Animation.

Animation.

It exists in the clowning world. And the cabaret world. And the circus.

And when you're doing all three as I have been at Teatro ZinZanni for the last few months, it exists there too. In spades.

Animation.

I've talked about it before here.

It's kind of a super charged version of mingling. It's "working the room" with intent.

It's testing the waters, gauging the temperature, getting your feet wet.

It's stepping on to the killing floor and playing.

It's fun.

You're not grabbing the whole room and commanding attention. You're subtly infiltrating across the footlights. You're not drawing attention to yourself. You're insinuating your character into the atmosphere. You're delicately infusing some antic spirit onto the proceedings.

You're basically just moving about psychoanalyzing the audience while you entertain them.

But Animation, especially when you're doing "Victim Work" like I am at ZinZanni, selecting involunteers to join you onstage later on, has an important purpose. You are vetting future scene partners.

So the first animation of the evening, before the show officially starts, is perhaps the most business like. You're touching shoulders, sensing senses of humor, checking for canes or crutches or accents that might make it difficult if you cast them later on. A readiness to smile, to laugh, combined with a slight reticence is usually what I'm looking for.

When a few of us are doing it concurrently, as we are in the current show Love, Chaos, Dinner at Teatro ZinZanni, there is a palpable lift in the air, a slight intensification of the chatter that seems to say: Yes, the fourth wall is down, this is not television and the lunatics are running this particular asylum.

Veronin being Veronin.

While I'm making light hearted barbs and trading gratuitous compliments with patrons I'm also keeping an eye on seating, social groupings, family dynamics. While 7 foot yodeling dominatrix Manuela Horn glides around the room in her 1st Act beer maiden outfit she is also making decisions about who to use in her whip and leash number later in the evening when she's suited up in full patent leather and red lace regalia. The Maestro himself, illusionist Veronin is silently animating, giving people the giggles and the creeps in equal measure.

Meanwhile acrobrat Ben Wendell of The Duo Madrona is high five-ing kids as his security guard character "Bruno". It's not too loud. It's conversational. It only gets the attention of a darkened booth over here or a table of bachelorettes there. But sometimes I think that it is the clearest barometer of what that particular audience's character is going to be.

Manuela and I at the afterparty.

Oddiences

They're all different. They're made up of completely separate and distinct individuals. But somehow, every night, the combined character of the group congeals into a single entity, that night- and that night's only- audience. It is the most talked about subject amongst us back stage.

"How are they?"

"I like them."

"They're a little..."

"I know, right?"

"They'll warm up."

"They're weird."

"It's an oddience."

For one of the numbers I'm doing now in ZinZanni, called "East Side Story", a musical send up of West Side Story which features a dance, a knife fight and a heart wrenching- and hopefully funnybone tickling- death scene I need an involunteer to play a Riff/Tybalt inspired gang leader. The bit gets pretty ridiculous and he quickly becomes an audience favorite and for the rest of the evening he will most assuredly be getting hearty slaps on the back from his co workers or extra squeezes from his girlfriend.

But he doesn't know that yet. He's just a member of the crowd, enjoying the evening. And I'm probably animating near him- but not with him. I want to see his reaction when I play with people around him not to him. What you laugh at is a clear indicator of your personality and I still want a bit of that deer in headlights look when I pluck him from obscurity later on. It is a very secretive casting process you are engaged in with one person while you are being funny with 5 others. 

I'm not phony. I'm mega-phony.

Meanwhile animation gives you a chance to see each group's pecking order, each families hierarchy, even each section's level of drunkenness. You gather this information as you include them in a little conspiracy- a shared intent to not take ourselves too seriously tonight, suspend our cynicism along with our disbelief and have some fun.

If you've been doing it as long as I have you develop some material. Go-to gags that fit just about any situation. Entendres you can double, compliments you can turn on a dime, seemingly in the moment observations that I've used before but give a certain underlying hesitancy to so they seem newly minted. 

He Who Is The Most Relaxed, Wins.

So I noticed something the other night. I was leaning too heavily on some of these tried and true tropes. So I let go. Of course there is a level of expectation as you approach a table. You're in an outlandish costume. Your mustache is painted on with what looks like a sharpie. But rather than animating at people I animated with them. I just walked on to the floor and took what came to me. I just responded in character. In this case mad movie director Cecil B. DeGrille. And new material came. It always does when you're relaxed. When you replace the inner monologue that commands you to keep dazzling them with your cleverness shouting "What do I say next? How can I make this funny?" with a calm voice that simply says: "Breathe. Listen. Respond."

I was watching the NBA champion Golden State Warriors on a replay of a game after the show the other night. I was watching Stephan Curry doing his thing. "Steph being Steph" they call it. Another spectacular highlight laden performance. And I was struck by the fact that in the middle of that 94 by 50 hunk of wood, his stage, his killing floor, with all that attention and the highest level of athleticism and defensive skills in sport pitted against him, he was clearly the most relaxed player out there. Not pushing to make a clever pass, not relying on what he knew had worked the last time, not doing anything by rote. Just breathing, listening, responding.

Sure, there are gems you hold on to. Stuff you pull from your bag of tricks. But my favorite moments in animation come when I'm as surprised at what I say as the patrons are. That we share, in that moment in time, the creation of a new bit. Then it's up to me to remember it, to hone it and perhaps even add it to my arsenal. But every situation, every audience is different.

They all deserve my best. But sometimes- I never thought I'd say this- less really is more.

Cheers.

Containing Multitudes.

 

Containing Multitudes.

I'm currently playing 20 characters in a 5 actor adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days. One actor plays the unflappable Phileas Fogg and the rest of the cast plays key parts like his erstwhile servant Passepartout, the dogged Detective Fix and Aooda, the girl he rescues plus a few assorted British noblemen and Indian elephant sellers.

I play everybody else.

20 characters.

20 different accents.

20 different costumes.

20 separate and distinct body types.

20 velcro enabled, dresser assisted whirlwinds in the wings to change everything from boots to facial hair and everything in between.

All packed into 1 sweaty, frantic and strangely invigorating evening of performing.

9 shows a week.

For 4 weeks.

That's 720 characters in 1 month.

But who's counting.

And each character is clamoring for his (or her) own respect, truthfulness and integrity. Each character possesses his (or her) own gait, gestures and grievances. Each character is trying to get his (or her) laughs.

I've done this kind of thing before. Most recently I played 20 characters in a one man adaptation of The Dybbuk at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Previously I've played 28 characters in a one man adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, 22 characters in The Boneman of Benares and 38 characters in The Thousandth Night. In those one man shows the costume changes were usually done in full view of the audience. A scarf or a hat suggested the new character. A pillow became a hunchback or boobs or a pregnant belly. The rest was up to me.

 

Playing 20 Characters in The Dybbuk.

But in Around the World in 80 Days I get the whole enchilada. Costumer extraordinaire B. Modern and her team assembled a whole closet full of period garb, rigged it all with snaps and magnets and Velcro patches, attached beards and mutton chops and mustaches to hats and caps and helmets and for 2 hours each night I dive in and out of it all while trying to pop onstage with the right lines in the right accent spoken by the correct character.

Breathing

This is just the kind of demanding fun I like. Most actors give themselves a little moment to settle in to who they are portraying before making an entrance. I don't get that moment. A fully fledged character has to be put on in seconds, then erased and replaced by the next one while desperately trying to put my hand in the right sleeve or apply the next mustache. And then bang, I'm back on. Sometimes you come on so flushed with the fact that you made the quick change in time to make your entrance that it takes a moment to remember who you are. You are out of breath. But the character isn't. He (or she) is just coming on to play the scene. So one of the delicious challenges of multi character work is respiratory. How to keep breathing onstage while a breathless scramble awaits you offstage at every exit. How to give each character at least a fighting chance to play, have fun and be his (or her)self.

 

Ralph Gautier of the Reform Club starts in on a monoclelog.

Tethers.

Finding these characters and distinguishing them from each other calls upon some particularly keen observation. I generally start with the chin, one of my favorite body parts. Where a person wears their chin can color not only their posture and attitude but their entire outlook on life. And when you're playing multi characters distinguishing chin placement goes a long way. The arrogance of the upturned chin works nicely in contrast with the tucked chin of a shy person. Angle that same chin and suddenly we don't trust this guy.

But that's just the beginning. Actors talk of a character's center. (My Colonel Procter in Around the World in 80 Days is decidedly belly centered for example) but few actors speak of a character's tether, that part of them that leads, that moves them through space, ambulates them from one place to another.

 

Colonel Proctor. (Photo by Kevin Berne)

Gravity.

Each character (person) has a different relationship with gravity. This may manifest itself in how the spine is worn. Which may in turn color the baseline emotional state of the character. Truly, the body has a sense memory.

Try saying "It's a beautiful day" while wearing the body of someone beset with heavy gravity, bent spine and tucked chin and you will feel what I mean. 

 

Kabuto.

Sculpting.

Other questions I try to answer for each character include:

Is he large or small, fast or slow?

Where does he keep his hands?

What is his "home"? (The posture he is most comfortable in.)

What personal quirk, tick, twitch or habitual mannerism does he rely on?

What is his relationship in space to the other characters? (Is he a space invader or a space evader?)

Does he flow or is there something more jagged there?

What is at war within him and what side is winning?

Acting is the study of everything. And coming up with 20 separate and distinct characters for Around the World in 80 Days has tested my resources. Sometimes you borrow from our shared culture.

 

Captain Bunsby. (Photo by Kevin Berne)

Captain Bunsby.

My Captain Bunsby of the Tankadere, who takes Phileas Fogg from Hong Kong through the storms to Yokohama sounds a bit like Quint from Jaws and a bit like Sterling Hayden. (Who was originally slated to play Quint in Jaws by the way.) 

He has a mouth full of gravel, an erect chin, a bent spine and lives in his own cloud of increased gravity. His center is his grizzled beard and for a tether he sports a wooden leg. A fear of the sea and a thirst for adventure are at war within him. His hands are fists and they're most at home in his pea coat pockets. He has a habit of stroking his beard that he's not aware of.

He's on stage for about 5 minutes and then limps off, his wooden leg leading the way, never to be seen again. But 2 seconds later I'm back on again, wearing a maid's dress and bonnet and a whole new set of decisions sculpting me. 

Bobby.

Emperor Norton.

Suez Consul.

Beautiful Contradictions.

Sure there are stereotypes here. Easy ways to latch on to a character and pigeon hole him into an easily recreate-able cypher. And that's where an actor's malleability and keen sense of observation comes in. To look for not only the broad strokes of what makes a character recognizable but the deeper exploration of the qualities (and contradictions) that make him human.

A line from Song of Myself from Whitman's Leaves of Grass reminds us that we are never just one thing, and all the quirks, imperfections, and contradictions are par for the course. And what differentiate us. All 20 of us in Around the World in 80 Days.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself;

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

      -Walt Whitman

Life size game of Risk ends badly.

Finding Eddie at The Speakeasy

Over the Moon at The Speakeasy (w/ Jon Deline)

You find yourself in a random street corner somewhere near the border of North Beach and Chinatown in San Francisco. The smells of simmering garlic risotto and sizzling Szechwan mingle in the evening air. You've been told to keep your eye out for a fellow in a faded overcoat and a canary colored fedora. You see him slouched insouciantly against a lamp post. He whispers a password to you past his down turned brim and upturned collar, gestures with a granite jaw towards either a Chinese laundry or a dusty clock shop. A goon at the door puts a hand the size of a porterhouse steak against your chest.

"Password." he grumbles.

"Skidoo." you reply.

With a grunt he lets you pass and you make your way down the rabbit hole.

You're in one of two places: either Sam Lee's Laundry Emporium or Joe's Clock Shop. Let's say you're in Joe's. The place is littered with clocks in various states of disrepair on every available surface. A desk bristles with springs and cogs and clock faces from every drawer. There's no Joe. Instead a dame in a sequined dress that fits her curves in all the right places reclines on a bentwood chair. Her gimlet eyes smolder at you. 

"Are you here to get a clock fixed?" she murmurs, lips painted the color of a day old bloodstain.

"Not really." you manage to stammer.

"Then you've come to the right place." She purrs and gestures you with lacquered nails towards a grandfather clock that probably last worked sometime around 1902. 
You open the door that should contain the innards of the clock. That's when you hear it. Music. Ragtime. A honky tonk waltz. You step into the clock and out the other side...

And you are in an illicit gambling den filled with flappers and dandies, swells and slatterns, bootleggers and roustabouts all decked out in the full regalia of 1923. You make your way past a Bellows boxing painting that hangs above a roulette table, past craps and blackjack players hunched over the green felt of the gambling tables, their chips clicking together in their sweaty palms and past an outstretched gloved hand holding a long cigarette holder belonging to a women resplendent in spit curls. Everyone is drinking. 

A bookshelf glides to one side on hidden wheels and you find yourself in a bar where a mustachioed piano player named Oscar Frost plinks out some forgotten moonshine sonata on a creaky upright. A bouncer with a face like a clenched fist and tougher than the calluses on a barflies' elbow gives you a wink and sends you through a secret passage marked only by a Dégas forgery. You make your way down a long hallway. Still more music beckons you past a velvet curtain the color of a bottomless lake. 

You emerge into The Palace Theatre Cabaret, swollen with swells swilling in the sepia glow of their table lamps or spilling over the mezzanine above the bouquets of drunken boozers in the booths. 
And onstage, caught in the glare of the footlights is a bevy of beauties in matching sequined hot pants kicking their long legs in perfect unison to the din of Mr. Arnie Topman and his Infamous Five. 

In the center of the chorus girls a man in a top hat and tails sings. He's the master of ceremonies, an ever ready joker with a bucket full of clever asides in his brain pan, sporting a jet black wig and a powdered face. His name is Eddie. The song ends and he raises a flask in your direction, his lips inches from a 1923 vintage microphone and says in a voice redolent of that era "So glad you could make it. Welcome to The Speakeasy!"

Three swells swilling.

Under Construction.

It started back in 2016 and even before that at another venue in 2014 and is the brainchild of Mr. Nick Olivero of Boxcar Theatre and his peripatetic business partner David Gluck. I was brought on to create the role of Eddie the Unlucky, the irrepressible gadfly emcee of the cabaret (loosely based on Eddie Cantor and a host of other comic luminaries of the Prohibition era) in their immersive theatre  recreation of a 1923 speakeasy.  I had just emcee'd the Theatre Bay Area Theatre Awards at the Geary Theatre for Nick and he asked if I was interested in creating Eddie for this 3 million dollar project he was embarking on in San Francisco. The venue was still fully under construction. It was a dusty, echo-y inhospitable environment to do theatre in. Now, almost a year later it is one of the hottest tickets in the city. And "Eddie" is at the center of it.

Becoming Eddie.

First was finding the material. Nick had done the heavy lifting of creating a cabaret order of where the specialty acts, the chorus girls, the comedy vignettes, the dream ballets would go. Eddie would be the one to tie them all together and keep the ball rolling. The only rule: nothing written after 1923. Authentic vaudeville humor. That plus what turned out to be seven songs, mostly from the Eddie Cantor songbook; If You Knew Susie, The Dumber They Come, She Don't Like It Not Much, etc. along with classics Lonesome Pine and even Those Were The Days are sprinkled throughout the evening with patter and plain ol' stand up of the time which needed to be part history lesson and part crowd control and all funny all the time. That's not true. When things go awry Eddie waxes philosophical and even holds forth with a Shakespeare soliloquy.

The Flannerelles.

Body of Work, Work of Body.

Luckily, Eddie Cantor was an extraordinary source of wit and ribald humor for generations and we were able to cobble together a kind of greatest hits and misses into Eddie's monologues from his vast body of work. And after a couple of months I started thinking like Eddie. Seeing the world through his cockeyed eyes. 

But then came the physicality. There's plenty of footage available of Eddie in the 30's and 40's. (He was one of those rare ones that went from vaudeville to radio to television without losing any of his well deserved popularity.) But there is precious little of the work he was doing pre 1923. Just a few grainy kinescopes and some scratchy audio. 

My first clue into him was his eyes. Throughout his career he affected a goggle eyed look, eyebrows in a perpetual state of astonishment. Next came his hands, splayed and fan like, as if the palms were capturing the limelight and the fingers were directing it directly to his garrulous face. His hips were square, retaining some of that early 20th century Puritan stiffness above feet that were like mirrors of his inner state: lively, jivey and almost irrepressibly delighted at everything he saw, heard or suspected might be on the horizon.

Coy/Decoy
The interesting challenge was that he was small in stature. And that was part of his charm. And I wanted that. I wanted to cram his Napoleon complex into my 6' frame. I went to my favorite body part: the chin. By tucking it, while still letting my eyebrows have that Cantoresque buoyancy, I found I could feel like the world was a little bit bigger than me. Eddie is almost coy. But because he's got a trick or two up his sleeve, it's actually decoy. That along with a slightly oversized costume seems to do the trick.
 

Giggle Juice and Tonsil Varnish

Since developing the role, they've had 2 others playing Eddie in The Speakeasy (including the aforementioned impresario Nick Olivero) but I like to think that Eddie Cantor himself, up in front of those footlights in the sky, is looking down with those big eyes of his and smiling, knowing we're all doing our best to give the swell swells of 2017 a little glimpse into a time when girls had gams, goons packed heat and giggle juice could get you daffy at The Speakeasy.

Eddie the Unlucky at the afterparty.

The Wrestler and the Sensei.

Mirrorly a Clown, Reporting the Facts.

Osaka

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A place is its people and people are their stories and there are two stories that have come to remind me the most about my time in the sister city of San Francisco; Osaka, Japan.

Two people whose stories are so different and yet the same.

Both are artists, gifted practitioners of completely different art forms.

Both lead double lives, like super heroes with their alter egos.

Both utilizing the Mask of Satori.

There is the mask you put on and the mask you take off.

There is the mask that conceals and the mask that reveals.

There is the mask that frees the wearer and the mask that holds him in.

Two examples.

Two stories.

The Wrestler

It is a place like no other.

An ex-pat American told me that its existence made life for him just a little sweeter on this side of the world.

Down a neon clad alley in the formerly red lit Shinsobashi district, its facade adorned with sculptures of Osaka's own clown-like gods of commerce and food- (which will later be depicted by wrestlers only to be thrown around the ring like 200 pound rag dolls) is a comedy/wrestling/party/free-for-all that runs about three hours with an intermission five nights a week.

There are the things you might expect from such an entertainment.

There is a clueless referee.

There are the good guys.

(There is a King who I was rooting for but he got knocked out with a sleeper hold early and spent the next few matches comatose in the center of the ring.)

There are the bad guys.

(Who spit and for whom no body part is off limits.)

There are flying bodies.

There are ringsider girls.

Plus there are:

Wrestling nurses.

Contortionist wrestlers.

Nurses wrestling contortionists.

Vain Kabuki heroes.

Tattooed muscle-bound monsters.

School girls scissor kicking in thigh high stockings and patent leather shoes.

The audience is clearly in on the joke and eats up every face slap, arm break and gravity defying swan dive that ends in a thunderous face plant.

They are comprised of the most varied group I have seen in Japan: salarymen and old ladies and hipsters and kids and aficionados and couples out on dates.

Before Every Moment There Is A Moment.

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Presiding above all the mayhem is one wrestler, mike in hand, ready to enter the fray at a moments notice and clearly the queen of this wild kingdom of kip rolls and cheap shots. Though my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to pick up what she is saying it is clear from the audience reaction that she is hilarious.

She does it all.

She is bantering from atop a turnbuckle, then flings the mike to the ref and flings herself into the ring. Three punching, kicking, biting, flipping minutes later she is atop the opposite turnbuckle, mike in hand, pumping out the comedy commentary.

Clearly an audience favorite, she does all this under a brightly colored mask.

Whale.
But don't worry. It's a really small piece. He probably didn't even feel it.

A couple nights later I met her at her "day job" where she works as the omote or "outside the bar" waitress at a sushi bar just down the street from the hotel that is putting up the cast and crew of Kooza.

She is demure.

Respectful.

Quietly efficient.

She brings me the ice cold Asahi that compliments the ootoro, hamachi and unagi nagiri so perfectly.

She is not wearing a mask.

She barely wears a smile.

She has one eye that is sunken and her face, though not unpleasant, is oddly deformed.

I complimented her on her amazing work in the ring.

She had seen Kooza and complimented me on my work in the big top.

I asked if I could take her picture.

She declined.

But then she remembered that she might have her wrestling mask in her purse in which case it would be okay. After rummaging around in her purse briefly she reported that she did not have it so a picture was "not possible".

I said "No problem."

She said "No problemo."

And smiled.

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The Sensei.

It's another place like no other.

Down a grey alley in the Awaza district of Osaka remarkable only in its unremarkability, on the second floor of a concrete building with metal crank up doors is The Meishinkan Dojo.

Unlike many of the dojos, practice halls, studios and the like that Iaido is practiced in, Meishinkan Dojo was designed exclusively for Iaido.

And more specifically, Muso Jikiden Eishen Ryu. The well known (in Iaido circles) picture of the armor of Hiyashizaki Jinsuke Minamoto no Shigenobu that adorned the shomen or shrine at the front of the room was evidence of that. Further evidence was in the stains of sweat on the long, toil-polished floorboards.

Through an ex-pat Aussie named Darryl Lawrence I was invited to train here during my time in Osaka under Hattori Sensei, who was described to me as serious, detailed and above all, practical.

I had no idea.

Training was on Friday nights which amazingly I had off from the circus though I did have a matinee that day.

For my first time at this new dojo I travelled from circus tent to dojo by bicycle, arrived early enough to help the mama-san open the windows she couldn't reach without the aid of a stick, put on my gear and awaited the Sensei and his other students.

They trickled in, grunted cordially in my direction and went about the waza of changing into keikogi, obi and hakama. These were older gentlemen, distinguished. There were flecks of grey in their black manes and the edges of their keikoji showed the frayed evidence of a lifetime in the martial arts.

Hattori Sensei arrived.

I was told he came directly from work.

He looked it.

Smart suit, tie.

(I later found out he was a lawyer.)

He was thirty-five.

He smiled, we exchanged rudimentary greetings, I told him I had just come from Tokyo where I had been studying with Kobara Sensei and of course Esaka Sensei. I think his eyebrows raised a little at the mention of Esaka Sensei. He had heard of Esaka dojo and was glad to take me on as a student for as long as I was in Osaka.

(Amazing how having studied with a 10th Dan can open some doors.)

He quickly changed into his crisply pressed hakama, lit some candles on the shomen, and with three claps- just like back home at Nishi Kaigan in Berkeley- we bowed in and class began.

Same Same

We started with Tata uchi nokarai, working in pairs using bokken (wooden swords) in a series of waza designed to give the practitioner a sense of real contact with a real opponent.

I think they are also designed to give you a real sense of real holy shitness.

My first partner turned out to be the mama-san, who had quickly changed into Iaido gear and turned out to be scarily good.

The thing with Tata uchi nokarai is that even though your mind may know which direction the cut is coming from, your body has to respond with the right timing to intercept the cut with a cut of your own or you are just relying on your partner to stop himself.

The way these guys were going at each other I didn't hold a lot of faith in that ever happening. As we changed partners around the room I had visions of riding a gurney down some hallway of a Japanese hospital, my head cracked open and blood coming out of my ears.

An hour later I was still alive, drenched in sweat and probably with a deeper appreciation of what they call same, which means something like the combination of push and pressure and inexorable.

We put the bokken away and got our swords. I noticed Hattori Sensei's first.

A shinken.

A "live blade".

When it was out the very air in the room changed.

There is the story of the sword that is so sharp that when it is placed with the edge facing upstream in a small brook, it will cut in half a leaf traveling downstream. Then there is the sword that is sharper. More imbued. When placed in that same stream, the same leaf will simply avoid it and go around.

I think Hattori Sensei's is in the second category.

It had no hi or groove along its length, what many misidentify as a "blood gutter" but actually creates a whoosh especially on the arcing downward cut called Kiriroshi.

Hattori Sensei didn't need it.

His cuts whooshed anyway.

All of them.

I have watched a lot of people do Iaido.

I have watched very intently.

I have watched as hard as I know how.

Yet I have never watched anyone summon an imaginary opponent to the room so completely, see him so clearly and after a charged ballet between human bone and steel see that same imaginary opponent so thoroughly dead as when I watched Hattori Sensei demonstrate Mae, the first waza in the Seiza series that first time.

And his face?

A mask.

A mask capable of horrendous violence, but a mask just the same.

I became a "guest" member of Mieshinkan Dojo and was helping the mama-san open windows every Friday night.

The Mask You Put On Or The Mask You Take Off.

Three months went by in a flash.

I got to know Hattori Sensei and his family, his lovely wife and charming daughter.

(When they came to see Kooza I got his daughter onstage with our ballerina during the pre-show and gave them a backstage tour.)

It was nice to see him as the happy young family man, always picked up at the dojo by his wife and daughter, a successful guy with a great disposition.

Or was this just another mask, perfectly calibrated to hide the monster of composed violence underneath?

Hattori Sensei doing Tata Uchi Nokarai with Shinken. (live blades)
To see the video click here.

Painting

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Two things that I shall take from my time at Meishinkan Dojo.

Both practical.

First a lesson.

Sensei was watching me do some waza, I don't remember which, it probably doesn't matter.

Hattori Sensei has little English so most of the teaching is done through example and osmosis.

He stopped me and said "This, you." and pointed to a notice on the bulletin board.

It was an announcement of something, in kanji, typed out on a page of paper. "This, Iaido."

He pointed to the large carving of the flowing kanji that spells out Meishinkan in dark grooves that perfectly represented the movements of a brush in the hands of a skilled calligrapher.

"Don't type. Paint."

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And finally, on my last night, after a dinner with Sensei and all the students, Sensei surprised me with a final gift.

We had been doing the small gift roundelay since that first night but this was different.

Inside a nami patterned bag with loops of bone to cinch it closed was a box. In the box was an inkan, the chop of my name and a bright red stamp pad.

Sensei had carved it himself.

The Japanese use chop to make official their most important documents. I recently used the one Hattori Sensei carved for me on my latest contract with Cirque.

Sometime later I realized he had probably carved the flowing kanji of the sign in the dojo.

At the time he didn't tell me.

I suppose he preferred to keep his mask on.