July 9 2023
July 9, 2023
# 1614
Brayden
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COVER:
Brayden Martino
Brayden is a recent graduate of the Boston Conservatory who carries with him an all-consuming interest in contemporary theater, including acting, directing, writing and devising: creating new work. He has worked in several theaters with several theater groups and has a wide circle of friends and associates in the field.
What does he like about theater? The immediacy of the performance and the active role of the audience. He is a happy young man because he is making plans for another production of his pirate musical, “Toothy.”
Although he is buoyant, socially, he is sensitive to homelessness, and in theater, he is saddened by the lack of creativity (unoriginal remakes) and by friends who have lost their imaginations.
Immediately in front of him, he is working on a pitch to a larger company to produce show.
Here are his responses to AI generated questions.
Can you say something about how film influences your stage acting?
The films I grew up on have influenced my work immensely. As a huge fan of Tim Burton’s films, I have been inspired by the other-worldly (and slightly creepy) aesthetics of Edward Scissorhands, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He has a real knack for being able to create a new world, and world-building is one of my favorite aspects of writing. I also have been greatly influenced by character actors such as Jim Carrey, Taika Waititi, and Mike Meyers — I consider myself a very physical actor and love to create absurd larger than life characters that still have heart & human within them. I also think that the TV show SpongeBob SquarePants has been hugely influential in my comedic writing today, as I think they coined a very specific dry style of humor that has seeped into the bones of my entire generation. It just hits the funny bone differently!
What inspired you to pursue a career in art, and how did you get started?
I was born into a very artistic family. My parents are both hair stylists, and they were very encouraging of me and my siblings’ creative endeavors from a young age. My parents would come home to complex buildings that my brother and I would construct out of our VHS collection, and sit through long intricate performances that my siblings and I would write and choreograph (but when it came down to it, we’d mostly just improvise). Finally when I was 10, my parents decided to help me find a creative outlet and get some real training in the performing arts, so they signed me up for a production of Alice in Wonderland at our local community theater in Yorba Linda, California. Since then, I’ve pretty much always moved from one production to the next, keeping myself busy with performing, writing, and directing. It just always came natural to me, and there’s nothing else I could possibly see myself doing! It always puzzled me when people would say I need to have a “backup plan” in case a career in the arts didn’t work out. What else would I do? I started telling people that my backup plan for theater-making was filmmaking, and my backup for filmmaking was cartooning, and my backup for cartooning was songwriting, and so on… The arts runs through my blood and it fulfills me! And I believe that if you are passionate about your art, you’ll draw people in who share that passion or at least admire it, and you will build a community and be able to sustain yourself.
What role do you see art playing in the world today, and how do you hope to contribute to that?
I think that different types of art play so many different roles in people’s lives, but two things come to mind as highlights in my personal lens. I think that art is an escape for many, and it allows us to let our suppressed imaginations run free from the pressures and monotony of our daily lives. I think that art is also a major tool for social change. We as humans are naturally storytellers and we connect with the stories we share with one another. These stories ignite our feelings of empathy towards people who are different from us, and introduce new ideas to us that could change our points of view for the better. Art is a tool for learning, for growth, for connecting and relating to one another, and for bettering humanity.
What challenges have you faced as a young artist, and how have you overcome them?
As a young artist, it’s sometimes hard to be taken seriously by older folks in the industry. It has also been very difficult to obtain funding for projects, but we have found very creative ways to make magic out of a shoestring budget. Any challenge we’re faced with is an opportunity to come up with creative solutions, and these solutions have often created better results than whatever the original plan was. What is most important is to stay positive, open-minded, and push through the hard parts.
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Commentary
Most people have great 4th of July stories.
Ours was close to home, enjoying rare leisurely time together: my daughter, Kat, her significant other and my dear friend, Will, and myself, Dom.
This is a photo of our delicious dinner.
A light salad w fresh lemon juice, fresh herbs, and evoo dressing
red lentil penne pasta with a tuna fish and anchovy sauce
Wing’s freshly-killed chicken with a dressing of gochujang, soy, and ginger, garlic, and scallion seasoned sesame oil
fried peppers with caramelized garlic and onions
washed down with watermelon margaritas
Now that’s eating.
We went out to the George Howell Cafe and then walked to Ben and Jerry’s for a Hot Fudge Sundae with mint chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, and walnuts.
All the reasons we needed for a celebration.
I Love Manhattan
you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.
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Kat’s Gen Z Corner
The Romanticism of New York
For many young people, New York is a pitstop. Before settling down, maybe starting a family, 20-somethings flock to the City’s corporate and night life for a few years. Then reality or societal expectation sets in and you hit the suburbs.
Not for me. I don’t want to face reality, and with a little luck I’ll create my own. I, so certain in my 25th year, want New York to be my forever home.
That’s because the whole world is in New York, and while that can be terribly overwhelming at times, it’s also the most thrilling experience of a lifetime. It’s an adventure at every turn. Within a few block radius, you can find $30 orchestra tickets to the ballet and free entry to half a dozen world-class museums. You can picnic in the most iconic urban park and feast on the cuisine from every country on earth. Not to mention it’s the setting of You’ve Got Mail.
I love romanticizing Manhattan. I’m currently devouring Sex and the City (sorry, Dad!) and listening to Billie Holiday as a way to delight in the grandeur (and roughness) of my new city. There’s always some cultural moment to celebrate here.
I just finished Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility, not as good as A Gentleman in Moscow (but I hear better than Lincoln Highway), and I loved it still because it was based in Manhattan. It captured the excitement of being young in the greatest city in the world and really living in it – not just using it as a pitstop before settling for a picket fence and minivan.
A quote from the novel:
"For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise - that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving."
I hope to be so lucky.
the Met Museum for a work-related Pride event. Doesn’t get more New York than that!
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Brayden’s Gen Z Corner
Immersive Theater: The Future of Live Entertainment
One of my greatest loves is for immersive theater. Now, the word “immersive” gets thrown around a lot. You’ve probably heard of the “immersive” Van Gogh exhibits, “immersive” roller coasters, “immersive” audio devices, etc. But what does this word mean in the context of theater? Theater has this great power of creating a story that unfolds before your eyes in real time, with live actors on stage in front of you. But what if you weren’t sitting in a chair watching actors far away on stage? What if the world the characters lived in was all around you, and you had free will to explore this world and interact with it directly? That, in a broad sense, is immersive theater. And it’s a relatively new concept that has been executed in many different ways.
Photo from Sleep No More, in New York City, where the audience roams anonymously wearing masks, and witnesses performers tell the story of Macbeth through movement, sound, and imagery.
One of the most well-known immersive theater experiences is Sleep No More at the McKittrick Hotel in New York City, which tells the story of Shakespeare’s Macbeth but without much dialogue. Instead, you walk through a 1930s noir-style hotel where there are five floors of simultaneous theatrical action. You couldn’t see everything that happens if you tried, because the story is unfolding all at once in different places, and your experience interacting with the story is completely personalized. Nobody else will experience the story the same way you do, because you have full control over where you roam and what you interact with.
Poster for Sockhop on Saturn by Klubhouse Arts.
I had the immense pleasure of working on an original immersive theater production in Brea, California in the summer of 2019. I was on the very small creative team of a brand new experimental theater company, Klubhouse Arts. We dreamed up a world where commercial space travel was perfected, and humans were invited to visit and be tourists at a small town on the planet Saturn. This town was inhabited by friendly aliens who had taken a lot of inspiration from observing humans through the television. However, because the television signal from Saturn to Earth isn’t very strong, they were getting content that was about 70 years old, and as a result their town took on an eclectic 1950s inspired roadside persona with alien-twists on everything.
Concept art by Tristen Martino, depicting the main street of the small town on Saturn.
This vivid world we created began to get more exciting when we discovered the stories we wanted to tell within it... A celebrity from the big Atlas City is in town to host a talent competition! The mayor’s husband has mysteriously gone missing! A mythical beast nicknamed The Alby is lurking in the town, but is it real?! We created 30 characters that live in this town, and each character had their own storyline that would vary each night — because the audience was in control of the story.
We built this small Saturn town inside of a giant tent. Complete with a retro diner, a beauty salon, a grocery store, a science lab, an arcade, a motel, and a bandstand — the town of Hyperion Flats was teeming with 30 actors roaming and improvising, interacting with the dozens of audience members choosing their own adventure.
A quartet of teenage aliens living in Hyperion Flats, who dream of winning Raaz Güdem's talent competition and becoming big stars.
If you attended, your personal level of participation was completely up to you. You could sit back and watch these improvised scenes happen in front of and around you, or you could chat directly with characters who might send you on different quests. There was also live music and performances for those who wanted to watch a more traditional theatrical experience. Regardless, it was like being immersed in a real-life video game. The audience determined the outcome of each character’s story arcs each night, which made it constantly fun and exciting and new.•
A review from Haunting.net (who selected us for their 2019 Staff Pick Award) stated, “I, for one, came away from my trip to Hyperion Flats with a renewed sense of creativity and nostalgia. It was amusing to watch each story unfold and, although I couldn’t see every single story, it was fun to have little interactions with everyone in the town. The variety of characters allows visitors to choose whom they identify with and with whom they would want to interact – or not.”
Myself, playing the pompous celebrity from Atlas City, Raaz Güdem.
Sockhop on Saturn was a massive experiment, as we were innovating new techniques and styles in immersive theater that had never been attempted before in this way. I learned so much from this experience, and hope to continue creating new and innovative immersive experiences that are accessible to the average person.
Check out this video to see some glimpses of the show in action!
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Tucker’s Corner
I needed some time to really think about Wes Anderson’s new film. I saw it two weeks ago and really couldn’t fully nail down my thoughts until the other day. Don’t let that scare you off. It’s truly lovely and fits right in with the brilliance of his other work. This is Asteroid City.
Asteroid City - Directed by Wes Anderson
At age 54 and with 11 feature films under his belt, Wes Anderson is not a director we should be taking for granted. You would think that deep into a successful career the man would have calmed down, petered out, what have you, but the opposite is true. Anderson approaches his most recent works with the same energy and attention to detail as he always has. Maybe more so. Following his two latest live action films that take place in Europe, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch, his new comedy Asteroid City brings him back to his home turf of Texas. Specifically, the comically small and sparsely populated town that’s about to host the annual Junior Stargazers convention for teen prodigies. But like any of Anderson’s films no matter where they take place on the map we are undoubtedly in his world.
Even though the population of Asteroid City is advertised at “87” we really only see the proprietor of the town’s single motel (Steve Carell), his staff, and the single waitress at the town’s diner. Enter young inventor Woodrow (Jake Ryan) who’s being chaperoned by his father Augie (Jason Schwartzman), a recent widower ferrying his wife’s ashes cross country in a Tupperware. “Let’s say she’s in heaven” Augie tells his brood as they arrive in town. “Which doesn’t exist for me of course but you’re Episcopalian”. Soon after the other stargazers and their families arrive, meet their mentors, flirt with one another and on the night of the award ceremony bare witness as an extraterrestrial drops down and takes the asteroid the town is named after from its landing spot. This of course leads to a government lockdown forcing everyone to stay in town.
Asteroid City takes place in 1955 and every frame of the town is designed to nod to the art that most influenced its creation. You’ll immediately draw a line of here to the sun-baked westerns of John Ford, the paintings of Alex Colville, MAD magazine inspired sight gags and the slapstick comedy of the Roadrunner cartoons. The square to camera framing and tracking shots may look simple but anyone who studies Anderson’s work with more than a passing glance will see how impressive this (and all of his) films are on a technical level. There’s been a recent wave of AI generated parodies of Anderson’s films or if the director took on a popular franchise like Lord of the Rings and seeing a Wes Anderson film play out in front of you shows how ridiculous those ideas really are. They prove unequivocally that you can’t fake the truly inspired artificiality of Anderson’s worlds.
Everything in Asteroid City, from the façade-like storefronts to the immaculately cleaned and creased costumes, to the desert sand itself has been so thoroughly stylized you would think it would require a concentrated suspension of disbelief from the audience. The actor’s performances (there are many and they’re all terrific) work in tandem with the sets and costumes. Everything adds up to what we’ve come to expect from Anderson. An artist at the top of his form, creating an entire world for audiences to play in for two hours and never fumbling a single detail.
Asteroid City quickly reacquaints us with many of Anderson’s oft visited themes – family, loneliness, theatricality, gadgetry, grief and because of how beautifully human each of these things are presented and experienced it becomes even simpler to forget the artificial visual style and allow Wes’ world to swallow you whole. Each of the teenaged Junior Stargazers are perfect Wes Anderson characters. All of them geniuses who are still naïve enough to not be able to navigate their own hormones. The scenes between Schwartzman and his grumbly father-in-law (Tom Hanks) who in the wake of his daughter’s death has been forced to assist a young man he’s never really liked, touch many of the same raw nerves felt in Anderson’s 2001 masterpiece The Royal Tenenbaums. Even when the alien appears, rendered is lovely stop-motion, evokes the beauty of the Jaguar Shark from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou – a gorgeous symbol of the mystery and indifference of nature and the cosmos.
Wes Anderson’s detractors say that he essentially takes the same approach to all of his films and apart from subject matter the style and acting choices could be swapped between his works without making much impact. What those same voices fail to grasp about his work however is that as Anderson has developed as an artist so too has his ability to tell the stories he chooses to tell. The Grand Budapest Hotel uses flashbacks within flashbacks. The French Dispatch is structured as a series of reports and essays within an issue of a New Yorker-style magazine. Anderson is trending toward being interested in storytelling as a subject and his last three live action films are certainly proving he’s having success in that arena. In Asteroid City, this fascination with storytelling takes the form of a complexly conceived framing device where the narrative of the families trapped in Asteroid City is revealed to be a Playhouse 90 style teleplay. These sections of the overall film are shot in black and white and in a narrower aspect ratio as if to suggest that art doesn’t just imitate life but expands and illuminates it.
It’s tough to summarize the movie’s structure but I can assure you it works better on screen than I’m selling it. The key to the whole film may actually be in one of the black and white framing sequences in which Willem Dafoe, portraying a Meisner style acting teacher leads his class (the film’s entire cast playing actors in the Asteroid City play) in a chant. “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” Anderson often frames his actors as if they are directly addressing the audience, but it’s never felt this overt before. Having actors deliver the “can’t wake up” line tells us a lot about how Anderson understands performances. Truly great acting requires a balance of imagination and vulnerability. But I think Anderson is talking to us too. In a time where so many movies feel designed to kill some time and hold you over until the next thing, he’s asking all of us to actually allow ourselves to give over to what we’re watching. If you don’t bother engaging with a piece of art and instead take it in over the top of your phone, you’ll never fully benefit from its power.
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Local Bits
My daughter Kat and Tucker and I visited the Back Bar in Somerville. We enjoyed their all-drinks menu and came away with some pictures which I’ll share.
The first, their ambience.
We practically opened the place, at 5.00pm
Their drinks are delicious as well as prretty.
We had dinner next door at Field and Vine. The restaurant is attractive, the service very friendly, and the food very good.
Field and Vine, a nice take.
This is the fairly spectacular, multi-page drink menu at the Back Bar.
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MONTHLY HEALTH REPORT CARD: of an 81-year-old male.
Dom Capossela
Natural Physiological Change
My hearing test indicates that my hearing has diminished. A hearing aid will be of benefit. But I can hear perfectly well in my everyday life so I will pass on getting a hearing aid for now. I will lower my grade.
Grade: B
Weight-lifting
June was a fair month for me.
I was at the club two times weekly.
But my energy level remains high and I still happily anticipate my visits. So I will lower my grade a full step down.
Grade:B+
Walking
June was a good month for walking.
As a matter of course, in the nice weather season in Boston, from May through October, I walk about five miles a day and I did that this month.
I prefer to find some reason to make trip out a destination walk, even if it’s only to buy an apple.
My speed and endurance have improved since the cold months have passed.
I walk twice as often in the warmer weather because the cold weather makes it so laborious to get out of the apartment.
Grade: A+
Illness
My Actinic keratosis was treated with liquid nitrogen cryotherapy. After the resulting scab fell off, my skin looked good. To a layman. I made an appointment for Sept 15 for a follow-up appointment. Grade is unchanged from last month.
Grade: B
Injury
None.
Grade A+
Weight
(Using only weight as a measure of health is simplistic. I know. Health care specialists consider an entire range of metrics. Two commonly used indicators are the Body Mass Index that takes into account a person's weight and height. And Body composition, considering the distribution of body fat and muscle mass rather than solely focusing on weight. But this analysis of the state of our health is meant to be doable in our regular day’s living.
We’ll use simple body weight and take other steps when we feel things going really poorly.)
I have stayed on my diet for most of June.
I am at a good weight for myself.
Grade A+
Oral Health
I have no teeth or gum issues.
I brush and floss regularly.
Get a cleaning twice a year.
Grade A+
Substance Abuse
I continue to drink a modest amount of coffee in the morning (12oz) and an Italian coffee in the afternoon. I have some form of alcoholic drink at dinner time. But only at dinnertime.
The grade is based on the absence of stimulants and mind-bending substances. I stay unchanged.
Grade: B+
Stress Management
Being retired and living alone I am deprived of the joys of gainful employment and daily social intercourse. But, on the other hand, I avoid the attendant stress that accompany both of those endeavors.
Grade: B+
Sleep
As I struggle with my sleep, I have devolved upon another solution that works and is appealing to me. (Although I haven’t passed that solution by my PCP yet. He might warn me off.)
I have no trouble falling asleep but I invariably awaken an hour later and have a difficult time getting back to sleep.
So here’s my latest solution:
For the last eight weeks, when I wake after that first hour, I have been taking four pills, at least two, but often three of them, are full-dose aspirin, and two, but often one, is a 5 mg dose of melatonin. The cocktail works in any combination.
But not 100% of the time. I still have a day or two a week when I am fully awake after just that first hour, sometimes two hours of sleep. Understandably, in the hours after I get up from bed, I function slowly. I get through the day by taking several naps ranging from 15 minutes to an hour. Despite the occasional misstep, the cocktail mostly works and so I will continue taking it until I am told otherwise, or until the combination of pills doesn’t get me back to sleep. With the continuation of my success I’ll raise my grade, a single step, from a B to
Grade B+
Regularity
While my current diet is great for my weight-control, it’s not working as well for my regularity. As far as my eating habits are concerned, I’m still working with my personal version of the 16-8 diet. While this is a great improvement over my past eating patterns, I still have not brought enough plant-based food into my diet.
Recently, I have increased my fiber pill intake from 3 capsules to 5 each day. (Five is the recommended dosage.) I have also added prunes into my diet.
But, after consulting with AI, I made a major change in my posture at the bowl: standing instead of sitting, otherwise following my regular routine. In my case, and AI stresses that everyone is different, the newly-adopted positre was worked wonderfully for the last two weeks. I’m rasing my grade by a small step, from a B- to
Grade: B
Memory
I do a lot to stay mentally active. One of my primary activities is writing. I work on this magazine, and I am also working on two books.
My other major memory activity is meal preparation, from the planning of the menu, the shopping, the preparation which sometimes involves me in writing recipes, and the eating.
Yet, despite all I do, my memory loss is a nuisance: I am the subject of those 1,000 jokes about walking into a room and forgetting why I chose to come here. This part sucks. I don’t know why I was so generous in grading myself in the past. So I’m making a full demotion, from an A+ to a
Grade: B+.
Social Activity
Social interaction helps ward off depression and stress. Some weeks are better than others. The month of June has been better excellent, lots of unexpected company. My grade remains the same.
Grade B+
Inspected carcasses tagged by the USDA
Everything is graded
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Chuckles and Thoughts
George Carlin says:
"Electricity is really just organized lightning."
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