Judging Your Own Work

...From an objective perspective is very difficult, or even trying to appreciate it from the subjective perspective of a potential audience member or consumer, "if I were stumbling upon this, how would I react?" and I think if you're goal is to create good work, as opposed to work that's explicitly commercial  (nothing wrong with that) the main question should be "is this something I would enjoy?"

But of course, you want other people to enjoy it too, and probably if you and your friends have a long list of convoluted inside jokes that have taken on various lives of their own inside and out of their original contexts hearing them parroted back and forth would be entertaining, it would sound like a conversation between you and your friends. Which is not an unworthy goal for something like a Podcast (that by the way is what I'm going to be talking about, get ready) to make something that sounds like an authentic and fun conversation between friends, because doing that is actually pretty difficult, especially doing it in such a way that would be compelling and entertaining to an outside listener.

I've been gradually realizing things like this throughout the process of editing down the recording session of July 22nd, going through various incarnations, finding what works, whittling things down, removing the pauses, adding background music, mixing, etc, etc and now listening to what I'm calling the finished product (while resisting the urge to go back and fix this bit of mixing or cut that piece of dead air I'd missed before) and trying to decide for my self "is this good?" Well yeah actually, for a first attempt ever at this medium, I'd say it's pretty good but then "really how good is it?" my id asks my ego or whatever model we use for the voices in our heads that doubt.

(Side note, I actually spoke to my Mom about it, and even though she's my Mom so of course she did she said she liked it, and specifically the bits I'm going to get into in a moment of a more philosophical nature. This actually made me happier than she probably realized, because I believe that if you can make something which appeals to 60 something baby boomers and people in your peer group, or any wide audience like that, you are really truly doing something right.)

Something I didn't do which is my goal in future recording sessions was to respond from a completely earnest, thoughtful and honest place (as myself, basically). Something that I tend to do in improv/comedy stuff is make a game of tossing curveballs at my partner, which is something I did a lot during our recording session. Like if someone is doing something to enhance the atmosphere of the scene, or has allowed a changed in their character or given circumstances based on a failed communication (like if you, my theoretical scene partner, or I establish one thing, say we're partners in a detective agency but then one of us changes it to make us siblings which doesn't break the scene but inexplicably changes it pointing that out or whatever) or even when something like that hasn't happened, just to see how the other person reacts.

As audience members, we get served that a lot in our contemporary "absurdist" comedy in the vein of Tim & Eric or much of the current Adult Swim programming block, and it's a perfectly valid aesthetic which is much easier to pull off than something like Louie which is completely dependent on the strength of Louis C.K's actual point of view on things as refracted through a semi realist depiction of his world and real life. Doing absurdist comedy well sounds easy but is difficult, depictions of life and adding to them the lens or angle of a specific comedic viewpoint sounds difficult but is actually nigh impossible.

And then again, at this moment I'm focusing on film and television, which is what I'm working on, I'm working on a podcast. In that respect, let's say two analogues entities to the Tim and Eric/Louis paradigm might be Comedy Bang Bang and WTF with Marc Maron, two extremely popular very different podcasts. Comedy Bang Bang sets it self as an interview show, and then becomes absurd (and is one of my primary inspirations for the model I'm trying to work out) and WTF is actually an interview show, which oftentimes becomes as much about it's host and his weird and compellingly specific world view as it does about the person he's interviewing. In the case of Comedy Bang Bang it works because usually all involved are world class improvisors who've been doing it in various forms for years and years, and have had a while to develop the specific voice of their show and Marc Maron is an incredibly compelling interviewer and for that other stuff he draws on 20 plus years of life as a stand up comedian and more than that as a thoughtful but doubting human being. Really, you should just go listen to them to see what I'm talking about.

Anyway, in response to those two archetypes, tons and tons of imitators have inevitably sprung up. One of my favorites from the WTF mold is You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes, which has much of the same structure as WTF where Holmes talks to a guest about his or her career in show business or whatever but often spirals off into very heady discussions about sex or religion or whatever.

I'd like to think that where my goal had been to do something purely resembling Comedy Bang Bang with just lots of comedy bits and improvised sketch type things (which are present in the pilot) we added up going into a lot of You Made it Weird-esque territory, and I actually kind of like that, but doubt my own ability to consistently make something like that work.

But at the same time, what am I gaining by doubting myself? I've only done one of these, and it developed organically and in the process of my editing it into this particular thing, next time will probably be something different and the time after that. And the reason why I'm trying this out is to scratch that creative itch to be making my own stuff that I've blogged about, and to just start learning how to do this thing. Certainly none of the podcast people I admire were doing their shows at the level they do them over night, no one does that, it takes time and practice and dedication. Well, right now I've got some time, so let's see how long I can keep this dedication going and where it takes me.

Blogcasting? Podblogging? (with a sidebar on dreams)

I've thinking about it and blogging about my desire to do it, and this past Sunday it happened; I recorded my first podcast. I should say we had our first recording session, we being my friend Jesse from Rebels Without Applause who I knew to be a generally funny guy, a good improvisor (especially with voice based characters which are the basis of what I want to do) and basically up for anything. So I met up a microphone in the middle of my living room, plugged into my laptop and we started going. Unfortunately, I did a poor job of setting up Garageband and some of our funniest stuff from the two or three hours of hanging out we did was lost but such is life. What remained was about two hours of material, which I've cut down to forty five minutes and which I'm continuing to massage, trimming pauses, false starts, umms those sorts of things and adding transitional music where appropriate.

One thing I've learned so far from this process is that making your own stuff, and doing it well, is a difficult and time consuming process. Especially when your working in a medium like say film or radio where you have to painstakingly comb over every piece for usable material, organize those pieces into piles and then compile them into a whole that makes sense and is effective at conveying your theme or message or whatever.

But anyway, the first episode is done, it's online here http://mikehandelman.podbean.com/, so I guess in addition to this blog I now have a "podblog" or whatever that's supposed to be. I have limited storage space, so I might need to upgrade to a paid account for like $2 a month which isn't bad... until we fucking EXPLODE AM I RIGHT?! No of course that won't happen. Do you know how easy it is to do something like this and how many people are out there doing it, many of whom are much more experienced and better at it than I am? Lots, that's how many.

This brings to mind a tension that sometimes becomes a problem in my relationships with fellow artists and actually hit a violent boiling point to where someone I've considered a friend for a while has declared he won't talk to me after I perhaps too harshly criticized his idea, which I found rather extreme and outlandish as an in to the entertainment industry and questioned his ability to actually do it, which he took as unsupportive and insulting in the extreme and I've been feeling bad about since. This habit of unerring rationalism of mine, and my sometimes poor filter, alienated a bunch of my friends in high school as well when they were really into writing hyper ambitious genre screen plays which they then planned to film using the school's TV equipment. I would point out how A) violent they tended to be, and B) called for a level of production values we simply didn't have access to, and they would get pissed and we'd argue and I wouldn't back down because I was a stupid 17 year old and after a while they stopped talking to me. Which is understandable because I was always being negative, even if I thought I was being constructive and I was probably pretty frustrating and irritating to deal with at the time. Losing those friendships, especially so close to the end of high school, made me pretty sad.

And I think there is a tendency towards a manic quality in creative people, and to an extent in myself which I try extremely hard to be self aware about but which other creatives may or may not, especially when their in the middle of on these manic phases. So they'll lay out their ambitious screen play idea (more often than not it's a screen play idea) and I'll poke various holes in how difficult it is to write a good screenplay or make something produceable on the level of a very small time film producer and they'll get frustrated. Or you know, that conversation with your (possibly intoxicated) actor friend about how their going to be a movie star, and I'll usually say "the likelihood of that happening is nigh impossible" and they'll ask me "well don't you have some big dream? Don't you want to shoot for the stars?"

And yeah, I do, sort of. I allow myself to indulge in grand fantasies of movie stardom every once in a while, but in my mind the path of seriously considering those possibilities leads primarily to disappointment and failure. Both of which are simply parts of life and especially part of being any kind of an artist where it's incredibly difficult to get anything to catch on commercially on any kind of large scale, much less to the point of being able to support yourself... and so I make that my big dream, that small goal to support myself as an artist. Occasionally I allow myself the slightly bigger dream of doing that while making work I'm truly satisfied by. Then we go into the realm of large scale commercial success or recognition or whatever. And that's not why I want to be an artist, it's just for the joy of art.

As is the case I'm sure for all or most of my peers, certainly for those I feel close to. But sometimes they allow themselves bigger dreams than I do. And when confronted with those dreams, my reaction is similar to when I see that in myself, I try to bring them to Earth. Sometimes too harshly, like in the case of my friend, who misunderstand that and took as a personal slight and offense or declaration that he wasn't good enough or as good as me or whatever. Which wasn't the case. I tried to explain that, he hasn't responded. And it could be that friendship is lost to me, or that he'll come around, I don't know. I don't know where he's at, after the provoking exchange I saw him several times before he left and we seemed cool before I got his message condemning me. So I wonder if something else is going on to put him in that headspace, I can only speculate. And feel a certain amount of sadness, which has been very distracting from the work I've been trying to do getting this modest podcasting project to resemble something I can happy with...

Anyway, it's a problem, how to be both supportive of friends and their endeavors and also truthful and honest and how to know when someone wants to hear honesty or just faith and support, which are not mutually exclusive. Even if I don't believe in an idea, I can still believe in a person. I don't know, I shouldn't say anymore in case they read this. I want to talk about my feelings of frustration and even anger at being unjustly condemned for expressing an honest thought, and so far after the fact. But it wouldn't make a difference.

I just have to keep my head in the game and keep moving forward. I feel like I've made a lot of progress this summer. I grew and discovered so much studying movement, and portraying Alfred. I began learning the principles of editing video and now podcasting, all of which is very exciting. Thinking of the future, I know it will hold more frustration like I'm feeling now. And struggle, oh God will it hold struggle. But also hope for friendship and art which are the truly essential things in life.

Thinkin' Bout Actin (Like a Lady!) or; "Are You a Transvestite in Real Life?"

Edit: I feel I should preface this post with a note on how difficult it actually kind of was to write. I try not to be over indulgent in my own appraisals of my work, generally speaking, so I don't forget to keep trying to get better or lose sight of all the things I need to improve on. But for the purposes of this role and this post, allow me to be self indulgent.

I realize that in all my blogging about my movement class, which I felt the need to get down on blog while the experience was still fresh in my mind and on going, step by step... that I have savagely neglected blogging about our performances of Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead and my discoveries with Alfred! I know, it's appalling.

Let's see, as of tonight we're seven performances into our run, with five in English and two and a half in Spanish (one of them was cancelled part way through) with tonight being probably our biggest crowd and maybe my best performance. I've been getting great responses the whole way through to my portrayal of Alfred, lots of people saying "oh you were my favorite" but of course there's always an aspect of hyperbole to someone saying that (or so I make myself believe to keep my ego in check), several little kids asking for autographs, and someone asking me tonight "Are you a transvestite in real life?" sort of half seriously, half joking, in the kind of way that "of course I'm not a transvestite" but if I had been it would be like "yeah ok".

Is there any way to say this in a way that I'm more comfortable saying it? No, there isn't, so I'll just say it. I am fucking killing it as Alfred. This role plays perfectly into my persona as a comedian... goofy, physical, kind of dark and weird and highly but also ambiguously sexual in a way that works which Stoppard doesn't anticipate but compliments the debauched nature of this universe. But also caring at moments, like what my Mom singled out when I connect with Ophelia after Hamlet has so violently and viscously attacked and rejected her. He tells her to go and be a prostitute, well I am sort of a prostitute and hey, wait a minute Hamlet, what did you just do! And then oh, poor thing... but of course I'm powerless to help her, on so many levels. Existentially and literally, in that moment, how could I this weirdo bisexual actor/whore possibly relate or connect to this young woman from a level of society I perform for but have no way of understanding. And then of course, we're in the world of Hamlet so she's inherently doomed to lose her father and her lover and than drown herself.

All of which evolved from my experience of the moment as our director staged it (who deserves much praise for so flat out brilliantly staging the play such that I could kill it on the level I'm killing it) where the Player King and I's dumb show make out session is interrupted by Hamlet assaulting and admonishing Ophelia and leaving her there, before we take her in, and slowly creep of stage in one of many laugh out loud moments in the play.

The point being, I've discovered a lot of depth to Alfred's character which Stoppard explicitly did not intend to be there from how he's written in the script, which is of course as a weak young child actor who's forced by circumstance to serve as the company's female playing tragedian (as would have been the case in Shakespeare's time) and also the company cabin boy and sexual bargaining chip. Yeah, it's some dark shit. And in the name of that curbing some of that darkness to make it a lighter, more family friendly show, we toned down those aspects, the exchanges where Alfred is most explicitly offered a sexual object, etc, but kept the man in the dress goofiness. Everything I'm doing in this alternate version is extremely well balanced by the feminine strength which is also kind of masculine and a little ambiguous (just like me, but inverted) of the woman doing The Player(s), Sarah and Paola (guess which one does it in English and the other in Spanish?). My mother commented on the effect having women in the role that it makes the advances of the Player which are typically pretty creepy as played by an older man (as is sort of the standard interpretation of The Player) into actually kind of appealing, and went so far as to call them deity like in their power and presence. Definitely, as I've been killing it, so have them and everybody else in the cast, Ros and Guild, the Hamlet ensemble, our ensemble ensemble and of course my fellow Tragedians.

But more about how awesome I am, which is to say how much fun I've been having (because trying your best is what really makes you awesome, amIright kids?). I really love playing comedy, and I'm especially enjoying playing it over such a long run of performances (Seven down, five more to) is that no matter what there's something new to be found every single night. I think this is true even more so than drama, for me at least, in some ways... How do I put this? As Tuzenbach, who had some pretty goofy moments as well, of course I was constantly focused on rediscovering each individual emotional beat for every performance. And come to think of it, the same was true for Nick in Swimming in the Shallows (which the work that I did on maybe prepared more than any other previous role for Alfred) who was also though even more explicitly comedic, but balanced by comedic moments...

I think what I'm trying to describe is in part due to the nature of Alfred and his role in the overall show, in that it's like jazz, with Alfred I'm always trying to find ways to play the silences... find the harmony of my other actors, their rhythms, so I can syncopate with my own comedy and make existing moments funnier when I can or when there's an appropriate bit of empty space fill it with something and try to make it of that space or silence every single night. Riffs, variations on phrases, all through expression and physicality and little interactions, ya dig?

It's equally true that with drama or comedy I'm trying to play each moment as spontaneously and truthfully as possible for that night, night after night. But the kind of playing I get to do with Alfred is just so my jam. Not that I didn't love playing Tuzenbach or Nick, because both of them had so much beautiful text... and maybe that's what I find so freeing about Alfred, that it's just physical and it's with that in mind which I took on a role smaller in that sense than what I'd played in my last few shows because I knew it would be a chance to explore that. And it's with the same mindset that I entered Yo-el's class, such that physicality has been a big theme in my work this summer, which I feel fantastic about.

But yeah, it's that quality of reacting more than being the driving force (which any role is a balance of the two) that I respond to in Alfred, because being able to do that with my specific brand of comedy has also been one of my favorite parts to get to play. And this is possibly the most successfully laugh out loud funny work I've done in the whole of my acting career. Oh yeah, and that all comes from finding a  discovery in every individual moment and once I've discovered them bringing them back and honing them. Variations on riffs, like I was saying. The dumb show sequence is especially rife with these opportunities to find those riffs. Like the moment with Hamlet and Ophelia. I got a great laugh tonight from how I found to play my specific aghast reaction to Hamlet's treatment as Ophelia as he storms off. If you saw me across multiple performances, you'd probably see me playing a similar bit night after night, but tonight I really nailed it. And tomorrow night will be different, even if I do nail it again, it wont' be quite in the same way. But I also know that tomorrow will bring on a new set of discoveries, and the night after that, and so on.

Until the end of the run. And that is the beautiful, tragic nature of theater, isn't it? Unlike with film... you get to do it again! And again! And again! And then it stops. It becomes photos, maybe a video that of course never can represent the magic of the real thing, and oh so many memories. Here's to making more of those with the time I have left with this wonderful group, actors, stage managers, audiences, everybody.

End of the Road (Beginning of the Journey)

So yeah, today was the last session of my movement class. Well sort of, we had to miss a few classes due to conflicts with Yo-el's other teaching, so at some point we should be making those up. Anyway this was the last of our scheduled classes, and I think the end of the "training" period for the apprentices before they go hard into tech (God bless them, I know how long and exhausting an outdoor tech can be, I can only imagine a show on the scale of Commonwealth is on another level).

Today was the last day of movement class, and the first day of the rest of my life as an artist being active and aware of my craft always in pursuit of the next level, whatever that may be. Today I felt better about a few things that had been challenging me, found some new things I didn't know would be as difficult as they would be, and overall have a new sense of where I need to go. For example, I felt much better about the Laban exercises than I did when we last went over them, about a week ago. The point of incorporating Laban technique into the curriculum is to create grounded movement. If you've seen a lot of professional or amateur theater, maybe you know what I'm talking about. Watching someone on stage, you can generally tell if their connected and present to the floor and the space around them, or just kind of hanging out waiting for their next cue or moving from point A to point B because the director instructed them too. I've figured out a way of doing this on stage that I feel like works for me, but I also know that I don't have the kind of groundedness that I see when I watch a production from Actors Shakespeare Project or Commonwealth Shakespeare with really bad ass classical actors fully connecting to the floor, the space, the actors around them, their intention, etc. What was I talking about? Anyway, through would Yo-el call "an active, breathing spine" Laban movement seeks to create that sense in an actor. One thing I realized in these past few weeks, my spine and I are on better terms than we had been before but still have a long way to go. Another aspect of the Laban work is creating a fully integrated and connected body, so that when you move you do so as a whole. Again, another problem area for me, and last night I blogged about how when we did this last I just didn't feel connected. Which today I did and I felt much more fluid and natural doing the waterbucket, bow and arrow, pinnochio, etc (don't worry about what those are) but also feeling the next steps I need to take in really bringing the parts of my body together as one.

So that was part one, part two was an ongoing partnering exercise we've been working on over the past few classes, a variation on the trust exercise people do at corporate retreats where someone falls and the group catches them. This is an exercise in awareness, trust and weight sharing and the class has had difficulty with it. But this morning, being in a smaller group, it was much easier to tell who was falling at any given time and promptly react and catch them, which I was able to do a few times and felt pretty good about. And I felt better and more trusting in my own falling work, after feeling like I'd nearly been dropped (and kind of was, once) or like the catchers didn't know what to do with me, this time we worked together and they did.

After that was an extension of those principles, as we worked on what's called contact improv. It's basically an improvisation between two or more people where you share contact and respond to one another's movements, at it's most basic. Again this is something I did with Tommy Derrah, but felt much rustier and more anxious about as Yo-el was really interested in the weight sharing aspect of the exercise, something I'm less comfortable with. I'm not a particularly coordinated person. I'm also a fairly large person. So if I try to move in a really crazy way, sometimes I lose my balance. If I'm trying to execute a spontaneous move, reacting to another person's input, while sharing my or their weight... yeah I might have unintentionally made contact with the floor once or twice. This is definitely a subject I want to revisit, because I feel it as an extension of the Gratowski work which I enjoy and I don't feel like I took it as far as it could have been taken in today's class.

And we ended with a beautiful flocking exercise. This time, I felt much more comfortable and tried some new things, like being more towards the back or middle of the flock and trying to be a part of that and not a direct companion to the leader like I'd been doing before. And at several points, leadership sort of organically fell to me and the group consented and went with what I was trying to do, which felt very satisfying.

From there I said goodbye, and walked away one last time. But it's not a true "farewell", I'll see the apprentices in Corilanus, and my hope is I'll be able to continue to work with and learn from Yo-el in some capacity in the future. The end of one road is the beginning of another journey, or something like that.

Stream of Observation: Flocking, The Cat, Baby Squirrels

I feel like I have an overwhelming amount of blogging to do, but I will endeavor to capture everything I experienced today and last week that I want to get down in my blog.

Like today, the baby squirrels. I think it was around 7 o'clock and I was behind the garage that makes our act II set up, so I was basically back stage, I think pre setting some props or costume pieces... and out of the corner of my eye, I see this squirrel moving with a great deal of intention and purpose sort of towards me, but than sort of not, but than towards me again, and it had something in it's mouth. That something was small and hairless, all curled up, and I realized it was a baby squirrel. I remember the moment, sort of, when I learned that squirrels transport their young in their mouths, I believe several at a time, and I was struck by the oddness of it. But of course it makes sense, they have big mouths to carry nuts and also infants. I guess by our standard of cuteness, an infant squirrel isn't that cute... but I sort of think they are, and it was fascinating seeing the squirrel out of the element I'm used to seeing it in, but also so much so in it's own element and so full of purpose, carefully but swiftly carrying it's young to safety. If I could go back and repeat the observation exercise in Yo-el's class, I know exactly what my subject would be.

Which brings me to the work we've been doing. Sad to say, I neglected to blog about my work last week, so I will endeavor to recap it. Last Thursday was difficult. I felt like my energy and focus had been consumed with opening Rosencratz and Guildenstern the night before, and subsequently I simply didn't feel as connected as I would like to have been for Yo-el's class. This difficulty was increased in that the work we were doing was concerned with groundedness, connectivity and coordination, which are not necessarily my strong suits usually, especially coordination unless I have a very specific routine worked out. Anyway, this particular class consisted primarily of Laban work (who was an early important theorist and practitioner of modern dance) who believed that movement should originate from the pelvis, the theoretical backing of which I don't really know so I won't try to explain, but I think it has to do with it being an extension of the core and the spine, etc. Many of my classmates are better at this stuff that I am (not that I'm passing judgement, many of them are simply dancers or athletes or whatever and are simply better equipped for this work) and so we went pretty quickly through the exercises also because there are 21 of us and only 90 minutes available to work. And I won't like, I started to get frustrated. It happens, of course. But when it did, I did my best to smile and laugh at my own inability to fluidly execute the forms and for a moment with one of them, I started to get it. Then I was back in my head, and class was over shortly after.

Our next class was Saturday, and focused more on some the Gratowski-esque elements we've been working on, beginning with an exercise I was familiar with in principle from my work with Tommy Derrah (and also Jeremy Geidt, and other teachers) called The Flock. The principle of the flock being that the group moves as sort of an amorphous mass or like a flock of birds, with one person at a time leading the flock ideally in such a way that an observer wouldn't know who the leader was. Initially, Yo-el called out leaders, but overtime it became organic with who was sort of at the front of the flock and who had the combination of interest, will and energy to take the lead. My approach to this exercise was to try and literally mimic the flock leader as closely as possible, so I was frequently towards the front because when it would turn I wasn't turning with the flock I was turning with the leader, usually. Probably because I naturally had that combination I talked about from having worked in this idiom previously, early on I took the lead once or twice leading the flock through the space. As we gradually warmed up, we added new movement elements, gestures, levels and so forth. After we were acclimated to that, Yo-el encouraged us to "go to the next level" which is when I, taking a gesture that was already happening took the lead and began expanding on the gesture which to me I recall as sort of an undulating wave motion which I made undulate wider and faster, and I was picking up momentum thinking maybe I was inspiring the class to a new height I looked behind me... and they were clearly perplexed, not really able to follow what the hell I was doing.

After my attempt to lead the flock failed, I took another course. My effort had been to push the group towards a new level or mode of flocking, so I sort of took a confusing tactic. Previously, it had been easy to follow who was leading by who was in front. When my effort to lead was unsuccessful, I started moving the group in a circle, until it became unclear where was the front and where was the back, until someone asserted dominance and lead the flock out of it. I didn't lead again after that, which I only realized after the fact, because I was too busy with the activity of following the flock leader and even trying to anticipate their movement...

I tried to express in the class but failed (wow I guess that's a theme today, even though I don't meant it to be), but I feel like in movement oftentimes there is a kind of subtle melodic or harmonic quality similar to music. If you hear a tense chord or note, you want it to resolve to a resolution, or if you hear a phrase if you are really paying attention to the music you can anticipate that phrase being repeated but possibly in a new form and such is often the case with movement, especially of this style and energy where everything is flowing. So I concerned myself with that, and found it very rewarding the times when I successfully predicated or anticipated a movement change based on what had come before. Or once or twice, I was able to add in a variation or motif to an existing movement without completely taking over leadership. That was cool too.

I should move off that tangent and into the rest of the work from Saturday and today, since this has turned into a post primarily concerned with my movement class. After that, we did a partnering exercise which is generally kind of stressful because I know I won't have one, but someone was gracious enough to be my partner. The exercise was inspired by Cafe Muller, a piece by the German choreographer Pina Bausch and showcased in the film Pina (which I watched recently and will need to blog about later), which in this case was one person would close their eyes and the other would lead them through the space, at first neutrally but then with the person being guided engaging in dance like movements and with multiple chairs in the space as obstacles. At first, I had a hard time giving over to my partner. I've done these kinds of exercises before, and this is often the thing for me even if I trust fully in the person, which I did, my other senses or even just my ability to sense light through closed eye lids overwhelm me with the feeling of other persons or obstacles in the space, and the fear of collision. That didn't happen though, for the most part, and it was interesting that when we moved in to the dance component, it felt much more natural and I was less anxious having the freedom to just explore and move in the space. Part of this was that my partner was a wonderfully natural and gentle guide and who was a generous collaborator as I found movement to the music being played and within the space and it's obstacles. Despite what I said above, during that moment, I felt connected and that to me is one of the most satisfying aspects of art connecting with other beings either as observers, participants or collaborators or even just with another aspect of yourself.

This sort of segues into our work today on The Cat, another Gratowski exercise the point of which is to extend and stretch your spine in a similar manner to yoga while bringing on a level of exhaustion which Gratowski believed, as I understand it, sort of stripped away your bullshit and allowed you to connect to a more truthful interior life and creativity not having the energy to judge or second guess. What I was struck by in this exercise was the way in which I felt my alignment... it was the most aligned I'd ever felt. I didn't have to force anything into place or hold anything in any particular way, it was just completely natural my spine was straight where it's supposed to be straight but also soft and curved where it should be and it felt incredible.

I'm sorry that tomorrow is our last session. I feel like I've only begun to scratch the surface of this work, but also excited at the prospect of continuing it in my own life and in other avenues. The road never ends, it just bends, and continues.

Up... And Running!

And we're off! Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are/Han Muerto is off to the races with two performances down in English and one in Spanish, and it is such a pleasure doing such a fantastic production in a beautiful space like Mary O'Malley Park (seriously it's gorgeous) for such appreciative audiences.

Probably my favorite thing so far have been the reactions from the little kids, usually on blankets in the front row, audibly responding to the events of Act 3, which is also the most violent, action packed and close quartered part of the show. Probably my favorite responses so far have been to the Player's Hamlet reenactment at the end of the show, "the bad guy's went down! yeah!" and then when we get back up for curtain call "they weren't dead!".

My Mom came to the English and Spanish opening, and enjoyed it throughly. She wrote a response to the Spanish opening that reflects her observation of  my ongoing growth as Alfred, and also some of the responses from audience members that make this show so damn satisfying. So here's a guest post. And if you haven't yet, come see this show! Boston Globe article, yeah!

From my Mom: "Even though they lost their place a couple of times in the long, complex back-and-forth, those guys were great!

I watched several passers-by get hooked on the coin-toss bit, sit down, and constitute themselves into an audience.  Stray kids got drawn in by the physicality of the coin tosses and reactions.  I got the sense everybody was on board for the intellectual hijinks, and several lone men, in the clothes of immigrant workingmen, showed distinctly high-brow responses to the philosophical jokes. By the time the Tragedians appeared, they were already hooked; the burst of costumes and instruments was a shower of amazement after amazement.

I think many of the people I'd seen hanging around the edges Wednesday actually were forming the intention of coming back last night, for the Spanish language production.  I didn't count the audience, but I think it will grow.

Alfred was even better than the first production.  The portrayal of the emotionally intense but fickle queen is hysterical, and is enveloped in a meta-portrayal of portrayal itself, as a creative act of the character you're actually portraying.  Alfred's unshielded empathy for Ophelia elevates that whole scene, and focuses his whole forceful stage presence right onto her crumpled form, like an emotional spotlight.  Crushed and hurt beyond human reason, she shines.  Bravo; brava."

The Great Slog (or the Longest Tech Week Ever) aka WE GOT FUNDED!

Hey, what's up? So this past week in addition to all that fun movement work I've been part of the less fun but still important and necessary work of teching through our production of Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead/Han Muerto.

Now, generally speaking, teching a show can be a long and frustrating process. Teching two shows (one in a language foreign to half the cast), outside, in a public park, across multiple site specific locations... it's a lot! And it's required a lot of hard work, dedication and a long hours, the challenge of which all involved have risen to and to my compatriots I say bravo! We're almost at the finish line! Yeah!

And I'm very excited to see this show go up. I have to say, as much of an added difficulty as it can be, I really like doing site specific theater. I mean in a very literal sense, all theater is site specific because of the relationship between live performance and space, amIright? I think Peter Brooks defined theater as an observer watching a body moving through space, something like that, I don't know I haven't read The Empty Space since I was a freshman in college (and even then I didn't read it that closely or particularly get it). But definitely, the room or the place where you put up a show is an integral aspect of the audience experience whether or not you draw attention to it as a bare black box or an elaborate period set up or what have you. I think the site specific or environmental aspect of these pieces though enhances the things that make theatre worth watching as opposed to say a DVD, or just staying in and taking a nap. One of my favorite things is watching a story unfold, not just in the sense of the literal narrative but seeing what places that story might go to. New environments always surprise and excite me. This is something I've always enjoyed about certain video games, like say The Legend of Zelda, where that sense of exploring and discovering a world is so integral. And site specific theatre, whether or not it's as immersive as something like Sleep No More or more static like our show, brings that to the forefront of the experience.

So yeah, I hope I can see more shows like this in the future and be part of them as well. And hopefully Apollinaire has been empowered to continue doing this kind of work, because have I mentioned our Kickstarter campaign? Cause that shit just got funded! Oh yeah! I know Apollinaire wasn't able to do a show like this last year, after something like ten years of doing it, because several financial backers fell through. Well it's back, and with a brand new source of funding... the internet.

Kickstarter really is incredible. It makes it easy and fun for people to find and support the kind of work they want to see in the world, and for artists to find those people and take their money to go off and support those endeavors. Of course, the artist/patron model is a pretty old one, but this really democratizes the whole thing and takes the power to give life to meaningful work outside of the realm of just the wealthy and empowers anyone anywhere to take part in whatever way they can afford to. Probably much better essays have been and will continue to be produced documenting this phenomena.  But what Apollinaire is doing is really special from a social justice stand point, in that it's bringing art to an underserved population, the people of Chelsea and by extension the whole community of people who I've been taking the 111 with every day, who rarely have the oppurtunity to see live performance much less in their own language (which is for a lot of them Spanish). And making art and especially theater accessible to these underserved, under represented groups is important, because increasingly people don't give a shit about live theater and they should because it's really something special, and powerful and the only way to inspire the next generation of great artists is by bringing art to them.

More on this project later, when we've brought it to them. Until then... oh shoot, I've gotta be at rehearsal.

Blogging My Movements

I would say I've gotten pretty good about consistently blogging lately, wouldn't you? Nod and say yes. Well done. Well, I'm sipping my iced coffee with a few minutes before I have to run off to our all day tech rehearsal for R&G so why don't I take a moment to blog a bit, yes? Yes.

This was my last blog post. You didn't read it, because I didn't post it to Facebook. What we ended up doing in Yo-el's class was some more of the Laban work, and the observation stuff I talked about didn't end up coming in to play. However, the Laban work has been helpful, although I feel like I'm only scratching the surface of it. I did have one meaningful "moment" in that particular class. Towards the end of the "Breakfast Warm Up" cycle that Yo-el has been teaching us, we do what he calls a "Pinnochio" where you basically skip across the room on a diagonal in small groups. He encouraged us to open up to this exercise, as I interpreted it to let go of our cynicism and adult doubts and be more child like and joyful. So I did that. I really did. I dropped my tension, my self awareness, and just went with the movement. And then when Yo-el noticed this and encouraged me to continue, my self awareness came back and I was a little less in it. Oh well! It's funny how even simple praise can create self awareness, isn't it? Because then you're stuck in this feedback loop of trying to recreate that moment of praise instead of making a new one for yourself. More on that later.

Friday we didn't have movement, which I didn't find out until I arrived at the BCA due to a communication error. But they were very accommodating, and instead I was able to sit in on a Linklater voice class with a local actress named Melissa Baroni who Jennie Israel had previously recommended as someone to study with. Linklater is a particular school of thought about breath and voice work that's taught at Shakespeare and Company where Jennie studied as did a bunch of ASP associated people and various Boston actors. This class was actually also made available to me as part of the Commonwealth thing I'm doing, but due to my schedule it didn't seem like it would work out and I feel like movement is more of a priority to my work right now. However it was very informative and enlightening, and I discovered a sense of my breath that I hadn't felt before... a sense of connection, of being in my breath within my body (as opposed to being in my head, which I've been trying to get out of by doing all this work) that was sort of an epiphany.

Saturday was movement again! And the beginning of our work with Jerzy Gratowski techniques, who was this cool Polish theater director and you should Google him. Previously, I'd done exercises inspired by Gratowski with Tommy Derrah (who unsurprisingly knows Yo-el) and found them kind of incredible in their power and energy with a large group. What we did on Saturday was called the River and was much more of an intimate exercise with a group of four, where one at a time we take up the energy of the "river" which in this case begins in one of part of the body and emanates throughout, inspiring movement in different body parts which the observers then followed. When I went up the first time for what was to be a minute with the river, it started in my knee and I followed it as it pulled up around in the space. I've found in my movement work, my poor sense of balance and coordination limits me from moving in the ways that my imagination would dictate, especially in the way that I want to escape what I find to be the more pedestrian levels of our everyday standing posture. So I'm always trying to get down low or high or at a diagonal and immediately I'm off balance. With this exercise I was able to accept that, and ultimately I was brought to the floor where I find myself less restricted by gravity and was able to embrace the inner chaos I was feeling in that moment, to the point of nearing what seemed like could have been self injury had I continued when Yo-el ended the exercise after what felt like 20 or 30 seconds, instead of a minute.

Afterwards, Yo-el commented that it was the most "out of my head" that he had seen me move, and inside of course I blushed a little, and he encouraged me to continue exploring in that direction. But how!? Now that I was aware that I'd been out of my head, I would be in my head trying to get back to that place. I was aware of that conundrum when we started the exercise a second time for two minutes. Instead of feeling violent and chaotic in my movements, I found a sensuality, exploring the feeling of my own body, the floor and of my breath. Instead of feeling like 30 seconds, it felt longer than two minutes, like three or four. We didn't talk about it aftewards, but we made eye contact and I felt Yo-el gave me a thumbs up. And I give myself a thumbs up too, because I don't think I fell into that trap of trying to recreate my own energy.

I'd hoped to tackle the challenges and joys of this tech week, but now I need to get to tech rehearsal! Until then bloggers!

Movement with Yo-Cassel: Day 4 Prejournal

I'm trying a new experiment for my first return to movement with Yo-el and the Comm Shakes apprentices after my four day hiatus, blogging before hand my thoughts and feelings coming in to the class.

As you might have read previously, last session we all participated an hour long exercise in observation in Boston Common, and as you might have further gleaned, I didn't have an easy time with it. I think Unpacking the experience just now in the shower (which was a continuation of an on going process starting with the exercise itself) I think I had an epiphany. My difficulty in the exercise could be boiled down to an inability to get out of my head. That I was having difficulty at all was ironic, because to be frank, I'm a very experienced people watcher going back at least to when I first discovered poetry in high school... but maybe even further back, to when I was young and would sit by myself at recess or lunch and just watch the other kids or adults or what have you. At a certain point, I started connecting this activity to my craft as an actor as my craft itself began to expand and open up, I found ways of applying casual observation and more focused "people watching" in my everyday life, and this practice has definitely affected my work. But the thing I've learned to watch for and try to puzzle out is not necessarily the other person's physicality, as is the focus in this class and which I have done at times but less than the times when I've tried to watch for another person's mental state. How are they feeling? What are they thinking about? What are they looking at, how does that thing make them see or feel? And in the case of this exercise, I was watching the people and trying to answer the questions on my survey "what's dance like about their movement, what are their surroundings, is there a soundtrack, are there any props"etc. The first thing which happened was I lost sight of the act of observation. Instead of just observing, I was trying to observe and trying to find answers to these questions and subjects with compelling responses. The second thing was the observed individual became aware of me watching them. Third, I became aware that they were aware of me, and this brought me even further into my head, until I completely lost the exercise except for a few cursory notes on some homeless guys' physicality and mannerisms as they thought some guy was trying to narc on them, which made me feel even worse and stranger and more in my head about the whole voyeur relationship I was sort of forcing onto these people.

And then at the end, I did have a meaningful and uplifting experience, like many of my classmates when I found the saxophone player in the public garden, beautifully and simply playing a jazzed up rendition of "You Are My Sunshine". I'm not sure if Yo-el wants for us to think ahead about what elements to include in our pieces, but I do know I want to somehow incorporate that melody. And moving forward in my work, an increased awareness of physicality in my everyday observation, not trying to observe physicality but just seeing it in people and feeling it, instead of thinking it. This brings me back to my motivation in the first place for taking the course, getting out of my head and into my body from moment to moment in my life and on stage. Here goes!

Where's my blog post? (negative spaces)

In the course of the imperfect experiment that is these United Stat... I mean my blog, I put up a blog post yesterday written from a negative place, posted it to Facebook with the heading "hopefully I don't regret this!" ended up regretting it, and taking it down.

Now, why exactly did I regret putting it up? Not because of any outside pressure, probably no more then 5 or 10 people read the post. But you know, I said some mean, pretentious and egotistical things, which granted were coming from an honest place, but were still fundamentally negative (and kind of bullshit anyway, honesty and bullshit don't have to be mutually exclusive). Basically, a confluence of experiences over this past weekend lead me to that negative place, stemming from a show I saw that just kind of depressed me, and which I related back to an observational exercise we did in my movement class, and then I became negative about that experience because I had a hard time getting into it. I related them I guess because on some level, it reminded me of the futility and impossibility of observation and artist renderings of what we observe in the outside world. Huh? How do I make this less convoluted... the show read to me as a series of false observations. Then, in that exercise when I was trying to observe people in Boston Common, I was struggling with that falsehood. And more complicated stuff with the voyeur/observed individual relationship that's created in that kind of exercise. And I think I could have done it better if I'd detached myself from the written component that was included. Essentially, I was trying to observe, instead of just observing. And became very self aware of my self in that act of observation, and of the people I was observing's awareness of my observing them. And my classmates had incredibly positive reactions to the exercise, which I had a hard time from my space of negativity not reacting to cynically and immediately questioning my own cynicism and just getting further and further into my head.

At the end of which, I wrote a post about the play, where I said some mean things. And about the class, where I said more things that I regretted saying. And the end of the day, the purpose of this blog is to spread positivity. Basically, the ethos is "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it" because people don't want to work with people who say negative things, but my thought is they will want to engage with someone who says positive things. And for my own self, I want to be someone who spreads positivity through my writing, which is why this isn't a theatre review or criticism blog. It's just a blog of my experiences, and in blogging I want to hold on to the positive experiences and not the negative ones.

This is kind of a lesson I learned from my previous blogging project, the Livejournal I maintained all throughout high school. I focused a lot on my negative emotions in that space, because I felt negative a lot of the time and it was kind of cathartic, I guess. But then I definitely hurt people's feelings. And you may not realize this about me, but I'm actually a very sensitive and emphatic person and as soon as I realize I've allowed the negative aspects of my being to affect someone, I feel terrible. And I don't want to feel terrible. I don't do art in order to feel terrible, I don't write to feel terrible, everything we do is an effort to feel the opposite of terrible. Right? Whatever that is for us individually, and whatever makes us feel that way.

So that's why that post went down. I'll maybe try and deal with the things I talked about in that deleted blog post later, like what bothered me about that theatre piece, even though I never said what it was. And next Thursday, we'll be doing movement pieces about our observations, so I'll have more to say on that then.