Getting There!

Swimming in the Shallows is swimming along towards our opening March 8th... holy crap that's soon! Well, it's not too soon, because I think the show has been in really great shape. This week for me was about tying my performance down to Earth, to the reality of the character's situations and really listening to my fellow actors. I think my best strongest assest as a performer is the energy I bring on stage, I'm full of it! This works well for a lot of my roles, it helps me do what I do comedically and when I can really focus and harness it, I think it makes me particularly well suited for certain kinds of film roles (when Crooked Arrows comes out, you'll see what I mean). Sometimes this can get in out of hand, especially in a fast paced show like this one, with a heightened reality and heightened language. At times it's almost reminiscent of my old friend, the farce. But it's not! And I realized that was the mistake I had been making, was to treat this material as if it were out sized and non realistic... which it is, to a point, but the characters don't know that. Nick doesn't think it's strange that he would be in love with a shark, to him it's completely a part of his world. And this is true of everything he says to the characters, so I've been thinking of each moment where my energy had been getting out of hand, and sort of dying it down to the ground, "grounding it", so to speak.

And I think it's been working! I think. My director, Scott, sent me some notes on some sections where the connection to the situation and to the characters can be stronger so my work this week will be to make those connections really as solid as they can be. And now that we're all off book and the show is picking up steam, really running it and polishing it and all that good stuff. Like I said, the show is in a really great place, having been in as many shows as I've been in, I feel pretty competent about that.

Another breakthrough from this week, my fellow actor playing the Shark and I crossed over into actually doing our same sex kiss. And you know what? It's not that big of a deal! I mean, of course it never was, but hey this stuff can be pretty hard and awkward. I'm glad we didn't rush into doing it, because it feels more meaningful and truthful now that we've had time to develop the characters and generally get to know one another. I think it's going to be a great, truthful, touching moment. Exciting!

In other news, I've contracted the services of a monologue coach and I've been thinking about what pieces to start working on for potential usage in Stagesource and also for other auditions that are coming up. What auditions, you ask? Well today I auditioned for Bye Bye Liver: The Boston Drinking Play. It sounds like it comes in a mold similar to a Fishnet, Flanagan's Wake, you know Shear Madness knock offs but with more a sketch element and less of a narrative through line. I thought it went well! I'm pretty good at sketch stuff, and I read for a drag queen, which is strangely enough one of my strong suits... moving on, the auditions on the horizon are The Three Sisters at Footlight Club, directed by Caitlin Lowans who's directing the Romeo and Juliet I blogged about auditioning for in Stoneham. Three Sisters is one of my favorite plays, since it's by Chekov and he's probably my favorite play write. It also has one of my favorite roles of Chekov's, one which is on my sort of actor's bucket list of roles to play at some point in my career, Tuzenbach. If you've read Three Sisters, you know what I'm talking about. The other big audition is Coriolanus with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. This will be second time auditioning for CSC, I have no particular reason to expect that my audition will warrant a callback or what have you. But hey it's worth a try! If nothing else, I can try and get my pieces down to two minutes and make it a test run for Stagesource.

In other, more guitar related news, I've been dabbling again in recording. A few weeks ago I bought a new recording toy, a Shure X2U XLR to USB signal adaptor. I think it sounds pretty good, technical mumbo jumba-what aside. Give it a listen, if you'd like.

Preparation!

It's February, and this year that means that Stagesource just did it's lottery thing and assigned time slots to actors participating in their annual auditions. That's right ladies and gentleman! Coming to you this April, the biggest and most important cattle call of the year!

Actually though, they are a pretty big deal, and can make a big difference for an up and coming actor in the next year of work if you can do a good enough audition with the right people in the room. Of course, like everything acting related, there are so many things out of one's control that can if you allow them to, turn the event into an exercise in frustration. Even if a company is casting a show which you would be a great fit for say, it's pretty up in the air if they'll be in the room when you go up. I mean I think these auditions last like ten hours on both days, and most people understandably just don't have that kind of stamina. And like any audition, there are certain things you can control, what did you eat the day of, are you get well rested, are you dressed appropriately, did you prepare prepare prepare. But then if someone cuts you off and gives you the finger on your way over? You spill coffee on yourself? The neighbor's dog keeps you up half the night and your cranky this morning? You can't control any of that! You can't control how the room will be set up. You can't control people using their cell phones. You can't control the person before you doing a screamfest of an audition about... I don't know, watching their dog get raped by aliens (if you are reading this and wondering what kind of piece to do, don't do anything with screaming or about sexual violence, just don't do it). Or alternatively you can't control the person before you killing with their comedic chops and making you look bad.

All the things you can't control! Of course fellow actors you know this. And the best thing you can do is carefully choose pieces that showcase you and which you have fun doing, prepare the hell out of them, and act the hell out of them. So that's where I'm at, the first step which is choosing material. Of course I have a stock of monologues I can do... but those have been shown around town. BUT I know I can do them really well. Then again, there are other monologues I've been wanting to get down to working on and should I take this opportunity to really polish a new piece or two that won't have been seen by anyone before? Who do I go to for potential monologue coaching? I need to start figuring this stuff out. Because last year I was not as well prepared as I could have been, and my presentation suffered for it. That's OK though, because if you've done Stagesource or any cattle call of that nature you know they are a different animal then your typical audition, two or three or four people at a table in a room and that's it. This is bigger, higher stakes, etc. You probably won't nail it on your first try. But this is my second attempt, and that is my objective. Nail that shit. Calderwood Pavilion, April 2nd 5 o'clock... here I come.

"Be in the moment... NOW"

Today in rehearsal I had to remind myself of one of the most basic acting principals: be in the moment and stay there. We are at a challenging stage of rehearsals for Swimming in the Shallows. Oh wait, let's see, our read through was only February 7th, and last night we had our first run off book (it was pretty messy, as you might imagine). We open March 8th. So more or less, that puts us two weeks in with two weeks ago. At this point, I'm pretty off book, you know, mostly off book. There are some passages that need further attention on my part. But overall, I have the text in my head and I've hammered out a rudimentary shape to the character and it's arc. My scenes, especially the ones we've had more time to give attention to, like one early scene that we spent tonight's rehearsal pulling apart, have a form and a rhythm that I'm comfortable with. Too comfortable with, as with tonight's scene, I was blowing through it without really thinking about what I'm saying or more importantly why I'm saying it. This text is pretty tricky though, rhythmically it's very demanding, it's sort of similar to Shakespeare in that it's written to be performed without unnecessary pauses but you see pauses are your best friend as a modern, realistic actor because they give you time to think, or to create the illusion of thought in your character.

Shakespeare's text is written in verse, in iambic pentameter, and there is a way that if you can find and follow the pentameter the text will carry it with you through performance and into all the various discoveries the character makes in it's journey. So if you know what your saying and how to say it, basically Shakespeare does the work for you. This technique, however tough a nut to crack, is pretty astounding! Swimming in the Shallows has a similarly rhythmic quality, you don't have time to stop and think you have to think with the line, as John Barton says in "Playing Shakespeare" or you know something like that.

But the thing I had to remind myself of tonight was to "be in the moment" and actually listen to my scene partner, even though I know exactly what she's going to say, I had to ACTUALLY HEAR HER SAY IT before I RESPONDED. Man, that's hard sometimes, right? So yes, I was committing the crime of anticipation. It's tough being halfway through, especially in this short process when I have so much still to figure out. And time to figure it out in. But not too much time!

Now that I've learned the text... I have to unlearn it. Real jedi type shit, huh? But it's true, and every actor worth their salt is reminded of it, every time we get on stage.

Time Management

Is anything more exciting then the whoosh of preparation as you rehearse a play? Every day is something new, a new discovery, a new challenge. You get to watch the piece develop  from moment to moment, knowing that time is ticking down before you have to make the next step. For me, right now in working on Swimming in the Shallows that big step is getting off book. At times, this feels like kind of a bear. Nick, my character, is in a lot of the play. And this is very exciting, because I get to create and experience a very full journey across multiple scenes and relationships and I get to be on stage a lot. This both pleasing to my ego as a performer but also to my desire to develop artistically. The best way to do that is to be on stage. What you do with that time on stage will determine your development. For instance, I've played a bunch of smaller roles in things, as well as roles which have been quite substantial. Both kinds of parts have made lasting impacts on how I think about my art. As the old saying goes, "there are no small parts only small actors", and that's generally true. Sometimes I forget that. And also, well, no there is such a thing as a small part. A spear carrier is a small part. Sorry. Unless I'm getting something else out of it, which granted in the past I've usually done, I'd rather not play any more spear carriers. I guess I should specify, I'm done playing spear carriers in community theatre productions.

But that's a whole other tangent. Nick is not a small part by any means. It's kind of ironic that when I think back on my track record of let's just say parts with substantial amounts of stage time and text vs parts with less of those things, I kind of feel like my batting average is better on the "smaller" parts. Or it might be that when it comes to my history with "larger" parts, I'm just more self critical. One part in particular that I felt like I could have done more with was Solomon in Speech and Debate, which I performed a couple of summers ago when I was still doing Harvard theatre. Thinking back on it, this was the only "large" part that I performed while I was doing Harvard theatre, most of my other roles were of the more "ensemble" variety which was fine and I thought I did some very good work in performing them. Solomon though, I feel like I could have done more with. I guess I've been thinking about the part in particular because it's the one other time that I've played a homosexual, other than now, with Nick.

I don't mean to get hung on these characters' sexuality. In Practical Aesthetics, one of the principals taught is to focus more on the similarities you share with the character your portraying while acknowledging the differences, where the temptation is often to do it the other way round. It was kind of a defining characteristic for Solomon, because he was 15 or 16 years old, closeted, and with a very tortured past, including a trip to "gay reform camp" and an ambiguous-in-the-text relationship with an older teacher. So yeah, a lot of internal conflict. Lots and lots of internal conflict and contradictions, all the kind of stuff that makes a role juicy for an actor. I thought I was in good shape with the role for the first few weeks, and then I got strep throat. This made rehearsing very difficult, because if I used my voice at full vocal energy, and a lot of the energy I draw for my performance is from my voice I find, then I would exhaust myself and my throat would feel like sand paper the next day. This was made worse that I was incorrectly prescribed penicillin which I have a resistance to after getting strep like ten times in my life, as opposed to immoxicllin which would have done the trick. So I spent a substantial chunk of the rehearsal process sick, and unable to perform at full tilt, and it seriously leeched the verve out of performance and I really struggled to get it back.

Looking back on the role, I think there was a lot I could have done with that internal conflict, and more that I could have explored more deeply. Then ago, it was college theatre and the nice thing about college theatre is that it doesn't really matter.

Swimming in the Shallows is more important, because now I'm a professional actor out in the world, and as I establish myself I have to constantly be putting my best stuff out there. And isn't that an exciting challenge! I found last night's rehearsal particularly invigorating, because it was the first time now that the whole show is blocked out that we were able to go back and really do work for detail and nuance, giving shape and making discoveries. All the stuff I love about acting and especially stage acting. Onwards to the next great discovery.

Imaginary Worlds

Recently, I've found myself reengaged with the fantastical, imaginary worlds I enjoyed entering as a youth. I remember being 9 or 10 and getting through the first Redwall novel, I then went out and got as many of the books as I could, there were quite a few of them, and began plowing through them as fast as I could. When I was older, it was Raymond E. Feist. I was never quite able to get into Tolkein to the extent that I maybe should have. I never did finish The Hobbit. I did make it through The Fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers, this was mind you right when the movies were coming out, so there you go. I had just gotten into the mines or Moria when the first movie got to theatres. I procrastinated on finishing the written words and saw the movie, and then they got into the mines and then... whoa. "Fly you fools!" etc. In my opinion, I think the first LOTR movie was the most successful. The Two Towers the weakest. Which was really disappointing for me, because the Two Towers was actually my favorite of the series. Oh and I never finished The Return of the King. The whole trilogy is on my list of "things I may have started but never really finished" along with Ulysses and further down maybe Moby Dick but I don't know about that one.

Another fictional universe I spent part of a summer utterly engulfed in? Was the original Manga version (the japanese equivalent to a comic book) of Akira, which you've maybe seen as an animated feature either because you are, like me, a geek or have some geeky friends or took a class or something. The movie is pretty great. I think the epic, thousands of pages long comic book is even better. I read it on my computer. It was pretty incredible. I don't really pay attention to these things, but I'm glad it's not being made as a live action movie. It or Neon Genesis Evangelion another anime favorite from my youth.

While I'm on an anime tangent, you know what the last anime series to really grip me was? Gurren Lagann a sort of post apocalyptic more lighthearted riff on the giant robot genre, with some serious emotional punch from the same production company, Gainax, as Neon Genesis. I don't know, it's really really good. I've gone through phases of being into anime. My much older brother (like nine years older) got me into it when I was real little like 6 or 7, then I rediscovered it more or less as a teenager. It's been on and off since.

Anyway, the thing that most recently got me back into fantasy was A Game of Thrones this past summer. As you probably know, those books are fantastic. I still haven't seen the TV show. I sort of tried watching the first episode but couldn't get past the first five minutes of cheesy effects and characters being similar to how they are in the books in terms of dynamics but events and actions changing slightly... I don't know. Basically Arya picking up the bow. Arya doesn't pick up a bow in the first book. I'll watch it someday...

...Probably after I've consumed all of the SPARTACUS franchise. This is my most recent fixation, with a stop over in the Hunger Games those took me like a week to devour. I got all the episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand with the understanding that OK the first few episodes might be kinda terrible but then it gets really good. To which I say, HOLY SHIT, YES. Definitely if you can make it to episode five when the bad guy starts acting really bad but in a way that you can sympathize and identify with, you will be hooked. I'm now on episode 3 of Gods of the Arena. I'm trying to limit myself as much as possible, something like an installment an evening which is something for me, since normal I would chew through them at a hand full. Partly, this is because the new season of Spartacus has started and I'd prefer having as large as possible a buffer of existing episodes before I then have to wait for Fridays for new ones to come out.

Also though... I do have lines to learn. Quite a few of them, actually, for Swimming in the Shallows. We go off book this Tuesday. So, there is work to do! Can't just watch pulpy shows all day.

In other acting related things, I had a few auditions last week which I'm waiting to hear back on, and another today for a few walk on roles (ex. waiter, bellman, greeter, etc) on an ABC pilot which is pretty exciting. These kinds of roles are sort of tough but also easy, because it's less about your acting and more about your "look", that is "do you look like a waiter/bellman/valet in a hotel in 1895". Maybe I do! And one of the sides has a bit of humor that I can and will pay with. Everything else is out of my hands, as usual.

New Discoveries

I had a sort of epiphany last night at a rehearsal... that I was at a rehearsal, playing a challenging role in a fun and exciting new play at a theatre I'd never worked at with people I'd largely never even met. Whoa, sensory overload of great and new stuff!

Probably this should have been less of an epiphany. But at this point, rehearsals, commuting, learning lines and blocking, coming and going from all those different things has become so business as usual. On the other hand though, this play isn't, this is different from anything else I've worked on. I guess it's sort of comparable to Speech and Debate, in that this character is a homosexual like Solomon but he was closeted and had all that other stuff going on. Speech and Debate is a pretty good play, but I think this one is better. Oh what is it? Why it's Swimming in the Shallows by Adam Bock. It's a sort of surreal romantic comedy about three couples, one falling in love, another rediscovering it and still another falling out of it as it were. My love interest is a Shark. He is being played by a man. In the world of the play, that he is a Shark is not especially strange. He lives in an aquarium, he works there, and he swims all day. At the plays beginning, my character is romantically frustrated. He has an easy time meeting men, and he sleeps with them quite frequently, but usually after sleeping with them once and early on in their relationship it then fails to progress into anything more significant. In addition to that, he has sort of a "Romeo complex" not that he's constantly finding himself in doomed, star crossed romances, but I guess more that he wears his heart on his sleeve and finds very deep feelings for these partners in a very short period of time which are then expressed through you know, sex, then not returned. Basically he sleeps with them and they don't call. My part of the play is about how he goes about identifying and changing that pattern of behavior so that he can have a real relationship and an outlet for all of his emotions and desire for love and to be loved.

Did I mention at the climax he and the Shark kiss? Do they then have sex? You'll have to wait for the play to see...

Actually though there is amongst the numerous very funny and poignant scenes an especially touching one between Nick and the Shark at the beach which largely inspired me to agree to this play all the way out in Salem. Despite the heightened universe it exists in, there is something very real and true about the way the two characters discover one another and explore their romantic feelings before it culminates in the aforementioned kiss. I feel like in some way this is an archetypal dramatic scenario. The party scene from Romeo and Juliet being kind of another example. I've played anger, platonic love, farcical love, and various other states of being on stage before. But never something like this. And so for all those reasons, I'm excited to work on this show. Oh and the chance to play! After just a few rehearsals with this group, I can tell that's going to be central to the work we do. And when the work you do is playing, is it even work? Exactly! Now if you'll excuse me, we open March 5th and we've just started rehearsing this week *ahem* so I have lines to learn.

Pretty Great Weekend

Nothing substantial to report in this blog post, just that this was what seemed to me like a fairly fantastic weekend. Part of that maybe was because it was the first weekend I've had in what feels like months (having checked my calendar, that's confirmed) where I didn't have to be at a theatre or on a movie set for a rehearsal, performance, or shoot. Mind you, those are all fantastic things and I'm very grateful that my life has been so chock full of acting opportunities... but it was nice just to spend a weekend away from all that, doing things I enjoy with people I love and care about.

So let's see! Recap time! Friday was Interim Writers, you know that was fantastic, although I guess it could kind of be considered a rehearsal/performance for my purposes it was pure pleasure and something I would have been at regardless of my having read in it. Yesterday (Saturday), I went with my parents and girlfriend to the Museum of Fine Arts as part of what was apparently a mad dash to see the naked Degas pictures. My parents were unimpressed, and I'm not crazy about the new lay out of the MFA or how they blocked out all the windows in the all the old wings that were so pretty with their natural light (*cough* the old better than the new ones American/Modern Art wings*cough*) but I got something out of the Degas. I would have kind of liked to come back on my own on Monday when it was less crowded but oh wait, it closed today, ces la vie. We also saw the Aphrodite pieces, and a very nice exhibit on Japanese and Korean teaware and pottery, which was actually quite beautiful. It's kind of strange to think how everything around us, my Ikea mattress I'm sitting on, the computer I'm typing into, is so completely mass produced. Then going to the MFA and seeing these exquisite objects of clay and metal and porcelain so were so pain-stakingly hand made. Some of them having survived for thousands of years! Wow! Will anything being made today still be of value in a thousand or even two hundred years? I certainly won't know, because I'll be dead! Hahaha! Anyway...

Today I had the pleasure of meeting Adia's new friends she made via CVS before she quit. All of them are young women in their early and mid twenties (just like Adia!), two of them are graduating students at Mass College of Pharmacy, one is a Georgian (the European country, not the state) medical student. They are all very nice. Adia had made plans for the five of us to go to Taza Chocolate in Somerville and take their factory tour. Apparently, this was written up recently in one of the local papers and received a negative review, but being such a food geek and having watched Good Eats since it first came on (that's right, I was into Alton Brown waaaaaaay before you even were aware of Food Network), I enjoyed it throughly. Also, there was lots of chocolate to sampled. Good stuff!

After that, I did technically have a rehearsal for my improv troupe, but it's been so long since I was able to rehearse, being all busy with Vanya and the holidays and then being out of town, that felt really good and I thought it went quite well. We are working on a long form for *fingers crossed* if we get into Geek Week at Improv Boston. Even if that doesn't happen, we'll have a cool new form for our shows. Exciting!

This evening, instead of actually watching the Superbowl, I followed my old friend (like seriously old friend, we go back to when I was a Sophmore in high school) Vinny's house to play board games, drink and eat snacks while the game was on in the back ground. Oh wait what happened? The guys in blue lost? OK I know the Patriot's lost, I used to kind of care about Football I admit but that was a long time ago. Anyway, a great time was had by all, Adia made chocolate covered pop corn balls (they were a huge hit) AND she won at Mall of Horror, which surprised me until I remembered how smart she is.

All in all, great weekend! And wow, your great too, for reading to the end of this insignificant post.

Written Words

Last night was my second time making it to the Democracy Center for the fantastic event "Have You Read? An Evening of New Plays" hosted by the play writing collective (co founded by my friend and collaborator on "The Muse" Cassie Seinuk) Interim Writers. Basically, local writers submit their work to be read aloud in front of an audience, then there is a talk back with said audience, and it's all for free (with suggested donations and muffins!) Once again I was astounded by the variety and quality of the four pieces presented and for an added bonus, this time I was able to participate as a reader! These are always extra enjoyable because I get to meet new people and be reunited with friends I already have made but don't always see across the Boston theatre community. For those readers who may be aspiring to get on Boston stages, these kinds of events are super essential for getting yourself out there and... *ahem* networking.

A slight segway about networking, I feel slightly dirty saying it. I guess because the subtext is "hi I'm interacting with you for the purpose of my own advancement" but at the same time, the only way anybody ever makes it in this business is by helping other people out, you know what I mean? And to do that, you have to introduce yourself and put out the image "Hi, I'm a worthwhile and intelligent person who has their shit together, so the next time a potential project comes up that I would be a good fit for, think of me!" you know what I'm saying? I guess it's not the aspect of putting yourself out that's difficult for me, but more the point where you need to say "hi, now that we've known each other and possibly there has been some sort of transactional aspect of our relationship, I need something!" which will be especially essential to my success in New York/LA/The Outside World. Anyway this has been a segway on networking.

Which you should do at the next Interim Writers event! Seriously, the material is always really top notch, and never what you expect to hear at one of these events. It's really cool. But make sure you get there early, because the Democracy Center is a small building and the Nelson Mandela room fills up fast.

Last night there was a piece I found particularly surprising, "Four Riffs For A Sailor" by Monica Raymond. It was a monologue from the perspective of Calypso in the Odyssey, you know the really hot nymph who holds him captive and has hot beach sex with him before he can get back to Ithaca (sorry gender studies major I know there is more to her character than that, as articulated by this piece). It's not obvious at first that it's about the Odyssey, but as the language rides the line between prose and poetry over time you come to that realization. My friend James compared it profoundly to getting a Boloco burrito but knowing what's inside except that it's delicious. Anyway, seeing the piece performed, I realized "Hey I used to write stuff like this, what's stopping me from taking one of those pieces and adapting it for performance?"

When I used to write poetry I was always hesitant about reading it aloud or performing it, despite the irony of my aspirations to act, I felt like it worked better as words on a page which is valid for many of the post modern poets who I aspired to in those heady days of teenage pretension. But frankly, I'm a much more capable performer then I was then, and the time is coming that I should really be working on my own stuff. Dramatic conflict has never been my forte as a writer, and up till now I viewed that as a barrier. But what the hell, I have all this material (I probably wrote hundreds if not thousands of poems as a teenager, most of them not very good, but some of them were passable) why not try to do something with it?

I was going to then cut and paste the first piece I had in mind... but my imagined judgement of me and my work by you and your anonymity has caused me to chicken out. Also, I should probably revise it, there a few things that popped out at me as being worth adjusting when I last looked at it. However, I may be trotting out to some open mics and or poetry nights in the near future to see how this goes down, and when I do, wish me luck!