7 Surprisingly Busy Days in the Life of an Experimental Theater Maker
It's another story for the experimental performance scene, which struts its stuff at festivals such as Under the Radar, Prototype and Exponential. For someone like Peter Mills Weiss, it's go time.
'January is this incredible crush of everyone doing everything all the time, and by the seat of everyone's pants,' Weiss, 36, said over the phone. 'I'm happy to support in all the ways that I can.'
Weiss wears many hats, most prominently as a creator with his regular collaborator, Julia Mounsey, of such unsettling, darkly funny shows as 'While You Were Partying' at Soho Rep (2021) and 'Open Mic Night' at last year's Under the Radar.
In addition, he and Ann Marie Dorr are joint interim producing artistic directors of the Brooklyn avant-hub the Brick Theater and its annex, Brick Aux. Weiss, who lives in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, also juggles projects as an actor and a sound designer. 'I like being a jack-of-all-trades,' he said.
Weiss kept a diary of his cultural diet during a mid-January week that culminated with his participation in 'Soho Rep Is Not a Building. Soho Rep Had a Building…,' a 12-hour 'marathon wake' in honor of Walkerspace, the company's former home in TriBeCa. These are edited excerpts from phone and email interviews.
Monday: Move-Outs, Load-Ins
Because they're moving out of their space, Soho Rep had no chairs anymore for 'Soho Rep Is Not a Building,' so I offered 38 chairs from Life World, which is this sort of comedy venue I helped run (we're in the midst of looking for another space). They're the original folding chairs from the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.
I hopped out of the truck so I could make it to the first day of rehearsal for a reading of 'Future Wife,' a play by Reid Tang directed by Nazareth Hassan, at Ars Nova.
Afterward I rushed to the simultaneous load-ins for Ella Lee Davidson's show, 'Sapphire,' at the Brick, and 'Cool Zone: The Lost Episode' at the Aux.
Tuesday: Taking and Making Stock
I spent the morning going back and forth between the Brick and the Aux and met with Ann Marie Dorr. We're interim so we're mostly stewarding Theresa Buchheister's [the former Brick artistic director] legacy programming. I did help sort of articulate the curatorial modality for ?!: New Works, which is the open-access program we do in April.
Later I spent about three hours working on my eulogy for Walkerspace for Saturday. I also made chicken stock. I like to cook, it's one of the ways I unwind.
Wednesday: Weird Zone
I met Julia at the Aux at 10 a.m. We read through this thing that's still in process. It's an adaptation so it's a weird zone for us — we're interested right now in doing the opposite of what people might expect from us.
Then I hustled to Ars Nova, we rehearsed the reading for two hours, and I went back to the Aux. After a thrilling bout of admin, I went to the 'Sapphire' opening night, part of Exponential. The play was really funny and provocative in a lot of ways. The audience really ate it up.
Thursday: A Millennial Roast
I slept in and then went through a full day of rehearsal for the reading. It was the principal staging of the little things that happen in readings, like when you stand up, when you sit down, that kind of stuff.
That night I went to Matthew Antoci and Meaghan Robichaud's 'MEOW!' at Loading Dock. I'd never been to that space before, surprisingly, and it's such a cool spot. It was one of those shows that's just total, total chaos in a way that I really love. I got roasted in the middle of the show because Meaghan was doing some sort of harangue about how millennials suck and she asked 'Who's a millennial in the audience?' I participate every time if I'm asked to participate, so I raised my hand. She's, I believe, a Zoomer, and so had a bone to pick with my generation, and I think that's chill.
Back home I ate half a sleeve of Club Crackers, tried to play a video game and failed, and went to bed.
Friday: Anti-Fascist Puppetry Drag Extravaganza
The reading at Ars Nova went well. I thought it was no disaster and the play is really cool. I don't act a ton for other folks so it's always a kind of experience for me. In the evening I went to see 'Cool Zone' at the Aux, a sort of anti-fascist puppetry drag extravaganza. It was really fun, and very sold out.
Saturday: 11 Eulogies
Saturday was insane, with 'Soho Rep Is Not a Building' from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eric Ting had commissioned 11 eulogies, with around hundred people reading them, each with their vibe. Around 7 p.m. Carmelita Tropicana and I began hosting. We had basically exchanged, like, four text messages about it as a plan. She wanted to do the [grieving] ritual of keriah — not exactly the ritual, but something like it — so we prepped one of her pant legs to rip up. I was overzealous in my ripping and she got mad at me, like, 'Peter, it's cold outside!' I found a bunch of binder clips and got her pants together again. William Burke, the box-office manager and co-chair of the Writer Director Lab, gave a bring-down-the-house speech about all the things he's experienced over the years at Soho Rep. In comedy parlance, he destroyed. Kaye Hurley [Soho Rep's marketing and media manager] and I took down all the posters in the lobby as people were leaving.
Sunday: A Blur
I went over to the Brick way later than I should have but 'Sapphire' loaded out the night before. I caught the 'Cool Zone' team at Poetica Coffee nearby and congratulated them. They really killed it and I was happy about that. I went home and it's a blur to me. Oh, I ate pasta, watched some videos — I consume a steady diet of YouTube videos on a variety of topics — and attempted to do some administrative work. Maybe I succeeded or failed, I have no idea.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Ben Folds on Writing for Charlie Brown, When Music Lost Its Sense of Humor, and How 'Stupid' the Critics Were About Billy Joel
Ben Folds is 'Rockin' the Suburbs' for your kids these days as Charlie Brown's main songwriter (all due respect here to composer Jeff Morrow). On Friday, Aug. 15, Apple TV+ released the first new Peanuts musical in 35 years, Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical. This time around, the gang has to save their beloved summer camp from being closed — bring in the guy who wrote that abortion song. (Kidding, of course: both 'Brick' and Folds' Peanuts work are terrific in their own right.) More from The Hollywood Reporter Lucian Grainge Fires Back at Drake's "Farcical" and "Nonsensical" Claims That Universal Wanted to Devalue the Rapper's Brand Watch Out 'Mean Girls,' It Seems Oct. 3 Is Now Taylor Swift's Day Kid Cudi Details "Heartbreaking" Falling Out With Kanye West: "I Don't Know That Version of Him" This year marks the 75th anniversary of Peanuts. Apple TV+ became the home of Peanuts in 2019 (the deal was first announced in 2018). Produced for Apple TV+ by Peanuts and WildBrain, Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical is directed by Erik Wiese and is written by Craig Schulz, Bryan Schulz and Cornelius Uliano. Executive producers are the Schulzes, Uliano, Paige Braddock, Josh Scherba, Stephanie Betts and Logan McPherson. Read The Hollywood Reporter's wide-ranging (from Charlie Brown to Bill Burr to Billy Joel) Q&A with Folds below; we previously published an excerpt from the same Zoom interview in which the former Ben Folds Five frontman discusses his exit earlier this year as artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra, a program overseen by the Kennedy Center. *** Classic rock-and-roller move here — I'm trying to understand how you got involved with Snoopy and the gang. You and I wonder the same thing. I don't really know. I did another TV special with them, I guess two years ago and got an Emmy nomination for ['It's the Small Things, Charlie Brown'], and everything. We all worked together really well. And I don't know, I feel like I understand that world Charlie Brown's mentality is very familiar to me. It feels comfortable, you know? But, the Schulz's are great, and I think we might have done some stuff with them years ago for other projects. They've got Schroeder. [Laughs] Yeah. You'll probably get nomination(s) off the new musical, and as we speak, a kids movie called is dominating Netflix, in large part because it has great original songs. Why are so many of the best pop songs coming (first) from movie soundtracks today? That's interesting. Well, I think some of it is because pop music, in and of itself, is not really all that relevant. Comedy probably took the place of rock and roll at some point. It did the same things. It was rebellious in that way, and it defined lots of things about culture. And now it's like everything is sort of eaten up into content. I don't really know the landscape enough; I've never been a real student of any of that, but that's the feeling that I get. I think that one thing I could do for [Apple TV+] with this show was just to bring a real, old-fashioned craft of songwriting, which is dying out. That doesn't mean that there's not good songs these days, but there are different kinds of songs, far less about the craft, which is a good thing. But it makes me think of something specific: David Bowie and Bing Crosby sang that famous duet ('Peace on Earth'/'Little Drummer Boy'). Well, the story, roughly, behind that was that Bowie walked into this whole thing and was like, 'I'm not singing ba rum pum-pum-pums.' And they were like, 'Well, what if we made it something— a little bit expanded?' So a staff writer just wrote the half of the song. They call it a mashup, but the song didn't exist. So the other one, where it says 'Peace on Earth,' or whatever, the other they've mashed up, the staff writer pulled that out of his ass And that's the kind of craft that existed in that era, where people who were just writing on staff were writing better than stuff that people make now. So how do you apply that to Charlie Brown? He's an established, iconic personality. We know he's not the dude that elbows his way to the front of a choir. He's not, like, effusive, big, loud. So then, him breaking into song has its own sort of constraints, and the way he expresses himself has to be real solitary. And since he's been with us forever, he's an old soul. 'When We Were Light'…he's singing like a middle-aged dude singing back about something [that] he shouldn't actually know about. I think those things require a little thoughtfulness, a little craft that you just kind of got to know, [or] even have a bag of tricks as far as writing songs goes. The first two (songs), I didn't write. I know one of the guys that was part of the team that wrote the first two songs, and they're great. They set the whole thing up for me. But as soon as my three songs come in, you know, [Charlie Brown's] been thrown in a hole. So it's like, Chuck in a hole, now we've got to dig out. I didn't really have scripts to explain how they get from a day where they're supposed to save camp with a rock concert, and it's raining, and then the sun comes out. But, this is one of the things about good songs and musicals, is they're supposed to punt to the song and let the song dunk. You didn't have a full script to work from? They didn't really have anything in there. So it's like, 'Well, look, you know this it rains, and then they're not going to have the concert. And then, the sun comes out, then yeah, they're gonna have the concert.' The song that I wrote was there so it would obviate the need for script that would fill out. So in some ways the screenwriters get more from you than you do from them. Well, that's the point of a musical, and actually good book writers, like them, know that. I'm not making up for a deficit. I'm actually stepping into the role of the column there that is required of the song. That's another reason why I have to think that someone like me finds himself in an unlikely gig. That's not for all songwriters. Is there a challenge in music as in comedy where frankly so much has been done — written, sung, said — that there is also just less original stuff less to do? Like, literally fewer topics and word combinations available? Well, I think (what) good music and good comedy have in common is that it's about a unique view on what's happening to us all. So, to the extent that history repeats itself, or rhymes, and to the extent that we have things you can and can't say — they're different now than they used to be. George Carlin used to go through the seven words you can't say on television. Well, you almost have to say them now, right? What can't you say (now)? Well, listen to a 70s a comedy album, just put the needle down, and you'll hear something you can't say now. Especially in Peanuts. [Laughs] Yeah. In music more than comedy…if everyone just keeps on expressing roughly what they're feeling, just technology alone is enough to move it into the next decade. You were among those '90s bands and musicians that combined comedy within their otherwise good, solid, straightforward music. I'm not sure that happens these days — why is that? What I've felt over my lifetime has been that it's— I think it's increasingly not encouraged to take a real solid stand of 'Who are you?' I just imagine there's no there's no shape, gender, color, you can grow up in this moment, come purely from that place, and somehow not incite something hateful. I'm not going to try to imagine being in anyone else's shoes, I'm just southern white guy — but I imagine right now that maybe one home for that music that you'd feel safe really being yourself, would be some kind of dreadful country music. And I think that if you joke, you've got to watch out what you're joking about. I'm not being grumpy about some kind of 'cancel culture' thing. I'm just actually talking about societally— it's just much sexier to be mysterious. If you're mysterious, and we don't know exactly who you are, then we can't exactly attack you. Because everyone's got faults…I think those differences should be celebrated. Let's just say you're growing up a white girl in the suburbs, upper-middle class, and you just kind of feel like, 'I think I need to, you know, kind of affect a little bit more of a vocal fry, that'll keep them off of me.' Just a certain kind of sexy, not any kind of jokes. They don't have any real functions like eating or sleeping or having a bad day, it just has to come from the sky or something. I think that's a lot of pressure on kids. If I were the the boss of them, I would make them come out from behind— like, even online, you just call yourself some stupid handle, and one has to see who you are. I just think, 'Who are you?' That's what I'm interested in. When someone comes out and they're just who they are— and think that's true in comedy too. That's why we love someone like Bill Burr. He's obviously flawed. He'll tell you that, he doesn't try to hide it — he's been through stuff. And I think that's probably where humor went, because humor shows you that you have to take a little bit of stand on who you are, you have to have an ethnographic position. Have you watched , ()? Beautiful, loved it. It's just so moving. When I was coming up in the 90s, I was compared to him — but only in bad reviews. See, this is the way that they treated him, was so badly, that an up-and-comer like me, if I was going to get trashed, it would be by taking one of our great songwriting geniuses and comparing me to the guy. That's how stupid they were. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise Solve the daily Crossword
USA Today
4 days ago
- USA Today
Star Trek's 60th anniversary to be celebrated with waves of toys
For its 60th anniversary, the Star Trek franchise is going where it's never gone before – in terms of action figures. The groundbreaking original TV series debuted on NBC back on Sept. 8, 1966, spawning a fleet of subsequent movie and TV enterprises, including "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," currently in its third season on Paramount+, and the in-production "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," set to arrive on Paramount+ in 2026. With the space franchise's upcoming 60th anniversary looming, fans will likely engage in a massive celebration. Collectors already have plenty to get excited about. The first wave of figures, expected to be due later this year, includes characters never made available as action figures before, among them Capt. Jellico ("Star Trek: Prodigy"), Peter Preston from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," and Valkris, a female Klingon from "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock". The Nacelle Company, perhaps best known for TV specials such as "Kevin Hart's Guide to Black History" and "Down to Earth with Zac Efron" (both on Netflix), acquired the rights to market Star Trek playsets and accessories in 2024. The company has already announced that a host of action figures is in the works. Anniversary cruise: 'Star Trek' cruise will celebrate show's 60th birthday with William Shatner and more stars Those figures, which are one-twelfth size (roughly six or seven inches tall) can be pre-ordered now (priced individually at $28.99), will be followed by three additional waves: The arrival of a new line of Star Trek action figures "indicates how meaningful, and relevant, this series is, even 60 years later. And that makes me very proud," said Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, son of the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment, in a statement to USA TODAY. "The Original Series holds a special place in the history of Star Trek, in the history of science fiction, and in the history of television," Roddenberry said. "I am thrilled to see it being honored in conjunction with Star Trek's 60th." Roddenberry wasn't ready to share other aspects of the 60th anniversary just yet. "But rest assured it's Roddenberry's intention to provide Trek fans the opportunity to be part of the celebration and engage in the Trek community," added Roddenberry, who suggested Trekkies follow the brand on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and YouTube. 'Lifelong' Trekkie commands Star Trek toy-making mission Nacelle CEO and founder Brian Volk-Weiss comes by his interest in Star Trek toys honestly, as the owner of a collection of more than 5,000 toys. He chose the company's name based on a word for the housing of a starship's warp engines. "I'm a lifelong Star Trek toy collector and a lifelong fan," Volk-Weiss told USA TODAY. When meeting with Paramount to secure the licensing, Volk-Weiss said he told the studio he planned to cater to Trekkies who want action figures beyond the obvious characters, such as Kirk and Picard. "Where's Captain Garrett? Where's Captain Jellico? Where is Peter Preston?" he said. "That was my pitch. …. What I basically said was, 'I believe the base of the Star Trek community is strong enough to give them what they want – and Valkris is the greatest example – even if it's a character that was on screen for 81 seconds, 35 years ago.'" The company's plan for releasing action figures is to alternate waves of figures who commanded a starship bridge with waves of assorted characters. When Nacelle announced it would be releasing Star Trek toys, it included an email address in the news release encouraging fans to chime in on figures they would like to see. Decisions on which ones to produce were "absolutely 100% influenced by that," Volk-Weiss said. Nacelle has announced a total of four waves of action figures to "assure the community this is not going to be a two-wave line," Volk-Weiss said, adding that "we have to make everybody feel confident we're going to go the distance." The toys, which are made in China, would fall under President Trump's unsettled tariff policy. But Volk-Weiss said the company plans to "keep everything on schedule and keep the prices locked," with Nacelle's other divisions helping to manage any impact on the profit margins. "My goal is to make this the most successful Star Trek (toy) line ever or at least tie Playmates from their original '90s run," Volk-Weiss said. "So if I want to do that, I can't raise my prices and I can't slow anything down because keeping the trust of the community – this sounds cheesy, but it's true – if we lose (that), the line will fail." Star Trek action figures: Wave One Wave One is available for pre-order and is expected to ship out this fall. Available for $28.99 each; $225 for a bundle of all eight figures: Watch: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Star Trek action figures: Wave Two Wave Two figures, announced in March 2025 at WonderCon in Anaheim, California, will be available for pre-order soon and released in 2026: Star Trek: The Original Series action figures in Wave Three Wave Three figures, which features the "Star Trek" original series cast in their duty uniforms and a 60th anniversary surprise two-pack of unannounced characters, was made public in July at the San Diego Comic-Con and will be available for pre-order soon and released in 2026: Star Trek action figures: Wave Four Wave Four figures, also announced in July at the San Diego Comic-Con, will be going on sale in mid-to-late 2026: Mike Snider is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @ & @mikesnider & msnider@ What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Ben Folds on the depth of the new ‘Snoopy Presents' animated musical and why he left Trump's Kennedy Center
Snoopy is the superstar of the 'Peanuts' world, but Ben Folds is loyal to Charlie Brown. 'I'm going to have to go with Chuck because he's so emotionally compressed,' the singer-songwriter said when asked for a favorite. Folds didn't grow up poring over the Charles M. Schulz comics or memorizing the TV specials — 'I can't think of anything I really was a fan of outside of music' — but he loved Vince Guaraldi's music for the animated specials. He started studying Charlie Brown and the gang when he was hired to write the title song for 'It's the Small Things, Charlie Brown,' sung by Charlie's sister Sally in the 2022 Apple TV special. And he recently dove back into the world of these iconic characters when he returned to write the final three songs for 'Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical.' 'I think it's good that I came to fully appreciate the world of 'Peanuts' as an adult,' says Folds, although he adds that he was still starstruck about writing for Charlie Brown. 'It's a lot of responsibility,' he says. 'I was asking the Schulz family, 'Can I say this?' and they'd say, 'Yes, it's yours.'' Folds' best-known songs, such as 'Brick,' 'Song for the Dumped,' 'Army,' 'Rockin' the Suburbs' and 'Zak and Sara,' may seem too sardonic or dark for the sweet world of Snoopy and company. But he sees it differently. 'There's a lot of deep stuff there. 'Peanuts,' like 'Mister Rogers,' presents an empathetic and nuanced, not dumbed-down view of the world, and that is rare for kids programming,' he says. 'I was able to say stuff in my songs that kids will understand but that will go over the heads of many adults.' He also knows how to approach the storytelling aspect of musical writing pragmatically. Within the show's parameters, Folds is grateful to the creators for giving him his artistic freedom. 'They give me carte blanche and don't push back' Folds says, adding that when he puts in poetic imagery — 'I'm not calling myself f—ing Keats or anything,' he adds as an aside — director Erik Wiese would weave those ideas into the animation. 'That's really cool to see.' 'My ambition is to have them tell me that my lyrics meant they could delete pages of script,' he adds. 'That's what these songs are for.' Wiese says Folds was the ideal person to 'take the mantle' from Guaraldi: 'He brings a modern thing and his lyrics are so poetic; on his albums he always touches your heart.' Writer and executive producer Craig Schulz, who is Charles' son, was impressed by both Folds' songwriting and the responsibility the musician felt to the 'Peanuts' brand. 'He has a unique ability to really get into what each of the gang is thinking and drive the audience in the direction we want to,' says Schulz, adding that there was one day where the writers got on the phone with Folds to explain the emotions they needed a scene to convey 'and suddenly he says, 'I got it, I'm super-excited' and then he hangs up and runs to the piano and cranks it out.' The first song Folds wrote for 'A Summer Musical' was when Charlie Brown realizes that the camp he holds dear 'is going to get mown over in the name of progress. I wanted him to have the wisdom of his 60-year-old self to go back to 'when we were light as the clouds' to let him understand the future,' he says. So it's a poignant song even as he's writing about Charlie Brown looking through 'old pictures of people he met five days ago. That's the way kids are — they're taking in a whole world and learning a lot in five days.' (He did not write the show's first two songs, though you'll hear plenty of Folds-esque piano and melody in them because, Wiese says, 'We wanted it to sound cohesive.') In the final song, Folds' lyrics celebrate the saving of the camp (yeah, spoiler alert, but it's 'Peanuts,' so you know the ending will be happy), but he laces in the idea that these children are inheriting a lot of bad things from older generations, including climate change. But it's not cynical, instead adding an understanding that their parents did the best they could (with a 'Hello Mother, Hello Father' reference thrown in for the old-timers) and that this new generation will do the best they can and make their own mistakes. Folds says it's important for people in the arts and on the left to bring a realistic view but not to become doomsayers. 'I see how bad it could get, but there are two stories you can always tell that might be true — one way to talk about climate change will leave people saying, 'We're screwed anyway so I'll just drink out of plastic bottles and toss them in the garbage,' but the other way is to motivate people, to tell a story that shows an aspiration towards the future.' That does not mean, of course, that Folds is blind to the perils of the moment. He stepped down as the National Symphony Orchestra's artistic advisor at the Kennedy Center to protest Donald Trump's power play there. 'I couldn't be a pawn in that,' he says. 'Was I supposed to call my homies like Sara Bareilles and say, 'Hey, do you want to come play here?'' But he's focusing on the positive, noting that he's now working with other symphony orchestras with that free time. Folds has recently also tried countering the turmoil of our current era: Last year he released his first Christmas album, 'Sleigher,' and his 2023 album 'What Matters Most' opens with 'But Wait, There's More,' which offers political commentary but then talks about believing in the good of humankind, and closes with the uplifting 'Moments.' And obviously, Folds knows that a show that stars a beagle and a small yellow bird that defies classification is not the right place to get bogged down in the issues of the day. Even when the lyrics dip into melancholy waters, they find a positive place to land. 'In this era I don't want the art that passes through my world to not have some semblance of hope,' he says.
