Some projects feel like projects. Others feel like your life. This falls in the latter category. It single-handedly shaped a decade of my existence. I am overwhelmed at the thought of trying to track this journey.
This play is what prompted my move to LA. It introduced me to a whole new circle of friends, Larry Clarke and Jeff Donovan in particular. It vaulted the possibility in my professional life to a whole new level. I know the reality of my career but if it hadn't been for this play I shudder to think what might have been.
In fact, I just returned from New York where a film version is currently being shot. So a decade after the first staged reading I just did my first SAG film work on it. Amazing.
Searching For Certainty:
My cousin Mike wrote this searing examination of the modern courtship. Before we put up the actual Los Angeles production which still reverberates to all those who were in it or saw it, we did staged reading after staged reading, many in New York and one week-long workshop in Cleveland.
For anyone who thinks writing a great play is an easy task, they would do well to track the progress of this particular work. It went through transformation after transformation as Mike attempted to wrestle the three-pronged story into the perfect final shape.
The plot is deceptively simple. Dom and Deb are engaged and about to embark on the Pre-Cana retreat required by the Catholic Church for all those to be married in the faith. The communication exercises used to foster closeness wind up revealing secrets that threaten their relationship to its core. The priest who is running the retreat attempts to help them wade through the dark corners without splitting up.
From the beginning I played the part of Kevin, Dom's oldest best friend, a singer-songwriter from Providence, Rhode Island who is drowning in a sea of booze and shallow relationships. I know, I know, I am from Rhode Island, I am a singer-songwriter, but Mike invented this guy whole cloth. He is lewd, obnoxious, leering, sexist, infantile and endearing to an almost dangerous degree. His charm and humor have buffered him from having to deal with the reality of his life.
Kevin is obsessed with an old college friend named Betsy. They had one of those relationships unique to college in which you spend all of your time with someone who still has a boyfriend or girlfriend. Kevin in a fit of drunken bravery and self-pity bared his soul, admitted his love and scared Betsy off. They haven't spoken in nine years.
Also factoring in to the story is Dom's younger sister Melissa, uneasily married to Roddy, a garrulous whirlwind of a software salesman. She has recently lost a great deal of weight and begun to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, much to Roddy's chagrin. Her secret, revealed in the penultimate scene of the play, threatens to derail two relationships and her own with her brother.
Some details of the play have shifted as it has moved to the screen, a fascinating process which I could write eight other posts about!
I am proud to say that I did readings of this play with some of the best and most accomplished actresses of this generation. Kate Walsh. Annie Parisse. Miriam Shor. Callie Thorne and then in the actual Los Angeles performance Missy Yager. It still blows me away.
As we moved to take the play to Cleveland, they held auditions for the first time. I actually auditioned for Kevin and Dom as well.
Up to that point, Mike had read Dom in several of the readings. But he was not interested in acting in the play, he wanted to be able to watch and take in what needed to change, what worked.
Thus Jeffrey Donovan came into our lives. In the loving vernacular of my family, what a douche.
From the first rehearsal it was clear that he was a force to be reckoned with. He was a Massachusetts kid and instinctively got the rhythms inherent in the piece. I've since see him take on wildly different roles and realized that this acumen had nothing to do with the place of his origin. He's just a great fucking actor. His success is not accidental.
The reading in Cleveland went well but Mike basically went back to the drawing board afterward. We'd thought there might be a production following right on the heels but Mike wasn't satisfied with the state of the script. Plus he was a teensy bit busy being the center of a hit sitcom.
But he found the time and chiseled away at the play until he was ready to pull the trigger.
So. 2003. January. Peter Askin, who had directed the reading in Cleveland and fostered the readings in New York, was going to direct a full on production in Los Angeles.
I stayed at the infamous Oakwood Apartments near Universal City. A complex nestled into the base of a hill, it houses all sorts of people in town working on various projects. There are full time residents but the overall vibe is one of a live-in hotel. I saw my first coyote in the driveway late one night.
I pulled into town and went right to Mike's house. Mike gave me a group of songs to listen to that he had used as inspiration while in the midst of his latest rewrite. He told me to go out to the guest house and listen to the whole thing. I hadn't heard most of the songs and they were so apt, piercing directly to the core of this character's heartbreak that I burst into tears listening to the very first song.
Also at play in the power of my emotional response was the sense that this would be a giant moment for me professionally. I'd had near miss after near miss and was, quite frankly, floundering in New York without really knowing it. To be whisked out of my surroundings to work on this play which was so near and dear to me was like the kid pulling his thumb out of the dyke. I was a raw nerve.
Mike also asked that I write a short melody for Jeff Donovan to sing...Dom sings a line back at Kevin from a song he'd written about Betsy..."Her name was Betsy..." Mike needed a tune for Donovan to mock me with. He'd asked Jon Leahy and Shark to come up with a musical snippet as well. But I was so invested in this play that I wound up writing a full song that day in the guest house.
Within one hour of arriving at Mike's I'd had a nervous breakdown and written a song.
I called it QE3.
The rehearsal period was very short but most of us were very familiar with the material by this point. We opened after an intense but painless two and a half week process.
A veritable who's who of Hollywood sat in the tiny dusty ramshackle theater in Hollywood. I remember telling Mike just to keep whoever was coming that night to himself until after the play. I'd blow a gasket if I knew.
Because Jeff had booked a big TV gig, we could only run the play for two weekends, a total of eight performances. It seems impossible in retrospect. I still, more than seven years later, get compliments from people about that show. And not the garden variety "Great job" comments. No, Mike's play elicits much stronger thoughts.
People say things like, "I wound up breaking up with my boyfriend after that play." Or "I decided to ask my girlfriend to marry me after that play." Or "I started to think about God again and it freaked me out." Things of that nature. It is not a small play.
Now, the material success that was intimated by the impact of this play did not pan out for me. Probably because it was all I was focusing on. But when I think about the payoff that this play has had in my life my mind boggles. Lifelong friendship, continued fruitful collaboration, support through difficult times...what more can you ask for?
Oh, yeah, how about a part in a movie? How's that for a cherry on top of a ten year sundae?
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Morning Milking Evening Milking, Mach II (Spring: 2001)
This is the only play I've ever done twice in full production. I've work-shopped plays and done readings with various casts but this was different. In a four person play a delicate interconnectedness is created. We replaced two actors and set about re-mounting this strange and beautiful play.
I know that any audience member who hadn't seen the play was just as disoriented and entranced as the first time we'd done it, but for me, some elemental component had lessened. It was as if I was hearing the third echo in a canyon, not shouting out the original slogan.
An intricate drawing faxed to successive numbers erodes back to some inarticulate state. A game of telephone in which "You don't have to open the envelope" becomes "Shoes don't run back to the antelope." The bank of a great river eroded over time creates a pond.
I feel funny typing it now because of course when you are in the moment you do your best, you think the best of what you are doing, you applaud the efforts of everyone involved. However, in looking back on it I feel as if some crucial cog had lifted out of gear, the engine still ran and the car could still handle rough turns, but there was always the slight nagging fear that we might just run right off the road.
Adding to the strange replicate experience was the fact that we were doing the play in the same theater on basically the same set. Because of this there was a constant internal replay going on.
It is a testament to the power of the piece that it still worked as well as it did. The language Jim Farmer uses destroys audience expectation. It lets you know right from the start that you cannot expect any normal storytelling ploys. I had seen a production of his before I did one and I was determined to work with him after it. He takes classic genres and inverts them so thoroughly that to call them spoofs is to do them a great disservice. Their absurdity exploits our expectations of the drama or tension inherent in those forms and creates something utterly new.
So even though I felt a constant little itch at the faded repetition of this particular production, I could also instinctively feel how deeply what we were doing touched the audience. They would reel with laughter, talk out loud at what they saw amongst each other, gasp in disbelief. It was like being at The Apollo Theater.
At one point, my character is tortured with desire and anger. My woman is pregnant and the baby isn't mine. We've continued a hot and heavy romance throughout. I've come home late after a night of drinking. I am alone for the first time in the play. I surreptitiously take out a small Pinocchio marionette and play with him, making him climb up a chair, do a dance, etc.
Why was this so funny? To this day I truly do not know. But the first moment I put those little plastic feet on the ground and made them move, each and every audience transformed into a screaming horde of children, delighted and amazed.
I've begun to write on my own and my biggest influence is Jim Farmer. In fact, I have to cop to just imagining I am him and doing what he might do. His co-existing sense of doom and humor combine in such a powerful way. Doomor, you might say.
So this second production of "Morning Milking Evening Milking" was like the moment after you look directly at the sun. Your eyes are closed so you can't possibly be seeing the real sun, but there it is just the same on the back of your eyelids.
I know that any audience member who hadn't seen the play was just as disoriented and entranced as the first time we'd done it, but for me, some elemental component had lessened. It was as if I was hearing the third echo in a canyon, not shouting out the original slogan.
An intricate drawing faxed to successive numbers erodes back to some inarticulate state. A game of telephone in which "You don't have to open the envelope" becomes "Shoes don't run back to the antelope." The bank of a great river eroded over time creates a pond.
I feel funny typing it now because of course when you are in the moment you do your best, you think the best of what you are doing, you applaud the efforts of everyone involved. However, in looking back on it I feel as if some crucial cog had lifted out of gear, the engine still ran and the car could still handle rough turns, but there was always the slight nagging fear that we might just run right off the road.
Adding to the strange replicate experience was the fact that we were doing the play in the same theater on basically the same set. Because of this there was a constant internal replay going on.
It is a testament to the power of the piece that it still worked as well as it did. The language Jim Farmer uses destroys audience expectation. It lets you know right from the start that you cannot expect any normal storytelling ploys. I had seen a production of his before I did one and I was determined to work with him after it. He takes classic genres and inverts them so thoroughly that to call them spoofs is to do them a great disservice. Their absurdity exploits our expectations of the drama or tension inherent in those forms and creates something utterly new.
So even though I felt a constant little itch at the faded repetition of this particular production, I could also instinctively feel how deeply what we were doing touched the audience. They would reel with laughter, talk out loud at what they saw amongst each other, gasp in disbelief. It was like being at The Apollo Theater.
At one point, my character is tortured with desire and anger. My woman is pregnant and the baby isn't mine. We've continued a hot and heavy romance throughout. I've come home late after a night of drinking. I am alone for the first time in the play. I surreptitiously take out a small Pinocchio marionette and play with him, making him climb up a chair, do a dance, etc.
Why was this so funny? To this day I truly do not know. But the first moment I put those little plastic feet on the ground and made them move, each and every audience transformed into a screaming horde of children, delighted and amazed.
I've begun to write on my own and my biggest influence is Jim Farmer. In fact, I have to cop to just imagining I am him and doing what he might do. His co-existing sense of doom and humor combine in such a powerful way. Doomor, you might say.
So this second production of "Morning Milking Evening Milking" was like the moment after you look directly at the sun. Your eyes are closed so you can't possibly be seeing the real sun, but there it is just the same on the back of your eyelids.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Side Man (Fall: 2000)
Everything else had changed by fall of 2000, why not me? I am notorious for ragging on the intense jazz fan, a personality conglomerate I have dubbed "Jazz Douche".
I've written about "Jazz Douche" before but here I will give you a quick recap of the dominant traits of this rampant sub-species:
How do you know if you are a "Jazz Douche"?
Here are some common indicators...
1. A beret that looks as if it was kidnapped off of the tete of Marcel Marceau's bastard nephew.
2. A storage space with alphabetized vinyl in milk crates.
3. Facial hair that requires constant attention yet still looks like some sort of rabid animal attack.
4. Fanny pack.
5. You say things like 'Dig?' and 'Cool, daddy-o.'
6. You know that Hector "Gobble-Neck" Ramsay played on the first take of The Kansas City Trio's version of 'Chatanooga Choo-Choo' but then he ate some bad fish so they had to call in Arizona Smith for the second take. But, see, on the second take, they had Arizona set up in the bathroom and his stand-up bass kept scratching up against the faucet so they wound up using Gobble-Neck's take anyway, in spite of the fish.
7. You can't play an instrument.
8. You play Santana records to get in your wife's pants.
9. You smell like bologna.
10. Your pants have pleats.
11. For a brief shining moment, you thought Yes was going to change EVERYTHING.
12. Listening to Frankie 'Two-Tone' Walters recording of 'Opus Etude Interlude No. 27 in A Minor' for the first time was the catalyst for ending your second marriage.
13. You wrote a short novel imagining a militia led by Miles Davis overthrowing the MTV Total Request Live set and playing 'Sketches of Spain' on an endless loop.
14. You used to have a hoop earring in your right ear until your boss at the convalescent hospital made you take it out because it was unsanitary.
15. You have an 'I'd Rather Be Be-Bopping' bumpersticker on your Ford Escort.
16. Your eyelids are heavy.
17. After you've had a few cocktails, you start raving about how everything would have gone differently if Chet Baker hadn't died...he'd have been the teen idol, the Beatles wouldn't have made such a splash, and the world would be grooving to Chick Corea a little bit more.
18. You have bad dreams about guitars.
19. You like Pauly Shore comedies.
20. You are deeply ashamed of it, but you secretly prefer Julie Andrews' version of "My Favorite Things" to Coltrane's.
There. If you need any further help in identifying a "Jazz Douche", either in the mirror or in your general vicinity, check back in with me.
When I got the audition for "Side Man" at Stamford Theater Works I knew I was going to get the part because the whole thing takes place in the 1950's jazz underworld of New York City. Bang, I got the part.
Dennis Delaney was the director and I liked him immediately. His wife Shelley was to play my mother. At various times in the play my character, who also functions as the narrator, steps back in time to play himself at ten years old, seventeen, etc. Dennis would later turn me on to The Shaggs and their profoundly disturbing album "Philosophy Of The World" for which I cannot quite say that I am grateful for.
But Dennis also took the time to make everyone in the cast a mix of jazz songs that he thought were appropriate for their character. I took it begrudgingly and muffled my "Jazz Douche" comedy routine. Lo and behold I realized upon listening to this assortment of compositions that "Jazz Douches" were one thing but jazz music was another entirely. I was blown away.
I let go my prejudice about the music and immersed myself in it for the duration of the play.
The play ran in Stamford so on the nights that we performed I would take the commuter train from the city with the rest of the strap-hangers. There was something oddly subversive about this. I was a commuter along with the rest of the bankers, executives, admins, nurses, doctors and lawyers. But my nine to five was on the tail end of their journey, it began at 8PM with me stepping on stage.
The play was an odd echo for me of "Biloxi Blues", another play in which I addressed the audience directly from within the action of the play. I had not done this since that play and it was like slipping into an old shoe. Dennis thought he'd need to allot time to developing this aspect of the play but quickly we realized that we didn't need to belabor it, especially since the rest of the play is so packed with challenging moments.
There are charmed rehearsal processes and charmed productions. This was one of them.
And for me it was capped by an experience that I will never forget.
There are few actors I look up to. I prefer to look ACROSS at actors from a place of equality. Being a fan does nothing for me. I cultivate the feeling that I am a partner, a peer, even with the most successful people I encounter.
Occasionally though, there are exceptions.
Stamford Theater Works was housed in a small red barn behind an exclusive prep school. It had an illustrious history and since many luminaries lived either in Stamford or nearby Greenwich it had strong support from many famous actors and writers.
Word came to us before a show that the one and only Gene Wilder would be in attendance. He was a friend of the owner of the theater and made a point to see all of the shows. Normally he stayed and spoke with the cast but since he was battling cancer he might not be able to do so this time and wanted to congratulate us IN ADVANCE for our show. Classy.
For Gene Wilder I am a fan. I am not on equal footing, never could be, wouldn't dare. As a kid I took "Young Frankenstein" into my cells. "Blazing Saddles" followed and he went so deep into my psyche that if you did a DNA test you might come back with a strange identification. He is like the Red Sox of actors, the local sports team that you root for reflexively, almost like breathing.
So to know that he would be sitting in the audience? An audience I would be addressing directly as a narrator? Wow.
Once the play started all knowledge of that flew out of my brain. This is a wonderful thing about performing. Everything else disappears. Migraines, back aches, heart break, hero in the seats? Gone. The show went well as I recall, it always did. The response varied night to night only because there were different bodies in the seats, not because the show was any different or better or worse.
The audience filed out and the stage manager let us know that Gene was waiting in the house to talk to us.
He was very frail. He walked with a cane. But he was extremely gracious and complimentary of all of our performances and the production as a whole. He mentioned specific moments that he enjoyed (managing to positively implicate the entire cast with just a few words) and then he was off, helped to his car.
I was blown away. I have been star struck very few times in my life and this is by far the most obvious example. I was nervous, I was sweating, I was worried that I might blurt out something stupid, all in all I felt like a kid about to ask his first girl to dance.
I left the theater on a huge high but also very concerned about his health. If he'd passed away that week I wouldn't have been surprised. But somehow he rallied! In fact, his recovery allowed him to perform himself in a series of Moliere one acts at the Westport Country Playhouse which Joanne Woodward ran for years. Melody hadn't moved to New York in time to see "Side Man" but she bought me tickets to see Gene Wilder sling his hash on stage.
And that day? He had become a peer to me, a guy who'd had some health problems and was back doing what he loved. He was magnificent that day, giving Moliere's crazy farce total reality and life.
So by the time "Side Man" closed I had lost some of my long-time animosity towards jazz and I'd slung MY hash for one of the greats.
I've written about "Jazz Douche" before but here I will give you a quick recap of the dominant traits of this rampant sub-species:
How do you know if you are a "Jazz Douche"?
Here are some common indicators...
1. A beret that looks as if it was kidnapped off of the tete of Marcel Marceau's bastard nephew.
2. A storage space with alphabetized vinyl in milk crates.
3. Facial hair that requires constant attention yet still looks like some sort of rabid animal attack.
4. Fanny pack.
5. You say things like 'Dig?' and 'Cool, daddy-o.'
6. You know that Hector "Gobble-Neck" Ramsay played on the first take of The Kansas City Trio's version of 'Chatanooga Choo-Choo' but then he ate some bad fish so they had to call in Arizona Smith for the second take. But, see, on the second take, they had Arizona set up in the bathroom and his stand-up bass kept scratching up against the faucet so they wound up using Gobble-Neck's take anyway, in spite of the fish.
7. You can't play an instrument.
8. You play Santana records to get in your wife's pants.
9. You smell like bologna.
10. Your pants have pleats.
11. For a brief shining moment, you thought Yes was going to change EVERYTHING.
12. Listening to Frankie 'Two-Tone' Walters recording of 'Opus Etude Interlude No. 27 in A Minor' for the first time was the catalyst for ending your second marriage.
13. You wrote a short novel imagining a militia led by Miles Davis overthrowing the MTV Total Request Live set and playing 'Sketches of Spain' on an endless loop.
14. You used to have a hoop earring in your right ear until your boss at the convalescent hospital made you take it out because it was unsanitary.
15. You have an 'I'd Rather Be Be-Bopping' bumpersticker on your Ford Escort.
16. Your eyelids are heavy.
17. After you've had a few cocktails, you start raving about how everything would have gone differently if Chet Baker hadn't died...he'd have been the teen idol, the Beatles wouldn't have made such a splash, and the world would be grooving to Chick Corea a little bit more.
18. You have bad dreams about guitars.
19. You like Pauly Shore comedies.
20. You are deeply ashamed of it, but you secretly prefer Julie Andrews' version of "My Favorite Things" to Coltrane's.
There. If you need any further help in identifying a "Jazz Douche", either in the mirror or in your general vicinity, check back in with me.
When I got the audition for "Side Man" at Stamford Theater Works I knew I was going to get the part because the whole thing takes place in the 1950's jazz underworld of New York City. Bang, I got the part.
Dennis Delaney was the director and I liked him immediately. His wife Shelley was to play my mother. At various times in the play my character, who also functions as the narrator, steps back in time to play himself at ten years old, seventeen, etc. Dennis would later turn me on to The Shaggs and their profoundly disturbing album "Philosophy Of The World" for which I cannot quite say that I am grateful for.
But Dennis also took the time to make everyone in the cast a mix of jazz songs that he thought were appropriate for their character. I took it begrudgingly and muffled my "Jazz Douche" comedy routine. Lo and behold I realized upon listening to this assortment of compositions that "Jazz Douches" were one thing but jazz music was another entirely. I was blown away.
I let go my prejudice about the music and immersed myself in it for the duration of the play.
The play ran in Stamford so on the nights that we performed I would take the commuter train from the city with the rest of the strap-hangers. There was something oddly subversive about this. I was a commuter along with the rest of the bankers, executives, admins, nurses, doctors and lawyers. But my nine to five was on the tail end of their journey, it began at 8PM with me stepping on stage.
The play was an odd echo for me of "Biloxi Blues", another play in which I addressed the audience directly from within the action of the play. I had not done this since that play and it was like slipping into an old shoe. Dennis thought he'd need to allot time to developing this aspect of the play but quickly we realized that we didn't need to belabor it, especially since the rest of the play is so packed with challenging moments.
There are charmed rehearsal processes and charmed productions. This was one of them.
And for me it was capped by an experience that I will never forget.
There are few actors I look up to. I prefer to look ACROSS at actors from a place of equality. Being a fan does nothing for me. I cultivate the feeling that I am a partner, a peer, even with the most successful people I encounter.
Occasionally though, there are exceptions.
Stamford Theater Works was housed in a small red barn behind an exclusive prep school. It had an illustrious history and since many luminaries lived either in Stamford or nearby Greenwich it had strong support from many famous actors and writers.
Word came to us before a show that the one and only Gene Wilder would be in attendance. He was a friend of the owner of the theater and made a point to see all of the shows. Normally he stayed and spoke with the cast but since he was battling cancer he might not be able to do so this time and wanted to congratulate us IN ADVANCE for our show. Classy.
For Gene Wilder I am a fan. I am not on equal footing, never could be, wouldn't dare. As a kid I took "Young Frankenstein" into my cells. "Blazing Saddles" followed and he went so deep into my psyche that if you did a DNA test you might come back with a strange identification. He is like the Red Sox of actors, the local sports team that you root for reflexively, almost like breathing.
So to know that he would be sitting in the audience? An audience I would be addressing directly as a narrator? Wow.
Once the play started all knowledge of that flew out of my brain. This is a wonderful thing about performing. Everything else disappears. Migraines, back aches, heart break, hero in the seats? Gone. The show went well as I recall, it always did. The response varied night to night only because there were different bodies in the seats, not because the show was any different or better or worse.
The audience filed out and the stage manager let us know that Gene was waiting in the house to talk to us.
He was very frail. He walked with a cane. But he was extremely gracious and complimentary of all of our performances and the production as a whole. He mentioned specific moments that he enjoyed (managing to positively implicate the entire cast with just a few words) and then he was off, helped to his car.
I was blown away. I have been star struck very few times in my life and this is by far the most obvious example. I was nervous, I was sweating, I was worried that I might blurt out something stupid, all in all I felt like a kid about to ask his first girl to dance.
I left the theater on a huge high but also very concerned about his health. If he'd passed away that week I wouldn't have been surprised. But somehow he rallied! In fact, his recovery allowed him to perform himself in a series of Moliere one acts at the Westport Country Playhouse which Joanne Woodward ran for years. Melody hadn't moved to New York in time to see "Side Man" but she bought me tickets to see Gene Wilder sling his hash on stage.
And that day? He had become a peer to me, a guy who'd had some health problems and was back doing what he loved. He was magnificent that day, giving Moliere's crazy farce total reality and life.
So by the time "Side Man" closed I had lost some of my long-time animosity towards jazz and I'd slung MY hash for one of the greats.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Morning Milking Evening Milking, Mach I (Spring: 2000)
(Morning Milking Evening Milking opened at Theater For The New City in spring 2000)
A bird flew through a strange puff of smoke and was forever altered. It stayed a bird, yes, but all of a sudden it used to be a cat that had tried to chase it for years. So needless to say this bird was confused.
And ain't they all, fellas? Ain't all beautiful birds that flew through magic smoke confused? I've met a few myself and I know you have too. They say one thing and then pretty soon they're doing everything opposite from that. You try to expect the unexpected but what winds up happening is you lose your ability to foresee even the slightest of futures.
So what do you do then, huh? Do you fold yourself up into a tiny little origami swan? Or do you do like that real bird did and keep flying on, remembering your new history, experiencing anew your own desire to catch and eat yourself alive?
I don't know. I'm hungry.
There I was in New York City, thrown into a world created by Jim Farmer called "Morning Milking Evening Milking". I might as well have been the imaginary bird I just planted in your brain for all I knew.
His words are alive and they don't allow you any of your bullshit. If you think you're gonna get out of it unscathed you better think again because Farmer that little imp has other destinies in mind for you.
His loft hovered somewhere in Tribeca and would later be covered in dust that flew out from the falling towers. This was still over a year away by the time I saw it for the first time and I knew I was in for a magical ride the moment I read the first word.
All traditional description of rehearsal and production do not apply here. Suffice it to say that we were captured by the images in Farmer's brain. They brought us to a strange Tennessee Williams world where the normal interactions defined by pixie dust and mint juleps ceased to fully apply. We were on our own in that velvet jungle and the sweating palm fronds that slapped against the greenhouse of his imagination gave our fictional selves license to dream our own internal fun house magic shows.
Disorientation is art.
So is a stick of gum chewed and placed directly under your windshield wiper.
So is your cute little panties sticking out from underneath that skirt with the rabbits on it.
And when you showed up soaking wet on that sunny day I knew there was no turning back, that any and all references would be encircled by you, that you eclipsed the idea of you, that I had no alternative but to shatter my own misconceptions and replace them with utter faith and disbelief.
See I get violent when I am challenged and this ol' world isn't big enough to contain my rage. So that baby growing in your stomach that might or might not be mine and might or might not be yours is just another call to arms, one more slight to be endured while I shiver and shake with the never ending lust you've planted in my heart like a weed.
Oh baby. Come sit on my lap with your big pregnant belly and tell me everything gon' be alright in spite of what your daddy says. And don't even bring up yer Ma coz I swear to God I'll pull the roof down and build a dollhouse with it in which I'll torture every damn Barbie you ever owned. I know that's anachronistic and shit but you think I care? DO YOU THINK I CARE?
You know I do, baby doll. You know I do.
And there goes that bird again, back through the smoke that brought about the unspeakable change. Would the reversal of the action take the cat-past-life out of its birdbrain and restore it to some sort of virginal purity?
Course not, darlin'. Life don't work that way.
(Morning Milking Evening Milking opened at Theater For The New City in spring 2000)
A bird flew through a strange puff of smoke and was forever altered. It stayed a bird, yes, but all of a sudden it used to be a cat that had tried to chase it for years. So needless to say this bird was confused.
And ain't they all, fellas? Ain't all beautiful birds that flew through magic smoke confused? I've met a few myself and I know you have too. They say one thing and then pretty soon they're doing everything opposite from that. You try to expect the unexpected but what winds up happening is you lose your ability to foresee even the slightest of futures.
So what do you do then, huh? Do you fold yourself up into a tiny little origami swan? Or do you do like that real bird did and keep flying on, remembering your new history, experiencing anew your own desire to catch and eat yourself alive?
I don't know. I'm hungry.
There I was in New York City, thrown into a world created by Jim Farmer called "Morning Milking Evening Milking". I might as well have been the imaginary bird I just planted in your brain for all I knew.
His words are alive and they don't allow you any of your bullshit. If you think you're gonna get out of it unscathed you better think again because Farmer that little imp has other destinies in mind for you.
His loft hovered somewhere in Tribeca and would later be covered in dust that flew out from the falling towers. This was still over a year away by the time I saw it for the first time and I knew I was in for a magical ride the moment I read the first word.
All traditional description of rehearsal and production do not apply here. Suffice it to say that we were captured by the images in Farmer's brain. They brought us to a strange Tennessee Williams world where the normal interactions defined by pixie dust and mint juleps ceased to fully apply. We were on our own in that velvet jungle and the sweating palm fronds that slapped against the greenhouse of his imagination gave our fictional selves license to dream our own internal fun house magic shows.
Disorientation is art.
So is a stick of gum chewed and placed directly under your windshield wiper.
So is your cute little panties sticking out from underneath that skirt with the rabbits on it.
And when you showed up soaking wet on that sunny day I knew there was no turning back, that any and all references would be encircled by you, that you eclipsed the idea of you, that I had no alternative but to shatter my own misconceptions and replace them with utter faith and disbelief.
See I get violent when I am challenged and this ol' world isn't big enough to contain my rage. So that baby growing in your stomach that might or might not be mine and might or might not be yours is just another call to arms, one more slight to be endured while I shiver and shake with the never ending lust you've planted in my heart like a weed.
Oh baby. Come sit on my lap with your big pregnant belly and tell me everything gon' be alright in spite of what your daddy says. And don't even bring up yer Ma coz I swear to God I'll pull the roof down and build a dollhouse with it in which I'll torture every damn Barbie you ever owned. I know that's anachronistic and shit but you think I care? DO YOU THINK I CARE?
You know I do, baby doll. You know I do.
And there goes that bird again, back through the smoke that brought about the unspeakable change. Would the reversal of the action take the cat-past-life out of its birdbrain and restore it to some sort of virginal purity?
Course not, darlin'. Life don't work that way.
(Morning Milking Evening Milking opened at Theater For The New City in spring 2000)
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Two Gentlemen of Verona (Summer: 1999)
I got the call from Nagle Jackson about a month after I'd returned from Chapel Hill. Nagle had directed "Beauty Queen" and had moved on to Shakespeare In Santa Fe, an outdoor Shakespeare festival he'd been directing at for years.
The actor who'd been hired to play Proteus had to drop out and Nagle thought of me.
I was reluctant to leave New York again so soon on the heels of having been away but the lure of doing Shakespeare professionally was too great. I had done the Public Theater Shakespeare Lab the summer before and 'Tis Pity She's A Whore the year before that and felt as if my calling might be in the classics. I had an affinity for it and a love of it.
So on rather short notice I was jetting off to the American Southwest to do an ancient comedy.
Nagle's directing style is about as subtle and hands-off as you can get. I don't know how he does it. He gets exactly what he wants but never seems to be enforcing his will upon anyone. He reminds me of the great coaches in sports who handle rosters full of superstars. The wrong hand at the helm could be disastrous in spite of all the talent. Any ego coming from the leadership position could send things spiraling out of control.
But Nagle Jackson is a pro's pro. And I feel very blessed to have worked with him twice in quick succession. It was very good for my confidence.
I only remember one difficult moment in rehearsal. We were working on a bit in which I begin losing my mind and basically threaten to force myself on my new crush. She tries to run away, I grab her hand and pull her close to me, she pulls away to the length of my extended arm and then I pull her back. It was a classic melodramatic piece of blocking that would maintain the romantic thrust without being creepy or violent.
I could not synchronize the lines and movements. We were pretty far along in rehearsals and the combination of blocking and words should have been easy for me to grasp. We spent more time on it than we ought to have and Nagle almost lost his temper with me. He got out of his chair and said smartly, "No, like this!" and proceeded to demonstrate exactly how it should go.
And what do you know, that was all I needed. So even in the ONE moment when he lost his patience he delivered the goods. An amazingly talented man. Also a playwright of some note and one of the most interesting sweet people I've ever met.
Seeing as our crowds would be upwards of one thousand people a night and we performed on a giant stage nestled high in a mountain campus, we couldn't settle for realistic or subtle depictions. Everything had to be writ large to reach people almost one hundred yards away.
The set was a giant pink adobe fortress, behind which stretched away a massive mountain vista above and a sprawling valley below. Truly the most spectacular setting for a play as you could imagine. The setting was vaguely Victorian or perhaps a bit later and the women wore corseted dresses and the men wore sharp suits and hats.
My challenge was to keep the audience on my side as I ditched my longtime love and ardently pursued my best friend's fiancee. But William Shakespeare does most of the work for you and the audience was immediately caught up in my madness, loving what it said about our own capacity for folly and passion.
Maria and Cashel came to visit for a short time and then Cash stayed with me once Maria left. He was two and a half. He loved going in the pool at the hotel I was staying at. Maria tried to bring him to see the show and from way back in the massive crowd I heard the small voice chirp, "Daddy!" She had to take him back to the hotel because he couldn't watch the show without yelling for me.
My parents came along with my mom's mom and it is one of the last times I spent with her in which she was lucid and present. So I'll always cherish that.
I made a lifelong friend in Ted Bettridge who played my best friend Valentine. I got to spend weeks with Tim and Laura and Reeve, my friends from Providence.
And I got to say those words. Even in perhaps his slightest work he still managed to grab the attention of a modern throng a thousand strong and whip them into a frenzy of laughter.
The actor who'd been hired to play Proteus had to drop out and Nagle thought of me.
I was reluctant to leave New York again so soon on the heels of having been away but the lure of doing Shakespeare professionally was too great. I had done the Public Theater Shakespeare Lab the summer before and 'Tis Pity She's A Whore the year before that and felt as if my calling might be in the classics. I had an affinity for it and a love of it.
So on rather short notice I was jetting off to the American Southwest to do an ancient comedy.
Nagle's directing style is about as subtle and hands-off as you can get. I don't know how he does it. He gets exactly what he wants but never seems to be enforcing his will upon anyone. He reminds me of the great coaches in sports who handle rosters full of superstars. The wrong hand at the helm could be disastrous in spite of all the talent. Any ego coming from the leadership position could send things spiraling out of control.
But Nagle Jackson is a pro's pro. And I feel very blessed to have worked with him twice in quick succession. It was very good for my confidence.
I only remember one difficult moment in rehearsal. We were working on a bit in which I begin losing my mind and basically threaten to force myself on my new crush. She tries to run away, I grab her hand and pull her close to me, she pulls away to the length of my extended arm and then I pull her back. It was a classic melodramatic piece of blocking that would maintain the romantic thrust without being creepy or violent.
I could not synchronize the lines and movements. We were pretty far along in rehearsals and the combination of blocking and words should have been easy for me to grasp. We spent more time on it than we ought to have and Nagle almost lost his temper with me. He got out of his chair and said smartly, "No, like this!" and proceeded to demonstrate exactly how it should go.
And what do you know, that was all I needed. So even in the ONE moment when he lost his patience he delivered the goods. An amazingly talented man. Also a playwright of some note and one of the most interesting sweet people I've ever met.
Seeing as our crowds would be upwards of one thousand people a night and we performed on a giant stage nestled high in a mountain campus, we couldn't settle for realistic or subtle depictions. Everything had to be writ large to reach people almost one hundred yards away.
The set was a giant pink adobe fortress, behind which stretched away a massive mountain vista above and a sprawling valley below. Truly the most spectacular setting for a play as you could imagine. The setting was vaguely Victorian or perhaps a bit later and the women wore corseted dresses and the men wore sharp suits and hats.
My challenge was to keep the audience on my side as I ditched my longtime love and ardently pursued my best friend's fiancee. But William Shakespeare does most of the work for you and the audience was immediately caught up in my madness, loving what it said about our own capacity for folly and passion.
Maria and Cashel came to visit for a short time and then Cash stayed with me once Maria left. He was two and a half. He loved going in the pool at the hotel I was staying at. Maria tried to bring him to see the show and from way back in the massive crowd I heard the small voice chirp, "Daddy!" She had to take him back to the hotel because he couldn't watch the show without yelling for me.
My parents came along with my mom's mom and it is one of the last times I spent with her in which she was lucid and present. So I'll always cherish that.
I made a lifelong friend in Ted Bettridge who played my best friend Valentine. I got to spend weeks with Tim and Laura and Reeve, my friends from Providence.
And I got to say those words. Even in perhaps his slightest work he still managed to grab the attention of a modern throng a thousand strong and whip them into a frenzy of laughter.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Winter/Spring: 1999)
After "Angel Wings" I truly felt at a crossroads. My creative circle had centered around the 42nd Street Workshop and I could never trust them again. We had trotted out an abomination as casually as I take my wallet out of my pocket to buy a coffee.
On the day after the night that we were to tech "Angel Wings" I had the worst audition (I hope and pray) that I have ever had.
Someone had obtained the rights to the novel "Trainspotting" and had written a play from it. The movie had come out in 1996 but no one had ever secured the rights to a theatrical play. Irvine Welsh, the novelist, apparently gave his stamp of approval to the project.
My agents called me and said I had an audition to play Tommy, described in the breakdowns as "a gentle giant".
The first audition was at about 5PM before I had to head to The Neighborhood Playhouse to start tech rehearsal.
The casting director had never met me before. She took an instant liking to me. She was a young hip Manhattanite and she immediately realized that I had not been submitted for the right part. She said I was definitely the Ewan MacGregor type. She said I should come to the callbacks the next day ready to audition for Renton.
Needless to say I was psyched. I was a bit concerned that my agents had gotten the submission so wrong which meant that I'd prepared for an audition that I wouldn't give. I was also worried because the tech would most likely go really late and I wouldn't have much time to prepare for the audition. Looming over all this was the damn play "Angel Wings" itself.
Of course the tech lasted til almost 2AM. Of course the next morning I got calls for three commercial auditions, last minute. I tried to work on the audition when I got home from the tech but I was way too exhausted. I figured I'd stay at home and work on it all day. But no, I headed out to smile and hawk products and hustle jobs. I bundled little Cashel into his stroller and headed into the city.
The three auditions were in three separate parts of the city. They were spaced out in such a manner that I'd be in transit all day long. Bringing Cashel to commercial auditions was a snap. He'd be asleep in his stroller or an actor I knew would sit with him while I put myself on tape.
But for theater or tv auditions it was more complicated.
I arranged with a friend to meet me at the Barnes and Noble near the "Trainspotting" audition which was at 4:45PM.
I'd barely been able to work on the long heroin fueled monologue, let alone the Scottish accent it required. As I sat in the hallway getting more and more nervous as I realized how unprepared I was, I heard the guy before me doing his rendition of what I would be doing shortly.
He was actually Scottish. Any tiny confidence I could have mined from the depths of my consciousness evaporated in that instant and by the time I entered the room I was a wreck.
The flirty casting agent hooked her arm in my elbow and walked me into the room, whispering in my ear, "Best for last", as I was the last actor they would see that day. I was about to prove her so wrong.
I started the monologue. My accent sounded like a drunk frat boy doing a Mike Myers imitation. Then it morphed into Sean Connery trying to do a Russian accent. And for a while there it was straight up Hillbilly.
I asked if I could start again. They said fine. Again a stream of unidentifiable American twisted into cartoon shapes started coming from my mouth. Again I said I'd start the monologue over. This last effort so unhinged me that halfway through I simply stopped, looked at them all behind their table, and stopped. I said, "I think I'm just gonna go. This isn't working."
And the casting director who thought I looked like Ewan Macgregor and brought me directly to callbacks and said "Best for last" less than three minutes earlier looked at me and said, "Well at least you know."
Needless to say, having to go perform "Angel Wings" for the first time in front of an audience that night was a hammer blow to my ego. I began seriously, for the first and only time ever, that perhaps I wasn't as talented as I thought I was, perhaps I just wasn't an actor after all.
A week later I got another audition that required an accent. "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" had been the toast of Broadway that year and was about to have its first regional production mounted at Playmakers Rep in Chapel Hill, NC.
A surge of determination arose in me and I was damned if I wasn't going to get that part. I decided before the audition that it was mine. In the audition I literally ate the scenes alive. The director was a gentle man who reminded me of many of my uncles. He gave me a few tweaks and I went with them unreservedly. I knew I'd gotten the part.
I went through the rest of the "Angel Wings" run less affected by having to abase myself nightly in front of strangers. I had a job. I was going to get my Equity Card. I was going to North Carolina.
Now, I've written here about meeting Melody on the campus there, in a series of posts centering around the legendary rock and roll club Cat's Cradle that sits in a strip mall right off campus. As follows: Cat's Cradle, Pt. 1: Alone, Combustible, Cat's Cradle, Pt. 2: What a Superdrag, Cat's Cradle, Pts. 3 Thru Now: Emmitt Swimming, Cat's Cradle, Pts. 3 Thru Now: Fate Taps Me On The Shoulder and Cat's Cradle, Pts 3 Thru Now: Emmitt Swimming, The Wig, The Almost-Fight, The Lie.
The personal side of this story is, aside from Cashel being born, the crucial event in my adult life.
But the actual theatrical event? Total magic from beginning to end. Pauline Flanagan played the twisted mother. Pauline was an Irish grande dame of the theater who had been in the original production of "Ulysses In Night Town" with Zero Mostel, she'd been a close friend of Harold Pinter who wrote with her in mind, and she was a consummate pro. This part is not an easy one and she was in her seventies. She was a monster.
The theater was a raised three quarter thrust stage which is to my way of thinking one of the most difficult playing spaces. You have all of the sight line challenges that come with playing in the round, all of the sight line challenges that come from being raised above the first few rows of seats, but with none of the benefits that those attributes can give if they are prominent.
Pauline and I had a moment in our last scene that we knew we could get a big laugh on. But the position of her rocking chair, raised on a slight platform above the rest of the floor, made getting this laugh very difficult. We schemed and plotted to wring that laugh out of at least one audience before we were through.
Every day the moment would come and even though our characters were antagonists we would share a funny little look every time the laugh didn't come. She was a blast. When we finally got it we celebrated like we'd just won Oscars.
This was the first time I'd ever done a part in which I'd recently seen the original done. The guy who played my part on Broadway, a great actor named Tom Murphy, had been indelibly burned into my brain. How would I escape that shadow?
Somehow our director, Nagle Jackson, managed to steer me away from the rocks. He made everything seem 100% natural and unique to us. I quickly forgot that the play had ever been done anywhere else. We took that thing and ran with it.
Rumor had it that Martin McDonagh might be coming to see it, seeing as this would be the first time his play had been taken and played without him having a big hand in it. But that never materialized.
So in the space of a few short months I'd gone from a terrible play done for nothing and the worst audition perhaps in the history of auditions to fully inhabiting the sick and twisted world that Martin McDonagh created in the fields of Leenane.
Pauline Flanagan passed away in 2003 after a long bout with Cancer. She had a giant collection of giraffes that she'd gathered over the years. People would buy them for her on their trips. She was that kind of person.
At the close of the play I wrote the following small book of poetry inspired by the play and the performances I'd been lucky enough to witness.
I called it Pageantry and Savages.
On the day after the night that we were to tech "Angel Wings" I had the worst audition (I hope and pray) that I have ever had.
Someone had obtained the rights to the novel "Trainspotting" and had written a play from it. The movie had come out in 1996 but no one had ever secured the rights to a theatrical play. Irvine Welsh, the novelist, apparently gave his stamp of approval to the project.
My agents called me and said I had an audition to play Tommy, described in the breakdowns as "a gentle giant".
The first audition was at about 5PM before I had to head to The Neighborhood Playhouse to start tech rehearsal.
The casting director had never met me before. She took an instant liking to me. She was a young hip Manhattanite and she immediately realized that I had not been submitted for the right part. She said I was definitely the Ewan MacGregor type. She said I should come to the callbacks the next day ready to audition for Renton.
Needless to say I was psyched. I was a bit concerned that my agents had gotten the submission so wrong which meant that I'd prepared for an audition that I wouldn't give. I was also worried because the tech would most likely go really late and I wouldn't have much time to prepare for the audition. Looming over all this was the damn play "Angel Wings" itself.
Of course the tech lasted til almost 2AM. Of course the next morning I got calls for three commercial auditions, last minute. I tried to work on the audition when I got home from the tech but I was way too exhausted. I figured I'd stay at home and work on it all day. But no, I headed out to smile and hawk products and hustle jobs. I bundled little Cashel into his stroller and headed into the city.
The three auditions were in three separate parts of the city. They were spaced out in such a manner that I'd be in transit all day long. Bringing Cashel to commercial auditions was a snap. He'd be asleep in his stroller or an actor I knew would sit with him while I put myself on tape.
But for theater or tv auditions it was more complicated.
I arranged with a friend to meet me at the Barnes and Noble near the "Trainspotting" audition which was at 4:45PM.
I'd barely been able to work on the long heroin fueled monologue, let alone the Scottish accent it required. As I sat in the hallway getting more and more nervous as I realized how unprepared I was, I heard the guy before me doing his rendition of what I would be doing shortly.
He was actually Scottish. Any tiny confidence I could have mined from the depths of my consciousness evaporated in that instant and by the time I entered the room I was a wreck.
The flirty casting agent hooked her arm in my elbow and walked me into the room, whispering in my ear, "Best for last", as I was the last actor they would see that day. I was about to prove her so wrong.
I started the monologue. My accent sounded like a drunk frat boy doing a Mike Myers imitation. Then it morphed into Sean Connery trying to do a Russian accent. And for a while there it was straight up Hillbilly.
I asked if I could start again. They said fine. Again a stream of unidentifiable American twisted into cartoon shapes started coming from my mouth. Again I said I'd start the monologue over. This last effort so unhinged me that halfway through I simply stopped, looked at them all behind their table, and stopped. I said, "I think I'm just gonna go. This isn't working."
And the casting director who thought I looked like Ewan Macgregor and brought me directly to callbacks and said "Best for last" less than three minutes earlier looked at me and said, "Well at least you know."
Needless to say, having to go perform "Angel Wings" for the first time in front of an audience that night was a hammer blow to my ego. I began seriously, for the first and only time ever, that perhaps I wasn't as talented as I thought I was, perhaps I just wasn't an actor after all.
A week later I got another audition that required an accent. "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" had been the toast of Broadway that year and was about to have its first regional production mounted at Playmakers Rep in Chapel Hill, NC.
A surge of determination arose in me and I was damned if I wasn't going to get that part. I decided before the audition that it was mine. In the audition I literally ate the scenes alive. The director was a gentle man who reminded me of many of my uncles. He gave me a few tweaks and I went with them unreservedly. I knew I'd gotten the part.
I went through the rest of the "Angel Wings" run less affected by having to abase myself nightly in front of strangers. I had a job. I was going to get my Equity Card. I was going to North Carolina.
Now, I've written here about meeting Melody on the campus there, in a series of posts centering around the legendary rock and roll club Cat's Cradle that sits in a strip mall right off campus. As follows: Cat's Cradle, Pt. 1: Alone, Combustible, Cat's Cradle, Pt. 2: What a Superdrag, Cat's Cradle, Pts. 3 Thru Now: Emmitt Swimming, Cat's Cradle, Pts. 3 Thru Now: Fate Taps Me On The Shoulder and Cat's Cradle, Pts 3 Thru Now: Emmitt Swimming, The Wig, The Almost-Fight, The Lie.
The personal side of this story is, aside from Cashel being born, the crucial event in my adult life.
But the actual theatrical event? Total magic from beginning to end. Pauline Flanagan played the twisted mother. Pauline was an Irish grande dame of the theater who had been in the original production of "Ulysses In Night Town" with Zero Mostel, she'd been a close friend of Harold Pinter who wrote with her in mind, and she was a consummate pro. This part is not an easy one and she was in her seventies. She was a monster.
The theater was a raised three quarter thrust stage which is to my way of thinking one of the most difficult playing spaces. You have all of the sight line challenges that come with playing in the round, all of the sight line challenges that come from being raised above the first few rows of seats, but with none of the benefits that those attributes can give if they are prominent.
Pauline and I had a moment in our last scene that we knew we could get a big laugh on. But the position of her rocking chair, raised on a slight platform above the rest of the floor, made getting this laugh very difficult. We schemed and plotted to wring that laugh out of at least one audience before we were through.
Every day the moment would come and even though our characters were antagonists we would share a funny little look every time the laugh didn't come. She was a blast. When we finally got it we celebrated like we'd just won Oscars.
This was the first time I'd ever done a part in which I'd recently seen the original done. The guy who played my part on Broadway, a great actor named Tom Murphy, had been indelibly burned into my brain. How would I escape that shadow?
Somehow our director, Nagle Jackson, managed to steer me away from the rocks. He made everything seem 100% natural and unique to us. I quickly forgot that the play had ever been done anywhere else. We took that thing and ran with it.
Rumor had it that Martin McDonagh might be coming to see it, seeing as this would be the first time his play had been taken and played without him having a big hand in it. But that never materialized.
So in the space of a few short months I'd gone from a terrible play done for nothing and the worst audition perhaps in the history of auditions to fully inhabiting the sick and twisted world that Martin McDonagh created in the fields of Leenane.
Pauline Flanagan passed away in 2003 after a long bout with Cancer. She had a giant collection of giraffes that she'd gathered over the years. People would buy them for her on their trips. She was that kind of person.
At the close of the play I wrote the following small book of poetry inspired by the play and the performances I'd been lucky enough to witness.
I called it Pageantry and Savages.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Angel Wings (Fall: 1998)
I know I've been lucky in my theater life. There were a couple of sub-par shows at URI, shows that didn't pan out the way anyone would have liked. There was one short-lived disaster at Looking Glass Theater that got shut down almost immediately. But for the most part I went from one fantastic show to the next, culminating in my NYC debut in 'Tis Pity She's A Whore'.
The Bell Curve was about to even shit out in a hurry.
At the time, being cast in 'Angel Wings' seemed like a coup of sorts. It was a new play written by Murray Schisgal who'd won a Tony, co-written 'Tootsie', and still co-owned a production company with Dustin Hoffman. He was in his mid-seventies but had a new play ready to go.
For the past year I'd been studying with a fantastic acting teacher named Sam Schacht. He had taught my sister at the New School Actor's Studio program which James Lipton has brought to the world via the Bravo specials. Sam taught a private class and I signed up. His studio was affiliated with a theater company, The 42nd Street Workshop.
They did a cold reading series and fostered new playwrights. I began frequenting their Monday night gatherings and did many readings of both classics and new works. I'd turned down a role in a play they were doing that would eventually turn into the 'Finding Neverland' movie. I went to a rehearsal and realized that I'd be pretending to be eight years old, probably wearing knickers and talking in a cute little boy Cockney accent and fled the scene. When it made its way onto the big screen I had a little moment of regret but I figured they'd probably get a REAL eight year old English kid. Which they did.
But 'Angel Wings' came along and I auditioned for it anyway.
I thought this script was cute and had some funny moments. It was absurd and I liked that it just WENT for it. A wealthy businessman who has alienated his whole family dies and comes back as an ugly misshapen hunchback. He has to get everyone that he fucked over to love him in spite of his outward appearance, to make them love him for his soul or he will be damned eternally. Funny, right?
Well, it might have been. But this production was about as wrong-headed as any creative enterprise I've ever heard of.
First of all, Schisgal insisted that it was not a farce but that it was a romantic comedy. In spite of the fact that there wasn't really a romance at the center of it and that characters did absolutely absurd things for reasons that were never quite clear.
For example, I played the young son of this mogul. I am obsessed with insects. I wear safari clothing and carry a butterfly net with me at all times. I fall in love with the young French woman who my father was romancing. In the scenes that I have with her I begin to talk with a French ACCENT. Not actual French, but English with a French accent. Now, this makes NO sense on the surface of it. If I wanted to woo her I wouldn't speak in a way that might make her feel self-conscious. So why do I speak with a French accent? The only plausible way to play the scenes is that I am so smitten that I have gone a bit bonkers, that my sanity has crumbled a bit. But, no...Murray insisted that I was merely in love with her.
Now, I of course bucked at this direction. And, keep in mind that Murray was never on the scene. He merely told the director what he wanted and what we were supposed to do. He didn't seem to understand his own play.
This made rehearsals excruciating. The director was trying to dig deep into the words, as if this were some Arthur Miller satire, or a long lost Tennessee Williams dramedy. We did improvs that lasted upwards of thirty minutes with actors just rambling on, jerking off to each other and for each other. I would leave rehearsal fuming but somehow still thinking that I needed to do the play. If something like this happened today I wouldn't be back the next DAY.
We rehearsed FOREVER. The dread in my stomach just grew as we ground whatever comic life existed in the script beneath our boot heels. Pretty soon we were in the space and I was wearing my costume and it seemed as if my worst fears were being realized. I was dressed like a Boy Scout, speaking in a French accent for no apparent reason, and doing pratfalls that barely made literal sense.
The sinking feeling in my stomach grew as we approached opening. There was a comedy black hole taking shape on that stage and no audience would survive the gravitational murder of it.
Now, often times the natural insecurity of the actor combined with the stress of mounting a production will cause bouts of self doubt. Performance anxiety will invade but that will be lessened as you delve deeper into how/why you are executing the piece at hand.
That was not how 'Angel Wings' went down. The further we got into the process the greater the distance we created between us and any semblance of entertainment. Shows like this are not just BAD. There is something to be said for throwing a play up on its feet and falling down with it. But then there is a special kind of production that enters some sickly realm of achievement, an inverse of excitement, a dead spot.
The audience is minding their own business, going about their lives, when suddenly you turn out the house lights on them and they very quickly realize that they are in quicksand up to their noses and they can barely breathe.
I have never felt that kind of hostility from an audience. The silence was AGGRESSIVE. Within five minutes of the first line a blanket of stoicism was laid over the gathered assembly like a sheet over a corpse. They could not wait for it to be over. This was a fait accompli before I ever MADE MY ENTRANCE.
Once I did, things got worse because my character is the most farcical aspect of a play that had been drained of any sense of lightness or farce. So what should have been one more oddball in the oddball soup seemed like the desperate act of a street mime - "Oh, they don't like me in a box with my little beret and white face and leotard so I'm going to GO UP TO THEM AND MAKE THEM INTERACT WITH ME."
When you can hear an audience moving around in their seats you know there is trouble. If they are engaged they sit still. And if there is movement the laughter will mask it. But if you can hear trousers against wood, heels on floor, hands rubbing necks, you are DOOMED. And we were DOOMED.
I remember slogging through my scenes with the French girl, carrying my butterfly net, speaking in a faux French accent, tripping over the back of a couch and landing on my ass, all to angry silence. I wrote a song about it called "Pratfalls For Crickets".
I left the theater every night thinking that it wouldn't be such a bad thing if I didn't make it after all, that I might just hang up the spikes if this is what acting was all about. In the space of a few short weeks I'd gone from excitement at working with a Dustin Hoffman ally to contemplating retirement.
Somewhere in space a galaxy was snuffed out of existence by the comedic inertia we invoked.
The Bell Curve was about to even shit out in a hurry.
At the time, being cast in 'Angel Wings' seemed like a coup of sorts. It was a new play written by Murray Schisgal who'd won a Tony, co-written 'Tootsie', and still co-owned a production company with Dustin Hoffman. He was in his mid-seventies but had a new play ready to go.
For the past year I'd been studying with a fantastic acting teacher named Sam Schacht. He had taught my sister at the New School Actor's Studio program which James Lipton has brought to the world via the Bravo specials. Sam taught a private class and I signed up. His studio was affiliated with a theater company, The 42nd Street Workshop.
They did a cold reading series and fostered new playwrights. I began frequenting their Monday night gatherings and did many readings of both classics and new works. I'd turned down a role in a play they were doing that would eventually turn into the 'Finding Neverland' movie. I went to a rehearsal and realized that I'd be pretending to be eight years old, probably wearing knickers and talking in a cute little boy Cockney accent and fled the scene. When it made its way onto the big screen I had a little moment of regret but I figured they'd probably get a REAL eight year old English kid. Which they did.
But 'Angel Wings' came along and I auditioned for it anyway.
I thought this script was cute and had some funny moments. It was absurd and I liked that it just WENT for it. A wealthy businessman who has alienated his whole family dies and comes back as an ugly misshapen hunchback. He has to get everyone that he fucked over to love him in spite of his outward appearance, to make them love him for his soul or he will be damned eternally. Funny, right?
Well, it might have been. But this production was about as wrong-headed as any creative enterprise I've ever heard of.
First of all, Schisgal insisted that it was not a farce but that it was a romantic comedy. In spite of the fact that there wasn't really a romance at the center of it and that characters did absolutely absurd things for reasons that were never quite clear.
For example, I played the young son of this mogul. I am obsessed with insects. I wear safari clothing and carry a butterfly net with me at all times. I fall in love with the young French woman who my father was romancing. In the scenes that I have with her I begin to talk with a French ACCENT. Not actual French, but English with a French accent. Now, this makes NO sense on the surface of it. If I wanted to woo her I wouldn't speak in a way that might make her feel self-conscious. So why do I speak with a French accent? The only plausible way to play the scenes is that I am so smitten that I have gone a bit bonkers, that my sanity has crumbled a bit. But, no...Murray insisted that I was merely in love with her.
Now, I of course bucked at this direction. And, keep in mind that Murray was never on the scene. He merely told the director what he wanted and what we were supposed to do. He didn't seem to understand his own play.
This made rehearsals excruciating. The director was trying to dig deep into the words, as if this were some Arthur Miller satire, or a long lost Tennessee Williams dramedy. We did improvs that lasted upwards of thirty minutes with actors just rambling on, jerking off to each other and for each other. I would leave rehearsal fuming but somehow still thinking that I needed to do the play. If something like this happened today I wouldn't be back the next DAY.
We rehearsed FOREVER. The dread in my stomach just grew as we ground whatever comic life existed in the script beneath our boot heels. Pretty soon we were in the space and I was wearing my costume and it seemed as if my worst fears were being realized. I was dressed like a Boy Scout, speaking in a French accent for no apparent reason, and doing pratfalls that barely made literal sense.
The sinking feeling in my stomach grew as we approached opening. There was a comedy black hole taking shape on that stage and no audience would survive the gravitational murder of it.
Now, often times the natural insecurity of the actor combined with the stress of mounting a production will cause bouts of self doubt. Performance anxiety will invade but that will be lessened as you delve deeper into how/why you are executing the piece at hand.
That was not how 'Angel Wings' went down. The further we got into the process the greater the distance we created between us and any semblance of entertainment. Shows like this are not just BAD. There is something to be said for throwing a play up on its feet and falling down with it. But then there is a special kind of production that enters some sickly realm of achievement, an inverse of excitement, a dead spot.
The audience is minding their own business, going about their lives, when suddenly you turn out the house lights on them and they very quickly realize that they are in quicksand up to their noses and they can barely breathe.
I have never felt that kind of hostility from an audience. The silence was AGGRESSIVE. Within five minutes of the first line a blanket of stoicism was laid over the gathered assembly like a sheet over a corpse. They could not wait for it to be over. This was a fait accompli before I ever MADE MY ENTRANCE.
Once I did, things got worse because my character is the most farcical aspect of a play that had been drained of any sense of lightness or farce. So what should have been one more oddball in the oddball soup seemed like the desperate act of a street mime - "Oh, they don't like me in a box with my little beret and white face and leotard so I'm going to GO UP TO THEM AND MAKE THEM INTERACT WITH ME."
When you can hear an audience moving around in their seats you know there is trouble. If they are engaged they sit still. And if there is movement the laughter will mask it. But if you can hear trousers against wood, heels on floor, hands rubbing necks, you are DOOMED. And we were DOOMED.
I remember slogging through my scenes with the French girl, carrying my butterfly net, speaking in a faux French accent, tripping over the back of a couch and landing on my ass, all to angry silence. I wrote a song about it called "Pratfalls For Crickets".
I left the theater every night thinking that it wouldn't be such a bad thing if I didn't make it after all, that I might just hang up the spikes if this is what acting was all about. In the space of a few short weeks I'd gone from excitement at working with a Dustin Hoffman ally to contemplating retirement.
Somewhere in space a galaxy was snuffed out of existence by the comedic inertia we invoked.
Friday, May 14, 2010
'Tis Pity She's A Whore (Spring: 1997)
I left Rhode Island for New York in the winter of 1994. Over the next two years I would hustle auditions for student films (a few of which I booked and shot), I obsessively sent out head shots each week to every possible Back Stage notice (only one or two of which ever panned out into an actual call), and I worked a variety of day jobs to keep the stalled dream alive.
Compared to the constant stream of acting I'd done in the past six years in Rhode Island, things slowed to a veritable trickle.
Maria and I got married in August of 1996. We came back to the city and immediately began working together on the Urban Legends project. By this time I had a commercial agent and was freelancing with a theatrical one. I had booked an episode of "Law and Order" and shared a set with Benjamin Bratt and the late great Jerry Orbach. The day I found out I'd booked that job I booked a video for the band Live which you can watch here...
But I hadn't done a play since "True West" in the winter of '93. Almost four years earlier.
And then Frank Pisco asked me to do "Tis Pity She's A Whore" at Expanded Arts. Frank passed away too young a couple of years ago. We had a bit of a falling out which I will get to later but I always thought Frank was a great guy and quite a director. He had a brilliant idea for "Whore"...
He set the play in a bomb shelter in 1950's America. Nuclear paranoia and cultural repression force a kind of myopia on the denizens of the play.
The plot is as follows: Giovanni develops a growing sexual obsession with his sister Annabella. Upon hearing this confession, his priest implores him to turn his thoughts to God. But he cannot. Annabella is promised to be married to a powerful Senator. This impending cataclysm forces Giovanni's hand and he seduces his sister, almost but not quite against her will. She becomes pregnant which the Senator discovers on the eve of the wedding. Giovanni cannot bear to see his sister married and kills her, cutting her heart out. He is then pounced upon by the wedding party and killed himself.
The production was held in a storefront theater in lower Manhattan. The theater seated about twenty five people who sat in chairs lined up against either wall. The length of the space was about thirty feet and the width about twelve. The audience sat on either side of the rectangle and the action took place almost in their laps.
Frank also wanted the strange romantic music of the 40's to play a big part. On several occasions throughout the show actors sang along to standards of that era. I sang "Let's Fall In Love", not the one you think you know but a different song entirely, as Giovanni seduced Annabella, playing a romantic song and serenading her.
This love scene is still one of the more shocking things I've ever done as an actor. The scene was very sexy, the most explicit sexual scene I've ever done on any stage, but it took place literally inches from the audience. I stripped her down to a negligee while singing softly. Then I stood over her and stripped down myself, to a period appropriate pair of boxer shorts. Ford's scene ends with a declaration of love between the siblings but Frank rightfully took the sexual repression of the setting and exploded it by having the scene continue. We began kissing on the blanket I'd laid out for her and then crawled under the blanket to consummate the act.
The wonderful Siobhan Mahoney played my sister and we are friends to this day partially because of this strange theatrical gauntlet we had to traverse each night.
You could feel a dual response happen simultaneously. The scene was deliberately titillating. Sensuous. If you didn't know the context it would have been a steamy sex scene. But layered over that was this patina of disgust, a rejection of what was obviously happening. People DID NOT WANT US TO KISS. But they were turned on by it too. A great great moment.
The climax of the play involved me coming on stage carrying her bloody heart in my fist. We bought a pig heart and drenched it in fake blood. This was difficult for me. I don't know if you've ever held a real pig heart in your hand but I have and let me tell you, it isn't pleasant.
For the second time in the evening the audience was seriously challenged. It was obvious that this was not a prop. You didn't have to wonder whether that was tissue or man-made. It was clear. A collective retch rippled through the seats as they took in the fact that I'd killed her but also that I held the remnants of her life engine in my hand.
And Frank Pisco had envisioned all of this before we got started.
And now I'll explain the rift that occurred between Frank and myself, indeed between many members of the cast and myself as well.
I booked a Wendy's commercial. A national commercial. Which nowadays doesn't mean much but back then it could mean a lot of money. Later that year I booked a K-Mart commercial and made almost $20,000 on it in under a month. So this was not something I could turn down. It shot in Miami. I would have to miss a Sunday show in order to fly out to be in Miami on time.
Frank was livid. We didn't have an understudy. The show would have to be canceled for that night. I had my first taste of the balancing act that goes along with any kind of success. Frank kept accusing me of being unprofessional. I reminded him that I was making no money doing this show and that I'd already donated upwards of one hundred hours of rehearsal and performance. Maria and I were expecting a child by November of that year and there was simply no way I could refuse this job.
The cast was similarly angry. We had two shows to do before I headed out of town and the atmosphere was very grim. They were furious with me. On one level I understood but I also saw how this separated me from them. If any of them had booked a paying gig somewhere I'd have had no problem with them taking it. It is show BUSINESS. That is just how it goes. Free theater or paying job? I will take the paying job almost 99 times out of 100. That is why theaters have understudies.
But it took several years for the stain to wash away, for Frank to truly let his anger at me go. We were friends before that and not really friends afterward. In fact, on one night when Mike was in town later that year, Frank actually left a gathering at a bar because I arrived. So the feeling cut him deep.
I had no patience with this. As far as I was concerned I'd made the right choice for myself and my family.
The bitterness ebbed however and I saw him on several occasions before I moved from New York. We made peace with one another. Or, I should say he made peace with me. I never had a gripe with him.
We risked a lot on that production, all for a play written in 1633, and what I'll remember most is how we made the audience squirm in their seats, wishing we would stop doing what we were doing because it was BOTHERING THEM SO MUCH.
Compared to the constant stream of acting I'd done in the past six years in Rhode Island, things slowed to a veritable trickle.
Maria and I got married in August of 1996. We came back to the city and immediately began working together on the Urban Legends project. By this time I had a commercial agent and was freelancing with a theatrical one. I had booked an episode of "Law and Order" and shared a set with Benjamin Bratt and the late great Jerry Orbach. The day I found out I'd booked that job I booked a video for the band Live which you can watch here...
But I hadn't done a play since "True West" in the winter of '93. Almost four years earlier.
And then Frank Pisco asked me to do "Tis Pity She's A Whore" at Expanded Arts. Frank passed away too young a couple of years ago. We had a bit of a falling out which I will get to later but I always thought Frank was a great guy and quite a director. He had a brilliant idea for "Whore"...
He set the play in a bomb shelter in 1950's America. Nuclear paranoia and cultural repression force a kind of myopia on the denizens of the play.
The plot is as follows: Giovanni develops a growing sexual obsession with his sister Annabella. Upon hearing this confession, his priest implores him to turn his thoughts to God. But he cannot. Annabella is promised to be married to a powerful Senator. This impending cataclysm forces Giovanni's hand and he seduces his sister, almost but not quite against her will. She becomes pregnant which the Senator discovers on the eve of the wedding. Giovanni cannot bear to see his sister married and kills her, cutting her heart out. He is then pounced upon by the wedding party and killed himself.
The production was held in a storefront theater in lower Manhattan. The theater seated about twenty five people who sat in chairs lined up against either wall. The length of the space was about thirty feet and the width about twelve. The audience sat on either side of the rectangle and the action took place almost in their laps.
Frank also wanted the strange romantic music of the 40's to play a big part. On several occasions throughout the show actors sang along to standards of that era. I sang "Let's Fall In Love", not the one you think you know but a different song entirely, as Giovanni seduced Annabella, playing a romantic song and serenading her.
This love scene is still one of the more shocking things I've ever done as an actor. The scene was very sexy, the most explicit sexual scene I've ever done on any stage, but it took place literally inches from the audience. I stripped her down to a negligee while singing softly. Then I stood over her and stripped down myself, to a period appropriate pair of boxer shorts. Ford's scene ends with a declaration of love between the siblings but Frank rightfully took the sexual repression of the setting and exploded it by having the scene continue. We began kissing on the blanket I'd laid out for her and then crawled under the blanket to consummate the act.
The wonderful Siobhan Mahoney played my sister and we are friends to this day partially because of this strange theatrical gauntlet we had to traverse each night.
You could feel a dual response happen simultaneously. The scene was deliberately titillating. Sensuous. If you didn't know the context it would have been a steamy sex scene. But layered over that was this patina of disgust, a rejection of what was obviously happening. People DID NOT WANT US TO KISS. But they were turned on by it too. A great great moment.
The climax of the play involved me coming on stage carrying her bloody heart in my fist. We bought a pig heart and drenched it in fake blood. This was difficult for me. I don't know if you've ever held a real pig heart in your hand but I have and let me tell you, it isn't pleasant.
For the second time in the evening the audience was seriously challenged. It was obvious that this was not a prop. You didn't have to wonder whether that was tissue or man-made. It was clear. A collective retch rippled through the seats as they took in the fact that I'd killed her but also that I held the remnants of her life engine in my hand.
And Frank Pisco had envisioned all of this before we got started.
And now I'll explain the rift that occurred between Frank and myself, indeed between many members of the cast and myself as well.
I booked a Wendy's commercial. A national commercial. Which nowadays doesn't mean much but back then it could mean a lot of money. Later that year I booked a K-Mart commercial and made almost $20,000 on it in under a month. So this was not something I could turn down. It shot in Miami. I would have to miss a Sunday show in order to fly out to be in Miami on time.
Frank was livid. We didn't have an understudy. The show would have to be canceled for that night. I had my first taste of the balancing act that goes along with any kind of success. Frank kept accusing me of being unprofessional. I reminded him that I was making no money doing this show and that I'd already donated upwards of one hundred hours of rehearsal and performance. Maria and I were expecting a child by November of that year and there was simply no way I could refuse this job.
The cast was similarly angry. We had two shows to do before I headed out of town and the atmosphere was very grim. They were furious with me. On one level I understood but I also saw how this separated me from them. If any of them had booked a paying gig somewhere I'd have had no problem with them taking it. It is show BUSINESS. That is just how it goes. Free theater or paying job? I will take the paying job almost 99 times out of 100. That is why theaters have understudies.
But it took several years for the stain to wash away, for Frank to truly let his anger at me go. We were friends before that and not really friends afterward. In fact, on one night when Mike was in town later that year, Frank actually left a gathering at a bar because I arrived. So the feeling cut him deep.
I had no patience with this. As far as I was concerned I'd made the right choice for myself and my family.
The bitterness ebbed however and I saw him on several occasions before I moved from New York. We made peace with one another. Or, I should say he made peace with me. I never had a gripe with him.
We risked a lot on that production, all for a play written in 1633, and what I'll remember most is how we made the audience squirm in their seats, wishing we would stop doing what we were doing because it was BOTHERING THEM SO MUCH.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Looking Glass Shows (Fall, Winter, Spring: 1992-1993)
I ended my last post, as I am wont to do, with a dramatic exit line.
"I would never perform on stage in Rhode Island again."
And, as with most exit lines, it might be effective but that doesn't make it altogether true.
"True West" closed in January, if I recall correctly. And while I would never again rehearse and put up a play at night for grownups in Little Rhody, I was still doing two shows a day with Looking Glass Theater.
So before I make the fateful journey down I-95 and begin recounting my New York theater exploits I have to give a short precis of each of the magical shows we did in elementary schools all over New England.
But first, my audition two years earlier.
My friend Mitchell had been the third member of the troupe for a year but was moving to Chicago. He suggested that I take over for him. I thought this made it a done deal so I went to the audition much like I went to the "Camelot" one, full of what would turn out to be false confidence.
Diane Postoian put me through one of the more exhausting audition processes I've ever been through. And when I look back at what the job actually entailed, she was absolutely right to do so.
The offices of Looking Glass Theater were housed above a church in a leafy corner of the West Side of Providence. The space was filled with props from former shows, toys from the church day care and shelves and shelves of books. It feels like where the kids in the Peter Pan family might live.
We ran through a few scenes from some material they'd used in the past. We ran through a few scenes from a few of the shows they were currently running.
And then Diane said the words that can still shrink my testicles in any audition.
"Let's do some improv!"
Now, I know there are actors out there who just can't wait to be given permission to go off script. I am not one of them, especially in an audition situation. Part of this is a block that I've tried to approach over the years by facing it head on. I actually joined an improv company in Providence to get over my issue.
Part of the trouble is that when I go OFF, when I really go OFF, I tend to cross lines. My friends and family know this about me, which is why many of them are surprised when I say I don't really like improv. But I have, in the name of humor, ruffled so many feathers in my life that I can't really trust myself to play by the rules. I have made good friends cry. I've also said things which I thought were hilarious which offended just about everyone in earshot. I once had to leave a game of "Scruples" in college.
So part of my trepidation comes from a real sense of truth about my sense of humor and how utterly inappropriate it can get.
But part of it comes from a real love of STRUCTURE. To my way of thinking, the best art comes from forethought, from injecting spontaneity into craft. Do I think Sacha Baron Cohen is talented? Yes. Do I like the Borat movie? Not one bit. I think he was a thousand times more interesting in Talladega Nights. That's just me.
In any case, when Diane told me that the next phase of the process would be improv based I felt a giant lock close, shutting the door to my access. I started to sweat. And the cool job that I didn't know I really wanted started to slip away.
I don't even remember what she asked me to do, but she really needed to know whether I could think on my feet this way. The job entailed constant interactions with large groups of schoolkids, none of which would be scripted. Which I had no problem envisioning myself doing, but Diane didn't KNOW me, how could she KNOW that I'd be fine?
Anyway, the audition dragged on for what seemed like hours. I think that Diane was confused...why was the spark that she saw in my readings not present anymore? Why was this confident funny actor sweating bullets and stuttering?
Finally she asked me to ACT out a story from my childhood.
And I did, telling the infamous Case Of The Governor's Limo story.
By the end I was crouched on a tricycle pedaling madly, completely transported back to that day.
Diane later told me that this was the moment that sealed the deal for her. I wandered off into the Providence day EXHAUSTED.
I went into a whirlwind rehearsal process, learning the slate of shows that Looking Glass offered. There was a literacy show for younger kids that didn't really have a plot, it was more an interactive slide-show designed to get kids interested in books.
What I was most excited about was the production of "From The Mixed Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" in which I played Jamie, the resourceful younger brother of the heroine of the book. This book was a huge part of my childhood. I used to fantasize about doing just what the characters in the book do, run away and live in a museum!
There was a short lived production of "Strega Nona" that was shot down by Tommy Di Paola's lawyers. There was a disastrous adaptation of "The Search For Delicious" that was not directed by Diane and that we cast members eventually demanded be removed from the lineup. The schools were usually furious with us after that show, so bad was it. They were used to GREAT shows from Looking Glass and the response was akin to a patron who comes to their favorite restaurant every day and gets their usual only to find that it is DISGUSTING. The outrage is tripled because your expectations are so high.
In any case, my proudest memory from Looking Glass Theater is the show we created for Delta Dental on a State Grant. Taxpayer money put to good use! And I mean that.
Delta Dental had been given a big chunk of change to create a show that promoted taking good care of your teeth. We got the contract. They didn't know what they wanted. We came up with a show that ran for three or four years, long after I left.
And here is where the improv gene started to kick in in a different way. We had to create the show from scratch. The two actresses, Wendy and Christa, Diane and myself holed up above the church and started brainstorming and playing around. A few intense weeks later we had a show.
In it, Sweet Tooth is on trial for causing tooth decay. Wendy played Sweet Tooth as a Southern Belle in a Kentucky Derby hat. I played the lawyer prosecuting her for her terrible crime. But Christa played the kid who had to ultimately take responsibility for the health of her teeth, it wasn't Sweet Tooth's fault!
At least, that's how I remember it. I am probably getting some details wrong. The play was an absolute blast. The kids got to play teeth, they got to play germs, they got to play plaque, they got to be toothbrushes. The interactive aspect of the show was key.
I had a great line that I still remember to this day which ended with me browbeating Sweet Tooth about her "heinous sugar habit" which my Southern accent twisted into "HIGH-anus sugra habit". I loved that line.
But what I remember most about Looking Glass Theater is driving around Rhode Island in our van, carrying our show with us like we were on a cart pulled by a horse from town to town in the Middle Ages. We drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, talked about our lives and then turned right around and did shows at the drop of a hat.
I was going through a very difficult time and those relationships got me through it. So thanks, Diane, thanks for insisting that what I was offering wasn't quite enough, for sensing that I had more to give. And thanks to Wendy and Christa for putting up with my bullshit and pulling me through my own darkness.
"I would never perform on stage in Rhode Island again."
And, as with most exit lines, it might be effective but that doesn't make it altogether true.
"True West" closed in January, if I recall correctly. And while I would never again rehearse and put up a play at night for grownups in Little Rhody, I was still doing two shows a day with Looking Glass Theater.
So before I make the fateful journey down I-95 and begin recounting my New York theater exploits I have to give a short precis of each of the magical shows we did in elementary schools all over New England.
But first, my audition two years earlier.
My friend Mitchell had been the third member of the troupe for a year but was moving to Chicago. He suggested that I take over for him. I thought this made it a done deal so I went to the audition much like I went to the "Camelot" one, full of what would turn out to be false confidence.
Diane Postoian put me through one of the more exhausting audition processes I've ever been through. And when I look back at what the job actually entailed, she was absolutely right to do so.
The offices of Looking Glass Theater were housed above a church in a leafy corner of the West Side of Providence. The space was filled with props from former shows, toys from the church day care and shelves and shelves of books. It feels like where the kids in the Peter Pan family might live.
We ran through a few scenes from some material they'd used in the past. We ran through a few scenes from a few of the shows they were currently running.
And then Diane said the words that can still shrink my testicles in any audition.
"Let's do some improv!"
Now, I know there are actors out there who just can't wait to be given permission to go off script. I am not one of them, especially in an audition situation. Part of this is a block that I've tried to approach over the years by facing it head on. I actually joined an improv company in Providence to get over my issue.
Part of the trouble is that when I go OFF, when I really go OFF, I tend to cross lines. My friends and family know this about me, which is why many of them are surprised when I say I don't really like improv. But I have, in the name of humor, ruffled so many feathers in my life that I can't really trust myself to play by the rules. I have made good friends cry. I've also said things which I thought were hilarious which offended just about everyone in earshot. I once had to leave a game of "Scruples" in college.
So part of my trepidation comes from a real sense of truth about my sense of humor and how utterly inappropriate it can get.
But part of it comes from a real love of STRUCTURE. To my way of thinking, the best art comes from forethought, from injecting spontaneity into craft. Do I think Sacha Baron Cohen is talented? Yes. Do I like the Borat movie? Not one bit. I think he was a thousand times more interesting in Talladega Nights. That's just me.
In any case, when Diane told me that the next phase of the process would be improv based I felt a giant lock close, shutting the door to my access. I started to sweat. And the cool job that I didn't know I really wanted started to slip away.
I don't even remember what she asked me to do, but she really needed to know whether I could think on my feet this way. The job entailed constant interactions with large groups of schoolkids, none of which would be scripted. Which I had no problem envisioning myself doing, but Diane didn't KNOW me, how could she KNOW that I'd be fine?
Anyway, the audition dragged on for what seemed like hours. I think that Diane was confused...why was the spark that she saw in my readings not present anymore? Why was this confident funny actor sweating bullets and stuttering?
Finally she asked me to ACT out a story from my childhood.
And I did, telling the infamous Case Of The Governor's Limo story.
By the end I was crouched on a tricycle pedaling madly, completely transported back to that day.
Diane later told me that this was the moment that sealed the deal for her. I wandered off into the Providence day EXHAUSTED.
I went into a whirlwind rehearsal process, learning the slate of shows that Looking Glass offered. There was a literacy show for younger kids that didn't really have a plot, it was more an interactive slide-show designed to get kids interested in books.
What I was most excited about was the production of "From The Mixed Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" in which I played Jamie, the resourceful younger brother of the heroine of the book. This book was a huge part of my childhood. I used to fantasize about doing just what the characters in the book do, run away and live in a museum!
There was a short lived production of "Strega Nona" that was shot down by Tommy Di Paola's lawyers. There was a disastrous adaptation of "The Search For Delicious" that was not directed by Diane and that we cast members eventually demanded be removed from the lineup. The schools were usually furious with us after that show, so bad was it. They were used to GREAT shows from Looking Glass and the response was akin to a patron who comes to their favorite restaurant every day and gets their usual only to find that it is DISGUSTING. The outrage is tripled because your expectations are so high.
In any case, my proudest memory from Looking Glass Theater is the show we created for Delta Dental on a State Grant. Taxpayer money put to good use! And I mean that.
Delta Dental had been given a big chunk of change to create a show that promoted taking good care of your teeth. We got the contract. They didn't know what they wanted. We came up with a show that ran for three or four years, long after I left.
And here is where the improv gene started to kick in in a different way. We had to create the show from scratch. The two actresses, Wendy and Christa, Diane and myself holed up above the church and started brainstorming and playing around. A few intense weeks later we had a show.
In it, Sweet Tooth is on trial for causing tooth decay. Wendy played Sweet Tooth as a Southern Belle in a Kentucky Derby hat. I played the lawyer prosecuting her for her terrible crime. But Christa played the kid who had to ultimately take responsibility for the health of her teeth, it wasn't Sweet Tooth's fault!
At least, that's how I remember it. I am probably getting some details wrong. The play was an absolute blast. The kids got to play teeth, they got to play germs, they got to play plaque, they got to be toothbrushes. The interactive aspect of the show was key.
I had a great line that I still remember to this day which ended with me browbeating Sweet Tooth about her "heinous sugar habit" which my Southern accent twisted into "HIGH-anus sugra habit". I loved that line.
But what I remember most about Looking Glass Theater is driving around Rhode Island in our van, carrying our show with us like we were on a cart pulled by a horse from town to town in the Middle Ages. We drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, talked about our lives and then turned right around and did shows at the drop of a hat.
I was going through a very difficult time and those relationships got me through it. So thanks, Diane, thanks for insisting that what I was offering wasn't quite enough, for sensing that I had more to give. And thanks to Wendy and Christa for putting up with my bullshit and pulling me through my own darkness.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
True West (Winter: 1993)
My relationship with Maria was unraveling. My bass player had moved to Alaska, effectively folding the band. New York beckoned like a siren to a sailor who knew the legend. Sure I could listen to the voices but the rocks were littered with the carcasses of those foolish enough to risk the attraction. I was petrified, not in terms of fear, but fixed, fossilized prematurely.
Along came Sam Shepherd. A production of "True West" organized by the woman who'd done the choreography for "Kind Ness". She must have sensed my hair trigger mentality because she cast me as Lee, the desert drifter with a permanent chip on his shoulder as opposed to the repressed frustrated writer, Austin. Opposite me in that role she cast an excellent local actor named Chris Perrotti. A very interesting bit of opposite casting as Chris was much bigger than me. This made the intimidation factor at the center of the play very complex.
We began rehearsing. The actors playing our mother and Austin's agent respectively were weak but the play doesn't need all four to work. If you have the brothers down the thrust of the story happens no matter what.
Chris and I had a great working relationship. We enjoyed each other's company which is also crucial to the depth of the play. If there is only animosity the play is nothing but a cock fight.
The winter of 1993 was cold and wet. We put the play on out at Rhode Island College where I'd run the final race of my high school cross country career. I'd not been back on that campus since. The theater was a characterless auditorium, more like a high school events hall than a theater. But the set was excellent, designed and built by Bill Denise, and we managed to evoke the heat and desolation of a desert community in the middle of a New England winter.
I also recorded a couple of my songs to be used as sound cues. I clearly was over-identifying with the sunburnt brain-scape of Lee and I think it hastened my departure from my relationship and from my home state.
I would rub dirt all over myself to prepare. I didn't wash my costume between shows. I poured beer over my head (non-alcoholic, of course) and didn't shave.
It was a good show. The fight between the brothers that precedes the stand-off ending was brutal, and since the director was a choreographer she was great with the movement aspect of such a confrontation. I wound up with a phone cord wrapped around my neck bucking underneath my brother like a wolf caught in a trap.
The post show beer was always very sweet with this one as Chris and I continually needed to reconnect to keep the conflict at the center of the play from bleeding into our off stage interaction. We would give each other the tough guy side-hug and toast the other performance.
Lee is constantly haunted by the lure of the desert, by the purity of self-sufficiency and loneliness. No hassles, no people, no society, no nothing.
The parts of me that connected with that made for a very visceral play. But those parts also kept me on a path of self-destruction that I am just now coming to terms with. Unlike Lee I always tried to counteract those tendencies by embracing connection, by moving towards tenderness. But I thought I could have my cake and eat it too.
Don't kid yourself. That cake eats you, friends.
Within a few months after the close of this play, Maria and I broke up for the first time and I moved back home to save up money to move to New York. I would never perform onstage in Rhode Island again.
Along came Sam Shepherd. A production of "True West" organized by the woman who'd done the choreography for "Kind Ness". She must have sensed my hair trigger mentality because she cast me as Lee, the desert drifter with a permanent chip on his shoulder as opposed to the repressed frustrated writer, Austin. Opposite me in that role she cast an excellent local actor named Chris Perrotti. A very interesting bit of opposite casting as Chris was much bigger than me. This made the intimidation factor at the center of the play very complex.
We began rehearsing. The actors playing our mother and Austin's agent respectively were weak but the play doesn't need all four to work. If you have the brothers down the thrust of the story happens no matter what.
Chris and I had a great working relationship. We enjoyed each other's company which is also crucial to the depth of the play. If there is only animosity the play is nothing but a cock fight.
The winter of 1993 was cold and wet. We put the play on out at Rhode Island College where I'd run the final race of my high school cross country career. I'd not been back on that campus since. The theater was a characterless auditorium, more like a high school events hall than a theater. But the set was excellent, designed and built by Bill Denise, and we managed to evoke the heat and desolation of a desert community in the middle of a New England winter.
I also recorded a couple of my songs to be used as sound cues. I clearly was over-identifying with the sunburnt brain-scape of Lee and I think it hastened my departure from my relationship and from my home state.
I would rub dirt all over myself to prepare. I didn't wash my costume between shows. I poured beer over my head (non-alcoholic, of course) and didn't shave.
It was a good show. The fight between the brothers that precedes the stand-off ending was brutal, and since the director was a choreographer she was great with the movement aspect of such a confrontation. I wound up with a phone cord wrapped around my neck bucking underneath my brother like a wolf caught in a trap.
The post show beer was always very sweet with this one as Chris and I continually needed to reconnect to keep the conflict at the center of the play from bleeding into our off stage interaction. We would give each other the tough guy side-hug and toast the other performance.
Lee is constantly haunted by the lure of the desert, by the purity of self-sufficiency and loneliness. No hassles, no people, no society, no nothing.
The parts of me that connected with that made for a very visceral play. But those parts also kept me on a path of self-destruction that I am just now coming to terms with. Unlike Lee I always tried to counteract those tendencies by embracing connection, by moving towards tenderness. But I thought I could have my cake and eat it too.
Don't kid yourself. That cake eats you, friends.
Within a few months after the close of this play, Maria and I broke up for the first time and I moved back home to save up money to move to New York. I would never perform onstage in Rhode Island again.
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