn't want to "be there."

So I stared in the mirror and I gazed at my navel, and then remembered that the me I like is more accurately represented by this than by Iago:

If I'd Had a Pet Like This as a Kid, the Bullies Woulda Been His Lunch

Have you seen this?


The tyrannosaurus rex wishes it were this guy. Teeth a foot long. A skull double the size of T.R.'s. A bite with 4 times the force. Coming in at about 50 feet long, 45 tons. It's a new species of pliosaur that the paleontologists have dubbed "Predator X" -- which sounds like a great name for a bad Sci-Fi movie. How long ya think it'll take 'em to make that one?

The Last Coupla Weeks

We've been plugging along on Heidi rehearsals the last couple of weeks.

Early on, I had to try on wooden clogs -- like these:
Turns out those clogs were meant for the character "Peter," not the actor Peter (I'm sometimes called "the real Peter" in rehearsal now). That's all fine with me -- I'm quite happy to have tried them on, and quite happy that I wasn't going to be wearing them during the show -- they weren't uncomfortable, but they're not very practical. Like wearing a pair of small boats. Or really short stilts. I suspect it was a fashion thing, like high heels, except without the pain (turns out they won't be in the show, anyway -- too impractical).

We're using goat puppets in the show, so I've been researching goat movement with some help from YouTube. It just so happens that there is a kind of goat that faints (sort of) when startled, due to a genetic disorder called myotonia congenita. Think that's odd? How about this: The International Fainting Goats Association, an organization dedicated to the breeding and showing these goats.

And I and most of the rest of the cast and various other folks from Imagination Stage went to the residence of the Swiss ambassador for a little soiree.  We performed a couple of songs from the show, and we listened to a few brief speeches from the ambassador and some of the Imagination Stage higher-ups. Then time for drinks, hors d' oeuvres, and shmoozing. The ambassador's residence is a spectacular pad designed by Steven Holl. Check the link for details and pics, it's a very green, award winning, modern building.

Non-Heidi related: last Sunday, I was part of a staged reading of Sam Shepard's Unseen Hand at Rep Stage. Not many people in the audience, maybe a dozen, but we expected low number because of the date change. One of Shepard's earlier pieces, it's an interesting, odd play -- a 120 year old cowboy-outlaw, a genetically-modified baboon from another planet, with some social commentary.

3 Months

So, what's happened in three months?

Performed in that scene from Eccentricities of the Nightingale.

Choreographed / coached the fights / violence for two more scenes for that Studio Theatre directing class -- one from Speed the Plow, which Yvonne Erickson directed, the other from The Dutchman directed by Phoebe Duncan. A lot of that turned out to be not so much violence itself, but creating the threat of violence, which in a way is more valuable -- the threat continues the tension.

Went to Mississippi with Jenny, to visit relations. We also visited Elvis Presley's birthplace (Tupelo).
Came up with some anagrams. Here you go:
DICK CHENEY = NEEDY CHICK
TOM CRUISE = MICE TOURS
PETER BOYER = TOY PER BEER (or, BEER PER TOY, take your pick)

Watched the inauguration of Barack Obama. On TV, we didn't go into the city. But it was still cool.

Did a quick industrial for the FAA. Me in coat and tie, and reading (somewhat, I knew the script fairly well) a teleprompter sitting over the other guy's shoulder. Acting while using a teleprompter is odd, because you're "reacting" to someone you're not actually looking at (from the camera angle, you can't tell that we're not actually looking at each other).

(A friend of mine turned into a polar bear.)

Gave a pretty decent audition at the AEA Liaison Committee auditions -- annual auditions for DC / Baltimore area Equity theatres (and a casting agent or two).

Got a call about a callback for a show at Folger, but that didn't pan out due to that show's overlap with Heidi.

Had a callback for Shear Madness at the Kennedy Center.

Auditioned for a small indie film. Got the role. Then shortly before the shoot date arrived in mid-February, the director *disappeared*. He won't return calls or e-mails. I'm still looking for him, so that if he doesn't have a really good reason, I can talk to him like an angry New Yorker.

PA'ed (PA = production assistant) for a photo shoot for a training thing for the TSA, done at Dulles Airport. Three days, and on the third day I was also a model.

Had a couple of callbacks for shows at Imagination Stage.

Almost did a staged reading for Rep Stage of Sam Shepard's The Unseen Hand -- postponed because of the arrival of snow.

As you can clearly see, the last three months have been uneventful.

Rehearsals for Heidi start tomorrow. And that staged reading I just mentioned was rescheduled for Sunday, March 15th at 2pm, being presented at Howard Community College, in Columbia, MD -- and it's free, yo.