As I watch my son negotiate the strange modern waters of technology and communication, I become more and more grateful for the atmosphere that surrounded me as I grew up. We X'ers are the last Americans to have wandered around, connected only to those who were physically present. It was rare that I spoke on the phone as a child, and when I did it was still attached to a wall. The cordless didn't make an appearance in my house until I was almost out of high school.
This is not better or worse than today's world, only different. My father, in describing what it was like to be a librarian at this particular moment in history, said, "I feel like a blacksmith in 1910."
Every generation feels that their childhood was vastly different than the one that follows. However, in examining the changes that have taken place between 1980 and 2010, I think it is safe to say that the gulf between the day-to-day life of a twelve year old today and the kind of life I led when I was the same age is a greater gulf than most thirty year periods would normally contain. For example, 1945 to 1975. Different, yes. Socially, culturally, economically. But technologically?
In 1945 you picked up the phone attached to your wall. In 1975 it might have been made of a different plastic but it was still attached to the wall. But 1980 to 2010? If you didn't know any better, you might assume we'd been invaded by aliens.
The most instant photo was a Polaroid and that was still a bulky inconvenience. Now a photo taken on a phone can be national news within twenty minutes.
I expound this way to set the scene.
As a kid, I spent my free time in very few ways. I played sports, either organized or in backyards, I listened to music and played with my sisters in our den, and I read. I read and read and read. Each week we would go to the library and check out as many books as we wanted. Everywhere else we were limited by my parents' natural sense of moderation. One candy. No extra soda at the restaurant. Very rarely in a restaurant period!
But books? Bring a wheelbarrow if you want.
And one of my favorite series of books concerned a young Middle American pre-teen named Alvin Fernald. The books I remember most are "Superweasel" in which Alvin creates a super-hero named Superweasel to combat pollution and proceeds to commit various acts of what comes down to eco-terrorism and "Alvin Fernald: Mayor For A Day" in which he wins a contest to serve as Mayor of his town and uncovers corruption while actually getting things done. All in one day.
I loved these books. I wanted to be Alvin Fernald. They were written by a man named Clifford B. Hicks.
I found a beat up copy of "Superweasel" at the used book store in our town and gave it to my son when he turned eight. He loved it as much as I did.
Now. In my entire collection of books, I have two autographed editions. One, "Superweasel" is addressed to me and "Alvin Fernald: Mayor For A Day" is addressed to Cashel, from Clifford B. Hicks.
The story of how I come to have these treasures is a treasure to me itself.
This past spring I was cast in Erik Patterson's new play "Sick" at the Los Angeles Theater Center. I was excited about this for a thousand reasons. I love Erik's writing but I also love Erik himself. Through Tuesdays At 9 and my sister's blog he seemed to be a satellite member of my family.
Aside from being an astonishing playwright, Erik is an accomplished screenwriter as well, focusing on tween movies. He and his writing partner did "Another Cinderella Story". IMDB him and see for yourself.
In any case, we were working on "Sick" and Erik was a wonderful presence in rehearsal, giving feedback whenever we needed it and ignoring one terrible idea I had which he will tell whenever he has a drink in him and wants to embarrass me.
I had just re-read "Superweasel" for some reason and I thought of Erik and his other career writing tween stories. I went to rehearsal and asked him if he knew of the character Alvin Fernald.
His head jerked and he said, "You mean by Clifford B. Hicks?"
Now, these books were popular but not Twilight level and they were popular in the 1970's which I described above. There was no instant knowledge. Everything was popular in a vacuum. Erik was the first person ever to know what I was talking about when I mentioned Alvin Fernald.
Erik's eyes bulged and he gushed, "I know Clifford B. Hicks! He's an old family friend...we used to visit them every July 4th! He's the reason I'm a writer! I wrote my first novel when I was ten and showed it to him!" I'm paraphrasing and Erik can correct me however he likes but that was the gist of the conversation.
Our minds were BLOWN by this mad coincidence. What were the odds? That we would have known each other going on five years...it is quite possible that we could have gone on being good friends for years upon years and NEVER discovered this connection.
We basically then jumped up and down reveling in the mystery of life before we had to settle down and get down to rehearsal. It was a beautiful moment.
Cut to a post performance moment at the LATC. "Sick" was a roaring success. Erik's mother was going to be in the audience. After the show we all gathered in the lobby to accept and give congratulations and bask in the aftermath of the play. Erik introduced me to his mother.
She had a package in her hand. I opened it to find the aforementioned autographed copies of "Superweasel" and "Alvin Fernald: Mayor For A Day".
Needless to say I was very touched. Moments like that are what it is all about as far as I am concerned.
Clifford B. Hicks passed away on September 29, 2010 at the age of 90. Here is his obituary from The Times Republican.
Even though I read those books before home computers, even though technology has advanced exponentially since then, the impact those stories had on me lasted a lifetime, my lifetime up to now. I passed them on to my son. And I hope he'll do the same.
Maybe things haven't changed that much after all.
Rest in peace, Clifford B. Hicks. Thanks for the books, both generally and specifically.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Sick (Spring: 2010)
Wow. A lifetime of plays and I've already reached the present. I just finished a run playing the role of Dr. Brown in the World Premiere of Erik Patterson's fantastic play "Sick" at the Los Angeles Theater Center.
Turns out that I would take the longest break between full productions ever in my life. Almost three and a half years passed between "Devotion" and the opening of "Sick".
Now, I kept as busy as I could during this time. Projects included a short spoof of movie review shows that I shot with Larry, several evenings of short plays from the Yo-Yo Theater company, several different evenings of sketch comedy through the infamous "Slap & Tickle" group and one offshoot of that "Saturn & Vine" in which Larry and I premiered our High-Talkin' Detectives in "The Finishers", and a lead role in a sweet sitcom pilot from the creator of Kate & Allie called "Little Women, Big Cars".
Plus I recorded and sold my song "Always Leaving Providence" to the Showtime series "Brotherhood" and recorded and released "Good Bye, New York" as a single on iTunes, accompanying that with an evening of songs about New York at the Bootleg Theater. Oh, yeah, and I performed in two evenings of music for charity, one using all Fugazi songs, one using all Pixies songs.
All this while parenting, dealing with the terrible illness and subsequent passing away of my wonderful father, and desperately trying to wrestle myself into some sort of acceptable shape, both physically and mentally.
Yikes. It has been a rough couple of years. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, got pneumonia and pleurisy, and discovered that I suffered from a chronic condition called "carotydina" which is an inflammation of the carotid artery.
I was rather overtaxed and did not feel like I could take on a full production.
That is, until Erik asked me to do "Sick".
I'd met Erik several years earlier at Tuesdays at 9, another creative outlet that I pursued fanatically in the intervening years. Naked Angels sponsors a cold reading series every Tuesday night at 9PM at St. Nick's Pub on 3rd St. near the Beverly Center. If you live in LA and haven't checked this out, I strongly urge you to do so.
Each week writers preview ten pages of whatever they are working on. Actors are handed the scripts almost at random before the night and then they read them cold. No rehearsal, no familiarization with the material, just instant show. There is also a musical guest each week that performs two songs. Which I also did a few times over the past couple of years.
This evening was my creative lifeline in the down time between all the aforementioned projects. It gave me the sense that I was pursuing my craft even if I had no professional proof of such. It was a weekly oasis of creativity in the desert of day jobs, mental struggle and financial worry.
Every time Erik showed up with material to be read something special would happen. His work is constantly surprising without being overtly so, deep without being ponderous, funny without resorting to shallow jokes and well-crafted without being predictable. Plus his subject matter varied wildly from piece to piece, something that I really responded to. I loved that you never knew what to expect.
But he never asked me to read for him! We were friendly enough, more so than I was with any of the other writers. He'd become a fan of my sister Sheila's blog so it always felt like he knew everything that was going on in my life!
In any case, Melody and I went to see a production of "He Asked For It" in West Hollywood. I'd seen excerpts of this play at Tuesdays and even so was not prepared for the emotional wallop he inflicted on us. There really was no part in it that I could have played but I joked with Erik afterward that he better put me in his next play, or at least let me do a reading of his stuff at Tuesdays.
Lo and behold, several months ago, Erik asked me to do a reading of "Sick" at the Los Angeles Theater Center. They'd chosen it to be a part of their season through Playwright's Arena. Playwright's Arena is dedicated to work written by Los Angeles writers that are set in Los Angeles as well. "Sick" fit that bill to a t.
The reading went well and Erik and the director Diane Rodriguez asked me to do the production. I felt as if the lag time between my last play and this one was worth it because I could unreservedly say that the play was worth it. I'd turned down other stuff over the years because of time commitments or laziness but in looking back I just must not have responded to the material. I wanted this part.
"Sick" tells the story of Pamela, a very young mom who is convinced she is dying. Her long suffering husband David has had it up to here with her delusions and has developed a crush on his sister-in-law, Carla. Carla is married to Pamela's brother Gary and she has just embarked on the 12-Step Program and kicked Gary out of the house in an effort to stay clean. Gary comes to stay with Pamela and David and their ten year old son Michael. I played Michael's pediatrician, Dr. Tim Brown.
I am not going to give too much of the plot away, seeing as this play has only been performed once in full production on the planet. Suffice it to say that Pamela's hypochondria sets in motion a series of events that threaten the family to its core.
Ironically enough I got really sick during rehearsal and was a veritable shell of myself for almost three of the five weeks of rehearsal that we had. But even this setback was something of an eye-opener for me. In the past I would have raged against this unfair development, why me? Why now? Why couldn't I catch a break when I needed it?
Instead I just hunkered down, conserved as much of my energy as I possibly could, and constantly reassured myself that I would be ready to go on opening night. And you know what? That's just what happened. I kicked the illness and caught up to the rest of the cast.
There were challenges as there are in any production. But overall it was one of the most relaxed enjoyable rehearsal periods I've ever encountered. Erik's play is so finely constructed that a lot of the work is done for you. All you have to do is say the words and everything unfolds.
I met some great new people, got to work with a playwright whose work I had admired from up close for over half a decade and performed a breast exam right on stage.
Could not ask for more.
Well, an agent would be nice but ten percent of nothing is nothing anyway. Who needs 'em?
Turns out that I would take the longest break between full productions ever in my life. Almost three and a half years passed between "Devotion" and the opening of "Sick".
Now, I kept as busy as I could during this time. Projects included a short spoof of movie review shows that I shot with Larry, several evenings of short plays from the Yo-Yo Theater company, several different evenings of sketch comedy through the infamous "Slap & Tickle" group and one offshoot of that "Saturn & Vine" in which Larry and I premiered our High-Talkin' Detectives in "The Finishers", and a lead role in a sweet sitcom pilot from the creator of Kate & Allie called "Little Women, Big Cars".
Plus I recorded and sold my song "Always Leaving Providence" to the Showtime series "Brotherhood" and recorded and released "Good Bye, New York" as a single on iTunes, accompanying that with an evening of songs about New York at the Bootleg Theater. Oh, yeah, and I performed in two evenings of music for charity, one using all Fugazi songs, one using all Pixies songs.
All this while parenting, dealing with the terrible illness and subsequent passing away of my wonderful father, and desperately trying to wrestle myself into some sort of acceptable shape, both physically and mentally.
Yikes. It has been a rough couple of years. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, got pneumonia and pleurisy, and discovered that I suffered from a chronic condition called "carotydina" which is an inflammation of the carotid artery.
I was rather overtaxed and did not feel like I could take on a full production.
That is, until Erik asked me to do "Sick".
I'd met Erik several years earlier at Tuesdays at 9, another creative outlet that I pursued fanatically in the intervening years. Naked Angels sponsors a cold reading series every Tuesday night at 9PM at St. Nick's Pub on 3rd St. near the Beverly Center. If you live in LA and haven't checked this out, I strongly urge you to do so.
Each week writers preview ten pages of whatever they are working on. Actors are handed the scripts almost at random before the night and then they read them cold. No rehearsal, no familiarization with the material, just instant show. There is also a musical guest each week that performs two songs. Which I also did a few times over the past couple of years.
This evening was my creative lifeline in the down time between all the aforementioned projects. It gave me the sense that I was pursuing my craft even if I had no professional proof of such. It was a weekly oasis of creativity in the desert of day jobs, mental struggle and financial worry.
Every time Erik showed up with material to be read something special would happen. His work is constantly surprising without being overtly so, deep without being ponderous, funny without resorting to shallow jokes and well-crafted without being predictable. Plus his subject matter varied wildly from piece to piece, something that I really responded to. I loved that you never knew what to expect.
But he never asked me to read for him! We were friendly enough, more so than I was with any of the other writers. He'd become a fan of my sister Sheila's blog so it always felt like he knew everything that was going on in my life!
In any case, Melody and I went to see a production of "He Asked For It" in West Hollywood. I'd seen excerpts of this play at Tuesdays and even so was not prepared for the emotional wallop he inflicted on us. There really was no part in it that I could have played but I joked with Erik afterward that he better put me in his next play, or at least let me do a reading of his stuff at Tuesdays.
Lo and behold, several months ago, Erik asked me to do a reading of "Sick" at the Los Angeles Theater Center. They'd chosen it to be a part of their season through Playwright's Arena. Playwright's Arena is dedicated to work written by Los Angeles writers that are set in Los Angeles as well. "Sick" fit that bill to a t.
The reading went well and Erik and the director Diane Rodriguez asked me to do the production. I felt as if the lag time between my last play and this one was worth it because I could unreservedly say that the play was worth it. I'd turned down other stuff over the years because of time commitments or laziness but in looking back I just must not have responded to the material. I wanted this part.
"Sick" tells the story of Pamela, a very young mom who is convinced she is dying. Her long suffering husband David has had it up to here with her delusions and has developed a crush on his sister-in-law, Carla. Carla is married to Pamela's brother Gary and she has just embarked on the 12-Step Program and kicked Gary out of the house in an effort to stay clean. Gary comes to stay with Pamela and David and their ten year old son Michael. I played Michael's pediatrician, Dr. Tim Brown.
I am not going to give too much of the plot away, seeing as this play has only been performed once in full production on the planet. Suffice it to say that Pamela's hypochondria sets in motion a series of events that threaten the family to its core.
Ironically enough I got really sick during rehearsal and was a veritable shell of myself for almost three of the five weeks of rehearsal that we had. But even this setback was something of an eye-opener for me. In the past I would have raged against this unfair development, why me? Why now? Why couldn't I catch a break when I needed it?
Instead I just hunkered down, conserved as much of my energy as I possibly could, and constantly reassured myself that I would be ready to go on opening night. And you know what? That's just what happened. I kicked the illness and caught up to the rest of the cast.
There were challenges as there are in any production. But overall it was one of the most relaxed enjoyable rehearsal periods I've ever encountered. Erik's play is so finely constructed that a lot of the work is done for you. All you have to do is say the words and everything unfolds.
I met some great new people, got to work with a playwright whose work I had admired from up close for over half a decade and performed a breast exam right on stage.
Could not ask for more.
Well, an agent would be nice but ten percent of nothing is nothing anyway. Who needs 'em?
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Diverting Devotion (Fall: 2006)
Larry Clarke had begun dating a very talented writer/actress, Fielding Edlow. They'd done a production of "Miss Julie" together and had fallen in love. She was looking around for another play to do when she read "Diverting Devotion" by Mike O'Malley.
This play is why Larry is in the O'Malley universe...he'd played Henry opposite my cousin Kerry in the inaugural production at the Irish Arts Center in New York City. Kerry's performance as the foul-mouthed elementary school teacher on a date with the Larry's shell-shocked Henry ranks extremely high on my all-time big-laugh scale. He was so good he made me forget I had desperately wanted to play the part. She was so good she may have deterred any audience members who were considering a career in education.
In any case, Fielding flipped over the play. They approached Mike, he decided to re-write it and re-publish it as a new, different version. Larry would direct, Fielding would play Janice. Mike suggested that Melody would be a good choice to play the part of Nicole.
At the time Melody still lived in New York City and we were doing the long-distance thing. As I've alluded to in the past, hindsight allows me to see the many ways in which I was unable to truly perceive my own deep-seated issues. I was in desperate need of anger management training, diligent therapy in pursuit of that goal and wholesale changes in my body life (i.e. quitting smoking, eating right, working out, etc.).
Not being able to take any steps towards any kind of health, I was continually lashing out at Melody. I kept it from the public at large (until an opening night diva fit, unfortunately) but my rage was eroding any chance Melody and I had of being happy.
In spite of her misgivings on these counts, Melody took the leap and quit her job in New York to come to LA to do the play.
Larry filled out the rest of the cast as follows. An old friend of his who I'd only briefly met before, Michael Hurley, would play Sully. Terry Maratos would take on Henry, the part that Larry had played in NY. Jen DeMartino would play the foul-mouthed teacher Nancy, and Dee Ann Newkirk would play Carol.
I would give you a plot summary but the truth is that I hope you read it, read the updated version that Mike published through Samuel French. I am very proud to have my name on it, to have played a part in helping Mike rewrite it.
I am not proud, however, of how I acted during the play. I have come to a place of self-forgiveness about it so I'm not even going to go into detail. Suffice it to say that the stress of a production forced what had remained secret and reserved for Melody out into the open. I yelled. I raged. I behaved very badly.
I am lucky to have friends and family who have deep capacity for forgiveness and understanding.
Now, all that aside, this play is like a joyride from hell. The inexorability of the heartbreak is excruciating. Mike peppers laughter throughout at such an astonishing rate that once things start to turn sour it is like a sucker punch.
The final trilogy of scenes play out like a microcosm of every love story gone awry. Much like when we did "Certainty" the audience comments weren't specifically about the performances or play but about THEMSELVES. As in, "Oh my god, I was PETE in college. I was dating this girl..." Or "I was CAROL! I freaked out on this guy I was dating and etc. etc."
There is something in the way Mike unfolds relationship trauma that is universal. You watch his plays and look at each character and think, "That was me. That is me."
Now that a few years have passed and I've been able to leave a lot of my self-destructive behavior behind, I am able to look fondly on this production. I can forgive myself for my faults which threatened to derail everything. Everyone poured their heart and souls into it and left everything they had on the stage.
It just goes to show you that you can reach an audience with a great play and a great cast even if the behind-the-scenes stuff is fraught with tension and strife. And you can even keep your girlfriend and friends after you act like a total jackass and yell at everyone on opening night.
How lucky am I???
This play is why Larry is in the O'Malley universe...he'd played Henry opposite my cousin Kerry in the inaugural production at the Irish Arts Center in New York City. Kerry's performance as the foul-mouthed elementary school teacher on a date with the Larry's shell-shocked Henry ranks extremely high on my all-time big-laugh scale. He was so good he made me forget I had desperately wanted to play the part. She was so good she may have deterred any audience members who were considering a career in education.
In any case, Fielding flipped over the play. They approached Mike, he decided to re-write it and re-publish it as a new, different version. Larry would direct, Fielding would play Janice. Mike suggested that Melody would be a good choice to play the part of Nicole.
At the time Melody still lived in New York City and we were doing the long-distance thing. As I've alluded to in the past, hindsight allows me to see the many ways in which I was unable to truly perceive my own deep-seated issues. I was in desperate need of anger management training, diligent therapy in pursuit of that goal and wholesale changes in my body life (i.e. quitting smoking, eating right, working out, etc.).
Not being able to take any steps towards any kind of health, I was continually lashing out at Melody. I kept it from the public at large (until an opening night diva fit, unfortunately) but my rage was eroding any chance Melody and I had of being happy.
In spite of her misgivings on these counts, Melody took the leap and quit her job in New York to come to LA to do the play.
Larry filled out the rest of the cast as follows. An old friend of his who I'd only briefly met before, Michael Hurley, would play Sully. Terry Maratos would take on Henry, the part that Larry had played in NY. Jen DeMartino would play the foul-mouthed teacher Nancy, and Dee Ann Newkirk would play Carol.
I would give you a plot summary but the truth is that I hope you read it, read the updated version that Mike published through Samuel French. I am very proud to have my name on it, to have played a part in helping Mike rewrite it.
I am not proud, however, of how I acted during the play. I have come to a place of self-forgiveness about it so I'm not even going to go into detail. Suffice it to say that the stress of a production forced what had remained secret and reserved for Melody out into the open. I yelled. I raged. I behaved very badly.
I am lucky to have friends and family who have deep capacity for forgiveness and understanding.
Now, all that aside, this play is like a joyride from hell. The inexorability of the heartbreak is excruciating. Mike peppers laughter throughout at such an astonishing rate that once things start to turn sour it is like a sucker punch.
The final trilogy of scenes play out like a microcosm of every love story gone awry. Much like when we did "Certainty" the audience comments weren't specifically about the performances or play but about THEMSELVES. As in, "Oh my god, I was PETE in college. I was dating this girl..." Or "I was CAROL! I freaked out on this guy I was dating and etc. etc."
There is something in the way Mike unfolds relationship trauma that is universal. You watch his plays and look at each character and think, "That was me. That is me."
Now that a few years have passed and I've been able to leave a lot of my self-destructive behavior behind, I am able to look fondly on this production. I can forgive myself for my faults which threatened to derail everything. Everyone poured their heart and souls into it and left everything they had on the stage.
It just goes to show you that you can reach an audience with a great play and a great cast even if the behind-the-scenes stuff is fraught with tension and strife. And you can even keep your girlfriend and friends after you act like a total jackass and yell at everyone on opening night.
How lucky am I???
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Glory Pie (Spring: 2006)
After "Bloody Corsets/Body Count" I hit a rough patch personally. I was still years away from any kind of real internal change or acceptance of what my true issues were. This hamstrung me in ways I couldn't perceive. The biggest stress was the fact that Cashel had moved first to Maine and then Texas. I was not handling the separation very well.
He'd visited a few times, even helping to hand out programs at "Bloody Corsets/Body Count". I'd visited him as well but we were both deeply affected by the distance between us. His arrival in the fall was a great help.
Somehow I was called to audition for a new play called "Glory Pie". This was one of those times when I instantly knew that the part was mine. I might not get it, but I knew it was mine. The audition went very well and my instinct was correct.
"Glory Pie" opens with a couple dealing with the news that they are pregnant. Guests are expected at any minute, her sister and brother-in-law who are just about to go to China to adopt a baby girl. They are taking this course because they have not been able to conceive. My wife fears that her sister will not take the news of our natural conception well.
Complicating matters is the unexpected arrival of our new next-door neighbors, an Aussie actor and his lingerie model girlfriend. They inject a party atmosphere into the evening that sets everyone off on a drinking spree. Tensions rise, tempers flare, and voila, hit show.
We opened at the Coronet Theater right near the Beverly Center. Eddie Izzard had just done a string of shows here, testing out new material and there was a feather boa draped over the window of the dressing room.
After having done a show with a whole group of friends, it was a real treat to meet and work with all new people. Well, all new but for the actress who played my wife, who I had met through my circle of friends.
We were not rushed, we had the co-authors directing, we had a crack production team behind the show. The Lawlers wrote the play partially based on their own experience adopting a little Chinese girl but they didn't rest on those laurels. The sibling rivalry was sharp, the new-Hollywood party couple was a sexy hoot and the whole design and execution of the show created a real party vibe.
The set felt like an ultra-modern retro Silverlake house decorated to look like a 1950's martini bar. There was a spontaneous dance sequence that interrupts the uneasy dinner that has, fueled by alcohol, funneled into a party. And the audience ate it up with a spoon.
My character flirts shamelessly with and ogles unabashedly the lingerie model. My wife is aggressively pursued in a light-hearted way by a new guest, the slick Aussie friend of the Aussie neighbor. And yet somehow, in spite of these obvious stabs at flirtatiousness, the writing manages to make it clear that these two are meant for each other.
Alyssa Stec played my wife and she was a bundle of dancer nerve and verve. Her tension builds until she takes center stage during the dance for a sexy ass-shaking solo which builds to a hip rattling climax. Alyssa was a Rockette in another life and nailed this moment, managing to ACT at the same time. A great performance.
Real life Aussie Tom Tate played the thick-as-a-brick heart-of-gold Aussie actor on the brink of stardom and Bree Turner effortlessly inhabited the hedonistic yet oddly innocent world of his lingerie model arm candy. All the baby talk gets to her and she deepens considerably over the course of the dinner. Her understudy was a wonderful actress named Parisa Fitz-Henley who brought her own wonderful flavor to bear in such a way that the play changed. Not for better or worse, but good change, like watching a sunset shift from deep red to purple-orange.
Dan Kinsella and Carla Capps were hilarious as the nervous couple about to fly to China to pick up a baby and bring her back here. This nervousness was palpable and crucial to the conflict at the center of the play. For while my wife and I have to face the arrival of a few growing cells, these two are about to pick up a living human being. Instant parenthood.
Finally, Darren Schnase and my friend Sean-Michael Bowles both played the Aussie latecomer who turns the party on a dime. This is a tricky part as he is a whirlwind, late to arrive, first to leave, he comes in and somehow by his very presence, unfolds all of the tensions that have been bubbling beneath the surface. All while remaining above the fray.
Packed appreciative houses, great reviews, out and out hit show.
Now, I would be remiss in telling this tale if I didn't write about the aftermath. The Lawlers filmed our performances to pitch the play as a TV pilot. The popularity of the show led them to seek to move the production to a larger house.
The money people wanted to do so but wanted to cast names. Which I get. My cousin and I had been joking about Mark Ruffalo replacing me in "Searching For Certainty" almost since the first reading. But The Lawlers asked us all to be understudies once the play moved. Which made me mad.
Now, I was mad all the time those days so I think my reaction would be quite different these days. Then I could only connect to the insult. Not the fact that they were caught in a difficult spot and were doing the best that they could. Now, I still think they should have just told us what was going down and thanked us for our help. I think relying on our knowledge of the play to give them a back-up plan is understandable but they probably should have just come up with other options.
But truth be told, what else were they gonna do? NOT ask us to be involved? That wouldn't feel right to them either. The second production never materialized, partially I assume because it is such an ensemble piece that no name big enough to draw houses would be interested. It really works on each actor, it is not a showcase piece for any one person.
What I care to focus on is the moment in the play when all the characters spontaneously erupt into a choreographed dance which whipped the audience into a frenzy. I always did love to dance.
And I kept Eddie Izzard's feather boa, too.
He'd visited a few times, even helping to hand out programs at "Bloody Corsets/Body Count". I'd visited him as well but we were both deeply affected by the distance between us. His arrival in the fall was a great help.
Somehow I was called to audition for a new play called "Glory Pie". This was one of those times when I instantly knew that the part was mine. I might not get it, but I knew it was mine. The audition went very well and my instinct was correct.
"Glory Pie" opens with a couple dealing with the news that they are pregnant. Guests are expected at any minute, her sister and brother-in-law who are just about to go to China to adopt a baby girl. They are taking this course because they have not been able to conceive. My wife fears that her sister will not take the news of our natural conception well.
Complicating matters is the unexpected arrival of our new next-door neighbors, an Aussie actor and his lingerie model girlfriend. They inject a party atmosphere into the evening that sets everyone off on a drinking spree. Tensions rise, tempers flare, and voila, hit show.
We opened at the Coronet Theater right near the Beverly Center. Eddie Izzard had just done a string of shows here, testing out new material and there was a feather boa draped over the window of the dressing room.
After having done a show with a whole group of friends, it was a real treat to meet and work with all new people. Well, all new but for the actress who played my wife, who I had met through my circle of friends.
We were not rushed, we had the co-authors directing, we had a crack production team behind the show. The Lawlers wrote the play partially based on their own experience adopting a little Chinese girl but they didn't rest on those laurels. The sibling rivalry was sharp, the new-Hollywood party couple was a sexy hoot and the whole design and execution of the show created a real party vibe.
The set felt like an ultra-modern retro Silverlake house decorated to look like a 1950's martini bar. There was a spontaneous dance sequence that interrupts the uneasy dinner that has, fueled by alcohol, funneled into a party. And the audience ate it up with a spoon.
My character flirts shamelessly with and ogles unabashedly the lingerie model. My wife is aggressively pursued in a light-hearted way by a new guest, the slick Aussie friend of the Aussie neighbor. And yet somehow, in spite of these obvious stabs at flirtatiousness, the writing manages to make it clear that these two are meant for each other.
Alyssa Stec played my wife and she was a bundle of dancer nerve and verve. Her tension builds until she takes center stage during the dance for a sexy ass-shaking solo which builds to a hip rattling climax. Alyssa was a Rockette in another life and nailed this moment, managing to ACT at the same time. A great performance.
Real life Aussie Tom Tate played the thick-as-a-brick heart-of-gold Aussie actor on the brink of stardom and Bree Turner effortlessly inhabited the hedonistic yet oddly innocent world of his lingerie model arm candy. All the baby talk gets to her and she deepens considerably over the course of the dinner. Her understudy was a wonderful actress named Parisa Fitz-Henley who brought her own wonderful flavor to bear in such a way that the play changed. Not for better or worse, but good change, like watching a sunset shift from deep red to purple-orange.
Dan Kinsella and Carla Capps were hilarious as the nervous couple about to fly to China to pick up a baby and bring her back here. This nervousness was palpable and crucial to the conflict at the center of the play. For while my wife and I have to face the arrival of a few growing cells, these two are about to pick up a living human being. Instant parenthood.
Finally, Darren Schnase and my friend Sean-Michael Bowles both played the Aussie latecomer who turns the party on a dime. This is a tricky part as he is a whirlwind, late to arrive, first to leave, he comes in and somehow by his very presence, unfolds all of the tensions that have been bubbling beneath the surface. All while remaining above the fray.
Packed appreciative houses, great reviews, out and out hit show.
Now, I would be remiss in telling this tale if I didn't write about the aftermath. The Lawlers filmed our performances to pitch the play as a TV pilot. The popularity of the show led them to seek to move the production to a larger house.
The money people wanted to do so but wanted to cast names. Which I get. My cousin and I had been joking about Mark Ruffalo replacing me in "Searching For Certainty" almost since the first reading. But The Lawlers asked us all to be understudies once the play moved. Which made me mad.
Now, I was mad all the time those days so I think my reaction would be quite different these days. Then I could only connect to the insult. Not the fact that they were caught in a difficult spot and were doing the best that they could. Now, I still think they should have just told us what was going down and thanked us for our help. I think relying on our knowledge of the play to give them a back-up plan is understandable but they probably should have just come up with other options.
But truth be told, what else were they gonna do? NOT ask us to be involved? That wouldn't feel right to them either. The second production never materialized, partially I assume because it is such an ensemble piece that no name big enough to draw houses would be interested. It really works on each actor, it is not a showcase piece for any one person.
What I care to focus on is the moment in the play when all the characters spontaneously erupt into a choreographed dance which whipped the audience into a frenzy. I always did love to dance.
And I kept Eddie Izzard's feather boa, too.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Bloody Corsets/Body Count (Spring: 2005)
One of the major offshoots that came about due to "Searching For Certainty" in Los Angeles was my new friendship with Larry Clarke. Now, I'd known Larry since 1996 when he originated the role of Henry in Mike's play "Diverting Devotion" in New York. We'd done all the readings of "Certainty" together and had also both fled a disastrous staged-reading we'd been roped into. But we were not friends.
"Certainty" changed all that. Larry had moved to LA a little bit earlier and he was determined to show me around town. He took me to the 101 Diner, he took me hiking in Runyon Canyon, he took me to the monstrous steps in Santa Monica. It was a little while into the rehearsal process that I realized: I had a new friend! I hadn't made a new friend the entire time I'd been in New York City for chrissakes.
The friendship deepened from there as I moved in with Larry and Jeff at the now infamous Rossmore Apartment complex. I slept in a nook between the living room and kitchen. It was in this apartment where Larry, in a fit of fevered creativity, wrote the bookend one-act plays "Bloody Corsets" and "Body Count".
He would stagger out of his room, sweaty and disheveled, clutching his laptop like it was a battered old notebook, and he would read aloud to me, doing all of the characters. These performances are burned onto my brain. I remember howling with laughter, clutching my stomach, telling him that he needed to STOP.
He was determined to mount a production immediately.
That apartment is where we rehearsed both plays. "Bloody Corsets" has four characters and "Body Count" nine.
Plot summaries of both plays are as follows:
"Bloody Corsets" is the title of a one-woman show that is being rehearsed in a black box theater. The director of the piece is married to the actress playing the main role. Their dynamic is the true story of the play, but we also get the play-within-a-play and the twisted nature of the theater company itself, which is basically this married couple and their sycophantic stage manager. The only outsider is the hired hand running the light and sound boards.
"Body Count" is the story of one disastrous night for a restaurant staff. In essence it is a war movie. A new staff member rubs everyone the wrong way as he tries to quickly assimilate himself into the deeply stratified levels of hierarchy and personality quirks that make up the pecking order in this high quality joint.
Back to back the two pieces lasted just over an hour.
I wound up playing the stage manager in the first piece by default. Larry and I were having a hard time figuring out how we could schedule full rehearsal for two casts at once. The only cast member who was not in both shows was the light/sound board operator in "Bloody Corsets". If I played the stage manager our rehearsal problem became much easier to manage. This wound up being quite a fortuitous shortcut because I have never had more fun than I did playing that brainwashed doormat.
We would all cram into our apartment and go to work. Talk about a labor of love. Larry would rewrite as he saw fit, solving problems as we went. He had very specific bits in mind for both shows...the comedy was quite often physical in nature and had to be choreographed to the limit. There were wine bottles being thrown, pratfalls, fake explosions (remember, it was a war movie!), glasses, plates and pepper grinders to be dealt with, and in the case of "Bloody Corsets", humor that came directly from ill timed light and sound cues.
These shows, while short, were extremely intricate.
But Larry literally had a flawless blueprint in his mind of how it all ought to go. We simply let him conduct us around the stage. His attention to detail, his determination to wring every ounce of humor and drama out of these stories was inspiring.
The audience reacted as if they were being tickled. It had a squirmy, "oh-my-god-if-you-don't-stop-that-i'm-going-to-pee-my-pants" feel to it. "Bloody Corsets" is a packed 15 minutes but somehow seems epic and insane. "Body Count" is about 45 or so and starts out casually enough but builds to a feverish climax much like a cliche ridden war movie.
No one made any money. In fact, everyone probably lost money on this thing, what with minor expenses. Larry most certainly did. He designed and built the set. He bought the costumes and props. He put together a program.
At the center of it all was Larry. These two plays hadn't existed just a few months earlier. Now they were whipping audiences into a frenzy. Thank god for new friends!
"Certainty" changed all that. Larry had moved to LA a little bit earlier and he was determined to show me around town. He took me to the 101 Diner, he took me hiking in Runyon Canyon, he took me to the monstrous steps in Santa Monica. It was a little while into the rehearsal process that I realized: I had a new friend! I hadn't made a new friend the entire time I'd been in New York City for chrissakes.
The friendship deepened from there as I moved in with Larry and Jeff at the now infamous Rossmore Apartment complex. I slept in a nook between the living room and kitchen. It was in this apartment where Larry, in a fit of fevered creativity, wrote the bookend one-act plays "Bloody Corsets" and "Body Count".
He would stagger out of his room, sweaty and disheveled, clutching his laptop like it was a battered old notebook, and he would read aloud to me, doing all of the characters. These performances are burned onto my brain. I remember howling with laughter, clutching my stomach, telling him that he needed to STOP.
He was determined to mount a production immediately.
That apartment is where we rehearsed both plays. "Bloody Corsets" has four characters and "Body Count" nine.
Plot summaries of both plays are as follows:
"Bloody Corsets" is the title of a one-woman show that is being rehearsed in a black box theater. The director of the piece is married to the actress playing the main role. Their dynamic is the true story of the play, but we also get the play-within-a-play and the twisted nature of the theater company itself, which is basically this married couple and their sycophantic stage manager. The only outsider is the hired hand running the light and sound boards.
"Body Count" is the story of one disastrous night for a restaurant staff. In essence it is a war movie. A new staff member rubs everyone the wrong way as he tries to quickly assimilate himself into the deeply stratified levels of hierarchy and personality quirks that make up the pecking order in this high quality joint.
Back to back the two pieces lasted just over an hour.
I wound up playing the stage manager in the first piece by default. Larry and I were having a hard time figuring out how we could schedule full rehearsal for two casts at once. The only cast member who was not in both shows was the light/sound board operator in "Bloody Corsets". If I played the stage manager our rehearsal problem became much easier to manage. This wound up being quite a fortuitous shortcut because I have never had more fun than I did playing that brainwashed doormat.
We would all cram into our apartment and go to work. Talk about a labor of love. Larry would rewrite as he saw fit, solving problems as we went. He had very specific bits in mind for both shows...the comedy was quite often physical in nature and had to be choreographed to the limit. There were wine bottles being thrown, pratfalls, fake explosions (remember, it was a war movie!), glasses, plates and pepper grinders to be dealt with, and in the case of "Bloody Corsets", humor that came directly from ill timed light and sound cues.
These shows, while short, were extremely intricate.
But Larry literally had a flawless blueprint in his mind of how it all ought to go. We simply let him conduct us around the stage. His attention to detail, his determination to wring every ounce of humor and drama out of these stories was inspiring.
The audience reacted as if they were being tickled. It had a squirmy, "oh-my-god-if-you-don't-stop-that-i'm-going-to-pee-my-pants" feel to it. "Bloody Corsets" is a packed 15 minutes but somehow seems epic and insane. "Body Count" is about 45 or so and starts out casually enough but builds to a feverish climax much like a cliche ridden war movie.
No one made any money. In fact, everyone probably lost money on this thing, what with minor expenses. Larry most certainly did. He designed and built the set. He bought the costumes and props. He put together a program.
At the center of it all was Larry. These two plays hadn't existed just a few months earlier. Now they were whipping audiences into a frenzy. Thank god for new friends!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Searching For Certainty (Spring 2000-Winter 2003/Spring 2010)
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?
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?
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.
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