He's got the pigs at the door, he put the drugs down the drain. He's gonna have to come up with seven grand some other way...

Unemployment blog, week 1:

"Funny thing about weekends when you're unemployed, they don't mean quite so much - 'cept you get to hang out with your workin' friends"

It's Saturday already (??!!) and I've been without an employer for a whole work week and I have to say so far the experience is a mixed bag. After being gone so much for so long I enjoy the surplus of time around the house (or in any one place, really, but home is the best place) to just get stuff done and see the kids to and from the bus on school days.

Plus, the transition is well timed since this is when we kick into gear for the improv festival, so that's helped mitigate the negative effects of suddenly having a large amount of unstructured time on my hands. Plenty to do on my list. I'm sure I'll reach a point when that runs out (the house has been getting steadily cleaner every day as well) and I'll panic a little bit but not yet.

It will happen, it's just a matter of when.

The big question I haven't really answered fully - what am I doing now?

Originally things with HUGE were steaming right along on a course to really take off basically the day after I was done working the jobby job but we've put some things on hold to sort through some new developments and generally slow down and give things the time and planning they deserve.

And for a long time I've just been answering that I'm going to open a theater, (and that's still true) but when I'm not actually taking concrete (and terrifying) steps toward that goal my day can get kind of nebulous. For now I'm trying to be a good house-husband, enjoy the time I get at home and trying not to drive my wife insane when we're "working" in the same house together all day since I've got a pretty good deal going on here.

One of the really fun things right now has been Overheard in Minneapolis - the show HUGE is producing (and I'm directing) at Intermedia Arts. HUGE shows are one of the biggest things I've been missing while I've been jetting around the country, focusing on the business side of things like planning the fundraiser, etc. I've essentially missed whole productions that HUGE has done (like Beatbox) even while HUGE has been a big part of my work.

Overheard is something I've been really excited about for a long time, since Nels and I have been talking about it forever, and I'm glad to be able to slow down and enjoy the process and see the show develop. Or see the show at all. The cast is a really great mix and I think we really hit the chemistry right and this past week we had a great show that I walked away from saying "That is the show I had in my head. THAT is the show" - which is a great place to be and a rare thing.

Directing has been strange, since the cast is made of experienced improvisers it was just a matter of laying out the structure of the show and then forgetting all about the mechanics of it and just having a good, fun show that felt like a great, long-form improv set. That's what I've been after and I think that's what we put on stage.

I hesitated for a long time to call the show "a play" even though that's very much what I wanted it to be - there's something very different about "just playing" and when you step up and say "now watch this, this is going to be real fucking theater" in terms of the expectations you set up for the audience. If things go wrong when you're "just playing" it's easy to shake off, when you put it out there as a serious effort and things fall flat there's nothing easy to tell yourself, so the temptation to keep things silly and "just play" is an alluring one for the ego.

We've been saying for a long time in and around HUGE and the Twin Cities community that improv is "real theater" but been actively avoiding the air of "real theater" since it seems so....serious. And improv is so FUN. And that's really the thing we've been trying to bridge. "Theater" always seems like classical music and "improv" is more punk rock in my mind.

From the show that you put on stage to the way you think of an evening of "theater" versus a night out of "improv" there's a weird perception that one is not the other, which is frustrating in some ways and a relief in others.

And one of my big goals is to do something in that middle space between the two. That seems like a really cool place to play. To try and remind people that "real theater" doesn't have to be heavy and dense and stuffy and can be a really good time without taking itself too seriously. We can also show that improv can be polished and presentational and - holy shit - theatrical as hell and still feel like punk rock.

Overheard hit those notes for me and I'm proud as hell of the show. This isn't just an extended plug for our show, this is hopefully a little window into the dark place that is my brain. Since I have more time to myself in front of the computer while I scheme my big schemes I hope to open it a little more via my blog and let people know a little bit of what HUGE is going for even if we're not announcing an address for a theater this week or next.

There are no small ambitions here.

The name says it all.