Art From Your Elbow

Please don't misunderstand any of what I'm about to say. I love the theatre, actors, stage crafters and playwrights. But if I ever again (unless there is a really big pay check involved) play another fucking character, build another piece of Godforsaken scenery, waddle through another final dress tech rehearsal until 4AM, suffer through another center stage pissy fit tirade by a fellow actor, director or stage techie all in the name of art and ego, please, I beg you please, shoot my stupid ass in the fucking head with the biggest rifle from the nearest Walmart you can lay your merciful hands upon and put me out of my protracted senseless misery. I have been through it, over it and around it and have the T shirts and war wounds ad nauseam as proof.

For about 16 years, live theatre was my life. Onstage, backstage, actor, carpenter, electrician, director, producer, ticket taker, trash hauler and stage mopper. I've been in Shakespearean plays that have received standing ovations. That much was very gratifying considering the fact I grew up with a very pronounced speech impediment, so screw you junior high school bullies.

I've performed to a standing ovation in a prison. I've traveled around relentlessly in a van doing the same play four times daily at different locations for days on end until I lost my voice from exhaustion in front of a crowd of 800. I once performed with a psychologically challenged actress who didn't see the line of demarcation between acting and reality. One night she said, 'I hate you and I'm going to kill you.' Later that evening, before an audience of 400, she tried to do just that. 

No I'm not kidding.

I remember the uber zealous Christian coalition protesting outside of the production of 'Equus', in which I played the dual roles of the Young Horseman and the horse Nugget. It was the best publicity you could ask for. Standing room only every night. That was my favorite production ever. 

One of my all time favorite teachers, Barbara Lowery, was my first acting instructor. I love this lady to eternity and beyond. She taught me more than she is aware of. I am forever grateful to her. 

I've had some of the best and worst times of my life either on or in close proximity to a stage and it's lover, the audience. I cherish every character I ever played, every line I ever forgot and every crazy ass actor I ever played make believe with. 

The theatre is where I met the love of my life. After many months of working together in various projects, I finally realized that this is the woman I would marry. At the time, I was playing Oberon and she Titania in a small children's theatre production of 'A Midsummer Nights Dream.'

For a kid like me, who grew up as a painfully shy wall flower with a nearly paralyzing stutter, my years in the theatre, in large part made me into who I am today. I am now and forever grateful for all of the triumph and tragedy, both onstage and off. The proscenium, the flys, the orchestra pit, the dressing rooms were my home and my mistress. 

That love affair ended about 14 years ago. Our coitus of hard work for little pay and yearning for the illusion of fame became a stale tango. We parted ways with a final kiss in the alley, behind the dressing rooms while the final act curtain dropped and the applause faded into echos in the mist and like all sacred lovers, never to be forgotten.

This poem was written many years ago when my love/hate relationship with the theatre was not at the point of equilibrium that time and distance have since provided.

High on a horse

of bullshit and tears

rides the beaten down artist

wrapped in a fabric of fears. 

Of all of his needs

the greatest of these

is a kick in the collective ass. 

While mincing and prancing 

and aloof in his silence

he shits in the doorway

hoping to instigate violence. 

He purges his soul

and opens his heart

where on the privileged may pass. 

Though the theatre is empty

the show still goes on

and the critics can all go to hell

The audience is sleeping

except for the hero

standing stage center

proclaims with a yell

and flapping his arms

as if trying to take flight

above what he believes 

is injustice

and towards 

the center of the light. 

The horseman then entered stage right

with an axe and the vaguest of smiles

an idea of destruction before the creation

the artist threw in the towels 

and bled on the tiles. 

The boards of the stage

quivered with rage

as our hero reached out of the lady

but his arms were too short

and his tongue was too long

to stop the aft one

before she finished her song. 

Then down came the doors

and the cops all rushed in

like a thousand bison in heat. 

With a standing ovation

and a punch in the mouth

no one could find a dry seat. 

The nocturnal emission

and exposure indecent

brought gales of laughter

and screams of disgust. 

The lights all came up in the house

Who are these grave robbers?

These crass motherfuckers?

Then the ingénue tore off her blouse

‘Leave us alone

you booshwah pig slobs

or I’ll slice off your heads with my tits!

We’re artists God damn it

you’ll pay for our drivel and like it!

Now sit your asses down

and lets get on with the show. 

These is our lives that we’re spewing. 

so have some respect 

for the scenery chewing.

and after the fanfare

 you can all go back to your lives. 

But this is a temple 

and you’re all just sheep. 

You wouldn’t know 

art from your elbow. 

Blaspheme and declaim 

if you must

but there’s a knife in my side 

and it’s starting to rust. 

When we left off

the artist was dying

before we were so rudely interrupted

the theatre was quiet

all eyes focused on him

squealing and shitting

and hoping you’d listen

to the story of his fire within. 

All my love always,

Max

PS. Here is another short video clip from the evening of October 23rd, when I was the featured poet at Java Monkey Speaks in Decatur GA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFrlLHpxq7A.