Reading to him helped me rediscover my love of performing, and of story.

Singing with him helped me rediscover my love of song, and music as a thing made.

In those moments we were deeply together, sharing experience richly, across the three decades that persistently endeavor to separate us.

In those moments I was me, not any of the formal presentations of myself. And that freedom drew us together, hand in hand. Two people, ageless, sharing a love of tune and tale and, more often than not, a certain level of silliness.

When he finds himself mired in those tough questions of how to repay the things our parents did for us, I hope he remembers this.

And knows we’re all good.

This weekend was the world premier (doesn’t that sound grand?) of our son Thomas’s play “The House of Atreus”. He wrote the play for the Morris Area High School (MAHS) folks to perform as their entry in the annual One Act competition, and it was a really wonderful opportunity to give back to the theatre program that was so valuable to him during his time at MAHS.

The play is a challenging one to perform, involving a lot of monologue from the four leads, and a lot of synchronized response from the chorus. There’s not a lot of action, as the play emphasizes ideas instead of car chases and love scenes. The cast really rose to the challenge, though, and managed to own these complex concepts and stories.

I’m particularly grateful that teacher/director Seth Kelly was willing to work with Tom on this. Not everyone would be willing to take a flyer on a still-being-written play by a college student. Mr. Kelly, however, was incredibly supportive of Tom’s writing, and was then able to help his student actors inhabit these complex characters and make the play really work on the stage.

All this would have been totally wonderful if all that happened were the two performances at the high school. Today, however, they took the play to the one act sub-sections and won first place! This qualifies them to go on to sections next Saturday (8 Feb). If they can take first there as well then they perform in the state event on Friday the 14th! Taking first at sections is tough as the competition is likely to be stiff, but a parent can hope :-)

Congratulations to Thomas for writing such a cool play, and to all the MAHS folks that brought it to life on the stage!

We really liked Mr. Kelly’s description of the story in the program:

This bold and honest Greek drama is a tragedy within a tragedy, focusing on Agamemnon’s children. Agamemnon, a hero of the Iliad and the Odyssey, has no shortage of heroic feats and triumphs under his storied belt, but his children’s struggles are more complex. In popular mythology, these four siblings are rarely given depth, often acted upon as pawns, and usually treated as victims rather than individuals. This play gives them the voices they lost millennia ago.

Iphigenia, Chrysothemis, Electra, and Orestes must face the terrible realities of their existence in order to make peace with their lives. As they bravely face the trauma of their pasts, they grasp for hope’s elusive grip. The truths they stumble upon along the way are as relevant today as they were in ancient Greece.

and his “Director’s Note”:

I knew that selecting a Greek play for our One Act this year was ambitious. After all, stripping actors of all physical objects and elaborate scenery leaves them with little but their own dramatic imaginations to carry the story. That said, at the production’s onset I couldn’t have fathomed the intensity we eventually found in these stories and characters. I’m tremendously proud of our cast and crew, and I would never have burdened them with such a complex and challenging script if I didn’t have faith in their ability and dedication.

We are pleased that this year’s show was written by MAHS alum Thomas McPhee, who currently studies Theatre and Writing at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. I am delighted that his passions have continued to inspire us beyond his tenure here, and I sincerely hope this won’t be the last time he lends us his talent.

It is also worth noting that, as in all Greek tragedies, very weighty themes abound in this show. At its best, tragedy informs the audience how we might improve the business of our own fleeting lives, therefore an ever-present, foreboding sense of mortality drives these stories. We recognize that these concepts might be difficult for younger children to digest, so please don’t feel locked in to your ticket purchase if, knowing this, you’d rather not have your children hear about violence, war, sacrifice, death, and revenge. We understand! The ticket taker can refund you if you leave before the show begins.

The following text exchange between Sue and I was kicked off by my dropping Thomas off at the MSP airport for his flight back to Massachusetts:

Me: Tom’s heading off through security looking all grown up and scruffy! Love you!

Sue: Sniffle

Sue: Hug

Me: Ditto!

How exactly did we get to be parents of an increasingly adult-like creature?

(Don’t answer that. Really. Don’t.)

It might also be useful to read the lyrics since Aesop Rock’s verses (which are crucial to our exchange) are tricky to follow and understand. (I totally missed the “Vin Van” reference to Vincent Van Gogh until I read these, for example.)

Now to the exchange:

Tom: Thank you for paying for that [something minor]… For paying for college and so many other things… I feel like I owe you guys more than I could ever pay back…

Nic: DON’T SEND ME AN EAR!

Tom: That was the single best response you could’ve sent :-)

A nice example of why art and music matter. They give us a short-hand language for describing important and difficult concepts. Tom and I had discussed the lyrics to this song at some length when the video came out a few weeks ago, and Tom’s initial text really resembles some of the ideas Aesop is presenting in the song. Because of that conversation, I could respond with could appear as a bit of a non sequitur that would instead carry with it tons of information, and manage to raise a smile at the same time.

I’ll wrap by definitely recommending The Uncluded album. I think “Delicate Cycle” (video above) is a really wonderful song; I listened to it about a zillion times when the video came out. While some of the songs seem to have Kimya and Aesop’s parts kind of pasted together, Perhaps the two most “unified” sounding songs in my opinion are “TV at 10” and “Organs”, both of which are just killer. Tom really likes “Bats” as well. So check it out, and share your thoughts.

The sad thing for us is that we don’t get to see most of this because it’s a wee bit too far to zip over for an evening’s theatre. Happily, however, we can see him act in at least one play via YouTube!

This is a production of the short play “Words, Words, Words” by David Ives, directed by Mike Lion, a fellow Hampshire student. Tom was in a longer play directed by Mike last fall (“Force play”), which was Tom’s first theatre experience at Hampshire. This production of “Words, Words, Words” was for an advanced directing course Mike’s taking at Amherst College, and the play is actually set in a Physics lab on the Amherst campus.

I really like having it in a lab instead of on a stage (compare to numerous other versions on YouTube), and the use of actual typewriters and paper definitely adds significant depth. The stage versions I found on-line all tended to look significantly more “fake” (a weird thing to say about a play featuring three talking chimps) than setting it in the lab. I also think the understated costumes are a win here; some of the other productions on-line have some really weird costuming (tuxes, marionette-doll-style-dresses) that I found quite distracting. (Tom tells me that the playwright actually suggests such customs – weird.)

As WeatherGrrrl says, “Kidlet is way cool!!!!! Great monkey body posture. Very effective location. Definitely earned the requisite number of laughs to be considered successful.”

Being a well-trained father, I did exactly that:

Subject: HOLY MOTHER OF FRAK YOUR FAMOUS
DAD.

DADADAD.

YOUR GODDAMN PHOTO.

FROM THE FIRST BLOWOUT.

IS.

THE.

PHOTO.

FOR.

DOOMTREE.

ON WIKIPEDIA.

WAT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomtree

At least it is RIGHT NOW

(We’ll blame his failure to use the correct version of “you’re” in the subject on his abject excitement.)

Jeez O’Criminey Pete! – It’s true! If you head on over there, the picture of five rappers that they’re using is indeed one of mine from our first Blowout nearly two years ago now. That’s even Thomas’s arm and hand sticking out of the green sweatshirt sleeve in the foreground :-) (This link points to today’s version of the page in case they come to their senses and swap in a different picture down the road.)

There are certainly better photographers and photographs of the crew out there, so I’m a little surprised. I suspect my liberal Creative Commons licensing has a lot to do with it, as I’m pretty Wikipedia/Wikimedia friendly in that regard. Still, it’s super cool to see people using my photo this way.

I should also make it clear that it almost certainly wasn’t someone at Doomtree that made this choice. Wikipedia strongly discourages/disallows people creating or editing content about themselves, so I’m guessing this choice was made by someone outside of the crew.

I should also point out that the content of the entry is pretty thin and kinda sad. I think some folks should get on that – we gotta make sure there’s good text to distract people from the lousy picture up at the top :-)

Thanks to Thomas for the pointer!

And has packed his bags for Egypt.

He’s going on a UMM course “Pyramids and politics on the Nile” led by UMM Poli Sci faculty Sheri Breen and UMM librarian Jayne Blodgett, both super cool people. This is a pretty structured experience (full itinerary as a PDF) using Cairo as their primary base but with trips down the Nile to Luxor and Aswan, visits to Alexandria, and time at a desert research station.

One of their requirements is to keep a journal during the trip, and they all had to write a “Letter to Cairo” before departing as their first entry, and I thought I’d play along.

Dear Cairo,

Please take good care of our son. I really wanted to start with something more profound, but to be honest this is the first thing that I thought of. I’m genuinely not worried. His mother and I survived a number of great study abroad experiences which did so much to define who we are, and we’re sure he’ll have an amazing and glorious time. Still, it’s an exciting time to be in Egypt, and I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d play nice.

Inspire some wonderful writing. People keep telling him to take lots of pictures, but they’re really barking up the wrong tree, as he doesn’t really do that. (Here the apple fell on a slope and rolled well away and down the hill.) Tom is much more likely to digest and record his experience in words than images. It probably won’t be straightforward journaling, however, and instead be more indirectly represented in his poetry. “Vulcan’s bed”, for example, is a response to his time with me in Lava Beds National Monument two years ago; it is his version of all my photos. So while I know that he’ll have phenomenal experiences in Egypt, I hope to see them creep (or smash) into his poetry and other writings.

Open some doors; I’m sure he’ll walk through them. Morris has been a wonderful town for Tom to grow up in, but it’s a pretty small world. Thomas has had the huge advantage of living in the UK twice, and travelling in Europe on both of those trips, but it’s still been a very European life. You represent such a fascinating crossroads of history and culture: Mediterranean and Arab and African and Islamic and pharaonic and crowded and vibrant and changing and old and new. In 3.5 weeks he’ll only be able to sample such a feast, probably taking more than he realizes in some ways and less in others. When he comes back, though, I suspect he’ll never quite see things the same, sometimes in ways that may take years to fully realize.

I know that he’ll be a tiny mite on the huge organism that is Cairo, so odds are that you’ll never even notice he was there. You’ll loom huge for him, however, and we appreciate all you have to offer.

Best wishes,

    Nic aka Thomas’s Dad

The Incident at Tower 37 from bitfilms.com.

Hampshire College was one of the schools Tom and I visited on our big tour of New England colleges last month, and we saw a bit of student animation as we passed through one of the buildings. While we were visiting with Lee Spector (a friend of mine who teaches at Hampshire), the film came up and he told us we could find it online at bitfilms.com. One of the things that most impressed us both about Hampshire was the incredible quality of the student work there, and the videos at bitfilms are wonderful examples. These animated shorts are directed by professor Chris Perry, who came to Hampshire from Pixar. You can definitely see his Pixar background, as the animation (which is truly splendid) is always in service of an interesting story, and the characters have wonderful depth despite the brevity of the films.

As well as “The incident at Tower 37”, I also definitely recommend their other two bitfilms shorts (“Catch” and “Displacement”), as well as the 2010 Hampshire student animation demo reel and independent Hampshire student films such as “Nick the Shoes” by William Colón. All really impressive stuff that sets the bar awfully high for everyone in academia.

Tuesday we saw James T. Wilson, a two person show including Stanton Pavlicek in the title role. We know Stanton and his family from Morris (his dad was a huge help in building an enormous frame to hold up our gargantuan honeysuckle vine), and it was cool to see two 18-year olds just out of high school in this setting. The show itself was still struggling to become, and while there was a of potential, it’ll need some more work to realize that possibility.

Thursday we saw Speech!, an absolutely hilarious comedy about the goofy (and often twisted) world of high school speech competitions. The writing and performances were tres sharp, and the audience was rolling in the aisles from the start to finish. This show has received a number of well deserved nominations, including a best male performance for our friend and UMM alum Tim Hellendrung! Tim’s did lots of cool improv back at UMM (as well as being an excellent manager for the campus radio station), and has continued to develop at Comedy Sports in Minneapolis. It was great to see him do such a fine job in a great ensemble production like this. Big congratulations to Tim and the entire cast and crew!

Last night (Friday) we saw what will sadly be our last show, because we head back to Morris this afternoon so Tom can hang with his friends some before we come back to the Cities Sunday night. We went out with a bang, though, catching the amazing O(h) by casebolt and smith, a two person show unlike any dance performance I’ve ever seen before. They combined some great dance with liberal splashes of spoken word and singing, providing a rich piece of performance than transcended any simple notion of genre. There was wonderful (often comedic) commentary on both culture in general and dance in particular, creating a really fun experience that was also chock full of food for thought. They also received a number of nominations, and our group (two straight guys and a woman) all agree that a sweaty Joel Smith in Superman briefs is hot!

There’s a great section in this performance about intellectual property that inspired a long enough commentary that I’ve moved to it’s own post. It’s not often in my experience that a dance performance explicitly opens these kinds of doors, so check it out.