Today was an adventure. Did you know, tomorrow I'll be playing guitar in the 8th grade talent show of Martin Luther King Junior K-8 School in Dorchester? It's true, an acting buddy of mine referred me his fellow actor who teaches there, was putting together a talent show and needed a guitar player. And thus I took a train and a bus into Dorchester.
On the way there, I thought about my relationship to that part of Boston. What relationship? Well, when I was born my mother taught at a program for teenage mothers in Dorchester. While they were having babies and joining the program as a means of accessing resources and staying in school with their infants, my mother had me. I remember as a kid, seeing pictures of myself as an infant with her students. Later, she told me a few horror stories about the various drugs particularly crack which was in an epidemic phase in many parts of the United States. But some inspiring one's as well. I'll tell you more at another date.
It was kind of an adventure getting to the school. I consulted Google Maps, who told me there was a bus I could catch from Umass Station which I then missed by about 30 seconds when my train ran late. Using Google Maps and Next Bus I was able to triangulate my way back into a route to the school. After a ten minute walk and a five minute bus ride then another five minute walk... I got the school, and met the kids I would be performing with. What song will I be performing with them? Who You Are by Jessie J, that's what. It was really cool getting to hang out with these kids even just for a little bit, and hear them sing and get to watch the process of them rehearsing together even just a little bit, working out Man in the Mirror and the other numbers their performing, realizing "oh yeah these kids are pretty good, they are just 14". It was also kind of fascinating seeing into their anxieties about performing for their peers. I mean, for me at this point it's pretty much automatic when the show starts you go on, no matter where you might be at and I've been in some plays where there's been reason to question where everybody was at. But being 14 and singing, SINGING in front of EVERYBODY, I'd forgotten that. Not that I did much singing when I was 14. Strangely, I can kind of identify with them through my guitar playing, which I haven't done a lot of in front of people. Uncle Vanya was definitely the most I'd ever done, and actually one of the most defined ways in which I grew from that experience was in how much more comfortable I am playing music for people.
Anyway, the performance is tomorrow, and the more I think about it, the more I look forward to having the opportunity to connect with the kids on stage and in the audience. I mean, that's what art is all about, right? Something else I haven't done in my 6 or 7 years of guitar playing and general performing has been playing as an accompanist. I did during Marat/Sade, and it was really cool, but that's about it. And I think this will be too.
The other thing that struck me about the experience was realizing that if I weren't so set on being an actor, to the point that I don't really know what else I could do with my life... I could have been a teacher, maybe. A music or theatre or english teacher. I don't know how happy I would be as the person I am today, but what if I'd been a different person? I could see how that could have happened and teaching would be something I'd be OK with, I think.
Anyway, I'll blog more about it after I've actually done it. The reason the title of the post is in Spanish was because today was my first bilingual theatre rehearsal ever! Exciting, right? And very challenging. I mean, it's such a trip, trying to do theatre in another language entirely. Granted, I sort of know some Spanish... but actually not really. It wasn't made easier that everything we went over had been worked previously at a rehearsal I wasn't present for but that was OK I'm a fast learner. Will I be though when it comes to this Spanish stuff? Yeah actually, I hope so. And it will give me a totally different perspective on this process, no doubt. I mean, the first step will be studying the passages in English where the tragedians interact with each other, The Player and of course the pair of the title. Then figuring it out in Spanish. I think it'll be a fun exercise. And I'm already having fun in the role. It's getting late, and I have to get to a performance early in the morning, so this too will have to wait till a future blog. But hey, I'm blogging! Aren't I? I feel pretty good about that.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Blogging Along the River of Babylon (no significance just sounds cool)
Well hello readers of my blog! Why am I addressing this as an epistle? Well, why not. Did you know that before the novel entered it's modern 19th to 20th century incarnation, epistolary fiction was a very popular form? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for example. I learned in that my college expository writing class where I was supposed to have read a bunch of them but didn't really and still got like an A-.
Anyway, I feel like catching up on a few things with y'all. For instance, this is going to be the first of no doubt numerous blog posts on my second go around with Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This time as you know, I'm playing Alfred and at this rate when I inevitably do the show again because people do this play kind of a lot maybe I'll be Hamlet and the time after that, who knows! Anyway, so yeah, from my end of things we've had two rehearsals with the Tragedian ensemble mostly exploring physical character work type stuff through acting games, mimes and practicing dying different ways (as the player hammers him, his troupe of players are very into deaths) and a little bit of rough playing around sort of workshopping a few of the "play within a play" tableau type sequences. So far, so fun! As it turns out, we'll be the ensemble of tragedians for both the English and Spanish versions of the production. At the rehearsals I've been to, we didn't have the Player's Spanish speaking counterpart but that will be a serious trip figuring out how to coordinate those sequences in a language I don't particularly speak, para un pequito (which I think means except a little bit).
Last night was the first I'd been in a room with what was close to being but wasn't quite as if often the case the full cast for our read through, in English but trading off and stuff. And man, this play is dense. Our director Danielle has cut it down substantially in the hopes of making it run two hours or less and will probably cut it even more before we're through. To be honest, even having been in it, big parts of this play are still a little over my head. But then, I've never really put the full energy necessary to sitting down with the entire text, reading it through and putting all the pieces about the nature of drama and metaphysics together. Hearing it read again though, those things clicked for me in some new ways, so maybe I'll make it part of my blogging project this summer to chronicle both the bi-lingual experience and my own musings on the piece's dramaturgy.
As that is just now beginning to crawl along, Three Sisters is running to the finish line! But first we must overcome the massive hurdle... OF TECH WEEK. Tonight is supposed to be our first off book run, and I feel mostly ready. This past Sunday was our first stumble through and it definitely highlighted the problem passages for me, which isn't to say that this from a memorization stand point this translation is anything but problematic. But the character is there, the arc is there, the relationship with Irina is there and in theory this is the best and most fun part. Actually getting to do it!
As an actor getting the opportunity to act it's important to stop every once in a while and think "wow this is so great, I'm acting!" because hey, getting a shot at working your stuff in a room of people is hard to do so be grateful when it happens. In that way, acting is different than most creative pursuits. Painters, writers, musicians they can just sit and do there thing and take down their output even if it's going into a void. But acting doesn't exist in a void, inherently it requires an audience! Technology and Youtube and stuff has brought us closer to the model of a recording artist or writer, in that with the internet you can put yourself out into the world, but it's incredibly hard to create traction. Generally with theatre, some of that exists, although not always and that's one kind of experience that it's much more complicated to manufacture. So you know, I've hit on this theme before, remain grateful.
Speaking of being grateful, I had an experience to be grateful for yesterday, an audition for a part in a feature film. Specifically, The Way Way Back which was written and is being directed by the writers of The Descendants and will have Steve Carell in it. Exciting, right? I read for Charlie, an 18 year old hippy stoner dead head guy, who one of the leads a 14 year old kid has a brief interaction with at a beach party. It required me to act spaced out and do a sort of weird spacey dance and deliver a few lines. Which I did! I tried to keep it interesting and make fun dynamic choices while also bringing in the world of the party, the guy putting me on tape had me go gradually bigger and bigger with it, which I did hopefully without blowing out the frame, so to speak. And maybe I'll get a call back. More likely not because those are just the brakes. But again, I was grateful for the opportunity, and that's where you've gotta be.
Anyway, I feel like catching up on a few things with y'all. For instance, this is going to be the first of no doubt numerous blog posts on my second go around with Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This time as you know, I'm playing Alfred and at this rate when I inevitably do the show again because people do this play kind of a lot maybe I'll be Hamlet and the time after that, who knows! Anyway, so yeah, from my end of things we've had two rehearsals with the Tragedian ensemble mostly exploring physical character work type stuff through acting games, mimes and practicing dying different ways (as the player hammers him, his troupe of players are very into deaths) and a little bit of rough playing around sort of workshopping a few of the "play within a play" tableau type sequences. So far, so fun! As it turns out, we'll be the ensemble of tragedians for both the English and Spanish versions of the production. At the rehearsals I've been to, we didn't have the Player's Spanish speaking counterpart but that will be a serious trip figuring out how to coordinate those sequences in a language I don't particularly speak, para un pequito (which I think means except a little bit).
Last night was the first I'd been in a room with what was close to being but wasn't quite as if often the case the full cast for our read through, in English but trading off and stuff. And man, this play is dense. Our director Danielle has cut it down substantially in the hopes of making it run two hours or less and will probably cut it even more before we're through. To be honest, even having been in it, big parts of this play are still a little over my head. But then, I've never really put the full energy necessary to sitting down with the entire text, reading it through and putting all the pieces about the nature of drama and metaphysics together. Hearing it read again though, those things clicked for me in some new ways, so maybe I'll make it part of my blogging project this summer to chronicle both the bi-lingual experience and my own musings on the piece's dramaturgy.
As that is just now beginning to crawl along, Three Sisters is running to the finish line! But first we must overcome the massive hurdle... OF TECH WEEK. Tonight is supposed to be our first off book run, and I feel mostly ready. This past Sunday was our first stumble through and it definitely highlighted the problem passages for me, which isn't to say that this from a memorization stand point this translation is anything but problematic. But the character is there, the arc is there, the relationship with Irina is there and in theory this is the best and most fun part. Actually getting to do it!
As an actor getting the opportunity to act it's important to stop every once in a while and think "wow this is so great, I'm acting!" because hey, getting a shot at working your stuff in a room of people is hard to do so be grateful when it happens. In that way, acting is different than most creative pursuits. Painters, writers, musicians they can just sit and do there thing and take down their output even if it's going into a void. But acting doesn't exist in a void, inherently it requires an audience! Technology and Youtube and stuff has brought us closer to the model of a recording artist or writer, in that with the internet you can put yourself out into the world, but it's incredibly hard to create traction. Generally with theatre, some of that exists, although not always and that's one kind of experience that it's much more complicated to manufacture. So you know, I've hit on this theme before, remain grateful.
Speaking of being grateful, I had an experience to be grateful for yesterday, an audition for a part in a feature film. Specifically, The Way Way Back which was written and is being directed by the writers of The Descendants and will have Steve Carell in it. Exciting, right? I read for Charlie, an 18 year old hippy stoner dead head guy, who one of the leads a 14 year old kid has a brief interaction with at a beach party. It required me to act spaced out and do a sort of weird spacey dance and deliver a few lines. Which I did! I tried to keep it interesting and make fun dynamic choices while also bringing in the world of the party, the guy putting me on tape had me go gradually bigger and bigger with it, which I did hopefully without blowing out the frame, so to speak. And maybe I'll get a call back. More likely not because those are just the brakes. But again, I was grateful for the opportunity, and that's where you've gotta be.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Further thoughts on Crooked Arrows
Let's see, it's been... three days since I saw Crooked Arrows, and I've been continuing to digest the experience of seeing the final product and subsequently news has come out that it banked $280,000 in 55 theaters which for a film in it's size in it's range of distribution is pretty strong, so expectations are positive that it will do well in wide release and after screening at Cannes (that's right, a movie I was in screened at MOTHERF@#%&!G CANNES OH YEAH) it's been picked up for international distribution to Europe and so forth, all of which is good news.
While I was mentally penning a note to send to the director, producers, etc congratulating them on the success of the film, I started to think about how culturally significant and remarkable it is that a film essentially oriented to such specific niche audience, the lacrosse and by extension Native American community, could be made on what is in film making terms such a modest budget (I think something like $10 million dollars total, don't quote me on that) could go on to be successful in a traditional model of distribution. What I mean to say is releasing it to movie theaters instead of just putting it out on DVD and video on demand services, which is increasingly the route many small and independent films are taking. The way that they've been able to make that work is largely through viral marketing using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and you know, the internet.
This is process I've been aware of since I first started reading webcomics as an adolescent, which I think will go down in history as part of the really initial wave of "new media" before Youtube and all that stuff made it convenient to post movies to the internet. Back when dial up was still the norm guys like Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of the comic strip Penny Arcade or Scott Kurtz of PVP (two of my favorite webcomics, and also two of the longest lasting and most successful franchises in the webcomics world) were able to turn posting pictures they drew onto the internet for free into a very viable business model. If you're not familiar with Penny Arcade, today it's like a multi million dollar company and one of the major voices in the world of... wait for it, video games. And it was by feeding into a demand unmet by big conventional media companies (and I should also add doing it very well), which is to say video gamers, they were able to turn their creative project into a fairly big thing culturally and monetarily (at least in their specific niche) without having a big publishing deal. Love him or hate him, Tyler Perry has been able to pull off a similar thing by catering to the values of a very specific and underserved niche group, middle class African Americans, by telling stories that cater very strongly to their world view and giving them to them on a regular basis.
If I'm not mistaken, Crooked Arrows is one of the first films post Tyler Perry to take another audience, again the Lacrosse community who has money to spend on movie tickets and will probably be willing to buy DVDs as well as t-shirts, ball caps, lacrosse sticks, etc and made a product catered to that community and offered it up to them again not on the internet or on DVD but in a movie theatre and telling them about it through very specific low cost marketing strategies focusing on the internet.
I mean Jesus, do you realize how much money goes into marketing a film like The Avengers or Transformers or your typical summer block buster like say Battleship which is in the process of rapidly sinking under it's own hubris while Crooked Arrows is looking to make a profit? Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. The ten million dollar quote I made earlier for Crooked Arrows I believe includes marketing. So I think it's very exciting that a small, independent group of creatives will have the ability in the coming decades to create a product catered to a specific audience and deliver it to them. And hey, I'm a part of it! Wow, that's pretty cool.
So there's all that, and upon further contemplation of the work I did in my own role... I have such a long way to go. As an actor, it's so easy to be super hypercritical of your work, and there's some of that in my reaction to seeing myself in the movie. And the desire to go back and rerecord everything. But what's done is done, and I guess what I failed to realize is how incredibly in over my head I was doing a role that size in a feature of that scale, having just done a bunch of parts in like web series and student films and stuff, to say nothing of the amount of voice over work that was involved of which I had no experience or training. So looking at it from that perspective, I did pretty good. But I've had to scale back my expectations about what happens next. I don't think based on this performance, Judd Apatow is going to be calling me and offering me a role in the next Superbad. But at the same time, I've demonstrated that I can pull something like this off without having ever done any of the smaller kinds of roles you usually do in film and television before it's like "BOOM you're a principal, go". Which also speaks to the kind of risk that the director and the producer took by casting me, and how grateful I have to be to them for that opportunity. Once again, the task now is pulling together a reel that shows what I can do, figuring out what that thing is going to be, and honing it and perfecting etc. And what an exciting journey that will be.
While I was mentally penning a note to send to the director, producers, etc congratulating them on the success of the film, I started to think about how culturally significant and remarkable it is that a film essentially oriented to such specific niche audience, the lacrosse and by extension Native American community, could be made on what is in film making terms such a modest budget (I think something like $10 million dollars total, don't quote me on that) could go on to be successful in a traditional model of distribution. What I mean to say is releasing it to movie theaters instead of just putting it out on DVD and video on demand services, which is increasingly the route many small and independent films are taking. The way that they've been able to make that work is largely through viral marketing using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and you know, the internet.
This is process I've been aware of since I first started reading webcomics as an adolescent, which I think will go down in history as part of the really initial wave of "new media" before Youtube and all that stuff made it convenient to post movies to the internet. Back when dial up was still the norm guys like Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of the comic strip Penny Arcade or Scott Kurtz of PVP (two of my favorite webcomics, and also two of the longest lasting and most successful franchises in the webcomics world) were able to turn posting pictures they drew onto the internet for free into a very viable business model. If you're not familiar with Penny Arcade, today it's like a multi million dollar company and one of the major voices in the world of... wait for it, video games. And it was by feeding into a demand unmet by big conventional media companies (and I should also add doing it very well), which is to say video gamers, they were able to turn their creative project into a fairly big thing culturally and monetarily (at least in their specific niche) without having a big publishing deal. Love him or hate him, Tyler Perry has been able to pull off a similar thing by catering to the values of a very specific and underserved niche group, middle class African Americans, by telling stories that cater very strongly to their world view and giving them to them on a regular basis.
If I'm not mistaken, Crooked Arrows is one of the first films post Tyler Perry to take another audience, again the Lacrosse community who has money to spend on movie tickets and will probably be willing to buy DVDs as well as t-shirts, ball caps, lacrosse sticks, etc and made a product catered to that community and offered it up to them again not on the internet or on DVD but in a movie theatre and telling them about it through very specific low cost marketing strategies focusing on the internet.
I mean Jesus, do you realize how much money goes into marketing a film like The Avengers or Transformers or your typical summer block buster like say Battleship which is in the process of rapidly sinking under it's own hubris while Crooked Arrows is looking to make a profit? Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. The ten million dollar quote I made earlier for Crooked Arrows I believe includes marketing. So I think it's very exciting that a small, independent group of creatives will have the ability in the coming decades to create a product catered to a specific audience and deliver it to them. And hey, I'm a part of it! Wow, that's pretty cool.
So there's all that, and upon further contemplation of the work I did in my own role... I have such a long way to go. As an actor, it's so easy to be super hypercritical of your work, and there's some of that in my reaction to seeing myself in the movie. And the desire to go back and rerecord everything. But what's done is done, and I guess what I failed to realize is how incredibly in over my head I was doing a role that size in a feature of that scale, having just done a bunch of parts in like web series and student films and stuff, to say nothing of the amount of voice over work that was involved of which I had no experience or training. So looking at it from that perspective, I did pretty good. But I've had to scale back my expectations about what happens next. I don't think based on this performance, Judd Apatow is going to be calling me and offering me a role in the next Superbad. But at the same time, I've demonstrated that I can pull something like this off without having ever done any of the smaller kinds of roles you usually do in film and television before it's like "BOOM you're a principal, go". Which also speaks to the kind of risk that the director and the producer took by casting me, and how grateful I have to be to them for that opportunity. Once again, the task now is pulling together a reel that shows what I can do, figuring out what that thing is going to be, and honing it and perfecting etc. And what an exciting journey that will be.
Friday, May 18, 2012
The Arrow Flies It's Path (Full Circle)
Tonight I saw the finished product that is Crooked Arrows, the completion of my first journey into professional acting and feature films. Where to begin? It was an incredible stroke of luck combined with the actor's only true ally, preparedness, with which I found myself in this role. Filming it was kind of grueling, but also a growing experience where I met a lot of people and made friendships I hope to carry with me for the rest of my life. And at the end of the day, here is the document of that experience.
How is it as a film? Well, if you read most of the reviews, they're pretty much accurate. Formulaic, yes, but highly entertaining and with some really interesting original elements and a meaningful introduction to the culture and lifestyle of contemporary Native Americans, that isn't blanketed by tragedy or in the shadow of genocide. In the context of the film, they're a vibrant people, and it tackles the issue of reservation casinos with surprising depth... right up until Brandon's character tells Tom Kemp's evil developer that he can't sue because they're a soveregin nation... which I don't think would really hold up in court but WHO CARES THE CROOKED ARROWS WIN THE BIG GAME!
In case you couldn't tell, that was in my Chad Bryan voice. How was it watching Chad up on the big screen? Pretty surreal. Anytime I was on screen, I was basically counting the seconds thinking "OK that's about ten seconds of reel material right there..." To be honest, I'd been coming face to face in the last few weeks with the film actor's ultimate dilemenna, that being an utter lack of control of what of you gets up on screen, the opposite of theatre where you have nothing but control at the end of the day, because your in the room doing it from moment to moment.
So you can have someone in the editing room use only your worst takes, or you can be cut from the film completely. Much of my anxiety had been caught up in the latter possibility, from a conversation I had with the producers, it had crossed their minds. But thankfully, I wasn't. Not all of the lines I recorded made it in, in fact maybe half, but I recorded a lot of lines so that's a pretty good ratio. And most importantly, some really fun moments made it into the final cut which will then be making it onto my reel which will then be the basis from which I'll hopefully begin to develop my screen acting career.
Before I can do that, I have to do a lot of other things first. Like get the footage from all the other projects I've shot in the past three years or so, or as much of it as I can. And begin to strategize, where can I get representation, and how will I go about it? Which market do I want to go for, New York? Los Angeles? Do I stay in Boston? At the very least, this summer and fall I'll be doing theatre. Then this winter is pilot season (which is when there are the most auditions happening for all the upcoming TV shows being shot as pilots, etc you know that scene from Pulp Fiction), and if I'm going to make a move it has to be then. And you know I'm going to be blogging about it when I do!
How is it as a film? Well, if you read most of the reviews, they're pretty much accurate. Formulaic, yes, but highly entertaining and with some really interesting original elements and a meaningful introduction to the culture and lifestyle of contemporary Native Americans, that isn't blanketed by tragedy or in the shadow of genocide. In the context of the film, they're a vibrant people, and it tackles the issue of reservation casinos with surprising depth... right up until Brandon's character tells Tom Kemp's evil developer that he can't sue because they're a soveregin nation... which I don't think would really hold up in court but WHO CARES THE CROOKED ARROWS WIN THE BIG GAME!
In case you couldn't tell, that was in my Chad Bryan voice. How was it watching Chad up on the big screen? Pretty surreal. Anytime I was on screen, I was basically counting the seconds thinking "OK that's about ten seconds of reel material right there..." To be honest, I'd been coming face to face in the last few weeks with the film actor's ultimate dilemenna, that being an utter lack of control of what of you gets up on screen, the opposite of theatre where you have nothing but control at the end of the day, because your in the room doing it from moment to moment.
So you can have someone in the editing room use only your worst takes, or you can be cut from the film completely. Much of my anxiety had been caught up in the latter possibility, from a conversation I had with the producers, it had crossed their minds. But thankfully, I wasn't. Not all of the lines I recorded made it in, in fact maybe half, but I recorded a lot of lines so that's a pretty good ratio. And most importantly, some really fun moments made it into the final cut which will then be making it onto my reel which will then be the basis from which I'll hopefully begin to develop my screen acting career.
Before I can do that, I have to do a lot of other things first. Like get the footage from all the other projects I've shot in the past three years or so, or as much of it as I can. And begin to strategize, where can I get representation, and how will I go about it? Which market do I want to go for, New York? Los Angeles? Do I stay in Boston? At the very least, this summer and fall I'll be doing theatre. Then this winter is pilot season (which is when there are the most auditions happening for all the upcoming TV shows being shot as pilots, etc you know that scene from Pulp Fiction), and if I'm going to make a move it has to be then. And you know I'm going to be blogging about it when I do!
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Long Overdue for a... Blog Post!
Hello my poor neglected blog, how do I blog you? Let me count the ways. Actually I guess I probably blog about once a week.
So let this be my weekly blogging. Seen a lot of theatre! What have I seen, let's see, 28 Seeds, Much Ado About Nothing with a Twist, Trog and Clay oh and Troilus and Cressida. All of which I enjoyed for different reasons, and which I could find things to criticize. Actually I think this is an interesting excercise, I'm going to compliment sandwich them one by one, meaning a positive note, a critique and a positive note.
28 Seeds, I liked the music. Great songs and great instrumentalists who played with panache and style. Ok critique. I know the company spent some time workshopping the script, but I felt like it needed more. I felt the narrative was kind of disjointed and episodic, which was OK but I wanted a stronger narrative thrust to establish the characters, their individual conflicts and why we should care about them. As it was, they felt more like ideas and dare I say it cariactures although that feels harsh. Which isn't to say the actors didn't do some nice work. When I was in college Will Lebow had us watch a play and write two pages about a performance and if that actor had the three fundamentals be taught, intention, relationship amd high stakes. And they had that! So bravo.
Next up was Fresh Ink. I thought this show was solid, with some really nice character work and especially strong use of lighting (all the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling were pretty cool, and I liked the sort of sepia quality they gave off like it was a live action black and white photograph). I did feel like the script was inconsistent, there was a stronger arc then in 28 Seeds and although the people in the play were quirky, they felt more or less like people and not just quirky character tropes. That said, the tone was very all over the place, and when it landed at the climax it felt like "OK this is the climax" but I didn't feel like the script earned the catharsis that the playwright was after or really landed the ending. Despite those flaws and inconsistencies, their were fun characters and funny lines, which the cast pulled off nicely.
I sort of feel like I just made the same review sandwich twice in a row, amIright? Liked this design aspect, thought the script was flawed, liked the acting. Well, to be honest, Troilus and Cressida is much harder to nail down to a culinary metaphor. I liked the idea of the production, and Troilus and Cressida is probably worth considering as the Bard's satire of war and the politics involved, and also it has some great pieces of text. But as a play, I don't think it was ever really finished, similar to Timon of Athens. According to some quote somewhere in it's Wikipedia entry, the version we received may have been edited or updated at some point to the fairly dark piece we have today from a previously lighter treatment of the Iliad, but who really knows. Ultimately, all of these pieces and plot lines get thrown up and Shakespeare starts to juggle them, then the action accelerates like something is about to happen, in this case Achilles kills Hector and then the play ends. Troilus ran close to three hours, which is just way too long, and in my opinion it had too many characters. I think for the production to work, it needed more of what ASP pulled out when it did Timon of Athens a couple of years ago, a whole lot of textual and structural rejiggering. In the case of Timon, they only kept a few of the characters and then the rest were portrayed by an ambiguous ensemble in painter's outfits (which I frankly never really got why that was, but whatever) and much of the story's thematic push came from sound design motifs and a really bad ass set. For this production, they had the Modern which they used in the round. Kinda cool, but I don't really know what it added. The set was some grey blocks that got moved around. There really wasn't much in the way of sound or lighting design. It had some nice performances, I liked Ross Macdonald as Hector, but many of the performances didn't feel lived in, more like some character traits and choices imposed over text. I think the solution was to dump as many of them as possible, pick one or two storylines and really tell those stories and make them work, as the play itself is just an overstuffed mess.
Then again, I'm talking like I have the recipe to make Shakespeare work, and I certainly don't, I'm a guy with a blog. And that's a tricky thing, because in Shakespeare's plays almost everything exists in relation to something else, so knowing what to cut and how to cut it without detracting from the whole is extremely difficult! I don't know how to make that play work, or how to make anything work, so I applaud Actors Shakespeare Project for bringing the show to the stage and I'm glad I got to see it, even if just to say that I have.
Oh, and the other show I saw recently was Bad Habit's production of Much Ado About Nothing. That was show was pretty much theatrical chocolate, it was just great. And I don't know what else to say about it! And also it was like two weeks ago that I saw it. Thinking back though, really strongly delineated characters, really crisp pacing and plotting, fun music, fun cast, really fun show.
What have I been up to? Well, I've been rehearsing Three Sisters and had the pleasure this weekend of delving into my big act four showcase scene, you know the one I'm talking about, with the declarations and the coffee. Man, what a fantastic scene. You know how sometimes theatre feels like a giant pain in the ass, all the commuting and memorizing and waiting around but then you get to that moment where it's like "oh right fuck yeah this is awesome" and I had that working on this scene. So that felt good.
Oh and last week was the staged reading of The Last Jews by Larry Jay Tish with myself, my friend Chuck Schwager who brought me on board, the talented Amber Williams who I met that night and oh yeah BOBBIE STEINBACH who is of course awesome and it was kind of a dream come true being on stage with. I'm happy to say that it went really well, our audience of 30 or 40 people laughed a lot, had some great feedback and seemed to enjoy themselves throughly. For my part, I didn't blow it. So good on me!
Most immediately on the horizon... Crooked Arrows comes out this Friday. I'm excited and nervous to see myself, and also wondering how much of me you'll be seeing in the final cut. Whatever else happens with it, it will be a great cap to what was a fantastic experience. My fantasy of course is that it comes out and immediately Hollywood starts calling, but more likely it will give me some small piece of ammunition should I head that way, which I am actively considering. We shall see!
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Being on Stage
I had the opportunity to get on stage and perform twice last weekend in two very different situations. One was the culmination of these past two weeks work as we presented The Apology my play about incest I was cast in at Roxbury Repertory Theatre's Six Playwrights in Search of a Stage one act play festival thing. The other was earlier this evening with my improv troupe, Rebels Without Applause as part of Improv Boston's Geek Week festival as we presented our (and particularly my own) virgin foray into performing long form improv. Both were the culmination of weeks of preparation and rehearsal, both presented challenges and both were unqualified successes. Well, except for one qualification, in my mind there were things which could have gone better about both of them, despite the fact that they were very well received and practically I performed to the best of my abilities... but not to my very absolute best. Which is OK. But that's the theme of this post, I'm coming back around to the theme of a previous post, satisfaction. Being satisfied with your work.
Because the thing is, as an actor, once you put something out in the world you don't get to do revisions on it like an author or even a painter or film maker gets to do. In the case of stage acting, you might get to try it again. But each individual performance stands alone as a piece, even if it's a piece of a greater organism, the show itself and the run of performances. In the case of these two events though, it's just one show. I'm sure I'll get to perform long form again in the future. And who knows, maybe this play will come back but I don't know that the playwright would contact us about reprising our roles if it did. So for the time being, I just have to be happy with the work I did.
Allow me to obsess a little bit. In both cases, I felt like in rehearsal we were able to achieve certain things that in performance we had the facsimile of but didn't exactly achieve. This is because live theatre is live theatre, it's different every time. In the case of our improv show, I sort of felt like it could have congealed a little better. But there was a major difference between our rehearsals and our performance... for the performance it was a packed full room of people. Laughing people. Quite a bit, actually. They really enjoyed our performance. And even if it was a little more chaotic then in some of our rehearsals, it was really really funny. And hey that's what it's all about.
The other, much more serious performance was also successful. It was strange performing in a straight play for the first time since March and Swimming in the Shallows that we only had one chance to perform it live, whereas with Swimming we had like sixteen. And of course, over that many performances the piece really evolves and even if you don't get something one night, you'll get another thing the next night and another thing after that but then not this, etc. But nope, The Apology had it's brief time on stage and now it's over. That was also successful. But I do wish we'd had a longer run, because I can't escape the feeling I could have done more with it. I mean man, what an intense piece and what an intense arc to go from just hangin' out with my Mom to "oh hey I spoke to my older sister, so my older brother raped her repeatedly when we were children? Why didn't you do something" etc and granted it was much more intense and much less flippant. It was a great acting challenge, and I had some great people taking it on with me. And then there were the other pieces, all of which were delightful and all the new folks I was able to meet and all the old ones I reconnected with. In short, a great experience.
Next up is that reading I've alluded to periodically, the culmination of months of work on the writer's part and us actors meeting several times over the past few months to break down the script and give him feedback, yes ladies and gentleman THE LAST JEWS are coming to Boston Playwright's Theater this Monday. And can I be honest? Being on stage with Bobbie Steinbach is a great opportunity, and despite the fact that she is anything but intimidating in person I can't help but be a little intimidated getting on stage with someone of her caliber. You know what I mean? In the meantime, let's just say my role has been expanded and I have some work to do. We had a rehearsal this past Monday, and another one on Friday primarily focusing on the scene where I do most of the talking between the playwright, my scene partner and myself. Oh and in the meantime, Three Sisters is about to enter full speed ahead mode as we go up in a month. So that's plenty going on!
Because the thing is, as an actor, once you put something out in the world you don't get to do revisions on it like an author or even a painter or film maker gets to do. In the case of stage acting, you might get to try it again. But each individual performance stands alone as a piece, even if it's a piece of a greater organism, the show itself and the run of performances. In the case of these two events though, it's just one show. I'm sure I'll get to perform long form again in the future. And who knows, maybe this play will come back but I don't know that the playwright would contact us about reprising our roles if it did. So for the time being, I just have to be happy with the work I did.
Allow me to obsess a little bit. In both cases, I felt like in rehearsal we were able to achieve certain things that in performance we had the facsimile of but didn't exactly achieve. This is because live theatre is live theatre, it's different every time. In the case of our improv show, I sort of felt like it could have congealed a little better. But there was a major difference between our rehearsals and our performance... for the performance it was a packed full room of people. Laughing people. Quite a bit, actually. They really enjoyed our performance. And even if it was a little more chaotic then in some of our rehearsals, it was really really funny. And hey that's what it's all about.
The other, much more serious performance was also successful. It was strange performing in a straight play for the first time since March and Swimming in the Shallows that we only had one chance to perform it live, whereas with Swimming we had like sixteen. And of course, over that many performances the piece really evolves and even if you don't get something one night, you'll get another thing the next night and another thing after that but then not this, etc. But nope, The Apology had it's brief time on stage and now it's over. That was also successful. But I do wish we'd had a longer run, because I can't escape the feeling I could have done more with it. I mean man, what an intense piece and what an intense arc to go from just hangin' out with my Mom to "oh hey I spoke to my older sister, so my older brother raped her repeatedly when we were children? Why didn't you do something" etc and granted it was much more intense and much less flippant. It was a great acting challenge, and I had some great people taking it on with me. And then there were the other pieces, all of which were delightful and all the new folks I was able to meet and all the old ones I reconnected with. In short, a great experience.
Next up is that reading I've alluded to periodically, the culmination of months of work on the writer's part and us actors meeting several times over the past few months to break down the script and give him feedback, yes ladies and gentleman THE LAST JEWS are coming to Boston Playwright's Theater this Monday. And can I be honest? Being on stage with Bobbie Steinbach is a great opportunity, and despite the fact that she is anything but intimidating in person I can't help but be a little intimidated getting on stage with someone of her caliber. You know what I mean? In the meantime, let's just say my role has been expanded and I have some work to do. We had a rehearsal this past Monday, and another one on Friday primarily focusing on the scene where I do most of the talking between the playwright, my scene partner and myself. Oh and in the meantime, Three Sisters is about to enter full speed ahead mode as we go up in a month. So that's plenty going on!
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