It seems I’ve had a reprieve from the arts gods and my production of Franz Kafka’s AMERIKA will see the light of stage, as a one man multi-media performance. Opening on, wait for it… April 1st.
I re wrote the treatment to be much more post modern story telling and less of a literal adaptation. The book itself is dysfunctional on so many levels I decided it was important to include the dysfunction in the work itself. I will have a Kafka character in the work played by a ventriloquist dummy, for whilst I like most of Kafka’s work he is held too much a god in literary academia.
So while soul searching and channeling Art Angst to come to grips with how to proceed on the AMERIKA project I tried to revisit some core art theory that I believe in…
1. Artist themselves are quite irrelevant, they are just a conduit of the universe, here only to communicate the golden secrets of understanding and wonder the everyday bloke seems to miss.
2. Always use personal taste, i.e. make the kind of art you like. If you love German Expressionist Theatre don’t make Musical Comedy.
3. Have a theory on everything … or 10! I’ve based most of my esoteric tastes on one simple maxim, a quote from Oscar Wilde
“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” It has always seemed to me that the most trite art is the most heart felt in the eyes of its maker. I sometimes call it precious art. All weepy art seems a bit forced and not elegant enough for me. 
4. Have in your work what Frank Zappa called Conceptual Continuity, the reuse of universal concepts, things etc. that help communicate your concept and make all make up one large conceptual thing ( actors call this a super objective).
5. NEVER take the audience/viewer into consideration while you are creating the work. i.e. never “play to the stalls”. Because your here to do the work of the universe, listen to the voices in your head that tell you to tap dance naked on a block of ice, instead of reading a poem at open mike night so you can express your inner feelings, no one of importance cares about your inner feeling other than your Mom. If you want to express your feelings, get a shrink don’t bore us by doing it onstage.
6. DON’T soften or make your work more accessible… if you want to bite off bat heads on stage… go for it Ozzie. If you want to paint ‘Leda and the Swan’ in full pornographic detail, do it! Trust your instincts and let the censors do their job, hell if you don’t make work that calls taste into question the censors would be out of a job.
7. Always be willing to change, media, style, theory, etc. Another smart thing Mr. Wilde said was “Consistency is the refuge of the unimaginative”
