Funny Uncles

Riches...with no embarressment

2007-12-04T06:26:52Z

All last week the Funny Uncles crew and I were in tech development time for the piece - with many thanks to Black Rock Center for the Arts and their opening the doors to their Black Box space. While a hike from Takoma Park, it enabled us to focus on the work and not deal with (at least immediately) the emails, the phone, the daily interruptions to art-making.

It has been a rich ten days or so. And these kinds of riches are not an embarrassment at all. Our designers Molly Ross, Staub, Matt Mahaney, and Kathleen Geldard, along with our Production Manager Amelia Cox and Stage Manager Kate have all brought an amazing wealth of talents - great thinking, great designing amidst the perseverance it takes to try to "get it right". The company of dancers - only two of whom are from our core group, with the rest being adjunct artists joining us for this production - benefited, too, from having the designers present a full week as we rehearse, replicate, rejuvenate, rest, repeat. The dialogue helps the work get better.

A new/old, or old/new?, colleague, Michael Bobbitt, artistic director of the Adventure Theatre at Glen Echo has been generous to offer his response to what we have put together. I would run into Michael more recently on the street or at a theatre. Early on during my DC days, Michael and I met at American University. It has been to have him, along with my Dance Exchange colleagues Martha Wittman and Elizabeth Johnson helping me to rehearse and direct.

AND SO:

We have a rich show to share with you this weekend. And the next, in LA, and the next after that in B'more. More soon.

If we understood it all mysteries, the interest would fade just as quickly...

2007-11-17T22:38:24Z

During a day like today, I often think back to a trip that my mother, Aunt Thelma and I took once across country. We headed directly west from Lake County, IL, just north of Chicago, across the great plains to get to the west coast- San Jose. We then head south to more relatives in LA, area and then head straight east. I remember in St. Louis, with the great arch in the background, some other driver flipped my mother off, and I flipped her off right back. I was probably 11 at the time. I asked my mother if it was ok that I flipped the other driver the bird, after I had done it instinctively. I don't remember what she said.

But: I digress. The highlight of this particular trip was stopping at the Grand Canyon. I was in a foul mood, and in response to my saying that I wanted to stay in the car, my mother tilted her head forward and looked out of the top part of her eyes, a sign she was about to say something she really meant.

"You will get out of this car immediately, young man, and you will go over to the edge of that canyon, and you will look at it, and you are going to enjoy every moment. Do you hear me?"

]]> I noticed today something I looked at, enjoyed every moment of, but remained in the car to do so. I have been savoring fall since my drive across the midwest earlier this week, and now that DC has a sense of fall, here, too.

The trees are in beautiful form. I spoke aloud to myself as I passed a house here in Takoma Park. "What a beautiful tree!". When we are younger -do we choose not to see the beauty, have no appreciation for the beauty? Does nostalgia for other trees from family yards, or wonderful picnics, or the ever elongating spans of years make you appreciate the trees - or the beauty, or the possibilities in life? - or the Grand Canyon? - better?

I am re-writing the script contained within the dance for "Funny Uncles". We have stumbled upon a new character - one inspired by the beautiful dancer Asanga Domask. Asanga will not appear live in this year's version due to work schedule. But a lucky happenstance: we are commissioning Molly Ross, our projection and puppet designer, to create a series of Asanga puppets. The use of Asanga as this Shadow character has been a lovely turn for the piece, I believe.

She has become a narrator of sorts - and the deus ex machina (if that is possible with shadow and light!) toward the end of the piece. We will find out.

But just like my new found appreciation for the trees today, and I am guessing if I were nearer the Grand Canyon I would be more entralled than I was in the past, I have an awe for whatever creative process truly is that feels also new found. We can rattle off tools and methods to create raw movement material. We can study forms of writing and narrative and dance composition. But how we all put it together or it puts itself together as we sit observing it happen in the studio, or on the page or on the screen, well, that is part of creative mystery.

As I finish up the script for today, I am humbled that I get to do what I do for a living. To have mystery to create awe is as spiritual an experience as the glaciers cutting through the rocks of the canyon as the turning of a leaf as the turn of a phrase, the editing that allows a truer articulation of word or movement to fall into placce.....

Great day.

The Last - or most recent - Supper

2007-11-13T23:10:50Z

On Sunday, after finishing up with our convening at Northwestern in Evanson, IL, I rented a car and drove to Round Lake, which is about 50 minutes northwest of Chicago close to the Wisconsin border.

My father had been Police Chief here for about 30 years spanning the fifties through the eighties. The population in the early days was as low as 150. The old Milwaukee Railroad stopped there then. The newly named Metra Transit offers daily commuting between Chicago and Round Lake - unheard of as a concept when I was growing up. Chicago might as well have been Mars!

The Iron Horse Diner, I have mentioned here before, where my mother sat at "her" seat at the end of a communal table, the pleather/plastic chair playing host to a revolving group as my mother had coffee usually from 6 am through about 10:30 am - and then she'd be back for lunch, mock fighting with John the owner and helping Patti, friend/waitress/confidante, make coffee filter setups and to count her tips.

]]> I had let my remaining family know that I would be back to get the last of my mother's belongings out of storage in my Aunt Marie's garage. It's been two years since we hurriedly boxed up what we knew would take time to go through and this the first time that I have had a chance to go get it.

Cousins and cousins kids and wives and husbands are all there for an early Sunday supper. My Aunt has made roast beef, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, a jello I will name Sunshine Jello. The vegetable casserole, my aunt worries, might not be right: she bought cream of mushroom soup WITH garlic instead of without. (It turns out fine!)They ask for information on my sister and my brother, and we try to call up Donna and Paul and Sienna in Mexico to see what news there is on the adoption front and to just say hi. No answer.

The family tells me of their medical woes. I tell the family of my medical woes. There is a football game on the TV, and its mostly men folk watching. The woman folk - and me! - sit around the dining room table and talk a bit about everything and nothing. When my mother was living, she would have been there in "her" seat, smoking her non-filtered Camels. Now, the smokers have to go to the garage - something my aunt could never get my mother to do.

The talk and the meal are just as it has been for decades - with the kids growing older and the more new kids. It is just me from our side of the family now, and save for Sienna, trapped across the border because this adoption won't go through, there are no little ones on the DiMuro side of the family from Illinois. We all have dogs named after people.

We hint at past family transgressions,the black sheep cousin, the born-again relatives, the dead, the living. How who heard what about whom from whats-her-name. We talk about baby showers, funerals, weddings. The illnesses are swept over quickly. I miss my sister at these gatherings, because she can be quite irreverent - and we do our best in her absence.

I am grateful my aunt has gone to the trouble of doing all this- this is really more like a holiday dinner. Comfort food with multiple meanings.

A Return Home

2007-11-11T00:13:13Z

I have been at a little convening of four artistic directors of companies who engage in community arts-making, in Evanston for the last few days. We are staying a block off Lake Michigan, and it certainly is fall in the midwest by now. And chilly, too. Like my growing up days - although I must admit I don't remember fall - or life!- as colorful as it seems here.

Tomorrow I will return to my hometown to pick up the last of things that were in my mother's house when she died two years ago. The house was sold almost immediately, so these items have been in my Aunt Marie's garage all this while.

For the life of me, I can't remember what it is specifically in those boxes. The big stuff includes two Appalachian stick furniture chairs that my grandmother had bought off the back of the truck of some man as he sold his home-made chairs in the "affluent" Midwest. They are beautiful. I can see my grandmother sitting in one of them on our front porch watching the traffic turn onto the main street of our downtown. At the time the population was most likely under 400 people - the first traffic light was still twenty years into the future. We had rotary phones. TV's were still black and white. Nuns who still wore black and white robes with starched peaked headgear (habits, I think they were called) can be seen with big gardening gloves on, snipping at the roses in their garden, which butts up against our yard. This is the view off the backporch.

]]> I suppose that in the boxes are family photos - and when I pull out each of them, I will nod my head to agree with myself that ah, yes, I remember the existence of it - the picture, the image, the memory, the real people depicted in it, the landscape. And I will mumble something like, I haven't thought about him/her/it/them for years. And then instead of nodding yes, I will shake my head no. Then I will pull another picture out and start with the nod all over again.

My Aunt Marie, along with my adult cousins and mayb some of their kids will come to a dinner my aunt has prepared, and I will nod yes, shake no several times as each incremental taste of the meal will remind me of previous family meals, holidays.

In Gumdrops, we have begun to make a section about Elver's family's favorite dish - a simple dish of seasoned meat, that is cured in beer and within the wrapping of leaves of the plaintain. This all took place in Colombia, in the country where they had no electricity.

The meal: the lighting, the people, the relationships, the mood. Funny, or not - most likely a mix of funny, sad, pedestrian. We all have memories of eating together- - these might be the stories most common to all families.

My Kingdom for Your Story

2007-11-09T07:49:37Z

Are you from...

... a broken home?

...a fixed home?

...a man-made (or woman-made?) home?

Were you ...

...a test-tube baby?

...a darling baby?

...Gerber baby?

...a big baby?

...fond of Santa Baby?

...mature beyond your baby years?

Tell me about...

]]> ...your funny uncle.

...your fantastic grandmother.

...a family meal that will go down in history.

...a ritual that only you and a few others share that shows your commitment to each other.

...your sperm-donor dad you don't know, you do know, you have ambivalence about knowing.

Look in the shadows and back in to the light and name what connects them....

...and tell why those you love are like that connection.

Time is running: Get your entries on to the blog - or better yet: video yourself, your home, your family and answer some of the questions above as you do so....contact us as to how to get the clips to us.

Thanks - Peter

Among the Lilies

2007-11-09T07:37:52Z

It's colder here in the Midwest, and drier, too. And flat. The land is flat.

But I am lucky to be among some beautiful flowers. Michael Rohd, of Sojourner Theatre and who is also a visiting professor at Northwestern has arranged for three other artistic directors of companies who engage communities in the making of their work to convene here for a few days, share some conversation. Exemplar funded our time together.

Today, Micheal Garces of Cornerstone Theatre, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women, Michael Rohd and I co-taught a class to a mix of theatre and dance students. Vincent Thomas, who has danced with us at Dance Exchange and has taught for Bush Women's Institutes, also taught. How inspiring to be among others who share similar values but also offer new perspectives. Today I got to play in the garden.

]]> I also received some prototypes for some of Molly Ross' new thoughts on projections as head to the final stretch of designing for our December shows. Asanga Domask, who danced live in the work last year, will be represented this year as a shadow and light projection designed by Molly, as well as in video mastered by company member Matt Mahaney.

Her character is our guide to the proceedings in the theater. Without giving anything away, I think Asanga's spirit will soar off the screen and help the audience to the Land of Sweets by the end of the evening.

Still, I get to play in a garden. What flowers I get to work with, play with. All in a day's work.

Funny and Sick...Sick of being Funny?...Lauging at being Sick....

2007-11-08T02:36:05Z

I flew to Chicago today - the first flight I have taken since having what I thought was a bad cold. What wasn't a cold was actually strep, compounded by the chic new affliction this season: mrsa.

So in the thick of our physical rehearsals in the studio and the efforts of a lot of good hardworking people to get this blog up and running and enticing enough for the general public to drop their individual stories onto the site I have not been myself - or all myself.

This flight today: I went to a place that is probably the polar opposite of my funny uncle self. The role I play in life as a not-quite-dad-or-older-brother to the Dance Exchange, to my niece who's not quite adopted in Mexico, who can't cross the border into the states, the roles I usually play on stage usually leans more toward where the humorous, the facilitator, the narrator, the translator. I am usually good with this.

But today I realised I have been running on empty, a bit depleted - and, just like the thin chocolate covering on on of those Cadbury Eggs, from a distance I am that sweet, chocolate-y outside, cheery, functioning. But on closer inspection, the chocolate skin is cracked and oozing sweet goo all over, and not able to contain it.

I have had the pills and am on my way to getting healthy, so this is not a pity party. But it is an apology for not being more upfront with this public forum. Really, if I had been more up front with myself, I could have been more up front for this writing.... and probably more true to what I think Gumdrops and the Funny Uncle is trying to say.It may just be part of what makes me a funny uncle that I am in a bit of a denial.

]]> We are as individuals and families multi-faceted, we are extremes of all things, not the confined definitions that we are fed from outside ourselves. Can I allow myself to be as full ranging, and as honest with you all in the process? I hope so.

So as I reread the entries that our great attendees at Busboys and Poets Blog-A-Thon made, I applaud them for their quirky, honest, poignant nature. And I want to live up to their example.

AND

I want you to feel free to write whatever makes sense when it comes to family, blood-born or chosen versions: no need to white wash, no need to share only the examples of fun funny uncles.

In the original monologue I wrote called "Funny Uncles" I delved into "unfunny funny uncles": these are the guys like in the Alfred Hitchcock movies- Tony Perkins playing his own mother and doing-in Janet Leigh in the shower. Or like Vincent Price. These are unfunny uncles in technicolor.

There are day to day examples of the funny, odd, quirky people in our lives, who by their actions teeter on that fine line between absurdly hilarious and aburdly painful, inducing tears.

One example: A woman in our home town, who came to be of a circle of friends, that came to be because these women were still alive: their husbands had died, their children moved away. My mother was among this circle, too, and they all sat at the same table in the Iron Horse Diner, down near the train station in my home town, every morning.

Mabel had never been married, had been a loner for many years. In the '60's and '70's Round Lake was not by any means the bed of high fashion, but Mabel's outfits, her car even, spoke more 1940's than the age of Aquarius. She worked for the phone company as a telephone operator, and it was if Lily Tomlin used her as a model for Ernestine. She maintained the puffy shouldered blouses and shirt dresses of an earlier era, her hair sat like dark died black honey-and-cinnamon buns on the side and top of her head. She was friendly but people held her at bay in the early years - she wasn't part of the circle at the diner until much later, after the husbands had all died.

Mabel was also pretty spendthrifty- - my sister was her waitress for many years and was lucky to get a 4 or 5 % tip on most days. Then, something shifted in the late 1970's: we all remembered the time because it was the height of the disco era. We never knew why, but Mabel traded in her 1953 Ford for a brand new red Chevy. The dark blue and white polka dot dresses became blue jeans (Oh my God!) and a white linen gauze shirt - with the tails out! Tied at the waist! She began to wear lipstick. It matched her new Chevy.

Mabel let out a few more details about her life as she sat closer and closer to the circle of friends in the diner. As if the change from a hemline to unhemmed jeans equated to looser lips. She had never been married, but as we found out, she liked to have a few cats as pets (we figured that). What was even odder was that she often would leave all the doors and windows in her house open, without screens. She'd sprinkle nuts and seeds around the house in an effort to lure the neighborhood squirrels in the house. At first she would lie very still so as not to scare them.

They had no problem with Mabel. The squirrels came to stay. For close to thirty years, Mabel lived among the squirrels, all doors open. She became part of the circle of diner friends - and the squirrels became as normal as Mabel's having cats and my mother having a cocka-poo.

She died in her late eighties. The police got a call from the waitress at the diner when Mabel hadn't shown up for a few days (the same waitress and the same police who rescued my mother a few times). The doors and windows were open and while a niece came in from Chicago to hold a funeral for her Aunt Mabel, the wake had already taken place: the squirrels and cats had guarded the body for the two or three days until the police, and then the volunteer fire squad came to reclaim the body.

Another entry soon...more comments on the entries made October 31.... and a PLEA to get your stories out there for everybody to read...

You're Invited to Funny Uncles Blogging Party in DC on October 31st

2007-10-12T16:03:48Z

My dog, Madeleine - who some of you may have seen performing as Cupid in one of our recent works, the VSA-commissioned "The Farthest Earth From Thee: A Suite of Sonnets" - is asleep at my feet. We have a great tradition. Well, maybe tradition is too strong a word. She's only ten months old, so it hasn't been that long we have been doing this. But it has been almost her whole life, so in those terms, it has been a long time. Madeleine in the Studio Whenever we're in the car, she will sit on the armrest between the two front seats, which puts her face level with mine. And there she'll sit while I drive, leaning against me for balance. Every now and then, if I lean my right cheek forward and toward her and say, "Kisses!", she plants several wet licks on my face. And then she resumes her watch from her perch, watching the world and all its other dogs go by. A moment for our Funny Family File. I am watching Jay Leno, and Ross the Intern is on TV. How far funny uncles have come! They have sent Ross to cover a Texas football game. He kids around with all the folks - very down-home Texans who don't seem to care about who Ross probably "is". In another time, either Ross would have been made fun of, or he would have come off as superior to the country locals. When Ross meets the Redneck Queen of the Sooner Schooners, he quips something about how he'd make a fine Redneck Queen. No cowboys recoil.]]> A moment for Funny Uncle Forward File. In Funny Uncles, we equate modern dance to being the "funny uncle" of the art form. And during the process of making the work we ask series of questions that relate to aspects of our subject matter. Like: What is your funniest family ritual? A time when you were odd man/woman out? The third wheel? A time when humor eased a moment in a good way? Your oddest, funniest, most eccentric Holiday custom? The most unholy thing you or your family does on a holiday? Describe a meal where all was aligned: sense of family, good conversation, well-being? A time when you, though geographically far from family, felt close to family? A time when you, though geographically close to family, felt far from family? Describe a time when family unexpectedly stood up for you. Are there people who are not blood-relations who you consider to be family? Why? If blood is not the connector to some who you consider to be family, what does connect you? How do you come to be connected? Attach the best picture of your pet in some kind of drag. (Or yourself in drag, or your uncle or aunt in drag....) Show us your funniest face. The face you think is your sexiest, but friends think is your funniest. Attach video snippet of a funny walk, a funny encounter, an odd grouping of things you would not expect to be together.... Funny Uncles Family Come to Our October 31 Event in DC This all leads me to our October 31 event at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. We would love for you to post your responses to our above questions, which you'll be able to do in upcoming posts--or, you can start below. But we also know its good to see each other face to (fun) face. So we are hosting a blog-a-thon with some available laptops and a video camera. We'll also have some entertainment on hand: Regie Cabico, performing poet, himself his own brand of funny uncle, Lorraine Gailliard, sings in foreign and non-foreign languages, some of the Funny Uncle cast will dance. And there will be a few other surprises. But its YOU who will be the main ingredient: come rub elbows with the rich and the weird, the sane and eccentric.

What is a Funny Uncle?

2007-09-28T18:33:20Z

Skating Scene from December, 2006 Funny Uncles Performance I am sure if you are a great scholar - or even a mediocre one!- we could trace the not-the-leading-man type in drama, dance, fairy tales, etc. way back into history. My first introduction were the movies I mentioned above, with actors like Edward Everett Horton playing the fop to Fred Astaire's suave romancer. TV in the sixties (yes, I am that old to have watched the first run of almost everything on Nick at Nite) included characters like:]]> Wally Cox, Floyd on the Andy Griffith Show, and of course Paul Lynde on Bewitched as Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arther was literally an uncle and channeled, I am sure, aspects of his own inner-Uncle. Again, sexuality is not an issue for Uncle Arthur - he is asexual, kind of evil, kind of tart. For me, a shift comes later in the sixties. We have a sexual revolution, and not that everybody who needs to comes flying out of their unique closets, but there is a release of what an actor can play as a character, and what he or she can say or do as themselves. Paul Lynde shows up in quiana, big print shirts on the original "Hollywood Squares" with his witty and arch, sexually-implicit responses playing no one else but himself. One foot in the closet, one foot dangling out. So, with moments of sexual revolution, sexual revelation, Funny Uncles are no longer the same kind of funny. My father, who would have called Tiny Tim a funny uncle, because he "tiptoes through the tulips" was reassured of Tim's more-or-less straightness because he had Miss Vicki. But now, folks like Paul Lynde were pushing the boas and feathers and leather out of the closet, and this caused discomfort for men like my father, and a lot of other people. So, after the radical sixties, especially after Stonewall in '69, the innocence of being a funny uncle was shattered: Liberace, who might have seemed obvious to most of us as a gay man, was noticed as much for his flamboyant outfits now as he was in a previous day, flirting with Totie Fields (google her) on the set of the Merv Griffin show! (Merv Griffin, don't get me started!) So, it's now 2007: There is the new fluidity among our under 30 crowd; gay, schmay! Bi, shim! Green martian, shmartian! As I travel and teach, the experiences I had even ten years ago as an out and gay artist - where a presenter might ask me to "be less gay, could you?" or a student at a rural tech college would ask, "Why do you have to tell us your gay in your work? Why are you fulfilling the stereo-types?" - are different. We talk about sameness and difference in many ways, but mostly in ways that are about curiosity: What was it like to know a time when there wasn't HIV? Or one of my favorite moments: when asked to partner up with someone in the room most like themselves, the straight boyfriend of one of the community dancers makes a bee-line for the newly female-to-male transgendered guy who's about the same age but from a world apart. What is the New Funny Uncle? The Dance Exchange cast and I have found that anyone or any unit that might be deemed off, eccentric, unique, not normal could be a funny uncle or serve that role in a family. This includes people, pets, cars. This include families of one entity. This includes single-parented homes. This includes mixed race, same gender parents. This include adopted families, within or beyond cultural lines. And..... There is a component of humor to be a funny uncle: It is through laughing, cajoling as well as our serious side that others can find their way to see more possibilities. Funny Uncles allow us to see a different angle on life's situations. There can be funny uncle moments accomplished by anyone: the right joke at the right time, the helping hand at the right moment. When a family adopts funny uncle behavior, it is revealed through the dopey rituals and bonds between them that may not make sense to anyone outside the family unit. But these rituals unite the group: the automatic signing of the cross when the family dog passes gas, the slipping of foreign objects into mom's jello mold she makes for every holiday before it congeals (not to worry, whatever it is is big enough to not be mistakenly swallowed), the over-sweet way a parent says "I love you" repeatedly when a child is in tantrum mode. For our definition, Funny Uncles aren't the negative connotation assigned it by some - not because we are in denial, but because I want to reclaim the phrase for the positive aspects. We have all known creepy folks, had creepy relatives and they are just Creepy Uncles. So, more to come on all this. Probably some texts from the work next up - - maybe some great pictures of the company dancing. AND more information about our BLOG IN on HALLOWE'EN October 31 at Busboys and Poets in DC.

Back to Blogging about "Funny Uncles"

2007-09-27T18:59:41Z

It has been a while....read posts from last year. I am typing with one hand and reaching with the other for some errant gumdrops that fell out of the bag. These are generic brand gumdrops but still good. I thought it fitting to begin writing and communicating again after so long surrounded by split gumdrops. For those of you who have written, wondering what was up with the Funny Uncles site, thank you. We come back after a hiatus refreshed, looking forward to telling you what's up with development of the work. For those of you who happen to be here by some unexpected turn, we'll catch you up as well. Highlights of the past year or so: Debuted an in-progress version of "Gumdrops and the Funny Uncle" at Theatre Alliance in Baltimore and at Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts, Millennium Stage (Dec 06)]]> Engaged puppeteer Molly Ross in dialogue and action to make an initial start to our collaboration on the work. Engaged the dancers in group and one-on-one Stewed on how to develop the work in the studio and out of the studio Hunkered down for a July rehearsal period where the piece made a great shift, almost as if by magic (and some intense work and dancing and thought and...) I became a funny uncle again - this time to a Boston Terrier named Madeleine. She is ten months old! Highlights of the next few months: October 31: Official LIVE party and celebration of the Funny Uncle Blogging Experience at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. Live entertainment, laptops to blog on; fun to be had October - November: On-going contributions to the website accepted (needed!) for text, audio, video. Contributions available for mash-up possibilities to re-create your own Funny Uncle, Funny Family Member, Funny Pet, Funny Anything December It's Funny Uncle Month - with performances in metro DC, Baltimore and Los Angeles. This series of performances will include items contributed to the website, as well as live interactive workshops for everyone NEXT ENTRY: No really, what is a Funny Uncle?

Christopher's First Entry...better late than never

2006-12-19T20:01:31Z

My name is Christopher. I am an Uncle to 21 nieces and nephews. I first became an Uncle when I was 5 years old. I can recall being in the second grade and all of my friends looking at me strangely as my 2 year old nephew Kevin ran across the playground shouting “Uncle Chris! Uncle Chris!” I guess that is the first way I might be a Funny Uncle. But as this piece explores the idea that being a Funny Uncle is more than just familial relationships, there are so many other ways I might qualify. I am a mixed race Mutt: part Hawaiian, part Japanese, part Chinese, part German and part Irish. People usually don’t know what to make of the light brown color of my skin and my ethnically ambiguous features. I have been the object of racism. I am bisexual – another thing that sometimes confuses people. Looking a little androgynous has often raised eyebrows – I have been called queer (and that is putting it nicely). I am a professional dancer and have not held a job outside of the arts in 12 years – which has placed me in a social circle that I am sometimes reminded is rather unique. Are these the things that make me a Funny Uncle? The first performances of “Funny Uncles” are now finished and I am finally finding the time to write about the work. It has been a challenging process, and as Ben said in his entry, the subject of families during the holidays can often lead to dark places of loneliness and isolation. Having known Peter for 8 years now (beginning when I was a core company member of the Dance Exchange back in 1998 and 1999) I felt comfortable to open myself up fully to this work and explore how family in my life has at times carried me, and at other times left me feeling alone and abandoned. Now that we are away from the work, I sense question marks left in its void. A part of me has been left a little raw and vulnerable by the ideas we explored to create the work. The term Funny Uncle implies a sense of humor, some levity. But in fact being the odd man out is mostly just sad. As the holidays ensue, and I finally have a little more time to simply be – I miss my funny family that is the cast of this piece. I hope that we all can celebrate the unique attributes that make each of us “Funny”…that we all can find the love and humor in who we are and our respective families – both found families and birthright families – and have a Happy Holiday.

Previews of Funny Uncles Performances in Baltimore

2006-12-11T15:17:44Z

Two previews for upcoming performances of Funny Uncles at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson in Baltimore, Maryland on Friday, December 15th and Saturday, December 16th. - In "Everyone's Got A Funny Uncle" by Rahne Alexander in Baltimore Gay Life you can read an interview of Peter DiMuro, artistic director for Funny Uncles. - In the Washington Blade Patrick Folliard writes about upcoming shows, dances and musical performances that are worth seeing over the holiday season. Here's part of the write-up about Funny Uncles:

WANT TO GIVE the gift of dance? Try tickets to see the progressive Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s production of “Gumdrops and the Funny Uncle” playing at Baltimore’s Patterson Theatre...Staged and conceived by gay choreographer Peter DiMuro, “Gumdrops” explores the definition of family through the eyes of Siena, a little adopted girl; a pair of figure skaters who adopt a hockey team; and a Baltimore grandfather who creates a home under many roofs. A work in progress, “Gumdrops” is partly inspired by DiMuro’s own real-life experience as an uncle to his young niece and his early career stint playing funny uncle roles, including Uncle Drosselmeyer in the Boston Ballet’s production of the “The Nutcracker.” “After I came out as a gay actor and dancer in the late 1970s midwest, I immediately went from playing male ingénues to odd uncles like Uncle Oliver in ‘School for Scandal,’” says DiMuro. “Knowing I was gay, directors could no longer see me as a romantic lead.”

Being a Funny Uncle

2006-12-06T04:35:26Z

Hi, my name is Ben Wegman and I'm one of the dancers involved with the process of creating Peter DiMuro's new work, Gumdrops and Funny Uncles. Since this is my first entry, I thought I'd throw a little background info. out to you all. I went to Point Park University with a concentration in modern and jazz and have been very fortunate in my career thus far to work with some really amazing people. I was first introduced to the Dance Exchange through Peter and his work, when he did a choreographic project at Point Park, and have since had extreme interest in the Dance Exchange's work and process. The opportunity to write about this work in progress has been available for awhile and for many reasons it has taken me over a month to begin to dialogue and articulate my experiences. What is a funny uncle? I'm not quite sure yet. We've verbalized a funny uncle as an outsider, but it's so much more than that. It's perhaps loving those who can't love you back; it's always being slightly removed from the spotlight, being second banana - never first. It's a role that many have felt at certain points in our life, whether we like to admit it or not. I've had many in depth discussions with the other dancers and we have agreed time and again how incredibly painful and personal the topic of family and the funny uncle can be for some to discuss. Indeed many of us spend our whole lives running from our genetic ties. Perhaps for myself, one of my inabilities to blog this process thus far, has been the harsh reality that this work has made me realize how incredibly alone I often feel in the world. For many years I have had a strained relationship with my own family due to issues of sexual preference and defining myself as an adult. Because of this and perhaps because of the simple realities of how hard it can be at times to be an artist, I feel as if I have relied on myself and myself alone for many years now. As time passes, I have realized how often I have thrust this idea of family upon relationships I have had, only to pull back when my desire became a reality. The irony of "family" is that I long for this sense of security while fearing the vulnerability and pain that can often be associated with it. As the holidays quickly approach it once again becomes evident how much I want to create this idea of family for myself, how essential this is for my life. Perhaps what I have been struggling with, in many ways, is my own inability to admit that I, too, am a funny uncle.

Watch Funny Uncles Video from Last Night at the Kennedy Center

2006-12-03T18:38:19Z

The first performance of Funny Uncles took place last night at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Click to watch the entire performance Enjoy!

Videos of Funny Uncles Rehearsals

2006-11-29T15:58:58Z

Here are two videos from last week's on-going rehearsals of Funny Uncles: Watch first rehearsal video from last week (Windows Media format) Watch second rehearsal video from last week (Windows Media format) Just a reminder. "Gumdrops and the Funny Uncle" will be performed Saturday, December 2nd at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage at 6:00 PM. Performance is free!! View Millennium Stage upcoming performance schedule.