alisa rosenthal

Cameron Esposito: Tell your rape jokes. Expect to be challenged on them.

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:45:37 -0400

Cameron Esposito: Tell your rape jokes. Expect to be challenged on them.:

Seems like every 6 months or so - maybe once a year - there is a debate about rape jokes. Here’s how it goes:

A dude tells jokes about rape or deals with hecklers in way that includes rape. A woman hears these jokes or is the heckler. She publicly states that she is upset or didn’t like the joke…

YES.

Ladies lunch: three generations of nails!

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:22:13 -0400

Ladies lunch: three generations of nails!

"No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. - Roger Ebert"

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 18:07:00 -0400

“No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. - Roger Ebert”

Evolution of a Costume

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:39:00 -0400

For “It’s Been Swell” I wanted a simple white dress with black trim - going for the live-action cartooniness of it all. But I couldn’t find this dress aaaaanywhere. I even sketched it out.

This is why I’m a performer and not a cartoonist.

So I took to the very talented costumer and performer Bella Ciao, and asked her if she’d be up for making this. What luck, she was! I told her that I wanted it to feel like a 1920s/30s cartoon (oh, you know me). Something that would read a little clown but not overtly, like a birthday party costume. Something simple and iconic for the character, but still with personality.

I sent her this as inspiration:

She sent me this back:

I knew we were going to get along just fine.

She then sent me this sketch.

I nearly LOST my MIND. I felt like I was on my own epsiode of Project Runway. And I was the clown client.

Shortly thereafter we went and picked out fabric and she turned this sweetness out.

Posing!

Sock garters!

Then a few days later this appeared in my inbox.

Oh, you didn’t think it could get any cuter? JUST WAIT.

BOOM. I walked into her apartment one day and that beautiful baby was staring right up at me and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Obviously I had to put it on and pose immediately.

That BOW. COME ON.

Can you believe she MADE that?? Working as an independent artist and on such a small scale at that, a lot of times I forget that real shows get things like “a costumer” and “a budget.” I couldn’t be happier with how this turned out. It was a true collaboration, and she took all of my input amazingly. She just NAILED it. And also I just want to hang out in this thing all the time. Anyone having any black and white parties coming up?

Pictures of it in performance coming soon, so stay tuned!

Show nails

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:20:55 -0400

Show nails

Oh let’s do a show tonight, whaddaya say?

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:33:46 -0400

Oh let’s do a show tonight, whaddaya say?

Getting ready to bid adieu to Facebook for a while… please...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 01:50:11 -0400

Getting ready to bid adieu to Facebook for a while… please enjoy my profile picture circa 2007.

maudelynn: Buster Keaton watches one of his most infamous and...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:12:48 -0400

maudelynn:

Buster Keaton watches one of his most infamous and memorable gags during his appearance on This is Your Life in 1957.

“How do you feel today seeing it, Buster? Would you do it again?”

[shakes head] “No.”

It’s Been Swell, Plucky Rosenthal!, my brand new one-woman...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:10:07 -0400

It’s Been Swell, Plucky Rosenthal!, my brand new one-woman variety show, is just five days away! Today I’m getting my Betty Boop-oop-a-doop on.

My one-woman variety show IT’S BEEN SWELL, PLUCKY...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:14:22 -0400

My one-woman variety show IT’S BEEN SWELL, PLUCKY ROSENTHAL! is just under one week away! So every day this week I’m going to post a different song on the ukulele from the 1920s or ’30s. To-day’s is…

On Productivity and also how the hell to put on a solo show

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:38:00 -0400

Putting together a solo show is hard! Enter the world’s tiniest violin, I know. With T-minus one week until show time for the debut of my newest one, this final week is really the crunch time to get all the finishing touches put on. So I thought it’d be interesting to muse on productivity for a minute here…

A Little Backstory

I am one of the laziest people I know, but I have the energy of like, five Jewish mothers put together. It makes for an interesting work ethic. I’ve been doing this solo act for going on five years now (YOWZA), and this is the third one-woman show I’ve put together.

The first, Vaudeville at the Mette! at the Wilmette Theatre, was a variety show that I co-produced and headlined… after having only done the act for under a year (DOUBLE YOWZA). But I’d like to stress here - nobody sought ME out, I contacted this theater that I had begun to establish a relationship with and we worked something out together. Creatively, this show was mostly an exercise in tacking together literally ALL of my stage material (bit, song, bit, …another bit), and while it was an exhilarating experiment, I can’t say it’s my… proudest theatrical achievement. But the audience was made up of my ENTIRE family (seriously, it felt like my Bat Mitzvah when I came out of the dressing room), which emotionally made it feel like a huge success.

Two years ago I ran “You’ve Come a Long Way, Plucky Rosenthal!” at the ever-beloved Upstairs Gallery, which was an exercise in refining short stage bits in an attempt to weave them together with a plot, and also to try bouncing this solo material off another person in a classic “I’m gonna make it in show biz!” kind of story. This was a little more successful, in terms of audience and material (my one review haaated it, but I was more elated that I actually got reviewed) (and also it gave me my best bit of marketing to date: “Come see the show that the Reader calls ‘hit or miss’ and that my mom calls ‘don’t quote that part of the Reader that calls you hit or miss!’”) But again, I contacted the space, and after much time and emailing back and forth, booked it …and then promptly hustled to get my shit together in a few weeks.

As you can see, there have been long stretches of time between each solo show – roughly TWO YEARS. And I wish I could say that this time was spent all in preparation of getting these three separate shows together, but in reality it’s been me doing the act here and there, auditioning for plays, and a whole lot of rejection. In what may seem like a sea of accomplishments, let’s just go ahead and commit to dedicating this paragraph to my failures. In the five years I’ve been in Chicago, surrounding these solo shows, I’ve acted in two plays, having not been cast in the …several dozen plays I’ve auditioned for, and I’ve been rejected by ten out of ten talent agencies that I’ve submitted to. I’ve been in two comedy competitions, not winning either of them but totally winning in my mom’s eyes.

But you see, that’s the nice thing about solo work, and why I keep coming back to it time and again. I have total control over it, and once you figure out how to get booked, it’s fairly easy to make that happen with regularity. (Hint: it involves a lot of cold-emailing and even more show-go-seeing.) I’ve actually worked with more theaters as a variety act than as a cast actor. Yes, I miss the excitement and feeling of community you can get from working with a group, but that time might come, or it never might. So always good to get your skills up in the interim and stay sharp for any future opportunity. I mean… this is what you HAVE to tell yourself.

So Now?

So now I’m at this place where I’m not sure if I should just let this character die already or if this has been something that people are into and that also I’m into. About a month ago I went on this 10-day non-speaking meditation retreat (more on that in a future post, I promise), and had a CREATIVE EPIPHANY while I was out there, spending long hours staring out of my window in lieu of having a phone and bonding with the box elder bugs therein in lieu of human interaction.

I have been lucky to not have to battle too many addictions in my life, but while I was there I learned that I am totally addicted to the feeling of coming up with a new idea, so much so that committing to fleshing out said idea is absolutely excruciating to me.

“Sure hope I don’t come up with my next great idea on this meditation retreat - because they wouldn’t let us bring a pen or paper on this thing!” thought foolish, naïve I. And sure enough it was there that I decided that I wanted to try another go with this solo character, and this time push the through line a little further by keeping it on one theme. So it was actually the exact right place to decide the next project I wanted to work on, because I was spending so much time in my own brain there that I really didn’t have a choice but to flesh out an idea. So… nice try, brain.

I was sure that the MOMENT I got back to my car to drive home from the retreat I’d jot down all the AMAZING ideas I came up with so that I wouldn’t forget them. I had spent a lot of time developing clever tricks to remember them and everything. Like I said… we had a LOT of spare time on this thing.

But then I realized I’d been home for three days and hadn’t written down the ideas yet, and they were still all there in my head, fully formed.

And I guess that’s the thing with good ideas. When they’re good, free of self-made pressure, and come from a real, authentic creative place, they stick.

Please, Speed Things Up and Bring it on Home

So this is what brings me to productivity. First off, I’ve been really interested in the ideas of “being busy” in this article – it takes the argument that we all feel good when we’re being busy – aka feeling productive and in demand - which in actuality can be a counterproductive thing. Second off, I have always taken leisure time very seriously, like probably, TOO seriously, to the point where I think that 90% of my sense of humor and writing ability comes from being glued to Nickelodeon in the ‘90s. Ideally, I’d spend equal parts of my time feeling/being productive and feeling/being leisurely. But I think in reality it’s more like, 15% productivity, 45% leisure time, 55% feeling guilty during my leisure time that I’m not being productive enough.

And this, FINALLY, brings me to a bit of my process with this current show. I have no idea how it’ll be received, but lately I’ve been feeling this compulsion to just… make the show that I want to see, and take my time with it, and develop it, and OH GOD I would be NOTHING without my amazing friends who have volunteered their time to watch me make a fool of myself in my apartment as I run through this material. So again, let me stress that for this show I contacted the theater, I organized my own rehearsals, I yelled at myself for not knowing my lines by my self-instated off-book date. Yes, it can appear more glamorous to have someone come to you, but if it has the same end result, what difference does it make? And it’s really true with creativity – you are your only roadblock, and it’s just a matter of fighting through your own laziness and inner naysayer to make the kind of work that you want to make. So for this show, I love everything about vaudeville, the style, aesthetic, and sweetness of the 1920s and 1930s cartoon world. And I just wanted to write a goddamn musical for myself so that’s what it is.

And really, it doesn’t matter how productive you are day to day, because at the end of the proverbial day, this kind of work takes a LONG TIME. And I really think that the key to productivity is understanding how leisure fits in, and using it to your advantage to keep your attitude as good about it as possible to muck through the tough stuff.

Show research - cartoon world

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:42:00 -0400

Show research - cartoon world

Show research - bathing suits/costumes, hair

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:33:00 -0400

Show research - bathing suits/costumes, hair

Show research - Blanche Sweet c. 1924

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:33:00 -0400

Show research - Blanche Sweet c. 1924

Today’s streaming Netflix pic: HOWL (2010) James Franco as...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:51:45 -0400

Today’s streaming Netflix pic: HOWL (2010)

James Franco as Allen Ginsberg is pretty genius casting, and it’s actually a surprisingly nice performance. He has that softness and gentleness that seems to embody Ginsberg. And put him in a black beard and some glasses? Doppleganger City.

As a movie… it really feels more like a documentary made up of historical dramatizations and animations that represent the poetry, so in terms of its Movieness it’s not all that entertaining, BUT in terms of bringing this poem to life, giving you a sense of context and what-the-hell-is-going-on, it’s incredibly successful. I took a class in college called Sex and Pop Culture in Post-War America (of course) and we had a unit on the beat poets - I certainly couldn’t tell you what “Howl” was about at that time in that class, but this movie made it totally accessible. I always wish I read more poetry, but I think it’s easy to forget that a cultural or historical context is fairly crucial to this kind of thing. So… we can all be a little easier on ourselves for not reading enough poetry.

The end of the film effected me in a way I wasn’t expecting. This isn’t a spoiler at all - as to be assumed with a biopic like this you’re going to get the kind of “where are they now” ending. Real images flash of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Keroac, the whole crew, with text of when and how they died, set to an eerie but charming song.

Then the film reveals that it’s been the actual Allen Ginsberg singing it, cutting to a tight close up of him singing. And I’m instantly reminded of my dad’s longtime affinity for Allen Ginsberg (he always had a postcard of him up on his fridge), him reading parts of “Howl” or maybe “Kaddish” to me as a kid (all I remember is a phrase involving a mother’s pubic hair… thanks Dad), and lastly was utterly taken back to Ginsberg’s striking resemblance to my dad. The gray hair and glasses, that softness and gentleness, the inner fight of creative energy that seemed to always be there. Grieving is an odd thing… I push it out of my mind a lot, always telling myself that “there will be a better time to think about these things.” But then something like this appears in the middle of my Sunday, and it’s such a gift. Such a sad, sad gift that I’m so happy to have.

VIDEO: Allen Ginsberg, Father Death Blues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew6ef3nE-E4

Little Alisa and Dad

I saw the 2013 Oscar winning live action short...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:51:26 -0500

I saw the 2013 Oscar winning live action short “Curfew” a few days and I’m absolutely in love with it. Simple storytelling, shot beautifully, with a few moments of my favorite kind of weird magic. The shorts program is still playing in a few theaters in Chicago, otherwise you can buy it on iTunes for $3.

So excited to announce my new solo show IT’S BEEN SWELL,...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:00:00 -0500

So excited to announce my new solo show IT’S BEEN SWELL, PLUCKY ROSENTHAL! Two nights only! Poster design (totally rocked) by Noah Ginex.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/vaudeville-roars/Event?oid=8823464

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 22:01:59 -0500

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/vaudeville-roars/Event?oid=8823464:

Got a little shout out in the Chicago Reader!

life: Former burlesque star June St. Clair (right) shows a...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:20:29 -0500

life:

Former burlesque star June St. Clair (right) shows a novice how to disrobe during a demonstration on “how wives should undress for their husbands” at the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing in 1937.

See more photos here.

(Peter Stackpole—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

I was really rooting for Seth MacFarlane last night after his surprisingly impressive job of hosting...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:51:00 -0500

I was really rooting for Seth MacFarlane last night after his surprisingly impressive job of hosting SNL, but NPR’s Monkey See sums it up:

Seth MacFarlane demonstrated Sunday night, perhaps as well as anyone ever has, that hosting the Oscars is not about proving how clever you are. Like being a good talk-show host, it’s about making everyone look good, which makes you look confident and capable.

Compare his hosting to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler from the Golden Globes. They had some jabs in there, but they were playful and positive, and it wasn’t about how funny/mockingly-bad THEY were. I think this is a major polarity in comedy right now - those who are willing to create something selfless and timeless vs. those who are in it to do or say something weird or shocking and go viral for 15 minutes.