'Tis Pity She's A Whore (Spring: 1997)

I left Rhode Island for New York in the winter of 1994. Over the next two years I would hustle auditions for student films (a few of which I booked and shot), I obsessively sent out head shots each week to every possible Back Stage notice (only one or two of which ever panned out into an actual call), and I worked a variety of day jobs to keep the stalled dream alive.

Compared to the constant stream of acting I'd done in the past six years in Rhode Island, things slowed to a veritable trickle.

Maria and I got married in August of 1996. We came back to the city and immediately began working together on the Urban Legends project. By this time I had a commercial agent and was freelancing with a theatrical one. I had booked an episode of "Law and Order" and shared a set with Benjamin Bratt and the late great Jerry Orbach. The day I found out I'd booked that job I booked a video for the band Live which you can watch here...

But I hadn't done a play since "True West" in the winter of '93. Almost four years earlier.

And then Frank Pisco asked me to do "Tis Pity She's A Whore" at Expanded Arts. Frank passed away too young a couple of years ago. We had a bit of a falling out which I will get to later but I always thought Frank was a great guy and quite a director. He had a brilliant idea for "Whore"...

He set the play in a bomb shelter in 1950's America. Nuclear paranoia and cultural repression force a kind of myopia on the denizens of the play.

The plot is as follows: Giovanni develops a growing sexual obsession with his sister Annabella. Upon hearing this confession, his priest implores him to turn his thoughts to God. But he cannot. Annabella is promised to be married to a powerful Senator. This impending cataclysm forces Giovanni's hand and he seduces his sister, almost but not quite against her will. She becomes pregnant which the Senator discovers on the eve of the wedding. Giovanni cannot bear to see his sister married and kills her, cutting her heart out. He is then pounced upon by the wedding party and killed himself.

The production was held in a storefront theater in lower Manhattan. The theater seated about twenty five people who sat in chairs lined up against either wall. The length of the space was about thirty feet and the width about twelve. The audience sat on either side of the rectangle and the action took place almost in their laps.

Frank also wanted the strange romantic music of the 40's to play a big part. On several occasions throughout the show actors sang along to standards of that era. I sang "Let's Fall In Love", not the one you think you know but a different song entirely, as Giovanni seduced Annabella, playing a romantic song and serenading her.

This love scene is still one of the more shocking things I've ever done as an actor. The scene was very sexy, the most explicit sexual scene I've ever done on any stage, but it took place literally inches from the audience. I stripped her down to a negligee while singing softly. Then I stood over her and stripped down myself, to a period appropriate pair of boxer shorts. Ford's scene ends with a declaration of love between the siblings but Frank rightfully took the sexual repression of the setting and exploded it by having the scene continue. We began kissing on the blanket I'd laid out for her and then crawled under the blanket to consummate the act.

The wonderful Siobhan Mahoney played my sister and we are friends to this day partially because of this strange theatrical gauntlet we had to traverse each night.

You could feel a dual response happen simultaneously. The scene was deliberately titillating. Sensuous. If you didn't know the context it would have been a steamy sex scene. But layered over that was this patina of disgust, a rejection of what was obviously happening. People DID NOT WANT US TO KISS. But they were turned on by it too. A great great moment.

The climax of the play involved me coming on stage carrying her bloody heart in my fist. We bought a pig heart and drenched it in fake blood. This was difficult for me. I don't know if you've ever held a real pig heart in your hand but I have and let me tell you, it isn't pleasant.

For the second time in the evening the audience was seriously challenged. It was obvious that this was not a prop. You didn't have to wonder whether that was tissue or man-made. It was clear. A collective retch rippled through the seats as they took in the fact that I'd killed her but also that I held the remnants of her life engine in my hand.

And Frank Pisco had envisioned all of this before we got started.

And now I'll explain the rift that occurred between Frank and myself, indeed between many members of the cast and myself as well.

I booked a Wendy's commercial. A national commercial. Which nowadays doesn't mean much but back then it could mean a lot of money. Later that year I booked a K-Mart commercial and made almost $20,000 on it in under a month. So this was not something I could turn down. It shot in Miami. I would have to miss a Sunday show in order to fly out to be in Miami on time.

Frank was livid. We didn't have an understudy. The show would have to be canceled for that night. I had my first taste of the balancing act that goes along with any kind of success. Frank kept accusing me of being unprofessional. I reminded him that I was making no money doing this show and that I'd already donated upwards of one hundred hours of rehearsal and performance. Maria and I were expecting a child by November of that year and there was simply no way I could refuse this job.

The cast was similarly angry. We had two shows to do before I headed out of town and the atmosphere was very grim. They were furious with me. On one level I understood but I also saw how this separated me from them. If any of them had booked a paying gig somewhere I'd have had no problem with them taking it. It is show BUSINESS. That is just how it goes. Free theater or paying job? I will take the paying job almost 99 times out of 100. That is why theaters have understudies.

But it took several years for the stain to wash away, for Frank to truly let his anger at me go. We were friends before that and not really friends afterward. In fact, on one night when Mike was in town later that year, Frank actually left a gathering at a bar because I arrived. So the feeling cut him deep.

I had no patience with this. As far as I was concerned I'd made the right choice for myself and my family.

The bitterness ebbed however and I saw him on several occasions before I moved from New York. We made peace with one another. Or, I should say he made peace with me. I never had a gripe with him.

We risked a lot on that production, all for a play written in 1633, and what I'll remember most is how we made the audience squirm in their seats, wishing we would stop doing what we were doing because it was BOTHERING THEM SO MUCH.