As I mentioned previously Natalya and I’d worked on Getting Sam before, with her as Melly and me directing.  However, the lead then was an actress called Jacqueline Rose.

Jackie did a fantastic job in the role, but when I started thinking about shooting the play as a short (as it was originally written) back in July I felt we needed someone older.  Jackie is in her early twenties, Melly in her early thirties and more reassured, worldly – something easier to carry off on stage but not so much in film.
That’s when Natalya introduced me to Elizabeth Alice Murray, a talented writer/director as well as an actress.  We met in a little café off Union Square in August and talked for an hour.  She read for the part and I cast her on the spot.

However, the combination of our three busy diaries (summer holidays, other shoots/work, traveling) meant the shoot was pushed, and soon Natalya and I were already starting work on Show Two for Me & Them.

Originally I’d written a piece called Darwin, Adam and Eve for Show Two, in which four NYC friends meet for dinner and discuss the disparities between their families’ traditional hopes for them and their actual lives, but when the writers met for script workshop we all agreed it was too long a piece for the collective.  We discussed how I might split it into two pieces instead but I wanted to save it and spin it into something more complex rather than simplify.  Rather than rush out a new piece for the sake of it, I suggested we use Getting Sam and Natalya agreed.

We went back to Elizabeth but she’d just won a webisode competition for her awesome series Café Conversations so was hard at work moving forward with that.  Step up, Amy Gironda, an actress Natalya had met in a recent class, and we had our new Lorelei.

With previous creative work I have either cast friends or gone through extensive casting sessions but Me & Them engenders a faster, hit-the-ground-running approach than more intricate film projects.  Also, I trust Natalya’s judgment so went with her casting blindly.  As such, I was on tender-hooks when it was time to see what the two of them –Amy/Lori & Natalya/Melly – had done with the piece and I was thrilled.

Though sick, at dress rehearsal Amy was a consummate professional and jumped into the role with full energy.  Seconds after dozing in a chair with flu she was battling Natalya in a dazzling array of verbosity.  I loved what they had done with the piece, which was infuse it with vigor by understanding that for the friendship to be believable and for the beats to fall in the right place, the dialogue needs to be extremely fast: the characters need to almost talk over each other, and use the words as ammunition.

An added bonus was that Amy physically looks very similar to Natalya – I’d always imagined Lori with longer hair, being the shyer of the friends – it tends to give people something to hide behind – but this mirror image presented to the group was a pleasant visual surprise and actually made sense given the script.  Natalya’s first comment on reading Getting Sam had been that she felt the two characters were the two opposites sides of me – and here they were, battling it out.

As I smiled I remembered the term “happy mistake” my fine art professor repeated to us again and again in college – that often it’s the unintentional marks on a page that lead you to a new, advanced place.

Given the chaos and speed of the event overall and Amy’s sickness I left notes for our next rehearsal – we have one scheduled between dress and performance.  Initially I’d been worried that this was not enough and too late in the day, but now I saw that it was only minor tweaks that were needed: Amy to temper Lori with more vulnerability at certain points, a few pacing variations in speed and volume and a few physical interaction notes, that’s all.   I’m excited to work with them again.

As co-founders we work very differently.  Night and day: literally.  Often I’ll work till 6am on my projects – Silence!  Concentration!  Bliss! – while for her it’s all about early bird catches the worm.   On the venue and timing front for our new show this was no exception.  Coming from a theatre background, for her it was important to work backwards, venue and date first give you a solid goal that you work toward.  Sensible.

For me, however, coming from film – and having lost a key and very specific location in the morning, then rallied all non-working cast and crew to get on their cells, call friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, and found a replacement by the afternoon – on the day of a shoot, this process was more fluid for me.

My approach is promotion, brand and visible content first – website, making people understand what we’re trying to achieve via an online presence  (a link is the best way to cut your workload of email and phone explanation over and over to participators, contributors, venues, press, etc) while working and documenting, knowing that the right time and place would present itself, or at least the odds of finding it would be improved once you had all of the above.

However, while a great approach in some respects, obviously this tightrope tactic is risky, with the cons being that it makes team confidence and overall time-management a little harder to manage.

As such when Brooke at Glasslands offered us the 5th Oct slot we jumped, given that Natalya starts a new acting school shortly after and I am returning to London to speak at Power to the Pixel, so anything after would be problematic.  The pressure is now on to make it happen in a short period of time.  And, unlike a film shoot, even in case of emergency, it can’t be pushed.  I was going to put a countdown timer on the blog, a la Studio 60 but it felt too mean.

The reason I held out for Glasslands is its standing.  Getting the venue was a big coup for me as I’ve been following what they’ve been doing for a while.  The space came to my attention back in the spring, when new to the area – NYC, but Williamsburg & Greenpoint, Brooklyn in particular – and starting to become assimilated to the scene I heard about the space from a friend, Conor, one part of gay rap duo Butch & Bellie.  He mentioned a space run by musician Rolyn Hu and artist Brooke Baxter -who ran underground events before opening Glasslands in 06- and my interest was peaked.

It’s been termed a “experiential community art space”  The word experiential meaning “to create for the purpose of the experience, not the final product, utilizing art as a form of communication.”

Though drawing names such as Thurston Moore, their curatorial sense expands further than music to include lectures, interactive art exhibits, film screenings, poetry readings, events like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs video shoot there last year (see below) parties, installations, murals (list of contributor artists) and afterschool music/art mentoring program for neighborhood kids – where musicians, painters, sculptors and writers support and nuture kids’ interest in creative expression.   They also donate a portion of the door to local Brooklyn organizations that strengthen the community.  Calendar of upcoming events.

For me, I just loved that people could write on the walls.  Felt like home.

While in London I lived in Shoreditch / Hoxton / Old Street and it was an extremely hard place to leave in terms of its creative atmosphere.

Any given day meant bumping into a fashion designer, graffiti artist, graphic designer, musician, DJ, party planner, photographer or model.  Those who made it stayed in the area, and drank and lived with, and next to, those on their way up.

For my group loyalty was not to a venue per se but to the East London based DIY ‘vintage hedonist’ crews or promoters like the Dolly Rockers, David Piper, Sean McClusky, Miss Pixi, White Mischief, or Viktor Wynd that curate/d music/art parties, often with everyone in wild dress, with themed spaces or heavily dressed sets, that moved from one place to another, be it bowling lane, club, parlor, music venue, basement, hotel, pub, church, members bar, stables, gallery, car park, ballroom, working man’s club or listed building, with the word of mouth crowd jumping about weekly.

The ideas of community & location are an ongoing interest, something I tackled in my last short film Bullet For Your Gun which was designed around specific venues & places like Jaguar Shoes and Hoxton square bar & grill – and I’ve been toying with the idea of doing some kind of geo-location release with it.

But now my home is NYC, and I was excited to go see Glasslands again – but this time with a director’s hat on – and dragged an understandably whiny Andy – who had expected a late-night chilled out drink at my house, post late work on my part, rehearsals on his – down there at 3am on Friday night.  It’s five minutes away from my house, I said. The next street, even.  I reassured.  Really close.  Half an hour into our walk he insisted on checking google maps on his Nokia N95.

This is this is your apartment, this is the venue.  This, he said, pointing to our mid-point on the map, is where we are.  Oops.  May have had a little to drink the previous times I’d been there.  He looked back, then forward, then paused for quite sometime before continuing to walk on, shaking his head.

We could hear the crowd from two blocks away.  While the venue entrance is a simple warehouse door, the Friday night exuberance could not be missed.  Twenty or so people scattered the pavement outside, smoking, shouting, pissing and making out.  Ah, Brooklyn.  Hipsterville.  We pushed our way in and the scene looked something like this, except everyone was in sunglasses:

A worried looking Andy looked back at me.  Don’t worry I reassured him, we’re on on a Sunday.  While I stared, fascinated by a zombie-like man in bad drag, make-up smeared down a sweat-drenched face, Andy nudged past a couple in matching sweat band, sports socks and satin short outfits.  He walked round the stage abruptly, made mental calculations of some kind and nodded.  Good, he said.

We got a cab back.