Reston Reduced.
Written by TheFaulkner on October 3, 2014 – 9:31 pm -So the company I’ve been touring with for the last 13 years, the Reduced Shakespeare Company, has played every single year since 1987 at the Reston Community Center in Reston, VA. How many touring groups can boast such a long, fruitful relationship with a presenter? So in honor of the 50th anniversary of Reston, many of the reducers went (along with managing directors / authors Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor) to Reston to perform SEVEN of the NINE abridged works over two weekends. It wasn’t a Shakespeare Festival. It was a Reduced Shakespeare Festival. The schedule was pretty hectic… luckily I was only in two of the shows, but one night I had to perform with someone I’d never performed with before (he was new) and another night with someone who practically retired years ago. Still it was an incredible time, where I got to make new friends (three generations of abridged Hamlets – Austin Tichenor (Current Head Co-Reducer), Jess Winfield (Founder and Originator of the role), and Me. 
And in my copious down-time (not), I managed to record a little song, a little tribute to Austin and Reed, who have been authors and co-authors of every abridged show since the original Shakespeare show: “Complete History of America (abridged),” “The Bible, The Complete Word of God (abridged),” “All The Great Books (abridged)” “The Millenium A Musical (abridged),” “Completely Hollywood (abridged),” “The Complete World of Sports (abridged),” “The Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged),” and “The Complete History of Comedy (abridged).” The song was featured on one of the RSC podcast episodes dedicated to the extravaganza, but I present it here in full for your listening pleasure.
And here’s a fairly un-abridged selfie (Ellen style) featuring many generations of RSC members from founders to current fools, onstage and off, with some Restonites thrown in as well. Can you pick them out?
Tags: Extravaganza, Reduced, Reston, RSC
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New Song Demo!
Written by TheFaulkner on January 14, 2013 – 12:32 pm -As I mentioned in this Reduced Shakespeare Company podcast, one of the great highlights of performing The Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged) over the holidays was the fact that it required me to get better at the guitar. I took my guitar to a really great luthier in the San Fernando Valley who set up my guitar (which hadn’t seen a qualified luthier’s hands since at least 1994) really nicely. It in fact played like an entirely new guitar, and is now an absolute pleasure to pick up and mess around on.
This gave me the inspiration to finish and record a song that I had partially written for my wife. Now I couldn’t move my entire recording rig down to San Diego for the run of the show, but I did have my guitar and my Macbook Pro. So the attached demo is what I was able to do with Garageband, the guitar, and the built-in microphone. It’ll have to do for now, but I really enjoyed making and enjoy listening to this tasty pop nugget. I hope you do as well. Leave a comment and let me know!
Click to listen:
Mandy, My Bride To Be
Tags: Bride, Marriage
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Rush, the Racist Bigot
Written by TheFaulkner on September 5, 2009 – 7:19 pm -[podcast]http://michaelfaulkner.us/Media/Audio/rush.mp3[/podcast]
Here’s a song I wrote in 2007, all about the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh’s use of the “parody” song, “Barack, the Magic Negro,” set to the tune of Peter, Paul & Mary’s iconic “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”
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