Don't change the channel - its Evan O'Television! Part 2

For the last 15 years, the performer known as Evan O'Television has hit the slam circuit as both sides of his comedy act with his television alter ego.   Evan frequently performs at puppet slams in Providence and Boston. For a decade, he produced  PAN 9, a multi-genre variety show event out of an artist's loft in Allston, which hosted one of the earliest Boston area puppet slams. Recently, Evan has been co-hosting Blood From a Turnip, which will have its final late night iteration on May 19th.  Evan's  feature-length show "Evan O'Television in Double Negatives" traveled to the New York International Fringe Festival.

Blood From a Turnip #Providence, Evan O’Television, Photo: David Higgins

Marsian: What was you most disasterous slam experience?
 

Evan O'Television: One of Kristin McLean's occasional collaborators was the director of The Revolving Museum - an organization that curated site specific shows at various different locations all around Boston.  The director of the Revolving Museum had set up a show for First Night (New Year's Eve) Boston that he populated primarily with Puppet Slam performers.   He asked me to perform at it.  It was at the Cyclorama in Boston and there was a very cool set, and we were all in different rooms of a mocked-up house.  People were encouraged to wander around and it was definitely a very cool set up if you were a more interactive performer.  But the problem was that I was performing a 15 minute version of the "Ex Machina" show I described earlier.  And this piece also now included an audience-plant routine.  The biggest issue is that my pieces are narrative and definitely require the undivided attention of an audience.  Here, we were playing a venue where people would essentially wander through look at what we were doing for about 2 minutes and then move on. Because I perform with a recording it's difficult to stop or start over and nearly impossible to improvise.  So we just kept performing it over and over, often with no one in our space and just me and my friend and collaborator Mark Myatt (who was my audience "plant" originally intended to blend in with the never-constant audience).  Most of the time we were performing for no one, or else for people who took a brief interest akin to viewing animals in a zoo. 

M: What did you take away from that experience?
EO: After performing in this show I have always taken pains to clarify that any show I am booked at is organized as a theatrical performance and not an "installation" style environment.

M: How could your slam circuit grow?

EO: I definitely would like to see more connection and sharing of acts from Boston and Providence up to Vermont, with Sandglass, and obviously Bread and Puppet.  So many performers I have enjoyed over the years have spent time in Vermont and yet, we still haven't fully been able to make Western Mass and Vermont a consistent part of a circuit down to Boston and Providence.  There's plenty of work still to be done on making the loop from New York to Providence to Boston and back more regular and fruitful.  Even though there has been some success with mini-tours in recent years we can always do more.  It would be also be cool to extend the performer's circuit up to Maine, which has always seemed to be rich with talent (Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers come to mind). 

M: And Nancy Andrews is up there too!
EO: I would love to see a slam circuit that brought more performers from Vermont, Western Mass. and Maine down to Boston and Providence, perhaps though UConn and on to New York, Philly and maybe even D.C....  and of course, vice-versa.

M: Tell us about a fabulous failure and what you've learned from it.
EO: There was an early show, probably the  5th or 6th piece I created as Evan O' Television, where I had a lousy idea for a very odd and awkward premise, where the TV and the live performer would start by speaking for many minutes entirely in synchronized speech, saying the exact same things, almost like a chant, and then a breakdown in our synchronized presentation would happen and we would separate into our usual argument mode.  One problem was that I was under-rehearsed so I was genuinely screwing up the synchronized speaking before the built-in intentional screw-up" could happen.  But it was basically too convoluted and too elaborate a performance idea with very little payoff to recommend it.  It taught me a lot about how I need to simplify and shape my ideas in the writing and recording stage before I got to the performance stage.  And it also taught me that when I am attempting something very stylistic different within my formula, I need to allow for even more rehearsal time.

M: Why are Puppet Slams important to you?  

EO: I love Puppet Slams because they are some of the only shows you can attend and still see things you didn't expect to see.  There are very often surprises, in terms of what kind of performance someone sharing, and what their particular angle or interpretation of puppetry is.  It is also great that very often the participants are a mixture of pros and amateurs, newbies and veterans.  You not only have very good odds for seeing something completely unexpected, but you also could see something astonishingly professional in its execution, and sometimes both within the same performance.

M: What inspires you to create a puppet slam piece?
EO: I wish I knew where my ideas came from so that I might burn a fire under them and become magically way more prolific.   Most of my ideas are about situations I can imagine the TV and I struggling with onstage.  If you have seen any of my performances, it's pretty clear that they are all built around a some performance goal that is thwarted or that the TV and I ultimately become distracted from in some way, or ultimately fail at.
 

So I guess the seeds of my pieces always are twofold:
 

1. What would be interesting to watch the Evan on the TV and I try to do? 
2. What is a new, interesting and entertaining way for us to fail at that goal? 

I also always like to play with breaking the audience boundaries and pursuing new ways to interact with the audience, because the more I do that, the less restricted and trapped I feel by the fact that I am performing with a recording.  Finally, in recent years, I have looked for new ways that circumstantially or plot-wise my live-performer character can sometimes get the upper hand or grab some power from the TV, because the Evan on the television is so often the more charismatic comedic star of my show.   I like to occasionally have the straight-man win one.

M: Who are some other artists on the puppet slam circuit that you are inspired by?   

EO: At a Blood From A Turnip  show that Vanessa Gilbert organized on the Brown Campus many years ago, there was a really amazing shadow show, I think it was The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by the Drama of Works.  That really blew me away.  It absolutely pushed the most cinematic potential of shadow shows in ways I've never seen.  You had a piece in that show as well, Marsian, your Michael Jackson's Zoo storybook piece which I really enjoyed in all of its perverse splendor.  

M: Go on!

EO: I especially liked  the way it was reminiscent of Children's TV - just you sitting there with the giant book, that you opened up and the puppets came out of.  I have always loved how quickly you are able to immerse the audience in the uniqueness of your world.  As you know I also loved every iteration of Growing Up Linda, that I have seen and really enjoyed it when you revived it at my Itching Man show at the Coolidge Corner.
 

M: Well thanks for the trip down memory lane...
EO: Sarah Frechette is always one of my faves, though I haven't seen her perform in a while, not since she moved West.  I'm just mesmerized by her power to make herself invisible through her Marionette skills and I love the puppets that she builds.  The Man on the Burning Trapeze, I believe was the name of a piece she used to do that used to give me chills it was so good.

M: Anyone else? 

EO: Last Winter in New York at the Hellzapoppin' Puppets show I saw Carla Rhodes for the first time and I was in awe.  It was just so exciting, to see someone who, like me, is playing around thematically with updating vaudeville traditions - but unlike me, has absolute real-deal chops and virtuosity regarding the traditional twin talents of puppeteering and ventriloquism.  Also, the way in which her puppet Cecil, both seduces the audience, but then punishes us by being totally offensive, is something that I really enjoy comedically.  I like the way we, in the audience, are made to feel guilty for liking him, and also how it falls to Carla as the puppeteer and performer to negotiate those uncomfortably funny problems of political incorrectness, in front of the audience.

M: What pieces do you have in circulation to perform in puppet slams?
EO: I have about three 8-10 minute sets right now that I feel are slam-ready and slam-worthy.

The first piece is essentially the initial 10 minutes excepted from my NY Fringe Festival show Double Negatives.  In it the television and I are undermined in our attempt to introduce ourselves to the audience by technical difficulties that involve a particularly awkward moment for the TV... of losing lip-synch.

Another piece is an abbreviated version of the show I am currently developing, called TV Personality,  In addition to dealing with a difference of opinion about how to start our show and greet the audience, the TV and I get into conflict about the appropriateness of a certain Abbott & Costello anecdote and entertain very different ideas about what the future holds for us.  If people are interested in booking a longer set, I also perform a 25 minute version of this show.

I also have a piece called Similies in which the TV attempts to moderate the live Evan's stress, by smoking an illicit substance.  But this ends up working in the wrong direction, resulting in the opposite of a mellowing effect.

And finally, if people want to book a longer piece, I have my long-standing, crowd-pleaser, Pavlov which famously involves audience participation and hypnosis and runs about 15 minutes. 
 

M: I love that one!  Such a classic. Where can people contact you to perform?
EO: People can contact me at my website, www.EvanOTV.com.  It is still kind of just an old Wordpress Blog where I sometimes post about my shows.  It will be undergoing a redesign this year I hope.  Or you can email me at Evan@evanotv.com

M: Where would you like to see the Puppet Slam Network in the future?
EO: I would like to see the Puppet Slam Network continuing it's current trajectory.  It's pretty inspiring to see it grow.  And I would like to see more and more of the Puppet Slam Network in person.  Namely, I would absolutely love to have a majority of the shows I do in 2013 to be at Slams around the country.  Puppet shows and puppet audiences have always been my favorite crowds.

M: That's a fabulous post-apocalyptic goal! What advice do you have for up and coming slam artists who are just starting out?
EO: Maintain a spirit of adventurousness and experimentation but also never forget the importance of the audience.  What is the journey you are hoping to take them on?  How successful are you?  Whenever experimental work forgets to continuously engage or reward the audience then it misses the inherently conversational nature of live theater and risks being over-indulgent.


M: Anything else we should know?
EO: On May 19th Vanessa Gilbert and David Higgins and I will be having our final Blood From A Turnip of the season. We'll have the always inspiring and hilarious Z & Chad with their  Wonderspark Puppets (another favorite act I could have mentioned above).  We will also have MF Town Productions from Providence, and Nicole LeDuc Hartigan bringing her newly acquired Storrs, CT, puppet school knowledge.   This will be our final season of doing Blood From A Turnip as a late-night series.  We will return in the Fall and Winter with a smaller selection of shows that will probably be more feature-driven.

And on June 9th and 10th, in Cambridge, Mass., I am reviving my Itching Man brand of live events in Boston with a two-night Fest celebrating Art Doing It With Comedy that includes ventriloquist Carla Rhodes, puppeteer Kim Mikeness, and sock-puppet soap opera Fat Nancy and Crisco alongside some of my favorite comic performers. 

M: Yay!

Don't change the channel - its Evan O'Television! Part 1

For the last 15 years, the performer known as Evan O'Television has hit the slam circuit as both sides of his comedy act with his television alter ego.   Evan frequently performs at puppet slams in Providence and Boston. For a decade, he produced  PAN 9, a multi-genre variety show event out of an artist's loft in Allston, which hosted one of the earliest Boston area puppet slams. Recently, Evan has been co-hosting Blood From a Turnip, which will have its final late night iteration on May 19th.  Evan's  feature-length show "Evan O'Television in Double Negatives" traveled to the New York International Fringe Festival.

Photo: Sarah Paterson

Marsian: How long have you performed at Puppet Slams?

Evan O'Television: In the 1990's I moved to Boston after attending Amherst College and growing up doing community theater and school theater in Brattleboro, Vermont (just two exits south of Putney, current home of the great Sandglass Theatre).  When I first got to Boston I was directing short plays  (in one and two-night runs) at venues like the Middle East rock club in Cambridge.  That was when I met Kristin McLean who was then the director of the Puppet Showplace Theatre.  She had already launched the very first round of Puppet Slams at the Showplace.  She and I met at a party for a mutual friend and ended up talking for hours about performance and puppetry.  For about a year I had been performing a 15-20 minute piece about Andy Kaufman called "A is for Andy".  That was the first piece where I recorded myself and then performed a dialogue with the video.  I knew I was cribbing from ventriloquist/dummy dynamics but Kristin convinced me that what I was doing was in essence puppetry, and encouraged me to create something new in the same style for her next Puppet Showplace Slam. 

M: And when was the first one?

EO: So, I think the first one I performed at was that Winter, in 1996?   I know it was the first time I called myself "Evan O'Television" The night is a blur of a memory for me, but that is the case every time I first perform a new piece.  It was the first version of a show I would perform for several years called  "Ex-Machina".  I had written it to be a little more directly about puppetry than some of my other pieces - As a live performer I had my head in a cardboard "TV-Shaped" box, directly across from the actual TV, and as a live performer claimed to be an animatronic puppet. The piece consisted mainly of the TV and I arguing about when the actual live performer was going to show up.

M: Who was on the bill that night?

EO: I don't really remember who else performed that night, but some of the key performers at those early Brookline Slams were the Andrew Periale's Perry Alley Theatre (doing their Chinese Menu puppet Shows), Paul Vincent Davis doing any number of wonderful shows, Kristin McLean herself (often doing gorgeous shadow puppetry) and the late Caleb Fullam performing with his sweetly funny original creations.

M: Explain "video ventriloquism" 

EO: My tether to puppetry (you could even call it my creative umbilical cord) continues to be primarily based on how much of the structure of my act is directly borrowed from Ventriloquist "dummy" acts.  The Evan on the television plays the dummy role, by continuously performing as the primary foil and catalyst for my routines.  Also the television is related to other forms of puppetry beyond ventriloquism because the TV is the focal point for any "illusion" that occurs in my act.  Where many puppet-artists, such as marionette-performers or hand-puppeteers rely on physical skills to create misdirection, or performer-character separation, or give illusion-based believability to their act, the mechanics of the illusion that I create are primarily auditory.  The believability, regarding how much my dialogue resembles the rhythms of real life conversation is the primary illusion.  The more I am able to achieve that goal, the greater chance there is that the audience might forget the unreality of what they are watching.   That audience commitment to the imaginary and suspension of disbelief is common in all theater, but I definitely think that the way I approach it, is most influenced by puppetry,

M: You've toured all over the North East with your TV.
EO: I have performed in Slams in New York City (Great Small Works' Spaghetti Dinner and Hellzapoppin' Puppets at the Voice 4 Vision Festival), Connecticut (UConn,  Puppet Slam), Philadelphia (Puppet Uprising) and obviously Boston (Brookline) and Providence (Blood From A Turnip).  Sadly, only the Northeast.  Philly was the most furthest  and therefore by default, the most exotic.   Morgan Andrews and Beth Nixon put on a terrific show with an infectiously circus-like atmosphere.  

M: What is the funniest, freakiest, edgiest, or weirdest show you have seen?
EO: My favorite performance ever at a puppet slam still has to be a Big Nazo performance I saw at the Brookline Puppet Showplace.  Big Nazo was preceded on the bill by a quiet 20-something young man who spoke in thickly broken-English and said he was from somewhere in Eastern Europe, I think.   He had a very intricate and delicate Toy Theatre set that he had made, if I remember corectly, he even needed a bit of help getting up on stage.  I feel like it was about 4 feet across, with  miniature figures and detailed little buildings across the whole thing.  He explained that the set was an exact model of the village he came from, in his country, and he pointed out all sorts of details on it, as the entire Showplace leaned forward in awe at the meticulous creation.  He said that he had written a song about his village that described all of the little buildings and each of people on his elaborate tiny Toy Theater model.

M: Lovely

EO:  After he was about one verse into his song (I believe the first verse may have even been sung in his "native" tongue), suddenly two enormous 7-foot tall, Big Nazo Puppets burst through the upstage curtain stepping on his model and crushing it completely.  The singer tried to salvage the tiny village but the Nazo monster had turned the "accidental" crushing of his Toy Theater into a slapstick entanglement, in which the Big Nazo creature couldn't move in any direction without stomping or wrecking the model further. 

M: Oh My!

EO: The audience was so devastated horrified and shocked, that I think they were even further revulsed by those people who got "the joke" right away and had started laughing first.  Gradually everyone realized that they'd been had and the foreign singer was a set up.  The Big Nazo singer with the extended rat head started up his patter and they launched into a song, but the total chaos of audience response that they had created did not die down for minutes.   

M: That's amazing!
EO: I always think of that as one of the most powerful, brilliant and funny manipulations of the audience I have ever seen or felt. - definitely in the Andy Kaufman tradition of engaging sympathy and flipping expectations.  We were all so invested in and devoted to this sweet, fictional singer/model maker that we were truly shocked and horrified by the destruction.  And then it all  gradually gave way to realizing the whole thing was a joke.  It was amazing.

M: How unexpected!

EO: Here's another contrasting example of a show I loved, a truly beautiful show that not many people had the chance to see when it was originally performed.  Many years ago Kristin McLean did a performance in which she had this small white house she had built, I think with sticks and rice paper.   I believe it was a tribute to the late Mary Churchill who ran the Puppet Showplace for many years.   Over the course of Kristin's performance she used the walls of the house in many different ways, including as a shadowpuppet screen-- projecting images through these walls.  She also painted on the walls with water and ink, all during the course of telling a story. Eventually, I think she cut into the rice paper walls of the little house making doors and windows and if I remember correctly, she ultimately began taking it apart.    It was just a powerful piece that examined very simply and directly all of the stylistic directions you could go with this physical object, and have them metaphorically resonate, and in the execution each action, the piece was consistently, quietly, beautiful, profound and poetic. 

M: Stay Tuned for Part 2...