Today our partners in Brief Encounters were revealed! I have been paired with Serge Bennathan, a choreographer. We are slated to begin work on our co-creation April 1st, and will be performing at Brief Encounters at Performance Works April 15, 16 and 17. I am going to write a bit about the experience of creating a 5-15 minute performance piece with someone I've never met as we go, I am so intrigued as to what will happen!
I'm used to creating in short periods of time - I have participated in Theatre Under The Gun (aka Show Off Festival) several times, and it is always a wonderful experience. Not easy, necessarily, but so rewarding. And I am always so surprised and delighted at the work that comes out of it. Theatre Under the Gun and Brief Encounters differ in a few ways. TUTG is a 48 hour playwrighting festival. An inspiration package is received at 8pm on Wednesday night and you're off and running! The package contains an image, a sound bite, a prop and a line of text or dialogue. You spend 48 hours creating a 15 minute piece and perform on Friday night at 8pm. Amazing! Generally speaking, all of the pieces I have been involved with at TUTG have been created by people who know each other and work together regularly. Brief Encounters pairs two artists of differing disciplines and gives them two weeks to create a 5-15 minute piece. No inspiration package, total strangers! So I am not nervous about the length of time we have, but I am a bit nervous about whether Serge and I will be good working partners. I am wide open to whatever we come up with - a funny dance piece? I am already imagining so many things....ohboyohboyohboy!
Okay, I am off to make charoset for a seder I'm attending tonight. Lucky me making the charoset, super easy chopping! I haven't been to a seder in years. I kind of let all the Jewiness fall off when Poppie died five years ago. He was such a connection to tradition, in such a non traditional way. So it is very sweet to have been invited to another family's seder, especially because it sounds kind of loose...they describe it as a hippie seder. I'm gonna dress up, anyway!
Cashews, honey, apples, cinnamon, lemon...chop, blend, chill...eat and be reminded of the bricks we made while we were slaves. (nb, I actually have no personal memory of being a slave, and am pretty grateful for that.)
So...stay tuned for updates about the creation process, and possibly even some more short fiction. I've had a lot of words roiling around in my brain lately, likely they are looking for an escape route. Might as well be out my fingers.
xoRH
3.29.2010
10.30.2009
I started this tonight. Don't know what it is yet.
This is an in between season. Something not quite autumn, with sun and crunchy leaves, and not quite winter, with snow and merrymaking. It is the blue season. A cavernous time of darkening and oppression. Cold rain comes down fast and hard. So hard that as drops hit anything they explode and become mist which then travels back up and makes having an umbrella a cruel joke. Storefront windows are fogged, people leave their hats on indoors. Suicides increase.
"Why don't you cheer the fuck up, anyway?" Barry's feet are on the coffee table and his sport socks, clearly worn for days on end, sag around the toes, giving him the look of a limp elf. He has your manuscript in his hands. He is reading it. Fucking douche. Didn’t you tell him not to touch anything?
“I’ll cheer the fuck up when you get a job and get out of my apartment, Barry. That’s when I’ll cheer the fuck up.” You feel good about that one, just a little pressure valve release, to keep you from killing him. From strangling your own brother. Sometimes imagining him slowly turning blue and his lifeless body dangling in your hands, sometimes this is the only thing that can put you to sleep at night. This has become worrisome.
“I never used to want to kill you, Barry.” Barry laughs, but his laugh ends in a little cough when you coolly take the manuscript from him and place one hand on his throat, squeezing gently. Holding on just long enough to make him uncomfortable. Barry’s face changes.
“Hey, cut that out. Fuck, Dale, that shit’s not funny.”
“Get out of the apartment, Barry. Go away for a while. Go to the park, or a movie, or go get drunk. Just leave me in peace.” Barry looks like he might respond, his mouth opens, then closes, like a fish. Barry’s stupid, fishy face stares at you.
“Can I have twenty dollars?” He is sheepish and arrogant at the same time. It equals out to pathetic, but you find twenty dollars and shove it at him. He mutters thank you, and goes. You think maybe you see him crying a little on his way out. It almost softens you, but not quite. You need the breathing room. Time alone. Close your heart, you think to yourself, it’s better for both of you. You hear the door close and Barry’s fading, thudding footsteps.
It is quiet. You realize you are gripping the manuscript so tightly that you have crumpled it. After staring at it for a moment, you frown, then scream, then throw the manuscript at nothing in particular. The pages mock you, drifting in all directions, spreading across the sofa and coffee table, fluttering peacefully to the floor. You hate it when Barry’s right.
"Why don't you cheer the fuck up, anyway?" Barry's feet are on the coffee table and his sport socks, clearly worn for days on end, sag around the toes, giving him the look of a limp elf. He has your manuscript in his hands. He is reading it. Fucking douche. Didn’t you tell him not to touch anything?
“I’ll cheer the fuck up when you get a job and get out of my apartment, Barry. That’s when I’ll cheer the fuck up.” You feel good about that one, just a little pressure valve release, to keep you from killing him. From strangling your own brother. Sometimes imagining him slowly turning blue and his lifeless body dangling in your hands, sometimes this is the only thing that can put you to sleep at night. This has become worrisome.
“I never used to want to kill you, Barry.” Barry laughs, but his laugh ends in a little cough when you coolly take the manuscript from him and place one hand on his throat, squeezing gently. Holding on just long enough to make him uncomfortable. Barry’s face changes.
“Hey, cut that out. Fuck, Dale, that shit’s not funny.”
“Get out of the apartment, Barry. Go away for a while. Go to the park, or a movie, or go get drunk. Just leave me in peace.” Barry looks like he might respond, his mouth opens, then closes, like a fish. Barry’s stupid, fishy face stares at you.
“Can I have twenty dollars?” He is sheepish and arrogant at the same time. It equals out to pathetic, but you find twenty dollars and shove it at him. He mutters thank you, and goes. You think maybe you see him crying a little on his way out. It almost softens you, but not quite. You need the breathing room. Time alone. Close your heart, you think to yourself, it’s better for both of you. You hear the door close and Barry’s fading, thudding footsteps.
It is quiet. You realize you are gripping the manuscript so tightly that you have crumpled it. After staring at it for a moment, you frown, then scream, then throw the manuscript at nothing in particular. The pages mock you, drifting in all directions, spreading across the sofa and coffee table, fluttering peacefully to the floor. You hate it when Barry’s right.
5.31.2009
Hey, listen to this!
I'm pretty funny, actually, when Guy MacPherson interviews me for a second time on his radio show, "What's So Funny?". I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying listening to it right now!
http://www.comedycouch.com/podcasts/Whats_So_Funny_RHahn2.mp3
Cut n' paste, or go over to the sidebar and click the link.
xo RH
http://www.comedycouch.com/podcasts/Whats_So_Funny_RHahn2.mp3
Cut n' paste, or go over to the sidebar and click the link.
xo RH
5.14.2009
This is a short story I wrote tonight.
It is a hot night on the subway. I am sticking to the seat. On my way to Brooklyn. The train does not stop at my stop this late at night. I have to walk several blocks, near the park and in a city unfamiliar to me. I am staying with a friend. She will be asleep, wrapped in the arms of her girlfriend, who is beautiful and fun but will later turn out to be a liar. My friend has had bad luck with women. I love staying with my friend. She is easy to be with and easygoing. She does not ask much of me or my time and happily intersects with me when we are both able.
New York city has the most jello available in restaurants of any city I’ve been to. At home in Vancouver there is only one restaurant I can think of where you can order jello, and it always comes in a tiny cup, with whipped topping, and always has a skin on it that tells you it is stale. And they never have red. It is usually yellow or orange, like those flavours are cheaper, always on sale. In New York the jello is fresh and comes in a glass dish as big as my left breast. Which is a D cup, so that’s a lot of jello. And it’s usually red, and they cut it up in squares. It’s cold and refreshing.
When I was a little girl and would visit my father in Montreal we would ride our bikes to his mother’s apartment on Wilderton Avenue. His mother, my Bubbeh. I wouldn’t realize until much, much later that her name was Tillie, I only knew her as Bubbeh. Her apartment was exotic to me. So many stories high, I thought only rich people must live there. You had to push a buzzer, one of seemingly hundreds of white buttons, and she would talk through a speaker and let you magically into her building. No one else I knew ever lived in an apartment. Houses of varying states and ages, cabins, schoolbuses, tents, shacks, domes, wagons, townhouses, co-ops…but no apartment buildings. We would ride our bikes up long hills along the side of Mount Royal and spend the evenings with Bubbeh. She would measure me against her blue chair to see how tall I had grown. She would make fried chicken and kougal, salad with iceberg lettuce and chicken soup. Always for dessert she would make me jello. It would be in this rectangular glass dish with a lid, always the same one. I would try to guess the flavour before we arrived. I hoped for red. Me and my father would sit on the balcony and watch the planes land in the distance against the sunset, eating the jello. I let the jello linger in my mouth, turning it back into liquid, sloshing it around, savouring every bite before swallowing. I tried to make the jello last forever.
I am sticking to the seat so bad in the hot subway, on my way home to my friend’s house, where she will be sleeping in the arms of her girlfriend. I can not believe it is so hot down here underground. A strange man stares at me, he looks like he wants to talk. An old woman fans herself slowly with a magazine. We are the only three on the car. I imagine the cool jello I will eat tomorrow, remember how it refreshes and comforts.
New York city has the most jello available in restaurants of any city I’ve been to. At home in Vancouver there is only one restaurant I can think of where you can order jello, and it always comes in a tiny cup, with whipped topping, and always has a skin on it that tells you it is stale. And they never have red. It is usually yellow or orange, like those flavours are cheaper, always on sale. In New York the jello is fresh and comes in a glass dish as big as my left breast. Which is a D cup, so that’s a lot of jello. And it’s usually red, and they cut it up in squares. It’s cold and refreshing.
When I was a little girl and would visit my father in Montreal we would ride our bikes to his mother’s apartment on Wilderton Avenue. His mother, my Bubbeh. I wouldn’t realize until much, much later that her name was Tillie, I only knew her as Bubbeh. Her apartment was exotic to me. So many stories high, I thought only rich people must live there. You had to push a buzzer, one of seemingly hundreds of white buttons, and she would talk through a speaker and let you magically into her building. No one else I knew ever lived in an apartment. Houses of varying states and ages, cabins, schoolbuses, tents, shacks, domes, wagons, townhouses, co-ops…but no apartment buildings. We would ride our bikes up long hills along the side of Mount Royal and spend the evenings with Bubbeh. She would measure me against her blue chair to see how tall I had grown. She would make fried chicken and kougal, salad with iceberg lettuce and chicken soup. Always for dessert she would make me jello. It would be in this rectangular glass dish with a lid, always the same one. I would try to guess the flavour before we arrived. I hoped for red. Me and my father would sit on the balcony and watch the planes land in the distance against the sunset, eating the jello. I let the jello linger in my mouth, turning it back into liquid, sloshing it around, savouring every bite before swallowing. I tried to make the jello last forever.
I am sticking to the seat so bad in the hot subway, on my way home to my friend’s house, where she will be sleeping in the arms of her girlfriend. I can not believe it is so hot down here underground. A strange man stares at me, he looks like he wants to talk. An old woman fans herself slowly with a magazine. We are the only three on the car. I imagine the cool jello I will eat tomorrow, remember how it refreshes and comforts.
5.07.2009
Pet Peeve
When people use the word "trolling" when really they mean "trawling". I am a on a mission.
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