Show 96: Seattle, Teatro de la Psychomachia

TURNOUT: 12

MONEYS:$61 + $17 merch

INJURIES: My kneecaps, the caps of the knees as the caps of soda bottles, has been spurred.

STORIES: (This was dictated while I was tired and driving, but not too tired to drive, as, I was driving successfully, not that that should be used as the measure of what's alright.)

We played next to a strip club. The line up was showgirls, dream girls, columbia fire building, building of fire, then goth show hosts. Vanessa, who's pictured above, was great. These people do butoh!! They also have an altar, which we didn't take a picture of, because, in the lineup of buildings before showgirls was a large baseball stadium and we had to park blocks away and left the camera in the vehicle. Things were dark and moody in a nice, charged way, folks seemed to be having a good time, occasionally speaking or slapping on the floor during the performance. I felt kind of strange doing the show under stage lights, as i couldn't see anyone around me, which made me feel like i was in some sort of ice dungeon, where sometimes faces would appear on the other side of the ice. Like an igloo, like a transparent igloo. Like a dungeon. Wow! We are sure still driving. Hey, look, a deer.

People seemed to enjoy it though, and that's that. Hooray! 13 hour drive to Billings.

Pete played his quiet set, which he added crackley voice to, which was a crackley change, so to speak.

Highwayku:

Holy shit Michaud!

Empire war war war bad war

Holy shit JOHN MANNO!!

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it becuase we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 93:Eugene, at The Jazz Station

TURNOUT: 13

MONEYS: $42

INJURIES: I pinched Ben's armpit, visciously. (Ben wrote that)

STORIES: We got to the venue somewhat worn out from spending the earlier part of the day in the mountains, hiking around in the river. Chefkirk played with us which was nice. Pete played his quiet set for a nice audience whom he was familiar with from previous shows in Eugene. I felt somewhat dirty during the show. It took place in a gallery/jazz space that was nice and clean and my pants have been ripping continuously throughout this tour, not to mention the multiple layers of tape holding my shoes together. Oh, yeah, and I knocked a vase over during the show, broke character to say I was sorry.

Highwayku:

bland flatland transforms

mountaintops cut interview

oh gosh they're purdy

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it becuase we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 89: L.A. at Echo Curio

TURNOUT: 6 in the beginning about 3 at the end.

SMELL: Fairly fresh. Smelled mildly of lavender.

BENCH PRESS: About two hundred. Not bad for such a scrawny place.

MONEYS: 20

INJURIES: It hurts, it hurts, oh god it hurts in my soul. (This is ben being slightly overdramatic)

STORIES: There were two skirted and pantsed people who walked into the space right before we were about to start which made me smile a bit thinking maybee somehow the press releases I'd sent out to the void had reached them only to see them walk out right after I did the "When you kill 500,000 children in order to impose your will on other contries, then you shouldn't be surprised when somebody responds in kind" bit.

Oh well.

John and Shannon of Pedestrian Deposit came and saw the show which was great and we had a discussion afterwards with them, Grant, and another guy who's on the neighborhood association and who I can't remember his name goddamn it. I feel like I sounded kind of straight-backed and bookish in this discussion which makes me a little nervous about what my brain and mouth want to do with the new information they suck up.

Other things: - The perfomance and general delivery of the show that night was a little shakey, went better the next night.

- You can't pee anywhere on Sunset Blvd but we did anyway.

- Pete played his loud set, the drooly one, which I watched with my eye's open this time.

Highwayku:

Smuggling apricots,

Where's the lush fertile valley

Barry White killed it.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it becuase we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 88: Phoenix AZ

TURNOUT: 9
MONEYS:
INJURIES: Unscathed!

STORIES: There was some press coverage for this show at the Trunk Space so some theatre folks decided to come out. Which was nice as it turned out to be a great performance, thankfully. This space was the hottest yet. It's amazing how fast the human body can generate sweat. I love it, it makes me feel like a seal just gliding through the performance like water.

Pete played his "weird set" with the bass and the 'I'm in a dream and am about to die by train or flying killer vampire bat' sound. It's the second time he's played it thus far and someone even bought a shirt.

HIWAYKU:

pricey oil change
wasting so much time in heat
back to Circle K! (to be said underneath: "hooray hooray hur")

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it or ask us a question. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 85: Salt Lake City

TURNOUT: 36

MONEYS: $72 + $40 fundraiser CDs + $36 merch

INJURIES: Kate can't seem to stop hitting me in the head on this tour.

STORIES: Very adventurous drive. Just outside Salt Lake City there were signs warning of a three hour traffic delay telling us to take "an alternate route" without clear suggestion of exactly what alternate route. So we just got off the interstate and proceeded to get lost in the mountains. Long steep winding roads, epic music on the stereo, walking into a wedding reception at some hillside resort to get directions, all led us to a steep gravel road up to a beautiful mountain pass. It took over an hour, but was definitely better than waiting in traffic.

This was a great show, set up by John, who played Arthur in Paint the Town, our last touring show. An artist warehouse, someone's birthday party, ping pong and steel industrial ball berring bocce in the courtyard, a machete and hairy monster glove.

The first musician, Silvery Antlers played some very energetic and positive noise music, then we performed for a great attentive audience, then Peter played his harsh drooly set, real nice and loud, and then another great band, whose name escapes me, lots of enthusiastic shouting and layers and layers of guitar, drone and beats. Kind of overwhealming yet relaxing at the same time. Maybe it was the nine hour drive, but we all dozed off breifly amid the hugely loud waves of sound they put out. Grand.

We crashed at the Boing collective, which seems like an awesome place where we definitely should've spent more than a few conscious minutes, but we were very exhausted, and had to get on the road pretty early this morning if we're gonna get some nature in on our drive day.

ROAD HAIKU (Denver to SLC):

Wyoming camels

now the water moves with us

mountain will kill us!

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 74: Knoxville, TN

Turnout: 13

Monetary Support: $55.07

Injury Report: Kate decided to change the "she holds the gun to touch his chest as he stands" part into "she holds the gun to ram his head as he stands" it was a bad idea.

Description: First show of a ten day tour, a Tuesday in Knoxville, where we've never been before. We played the Birdhouse, which is an old house converted into a sort of community center that does a little bit of everything. Mostly artist studio/gallery space, but also home of a small zine library and a food not bombs. We performed with Circle Modern Dance, one of the art groups that work out of the Birdhouse.

I really enjoy performing with modern dance groups. I don't mean to sound like a hippy, but they really warm spaces up with some nice tense energy. Something about dance tightens the audience's focus and also makes me more aware of my body in our performance. I find myself thinking of writhing in the chair as a sort of dance.

Anyway, the dance group was great, the venue was great, discussion after the show was solid, and, while the turnout was a bit low, they were definitely supportive. Our performance felt a little slow and low energy, but the audience definitely stayed with us throughout.

Afterward we went to a house party/pot luck with music acts, including a front lawn folk serenade of affectionate songs about inebriation by a couple who were appropriately inebriated and hardly made it through the set, to great comic effect.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it, or ask us some questions. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 72: Philadelphia, The Rotunda

We continually fail at getting people to come out to shows in Philly. Hurns.

This is a pic of a burnt and abandoned house's stairway in Youngstown PA. A house that ours in Philly is now aspiring to.

Turnout: 7

Monetary Votes of Support: 48

Personal Injury Report: If you count hopes as personal...

Show Description: The Rotunda was a big old space to perform in. Nice lighting and high, high ceilings. Unfortunately, when we got to Philly a day earlier, we'd seen that pretty much all of the posters we'd put up 2 weeks earlier were down and therefore, along with other things, like us being strange, not music, political, and not local, not many people came out. Disappointment. Oh well. The show went well nonetheless and it was good to have done. I don't really have anything else to say besides breathing a sigh of reality.

Off to Columbus!!

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 69: Detroit, Trumbullplex

Turnout: 22

Monetary Votes of Support: $82.25 (30 merch, 32 hat, 20 donation)

Personal Injury Report: Kate kept pulling out her hair during the show.

Show Description: A solid show at an awesome space. The Trumbullplex is two big old houses (biggest and oldest punk houses I've seen) and a theatre space. It's amazing. We played in the dining room so they wouldn't need to turn the heat on in the theatre space. It was Clara's birthday (she's the one getting a b-day massage in the pic). So now we can say we've done this show at a birthday party.

We did some pre-show experiments, that kind of threw things off a little this time. First, we got into town really early and went to a cafe/bakery (which had great bakery but not a lot of seating) and overheard conversations about an awesome urban beekeeping organization. Then we moved to a cafe/restaurant (cuz we wanted something other than bakery and it was too snowy out to wander around and eat peanut butter). We found the best food for it's price we've encountered in a while at Cass Cafe, and (this is where the experiments started) Kate had a couple drinks. She never drinks before the show. Then, we got back to the house and set things up in the dining room, Kate wanted to play chess (cuz it makes her upset when I beat her, which fuels a little method acting for her). Unfortunately, for our second experiment, she won. This (and trying to cram the audience into the dining room) got me flustered enough during the introduction that I forgot to put the blindfold on, which then snowballed into me missing cues cuz I was worried about what Kate will do when she takes the hood off and finds no blindfold. Yes, in spite of writing a part for myself with no lines, I missed some lines. Hurns.

These variations went unnoticed by the audience, who seemed to really love the show. We didn't have a big group discussion, but did have a number of really excellent individual conversations with people and felt really good.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questons or comment on it. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 67: Toronto, Tranzac

Turnout: 13

Monetary Votes of Support: 58.16

Personal Injury Report: Unscathed! We're finally getting good at this.

Show Description: This time we used a stick for the prop gun to avoid border crossing troubles. It worked alright, fell out of the holster a couple times but was better than the rolled up piece of paper we'd used in Pittsburgh.

I liked Canada right off the bat and thanks to Kelly we were not left without an audience.

Also, this show was one of the ones where we got to hang out afterwards, talk, and have some food with the people who saw it. This always makes my night. It's so good to get to know people outside of the environment the play is in. Refreshing. So, thanks guys.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it or ask us some questions. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 61: Toledo, Bozarts

Turnout: 22

Monetary Votes of Support: 101.80 (57.80 donation, 44 merch)

Personal Injury Report: Ben swallowed a mouthful of sock saliva down the wrong tube and had to hold it, silently, in his bronchia for an uncomfortably long time.

Show Description: Great noise set by Dr. Rhomboid Goatcabin, solid turnout, great space, excellent. Bozarts had pretty much all their wall space covered with art, both individually and collaboratively made. It's great to see an art gallery that's used the way this one is.

Hadn't done the show in two days so there were a couple strange things that happened with the radio parts and Ben's sock swallowing, but all in all it was alright.

Did you see this show? If you did write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 60: Madison, Project Lodge

Turnout: 9

Money: 56.50 (35 door, 21.50 hat)

Personal Injury Report: After the show we drove our car into the ditch, then into a corn field, then finally our battery died and we were pulled out by a nice man with a truck at 2 in the morning.

Show Description: We played amongst pink hearts and red string. See that big thing on the wall in the picture, that is a giant heart. I made the performance extra lovey because of this.

After the show, we stuck around to hear some poetry, and then drove to burlington where, on the way, there was a treacherously deep drift of snow in the road that, as I mentioned before, slid us smack into the ditch just barely missing a sign. Another car went in not three minutes after us. As we tried to dig ourselves out, we got to watch numerous trucks and cars swerve, spin and just barely save themselves.

Did you see this show? If you you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd like to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 58: Milwaukee, Alchemist

No picture of the show space, camera died. Here's the street view though.

Turnout: 10

Cut of hat: 35

Personal Injury Report: Ben keeps getting pinched by his zipper.

Show Description: We played in the basement of the Alchemist in a tiny room that worked quite well, extra creepy, and also carpeted--that was new. I was really glad that some people who hadn't seen the show yet came out and also that folks who'd already seen it came back. Thanks Jeb, Pete and Jill. The performance went well despite my eating about a cup and a half of raisins out of nervousness beforehand. Since this worked, I intend to do it before every show.

Did you see this show? If you did, comment on it, write a review or ask us some questions. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 53: Memphis at DeClyre Cooperative

Turnout: 15 ish

Monetary Votes of Support (some house donation): 37

Personal Injury Report: Ben tried to impress me with his match lighting skills and fried his thumb. He also banged his elbow within the first few seconds of the performance later that night. These things will heal but the stare of the giant eyeball pictured below will not.

Show Description: Another living room show! I really enjoy doing these, muddling the public/private space relations. It had been a while since the last one, and this time there were cats. I was hoping one of them, named Prometheus, would go and jump on Ben's lap during the show, as this would add a whole nother dimension to his character.

(Prometheus: Among other things, had "wily" intelligence, gave fire to humans against Zues's wishes, and was punished for this by being chained to a rock with his liver eaten out daily by an eagle.)

There were some nice individual discussions afterwards and we also were privy to one of the most comfortable sleeping arrangements yet. More and more these shows have me thinking about a complete change of attitude for my character, just as an experiment.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it or ask us some questions. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 51: Austin TX at the Salvage Vanguard

Turnout: 9

Door: 50 Merch: 6

Personal Injuries: Ben's gag got all crooked and now his jaw hurts.

Show Description: Back to the Salvage Vanguard. We played with the Waco Girls who did this piece that sort of followed on or drew off of the themes we were presenting. This turned out to be them blockading the door people would normally exit through with chairs and making them agree to and promise that they would stay where they were for their own protection. This worked really well. The music started out quietly as soon as I exited and as Ben tried to get people to untie him which gave a whole new ending to the piece. By the time he was able to get out of the chair, the music was to loud to say much, then the lights were killed and both of us could watch the audience as the tables were turned and they were held captive.

Also, Ben almost killed sombody in the night. There was a man in the road. We were on our way driving to Beaumont at three in the morning and there was this man in the middle of the highway. Caught sight of him from the shaddows of the headlights just in time to swerve out of his way without hitting him.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it or ask us some questions. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 45: Jacksonville @ 323 Modernism

Turnout: 20-ish

Monetary Votes of Support: 38

Personal Injury Report: 4th cement floor in a row, no harm done.

Show Description (by Ben): Fun show in a HUGE new art gallery space in the very Baptist town of Jacksonville. Performed with ambient guitar drone from Carlos Andujar and romantic singer songwriter Michah Davis. JD (the gallery owner and our enthusiastic host) took a ton of really great pictures that we'll put up here soon. There was this junk-art sculpture JD made the night before right behind our performance space (you can't see it in this picture, but it's cool) and there's an old electric metronome in the middle of it. The metronome was running, clicking throughout the performance, just loud enough that you could only really hear it when Kate was silent. It filled those silences with this really interesting steady beat. Like a heartbeat, or a ticking away of time, adding a layer of tension and urgency to the strange silent breaks in the play.

We crashed upstairs and headed out early enough to think about taking a swim in St Augustine, which turns out to have been a mistake...

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it, or ask us some questions. We'd love to hear from you because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 42 & 43: Chapel Hill, NC @ Nightlight

Turnout: 12 for the first show, 18 for the second.

Monetary Votes of Support: 51 and $40.16

Personal Injury Report: No injuries first night. Ben got shot dead with a banana on the second night.

Show Description: Most challenging discussions ever! Between the post show discussions and the Internationalist Books meeting, I can't really think of much to say much about our actual performances. People here are have been super critical and yet openly talkative, a really exciting combination. It's fucking GREAT! I hope we didn't fumble or put our foot in our mouths too often, cuz people definitely objected to what we're trying to do in some interesting and unanticipated ways, and I'm not sure we were always as articulate or clear as we'd like to be.

We were a little concerned coming into this weekend. Performing in a bar, twice in a city we've never played before is a risky endeavor, but thanks to the folks at Internationalist Books, Dan Mac (whose songs are awesome, rowdy and hilarious), Alexis at Nightlight, and Ickibod from The Mysterious Rabbit Puppet Army, the risks paid off and we had a two great shows. We also got to volunteer for a little while with Prison Books.

Also of note! Three masked vigilantes armed with a banana interrupted the end of the second show. I improvised playing dead (poorly, while laughing) and they left this message: "We killed capitalism. What?! That shit was tied up and ready to go. The 'global economy' is not 'all the oppressors and their victims' it's the flows of capital around the globe, the conversion of living into dead; it is not the workers, but the coercion of work. So now it's dead. Good fucking riddance. For once, violence went up the hierarchy, and it felt good. Can we really kill capitalism with one blow? No. Could theatre serve to inspire social conflict and courage? We hope so. [heart] the bonobo gang

We hope so too. In fact, we hope it can inspire a useful and successful social conflict.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it or ask some questions. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 41: Johnson City, TN @ Projexx Studio

Turnout: 35 ish

Monetary Votes of Support: 67
Personal Injury Report: Ben: Elbow bruises, kicked in the head twice (once by audience, once by fellow actor), indigestion, Kate needs to be reminded how to do stage punches in the gut and she um kinda caught Ben in the zipper a little.
Kate: Knee cap accumulated more scrapes and is still all loose.

Show Description: This show was brootal! In addition to the long list of personal injuries we also played with Compulsion Analysis (fucking great audio visual assault) glad to play with them again and had some lip-licking delicious potluck food. Excellent.

Also, there were a bunch of strange internal things that happened, like during the show, there were moments when I would hear or notice the audience shift or adjust in their chairs which, being in a quiet room and at a bit of a loss for focus this show, made the self conscious part of my brain ramp up into medium-high tickish gear saying "why are you moving, oh no please don't leave, I will be interesting in just a second, just a second, I'll do something, alright, alright everyone just please stay in the room, I'm sorry, really very sorry."

Also, the gallery space was positioned perfectly to catch people who were walking by outside off guard. There were big glass windows facing the sidewalk and so we occasionally got to see people stop, stare and try to figure out what was going on during our set and Compulsion Analysis's.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 40: Charlottesville, VA, This Little Bird Studio

Turnout: 10/20
Monetary Votes of Support: $21 Merch: $2
Personal Injury Report: Nothing!

Show Description: Play play play. Part of what we're pursuing on our adventures is experiments in alternative, non-capitalist forms of life. Sometimes such experiments can take the shape of emphatically non-productive activities, also known as playing. Our show in Charlottesville, coincidentally near our always enthusiastic and gracious host Cindy Leal's birthday, allowed us to position our production of Ulysses' Crewmen in the middle of a wonderful playtime session. The first hour of the show was audience participation, improvised music, experimental video, contact dancing and various hoops, tubes, noodles, and other soft objects to play with. Then we
performed. Then people played some more.

It wasn't for everyone (some people who, I imagine planned on being only spectators left during playtime) but the openness and joyful energies of playing definitely informed and contrasted with our nasty oppressive play about the strife of living in capitalist society very well, making this a unique and exciting experience for us, and hopefully everyone else there.

We hope to have more pictures and maybe video from this show soon.

Did you see this show? If you did, ask us some questions, write a review or comment. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 39: Baltimore, MD at 2640 The Church

Turnout: 18

Our Cut (3/4) Door: 71

Personal Injury Report: Hmm, Kate rescued herself from having to act the whole show with her contact slowly and sneakily making its way into the depths of her eye. Also, she made sure the second gun hit looked and sounded really good by really doing it.

Show Description: This show went very, very well. The best part though, was the discussion afterwards. People talking about what brought them out that night and what they took away from the play led to some great discussion covering points on violence and non-violence, what violence itself entails, and the scope and consequences of our, here in america, ideas and recommendations regarding the sort of society we'd like to live in.

Ryan Harvey also played music before and after the show. I actually still have one of the songs stuck in my head as I write this. Man, it's great playing with him, besides similar political themes he also just has the same sort of relationship with the audience that we try to have-- close, honest and straightforward. It's really refreshing to play with music like that.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.