First, if you haven't seen Our Town, you really should. It's very good. Probably one of the best shows I've ever been in. But don't take my word for it, come and see it. Seriously. I'm not joking or hyperbolizing, it's just good.
The first weekend was, I thought, all in all a success. Friday's night show was amazing, we had a big old packed house of receptive audience members who gave off such a great energy and were such a joy to perform for, that the show really sung. Saturday was trickier, it being the second show which can lead to a sort of weird energy sometimes when you come off the high of opening, coupled with the awful weather, and the subsequently much smaller crowd. Regardless the people who were that night said they really enjoyed it, I'm sure they weren't aware of the little trip ups we had along the way. Today's show again had a smaller crowd, but we hit the ground running and I thought it was equal to Friday's showing.
Now that the first weekend is out of the way... I can take a breath. For the moment, I can stop living and breathing Our Town all the time. I'm sure you know the feeling, you go into those final few runs pre tech, really putting the show together, polishing the final things to be polished before adding lights and sound. Then your in the space, on the stage, oh wait you have to make that entrance a few lines sooner, because the corridor is longer then how you blocked it. These steps are narrower then we expected, oh and they aren't completely built yet. Step into the light. Wait for the sound cue. Hold please, while I program this lighting cue. 12 hours later you go home. Come back the next night, do it for six hours, go home, come back, do that again. You really find everything there is to find in the role, in the space, in the moment with the lights and the sound and your fellow actors... it's exhilarating and exhausting. When you go into it ill prepared, unsure if the show will really come together and the problems can be fixed, it's terrifying. Comparatively, this was less of that then a lot of the tech experiences I've had, scrambling to make all the pieces fit together. And then, when opening night comes and everything clicks... what a fantastic feeling.
So that has been the past week for me. It's been maybe the most satisfying theatrical experience I've had to date, in terms of everything going fantastically technically, with a super group of people and most of all envisioning a goal for my own performance, and achieving it. A lot of that had to do with my director, Jason, who was a total joy to work with, and with my own advancement artistically as an actor.
But coming home from tonight's matinee, I take a breath. Six more performances to go... but until this Friday, I can think about something else! OK, this is me, doing that.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
BOOM, acting
I don't have a whole lot to blog about tonight. Except, tonight was the penultimate rehearsal of Our Town, and for my money I killed it. Part of what the director has been pushing us towards has been a super light, almost farcical tone for the first three quarters or so of the show, so that when it takes a serious turn at the end, the audience really feels the impact. This tonality is something the cast as a whole has struggled with, but that I found with my character early on, and spent the rest of the rehearsal process trying to harness throughout my scenes. At last night's rehearsal the play was especially down tempo, so our director really challenged us to make it "borderline Oscar Wilde" as we have in the past, and I especially embraced that challenge, I thought, and you know, really went for it.
Comedy is interesting. I think the best comedy comes when you are the most removed from your inhibitions, and completely in touch with your instincts. Admittedly, some of what I've struggled with in terms of really bringing my role to life has been my lines. I've known them for a while, but because we haven't had as much rehearsal as I'm used to, and it's in rehearsal that I really get familiar with a text, I've been a little iffy on them for much of the process. Leading into and then over the course of tech week, I would say I've gotten them to a really solid place, and having run everything in the space more then once, tonight I was able to take the director's challenge and really let loose. Comedy, like jazz, is all about space. You have to know how to let a moment breath. If your in a huge rush to fill it, then the audience won't appreciate the tension you are trying to create, and humor is a reaction to tension (or so goes my theory). It takes a lot of comfort and trust to make comedy really happen, you have to commit to your choices, commit to your spaces and commit to breathing. *In a yoda voice* Commitment! Specificity! These things will comedy make.
Anyway, tonight was I think the best work I've done in this role, and maybe some of my best work up to this point as an actor and I just wanted to capture that. It's going to be tough from here on out, not just trying to recapture the numerous discoveries I made tonight, but to try and build on them and make new ones. That challenge though is what I really appreciate about acting, and why I want to make this craft part of my life and my profession. I have tomorrow, and then nine performances to chase it, and I'm looking forward to the challenges and discoveries to come.
In short... BOOM, acting.
Comedy is interesting. I think the best comedy comes when you are the most removed from your inhibitions, and completely in touch with your instincts. Admittedly, some of what I've struggled with in terms of really bringing my role to life has been my lines. I've known them for a while, but because we haven't had as much rehearsal as I'm used to, and it's in rehearsal that I really get familiar with a text, I've been a little iffy on them for much of the process. Leading into and then over the course of tech week, I would say I've gotten them to a really solid place, and having run everything in the space more then once, tonight I was able to take the director's challenge and really let loose. Comedy, like jazz, is all about space. You have to know how to let a moment breath. If your in a huge rush to fill it, then the audience won't appreciate the tension you are trying to create, and humor is a reaction to tension (or so goes my theory). It takes a lot of comfort and trust to make comedy really happen, you have to commit to your choices, commit to your spaces and commit to breathing. *In a yoda voice* Commitment! Specificity! These things will comedy make.
Anyway, tonight was I think the best work I've done in this role, and maybe some of my best work up to this point as an actor and I just wanted to capture that. It's going to be tough from here on out, not just trying to recapture the numerous discoveries I made tonight, but to try and build on them and make new ones. That challenge though is what I really appreciate about acting, and why I want to make this craft part of my life and my profession. I have tomorrow, and then nine performances to chase it, and I'm looking forward to the challenges and discoveries to come.
In short... BOOM, acting.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Comedy
I saw the Divine Sister today at Speakeasy, it was funny! If you enjoy broad humor ala Mel Brooks, you'd probably like it. I started into it with hesitance, wondering it perhaps was too broad, but I ultimately gave myself over to it and enjoyed it. I had a few caveats, I get that it was a send up of 60s cinema, but the sheer number of varying plot threads including brief send up of the Da Vinci Code/60s spy movies and then this extended riff on Suddenly Last Summer(?) were a bit much, but those are textual issues. And I'm not really trying to write a review. Again, if you like Mel Brooks and fairly broad comedies (which the complaint I just made fits into the framework of, ala History of the World Part 1), check it out.
It was a pretty informative experience, and served as part of my overall effort to see more Boston theatre. It's not that I don't like going to plays, I'm just pretty lazy, and that shit's expensive. Luckily I have a source for comps that I've been taking advantage of which I hadn't previously, and when a performance time comes up that I can definitely make, I'm checking it out. This is also how I saw Collected Stories last week.
Anyway, I wouldn't call the humor in "The Divine Sister" subtle, but it was very capably delivered by the cast and I laughed a lot. Maybe my favorite moment of the show is when (my friend and teacher) Paula Plum's sexually repressed nun hears a charged remark from a cast member... and I'm not doing a very good job of describing this moment. Basically he goes into detail about his member, and Paula reacted in character, and even though it was a blatant penis joke it really worked for me. So, why? Well, Paula's delivery, specificity, her commitment to the bit, and the overall strength of her character and her choices.
These are things I've been thinking about, because The Divine Sister is the kind of over the top comedy that I hope to make my living acting in, and it was informative to be on the outside looking in on this kind of show, especially on a professional scale. I did a similar production of Steve Martin's The Underpants this past April, and this occasion seems like a good time to go into something that has reminded me of that experience...
You see, a week or two ago one of my cast mates stumbled across... a review. Personally, I thought it was a pretty good show, but this person did not. You know what, I'll just link to it and you can see for yourself. OK so it's not that they panned it, but they gave a fairly mixed review. Fair enough! Here's what they had to say about me in my role: "Versati was ... a lot. The character is a self-important, aggrandizing poet, and perhaps it was that type of character that I had so strong a reaction to, but Mike Handelman didn’t help me any. The character is hugely pompous and overblown with his own “poetic” conceits: I so understand the temptation to overplay. But Handelman seemed to channel some of the insane over-the-topness of (specifically) a Jack Black-ian persuasion. Handelman’s approach, although sometimes funny, battled the type of comedy written into the script, and usually ended up overshadowing and undermining the hilarity of the written jokes."
Better then no reaction at all, am I right? That's a rhetorical question. And although I take the comparison to Jack Black as sort of a compliment, and the reviewer admits that they were perhaps reacting more to the character in the text to my performance, I don't take their remarks too seriously. In the end any performance is a collaboration, and in my audition for the role I took the material in a very over the top direction, and the director must have responded to that because she had me continue with that throughout the production and I could have toned it down but that's not what the director wanted, and I thought it balanced out in the piece, and you can't please everybody.
Regardless, it makes me just a teensy bit... insecure. Not that I'm going to change what I'm doing, but it makes one think...
It was a pretty informative experience, and served as part of my overall effort to see more Boston theatre. It's not that I don't like going to plays, I'm just pretty lazy, and that shit's expensive. Luckily I have a source for comps that I've been taking advantage of which I hadn't previously, and when a performance time comes up that I can definitely make, I'm checking it out. This is also how I saw Collected Stories last week.
Anyway, I wouldn't call the humor in "The Divine Sister" subtle, but it was very capably delivered by the cast and I laughed a lot. Maybe my favorite moment of the show is when (my friend and teacher) Paula Plum's sexually repressed nun hears a charged remark from a cast member... and I'm not doing a very good job of describing this moment. Basically he goes into detail about his member, and Paula reacted in character, and even though it was a blatant penis joke it really worked for me. So, why? Well, Paula's delivery, specificity, her commitment to the bit, and the overall strength of her character and her choices.
These are things I've been thinking about, because The Divine Sister is the kind of over the top comedy that I hope to make my living acting in, and it was informative to be on the outside looking in on this kind of show, especially on a professional scale. I did a similar production of Steve Martin's The Underpants this past April, and this occasion seems like a good time to go into something that has reminded me of that experience...
You see, a week or two ago one of my cast mates stumbled across... a review. Personally, I thought it was a pretty good show, but this person did not. You know what, I'll just link to it and you can see for yourself. OK so it's not that they panned it, but they gave a fairly mixed review. Fair enough! Here's what they had to say about me in my role: "Versati was ... a lot. The character is a self-important, aggrandizing poet, and perhaps it was that type of character that I had so strong a reaction to, but Mike Handelman didn’t help me any. The character is hugely pompous and overblown with his own “poetic” conceits: I so understand the temptation to overplay. But Handelman seemed to channel some of the insane over-the-topness of (specifically) a Jack Black-ian persuasion. Handelman’s approach, although sometimes funny, battled the type of comedy written into the script, and usually ended up overshadowing and undermining the hilarity of the written jokes."
Better then no reaction at all, am I right? That's a rhetorical question. And although I take the comparison to Jack Black as sort of a compliment, and the reviewer admits that they were perhaps reacting more to the character in the text to my performance, I don't take their remarks too seriously. In the end any performance is a collaboration, and in my audition for the role I took the material in a very over the top direction, and the director must have responded to that because she had me continue with that throughout the production and I could have toned it down but that's not what the director wanted, and I thought it balanced out in the piece, and you can't please everybody.
Regardless, it makes me just a teensy bit... insecure. Not that I'm going to change what I'm doing, but it makes one think...
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Guilty Pleasure
If you aren't watching "Work of Art" on Bravo, maybe think about giving it a shot. It's basically Project Runway with visual artists, ta-da! And these days for me, it's what constitutes a guilty pleasure. Lately, television as a whole has taken on this weird duality of high minded art ( Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Community etc, these highly written shows in the style of The Sopranos or Larry Sanders or whatever) and utter trash which stimulates one's pleasure centers only in the most base ways possible... Bravo makes a whole line of these kinds of shows. This trend can be traced to the late 90s, The Sopranos and Survivor are I would argue the two most primal archetypes for the dominant forms of the TV landscape today. Work of Art almost sort of crosses them, if only in the sense that it's essentially a trashy, highly fabricated reality competition show in the vein of Project Runway, but it's about high art, or as one of the judges described it "a game show for artists". That's probably a little too high minded, and now that I think about it, the show really has nothing to do with the Soprano's... but it's entertaining regardless! Especially for someone like me, who has a limited stomach for guilty pleasure television unless there is some remote aspect of craft or information or SOMETHING other than people acting terribly to one another and crying. And Work of Art has the whole art angle as interpreted through a Project Runway/Top Chef lense, two shows I've enjoyed in the past. This season thus far though has been especially self aware, with the host China Chow addressing one of the artists in a cold monotone post judgement and being placed in the bottom "Are you crying because you aren't feeling well?" and then saying "feel better!" after she'd been eliminated. Shit, harsh, awesome. Also this season, the artist I am rooting for is named "The Sucklord" not just because his name is Sucklord and he makes art about action figures, but he's just a great reality show personality, full of snark and enough self awareness of everything to make the experience palatable, playing along but not blowing the whole thing off. I don't really have that much to add about this show. If you like Project Runway you'd probably enjoy it, although I haven't watched that other program since... season 4? The one where Christian Serrano won at the end. Anyway, check it out. I think my thesis about the Sopranos/Survivor dichotomy is a good one... and one that I came up with in the process of writing this post! Some cultural studies major should expand on it. If they haven't already. Probably they have. Ah well, originality is overrated.
Monday, October 17, 2011
The Weight (aka the actor's journey)
I have begun the next phase of "the next phase" (a phase within a phase, a prelude to phases yet to come) of my acting career: dieting. Since I last spoke about it in my blog in the bodies in space entry, yes I've been going to the gym with increased frequency, three to four times per week for the past month maybe? In the meantime though, beginning with when I was working on R&G Are Dead, my eating habits have progressively been getting worse. I would say they had been worse, got better when I started living with my girlfriend and got back into the habit of cooking at home and eating vegetables instead of burritos from Felipe's for multiple meals of the day, but at some point I started eating a lot more junk food. Specifically processed sugar, cookies and mountain dew and all those other kinds of shit, which I used to not really do so much. I mean sure I'd have a scone a week or something from a coffee shop, or the occasional sugary drink or snack but I found myself indulging all the time and not stopping myself. It had to do with the brownies my girlfriend made me for my birthday, which I ate most of cause that's maybe my favorite desert and then from there things went downhill.
Then, the other day, I weighed myself... "oh I've been going to the gym, maybe I lost a few pounds", but then let's just say I wasn't happy with the result. Mind you I don't have a good recent basis of comparison, and actually I think my weight is where it was the last time I took it like six months ago, but still, like many Americans stepping off the scale I committed myself to taking action... but will I succeed where so many routinely fail?
A little about my history, I was a heavy kid. It weighed upon me, growing up, especially in the second grade when it first became a subject of ridicule from a certain 2nd grader in my new school, it had it's first real impact on my self esteem. But I grew taller, and my weight stayed the same, that old story, and I did thin out somewhat, more or less to the state you see me in today with some fluctuation.
And the name of this post is the actor's journey (besides the reference to the song by The Band, that's what that is) and this is something professional actors deal with, it's part of the job to look a certain way. Now, I'm a character actor, my weight is much less relevant to casting people then in the case of someone who was more of a "leading man" type, but this is going to be a life long journey and I don't want my physical type to affect my potential success, I'd like to look... well, good. And then feel good. And do good work. And have a good career. And not get diabetes, which runs in my family.
As to the nuts and bolts of this process, I'm still figuring that out. My strategy is just to eat less. Today, before going to the gym which I will do after I press "publish", I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my coffee, no added sugar or salt in any of the ingredients, so that's good, and I put it on one piece of bread folded in half instead of two. BOOM less calories. It's a start, onward from there.
Then, the other day, I weighed myself... "oh I've been going to the gym, maybe I lost a few pounds", but then let's just say I wasn't happy with the result. Mind you I don't have a good recent basis of comparison, and actually I think my weight is where it was the last time I took it like six months ago, but still, like many Americans stepping off the scale I committed myself to taking action... but will I succeed where so many routinely fail?
A little about my history, I was a heavy kid. It weighed upon me, growing up, especially in the second grade when it first became a subject of ridicule from a certain 2nd grader in my new school, it had it's first real impact on my self esteem. But I grew taller, and my weight stayed the same, that old story, and I did thin out somewhat, more or less to the state you see me in today with some fluctuation.
And the name of this post is the actor's journey (besides the reference to the song by The Band, that's what that is) and this is something professional actors deal with, it's part of the job to look a certain way. Now, I'm a character actor, my weight is much less relevant to casting people then in the case of someone who was more of a "leading man" type, but this is going to be a life long journey and I don't want my physical type to affect my potential success, I'd like to look... well, good. And then feel good. And do good work. And have a good career. And not get diabetes, which runs in my family.
As to the nuts and bolts of this process, I'm still figuring that out. My strategy is just to eat less. Today, before going to the gym which I will do after I press "publish", I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my coffee, no added sugar or salt in any of the ingredients, so that's good, and I put it on one piece of bread folded in half instead of two. BOOM less calories. It's a start, onward from there.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Boring Weekend
Well, by most people's standards, that was a pretty boring weekend. By my own standard, it was totally par for the course of my life at this moment, and I don't particularly mind it. Yesterday, I hung out with my girlfriend and went to the gym, tonight I was in rehearsal in Hyde Park until 10:30 or so, then came home and ate dinner. I know, I am the rock and roll lifestyle personified.
One thing I did that was interesting this past week, was go to see Collective Stories. And then, I had lunch afterwards with one of it's stars, Bobbie Steinbach! By coincidence! A few weeks, maybe a month or so ago, another actor associate of mine invited me to participate in an informal reading of a new work a writer he knew was working in, which needed a male 20 something supporting character, and the other actor involved other than the two of us was Bobbie Steinbach, who hosted the event at her home. This was in a way, a lesson unto itself in "making it" on several levels. My associate, or let's just call him my friend, I knew from a workshop I did and subsequently a class we were in together. Another associate/friend of mine needed to cast a role in a show, which this person would have been a good fit for, so I got the two of them in touch. As it happened, he had a conflict with the production dates, and didn't go out for it. But I have no doubt that this lead in part to him contacting me about this other opportunity, which was a chance to meet some new people, a writer (who are some of the best people to know and work with, because if you attach your voice to the voice of a character early in it's development, oftentimes it will develop towards you and you might end up playing the part, as I likely will if this piece ever goes up) and a well known actor, Bobbie, who I respected. I then see Bobbie in Collected Stories this past Thursday, which was very good and you should see it if you get the chance. I really came away with no major criticisms. Overall it was a very satisfactory production, entertaining, engaging, thought provoking, and worth seeing. Afterwards, having time to cool and feeling hungry, I went to a eatery near the Arsenal but not in the main complex that my friend turned me onto when we working in the space this past May, and as I was finishing my sandwich, I saw Bobbie and she invited me to sit and have lunch with her and her husband, it was a lovely time.
All of which came out of being out in the world, and when I saw an opportunity that applied to someone I knew, I shared it. You know, it's a tricky dynamic. On the one hand, acting is so competitive, and it can be very "dog eat dog". If it had been something I thought I would be a good fit for, and I knew someone who also could be up for it, I might not have mentioned it especially if I wasn't especially close to the person in question, which in the case of my friend in the scenario above I'm not. On the other hand, you can't really "make it" completely on your own, you have to get help from other people somewhere along the line, and people are more likely to give help to someone who has helped them in some way prior to that moment.
It's tough knowing when to help out, and when to hold back. Granted, helping anybody out has yet to hinder me in career, and when someone I know is successful I'm always happy for them. I'm also really not in a place to hold resentments of anyone else's success, seeing as I've been getting plenty of opportunities and oh yeah I was in a movie with Brandon Routh that's coming out this Spring, so I think I'll be OK for the foreseeable future. I think I mentioned in this blog though, how in the audition for Crooked Arrows I declined to share the new sides I'd printed out and brought with me with a fellow actor also auditioning for the part. I don't know if it made a difference, but the director did say to me during shooting "Michael, the reason you got the part in this film is because you were the only one to audition who was really prepared" so go figure. And you know what? I was prepared. I printed those sides, I learned them, I did my homework. Maybe I was also lucky that the casting agency called and told me there would be new sides on the website, it doesn't matter. What does is that I got the part in that case. And that one was sheer circumstance, nothing to do with anything I done for anybody prior to that. But the next one could be.
So today's lesson, always be on the lookout, for yourself and for ways to help other people out because karma can be your friend.
Whew! I was going to talk about the other stuff that happened this week, but that was a much more interesting post. Let's leave it at that.
One thing I did that was interesting this past week, was go to see Collective Stories. And then, I had lunch afterwards with one of it's stars, Bobbie Steinbach! By coincidence! A few weeks, maybe a month or so ago, another actor associate of mine invited me to participate in an informal reading of a new work a writer he knew was working in, which needed a male 20 something supporting character, and the other actor involved other than the two of us was Bobbie Steinbach, who hosted the event at her home. This was in a way, a lesson unto itself in "making it" on several levels. My associate, or let's just call him my friend, I knew from a workshop I did and subsequently a class we were in together. Another associate/friend of mine needed to cast a role in a show, which this person would have been a good fit for, so I got the two of them in touch. As it happened, he had a conflict with the production dates, and didn't go out for it. But I have no doubt that this lead in part to him contacting me about this other opportunity, which was a chance to meet some new people, a writer (who are some of the best people to know and work with, because if you attach your voice to the voice of a character early in it's development, oftentimes it will develop towards you and you might end up playing the part, as I likely will if this piece ever goes up) and a well known actor, Bobbie, who I respected. I then see Bobbie in Collected Stories this past Thursday, which was very good and you should see it if you get the chance. I really came away with no major criticisms. Overall it was a very satisfactory production, entertaining, engaging, thought provoking, and worth seeing. Afterwards, having time to cool and feeling hungry, I went to a eatery near the Arsenal but not in the main complex that my friend turned me onto when we working in the space this past May, and as I was finishing my sandwich, I saw Bobbie and she invited me to sit and have lunch with her and her husband, it was a lovely time.
All of which came out of being out in the world, and when I saw an opportunity that applied to someone I knew, I shared it. You know, it's a tricky dynamic. On the one hand, acting is so competitive, and it can be very "dog eat dog". If it had been something I thought I would be a good fit for, and I knew someone who also could be up for it, I might not have mentioned it especially if I wasn't especially close to the person in question, which in the case of my friend in the scenario above I'm not. On the other hand, you can't really "make it" completely on your own, you have to get help from other people somewhere along the line, and people are more likely to give help to someone who has helped them in some way prior to that moment.
It's tough knowing when to help out, and when to hold back. Granted, helping anybody out has yet to hinder me in career, and when someone I know is successful I'm always happy for them. I'm also really not in a place to hold resentments of anyone else's success, seeing as I've been getting plenty of opportunities and oh yeah I was in a movie with Brandon Routh that's coming out this Spring, so I think I'll be OK for the foreseeable future. I think I mentioned in this blog though, how in the audition for Crooked Arrows I declined to share the new sides I'd printed out and brought with me with a fellow actor also auditioning for the part. I don't know if it made a difference, but the director did say to me during shooting "Michael, the reason you got the part in this film is because you were the only one to audition who was really prepared" so go figure. And you know what? I was prepared. I printed those sides, I learned them, I did my homework. Maybe I was also lucky that the casting agency called and told me there would be new sides on the website, it doesn't matter. What does is that I got the part in that case. And that one was sheer circumstance, nothing to do with anything I done for anybody prior to that. But the next one could be.
So today's lesson, always be on the lookout, for yourself and for ways to help other people out because karma can be your friend.
Whew! I was going to talk about the other stuff that happened this week, but that was a much more interesting post. Let's leave it at that.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Standing Up to the third power
Tonight was my third attempt at stand up...
I'd like to write "and it was fantastic!" or "it was so gratifying!" or "I can't wait to do it again!" and I feel guilty because of all the nice encouragement I got when I posted I was going up tonight on Facebook, but... it was sorta "meh". I think I was the most comfortable I've been on stage as a stand up yet, out of my three times doing it, and hey that is progress. But I had an epiphany, starting out, to get your five minutes on stage at an open mic, you need to be committed to being in a room for at least, say two hours, in this case a rather loud room, watching person after person not really get any laughs before eventually getting up for your five minutes. To make matters worse for me tonight, after being told I would be going up shortly, the comic who I had been told would call me up called the person I was supposed to call up and then that person called someone else up, and so forth until I went and spoke to the guy organizing the event and he was very apologetic and diplomatic that a mistake had taken place. And you know, shit happens, it's fine, but it really killed any lingering excitement I had about reciting what I'd written in my notebook and had been preparing mentally for the past two hours. Appropriate to the hour (it was just after midnight) the crowd was pretty sleepy. My first few volleys went OK, but I pretty quickly lost momentum and I felt the crowd more or less tune out. I had hoped to take my buddy Chris Anton's advice and work in my "pseudo angry" character that I would do backstage, but I was so not into it at that point and so low energy, it wasn't really going to happen. I did sort of an imitation of it, and referenced said imitation, and that got kind of a laugh and sort of propelled me into my Hamlet bit. I should consider it an accomplishment that I held their attention for as long as I did, and with a fairly high brow joke about the presence of the Oedipus complex in Hamlet (high brow that is for an incest joke, HEY-OH!) but at the end of my five minutes... I just wasn't feeling it.
And I'm sorry to say it, but I feel like that's my relationship at this point to stand up in general. Granted this is only after going up three times at the same fairly difficult open mic night, but I just don't get the same joy that I do out of acting or improv, I don't really think it's a thing that justifies the amount of time and effort required for me to do just five minutes. I know some people really love it... but I just don't seem to. Maybe when I'm able to get there earlier in the night and subsequently go up before midnight, I'll try it again, but that probably won't be for a while. If I do
I'd like to write "and it was fantastic!" or "it was so gratifying!" or "I can't wait to do it again!" and I feel guilty because of all the nice encouragement I got when I posted I was going up tonight on Facebook, but... it was sorta "meh". I think I was the most comfortable I've been on stage as a stand up yet, out of my three times doing it, and hey that is progress. But I had an epiphany, starting out, to get your five minutes on stage at an open mic, you need to be committed to being in a room for at least, say two hours, in this case a rather loud room, watching person after person not really get any laughs before eventually getting up for your five minutes. To make matters worse for me tonight, after being told I would be going up shortly, the comic who I had been told would call me up called the person I was supposed to call up and then that person called someone else up, and so forth until I went and spoke to the guy organizing the event and he was very apologetic and diplomatic that a mistake had taken place. And you know, shit happens, it's fine, but it really killed any lingering excitement I had about reciting what I'd written in my notebook and had been preparing mentally for the past two hours. Appropriate to the hour (it was just after midnight) the crowd was pretty sleepy. My first few volleys went OK, but I pretty quickly lost momentum and I felt the crowd more or less tune out. I had hoped to take my buddy Chris Anton's advice and work in my "pseudo angry" character that I would do backstage, but I was so not into it at that point and so low energy, it wasn't really going to happen. I did sort of an imitation of it, and referenced said imitation, and that got kind of a laugh and sort of propelled me into my Hamlet bit. I should consider it an accomplishment that I held their attention for as long as I did, and with a fairly high brow joke about the presence of the Oedipus complex in Hamlet (high brow that is for an incest joke, HEY-OH!) but at the end of my five minutes... I just wasn't feeling it.
And I'm sorry to say it, but I feel like that's my relationship at this point to stand up in general. Granted this is only after going up three times at the same fairly difficult open mic night, but I just don't get the same joy that I do out of acting or improv, I don't really think it's a thing that justifies the amount of time and effort required for me to do just five minutes. I know some people really love it... but I just don't seem to. Maybe when I'm able to get there earlier in the night and subsequently go up before midnight, I'll try it again, but that probably won't be for a while. If I do
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Discovery
I've made some fun discoveries over the course of the past few rehearsals for Our Town. At first, when presented with the challenge of playing Mr. Webb, one of the play's two father figures to the couple central to the play's story, I thought of playing my own father. As is often the case however, changes happen, and with plans evaporate or morph. With the encouragement of the director, and through my own engagement and sense of play with the text, I've found Mr. Webb to be much closer to myself then I initially thought, but a different side of myself then I usually end up playing. I find it easy to inhabit the comedic "Woody Allen" archetype or a variation on that form for many of my roles, it's a template I return to frequently because I know how to do it and it works, and it reflects an aspect of my self which I can magnify appropriately for a role. That isn't the rhythm I'm finding for Mr. Webb though, who throughout the play finds himself in the position of "winging it", and with some hesitation but not so much as to be crippling, tackles the issue at hand and finds a solution with humor and bravado. Sounds like someone I know... that would be myself, but a more mature version of myself, who has experiences to draw on and knows how to handle situations and find answers to questions. Mr. Webb is in his own way, a take charge kind of guy. He has an easy going but confident manner, he stands up straight, he tells it like he sees it, but again does all this with his own charm and humor. I find myself really liking the guy, and rather then drawing on a comic stereotype of myself as a kid or variation on a man child, I'm playing an idealized version of my adult self, who doesn't always have the answer but when he doesn't is able to find a reasonable compromise.
My director has been extremely helpful in this process, and I've been having a great time. He's more of an outside in kind of guy (I wonder if that has to do with his design background, oh yeah probably), and in this production is interested in using different levels of stylization to achieve the best story possible. He has an awareness of theatre as a heightened reality but which is constantly grounded in the experience of the audience, taking in the play. The style of the play is a naturalism which appreciates it's own status as a style and acknowledges that it is not set in the present, and allows the characters to represent people from the past. I could go on trying to describe the aesthetic and the slight Brechtian elements (no stop don't be turned off it's nothing bad or crazy just slightly deconstructed), but I'll hold off for now.
Regardless, I'm having a good time and it will be a production worth seeing of a play not commonly done well. In other news, Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead came to a close, and I am left with mixed feelings. Certain aspects of the production could have been executed better. Rather then go into detail, I'll allow that anyone reading this from the show knows what I'm talking about, and I'm not blaming anybody just stating a fact. At the end of the day, for me as an artist, I didn't leave the theatre being all that satisfied with having done something worthwhile, and I mean that in the most selfish possible sense. I, the actor, was at no point in the spotlight in any substantial way or contributed to the production in a way that made a difference to the rest of the piece, and that was a little frustrating, putting the hours commuting, rehearsing, etc for no real pay off or gained experience which I could draw on in a substantial way in the future which I would not have gotten from just reading the play a lot, maybe.
On the other hand, I made a lot of friends and enjoyed the company of some really good people who I hope to work with again in the future, or just have a beer with at some point. And that's certainly worthwhile. It's kind of a funny contrast, in that I usually feel somewhat more of the former (satisfaction with my artistic contribution) then the latter (a sense of camaraderie and friendship among my peers) just because I'm kind of socially awkward and often have a hard time getting really comfortable with a group of people, and knowing they will take my sense of humor the right way. But I did have that in this particular dressing room, and I'll miss the folks I had it with. C'est la vie! Until the next one, right?
My director has been extremely helpful in this process, and I've been having a great time. He's more of an outside in kind of guy (I wonder if that has to do with his design background, oh yeah probably), and in this production is interested in using different levels of stylization to achieve the best story possible. He has an awareness of theatre as a heightened reality but which is constantly grounded in the experience of the audience, taking in the play. The style of the play is a naturalism which appreciates it's own status as a style and acknowledges that it is not set in the present, and allows the characters to represent people from the past. I could go on trying to describe the aesthetic and the slight Brechtian elements (no stop don't be turned off it's nothing bad or crazy just slightly deconstructed), but I'll hold off for now.
Regardless, I'm having a good time and it will be a production worth seeing of a play not commonly done well. In other news, Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead came to a close, and I am left with mixed feelings. Certain aspects of the production could have been executed better. Rather then go into detail, I'll allow that anyone reading this from the show knows what I'm talking about, and I'm not blaming anybody just stating a fact. At the end of the day, for me as an artist, I didn't leave the theatre being all that satisfied with having done something worthwhile, and I mean that in the most selfish possible sense. I, the actor, was at no point in the spotlight in any substantial way or contributed to the production in a way that made a difference to the rest of the piece, and that was a little frustrating, putting the hours commuting, rehearsing, etc for no real pay off or gained experience which I could draw on in a substantial way in the future which I would not have gotten from just reading the play a lot, maybe.
On the other hand, I made a lot of friends and enjoyed the company of some really good people who I hope to work with again in the future, or just have a beer with at some point. And that's certainly worthwhile. It's kind of a funny contrast, in that I usually feel somewhat more of the former (satisfaction with my artistic contribution) then the latter (a sense of camaraderie and friendship among my peers) just because I'm kind of socially awkward and often have a hard time getting really comfortable with a group of people, and knowing they will take my sense of humor the right way. But I did have that in this particular dressing room, and I'll miss the folks I had it with. C'est la vie! Until the next one, right?
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