So far in these URI Theater recollections, the one constant is the fantastic work of the design department in constructing gorgeous functional sets that worked perfectly in the very large Will Theater.
Also consistently excellent were the productions themselves, vastly different from one another but always challenging, always well executed.
We were all about to collectively lay an egg.
Beth Henley's "Crimes Of The Heart" is an intimate little drama/comedy that takes place entirely in the kitchen of a Southern farmhouse. It is really a wonderful little play, perhaps a tad overrated once you really explore it, but very well written and full of funny idiosyncratic characters.
I'll get to the failure of the Design Department later because it was the straw that broke the camel's back, but the camel (meaning the cast and the thrust of the direction)was already suffering from a pretty bad freakin' back before that last straw landed.
Kimber tended to cast by feel more than anything else and even if it didn't work out you could totally see why he'd done what he'd done. The sisters were to be played by a relatively new trio of actresses, new to the department anyway. One girl had never done a full length play before and she was to play the critical part of the sister who has murdered her abusive husband.
Her vibe was perfect. She had a lushness to her, a beauty that men would naturally project all kinds of desires onto but that she didn't inherently trust. She was a tomboy who had just become a hot young thing. But in this case, the personal journey of the actress kept her from embodying that sense of ease, that knowledge of what men could be manipulated into which some beautiful women possess without thinking about it at all.
Her oldest uptight sister was fantastic but the glamor girl back from a disastrous stint in California was similarly stumped by the complexity of the part. My good friend Alec played the laconic limping sexy cowboy and I played the hapless lawyer hired to represent the girl charged with murder.
Again, I hesitate to pat myself on the back or criticize other actors at all but the fact was that by this point both Alec and I had CARRIED mainstage productions. He didn't go on to pursue a career but he most certainly could have with his talent and flexibility. We were more experienced in general and more comfortable with Kimber in his sometimes difficult process.
Halfway through the rehearsal process I realized we were in trouble. Kimber would routinely cut rehearsal short out of frustration. He saw no point in beating his head against a wall. I respect that to a certain degree but I still feel like a few choice words might have righted the ship.
And then, just when we were struggling mightily to get a handle on the play, the kitchen set was unveiled to us for the first time.
I knew right away we were doomed.
The set itself was gorgeous. The interior of a Southern farmhouse in great detail. The floor of the stage had been transformed into a faded sparkling yellow linoleum, cabinets lined the walls with intricate woodwork, detail upon detail piled up.
But it was GIGANTIC. And wide. The farmhouse from the outside must have been almost a mansion. Not only was this a bit out of scale according to the modest history of the family involved but it meant that we would be playing intimate two person scenes across a kitchen table that from the audience seemed about as big as a piece of dollhouse furniture.
I vividly remember sitting across from the lovely young struggling actress during the show. There were hints of a good performance going on but I was the only one who would ever possibly see them. In order to compensate I had to thrust the entirety of my performance out to the crowd so that they would at least get 50% of the plot.
It was brutal. A similar thing was occurring in the scenes with Alec and the sister he was tentatively romancing. The compensation required of him tipped the balance of the scenes in such a way that it became the story of an injured cowboy trying to woo a woman instead of what it is supposed to be: the story of a heartbroken woman who isn't sure if she can open up one more time to the possibility of love.
Now, if you looked at the diagram of the set, if you looked at the sketches, you'd say to yourself, "That is perfect. Gorgeous. Real. Evocative." It is only when you put an actor on it, it is only when you see it to scale with human behavior directly on it, that you know it is totally wrong.
Most of the crowd that I came in with had moved on by now. A whole new crop of actors were arriving. I made good friends with that crew but something special had already gone out the door. Up to that point I'd been involved in magical experience after magical experience: "Hay Fever", "Drood", "The Molieres", "Biloxi Blues", "The Comedy Of Errors".
Up to that point I'd assumed it would always be like that. I see now how lucky that run was, how lucky we'd been to have such a talented group of actors, how perfectly the shows chosen had made use of their talent. I'd already made plans to spend a fifth year abroad so I knew my time in the department was coming to a close (little did I know that I would do one more show upon my return from Europe...).
The trajectory was like that of a rocket returning to liftoff. The spectacular explosion had not come at the end of the journey but rather the beginning. The matter reassembled slowly but surely, anti-climax being built into the process. I remember railing against this feeling, craving the excellence that had seemed so effortless my first three years on campus.
There would be no more magic shows. "Camelot" was announced as the winter musical...
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
The Comedy Of Errors (Spring: 1990)
The decade had turned. I was so ensconced in the URI Theater Department that it might as well have been a cult. I was about to dive deeper into that commitment, discovering a love of Shakespeare that continues to this day.
John Neville-Andrews is a British actor who is also something of a Shakespeare scholar. He headed The Shakespeare Theater in Washington, DC which was affiliated with The Folger Library, the leading American Shakespeare collection. At one point he was married to Helen Mirren. He was a dashing natty dresser, a raconteur and a sort of Vaudevillian, a library of bits and stage play.
He charmed everyone immediately.
I'd never done any Shakespeare. I'd had to read something in high school and I think I'd seen a traveling educational production or two but I really came to this production with a blank slate.
'The Comedy Of Errors' filled that slate up pretty quick.
The double set of twin brothers at the core will show you how low Shakespeare would stoop in order to get laughs. Really, Bill? Two sets of identical twins, servant and master, separated at birth, reunited only after mistaken identity wreaks all sorts of havoc? If you tried to pitch this as a movie idea today you would get laughed out of the room.
But you rehearse those lines and put them up in front of an audience and magic inevitably occurs.
Two wonderful actors played the Dromio servants, Mitchell Fain and James Simon. Also two of the funniest smartest most awesome friends you could ever have. I was paired with Anthony Cinelli, another fantastic actor, as the two Antipholus'. He was much taller than I was and had an aquiline nose. They created a false nose for me which was amazingly lifelike and I wore lifts in my shoes so I would appear to be taller.
Neville-Andrews decided to set the play just before WWI in some Middle Eastern desert exotic desert locale. So our costumes, much like "Hay Fever" two years prior, were impossibly elegant suits and gorgeous cocktail dresses. I matched my fictional long lost twin in a dashing white linen suit and felt like Fred Astaire as I went up and down the wide (seemingly) pink marble staircase of the luxury hotel where all of the mix-ups took place.
There was a working fountain downstage left with a statue in it. Again, the design team outdid themselves as we were enveloped in an architectural dream of a hotel.
For the first time in my tenure at URI, however, I was stuck onstage with a dud of an actress. I don't remember her name and I wouldn't use it if I did because I am very protective of even the worst member of my tribe.
But this was extreme. She really had no business being onstage. But this goes to show you how great Shakespeare is. Sure it would have been great if some wonderful actress had taken that role and run with it. But not even a rank amateur could ruin the perfect structure of this lightweight early work from Billy Boy from Avon.
I can still see Mitchell and James in their matching outfits, more like chauffeurs than anything else. There were pratfalls, slamming doors, fistfights, you name it. I remember the process being rather effortless because the four of us carried much of the play and we all knew our shit very early on.
Neville-Andrews had a light touch and stayed out of our way for the most part. Or at least that's how I remember it. Mitchell and James might see things a little differently. Having been directed only by Kimber and Judith over my first two years I was excited to garner some new input. And while he was very good it only cemented how lucky I was to have such talented directors to work with.
Somehow the communal partying of "How To Succeed" had mellowed a bit. Perhaps the group realized they were out of control and collectively pulled it back a little bit. Perhaps the presence of an outsider at the helm kept everyone on their best behavior.
Or perhaps the cast couldn't quite gel because we had to ignore the central female performance. Chemistry is a tricky thing especially when you throw in the language wild card in a Shakespeare play. We had to expend so much energy to keep the momentum of the play going around her scenes we might have just been a little too worn out to party.
John Neville-Andrews is a British actor who is also something of a Shakespeare scholar. He headed The Shakespeare Theater in Washington, DC which was affiliated with The Folger Library, the leading American Shakespeare collection. At one point he was married to Helen Mirren. He was a dashing natty dresser, a raconteur and a sort of Vaudevillian, a library of bits and stage play.
He charmed everyone immediately.
I'd never done any Shakespeare. I'd had to read something in high school and I think I'd seen a traveling educational production or two but I really came to this production with a blank slate.
'The Comedy Of Errors' filled that slate up pretty quick.
The double set of twin brothers at the core will show you how low Shakespeare would stoop in order to get laughs. Really, Bill? Two sets of identical twins, servant and master, separated at birth, reunited only after mistaken identity wreaks all sorts of havoc? If you tried to pitch this as a movie idea today you would get laughed out of the room.
But you rehearse those lines and put them up in front of an audience and magic inevitably occurs.
Two wonderful actors played the Dromio servants, Mitchell Fain and James Simon. Also two of the funniest smartest most awesome friends you could ever have. I was paired with Anthony Cinelli, another fantastic actor, as the two Antipholus'. He was much taller than I was and had an aquiline nose. They created a false nose for me which was amazingly lifelike and I wore lifts in my shoes so I would appear to be taller.
Neville-Andrews decided to set the play just before WWI in some Middle Eastern desert exotic desert locale. So our costumes, much like "Hay Fever" two years prior, were impossibly elegant suits and gorgeous cocktail dresses. I matched my fictional long lost twin in a dashing white linen suit and felt like Fred Astaire as I went up and down the wide (seemingly) pink marble staircase of the luxury hotel where all of the mix-ups took place.
There was a working fountain downstage left with a statue in it. Again, the design team outdid themselves as we were enveloped in an architectural dream of a hotel.
For the first time in my tenure at URI, however, I was stuck onstage with a dud of an actress. I don't remember her name and I wouldn't use it if I did because I am very protective of even the worst member of my tribe.
But this was extreme. She really had no business being onstage. But this goes to show you how great Shakespeare is. Sure it would have been great if some wonderful actress had taken that role and run with it. But not even a rank amateur could ruin the perfect structure of this lightweight early work from Billy Boy from Avon.
I can still see Mitchell and James in their matching outfits, more like chauffeurs than anything else. There were pratfalls, slamming doors, fistfights, you name it. I remember the process being rather effortless because the four of us carried much of the play and we all knew our shit very early on.
Neville-Andrews had a light touch and stayed out of our way for the most part. Or at least that's how I remember it. Mitchell and James might see things a little differently. Having been directed only by Kimber and Judith over my first two years I was excited to garner some new input. And while he was very good it only cemented how lucky I was to have such talented directors to work with.
Somehow the communal partying of "How To Succeed" had mellowed a bit. Perhaps the group realized they were out of control and collectively pulled it back a little bit. Perhaps the presence of an outsider at the helm kept everyone on their best behavior.
Or perhaps the cast couldn't quite gel because we had to ignore the central female performance. Chemistry is a tricky thing especially when you throw in the language wild card in a Shakespeare play. We had to expend so much energy to keep the momentum of the play going around her scenes we might have just been a little too worn out to party.
Friday, April 30, 2010
How To Succeed (Winter: 1989)
The hyper intense theatricality of "Drood" lent the winter musical an air of invincibility. We were like cats who just discovered a cat-nip tree in their kitchen.
While all of the fun of "Drood" was an extension of the play itself, "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" wound up being the inverse. The parties got better but the show got worse.
This is not to say that it was not a good show. It most certainly was. The set was like a Brill Building grotesque, the costumes nailed the kind of buttoned up good-looking repression of 1950's big business, and the music was executed within an inch of its life.
But like the underbelly of the 1950's, there were some dark forces at work.
After a particular performance, Judith Swift called an impromptu meeting and chewed about fifty new assholes. It seems that someone had yawned on stage. The party the night before had lasted well after dawn which means that a good portion of the cast was most likely in that hangover stage where actual intoxication is still occurring.
Judith didn't name names and I don't know who yawned on stage but we were all guilty.
My house was a constant location for these debauched group performance art drinking sessions. There were distinct party factions, the drinkers and the smokers. Marijuana was becoming much easier to find and I happily planted flags in both camps. We shot hours of video footage of us dancing to hit songs of the day in complicated choreographed tableaux. We came up with the Insult Singing Game in which we would hurl insults at each other in made up song.
The show had a manic insanity. The sexuality that obsessed the office world of the play became out of control in the cast. Couples were formed and dissolved seemingly overnight. Triangles, parallelograms, hell, cubes of jealousy and intrigue arose and flamed out.
My character was named Jerry Tackaberry and I had one line. Someone said, "B.B.D.O?" to me and I repeated it a few times. Judith thought it would be funny if I sang it like an opera singer would sing "Figaro!" For some reason this moment totally worked even though it probably had no right to. Most of the time Jerry was kissing ass as far as he could up the corporate ladder.
We would take our curtain call and my face would ache from the giant plaster grin of a mask that I grimaced throughout the play.
One of my favorite numbers took place in the men's room as we all shaved in mirrors. We stood in front of a row of empty frame so we faced the audience. This gave the impression of us looking at our own reflections. We sang the song and used big bulky blocks of wood that had been meticulously transformed into old-fashioned electric razors. We made the sound of the razors in harmony.
I remember being vaguely in a panic throughout the whole run of the show. The energy was most definitely out of control and I was partying like I probably never have before or since. We steadfastly refused to let things like sleep or food get in the way of our fun.
The best number of the show was called "Coffee Break" in which the workers of the corporation threaten mutiny if they can't get their caffeine. A giant urn appeared and everyone danced in front of it like a Mayan zombie at a human sacrifice. That sense of being on the edge of some psychic break, that group-think was taking over.
We were one, fused into one giant infant, plugging two wet fingers into a live socket.
While all of the fun of "Drood" was an extension of the play itself, "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" wound up being the inverse. The parties got better but the show got worse.
This is not to say that it was not a good show. It most certainly was. The set was like a Brill Building grotesque, the costumes nailed the kind of buttoned up good-looking repression of 1950's big business, and the music was executed within an inch of its life.
But like the underbelly of the 1950's, there were some dark forces at work.
After a particular performance, Judith Swift called an impromptu meeting and chewed about fifty new assholes. It seems that someone had yawned on stage. The party the night before had lasted well after dawn which means that a good portion of the cast was most likely in that hangover stage where actual intoxication is still occurring.
Judith didn't name names and I don't know who yawned on stage but we were all guilty.
My house was a constant location for these debauched group performance art drinking sessions. There were distinct party factions, the drinkers and the smokers. Marijuana was becoming much easier to find and I happily planted flags in both camps. We shot hours of video footage of us dancing to hit songs of the day in complicated choreographed tableaux. We came up with the Insult Singing Game in which we would hurl insults at each other in made up song.
The show had a manic insanity. The sexuality that obsessed the office world of the play became out of control in the cast. Couples were formed and dissolved seemingly overnight. Triangles, parallelograms, hell, cubes of jealousy and intrigue arose and flamed out.
My character was named Jerry Tackaberry and I had one line. Someone said, "B.B.D.O?" to me and I repeated it a few times. Judith thought it would be funny if I sang it like an opera singer would sing "Figaro!" For some reason this moment totally worked even though it probably had no right to. Most of the time Jerry was kissing ass as far as he could up the corporate ladder.
We would take our curtain call and my face would ache from the giant plaster grin of a mask that I grimaced throughout the play.
One of my favorite numbers took place in the men's room as we all shaved in mirrors. We stood in front of a row of empty frame so we faced the audience. This gave the impression of us looking at our own reflections. We sang the song and used big bulky blocks of wood that had been meticulously transformed into old-fashioned electric razors. We made the sound of the razors in harmony.
I remember being vaguely in a panic throughout the whole run of the show. The energy was most definitely out of control and I was partying like I probably never have before or since. We steadfastly refused to let things like sleep or food get in the way of our fun.
The best number of the show was called "Coffee Break" in which the workers of the corporation threaten mutiny if they can't get their caffeine. A giant urn appeared and everyone danced in front of it like a Mayan zombie at a human sacrifice. That sense of being on the edge of some psychic break, that group-think was taking over.
We were one, fused into one giant infant, plugging two wet fingers into a live socket.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Get Down And Give Me Twenty! (Fall: 1989)
Whenever anyone else in the cast told you to you had to drop and do twenty pushups.
I was finally going to be directed by Kimber Wheelock in a full production. I'd done a staged reading and a ten minute clown piece. Which, when you analyze it, is hilarious: a clown piece rehearsed using The Method.
For the uninitiated, The Method is a technique whereby actors do not fabricate anything, they are not pretending. They use their specific history and personality to re-create true emotional states that (hopefully) match up well with the scene in question.
But clowns? We all had a few good laughs over that one. What sense memory recall do you use to figure out why you throw a bucket of confetti? To honk a horn while grabbing a girl-clown butt?
"Biloxi Blues" was announced as the first production of my junior year. This play was already famous and the movie had come out that summer. I knew I wanted to play Eugene Morris Jerome, the narrator. I felt confident that I could kill that part.
I got the part. Kimber and I worked very well together in his acting classes. He was notoriously prickly and impatient but I never felt the sting of his acerbic disdain. I talked back, I told him he was wrong, I pushed. It annoyed him sometimes but I think he respected me for it.
The play involved many scenes where the punishment given out was to do any number of pushups. One poor character had to squeeze out a whole slew of them. But we all began to do them in solidarity and all got into pretty good shape pretty fast. If you can't afford a gym and want to get in shape, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO...PUSHUPS AND SITUPS.
The play is part of a trilogy that follows this character (ostensibly Neil Simon himself) from Brooklyn in "Brighton Beach Memoirs" to WWII in "Biloxi Blues" and back to NY in "Broadway Bound".
I don't think Neil Simon gets his just due. This trilogy is not just another group of mildly amusing nostalgia plays. These are worthy of the time capsule. In the movie "Hustle and Flow" the main character is talking about a mix-tape put out by his rap hero. He says that everything in the world will turn to dust, everything will crumble. And if the people of the future try to reconstruct Memphis, if they want to know what it was like for HIM, all they have to do is play that mix-tape.
If the imaginary people of the future need to know what life was like in the 1940's in New York, if they need to know what the world was like just before the devastation of WWII, if they need to clue in to what the Jewish people in the free world were going through, all they need do is read these plays.
The cast was set and we started rehearsing. It was like butter. The play is perfect. It creates your performance without you knowing it. I barely remember staging it. This may sound redundant by this point but the simple barracks set that the design team constructed was simply perfect. It somehow was real and suggestive all at the same time.
In one scene the GI's visit a whorehouse. A sliding set was built so that when we set out on this lascivious weekend furlough a giant bed appeared almost out of nowhere. A USO dance was hinted at with a bit of bunting draped across the front of the barracks over some chairs. Elegant and practical, the set did nothing to distract from the narrative, which I think is not as easy as it looks to pull off. If the designers got enamored with showing off their period savvy it would pull focus from the journey that these characters are on.
A former URI student who was now living and working in New York City was cast as the gruff Sergeant. Eric Lutes, a fantastic actor, went on to a fine career in film and TV, most notably as Del on the hit series "Caroline In The City". I'd seen him act with my sister a few years prior in "Picnic" and was intimidated by his good-looks and talent. All of us were and this separation created the perfect tension the play needs.
The age difference wasn't as great as it perhaps is supposed to be, but that had the odd effect of making the mentally ill Sergeant an even more tragic character. He was so young and yet so profoundly disturbed and scarred by his combat history...a man old before his time.
Everyone had recently seen the film starring Broderick and Walken that had been a minor hit. Of course Hollywood fucked up the perfect structure of the play. Because Broderick and Walken were big movie stars, they rejiggered the final scenes to force the two of them into the conflict that had been building between the Sergeant and Epstein. This had the effect of waiting for a grand finale in a fireworks display and getting a dud. Forcing the narrative onto the main character and narrator robbed him of his status as an observer. The whole thrust of the play is that you have to get INVOLVED. No one is free to remain neutral. Which, although it is never overtly discussed, is most certainly a thematic dagger Simon is throwing at the world that stood by and watched millions get murdered.
Thankfully we were doing the play and not the movie.
I still remember the first moment when I addressed the audience. The scene opens on a train headed to basic training. Good natured bickering is slowly turning into something a bit more serious. After a few minutes I turn to the audience and say something snide and hilarious about one of the other characters.
It was like a bomb had gone off. When you break that fourth wall in the hands of a genius like Simon it is as if you are literally tickling hundreds of feet at once. They simply could not get over the fact that I was TALKING to them. Every time I turned my head to look at them it was like a mind meld.
To my way of thinking, this production embodied everything that works about The Method. There were no forced notes, no pushing. (I would be remiss if I didn't mention a valid criticism from Mitchell that I did not have a "Jewish" or "Brooklyn" accent...today I'd have taken it upon myself to cultivate it but Kimber didn't insist so it was never even an option). While that may have been an inadvertent false note by omission, all of the behavior exhibited in the play was natural, relaxed and fully realized.
David Fraioli, he of "As Datchery I Did My Bit" played Epstein, the determined antagonist of the bullheaded Sergeant. If he'd done this performance in New York he'd have been a movie star within six months. This play hinges around an intimate monologue his character has that perfectly illustrates the prejudice and ignorance at the heart of many Army interactions. The 550 seat theater shrunk to the size of the space between two people as he told it to me. I'll never forget it.
We knocked that play out of the park.
I was living Down The Line at the time, which meant in a rented house down near the ocean. We had a giant cast party that involved the entire cast lip syncing to 1940's songs as a USO band. Over two weeks nearly 3,000 people saw the show so I spent the next couple of months on campus experiencing the only true fame I'd ever know.
At least so far mo-fos! I'm doin' pushups again, look out!
I was finally going to be directed by Kimber Wheelock in a full production. I'd done a staged reading and a ten minute clown piece. Which, when you analyze it, is hilarious: a clown piece rehearsed using The Method.
For the uninitiated, The Method is a technique whereby actors do not fabricate anything, they are not pretending. They use their specific history and personality to re-create true emotional states that (hopefully) match up well with the scene in question.
But clowns? We all had a few good laughs over that one. What sense memory recall do you use to figure out why you throw a bucket of confetti? To honk a horn while grabbing a girl-clown butt?
"Biloxi Blues" was announced as the first production of my junior year. This play was already famous and the movie had come out that summer. I knew I wanted to play Eugene Morris Jerome, the narrator. I felt confident that I could kill that part.
I got the part. Kimber and I worked very well together in his acting classes. He was notoriously prickly and impatient but I never felt the sting of his acerbic disdain. I talked back, I told him he was wrong, I pushed. It annoyed him sometimes but I think he respected me for it.
The play involved many scenes where the punishment given out was to do any number of pushups. One poor character had to squeeze out a whole slew of them. But we all began to do them in solidarity and all got into pretty good shape pretty fast. If you can't afford a gym and want to get in shape, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO...PUSHUPS AND SITUPS.
The play is part of a trilogy that follows this character (ostensibly Neil Simon himself) from Brooklyn in "Brighton Beach Memoirs" to WWII in "Biloxi Blues" and back to NY in "Broadway Bound".
I don't think Neil Simon gets his just due. This trilogy is not just another group of mildly amusing nostalgia plays. These are worthy of the time capsule. In the movie "Hustle and Flow" the main character is talking about a mix-tape put out by his rap hero. He says that everything in the world will turn to dust, everything will crumble. And if the people of the future try to reconstruct Memphis, if they want to know what it was like for HIM, all they have to do is play that mix-tape.
If the imaginary people of the future need to know what life was like in the 1940's in New York, if they need to know what the world was like just before the devastation of WWII, if they need to clue in to what the Jewish people in the free world were going through, all they need do is read these plays.
The cast was set and we started rehearsing. It was like butter. The play is perfect. It creates your performance without you knowing it. I barely remember staging it. This may sound redundant by this point but the simple barracks set that the design team constructed was simply perfect. It somehow was real and suggestive all at the same time.
In one scene the GI's visit a whorehouse. A sliding set was built so that when we set out on this lascivious weekend furlough a giant bed appeared almost out of nowhere. A USO dance was hinted at with a bit of bunting draped across the front of the barracks over some chairs. Elegant and practical, the set did nothing to distract from the narrative, which I think is not as easy as it looks to pull off. If the designers got enamored with showing off their period savvy it would pull focus from the journey that these characters are on.
A former URI student who was now living and working in New York City was cast as the gruff Sergeant. Eric Lutes, a fantastic actor, went on to a fine career in film and TV, most notably as Del on the hit series "Caroline In The City". I'd seen him act with my sister a few years prior in "Picnic" and was intimidated by his good-looks and talent. All of us were and this separation created the perfect tension the play needs.
The age difference wasn't as great as it perhaps is supposed to be, but that had the odd effect of making the mentally ill Sergeant an even more tragic character. He was so young and yet so profoundly disturbed and scarred by his combat history...a man old before his time.
Everyone had recently seen the film starring Broderick and Walken that had been a minor hit. Of course Hollywood fucked up the perfect structure of the play. Because Broderick and Walken were big movie stars, they rejiggered the final scenes to force the two of them into the conflict that had been building between the Sergeant and Epstein. This had the effect of waiting for a grand finale in a fireworks display and getting a dud. Forcing the narrative onto the main character and narrator robbed him of his status as an observer. The whole thrust of the play is that you have to get INVOLVED. No one is free to remain neutral. Which, although it is never overtly discussed, is most certainly a thematic dagger Simon is throwing at the world that stood by and watched millions get murdered.
Thankfully we were doing the play and not the movie.
I still remember the first moment when I addressed the audience. The scene opens on a train headed to basic training. Good natured bickering is slowly turning into something a bit more serious. After a few minutes I turn to the audience and say something snide and hilarious about one of the other characters.
It was like a bomb had gone off. When you break that fourth wall in the hands of a genius like Simon it is as if you are literally tickling hundreds of feet at once. They simply could not get over the fact that I was TALKING to them. Every time I turned my head to look at them it was like a mind meld.
To my way of thinking, this production embodied everything that works about The Method. There were no forced notes, no pushing. (I would be remiss if I didn't mention a valid criticism from Mitchell that I did not have a "Jewish" or "Brooklyn" accent...today I'd have taken it upon myself to cultivate it but Kimber didn't insist so it was never even an option). While that may have been an inadvertent false note by omission, all of the behavior exhibited in the play was natural, relaxed and fully realized.
David Fraioli, he of "As Datchery I Did My Bit" played Epstein, the determined antagonist of the bullheaded Sergeant. If he'd done this performance in New York he'd have been a movie star within six months. This play hinges around an intimate monologue his character has that perfectly illustrates the prejudice and ignorance at the heart of many Army interactions. The 550 seat theater shrunk to the size of the space between two people as he told it to me. I'll never forget it.
We knocked that play out of the park.
I was living Down The Line at the time, which meant in a rented house down near the ocean. We had a giant cast party that involved the entire cast lip syncing to 1940's songs as a USO band. Over two weeks nearly 3,000 people saw the show so I spent the next couple of months on campus experiencing the only true fame I'd ever know.
At least so far mo-fos! I'm doin' pushups again, look out!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Move, Clown! (Spring: 1989)
I have tried to get the chronology right but I just can't see that far back into the past so if anyone out there has contradictory information, please let me know.
I believe that the final production of my sophomore year was an evening of one-acts by Moliere that has come to be known (to me, anyway) as "The Molieres". Another artist in residence type deal, with new translations of three one-acts by Moliere.
Each one-act was to have a different director and no overlapping cast members. The first of the evening was to be done with masks, very traditional. Then my show. We were full on circus clowns. Finally the last of the evening was set in modern day Cranston, Rhode Island and a whole Jersey Shore/guido aesthetic was layered over the classical language.
The overall effect of the evening was one of a kind of manic schizophrenia. The first show ended in a tableau, corsetted actresses frozen next to cravat wearing powdered wig actors. The set was a series of flats made to look like an aristocratic palace or mansion. We clowns came flying up out of the vom, a runway that led from the stage to the underbelly of the Fine Arts building.
We batted the cast over the head with big nerf hammers. We kicked them in their bustled buts with big floppy feet. We shoved their set back into the recesses of Will Theater until it exploded in a giant crash which was a sound cue brilliantly conceived.
Our show was the shortest of the three. It was so much fun to hide in that ramp waiting for the first one-act to end. That classical rendition really got the audience laughing in spite of the unfamiliar arch style they employed. The masks took on personality and expression that seemed far more fluid than the fixed reality of the appearance. You could feel the audience transforming, being brought back to a different sort of attention span.
This made the arrival of a troupe of modern clowns that much more hilarious. Even before we'd begun our play we could hear the audience screaming with delight. Because, no matter how much you might enjoy a play done in masks, there is a small impish part of you that would love to give the actors a swift kick in the rear. I liken it to how people feel about mimes. Sure, they might suck you in from time to time but you're still a little angry about it when it happens!
So we gave vent to some innocent disgruntled point of view that the audience had already discarded! We reminded them that it was okay to roll your eyes at a bunch of assholes in masks! And then our show took off like a wooden jalopy on a flaming set of train tracks.
I played a lecherous clown doctor who was supposed to be helping a family find a match for their daughter. But mostly I grabbed her boobs and swigged from bottles of Jack Daniels while honking a horn to show how hot she was. This was not high-brow comedy. In fact, it was so low brow that there wasn't even a brow. It was just low.
They ate it up. I remember getting a big laugh because I did a double take that made the big curly wig I wore shake on top of my head. In a ten minute show I completely exhausted myself.
Then the last one act of the evening started, somehow weaving a Vietnam vet having flashbacks while lip syncing to "I'm So Excited". There was hairspray, tiny skirts, fuck-me-pumps, wife-beaters, leather jackets, and lots of long vowel expressions of disgust or lust.
The juxtaposition of the language of Moliere with these modern guidos and guidettes was jarring to a ridiculously funny degree. The crowd was mainly Rhode Islanders so they saw nuance galore in a portrayal of a local population that skewered them good-humoredly.
The best part about this production was the pre-show rituals that we all got involved in. Imagine these three shows jumbled into one dressing room. You had guys tying up ruffled shirts and buttoning breeches. You had clowns pulling on fake noses and smearing white chalk all over their faces. And you had tough guy guidos greasing their hair and practicing their moronic accents.
My good friend David (he of the hat toss from Edwin Drood) was the ringleader of this cast. I think Judith came up with the concept for this play specifically so that David could wield his insane brand of Italian humor like a battle axe.
The clowns and the guidos had a not-so-friendly rivalry going on. One guy would walk in and even though he had PLENTY of room would walk right close to you and say in a dead staccato blare, "MOVE CLOWN." He wouldn't pass until you moved! God, this shit was funny. And we clowns would pick our noses at them, blow Bronx cheers, copy everything they said until they were fuming, y'know, we clowned them to death.
Once it escalated into an arm-punching war between David and myself. We were both already in full costume and make up. He said something like, "You're just a fuckin' clown" and punched my arm. I repeated it in a Mickey Mouse squeak and punched him right back.
He said, "You're just a FUCKIN' clown." And hit me harder. I went higher with the Mickey Mouse squeal and punched him right back.
He said, "FUCKIN' CLOWN" and hit me so hard tears came to my eyes. We stood huffing and staring at one another, truly angry, until the sheer insanity of the moment overtook us and we burst out laughing.
I can only imagine what he saw, a forlorn clown with a tear trickling down his bright white cheek!
I believe that the final production of my sophomore year was an evening of one-acts by Moliere that has come to be known (to me, anyway) as "The Molieres". Another artist in residence type deal, with new translations of three one-acts by Moliere.
Each one-act was to have a different director and no overlapping cast members. The first of the evening was to be done with masks, very traditional. Then my show. We were full on circus clowns. Finally the last of the evening was set in modern day Cranston, Rhode Island and a whole Jersey Shore/guido aesthetic was layered over the classical language.
The overall effect of the evening was one of a kind of manic schizophrenia. The first show ended in a tableau, corsetted actresses frozen next to cravat wearing powdered wig actors. The set was a series of flats made to look like an aristocratic palace or mansion. We clowns came flying up out of the vom, a runway that led from the stage to the underbelly of the Fine Arts building.
We batted the cast over the head with big nerf hammers. We kicked them in their bustled buts with big floppy feet. We shoved their set back into the recesses of Will Theater until it exploded in a giant crash which was a sound cue brilliantly conceived.
Our show was the shortest of the three. It was so much fun to hide in that ramp waiting for the first one-act to end. That classical rendition really got the audience laughing in spite of the unfamiliar arch style they employed. The masks took on personality and expression that seemed far more fluid than the fixed reality of the appearance. You could feel the audience transforming, being brought back to a different sort of attention span.
This made the arrival of a troupe of modern clowns that much more hilarious. Even before we'd begun our play we could hear the audience screaming with delight. Because, no matter how much you might enjoy a play done in masks, there is a small impish part of you that would love to give the actors a swift kick in the rear. I liken it to how people feel about mimes. Sure, they might suck you in from time to time but you're still a little angry about it when it happens!
So we gave vent to some innocent disgruntled point of view that the audience had already discarded! We reminded them that it was okay to roll your eyes at a bunch of assholes in masks! And then our show took off like a wooden jalopy on a flaming set of train tracks.
I played a lecherous clown doctor who was supposed to be helping a family find a match for their daughter. But mostly I grabbed her boobs and swigged from bottles of Jack Daniels while honking a horn to show how hot she was. This was not high-brow comedy. In fact, it was so low brow that there wasn't even a brow. It was just low.
They ate it up. I remember getting a big laugh because I did a double take that made the big curly wig I wore shake on top of my head. In a ten minute show I completely exhausted myself.
Then the last one act of the evening started, somehow weaving a Vietnam vet having flashbacks while lip syncing to "I'm So Excited". There was hairspray, tiny skirts, fuck-me-pumps, wife-beaters, leather jackets, and lots of long vowel expressions of disgust or lust.
The juxtaposition of the language of Moliere with these modern guidos and guidettes was jarring to a ridiculously funny degree. The crowd was mainly Rhode Islanders so they saw nuance galore in a portrayal of a local population that skewered them good-humoredly.
The best part about this production was the pre-show rituals that we all got involved in. Imagine these three shows jumbled into one dressing room. You had guys tying up ruffled shirts and buttoning breeches. You had clowns pulling on fake noses and smearing white chalk all over their faces. And you had tough guy guidos greasing their hair and practicing their moronic accents.
My good friend David (he of the hat toss from Edwin Drood) was the ringleader of this cast. I think Judith came up with the concept for this play specifically so that David could wield his insane brand of Italian humor like a battle axe.
The clowns and the guidos had a not-so-friendly rivalry going on. One guy would walk in and even though he had PLENTY of room would walk right close to you and say in a dead staccato blare, "MOVE CLOWN." He wouldn't pass until you moved! God, this shit was funny. And we clowns would pick our noses at them, blow Bronx cheers, copy everything they said until they were fuming, y'know, we clowned them to death.
Once it escalated into an arm-punching war between David and myself. We were both already in full costume and make up. He said something like, "You're just a fuckin' clown" and punched my arm. I repeated it in a Mickey Mouse squeak and punched him right back.
He said, "You're just a FUCKIN' clown." And hit me harder. I went higher with the Mickey Mouse squeal and punched him right back.
He said, "FUCKIN' CLOWN" and hit me so hard tears came to my eyes. We stood huffing and staring at one another, truly angry, until the sheer insanity of the moment overtook us and we burst out laughing.
I can only imagine what he saw, a forlorn clown with a tear trickling down his bright white cheek!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Bride Of Olneyville Square (Winter 1989)
After the euphoric emotional release of "Drood" came a different beast altogether. Edward Allan Baker is a wonderful Rhode Island playwright who has been chronicling the difficult lives of downtrodden Northeasterners for thirty years. At URI we had a chance to workshop his newest work with him on the scene, "The Bride Of Olneyville Square".
Judith was set to direct. I was still itching to be a part of a full-on Kimber Wheelock production but he'd chosen to do "Old Times" as a staged reading instead. Don't get me wrong, Judith Swift is one of the greats in my opinion, but I had been wanting to be in a Kimber show since I saw Sheila in "Picnic" years earlier.
The plot of the play is as gritty as they get. Tenement houses back up against each other and form a small square where the tenants uneasily coexist. The "Bride" of the title is an older woman who has had a brutal life. A tentative romance buds between her and a quirky neighbor. Their relationship sets off shock-waves in the tiny community.
This play took place in cavernous J-Studio. Once again the design team outdid themselves. Four back porches lurched out of the walls. The play was done in the round, with the playing space of the theater becoming the courtyard created by the houses. Extension cords stretched over the audience from upper porch to run-down bedroom window. Transistor radio blared. The pipe and steel girder grid of the studio ceiling created the sense of a rapidly encroaching industrial aesthetic, crushing the homesteads, slowly eating them alive.
The most exciting thing about this process was that we were going to work directly with the playwright in shaping the script. He had written a few drafts but trusted Judith to explore the play to its fullest potential. Improvs, in-depth discussions, group think...all these would be employed to hone what was already a very moving and difficult story.
But there was one catch for me.
My character didn't speak. Oh, he was onstage probably more than anyone but Baker chose to leave him silent. Which meant that I wouldn't be having much of an impact on the actual DIALOGUE of the play!
I am not complaining though, because I was challenged in a fundamental way in playing the part. I was a CIA prison guard, the CIA being the infamous high-security prison that sits just off of I-95 in Cranston like an angry mirage. In my research I found that psychological tests can discern very little difference between guard and inmate, that a guard is at best the flip side of the same coin and at worst something darker and more twisted.
Til now I'd not done any part that required me to be anything other than some extreme version of myself. But this guy was outside of my realm of experience. His wife hovered around him, spewing forth a constant stream of invective against their neighbors but he did not even speak to her. At a crucial moment in the play he deliberately ignores obvious peril to easily saunter off to work. There was something malignant in his silence, nothing laconic or reserved, but aggressive and hateful. A fist of quiet.
This was before the tiresome audience habit of reacting to onstage cigarette smoke as if it is some sort of racial slur and there was simply no question that my character smoked. Everyone smoked.
The play builds to a wedding celebration that takes place in the dingy courtyard. My wife and I attend with all the enthusiasm of parents at the trial of their murderous child. A pot-luck feast is spread across the weather-beaten picnic tables.
This is where my favorite moment from the play occurred. Judith wanted to make sure that my wife and I still maintained our disdain and remove from the other characters. Her solution to this?
My character would only eat the food my wife brought to the party. Even though it was a green jell-o casserole. But Judith also wanted to continue to carve out the obvious anger and spite I wielded towards my wife. So I never stopped smoking even while I was shoveling green jell-o into my mouth.
Apart from that scene, I spent the rest of my time sitting in my chair glowering directly ahead and pointedly ignoring everything that happened in front of me. Smoking. Drinking coffee out of a thermos in my guard uniform pants and a wife-beater.
The audience sat on either side of my porch and could look up at me. But I felt them studiously avoiding it, shrinking back from the unpleasant presence I projected, the way you walk around a dead bird on the sidewalk.
I don't take credit for that in any deep way, it was all set up by Judith in the staging and presentation. The way the other characters shied away from getting too close to me. The way I slapped at my wife's hand as she fussed at me before sending me off to work.
It taught me a great deal about theater, to feel such a recoil from what is essentially a silent character, a blank canvas that doesn't invite creativity but spreads its blankness, eroding at the color around it.
Judith was set to direct. I was still itching to be a part of a full-on Kimber Wheelock production but he'd chosen to do "Old Times" as a staged reading instead. Don't get me wrong, Judith Swift is one of the greats in my opinion, but I had been wanting to be in a Kimber show since I saw Sheila in "Picnic" years earlier.
The plot of the play is as gritty as they get. Tenement houses back up against each other and form a small square where the tenants uneasily coexist. The "Bride" of the title is an older woman who has had a brutal life. A tentative romance buds between her and a quirky neighbor. Their relationship sets off shock-waves in the tiny community.
This play took place in cavernous J-Studio. Once again the design team outdid themselves. Four back porches lurched out of the walls. The play was done in the round, with the playing space of the theater becoming the courtyard created by the houses. Extension cords stretched over the audience from upper porch to run-down bedroom window. Transistor radio blared. The pipe and steel girder grid of the studio ceiling created the sense of a rapidly encroaching industrial aesthetic, crushing the homesteads, slowly eating them alive.
The most exciting thing about this process was that we were going to work directly with the playwright in shaping the script. He had written a few drafts but trusted Judith to explore the play to its fullest potential. Improvs, in-depth discussions, group think...all these would be employed to hone what was already a very moving and difficult story.
But there was one catch for me.
My character didn't speak. Oh, he was onstage probably more than anyone but Baker chose to leave him silent. Which meant that I wouldn't be having much of an impact on the actual DIALOGUE of the play!
I am not complaining though, because I was challenged in a fundamental way in playing the part. I was a CIA prison guard, the CIA being the infamous high-security prison that sits just off of I-95 in Cranston like an angry mirage. In my research I found that psychological tests can discern very little difference between guard and inmate, that a guard is at best the flip side of the same coin and at worst something darker and more twisted.
Til now I'd not done any part that required me to be anything other than some extreme version of myself. But this guy was outside of my realm of experience. His wife hovered around him, spewing forth a constant stream of invective against their neighbors but he did not even speak to her. At a crucial moment in the play he deliberately ignores obvious peril to easily saunter off to work. There was something malignant in his silence, nothing laconic or reserved, but aggressive and hateful. A fist of quiet.
This was before the tiresome audience habit of reacting to onstage cigarette smoke as if it is some sort of racial slur and there was simply no question that my character smoked. Everyone smoked.
The play builds to a wedding celebration that takes place in the dingy courtyard. My wife and I attend with all the enthusiasm of parents at the trial of their murderous child. A pot-luck feast is spread across the weather-beaten picnic tables.
This is where my favorite moment from the play occurred. Judith wanted to make sure that my wife and I still maintained our disdain and remove from the other characters. Her solution to this?
My character would only eat the food my wife brought to the party. Even though it was a green jell-o casserole. But Judith also wanted to continue to carve out the obvious anger and spite I wielded towards my wife. So I never stopped smoking even while I was shoveling green jell-o into my mouth.
Apart from that scene, I spent the rest of my time sitting in my chair glowering directly ahead and pointedly ignoring everything that happened in front of me. Smoking. Drinking coffee out of a thermos in my guard uniform pants and a wife-beater.
The audience sat on either side of my porch and could look up at me. But I felt them studiously avoiding it, shrinking back from the unpleasant presence I projected, the way you walk around a dead bird on the sidewalk.
I don't take credit for that in any deep way, it was all set up by Judith in the staging and presentation. The way the other characters shied away from getting too close to me. The way I slapped at my wife's hand as she fussed at me before sending me off to work.
It taught me a great deal about theater, to feel such a recoil from what is essentially a silent character, a blank canvas that doesn't invite creativity but spreads its blankness, eroding at the color around it.
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Mystery Of Edwin Drood (Winter 1988)
The year had started slowly in the URI Theater Department. A staged reading of Harold Pinter's "Old Times" opened things on a decidedly somber note.
I had no idea what a staged reading was. I had no idea what the play was about. I did the reading as if I were a sleepwalker. I might as well have been reading a foreign language using phonetics.
Suffice it to say that the teeming sexual underbelly of Pinter's play was TOTALLY lost on me, a repressed nervous insecure TEENAGER who had barely even fantasized about what was clearly at stake in the story between these hardened grown-ups. I literally had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT ONSTAGE.
The famous Pinter pauses were filled with thoughts like, "I wonder what that means," or "What could she possibly be hinting at there?" Hilarious.
I'd had something of a tumultuous summer. I'd spent a few months at the end of my freshman year dating a senior girl named Diane. Diane was awesome. She would tell everyone it was my birthday whenever we were out and about. I was always getting free donuts at Bess Eaton, cakes and candles in restaurants and illegal free beers in pizza joints. But Diane was a senior and saw the writing on the wall.
She had sensed that there was something flirtatious going on between me and Sandi, Mitchell's younger sister. Being clueless I had no idea this was happening. But she was right. She told me I should be free to date anyone I wanted. I was a freshman! Of course, she got deliberately drunk to tell me this and neither of us REALLY wanted to break up. I went out with Sandi a couple of times immediately and had a lot of fun. But I was rather confused.
By fall Sandi and I were not really seeing each other full time. We never officially dated but we never officially broke up either. We would meet occasionally, have coffee, see a movie, make out, laugh.
My main focus, however, was the Theater Department. I liken my attitude to being on a sports team. I was gung-ho. Every day was a blast.
The Fine Arts building had a giant lobby that served as a cafeteria, meeting ground, rehearsal space and communal therapist couch. Everyone rotated in and out of the lobby throughout the day. It was not uncommon to see theater games spontaneously erupt.
My favorite was the instant death game. The rules were as follows: you had to move briskly across the lobby, not a run but a very fast walk. At the height of your speed someone would call out a manner of death which you had to immediately succumb to.
Flaming arrows. Double barreled shotgun. Mack truck. Poison dart. Heartbreak.
You get the picture. Girls in skirts would flail to the ground clutching their breasts which had been strafed with hollow tipped ammunition. Guys in jean jackets would clutch at their throats as the imaginary cyanide asserted itself.
I was determined to take part in the musical this year because I'd been too cool for school my freshman year and missed out on a chance to be a part of "Anne Of Green Gables", still in the Top 5 Best Theatrical Events I've Ever Seen List. Plus my sister was Anne and she was unbelievable.
I'd never heard of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", either the unfinished Dickens novel or the musical based on it. I was cast as James Throttle, the Stage Manger of the Royal Albert Music Hall.
The conceit of this musical is a fantastic one. Dickens left the novel unfinished. A music hall troupe has decided to put on a production of the novel. Therefore it is a play-within-a-play type of deal. You get the atmosphere of a theater troupe and the great storytelling of Dickens.
The best part? The audience votes on who they believe the killer is.
The interesting thing about my part is that I was the only member of the giant cast who only played ONE role. Everyone else had a Music Hall character (slutty showgirls and grizzled cockney clowns) and a Dickens character that they then adopted.
But since I was the Stage Manager of the troupe, I was NOT IN THE PLAY. I stood off to the side at a podium and assisted in the faux production we were doing. Judith Swift immediately sensed that this part was badly defined. Why was he there? Well, her take was that I was a sort of visual reflection of what the audience should be going through.
If the scene was funny I laughed harder than humanly possible. If it was scary I was petrified. If it was romantic I was over the moon in love. I was a cartoon of emotions. I never set foot backstage. Whole worlds were lived back there, a cast unity that I was always separate from. Judith directed the cast to have vague contempt for me, which is a kind of joke in the theater community. When a stage manager is on the bad side of a cast things get nasty real fast.
My favorite part of each night was when the voting happened. Cast members accosted the audience row by row demanding that they choose a suspect. Once they'd tallied the vote from their section they would rush the blackboard slate down to me. I quickly could tell who was the winner/loser. I chronicled this hilarious process in another post called "As Datchery I Did My Bit".
As usual, the tone of the show pervaded every aspect of the theater department. Girls went around flirting in cockney accents, guys had to have muttonchops or giant beards, it all began to turn into some crazed harmless Jack The Ripper co-ed fantasy.
My main function on stage was to be the right hand man to the leader of the Music Hall, played by an amazing actor named David Wagner. He doubled as a constable or mayor in the Dickens story, some figure of authority. He was also the narrator. Whenever he would switch from Music Hall to Dickens character he would take off the soft hat he was wearing and thrust it in his pocket. I would fire the hard top hat he wore as the Mayor through the air to him. It was often quite a long toss and he and I practiced it relentlessly so it would never fail us.
I can still vividly see him whipping the crowd into a frenzy and then turning to me from across that giant stage. It was SO MUCH FUN TO DO THIS BIT. You wouldn't think that something as simple as a hat flying through the air could be exciting but the level of difficulty was actually quite stiff. The crowd loved it, they ate it up, cheering louder each time we completed the haberdash javelin.
Did David love and respect my character James Throttle more because of this connection? Of course not. His character had great scorn for poor James Throttle and this translated to David trying to get me to crack on stage by standing just offstage behind my podium and throwing pennies at me.
I have probably never had more fun in a play than during "The Mystery Of Edwin Drood". We were chosen to compete in the regional competition of the NETC and gave a monstrous standing ovation worthy performance but narrowly missed being chosen to perform at the Kennedy Center.
It didn't matter, though. We knew what we had done.
I had no idea what a staged reading was. I had no idea what the play was about. I did the reading as if I were a sleepwalker. I might as well have been reading a foreign language using phonetics.
Suffice it to say that the teeming sexual underbelly of Pinter's play was TOTALLY lost on me, a repressed nervous insecure TEENAGER who had barely even fantasized about what was clearly at stake in the story between these hardened grown-ups. I literally had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT ONSTAGE.
The famous Pinter pauses were filled with thoughts like, "I wonder what that means," or "What could she possibly be hinting at there?" Hilarious.
I'd had something of a tumultuous summer. I'd spent a few months at the end of my freshman year dating a senior girl named Diane. Diane was awesome. She would tell everyone it was my birthday whenever we were out and about. I was always getting free donuts at Bess Eaton, cakes and candles in restaurants and illegal free beers in pizza joints. But Diane was a senior and saw the writing on the wall.
She had sensed that there was something flirtatious going on between me and Sandi, Mitchell's younger sister. Being clueless I had no idea this was happening. But she was right. She told me I should be free to date anyone I wanted. I was a freshman! Of course, she got deliberately drunk to tell me this and neither of us REALLY wanted to break up. I went out with Sandi a couple of times immediately and had a lot of fun. But I was rather confused.
By fall Sandi and I were not really seeing each other full time. We never officially dated but we never officially broke up either. We would meet occasionally, have coffee, see a movie, make out, laugh.
My main focus, however, was the Theater Department. I liken my attitude to being on a sports team. I was gung-ho. Every day was a blast.
The Fine Arts building had a giant lobby that served as a cafeteria, meeting ground, rehearsal space and communal therapist couch. Everyone rotated in and out of the lobby throughout the day. It was not uncommon to see theater games spontaneously erupt.
My favorite was the instant death game. The rules were as follows: you had to move briskly across the lobby, not a run but a very fast walk. At the height of your speed someone would call out a manner of death which you had to immediately succumb to.
Flaming arrows. Double barreled shotgun. Mack truck. Poison dart. Heartbreak.
You get the picture. Girls in skirts would flail to the ground clutching their breasts which had been strafed with hollow tipped ammunition. Guys in jean jackets would clutch at their throats as the imaginary cyanide asserted itself.
I was determined to take part in the musical this year because I'd been too cool for school my freshman year and missed out on a chance to be a part of "Anne Of Green Gables", still in the Top 5 Best Theatrical Events I've Ever Seen List. Plus my sister was Anne and she was unbelievable.
I'd never heard of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", either the unfinished Dickens novel or the musical based on it. I was cast as James Throttle, the Stage Manger of the Royal Albert Music Hall.
The conceit of this musical is a fantastic one. Dickens left the novel unfinished. A music hall troupe has decided to put on a production of the novel. Therefore it is a play-within-a-play type of deal. You get the atmosphere of a theater troupe and the great storytelling of Dickens.
The best part? The audience votes on who they believe the killer is.
The interesting thing about my part is that I was the only member of the giant cast who only played ONE role. Everyone else had a Music Hall character (slutty showgirls and grizzled cockney clowns) and a Dickens character that they then adopted.
But since I was the Stage Manager of the troupe, I was NOT IN THE PLAY. I stood off to the side at a podium and assisted in the faux production we were doing. Judith Swift immediately sensed that this part was badly defined. Why was he there? Well, her take was that I was a sort of visual reflection of what the audience should be going through.
If the scene was funny I laughed harder than humanly possible. If it was scary I was petrified. If it was romantic I was over the moon in love. I was a cartoon of emotions. I never set foot backstage. Whole worlds were lived back there, a cast unity that I was always separate from. Judith directed the cast to have vague contempt for me, which is a kind of joke in the theater community. When a stage manager is on the bad side of a cast things get nasty real fast.
My favorite part of each night was when the voting happened. Cast members accosted the audience row by row demanding that they choose a suspect. Once they'd tallied the vote from their section they would rush the blackboard slate down to me. I quickly could tell who was the winner/loser. I chronicled this hilarious process in another post called "As Datchery I Did My Bit".
As usual, the tone of the show pervaded every aspect of the theater department. Girls went around flirting in cockney accents, guys had to have muttonchops or giant beards, it all began to turn into some crazed harmless Jack The Ripper co-ed fantasy.
My main function on stage was to be the right hand man to the leader of the Music Hall, played by an amazing actor named David Wagner. He doubled as a constable or mayor in the Dickens story, some figure of authority. He was also the narrator. Whenever he would switch from Music Hall to Dickens character he would take off the soft hat he was wearing and thrust it in his pocket. I would fire the hard top hat he wore as the Mayor through the air to him. It was often quite a long toss and he and I practiced it relentlessly so it would never fail us.
I can still vividly see him whipping the crowd into a frenzy and then turning to me from across that giant stage. It was SO MUCH FUN TO DO THIS BIT. You wouldn't think that something as simple as a hat flying through the air could be exciting but the level of difficulty was actually quite stiff. The crowd loved it, they ate it up, cheering louder each time we completed the haberdash javelin.
Did David love and respect my character James Throttle more because of this connection? Of course not. His character had great scorn for poor James Throttle and this translated to David trying to get me to crack on stage by standing just offstage behind my podium and throwing pennies at me.
I have probably never had more fun in a play than during "The Mystery Of Edwin Drood". We were chosen to compete in the regional competition of the NETC and gave a monstrous standing ovation worthy performance but narrowly missed being chosen to perform at the Kennedy Center.
It didn't matter, though. We knew what we had done.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Coward's Umbrella Business (Fall: 1987)
Even though I was only a mile from the house I went to high school in, college life was a monstrous revelation. I was placed in Heathman Hall, a dorm that sat on the very Northern edge of the campus, just across the street from the woods that stretched away from the civilized academic institution into New England wild. To my naive teenage brain, Heathman seemed wilder than anything those woods would ever contain.
My first weekend sharing a suite ended in an infamous party. A blond blockhead drank too many beers at a poker game and wound up defecating all over his own unpacked bags in the back of the communal closet. He was in a new dorm by the first Monday morning, pleading with us to forgive him and give him another chance. We wondered why he wouldn't want to get some easy anonymity someplace else and were glad to be rid of him.
Girls walked up and down the hallways in towels. Accents from New Jersey predominated but there was the occasional Midwest twang and Southern drawl thrown in for good measure. I could walk home in fifteen minutes and my mind was blown so I can only imagine what it was like for those who'd been deposited by plane with a whole semester staring them in the face.
I was signed up for an introductory acting class with Kimber Wheelock, who had directed my sister in "Picnic". He was a lanky tall cranky bald man who had studied with Strasburg and taught the Method. I wound up being directed by him many times during my college career but the first play of the semester was being directed by the Chair of the Theater Department, Judith Swift.
The two of them, for me, served as an awesome teaching tool. Judith didn't give a shit if you meant it, believed it or really felt it. If the AUDIENCE believed it that was all that mattered. The cross-weaving of these two viewpoints would inform my work during those formative years and continue to reverberate today.
Audition notices were posted. The first production of the year would be "Hay Fever" by Noel Coward. I may have done a Noel Coward scene in high school and I was dimly aware of him. English accents were required for the audition. I don't remember how it worked, if you chose what part you wanted to audition for or not, but I wound up auditioning for Richard Greatham, a diplomatist on holiday.
I distinctly remember the moment when the cast was announced. I guess I expected to get in because I wasn't surprised when I saw my name. I do remember that a senior actor, a small bitter tank of a kid that I'd already harbored an intense dislike for from a party I'd attended while still in high school, stood at the cork bulletin board and expressed disbelief that he hadn't gotten in. I knew he'd auditioned for the part I'd gotten and for the first time I tasted the competitive fire that has driven me all the way to this desk job in Santa Monica!
Rehearsals began with a table read in a conference room type classroom tucked in between the administrative offices and the costume shop. The cast was a strange mix of upper- and lower-classmen and women.
"Hay Fever" tells the story of a theatrical family who are vacationing at their country estate. Mother is a grande dame of the theater and her young spoiled children are following her into the arts. Mitchell Fain, who played Simon in this production, says Simon was an aspiring cartoonist and Sorel plays the piano. Father is a novelist.
The conceit of the play is that each member of the family has invited a possible romantic partner down for the weekend. Judith (the mother) has invited Sandy, a strapping young boxer. David (the father) has invited the sultry Myra Arundel. Simon's possible flame is a flapper named Jackie who is a few pints short of a quart, and Sorel invited me, Richard Greatham, upstanding young diplomatist.
Roaming around angrily is Judith's former dresser, now maid, Clara. She is, to say the least, not suited to her new job.
Each is in turn outraged that anyone else would dare invite a guest when they have already invited one. It is never explained WHY they do what they do, but what they do is hilarious. Judith sets out to seduce her daughter's guest away from her. Sorel retaliates by coming onto the boxer. David rejects Myra in favor of the stupid dancer his son invited and Simon gloms onto Myra. Just as these romantic entanglements start to truly consummate, the family coalesces once again and mistreat the guests so thoroughly that they each storm off to return to London.
That is the whole plot of the play. The plot is not the point. The point is the extreme quirk of this family, the deliberate theatricality, the heartfelt false realities that they embrace for fun. They use their guests to amuse themselves without scruple, without restraint, with no fear of reciprocity.
For me, the rehearsal process was mind-blowing. Because the world of the play was so specific, so rooted in a certain era, we spent a full week of 4 hour rehearsals sitting around that conference table dissecting every moment Coward had carved out. We read it out loud. We hashed it out. We read it out loud again. We read sections separately. We disassembled it like an engine and then we meticulously put it back together again.
When we finally got on our feet we were primed. Our accents had been honed with tapes and coaching. I had begun to grow a beard so that I could wind up with a mustache. I had never had a beard before and this new found symbol of adulthood gave me a new sense of potency.
Judith is a choreographic director. This play without intense blocking would be interminably talky, and Judith knew EXACTLY what she wanted in each scene. She had FLOW CHARTS of movement. To give an example, in the second act the entire party is gathered in a common room for a kind of post-dinner party. Because my character was a narrow-minded, linear, practical man absolutely threatened by these bohemian surroundings, Judith had limited my movements to short straight lines that barely strayed from my chair near the piano. Simon however covered almost every inch of the stage in no discernible pattern whatsoever. Judith, a grande dame of the theater, made sweeping arced crosses and Jackie the stupid flapper made short bursts of movement that she immediately reversed or shied away from.
Like I said. SPECIFIC.
As we watched the set take shape on the floor of Will Theater we began to get very excited.
The Design Department at URI matched the genius and invention of the directing side. A two story English country house began to appear. A three leveled drawing room with a grand piano, an L-shaped stairway that ended in a landing with an ornate railing and two doors, a set of glassed French doors that led out onto a patio overhanging with actual plants that would be found in an English garden.
This set was a behemoth. Standing behind it there were two staircases that led up to platforms behind the upstairs entrances. A water system was set up so that rain could spatter the glass of the French doors.
The costumes were equally spectacular. I was in a natty suit with wingtips, the women wore fantastic dinner dresses and appropriate traveling clothes, crazy hats, veils, you-name-it. The patriarch wore florid ascots and the boxer knickers and a bowtie. If you stumbled into this rehearsal you would think you were in the 1920's in England, so perfect was the illusion.
Now, this play is not an easy one to get across. But in a 550 seat theater we DESTROYED audiences on a nightly basis. The world was so perfect, so hermetically sealed, realized so completely, it was as if we sent them back in time, back to the London of Coward's day where the erudite elite would have eaten this up with a spoon.
To this day it is one of the finest productions I have ever been a part of and rivals any of the best I've ever seen.
In a quick side note, I had my first inkling of the technical aspect of acting. My sister Sheila was working the lights on the show. She watched every night. There was a moment when Judith basically corners my character and bares her neck so that I can give it a chaste peck. She then reacts as if it were a Casanova seduction. She says "Oh, Richard" in a lusty growl. I counter, "I'm afraid I couldn't help it" as if I'd been overwhelmed by passion.
The laugh had been dwindling throughout the run. Sheila took me aside and said, "The reason you aren't nailing that laugh is because you turn towards her as you say it. When the show opened you were saying it OUT to the audience."
I made the adjustment and it worked like a charm, in fact the laugh was bigger than ever because the placement of my head was DELIBERATE. Take that, Method Acting, it had NOTHING to do with what was going on inside of me.
I also had my first lesson in the hypocrisy and hubris of critics. The show was entered in the annual NETC Competition. Any show that wished to be up for consideration was attended by a panel of judges. They watched the show in question and then stayed afterward for an appraisal and notes session. To preface this, I have to explain the blocking we used at the end of the show...
It is the morning after the disastrous dinner party. The guests straggle down to breakfast. The family has not woken up yet, the epitome of rudeness. Each guest desperately wants to leave but their etiquette forbids them such a drastic action. But they work themselves into such a frenzy that they ultimately decide to make a break for it.
Just then the family comes downstairs. They are in their pajamas. Coward only notes that as the family breakfasts, the guests sneak out the door.
We then embarked on a slapstick routine in which we threw suitcases down two flights of stairs and hid behind open umbrellas every time the family turned to look in our direction. The effect of course was that the family KNEW we were trying to sneak out and were messing with our collective heads by ALMOST noticing us over and over again. It was a ballet of repressed anger and panic. It brought the house down.
We took off our costumes and makeup and slowly gathered in the now empty theater to receive our critique. The crowd had been raucously involved; it had been our best show.
The judges then proceeded to say that they weren't sure of the relationships between the family and guests, they couldn't discern WHY the characters did what they did, etc. etc.
They neglected to tell us that they'd MISSED the first act entirely in which these things were laid out like clockwork.
But that is not the ultimate hypocrisy we witnessed that day. In attempting to give the director a compliment, they revealed themselves to be total frauds and posers.
They complimented Judith on how she handled "Coward's umbrella business".
When we heard that phrase uttered we all began to giggle on the inside. We knew there was NO mention of "umbrellas" in "Hay Fever". Judith had invented that on her own. But they tried to make themselves seem like experts, as if they had seen 27 productions of "Hay Fever" and our take on "Coward's umbrella business" was the most original.
It was this production that opened my eyes to how deep you could go in the pursuit of the truth of a play. How it is a never-ending process. How you can, if you are willing, unfold infinities in every project you attempt.
My first weekend sharing a suite ended in an infamous party. A blond blockhead drank too many beers at a poker game and wound up defecating all over his own unpacked bags in the back of the communal closet. He was in a new dorm by the first Monday morning, pleading with us to forgive him and give him another chance. We wondered why he wouldn't want to get some easy anonymity someplace else and were glad to be rid of him.
Girls walked up and down the hallways in towels. Accents from New Jersey predominated but there was the occasional Midwest twang and Southern drawl thrown in for good measure. I could walk home in fifteen minutes and my mind was blown so I can only imagine what it was like for those who'd been deposited by plane with a whole semester staring them in the face.
I was signed up for an introductory acting class with Kimber Wheelock, who had directed my sister in "Picnic". He was a lanky tall cranky bald man who had studied with Strasburg and taught the Method. I wound up being directed by him many times during my college career but the first play of the semester was being directed by the Chair of the Theater Department, Judith Swift.
The two of them, for me, served as an awesome teaching tool. Judith didn't give a shit if you meant it, believed it or really felt it. If the AUDIENCE believed it that was all that mattered. The cross-weaving of these two viewpoints would inform my work during those formative years and continue to reverberate today.
Audition notices were posted. The first production of the year would be "Hay Fever" by Noel Coward. I may have done a Noel Coward scene in high school and I was dimly aware of him. English accents were required for the audition. I don't remember how it worked, if you chose what part you wanted to audition for or not, but I wound up auditioning for Richard Greatham, a diplomatist on holiday.
I distinctly remember the moment when the cast was announced. I guess I expected to get in because I wasn't surprised when I saw my name. I do remember that a senior actor, a small bitter tank of a kid that I'd already harbored an intense dislike for from a party I'd attended while still in high school, stood at the cork bulletin board and expressed disbelief that he hadn't gotten in. I knew he'd auditioned for the part I'd gotten and for the first time I tasted the competitive fire that has driven me all the way to this desk job in Santa Monica!
Rehearsals began with a table read in a conference room type classroom tucked in between the administrative offices and the costume shop. The cast was a strange mix of upper- and lower-classmen and women.
"Hay Fever" tells the story of a theatrical family who are vacationing at their country estate. Mother is a grande dame of the theater and her young spoiled children are following her into the arts. Mitchell Fain, who played Simon in this production, says Simon was an aspiring cartoonist and Sorel plays the piano. Father is a novelist.
The conceit of the play is that each member of the family has invited a possible romantic partner down for the weekend. Judith (the mother) has invited Sandy, a strapping young boxer. David (the father) has invited the sultry Myra Arundel. Simon's possible flame is a flapper named Jackie who is a few pints short of a quart, and Sorel invited me, Richard Greatham, upstanding young diplomatist.
Roaming around angrily is Judith's former dresser, now maid, Clara. She is, to say the least, not suited to her new job.
Each is in turn outraged that anyone else would dare invite a guest when they have already invited one. It is never explained WHY they do what they do, but what they do is hilarious. Judith sets out to seduce her daughter's guest away from her. Sorel retaliates by coming onto the boxer. David rejects Myra in favor of the stupid dancer his son invited and Simon gloms onto Myra. Just as these romantic entanglements start to truly consummate, the family coalesces once again and mistreat the guests so thoroughly that they each storm off to return to London.
That is the whole plot of the play. The plot is not the point. The point is the extreme quirk of this family, the deliberate theatricality, the heartfelt false realities that they embrace for fun. They use their guests to amuse themselves without scruple, without restraint, with no fear of reciprocity.
For me, the rehearsal process was mind-blowing. Because the world of the play was so specific, so rooted in a certain era, we spent a full week of 4 hour rehearsals sitting around that conference table dissecting every moment Coward had carved out. We read it out loud. We hashed it out. We read it out loud again. We read sections separately. We disassembled it like an engine and then we meticulously put it back together again.
When we finally got on our feet we were primed. Our accents had been honed with tapes and coaching. I had begun to grow a beard so that I could wind up with a mustache. I had never had a beard before and this new found symbol of adulthood gave me a new sense of potency.
Judith is a choreographic director. This play without intense blocking would be interminably talky, and Judith knew EXACTLY what she wanted in each scene. She had FLOW CHARTS of movement. To give an example, in the second act the entire party is gathered in a common room for a kind of post-dinner party. Because my character was a narrow-minded, linear, practical man absolutely threatened by these bohemian surroundings, Judith had limited my movements to short straight lines that barely strayed from my chair near the piano. Simon however covered almost every inch of the stage in no discernible pattern whatsoever. Judith, a grande dame of the theater, made sweeping arced crosses and Jackie the stupid flapper made short bursts of movement that she immediately reversed or shied away from.
Like I said. SPECIFIC.
As we watched the set take shape on the floor of Will Theater we began to get very excited.
The Design Department at URI matched the genius and invention of the directing side. A two story English country house began to appear. A three leveled drawing room with a grand piano, an L-shaped stairway that ended in a landing with an ornate railing and two doors, a set of glassed French doors that led out onto a patio overhanging with actual plants that would be found in an English garden.
This set was a behemoth. Standing behind it there were two staircases that led up to platforms behind the upstairs entrances. A water system was set up so that rain could spatter the glass of the French doors.
The costumes were equally spectacular. I was in a natty suit with wingtips, the women wore fantastic dinner dresses and appropriate traveling clothes, crazy hats, veils, you-name-it. The patriarch wore florid ascots and the boxer knickers and a bowtie. If you stumbled into this rehearsal you would think you were in the 1920's in England, so perfect was the illusion.
Now, this play is not an easy one to get across. But in a 550 seat theater we DESTROYED audiences on a nightly basis. The world was so perfect, so hermetically sealed, realized so completely, it was as if we sent them back in time, back to the London of Coward's day where the erudite elite would have eaten this up with a spoon.
To this day it is one of the finest productions I have ever been a part of and rivals any of the best I've ever seen.
In a quick side note, I had my first inkling of the technical aspect of acting. My sister Sheila was working the lights on the show. She watched every night. There was a moment when Judith basically corners my character and bares her neck so that I can give it a chaste peck. She then reacts as if it were a Casanova seduction. She says "Oh, Richard" in a lusty growl. I counter, "I'm afraid I couldn't help it" as if I'd been overwhelmed by passion.
The laugh had been dwindling throughout the run. Sheila took me aside and said, "The reason you aren't nailing that laugh is because you turn towards her as you say it. When the show opened you were saying it OUT to the audience."
I made the adjustment and it worked like a charm, in fact the laugh was bigger than ever because the placement of my head was DELIBERATE. Take that, Method Acting, it had NOTHING to do with what was going on inside of me.
I also had my first lesson in the hypocrisy and hubris of critics. The show was entered in the annual NETC Competition. Any show that wished to be up for consideration was attended by a panel of judges. They watched the show in question and then stayed afterward for an appraisal and notes session. To preface this, I have to explain the blocking we used at the end of the show...
It is the morning after the disastrous dinner party. The guests straggle down to breakfast. The family has not woken up yet, the epitome of rudeness. Each guest desperately wants to leave but their etiquette forbids them such a drastic action. But they work themselves into such a frenzy that they ultimately decide to make a break for it.
Just then the family comes downstairs. They are in their pajamas. Coward only notes that as the family breakfasts, the guests sneak out the door.
We then embarked on a slapstick routine in which we threw suitcases down two flights of stairs and hid behind open umbrellas every time the family turned to look in our direction. The effect of course was that the family KNEW we were trying to sneak out and were messing with our collective heads by ALMOST noticing us over and over again. It was a ballet of repressed anger and panic. It brought the house down.
We took off our costumes and makeup and slowly gathered in the now empty theater to receive our critique. The crowd had been raucously involved; it had been our best show.
The judges then proceeded to say that they weren't sure of the relationships between the family and guests, they couldn't discern WHY the characters did what they did, etc. etc.
They neglected to tell us that they'd MISSED the first act entirely in which these things were laid out like clockwork.
But that is not the ultimate hypocrisy we witnessed that day. In attempting to give the director a compliment, they revealed themselves to be total frauds and posers.
They complimented Judith on how she handled "Coward's umbrella business".
When we heard that phrase uttered we all began to giggle on the inside. We knew there was NO mention of "umbrellas" in "Hay Fever". Judith had invented that on her own. But they tried to make themselves seem like experts, as if they had seen 27 productions of "Hay Fever" and our take on "Coward's umbrella business" was the most original.
It was this production that opened my eyes to how deep you could go in the pursuit of the truth of a play. How it is a never-ending process. How you can, if you are willing, unfold infinities in every project you attempt.
Monday, April 19, 2010
A Theatrical History
So three years into this blog and I've delved into my history in any number of ways...I've written about almost every important concert I ever attended, I've named and reviewed 50 of my favorite albums and 50 of my favorite books, and most recently gone back and identified every strange brush with ill-health that I can remember.
I got to work today and wondered what would be next, where I'd take this space. After I finished the book reviews I told myself I would take a break and do some writing for myself. Immediately upon making that decision I was asked to write something for Brains Of Minerva and was in the running for a very high-profile writing gig that ultimately didn't work out.
During that break I missed the daily challenge of calling something up, doing my best to articulate something specific about it, and letting it stand.
I am currently acting in a show at the Los Angeles Theater Center. It is a World Premiere of a new play by Erik Patterson, a playwright I admire greatly. I am enjoying the heck out of this show and am very proud and pleased to have such a great project to be working on.
As with any play there is a story that goes along with it. But you usually can't name the story until later, until the project is over and you've gotten some distance from it. In ruminating over this play that I am currently doing I began to look back over my life in the theater. I cherish my memories and will never find anything that equals the thrill and power of a play being performed for a live audience.
And, voila. My next blog path arrives.
I will be going back and telling whatever "story" is connected to every play I've ever done. College, Providence, New York, Regional, Los Angeles...I am going to have a blast going back into this territory.
When I got to the University of Rhode Island theater department I was already in awe of it. My sister Sheila had been a part of the department starting when she was in high school and did a production of "Picnic" that is legendary in my family. So by the time I enrolled I knew many of the students, I knew many of the professors, I knew the theater and was very excited to sign up.
Now, my high school drama club was quite adventurous and creative. I've seen plays performed by young people that work on every dramatic level conceivable. But the leap from South Kingstown High School to URI was quite drastic. The professors were determined that our experience should closely mirror professional productions. In fact, in retrospect they were far more disciplined and regimented than many professional productions that I've heard about.
I had no idea what to expect when I was cast in my first play.
Which I will talk about tomorrow...
Hay Fever by Noel Coward, comin' right up!
I got to work today and wondered what would be next, where I'd take this space. After I finished the book reviews I told myself I would take a break and do some writing for myself. Immediately upon making that decision I was asked to write something for Brains Of Minerva and was in the running for a very high-profile writing gig that ultimately didn't work out.
During that break I missed the daily challenge of calling something up, doing my best to articulate something specific about it, and letting it stand.
I am currently acting in a show at the Los Angeles Theater Center. It is a World Premiere of a new play by Erik Patterson, a playwright I admire greatly. I am enjoying the heck out of this show and am very proud and pleased to have such a great project to be working on.
As with any play there is a story that goes along with it. But you usually can't name the story until later, until the project is over and you've gotten some distance from it. In ruminating over this play that I am currently doing I began to look back over my life in the theater. I cherish my memories and will never find anything that equals the thrill and power of a play being performed for a live audience.
And, voila. My next blog path arrives.
I will be going back and telling whatever "story" is connected to every play I've ever done. College, Providence, New York, Regional, Los Angeles...I am going to have a blast going back into this territory.
When I got to the University of Rhode Island theater department I was already in awe of it. My sister Sheila had been a part of the department starting when she was in high school and did a production of "Picnic" that is legendary in my family. So by the time I enrolled I knew many of the students, I knew many of the professors, I knew the theater and was very excited to sign up.
Now, my high school drama club was quite adventurous and creative. I've seen plays performed by young people that work on every dramatic level conceivable. But the leap from South Kingstown High School to URI was quite drastic. The professors were determined that our experience should closely mirror professional productions. In fact, in retrospect they were far more disciplined and regimented than many professional productions that I've heard about.
I had no idea what to expect when I was cast in my first play.
Which I will talk about tomorrow...
Hay Fever by Noel Coward, comin' right up!
The Lightbulb
So if you're a regular reader you know I've been chronicling my health history. I've dealt with (in chronological order according to my age) synovitis, a blocked eardrum, a revealed ankle bone, a gouged hip, a scarred cheek, chondromalacia of the left patella, a torn ankle tendon, a crushed vertebra from a falling fridge, a zombie toenail, a blood blister the size of a plum on my heel, Lyme's Disease, an emergency appendectomy, pleurisy for the first time, pleurisy again seventeen years later, and pneumonia, all of which were interspersed with sporadic bouts of chronic bronchitis, arthritic side-effects from the Lyme's disease, carpal tunnel syndrome, and finally fibromyalgia. Oh, yeah, and crushing depression and anger management issues.
Do I want sympathy? Do I want pity? Hell yeah, I've been trained to. Normally. But I've just about had enough of it so this time I am going to respectfully decline.
I've come to some conclusions about this spectacularly bizarre run of bullshit.
I can't discount the fact that I have a very delicate equilibrium. I am not one of those hearty folks who shrug off infection, repel collision, eat/drink/ingest whatever they want and wake up smelling like a rose. No. I am the kind of person who has one peanut M&M and winds up in the waiting room.
Like a mouse stuck in a maze I've stood on the threshold for what feels like eons, repeatedly pushing the button that looks right. And for eons I've been shocked to the core over and over and over. Finally my teeny weeny mouse brain perked up. It started January 1st, 2008 when I quit smoking cigarettes. Cigars/weed were next for the poor shocked mouse and now the worst thing I take into my body is probably a peanut butter pretzel.
Even the tiniest brain can learn not to shock itself.
If it were simply a question of will power I'd have done it a long time ago. But, no, it is more than that and this is where I begin to tread on what is for me VERY THIN ICE.
Will power cannot even come into play unless there is a FAITH at work. An inherent belief that your system is holy, that your mechanism deserves the greatest odds you can give it.
I already got hit by a car and I'd have been pissed if it had finished me off. If a bus hits me I'll be in as perfect health as can be to show off to the Medical Examiner.
I joke but this dim light has been steadily brightening for me over the past few years, illuminating dark corners I'd not have even admitted were there. And with each day that goes by in which I treat my body like a temple my brain perks up, my soul follows suit.
So what will I be writing about next week now that I've plumbed the depths of my ridiculous health history? I don't know yet, but with the light streaming into the cracks I think I'll be able to see well enough to come up with something.
I'd make a crack about how that might be because of the hole in my retina but wonder of wonders I just had an eye exam and guess what? The hole healed.
All on its own.
Do I want sympathy? Do I want pity? Hell yeah, I've been trained to. Normally. But I've just about had enough of it so this time I am going to respectfully decline.
I've come to some conclusions about this spectacularly bizarre run of bullshit.
I can't discount the fact that I have a very delicate equilibrium. I am not one of those hearty folks who shrug off infection, repel collision, eat/drink/ingest whatever they want and wake up smelling like a rose. No. I am the kind of person who has one peanut M&M and winds up in the waiting room.
Like a mouse stuck in a maze I've stood on the threshold for what feels like eons, repeatedly pushing the button that looks right. And for eons I've been shocked to the core over and over and over. Finally my teeny weeny mouse brain perked up. It started January 1st, 2008 when I quit smoking cigarettes. Cigars/weed were next for the poor shocked mouse and now the worst thing I take into my body is probably a peanut butter pretzel.
Even the tiniest brain can learn not to shock itself.
If it were simply a question of will power I'd have done it a long time ago. But, no, it is more than that and this is where I begin to tread on what is for me VERY THIN ICE.
Will power cannot even come into play unless there is a FAITH at work. An inherent belief that your system is holy, that your mechanism deserves the greatest odds you can give it.
I already got hit by a car and I'd have been pissed if it had finished me off. If a bus hits me I'll be in as perfect health as can be to show off to the Medical Examiner.
I joke but this dim light has been steadily brightening for me over the past few years, illuminating dark corners I'd not have even admitted were there. And with each day that goes by in which I treat my body like a temple my brain perks up, my soul follows suit.
So what will I be writing about next week now that I've plumbed the depths of my ridiculous health history? I don't know yet, but with the light streaming into the cracks I think I'll be able to see well enough to come up with something.
I'd make a crack about how that might be because of the hole in my retina but wonder of wonders I just had an eye exam and guess what? The hole healed.
All on its own.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
