We had to celebrate week 50 of course because it's a multiple of 5 and 10, very sturdy and important numbers. This week was inspired and connected with the surrounding community. The Blueberry show may become the very conceptual performance show that frees AI robots into consciousness.
Monday May 29th
Title: "Please do what I want you to do" Feat Jordan Hardin.
Instructions: Jordan draws pictures of things he wants. I sing about things I want and loop parts of it.
Why? Jordan's down to skate after the show and showed up a few minutes early. Thus, he is invited, and we made a plan for duetting.
Rehearsal Discoveries: The marker has ink. The microphone works! Concept communicated.
Performance Write Up: The spewing of conscious-subconscious wanting is a force like no other, represented well by the connotations of spewing. A brother of the spew. Perhaps, spewing is the most disgusting, metaphorically viral need.
View on youtube here-->> https://youtu.be/56nJFGb01M0
Tuesday May 30th
Title: "Post it. Host it. Coast it." Feat Peter Lee
Instructions: Have audience draw on giant, orange post-its, and tape them to the performance doors. Lexi plays the fun, wee keyboard.
Why? A last minute discovery of collabability (Peter is down and freeeeee) and interest in musical sounds.
Rehearsal Discoveries: n/a
Performance Write Up: Very endearing, communal art energetic practice. Anytime a community art piece is made, there's a warm spirit in the air lightly pinching at everyone's cheeks. We all laughed, smiled, and felt like a pixar/disney film for 15 minutes, I'd say.
View on youtube here-->> https://youtu.be/JEemCvmnIXE
Wednesday May 31st
Title: "Did not do the reading"
Instructions: Try any way you can imagine to do the reading as quickly as possible.
Why? I was house-sitting for ROBYKO artist couple, and they put out a stack of books for me to read while I was there. I did not do the reading.
Rehearsal Discoveries: Walked from their place (they live on the same block) to Tenam around 9:45am blissfully unnerved, overall.
Performance Write Up: Definitely ground my gears trying to imagine new ways to format the concept. I felt a little out of ideas from the start. I had fun. Upon rewatching, breathing sounds were overkill.
View on youtube here-->> https://youtu.be/_pcwIN6tgok
Thursday June 1st
View on youtube here-->> https://youtu.be/XOlRyGdub5E
Friday June 2nd
Title: "The Blueberry Show" Feat Shark Guy Dinosaur, Janelle Dyan Cataldo, Michael Amato, Sergey Kolivayko, Ian Harland, Nancy Ross (I think), and Lexi Pulido
Instructions: Write a robot pirate play for shark guy dinosaur involving blueberries, a milkshake, a Mer-cat, and a fight scene.
Why? Shark Guy deserves all the shows.
Rehearsal Discoveries: Lia Trageser donated some silver paint and plastic silver sheets which were used to paint a palm leaf into a mercat tail and fashion a robot suit for shark guy dino. <3
Wednesday night, I was working on the script while eating in Barrio Logan at Hayes Burger.
The night before, I was making the audio tracks for the show. I received much help at different times in the night. After eating with Nancy and Ian, we went back to the studio around 9pm, and I recorded Ian playing piano on my trusty, SM7B steed. At some point, they left, I pressed on with the robot characters but struggled to do so because of smoking weed. Michael Amato and Sergey showed up around 12am or 1am and helped with some of the group sounds. Michael also laid down the "voice from beyond" monologue. Left around 3am to return at 8am to finish recording the voices at a more optimal, less stoned time.
The 8am rush was real, and I was still exporting the audio track when Janelle and Shark Guy Dinosaur arrived. Janelle had prepared a milkshake for the final scene. I set up separate stations around the room for costumes, props, performance outlines, and personal stuff. We spoke through the outline, as pictured above, and I conveyed to Shark Guy the "beep boop bop boop" cue was for him to be speaking, and he should wave his arms for the duration of his speech. It was rushed because I could not find the 1/8in to 1/4 in cable adaptor, and I had to perform multiple audio tests which ultimately resulted in mic'ing the bluetooth speaker directly into my QSC and blasting the volume. In the end, this was the only way for the track to be audible.
Performance Write Up: For zero rehearsal, we did pretty okay! Just one rehearsal and being prepared ahead of time in order to get enough sleep would have helped a lot, too. Still, the show was a feat of great featured featureness.
Check out the handwritten script here
View on youtube here-->> https://youtu.be/AYCxFpn2vY8
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