The Evening Series - Monday, August 21, 2017

I recently purchased a window shade, where it will keep the sunlight out, but if you’re outside the window, you can see yours truly as a shadowy figure moving around in my living room.  Day and night.  Privacy has never been an issue with me.  I don’t see the point in it.  Some people I know have shredders so they can cut up their bills and health notices as well as other personal papers before they throw it in the trash.  I, on the other hand, post all my bills, including notes from my doctor as well as sensitive tax notices on my Facebook page.  I figure the best way to hide something is to put it all in plain sight. 

It has been an open secret that every night I have a performance by our window.  Although we do have shades, the image on the curtain looks like images from a Lotte Reiniger film.  A German Filmmaker who was the pioneer of the silhouette animation.  My “shadow play” is never planned out in advance.  It’s everyday life in Tosh’s household, and that seems to bring an audience out in the evening.   The only thing I do in an organizational sense is to leave my trash cans out in front of the garage.  One for regular trash and the other is for recycling waste.  The show during the summer months starts at 9 PM.

Tonight, I’m planning on doing a version of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1895 play “Anatol.”  It’s theater about a bourgeois playboy named Anatol, who is obsessed with the thought of a lover being unfaithful to him.   It’s a common problem around me, and it’s a play that I take to my very heart.   Through the theater, one can project their anxieties in such a state, where it is healthy.  The lighting of the piece needs to be perfect.  I have to set lights within the living room to project the images to the outside world.  I hired a well-known lighting expert for the stage, Hassard Short, who came recommended by a friend of mine, Billy Ladd, who is a chorus dancer on Broadway. 

I spent the day making articulated cut-out figures, one representing me as Anatol, and the rest are all the women characters in the play.  Each cut-out female is based on an actual woman I know.  I have asked these particular 'models' to come over to the house, where they have to remove all their clothing so I can trace their body onto paper to do the cutting that will fit their form.   Being a heterosexual male, I was, of course, attracted to the female forms in front of me.  As part of my body reacted to what was in front of me, one of the models was kind enough to trace on the paper so that it can be part of the cut-out figure of my character.  I expect when I make my appearance as a cut-out, with the help of my model, I will get a standing ovation from the audience.  

When one prepares to put together a show for an audience, it seems that the preparation is more important than the actual performance.   I have had dreams where I'm a viewer instead of one who is participating in the narrative of the dream.  Now, that I'm conscious I make dreams happen.  It's the payoff that keeps on paying.  

- Tosh Berman