He engages in tasteful self-promotion. And here's a taste!

I have nothing to promote.

Oops. It's been a quiet moment on the project front. Despite angling for some juicy gigs so I could share with you yet another gripping tale of creative triumph (I do it for you), things didn't go my way. A foul conspiracy of schedule conflicts, injury, illness, and other people having talent (wtf) robbed me of my god-given right to make faces onstage. It's a cruel world out there, folks.

I've heard this is part of being alive, but I never believed it until now. I still don't, frankly. And I've never been wrong!

Greeks and Freaks

Of course, just because I wasn't working doesn't mean I wasn't working. In this fallow patch, distant from the pressures and pleasures of concrete creative commitment, I've taken some time to refamiliarize myself with craft for its own sake and as its own reward. Between auditions. When I'm not catching up on moneywork.

What this has looked like is sleeping (zzz!), seeing shows (Godot! Merrily!), seeing friends (yay!), and, crucially, exploring very old texts by Sophocles and Euripides with some very new pals and collaborators. It's been radical, in both the cool surfer-dude sense and in the older sense of "from the root."

Spending any time with the Greeks, in my experience, draws out a kind of limberness in the noggin. To meet the demands of these plays, to throw myself across the oceans of time and culture that separate us, I have to show up without answers, only with questions. That feeling sticks around when I put the text down, albeit reduced to the relatively meagre scope of my own life; no kings or gods here! Thankfully.

So, at the end of a long year of many roles, as I chewed on these uncanny texts, the big question I pondered in my own little life was why do I get cast as, and love to get cast as, so many freaks. But not just any freaks: freaks dealing with fricken' freaky stuff. Like, say, Kreon!

Towards a Theory of Weirdos

My dawning realisation is I have an affinity for the Extreme Character in specific tension with the Extreme Situation (although I suspect this has already been obvious to, uh, everyone else). Here's some 100% accurate math to describe this story mechanic.

(Normal character) x (normal situation) = realist drama. The art is to navigate the creation of a recognizable yet more ordered facsimile of the everyday. See: Sweat.

(Extreme character) x (normal situation) = clown or monster. The art is in specific exaggeration to expand on or explain some known element or question. See: I Think You Should Leave.

(Normal character) x (extreme situation) = Melodrama, thriller, grounded fantasy/horror/scifi. The art is in showing the persistence or change of an individual or idea's coherence against unusual pressure. See: Arrival.

((Extreme character) x (extreme situation)) / (in alignment) = superhero, action. The art is in making the racehorse run quickly in circles, wow, look at them go. See: Police Story, which to be clear is a killer movie.

((Extreme character) x (extreme situation)) / (in tension) = classical drama, non-realist drama. The art is in truthfully filling the always-widening gap between the character's and audience's experience. See: Richard III.

Each of these flawlessly defined categories offers some good stuff, but something about my whole deal is clearly aligned with projects that feature or invoke that last one. The reason for this resonance, as I've uncovered in my profound soul-searching, is that it's the most fun and that my artistic tools are well suited to it. It's certainly not because I myself am, in fact, in actuality, in this my one single life, a big ol' lil' freak.

Best,

Carl

P.S. Podcast practice recordings progressing, stay tuned.

This is the Carl Bindman Newsletter, for members of my professional or personal networks whom I think should get the scoop and be kept in the loop.

This newsletter was written on Lenapehoking, the occupied land of the Lenni Lenape.