Last month, two of my plays were presented by Kitchen Dog Theater as part of the 2015 Dallas One Minute Play Fest. I did the 1MPFlast year. I was pleased to contribute it again. I was on the road when the plays were put up with a lot of other great pieces from some other hard-hitting local playwrights. I didn't get to see the production that went up at the Greer Garson Theatre at SMU. I recently got some great pics (a rarity with this sort of thing... someone was on their game). Looking at them, I totally wish I had been there.
A CAUTIONARY COMMUTE
Ryan Lescalleet directed my one-minute play A CAUTIONARY COMMUTE, a sort of musical ode to DFW rush hour absurdity.
Jeremy Schwartz directed my one-minute play RUMBLESHANKS WANTS AN HQ in which my cyborg/ mad genuis would-be world conqueror character Captain Odysseus Rumbleshanks decides where to put his homebase, dropping hint after hint about the suitablenss of Dallas. Schwartz's interpretation was delightfully odd.
Glenfield, as you know I, Captain Odysseus Rumbleshanks,
part diabolical cyborg, part crazed super-genius am setting out to conquer the
world. Swiftly followed by the entire universe. All I need is a place to locate
my new headquarters.
GLENFIELD
Yes, yes… Where will you situate your homebase, master?
RUMBLESHANKS
Someplace with an affordable cost of living, Glenfield.
GLENFIELD
Yes, Yes…
RUMBLESHANKS
With an expansive interstate system, professional sports
franchises,
GLENFIELD
Yes, yes…
RUMBLESHANKS
World class arts and culture, architecture, shopping and
tech industry
GLENFIELD
Yes, of course, yes…
RUMBLESHANKS
Some place centrally located in North America. On the
vast rolling plains.
GLENFIELD
Yes…
RUMBLESHANKS
A place of big ideas. With a bold history, yes, but an
eye on the future.
The little audio experiment known as The Rumbleshanks Tapes that I did back in 2014 is getting a second life on YouTube. I will slowly roll out the episodes every few weeks on YouTube for the rest of the summer. I am strangely proud of this little project. Jeff Hernandez and I had a good time recording each episode, improvising most of it as we went along. Anyway, have a listen... HERE
# # #
Perhaps you would be interested in adding more excitement and romance, adventure and intrigue to your life. If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you. But I would suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I mean, who knows? Life is full of surprises. I only send stuff out occassionally, but it is good stuff. Hit the button below...
Leave a comment. If you are a robot or a blatant marketer trolling Blogger, then you will be deleted. Humans only, please.
A new-to-the-compound young agent named Jeremiah Hanson sits down for the first time with Captain Rumbleshanks. Listen/ download for your private collection of wonderful, whimsical things... HERE
So, I had this idea for a new podcast at the end of last year (or to put it another way... last month, which was December 2014). It would feature a would-be world conqueror named Captain Odysseus Rumbleshanks. Every episode would be culled from the "audio records" of sit down Q-and A sessions conducted by agents of a secret government organization. Oh, and Captain Rumblesdhanks is a part cyborg, mad genius bent on planetary domination. And also has a genetically mutated pet pteroldactyl named Franklin Mint. Featuring the voices of Jeff Hernandez and yours truly. With a kick ass intro by the dulcet-toned Brandon Potter. A New Episode Every Two Weeks (or whenever Jeff and I get around to recording them)... Listen to the first episode... HERE .
As I have stated before, I mostly use this website as a kind of portfolio of my creative projects. I have also been doing a kind of year-in-review report since 2012 (here's 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016,2017,2018 and 2019). This past year was challenging for many people, not just me, and for one overriding reason: Covid-19.
Everything pretty much came to an abrupt halt in March of this year. Theatres closed. Travel stopped. Social distancing became a thing. Everything turned inward. There was a lot more consumption that production. So, with that in mind here’s the sparse artistic happenings that occurred for me in 2020...
I did not get an illustrious start to the year. In fact, I didn't really do much besides my day job for the first few virus-free months of 2020. My day job involves me teaching college students about theatre and cinema. These classes moved from on campus to an online format starting in mid-March. The online format continued throughout the fall semester.
Created a "digital theatre" piece for a local festival
Perhaps the most substantial project I did this past year was a "digital theatre" project for the 22nd Annual Festival of Independent Theatres. Originally, the FIT was planned for the summer. It traditionally happens in the July and August. It was, of course, cancelled this year as theatres shut down everywhere. I had pitched a project to the FIT back in early March through my theatre company Audacity Theatre Lab, so when it was announced they would instead do an online version of the FIT this year in the autumn, Audacity was on the list of previous applicants who were commissioned to participate. Since the traditional in-front-of-a-live-audience theatre project I had originally pitched wasn't going to work, I proposed devising a completely new work that would be tailor-made for streaming in an online video format. The result was Daylan Hillis in Space.
I pulled in my friend and sometime collaborator Jeff Hernandez to be my co-writer. Then I called up Jeff Swearingen, an actor and good friend who I've worked with a lot in the past. Over a few weeks, the script took shape and then Swearingen and I recorded the three-part monologue.
The blurb for the show went thus: Security guard Daylan Hillis feels underappreciated in his job at a top secret government facility. One night his otherwise boring shift is interrupted by an encounter with strange intruders and a chance to show what he is really capable of.
The piece played "on demand" from October 8 - 31 and seemed to be well-received. Good critical feedback as well. Only one review came out where it seemed that the reviewer was way off in the understanding the project.
Along with the project itself, we put together a few behind-the-scenes videos as well. Here's one.
If you wanna see the full project, head... HERE. It is 38 minutes of wonderful weirdness.
Did some world-building for a giant audio theatre piece
The other "big" project I was part of this year was through the college I work at. Since classes were to be conducted online this past fall, I collaborated with two fellow teachers to brainstorm and come up with a unique audio theatre project that the students could help devise and then record and submit from their homes. The other two teachers were full-time faculty while I was the only part-time adjunct involved. The project was called A Blast in Kranesville.
The project took several months and my contribution was mainly in the initial concept and world-building of the piece. I was inspired by the 2013 real-life explosion in West, Texas as well as the psychological effects that the lockdown was having on daily life from the current 2020 pandemic. I also initially wanted it to have a tone sort of like Welcome to Night Vale, though the tone took on a more sincere quality once the students started writing their own monologues.
The premise involved a fictional small town in rural Texas. An explosion happens at a mysterious long-closed factory at the edge of town, resulting in tremors and a weird green mist that seeps up from the ground. A shadowy government agency shows up and locks down the entire town for several weeks. The citizens of the town, sequestered in their own homes for this extent of time each are faced with their own frustrations, confusion and reflections.
Though I led five students through the process of creating and performing original character monologues, I am most proud of the wiki I created that provided background for the town of Kranesville. Read it... HERE.
If you are into projects performed by college students, you can listen to the actual project... HERE.
Recorded and released 4 Cultivated Playwright podcasts
I released four more episodes of my podcast The Cultivated Playwright throughout the year. I still suffer with inconsistentancy with getting the episodes out.
One episode of those four has me up on a soapbox talking about theatre moving to Zoom readings this past summer to continue operating (I'm against it). I am especially proud of a two-part series I did with my friend Jeff Hernandez where we discussed how the role of the artist in society is reflected in the Coen brothers' movie Inside Llewyn Davis.
Produced 10 more YouTube videos in 2020
I keep my YouTube channel as an outlet for a bunch of my interests. I release a video when I wanna share something interesting I've found out or wanna let folks know about a project I'm doing (or did). My channel is a hodge podge of promo vids, camping-related stuff, mini-docs on my fringe touring, theatre-related "talking head" videos and an alternate way to listen to podcasts like Captain Rumbleshanks and Cultivated Playwrightepisodes.
I currently have 104 subscribers (up 64 from last year). According to the analytics, in 2020 I had 13,532 views and racked up 1,061 total watch hours, so that was kind of great.
I was featured in a podcast interview and a bit of press, plus conducted an two interviews for TheSoloPerformer blog. My friend Jaymes Gregory used his down time in lockdown this past year to start a delightful new podcast called Welcome to Jaymesville. It is part Pairie Home Campanion part 60 Minutes and part Welcome to Nightvale, all refracted through the slightly off mind of Jaymes Gregory. He featured me on episode 8. I started a new series on the http://TheSoloPerformer.blogspot.com/ website called "Inspiring the Show." It is a look at how a cross-section of solo performers got the idea for and then went on to develop their shows. Here's David Mogolov on his show Eating My Garbage and Leslie Tsina on her show Lord of the Files. More in this series are coming in 2021. When I created Daylan Hillis I was interviewed by Cristee Cook of Dallas Art Beat. It came out as a fun little piece.
I got some camping adventures in
One of my main focuses over the last year or two has been camp more. This urge to get outdoors has been two fold. First, I am trying to "harden up" a bit. As an indoors/bookworm type from back in the day, I could foresee moving into old-manhood wearing cardigans and becoming a comfortable, grouchy creature of habit. Hell, this past ten months has illustrated that this sort of fate is an extremely likely forgone conclusion. So, I have endeavored to do some "hard things" with my time. Hard in a practical sense... like sleeping outdors, trying to start and maintain campfires in the woods, and not mind so much the weather, bugs and uncertainties of being outside for hours on end. My goal is to work up to hiking long distances, but right now I'll settle for little one and two night adventures by car, foot or bike.
The other aspect I like about camping has been the sense of adventure. It is one thing to spend time writing about characters who have fantastic adverntures. It is another thing to be someone who lives actual adventures. Sure, I have travelled a lot in the past and taken my shows to far-flung places to perform for diverse audiences, but I like the idea of more common, more traditional kinds of adventures... like traipsing up a mountain pass with everything one needs in a backpack or bicycling down a converted railway line to camp overnight under a tarp.
With that said, my "adventure" forays were mixed this year. Spring was kind of a bust (see video below), but there was plenty of fun this past autumn.
Other than the above, I spent my time with my wife and kiddo, I watched too much youtube and tried not to squander the forced downtime the universe heaped on me (well, all of us) this past year.
To better times to come.
# # #
Perhaps you would be interested in adding more excitement and romance, adventure and intrigue to your life. If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you. But I would suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I mean, who knows? Life is full of surprises. I only send stuff out occassionally, but it is good stuff. Hit the button below...
Leave a comment. If you are a robot or a blatant marketer trolling Blogger, then you will be deleted. Humans only, please.
The second episode of The Rumbleshanks Tapes is now up. In this episode the Captain chats with Agent Hanson about the pterodactyl (named Franklin Mint) that has roosted on the roof of a Potbelly sandwich shop in Dayton, Ohio. Listen... HERE
In this episode Agent Hanson tries to uncover what's up with the immense "space elevator" Rumbleshanks has constructed in the middle of the Mongolian desert.
Also, Jeremiah Hanson learns what it is like to play a guessing game with the Captain.
Usually, by the end of the year I just don’t remember a lot of what happened. Too much work, adventure and travel makes time go really fast. The blog posts I put on this site serve as little reminders that things happened, theatre was created, bourbon consumed, adventures were had. For the last few years I've been using this site as a portfolio of sorts and doing a little summation of the year that ends (here's 2012,2013 and 2014). So, here’s some stuff I did in 2015...
CHOP at the Margo Jones Theatre
In late January into early February I mounted my solo show CHOP for a proper two-weekend run. It was well-recieved, though attendance wa spotty. I was glad to give it a solid two-week run here in Dallas. It felt like a neat bookend to premiering it in 2010 in the area and then taking it all over the country the last five years. I also launched a new podcast project with my friend Jeff Hernandez. It is called The Rumbleshanks Tapes. It is the "lost" archives of conversations between a cyborg mad genius named Captain Ulysseus Rumbleshanks and his dogged interrogator Agent Hanson. Hernandez and I made 4 episodes over the year and hope to make a few more. In February I redesigned TheSoloPerformer.com website I moderate. I also "re-launched" my YouTube channel. There's anow a focus on theatre topics (history, thoughts, theories, etc.) and little behind-the-scenes mini-documentaries about my traveling solo shows. I also launched a new section of this website called The Book Shelf where I have begun to compile a list of the all-time most beneficial books that have helped me as a person and as an artist. I am slowly rolling out "book reports" on some of the most influential.
CYRANO A-GO-GO at the Out of the Loop
In March I remounted a reworked version of CYRANO A-GO-GO at the Addison Water Tower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. It was a bit rough, but I did win a Best of Fest Award for it (this was the second year in a row I won that award!). At the end of March I also performed a five-show engagement of CHOP at Tarrant County College, where I am an adjunct.
This was more of a for-the-students run, though the public was welcomed. I had a crew of student stage hands helping. I love
performing the show and I might do it again in the future, but I am moving on
to other projects. I am putting CHOP on the back-burner for a while. In June the 2nd Annual Dallas Solo Fest played at the Margo Jones Theatre in Fair Park. It was pretty successful. I produced it and Ruth helped out with hospitality and ran the box
office. It was more difficult to get press coverage
than the first year. I guess the first year had novelty. The second year is a
bit of “Oh, that again…” Dallas likes new stuff.
In July we started an intense period of travel. First to Orlando, where
my folks got the family together in the Walt Disney World resort. We were there
to celebrate my niece, Kylie’s birthday. She turned ten. It was really fun and
we spent several days visiting theme parks, eating really well, and riding
rides.
Right after we returned from Florida, Ruth and I car tripped out to
California, where we hung out with her sister Christine and her family. They
live about an hour east of Los Angeles in a place called Yucaipa. Besides
seeing a lot of Ruth’s extended family, we spent a few days in Anaheim for a
big YouTube conference called VidCon (creating YouTube videos is one of my
growing interests). My friend Jeff Hernandez drove out to attend as well. It
was fun and informative, though we noticed that outside of the organizers we
were some of the oldest people there. And of course, we went to Disneyland
while we were out there. Two Disneys in one summer…
Back
to Texas for a few days, then I headed off to Seattle. My friend Grant and I
were meeting there before driving up to Naniamo (north of Victoria) in Canada.
I was in a fringe theatre festival up there, performing my solo show CYRANO
A-GO-GO. Ruth stayed home and started setting up the new rental house.
From
Canada, Grant and I drove back to Seattle, then on to Fresno, California. In
Fresno, I performed at a sort of mini-fringe event, again with my CYRANO show.
It was an epic three week-long adventure that is too jam-packed to go into here
in this letter, but I did make some new friends/colleagues, performed to
several standing ovations and had a blast. I missed Ruth. The adventures are
not quite the same without her.
At
the beginning of November, Ruth and I set off for Scranton, Pennsylvania. I
performed my solo show ROBERT’S ETERNAL GOLDFISH at the first ever Scranton
Fringe. It was a good trip, though the festival was brand new and had a ways to
go with audience attendance. On the plus side, the festival organizers put Ruth
and I up in a neat hotel in the center of Scranton. It was a hotel that had
been converted from an old railway station.
In late October my play DINOSAUR AND ROBOT
STOP A TRAIN saw the light of day again. It was a co-production between my group Audacity and a tiny theatre outfit up in Denton, Texas called Sundown. DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP ATRAIN played in Denton and in Dallas over
four weekends. The actors worked really hard. Unfortunately, there was spotty attendance in both cities.
In
December, I started rehearsals on NIGHT OF THE TARNATUBEARS a horror-comedy I
co-wrote with my friend Hernandez. I’m directing and producing with my own outfit,
Audacity, it should be awesome. Opens in late January.
DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN
I
had one or two other small triumphs at the end of the year. I published my
first ebook on Amazon Kindle… my one-act solo show I BROUGHT HOME A CHUPACABRA.
The feedback on it was overwhelmingly positive. I will try to publish more
works in 2016. My little playlet THE YETI IN THE AIRPORT LOUNGE was included in
a collection of holiday themed one-acts put on by Nouveau 47 Theatre in
December. It got good reviews.
This site will encompass Brad's professional and creative endeavors. He is a restless sort who is accustomed to instigating a lot of projects and wearing a lot of different hats. This website covers mostly means his theatre work and some of his visual art pursuits. Here's a more extensive biography.
Born and raised in Texas, Brad McEntire served from 1999 to 2006 as the founding Artistic Director of theatre groupAudacity Productions. Since 2008 he has been the Artistic Director of Audacity Theatre Lab.He holds a BFA in Theatre and Performance Arts from New Mexico's College of Santa Fe and a Master's degree in Playwriting from Texas Woman's University. Brad served as the Literary Manager at the Undermain Theatrein Dallas (2007-2010). He was an original member of the DFW Playwrights' Alliance, is a sometimes member of UNIMA-USA, theApplied Improvisation Network, The Playwrights Centerof Minneapolis and a former company member with Dallas' innovative (and now sadly defunct)Our Endeavors Theater Collective.
He is an alumnus ofDirectors Lab West(2004) and the Chicago Directors Lab(2009). He was also a performer, director, resident playwright and instructor with Plano Children's Theatre where he worked intermittently as part of their Professional Touring Series for nearly a decade. Brad is a veteran of several sketch and improvisational comedy troupes including Estranged Bedfellows (NM), Molotov Cockroach (NYC), The French Club Dropouts and the Mild Dementia Continuous-Play Variety Hour(both of Dallas, TX). He also performed with the improv groupThe Victimsand, up until 2015, one half of the infamous comedy duo Fun Grip (with Jeff Swearingen as the other half). NOTE: Fun Grip has reunited and since March 2022, the duo has been performing regular gigs around Dallas, TX. More info... HERE.
- The creation of small, powerful theatre is noble and necessary. Intimate in scale, but epic in scope.
- More often, artists should instigate and take responsibility for their own creations. This is especially true for fields where the art is traditionally created collaboratively and interpretively, like in the theatre.
- Experimental is only a modifier for the word theatre, as in Experimental Theatre. It must engage and entertain first, then move us all forward.
- The line between High Art and Low Art is and should be, extremely blurry- especially NOW.
He’s also interested in rocket packs, dinosaurs, cowboys, robots, tigers, goldfish, exotic locales, adventure, love, sex, romance, and other things kick-ass
Five Fun Facts...
I enjoy good cigars, smooth bourbons and great food.
I read a lot. And fast. You can see my all-time most influential books on me, personally, on my Book Shelf page.
I travel extensively (you know, when there are no global pandemics happening) and keep a Dopp kit packed and ready to go at all times.
When I am not in public, I sing a lot, often making up songs on the spot. My wife is very patient with me.
I love movies. A lot. If you’re curious, check out my 100 favorite movies.(circa 2016)
Artistic Statement... Well, this changes periodically (which I think is a good thing), but for the time being it would be: My work, especially as a playwright, but also as a performer and visual artist, explores idiosyncratic little worlds. These parallel microcosms are populated by eccentric misfits. Troubled, lost, amused, broken, absurd, desperate, isolated and forgotten - each is searching for his or her own sense of history, identity, and purpose.
