We have a month off from the Two and Only. I am back working at my regular job, which is looking for regular jobs. That of course is a joke. I have never had a regular job in my life. Even what I consider a job is working with a doll, so you wouldn’t label that “regular”.

The writer’s strike is essentially over. Los Angeles is getting back to the over indulgence it is known for. Writers can write again, the Academy Awards are saved and all is right in the plastic world. Unfortunately some writers that weren’t writing before the strike will now have to say, “I’m unemployed,” rather than “I’m on strike.”

At Highland and Hollywood, the site of the Kodak Theater, there is an Oscar exhibition advertising the up and coming ceremony. Several vintage Oscars are on display as well as some of the statues that will be given away in a few weeks. One of the most interesting is a miniature Oscar that was given to Judy Garland when she was a child star. It is about half the size of a regular Oscar. As if to say, child actors are half as important. They show the process of making the Oscar statue, and list the names of all the nominees with their pictures.

At the end of the tour there is an Oscar statuette that you can actually pick up and hold for a picture. Over the weekend I was in line with Nicki and Jeff, my niece and her husband, who work in the film industry, cueing up to hold the statuette. I asked, “Wonder if the same curse holds true with the Oscar Statue as the Tony?” They didn’t know the legend, so I told them. The Tony legend says that if you ever hope to win a Tony, you can never touch a Tony until it is yours. They said they had never heard that before.

No one said anything. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement. We just got out of line and avoided touching the Oscar. There’s no sense screwing with curses and legends. I doubt I will ever be a candidate for receiving an Oscar. Five years ago I would have said that about the Tony, so you never know. However, I think some day I may get to hold Nicki and Jeff’s Oscar. Until then I will be satisfied.

As you were,
Jay

The McCarter is a great theatre, as is SOPAC and the audiences could not have been better this last weekend. Two great nights on this magical mystery tour. I am really pleased at the way the show is being received on the road.

I got a comment on the blog asking me if I liked the small size of SOPAC. For me it was great. The "Two and Only", seen in an intimate theater is a great experience for me and the audience. The size of a theater is important mainly to producers. They obviously can make more money in a large theater than a small one. Me, I just like the intimacy of the experience.

I am in New York for a day to fly to Culver, Indiana Monday for a Tuesday show. New York is great. I feel at home here. The energy is unique. I feel more alive than I have for some time.

I normally take the subway but took a couple of cabs today. I got two great stories from some very talkative drivers. I will eventually recount them here some day soon.

In the city I met with my friend Philippe Parreno who directed "Iil Tempo del Postino", the art show I did in Manchester last July. He is in town from Paris talking to the Guggenheim about a couple of new art projects. I am always inspired to be around him. A great mind and very creative person. Someone I am honored to call a friend.

He had pictures for me to sign from "Iil Tempo".i I thought they were 8x 10's. Not so. They were six feet by four feet glossies of my section in the show. The print is mostly black theatrical lighting except for my face exaggerated by the 24 inch magnifying glass I performed behind. I look like a doomed passenger looking out the port hole of the Titanic. It makes an interesting poster.

We signed a dozen or so prints in large white pen. He copied my signature and I copied his super imposed over mine. It creates a very unusual graffiti like scrawl. However, it is a great statement of collaboration. Both signatures become one, him writing my name and me his. What I realized is we were not just signing autographs we were making an art piece. The longer I know Philippe the more I realize that is what his life is all about. Always making art.

We had great fun rolling the prints out on his hotel room floor and trying to forge each others signature. He had reams of paper to practice on, and glossy paper to get used to the feel of the pen. We were like little kids in a kindergarten art class. His french accent makes any thing he says funny to me. We laughed a lot. It was a great experience.

One of the prints is mine and I'm not sure I have a wall large enough to hang it on, but it is definitely a wonderful memento not just of the show, but the fun of signing them.

Only in New York do these things happen. It is why the energy is so great here. I always feel my artistic soul being fed in the City.

As you were,
Jay
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I am waiting for my plane to Newark, so I'll take a moment to catch up on my blogging. Writing this with my thumbs on a blackberry in the middle of LAX is tricky so go easy on the critique.



We started this year's tour in Crystal Lake, a bucolic part of Chicago. It was a matinee and evening performance on a hit and run schedule. Pretty much an eighteen hour day at the theatre. We set up, focused, ran some sound, did a cue to cue, set for the matinee. It was back to back performances, then pack up and move on. John Ivy took a picture of the three person crew standing at the stage door the morning we got there. The next day on the drive to the airport we looked at the picture and remarked how long ago it seemed.



The show actually works well scaled down set wise. I do miss the scoop carpet, but that is not an easy load in. The story and all the characters play.



Now we are off to a couple of theaters in New Jersey and a swing through Indiana. I have no confidence in the agents booking this tour. I haven't from the start. It's not my call, yet, but when it is, I'll find an agency that understands this show a little better and where it needs to be booked.



It feels. A lot like the Broadway producers are done with it. My show that is. They won the ultimate Broadway prize, the Tony, and there is really nothing more in it for them. They can make some money, but not enough to get their attention. This is a small show with a single cast and single company.



This is not sour grapes. I just have a different agenda. I want to perform this show in as many theaters and for as many people as I can for as long as I can.



Hopefully we are just getting started.



As you were,

Jay

The largest house in America is located in Asheville, North Carolina, the Biltmore House, built by a Vanderbilt son when he was twenty-seven years old and unmarried. Those of us from the west coast can brag about the Hurst Castle but it can not compare to the Biltmore House build by George Washington Vanderbilt at the turn of the century.  It is an amazing structure.  It is 175,000 square feet of what could only be described as a castle. That is about four acres of space.  It is dwarfed only by the actual property that it sits on which is 185,000 acres. When asked how much the home cost the answer is unknown.  George paid cash and destroyed the receipts because he said it was a person matter, and nobody's business how much it cost. 

It is an amazing property to see. In a house this size it is not just about the number of bedrooms, but the number of servants quarters that are available to accommodate the quests.

There is an indoor swimming pool and a bowling alley down stairs.  There is a pastry kitchen,  roticery kitchen and a regular kitchen, all bigger than the square footage of my own house. 

I suggest that everyone who can come to Asheville, North Carolina visit this incredible exhibit. It was one of the perks to spending a New Years Eve here. The exclusive bed and breakfast we stayed in while here is not to be believed. However, you need to get on a thirty year waiting list.

This was the best New Years that I have ever spent. 

As you were,

Jay

Happy New Year blog readers. This is one New Years Eves I chose not to sell out and go for big money and perform. Instead this New Years Eve was a special evening with a very exclusive group, my best friend Harry, his wife Elizabeth and my best girl Sandi.


I rarely get to laugh as much as tonight. I rarely find the conversation so stimulating nor eat and drink so well. To think, out of all the places I have been Asheville, North Carolina would be the center of the entertainment universe for me.


I have spent many New Years Eves with my friend Harry Anderson, and probably performed on stage with him more than any other person.

With our wives we enjoyed a great dinner at the four star restaurant Horizons, and got back to the Anderson house in time to watch Anderson Cooper declare the beginning of 2008. After popping another bottle of bubbly we decid on alternative entertainment. In our pajamas we watch a vintage 1979 Halloween network variety special starring Paul Lind. The comedy special is not funny nor special, unless viewed with this audience.


Harry makes me laugh and it is of little importance where we are or what we are doing, we have a creative synergy that is unique. I wish everyone had a friend like mine. If they did the world would be a better place.

As we turned in, exhausted from an evening of laugh cramps, I made one last toast,

"To my BFF." To which he replied "BFD".



Make it a Great 08.

As you were,

Jay

This is a strange feeling, being on the road in town. Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa is about an hour drive from my front door. However, with unpredictable Los Angeles traffic patterns it can take two or three hours to make the trip. Rather than spend hours and hours in a dressing room before the show, or risk being late for a performance, the Pacific Symphony put me up in a lovely hotel literally fifty yards from the stage entrance.

I packed like I was going away for a month, forgetting that I would have all day to make a two hour trip if I forgot something of major importance.

I am looking forward to performing this piece again. I had great fun with it in Dallas.

The second half of the Symphony is the Von Trap children singers. I think they are the grandchildren of the kids made famous in the Sound of Music. They seem very nice if rather intensely focused, enjoying a rather odd celebrity. I was not one who saw the movie multiple times and I was never a performer in any production of the musical. (I suspect this makes my Tony win all the more unique) The person walking by my dressing room whistling "How do you solve a problem like Maria" probably did. I suspect I could be a hero if I let it be known I was Julie Andrews opening act for several seasons.
More from the bowels of the symphony world later.

As you were,

Jay

After closing the "Two and Only" at the Dallas Majestic Theater, I stayed around to perform the Christmas concert with the Dallas Pops Orchestra at Meyerson Symphony Hall. My friend and conductor Richard Kaufman asked me to narrate the orchestration of "Twas the Night Before Christmas". Bob and I recite the poem together after a quick routine. Later I come back on stage, alone, to conduct the orchestration of "Sleigh Ride".

To compensate for my conducting skills Richard and I turned this section into a routine. We get a couple of kids on stage to shake sleigh bells with the orchestra. Since Bob is not on stage at this time, I pick one of the kids to help me. They "audition" by opening their mouth when I tap them on the back as I make them talk like Bob.

The first night we pick a little girl who becomes terrified and stands like a statue on stage. There were no laughs to be mined with her that night.

Richard and I decide we need to pick a more precocious child the next night. There is an energetic six year old boy down front who looks like Opie and can't wait to get on stage. He is right out of central casting for a Norman Rockwell painting.

I am sure he will be perfect until I ask him to open his mouth when I tap. He looks me in the eye and says, "I am not going to be your dummy. " That was that, he would have nothing to do with me from then on.

This is what I love about live theatre, you just never know.

As you were,
Jay

Any good paranormal will tell you that there are many levels to a haunting. The ghost I saw at the Helen Hayes was your garden variety specter. That is a visual manifestation which doesn't do much more than appear and disappear. They can be startling or even scary but not destructive.

However, I would classify the presence at the Majestic Theater in Dallas as a poltregeist. I haven't had many dealings with poltregeists. It was an interesting experience. Having had it, I think I prefer to deal with the much more benign sectors.

I'm not sure one can assign logic to a phenomenon nor give it a personality but that seems to be a very human thing to do

The stage hands call it Hobbetsell, named after the millionaire who originally built the Majestic. I'm not sure why he would want to disrupt the theater but he may be ticked off because the theater came very close to being turned into a parking garage a few years ago.

Hobbetsell messes mainly with electrical devises. Stage lights come on when there was no one at the dimmer board. Bulbs would burn out almost daily. Lamps would move out of focus more than any other time we have done this show.
Cameras wouldn't work in the theater and work fine out in the street. Several times when I would pose for pictures with fans their cameras would malfunction.

My blackberry would re boot every time I came into the dressing room until I started greeting Hobbetsell as I arrived for the evening.

And we had more microphone trouble in this one week than in the entire run so far.

The thing is, poltregeists are difficult to prove. Unlike a specter that you can see and sometimes photograph, the poltregeist can be explained by random chance. Lights burn out and electronics drain batteries. Shit happens as they say.

But I would say that the sheer number of occurrences happening this week to the Two and Only was odd and notable.

It is why this run of the show will be even more unforgettable. Thank you DSM, Michael Jenkins, the local crew, Lori, John, Sandi and Murphy everyone who came to the show, all my friends, especially those who have written to this blog, and good night to Mr. Hobbetsell.
As you were,
Jay

Dallas Opening

When Zero, the head of electrics at the Majestic Theatre, told me about Mr. Hobbetsell the ghost that haunts backstage I knew I was in the right place. Mr. Hobbetsell has been particularly active in advance of my show. I personally can't wait to meet him.

The opening was great here in Dallas last night, the Theatre is fabulous and the set looks beautiful on stage. There was a wonderful opening night party afterwards. Dallas is a very elegant city and never more so than the support of the arts.

I don't read reviews but they tell me that they are good and the Dallas Morning News was a valentine.

I have so many wonderful friends who are coming. Jane Hitch who was in the first Six Flags show I did and also in the cast of the show at Six Flags Over Georgia was at the show and the party. She is beautiful as ever. What great friends show business makes.

I am typing this with my thumbs so I will write more later, but enough to say it is certainly very exciting to be doing the show here and in this theater.
As you were,
Jay
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

The warm up shows for Dallas are over and I am really happy. I think we are in great shape for the run at the Majestic. I am looking forward to it more than I can say. I think the full creative will be there. If you didn't see the run of this show on Broadway then I hope you can see it in Dallas. It is proving to be a very magical run.

The shows at Ithaca and Indianapolis were very successful. We did them with a minimal set and in some cases the wrong lighting board but the reaction of the audience was incredible.
I am so blessed with this show. It continues to be a dream come true.

Big "D" here we come.
As you were,
Jay

I am on my way to Ithaca for a warm up performance of "The Two and Only". This means I am carrying more characters than a normal working trip.

In Orlando I am going through security when the TSA agent looks at the xray image of my carry-on. He says, "Sir, do you have three heads in your carry on?"

I say, "I'm sorry how many heads are you allowed to carry on?"

All I can say is, the TSA has no sense of humor.
As you were,
Jay

Jo Ann the publicity lady for the Majestic Theatre in Dallas wrote to me requesting video footage of The Two and Only for publicity. It is not material that I have possession of. This is something the producers usually take care of. It is, after all, in their own best interest to promote the show.

So, I write to three members of the Broadway team, the publicist, the marketing guy and the lead producer, asking them to send the material to Jo Ann.

I immediately get three emails back. One from each of the people I
wrote.

Publicist says, "We will get it sorted out."

Marketing says, "I'll get right on it."

Lead producer says, "Who is Jo Ann?"

As you were,
Jay

I just got a letter, addressed to me, mailed to the Helen Hayes Theater on July 9th of this year. The letter is from a gentleman named, Joseph Thiyoga Rushan Fernandopulle, of Negombo Road, Dankotuwa, Sri-Lanka. (If I were doing stand up at this point I would say, “I’d like to buy a vowel, Pat.”)

Mr. Thiyoga Rushan Fernandopulle is writing me for permission to translate “The Two and Only” into Sinhala, the language of Sir Lanka. His goal is to do my play for the dramatic theater of Sri Lanka. Although flattering to think that someone would think of my “play” as good, translatable Sri-Lankan drama, I just don’t see how it would translate.

A year after I got married I worked as a writer for a bilingual educational children’s television show. It was supposed be the new Sesame Street but it was canceled.

One of the things I learned from this experience is how difficult it is to translate jokes. The show had to be balanced with equal segments in English and Spanish. Once in a while the producers would come to me and say they were light on Spanish and needed to translate my sketch. There would be a language person that would accomplish this task. In a read through the next time I would hear my sketch (which I thought was extremely funny) it would get no reaction from the Spanish-speaking writers. At first I assumed it was professional jealousy but soon realized there were no jokes left after the translation.

It reminds me of a Johnny Dark routine. He did his act for a Japanese speaking audience one time. He found out they only knew three words in English,
“You, not funny.”

Mr. Thiyoga Rushan Fernandopulle said he learned of my show from the Internet so I assume he has not actually seen it. The fact that he thinks it is a drama is not a good sign. He may be reading this right now. I have sent him an email explaining that it really is a show that involves my art as a ventriloquist and not intended to be performed by anyone other than me. However, on the chance that I could do well in Sri Lanka I have decided to learn Sinhala. The way the tour is going I think I may need to look for other venues.

PS. Don’t forget to tell your friends about “The Two and Only” in Dallas.

Dallas: Jay Johnson The Two and Only

As you were,
Jay

Finally Dallas has posted information on Jay Johnson:The Two and Only! It is not on this website, but for those who want to know you can go here and get all the info.

Dallas: Jay Johnson The Two and Only

I can't wait to do the show again, and I hope you will all be there.
As you were,
Jay

Performing on a ship I have passenger status. I'm in a passenger cabin not crew accommodations and I can do any activity the passengers can. It also means I have to participate in the life boat drill, even though I have done it hundreds of times before. I hate it. It is hot and boring. Old ladies think it is sad for a person to be traveling alone and invite me to have dinner at their "red hat" table.

On one trip I decide not to go to the boat drill. They announce "security will check every room to make sure everyone complies". I do the math and figure there is no way they can check a thousand rooms in the time they have. So I hide in my cabin.

I am kicking back; the drill has begun, I figure I am safe, when I hear the door lock start to turn. Shit! - They do check every room! In a quickly ill-concieved plan I jump behind the curtains. (I think I saw this done in a Marx Brothers movie once) I figure security will open the door, see no one in the room and move on.

But that is not what happens. I hear the cabin door open, then the bathroom door open and someone walking around the room definitely not leaving quickly.

I figure it is only a matter of time before I am discovered so I poke my head through the curtains. I see it is not security but my cabin attendant Dolores.

Dolores is a portly Jamaican woman whom I have become friends with in spite of her superstitions about my career. She is very cautious of a man who works with, in her words, "graven images".

Her back is turned to me as I whisper her name. I want her to know I am there, but not call a lot of attention to my absence from the drill. She looks nervously left and right but not behind her, where the voice is actually coming from.

One more time I say in a stage whisper, "Dolores". This time she looks behind and sees... my head sticking through the curtain; to her perception it looks like a disembodied head floating above the floor calling her name!

She screams and jumps on the bed, doing an adrenaline fueled Jamaican voo doo dance. I come out from my hiding place to calm her down hoping her screamimg has not alerted security.

We will laugh about that for the rest of the trip, but the next week she transferred to work on another deck.

As you were,
Jay

Last night was the one year anniversary of our Broadway opening. I couldn't let the day go by without a blog mention.



I spent the evening alone with my memories in the middle of the ocean on board RCCL's Enchantment of the Seas. Granted there are 1500 others on board as well, but none I felt was worthy of this special occasion. It was, for that reason, an unremarkable event.( Bob and Darwin even had other plans that did not include me.)



It seems longer than a year ago for all the things that have happened since. But it was such a wonderful experience and still fresh on my mind.



I wanted to run

The Two and Only for a year on Broadway but that wasn't to be. However, a Tony Award is a great emotional equalizer.



Paul Kreppel, one of my directors, is still running off-Broadway in a show that opened about the time we did. His performance is the best thing about the show, which will probably continue to run through Christmas. Odd how things work out.



I am looking forward to Dallas almost as much as Broadway. I spend a lot of time wondering why the powers in charge can't convert a Tony Award winning show with Valentine reviews into a great tour?



London is the next big thing. I think the show will have a much greater appeal there than even New York. There will be new producing blood with an entirely new idea about marketing the show. It is in the works and very exciting.



So thanks to all who made that Broadway experience possible. I still run into people who are in love with the show. The cruise director on this ship saw the show off-Broadway and raved about it to the shipboard audience.



I can't wait to be performing it again.

Happy anniversary.

As you were,

Jay

Here is the deal with a blog. Sometimes you have the time to write something and sometimes you spend that time creating something else. So here is how I spent way to much of my time in the last week.

More Video. This is a viral commercial for our run in Dallas. The music is Juno Reactor a favorite group of my youngest son who turns 21 on Sunday.

As you were,
Jay

Embedding a video into the blog is an experiment. So is the film. (If this video causes the page to load too slowly please let me know. In the future I will try to post films in a different way)

Explanation:
This is a video scrapbook of the pictures I took in New York while doing “The Two and Only” at the Atlantic Theatre, now known as the “off Broadway run”. There are stage photos of the show, the family and even shots from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. The resolution is blurry, and it is to jerkie, I think it happened in the transfer. It looks and sounds much better in real life.

The song is Steely Dan doing “Centruy’s End”. I am not ashamed to admit that I like the music of Walter Becker and Donald Faggen. They have some great tunes to edit film and pictures to. I think it’s in the jazz root of the beat.

I hope you enjoy it.
As you were,
Jay

Here is a shout out to Bob Oliphant whom I would write personally if he would send me his email. Thanks for the comment, Bobby. I doubt you could have sneaked up on me in Dallas without me catching you. I can’t wait to see you again. Mike Christian still owes me a couple of dollars from a poker dice game back stage at the Crystal Palace.

Another friend and ex-roommate David Wylie tried to sneak into the audience for my Broadway Opening night. He even called me on the phone a couple of days before to say how sorry he was that he wouldn’t be able to make it. I knew he was there long before he knew that I knew.

A film crew followed me around backstage when we did the show in Los Angeles. At one point they caught me sneaking a look at the audience before the show. It is an old ritual that I have observed since my Six Flags days. My first request to Beowolf Borit, my Broadway set designer, was “give me a place behind the set to see the audience without them being able to see me.”

I like to watch the audience come into the theater. I like to watch them sit down, are they talking to each other? Are they reading the program? I like to get to know them before I take over their lives for a couple of hours. I think of it like a wolf stalking sheep. (Comedy is always expressed in aggressive metaphors Like, “I Killed them” “The show was a knock out”.. etc.)

Most of the time the stage lights create a dark wall between the performer and the audience. By studying the audience with the house lights on, I have a better sense of who they are. Body language is really telling when people don’t know they are being studied. I used to be able to find potential hecklers in a comedy club audience before their first drink. The system is not perfect, but I have been right more times than wrong.

I remember a comic who “went after” an audience member who was hurling heckling noises at the stage during his performance. He was merciless toward the poor guy, and it would have been funny if he had really been heckling. It was a multiple sclerosis patient in a wheelchair who was enjoying the show in the only way he knew how to express himself. The comic barely got out of the club alive when the audience turned on him. He should have noticed the wheel chair before the show started.

So, sneak, hide, ambush or wear a disguise but please come and see my show in Dallas. I will be seeing you before you see me.
As you were,
Jay

“Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!” website should be posting some of the dates for the tour soon. If you have followed this blog for the last year, you know that I am generally the last to know. However, here is a partial schedule:

Ithica, New York - October 27, 2007

Indianapolis, Indiana - November 10, 2007

Dallas Majestic Theater – November 27 – December 2, 2007

Some of the finest minds in show business are working on next year, and there are several other surprises TBA.

I am really looking forward to Dallas, no offense to the other cities and theaters. Playing Dallas has been my goal for this show almost as much as playing Broadway. “Bringing my Tony Award winning show to my home town”, sounds great to me.

The weekend after we close the show at the Majestic I am “conducting” the Dallas Symphony Christmas Concert thanks to my friend and conductor of the Symphony, Richard Kaufman. Bob and I will do “The Night Before Christmas” set to music. The next weekend we will reprise the performance with the Pacific Coast Symphony here in Southern California.

I was in Las Vegas the first part of the week. I was there for an event attended by my ex-manager Greg Janese and my current agent Chris Burke from William Morris. Greg is now an agent and a major competitor to Chris and the William Morris Agency. We have all been friends for too many years to count. To be honest the major reason for attending was the chance to get together again.

I met Chris and Greg for dinner in the hotel. Before I could even greet Greg (who I haven’t seen in several years) Chris pulls out a contract from his pocket. It is a release that states, “The undersigned, Greg Janese, will not attempt to steal my Tony Award winning client Jay Johnson away from William Morris or Chris Burke.”

Great agents also have a great sense of humor. Here is a shout out to Chris and Greg. They are the guys who make it all work for me in more ways than just friendship.

As you were,
Jay