Brendan Griffin

I’m very excited. I don’t usually “blog” about my professional exploits. In fact, I generally avoid talking about them at all unless I am under duress. This, however, Like Clybourne, is worth hearing hit the air. I’ve done not a small amount of work on projects of all shapes and budget but this one is special.

I’ve been at work on a low budget film called Movement + Location. It’s a beautiful film written by and starring the indispensably talented Bodine Boling and directed by her husband Alexis Boling (no less talented). It is a sci-fi thriller with very little sci-fi. It isn’t a splash ridden James Cameron style epic. Instead, it’s a small, simple, deeply soulful story that is compelling and unique. I’d tell you more but I’d love for you to go and see for yourselves.

I am so proud and excited to be a part.

Acoustically speaking, this room is ideal

Or the idea of something vaguely boring

In the flat light of mid-century modern.

I think of floor hockey and glimpses of

Things inappropriate clad in wood grain

And designer maxi dresses.

When the phone rings it sounds like gunfire

And gray suited bodies duck for cover for

Fear of the word, “reservations”. A word

Reserved for the unfortunate souls surrounded

By windowless brick and taupe dry-wall.

Without marble or breath the door swings

Like eternities piled one on top of the next

And pouted in silhouette stands a nameless

Venus chimerical in her unlikeliness as if

Feathered wings would not surprise me.

The slip covers creak like the floorboards under

The heeled wake of her designer breeze. She

Moves as if on ice skates pattered about by

Dark men in shirt sleeves who speak quickly

Of the antiquity of nothing and fine fabrics.

I imagine things in Russian tones and hazel eyes

Like the Chinese new year draped in the mystery

Behind Chanel glasses. She looks toward my

Position and I am embolden like Hotspur on the

Dover strand with the millennium approaching.

Stanzas of the ancients pass in unspoken

Volumes in the distance between our briefly

Unbroken gaze. I picture the mating of dolphins

And their digital whispers and compose a verse

Of biology that suspends the very cosmos from

Perfectly tuned piano-wire. And like that she

Coasts to conclusion before my eyes with medical

Precision and Thoreauvian logic. Her coral lips part

And I witness the vulnerability of a world laid bare

To the temperament of her Jacobean beauty.

I am defended with breath that is deep and

Taut muscles when she speaks simply. For a moment

I am entranced by works of music and balletic

Gestures. “My key Please”. But I am thrown

Into the third act of an obscure opera written

In the obsolete vernacular of a civilization gone

Undiscovered in the waters of the Agaean or some

Desert region where mountains once stood between

The fingers of allegretto descants and iridescent

Modulations her voice contorts into real time.

“My key please”.

And her echo collides with

The glass as it rattles in the window seatings.

The opera now transforms into daytime drama

And the obscure civilizations fall into regional

Sparring. My hair stands on end.

She departs amidst the draconian scurry of ball

Bearings across the floor and I am left bathing in

The heat of the floor lamps and considering an age of

Monochromatic flower stems that lurk in a crystal

Vase not feet from the smell of her shadow.  

“Mudslide”                                         11/15/2012

There was a mudslide down second avenue today. Nameless chickens and hippies and canines were hurled south flailing into the east river below the Williamsburg Bridge. Among the refuse a scavenger came across a charm bracelet that bore, in stoic font, the word “Highness” in hollow pewter letter-cubes. It belonged on the wrist of a chimpanzee favored by a zoo-keeper in the Bronx. The enamored custodian would comb the primate’s hair one hundred times every night with a fine-toothed ivory comb that once belonged to her great-aunt Silda. Back and forth through the young chimp’s coarse evolutionary hair she would wrist the delicate comb while playing Verdi’s “Otello” on a scratched child’s phonograph that belonged to a gaggle of Mackaws three pens over. The long tin phone bore the marks of a furious attack when the birds were displeased with an impulsive playing of Rachmaninoff’s 3^rd concerto for piano.

So, I’m tired of having a website dedicated to still and moving pictures of myself so I’ve decided to embrace my inner teenager and reveal to any and all who read this absurd thread something I have kept hidden for over a decade. I, and for no better reason than lack of attention span, have been known to write…jesus, I’m really gonna admit this…poetry. Now, I actually have an education in this absurd field and since my profession involves the exclusive employment of other people’s words I thought it might be of creative benefit to myself to begin writing again. And, seeing as the interweb wasn’t such a ubiquitous and indispensable entity when I was a boy publication of one’s work meant the actual physical publication of a words on a page. In other words, in order for non family to see your work it had to be kind of good. Or at least marketable. Now anyone can publish anything they want. Imagine that. So I thought I’d take advantage. Maybe I’ll get famous for real and pull some brooding academic stunt like this dude did.

What a guy. For updates on my acting career just reference, you know, the resume, reel, maybe some photos. The central purpose of the website will probably lead you to what you want to know. Maybe I’ll throw something show-business in here and there. 

www.clybournepark.com

How’s that for news?

So, as you know Clybourne has gone the way of Lazarus over the last week having been buried and then resurrected without much cosmetic impact in the end. After a week in the entertainment ICU we are back on as previously stated with only one week’s difference in between. I won’t barf all over the room about it I will simply send you to the authorities. Playbill has the scoop.

So…

SO.  The last few days have been like giving birth. Well, no. I saw my wife do that and it’s not at all the same. It was stressful. I will say that. HOWEVER! We are back online according to Mr. Patrick Healy of the New York Times and about every other major news outlet available to internet goers. Seriously. Just do a news search for Clybourne Park and see what happens. It’s actually a little exciting. Jesus, this has been a little like a codependent relationship. But we have a home and a wonderful lead producer in Jordan Roth and Jujamcyn Theatres. So thanks to all for your support and we’ll see you on 48th Street. Until then please remember that you can find us at The Mark Taper Forum in LA until February 26th.

Clybourne Park will come home to New York in April! We have found a home on 48th Street in none other than the Walter Kerr Theatre. It’s taken a few years but it’s all happening.

Wow.

I feel safe in posting this news as the New York Times has announced the transfer but part of me is still afraid I’ll get thrown in publicity jail. Well, I suppose part of that also comes from never having posted news of a BROADWAY TRANSFER(!!) Opening is April 12th. Exciting stuff. Now all I have to do is shoot my wife in the head and stuff her in a duffle bag to get her on the plane back from LA. So that should be fun. 

Hey to any and all from (apparently) around the world,

Today is the big day. Well, a big day on the way to another big day. Tonight is Opening Night at the Mark Taper Forum for our play “Clybourne Park”. Now please understand that Opening Night is more like Actor Christmas. The day previous is unbearably long, we can’t sleep that night, and we open the next days newspaper with the excitement and trepidation of a feral ten year old who’s been praying for a Sega Genesis but knows he’s been enough of a dick to warrant a getting lump of coal. I’m pretty sure we’re not getting coal but the mystery is still exciting. Think the phone before caller ID. Who could it be? Anyhow, I hope you’ll see it and tell your friends. We’re here all month, eight shows a week, babe. More news to come.