Countdown to FIGHT GIRL . . .

Whaddup, Vamp Fans! Sorry for the lengthy absence and the lack of quality blogging since September. I’ve been trapped behind my keyboard cooking something sweet for all you sexy geek chic muhfuckahs to enjoy. And what I can tell ya about the newest Vampire Cowboys trip is that it is gonna be fun. Fun with a “ph”. So fun that it makes ya stupid so ya end up spelling fun like “phun”. Interestingly enough, “phun” is the Vietnamese word for burp which really doesn’t connect to this conversation at all. But it is an interesting fact. Isn’t it? Shut up, you know you wanted to learn some Vietnamese today.

So we’re now a week away from beginning the rehearsal process for “Fight Girl Battle World”. I’m excited. I’m scared as all fizzuck, but I’m excited. I’ll be honest, getting here hasn’t been an easy ride for your favorite yella playwright. Writing Sci-Fi is hard. Constantly making up shiznet from new planets to extraterrestrial races to alien languages ain’t as easy as it looks. As a writer of Vampire Cowboys, I’ve spent a lot of my young career penning stories about zombies, superheroes, and unholy Catholic schoolgirls, so the thought of jumping into the world of interstellar fantasy didn’t seem that intimidating. I’m good at making shit up. Or so I thought.

Don’t underestimate geek culture, kids. Being a geek myself, I shoulda known this. Sci-Fi asks for so much more than just clever lines and cool kung fu moves. It asks for you to be at the top of your creative game ready to make up shazbat every step of the way. And that stuff has to be both awesomely original, but also thoroughly clear. We’ve all seen Sci-fi that’s infinitely creative, but boring (or confusing) as all heck to watch (Take for example, films like “UltraViolet”, “Battlefield Earth”, “Aeon Flux”). Creativity gotsa be balanced with good story, good characters, and, for me, a good amount of humor. Playing this hard at being both wildly out-of-this-world yet also staunchly dramaturgically grounded can often leave one’s brain feeling a lot like microwaved pudding.

However, the upside to this project is that Robert, my director, has given me a lot of freedom when it comes to the staging. His words, “Don’t worry about it. Don’t try to write the practical stageable sci-fi script that’s easily accomplishable for the theatre, write the sci-fi script you’ve always wanted to see. Go ahead and write the screenplay. We’ll figure out how to make it happen.”

And once again Vampire Cowboys is back torturing our selves with yet another set of nearly impossible staging challenges to solve.

This time we’re talking spaceship battles, spacewalks, warp speed, robots, laser guns, aliens, and an endless array of short scenes, instant transitions, and purely visual moments. This play is a movie. But live. Done with live tricks. It’s gonna be alotta fun. But my brain may melt away completely as we try to figure it all out.

And so . . . I’m returning from my blogosphere hiatus to journal how we put it all up. As we all know, “Production Blog Journals” tend to always be failures. There’s just so many ways to say “We rehearsed today. It was good” or “We rehearsed today. It was bad.” Let's see how long I can last.

So here we go! It’s time to make another Vampire Cowboys show! Yee-muhfuckin’-haw, the beyondabsurdity blog has reason to live once again. Let's rock.