04/05/2024
I'm meeting Matt Amendt today in Manhattan to interview a Japanese actress and theater owner about her experiences in theater, both here and in Japan. And dig deeper into Japanese culture, and the future of theater in Japan, in light of VR and AI. Matt will be traveling to Japan in a couple of weeks, where he will be conducting more interviews with Japanese actors, directors, and writers. And then conducting more interviews in Paris, which will be followed by another round in NYC and DC. All leading to the first season of RUNNING WITH KNIVES, a podcast series we've been trying to get off the ground for these past few years.
We met a few years ago at a performance of Matt's play, THE COMEDIAN'S TRAGEDY, in which he played the lead role, Aristophanes. The production originated in Minneapolis, directed by my old classmate, Bill McCallum, and was now playing in a sweatbox in TriBeCa.
Soon after meeting, we began to try and find something to do with 60 hours of recordings he had made before, during, and after a production of Hamlet he had done a couple years earlier at the Pittsburgh Public. The pandemic hit right about then, so development on the project began remotely the spring of 2020. We recorded summer of 2020, and did the post late summer and fall, with music by Lindsay Jones, a huge talent with a specialty in classical theater/Shakespeare. (Double Tony nominations for SLAVE PLAY, and he just won an Ambie for the music for a podcast production of Othello.)
Here's a link to the demo for WORMWOOD. Matt and I came very close to selling this 3 or 4 times, depending on how you define 'close'. We still intend to go back and finish this one one day. Along with a few other projects that are burning holes in our hip pockets. 43:20. Enjoy.
Listen to Wormwood Mix 3 by Kevin Thomsen on
