WILLIAM and the TRADESMEN

Pictures of William (part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:36:00 +0000

This one ranks among my favorites of the production shots. This was taken by Alex Goldberg, who was also the show's incredible lighting designer.

Pictures of William. (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:20:00 +0000

Photos by Curran.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyenowrite/

Pictures of William. (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:44:00 +0000

Photos by Curran.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyenowrite/

Nice one.

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Mon, 02 May 2011 23:02:00 +0000

Photo by Isaiah Singer

"William and the Tradesmen" just enjoyed an incredible run at The Drilling Company with Project: Theater. Like a flame, the run burned hot and all too brief.

PICTURES and MOVIES to come! Please stay tuned.

As ever, no show is ever brought to life by one person. William and all the Tradesmen would like to thank the following people for making this show a reality: Director Craig Wroe, Producer Joe Jung, Lighting Designer Alex Goldberg, Stage Manager Carmen Torres, as well as Project: Theater co-founder Jessi Blue Gormezano, whose solo show, "Mark My Words," ran in rep with "William and the Tradesmen," and lent our show not just its stage and many props, but also some much-needed inspiration!!

Special thanks also to Ted Cahn and Curran Bell, whose documentation will surely win prizes and bring more people to know who William and the Tradesmen really are.

Thank you all.

William and the Tradesmen.

WILLIAM and the TRADESMEN returns to New York April 28th - May 1st

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 01:32:00 +0000

WILLIAM and the TRADESMEN returns to New York, April 28th - May 1st at the Drilling Company Theater, 78th and Broadway!

It will be presented for four performances by Project: Theater, and will be directed by Craig Wroe.

Grab your tickets here!

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:

"British punk and post-punk-o-philes get the night they’ve been dreaming of when rock icons Morrissey, Paul Weller, and Joe Strummer grace the stage in William and the Tradesmen, a one-man rock musical written by and starring Eli James.

Author and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson alum James brings the biggest cult heroes of British rock to life through the eyes of Will Bray, a New York songwriter determined to save his simpering music career from oblivion. With a crucial deadline approaching, he convinces the lead singers from The Smiths, The Clash and The Jam to cram twenty years of rock star experience into four weeks of total panic. James performs all the characters as well as the show's many original songs. Running time is approximately 65 minutes."

Review in nytheatre.com

VIDEO:

William and the Tradesmen 2010 was bigger than Phantom

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 21:22:00 +0000

Bigger in the sense of emotional depth - and when I say Phantom, I'm sure you know I'm talking about "Phantom Menace."

So much I'd like to say about it. I don't know where to start. I feel like I had the experience we as artists are bound to have in producing our own work - that experience of nearly dying from heart failure, influenza, acute panic attack, hallux rigidus and advanced hair loss while producing it.

Luckily the New York International Fringe staff were able to come to my rescue by performing a complete "cashectomy," removing the strain of carrying any excess weight around in my wallet.

I'd love to thank all those who gave of their valuable time and sleep to help bring this show to life in the midst of my own failing health some pretty chaotic times:

Director Francesco Campari, Asst Director Patricio Witis, Light and Sound Designer Bill Stonehouse, Assistant Producer Marco Garbuglia, and our ACR Estrela Straus. A crack team who really pushed this thing through. Thank you!

And I'd love to also thank all those who came to see it, and who let us know that a weird-ass show about a guy who talks to Morrissey, Joe Strummer and Paul Weller in his effed-up fantasy world was able to strike a chord with their own lives. We were all really glad to hear that!

Foot News and the Spanish Inquisition

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:51:00 +0000

There's not a star in the sky over Brooklyn. Not a single one. And there are mountains of dirty white slush piled up on every corner. And outside my window people have finally stopped honking their horns at each other.

The skidding and cursing continue.

New York is medieval. If The Spanish Inquisition were a place you could live in, it would be New York - a constant test of courage, strength, and pain threshold. It never lets up. To learn of a plague visiting this town would not surprise me. I've begun shopping online for locust nets and gas masks. Bubo-Away Sore Spray for when the black death comes. The pall of doom, catastrophe, chaos, and fear that runs over this broken-down town, gives one the feeling The Joker is in charge, with a mayor, city council, and an entire sanitation department tied up unconscious in a basement.

And if the beginning of this entry seems a bit phobic, apocalyptic, paranoid and defeatist – it’s only because I’ve been hobbling around in a medieval city for ten months with a toe injury. I've been keeping that to myself and away from this blog. However, my agony has prompted me to break the silence.

In late March of 2010 I whacked my right foot on a door, and did damage to the first metatarsal-phalangeal joint. That's the joint at the base of the big toe. (I've since learned that doctors like to call it "the great toe.") The first M-P joint is something I'd never heard of before. I didn't even know you could do something to it. But you can - and it is one of the hardest joints in all the body to repair. That's according to the host of medical professionals with whom I have consulted on the topic.

Through the collision of bones, an edema formed in the joint, and now a soap-bubble-sized cyst sits in the middle of it. There might also be other untold damage the MRI and X-rays cannot see. All I know is my right big toe throbs in pain all day every day. Performing in two plays back-to-back prevented me from getting the surgery. Well, that and the fact that I did not wish to believe that surgery was the only answer. In the past ten months, I’ve tried bed rest, a black boot with straps, specially molded orthotic shoes, massage, anti-inflammatories and painkillers, physical therapy and acupuncture.

I’m having surgery this Wednesday.

I can say I’ve tried to keep this blog humorous over heavy most of the time; observational over confessional. I can say I never wanted it to be too intimate, because I cringe at people whining about their personal problems on the internet, and because I worry about too many people knowing my business. I CAN say all this, but it’d be bull-crap. It doesn't take much of a look-back to see that this blog has been a river of embarrassing confessions - sometimes carefully worded, sometimes playfully coded, sometimes as sloppy as a ninth-grader's poem, often as whiny as a Smiths song.

Does that mean I should just say “eff it,” and continue in this fashion, now that I’ve come this far? Not necessarily. But I've definitely been holding back communicating about my injury, for fear of judgment or of some risk to my career; for fear of being thought a sympathy-seeking crybaby boo-hooing on the internet like the rest of America. And lately I've been wondering if there might not be some greater good in talking about it. Perhaps it could prove instructive to others stuck dealing with long-term mechanical problems in an unforgiving metropolis. And on my usual selfish level, perhaps it will begin to alleviate some of the anxieties I have about my pain, my upcoming surgery, and the silly idea some doctors have planted in my brain that I might never walk normally again.

I’ll do it in parts.

Part One: Nobody Gets It.

Through no fault of their own, my friends do not get that I’m injured. They don’t really understand that it takes a lot out of me just to walk from my apartment to the subway station, or from 45^th Street to 46^th Street, or from our table to the bathroom. They understand that I’ve hurt myself, because I’ve explained it to them, and they understand that it’s stressful, and that I see doctors every week, and that I might have to have surgery. However, they don’t understand that walking causes me pain. This is partly because I have forced myself to make journeys on a regular basis. It is almost impossible not to walk in New York, when job, subsistence, and clean laundry are on the line. However, when it comes time to engage in social intercourse – eating out, seeing a show, going to the movies, getting a drink, or going to a party – I have to consider each move very carefully. How many buses can I take between where I am now and 16^th and 1^st? There are no buses? Well, how many steps are there between the subway station and the place where we need to buy beer for the party? Would it be alright if I show up empty-handed to the party, seeing as how the liquor store is all the way over on 4^th Avenue? Would you guys mind coming over to my place?

Yeah, thought so.

Some of my friends will even guilt me into feeling bad about not coming to their neck of the woods - if I complain that I'm not up to it - or if I try to cancel at the last minute because of the pain. They don't understand the double-standard - especially if they hear that I went somewhere else that day; or that I turned up on a JDate wearing my black cam-walker boot. (which I did).

And so then one has to consider whether to be a party-pooper and a disappointing friend, or to struggle out and maybe have some kind of social interaction that might take the sting out of sitting at home with an obstinately injured foot. If you go ahead and choose the latter, you might very well have a cheering social experience – but will be crying in agony by the time you get home, and there you are lying in bed with a pulsing digit. (Um… yeah, sorry folks. Sticking with that one.)

I know this doesn't seem like a big ethical dilemma, or a choice at all. Pain should trump everything. But it doesn't - because for the longest part of that ten months, my friends did not understand the extent of my handicap; and to be honest, neither did I.

-- Coming up.... Part Two: When to Share and When to Hide - Dealing with your Employers.

Bloody hell, it opens tomorrow!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 01:38:00 +0000

TICKETS:

This is the time when one lifelong Anglophile actor/writer starts biting his nails down to the nub, and one extremely patient Italian director starts biting his secret pillow...

Our biggest venue yet, our best rewrite - a million opportunities for surprise.

Exciting!!!

Tickets on Sale NOW! Click below.

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:49:00 +0000

Postcard designed by Bill Stonehouse

Click here for tickets to William and the Tradesmen in the New York International Fringe Festival!

Here are the dates:

A word from William

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 02:48:00 +0000

Photo by Isaiah Singer

Hi. I'd like to give my friend Will Bray a chance to chime in on my little blog.

That's him there.

Any passing resemblance to the author of this blog is purely coincidental, and I'd like to point out that my nose isn't nearly that big. If you think it is, you're looking at it all wrong, and you can order a special lens from the B&H Catalog.

A word or two ABOUT my friend, before a word or two from him. Will Bray is a rock musician, singer-songwriter, actor, novelist, Anglophile and waiter. He lives in Brooklyn. His apartment is not entirely unlike the black box theater pictured above.

He's got an indie rock band called "William and the Tradesmen." He writes all the songs and sings lead. They've got all the usual problems that result from a guy starting a band with his own name in it. His bass player is seventeen years old and is usually absent from gigs due to Finals and unplanned trips to planned parenthood. He's on drummer number seven, or six, he can't remember which.

He writes songs similar to THESE.

William is obsessed with certain aspects of British culture, such as:

He... doesn't have a girlfriend.

Sorry, Will, why don't you take it from here?

Thanks. Um.. hi. I don't want to take up too much of your time. Eli wanted me to do a sort of Topic of the Week segment with you guys to see if anyone out there feels particularly strongly about any of these... topics. Sorry, I've started this badly. Today's topic is Completion.

Do you ever feel like you never finish anything, and that with every "project" you abandon you add another year to your afterlife in hell? (Sorry, like most agnostic Jews, I'm not big on Heaven or God, yet somehow Hell seems real.)

I just want to finish something. I have half of a novel. I've written lots of plays, one of which I put into three envelopes four years ago. I've written about 75 songs, but no one's heard them, so I don't count them as finished. You know? I quit my sketch comedy group, four bands, and a string of pilates lessons. The pattern has sustained itself over enough years to beg the question, what kind of MAN am I?

Like, what if Thomas Jefferson went around saying to all his friends, starting in like 1774, "Oh man, I've got this great idea for a declaration of independence, and I wrote the preamble and two really strong paragraphs, but I just don't know where it goes..." And he just goes on talking about it for years, past 1776, into the 1780's. And by that time the whole issue has cooled off, and he just gets way too into beekeeping and inventing swivel chairs... and that's it. The world never gets democracy, we still have a king. Which, I don't know, maybe that would be cool, actually. But, like, years later, in the 1820's, Jefferson's still saying, "Yeah, I still love that declaration, but I didn't have a publisher at the time, so I was like 'Who's going to read it? No one.'"

Is it me? Is it the age we live in? Or is it the fact that I don't have a revolution or a Continental Congress to bounce ideas off of. Am I just... spending too much time alone? And if so, how do I stop doing that and find... a congress or a revolution?

It keeps me up at night. Well, that and Wikipedia-ing the lives of famous people to see how they broke through. Sometimes it's people I'm not even interested in. I had no idea Mandy Patinkin helped Kelsey Grammer get the audition for Cheers. I mean, aren't all our minds kind of blown by this?

I also stay up trying not to contemplate my roommate's lovemaking. I don't hear him having sex with his girlfriend - I'm just up half the night thinking of how they must be going at it just two feet from my bedroom door, and how they must be pretty good at keeping it quiet. How do they keep it so quiet? They sleep on a single-size bed. They possess subtleties I do not.

Anyway - completion. It'd be nice to feel completed. Before mankind. In the course of human events. But 'til that happens it is my every intention to finish this Topic of the Day post - without resorting to .... shit, did you know Anderson Cooper is Gloria Vanderbilt's kid?

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:55:00 +0000

Official "William and the Tradesmen" Video Trailer

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 04:19:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:14:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Eli James) — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:39:00 +0000

http://www.eli-james.com/2010/03/word-from-william.html