I think, therefore iambic

Preparation!

2012-02-24T09:30:00.002-08:00

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

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

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

"Be in the moment... NOW"

2012-02-22T23:33:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

Time Management

2012-02-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

Imaginary Worlds

2012-02-15T08:03:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Discoveries

2012-02-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

Pretty Great Weekend

2012-02-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written Words

2012-02-04T19:01:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good bye LA

2012-01-31T17:29:00.001-08:00

Today is the end of the latest chapter of the volume of my Acting career filed under "Crooked Arrows" titled "Reshoots and ADR in LA" cross referencing another section "Acting in LA" title "The First Time". It was a good trip, and I am incredibly grateful for having had the oppurtunity. I learned alot. I felt much more comfortable acting on set. With a large crowd of extras, and also grips camera people PAs etc everywhere. Its hard to get in a zone and focus. I struggled with it a bit last summer. But I learned how to deal with it and this time was definitely easier. I did my first real voice over session, and had my first real oppurtunity to work closely with the films director, Steve Rash who is a consumate professional and a great guy. It was way different entering the character with this totally differ t context and build up. For me acting on film the adrenaline of the set up, calling action, etc becomes part of the given circumstances that drive the scenes stakes. For this character the costume made a huge difference to the role. All of which was removed leaving just the actor and the performance. Steve was tremendously helpful in putting me at ease as we worked together to find the best reading. Will I move to LA? Maybe. So far I dont mind it. I will wait and see what happens! The future, what a wonderful and terrifying prospect.

Straight Chilling

2012-01-30T22:10:00.001-08:00

Hello loyal readers! This is Chad Bryan reporting to live from Custom hotel in Los Angeles with an inside joke you wont get until you see Crooked Arrows this April in a theatre near you. Today was pretty chill. I needed that time to refuel. Yesterday was a long day shooting. Today I just chilled at this cozy hotel. Worked out less than I should have, but worked out none the less. Just chilled. Had some beers at the hotel bar, got caught up on WTF with Marc Maron, one of my all time fav podasts. Going to bed soon. 8:30 AM pick up for a 100 AM APR (voice over) session, then a redeye home. Exciting! Blog you again East Coast style.

Back in the saddle (or something)

2012-01-28T21:03:00.001-08:00

I tried to think of a metaphor for being back on set but couldnt come up with a good one. The one above will suffice. This is a similar situation but a new context. Or vice versa. I dont know. My first reshoots are tomorrow. Apparently the movie was screened last night and I was funny in it. Good. I have an early call tomorrow. So good night.

If I Knew Then... What I Now Know

2012-01-24T13:12:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended the latest of Stagesource's "If I Knew Then..." series, the previous entry featuring play wrights and this one featuring actors. Since I didn't have anything to do last night, and it was right in Harvard Square at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education I thought "why the hell not" and gave Stagesource the $5 for admission.

What do I now know after having attended the event? A lot of things which I had some idea of already, but refreshed and reinforced in new ways I hadn't necessarily considered in the context of these actor's careers. One theme which actor Tim Smith repeatedly reinforced "be aggressive". For example, during the audience Q&A someone asked "who are good acting teachers" and Tim said (paraphrasing) "your fellow actors and directors who you work with whom you respect and can learn from. Most of the time, if you offer a fellow actor your money, they will help you. Ask them, be aggressive." He accompanied this with an anecdote of his younger self calling around to random agents, managers, coaches, etc and being like "hey can you help me out" and one of them said to him "ask some people you know and respect". The person was in fact, Nicholas Cage's former acting coach, so he went and did that and now he's a successful equity actor. So there you go!

On the subject of auditioning, Marianna Basham said "try and enjoy it, pick material that you really enjoy performing, not necessarily just because someone says it's right for you but because you enjoy performing it." Also on the subject, Marianna said "be a human being. Say thank you to the reader." And the group agreed "know your limits and control the things that you can control." One profound thing Will Lyman talked about sort of in that vein is instead of getting caught up in your head of what your whole performance has to be, go on stage and ask yourself "what am I doing?" If your looking for your keys, find your keys. Then what? Essentially, be in the moment. Isolate the first thing you or your character needs to do when you get on stage, and do that thing.

That last point I learned from Scott Zigler's Practical Aesthetics class and from reading David Mamet, but they are deep and essential truisms of our craft, worthy of being reminded of, over and over! Another great suggestion from Will, which I hadn't heard before, "prior to walking into an audition take a sip of water or suck on a lemon drop. Feel the water or the juice from the lemon drop going down your throat. Focus on that." Whoa, pretty Zen type shit, Will Lyman. And so true! And not something I'd heard before! But also so obvious. Just be in the moment. As Will put it at the end, "your job is not to act, it's to be." And I mean, there it is, that's the fundamental thing. But it's so difficult to do that, and cut past all our prepared, canned, smelly bullshit.

Another subject that was discussed at length was the subject of having a "survival job", basically the job you have that you can manage alongside your acting pursuits that helps you buy food and pay rent. Will Lyman highly recommends a career in voiceover, but then again he's also Will Lyman voice of Frontline and those beer commercials with "the most interesting man in the world". Consensus was that it's important to find something you enjoy and which you find worthwhile. Will talked at length about how during a period of doing what I imagine to be mediocre plays, television work, commercials, etc, Frontline gave him the feeling of working on something worthwhile which contributed to society, and sort of "fed his soul" when acting wasn't doing that.

Maybe the biggest and most universal point of the evening, find meaning in what your doing and lead a rich life, which may not come from acting alone but all the things you do, you have to be happy doing it. "You go from show to show and you build this career, and in the end, what's the point?" To be happy. So find the thing that makes you happy, and go after it. Follow your gut, "what is the thing I want to be doing?" A lesson I've heard repeated before, but an important one to be reminded of. Let's hope we all never forget it.

P.S. If anyone associated with the event finds this, realize all the quotes are paraphrased from my memory. Also, if you are associated with the event and reading this, thanks for a great and informative evening!

All Good Things

2012-01-23T22:59:00.000-08:00

Last night was the final performance of Uncle Vanya. It's incredible how theatre continues to surprise me. On our final ride through Cambridge, I told Ann Marie Shea who was my transportation lifeline for much of the process how strange it still felt after so many shows, the sense of connecting with a group of people very deeply and spending such inordinate amounts of time together usually in the final moments leading up and then over the course of the performance of a piece. Then at the end, you never see them. Well I'm sure I will continue to see these people in different contexts, usually at theatre related things like auditions or performances and we talked a little about seeing our co-actors upcoming projects together as a group which would be fantastic. But of course the likelihood is that I won't be working with this same ensemble of characters again in the near future.

I also continue to surprised by how much I like people. You know, I guess it was really only in my time doing academic theatre in high school and college that I ever went through a process feeling disconnected from the people around me. I tend to enter a company expecting that, and of course it takes time for people to open up and a common language to develop between you and I found that in Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead, where I met a lot of people I really liked. I assumed my liking those people was an anomaly, but then I found the same thing was the case in Our Town and now in Uncle Vanya. I guess as I get older, I'm less harsh and more open. I'm not the bitter teenager I used to be, it would seem!

Anyway, all good things come to an end, and that is now a truism of the Vanya estate. Man, what a fantastic production. Probably the best thing I've done yet. Wandering the halls playing my guitar was really a joy. This is the second time I've played a musician, the first being Marat/Sade when I was in undergrad, both times it kind of happened by (happy) accident and it's fun and different exploring a theatrical performance with musical notes instead of text. In the case of Marat/Sade, I was kind of faking it off of the lead sheets to the RC Peaslee score that was included in the back of my copy of the play. It's a funny coincidence, come to think of it, how that came to be. My friend was one of the producers, but he was too lazy to do any photo copying and as an Extension student I had access to free printing at the computer lab, so I made all the scripts. My recollection was that I saw the music at the back, didn't think it was important, and didn't print it with the rest since there was a print limit and it would have been more effort on my part breaking up the job across the hundreds of pages I had to print.

I like though, when possible, working from a bound copy of a text rather then a photocopy so I had bought a copy of the play from a used book store. At a rehearsal, the director sort of tried to enthusiastically lead the cast in some of the music as he, being tone deaf, had sort of remembered it from I guess the movie version. I pointed out the music in the back of my text, and someone who played piano pecked out the melody and we figured it out that way. Later on, it came out that I played guitar and I was moved from being a member of the staff of the hospital to a guitar playing inmate in the asylum, the rest being history.

It's funny that in Uncle Vanya, myself included three of us had been in productions of Marat/Sade since it's not very commonly done for understandable reasons of it being fucking insane. But it was a new and fun experience, that also helped prepare me for Uncle Vanya. In this case, I had a much longer leash to fill space and did quite a bit of improvising as well as learning a couple of classical pieces and Russian folk song, which was fun! Hey by the way, if anybody is doing The Cherry Orchard or another Russian play and needs a guitar player, I'm your man.

Oh, and there was a question of what I'd be doing next, if anything in the immediate future. One of the auditions I blogged about did come through. I won't say which until I know for sure it's on, but I'm pretty excited to be working on it. It's a role that I think will be a great opportunity for me to learn and grow, and I'm all about that right now.

Art is Everywhere

2012-01-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

This week I saw Red at Speakeasy and Art at New Repertory Theatre back to back. Last week I saw Superior Donuts. On my list of things to see in the near future, Green Eyes with Company One, A Number and maybe the other Caryl Churchill piece that Whistler is doing at the factory, but especially A Number since I worked on a scene from it last year in an acting class and I'm really curious to see it done, then also Imaginary Beast's Winter Panto at the BCA since I did rather enjoy Macbett although I also thought it was too long, but whatever.

I have to say, my least favorite part of seeing these plays has been sitting in the theatre with my fellow audience members. Jostling into me from their cramped seat, chattering to each other during the play sometimes fairly conspicuously, in one case snoring audibly multiple times. For gods sake, shut up and sit still, we're sitting in the second to front row, you know those people up on stage working for your entertainment and intellectual stimulation... yes, them they can hear you!!! I'm sorry your hearing is going (in the case of the group at ART today, who at least chittered during the silences on stage) and you, persons next to me at Superior Donuts gossiping during the play, drink less before coming to the theatre.

Oh well, I do enjoy experiencing art and stuff with other people and I'm especially sensitive to people's etiquette in the theater since I spend so much time in them. At the very least, I haven't seen anybody do any tweeting, blech.

In other news, this is the last weekend of Uncle Vanya, wow. What an incredible show this has been, definitely one I'll look back on a long time from now. I had resolved myself to the prospect of not immediately getting any new roles but I have some callbacks coming up which is exciting, and I've been auditioning continuously so I feel pretty good about myself. That's right! I feel good about myself! What do you have to say to that, WORLD?! Good for me? Yeah, it is good for me. Let's try to keep this going.

Guitar Post

2012-01-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

I've been playing guitar a lot lately. It's funny how these things happen. Guitar took on a really important role in my life from when I first started, and later started taking lessons getting more serious but I started finding real success of a kind with acting it took a back seat, and that frustrated me a little, that I couldn't keep taking it to the next level in the way I knew I could if I really focused. Of course, I've never set out to be a professional musician, music has always been about catharsis for me, and it continues to serve that role. It's always come in handy in my theatrical life, like when I played arrangements of the RC Peaslee score to Marat/Sade on my guitar which elevated my role from a very minor ensemble member to something more vital and it felt fantastic to be creative on stage in that way. A similar thing has happened with Uncle Vanya, the director saw an opportunity with my guitar skills, first to have me instruct my cast mate who needed to learn to play for the show and then use my musical ability as atmosphere. So, in the course of doing that show, I've been a lot of guitar. Mainly Russian sounding classical guitar, a couple of pieces the sound designer picked out and my guitar teacher helped me arrange and some improvisation on my part. It's been a cool experience, the whole thing. I've been playing mainly acoustic guitar, but today I picked up my electric and got the microphone directed at my amp and into Garageband and just noodled out this jam without thinking too much about it (which was the point of the exercise, to capture a spontaneous moment of music). I was feeling a blues, but a happy one. So there's plenty of major pentatonics in with the minor, and some wonky, jazzy, diminished stuff. Check it out, this is where I'm at.

Waiting...

2012-01-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

My week of Uncle Vanya performances and other auditions has come to a close, and now the hard part... waiting. I've probably talked about this before, the anxiety I feel sometimes when I don't have a project lined up that I know I'll be occupying myself with in the present or near future. I've been aware of it from the beginning, and this weekend it really dawned on me that Uncle Vanya will come to a close. And now that we're out of weekend 2 of 4, next is weekend 3 and then the final performances. Out of the course of this past batch of auditions, I've been hoping to have something lined up, and now that they are all over and with varying degrees of perceived success or failure attached to them, I just have to wait for the phone to ring or the rejection email to land in my inbox. Speaking of which, isn't that irritating when they say "we'll get back to you" or "we'll let you know either way" and of course you don't... and after a few weeks you get the message. But that's just one of the realities of the acting world, nothing to be done about it.

Anyway, let's do a run down. Monday was the Miracle Worker; perceived sense of success to failure ration, let's say 6 out of 10. I thought I did pretty well, but I have no connections to the company and I'm sure they have a sizable existing roster of actors my age and there are all kinds of factors completely out of my control mostly having to do with the "type" they want to cast in the role, etc, etc.

Friday was Crimes and Crimes, perceived ratio 3 or 4 out of 10, I went into my 10:45 AM audition slot having had no coffee (always a mistake) and was probably too big, broad and general in the audition and I got the sense that the auditor just didn't like what I was doing and dismissed me as such. As far as I'm concerned, that one is off the table.

Saturday was Hookman with Company One, and I'm going to say... 6.5 out of 10. I thought my monologue went over well, but at the same time I think I've done the same piece better in other auditions and was trying to recapture that rather then just being truthful in the moment etc. Then again, my side reading went very well, I was luckily (and maybe consciously? Who knows) partnered to read with my scene partner from when I did the scene study with Company One so we had an existing sense of comedic chemistry and were generally very comfortable reading on stage with one another and they laughed audibly multiple times during our reading. Again, I took the class with them, so hopefully they recognized me from that but again probably a lot of actors read for the one male role, so who knows.

Yesterday was Swimming in the Shallows with Salem Theater Company, and without putting a number to it, that's the one I'm most optimistic about. I auditioned for them over the summer, and they seemed to really enjoy my work, but then due to scheduling stuff with Crooked Arrows I couldn't make it to that particular call back. But this audition felt more like a call back, I had done some work on the sides ahead of time and I felt like I was really jiving with the director, who gave me several different angles of direction over the course of my working with him. It also seemed to be very thinly populated, only three people in my slot, the other two being women. But, again, there's no way of knowing. And here's to uncertainty!

One Audition Down!

2012-01-02T17:31:00.000-08:00

Well, today was audition number one: Wheelock Family Theatre! How did it go? WHO FUCKING KNOWS! No, but seriously, pretty good I thought. Here's a play by play; the last few auditions I've gone on, I've been a few minutes late. In the past, it hasn't seemed like that big of a deal, time slots felt like they were pretty loose at the auditions I was going on locally. But at these two, and at one in particular where I got what came close to being a hard time when I was there right smack on my time slot but wanted a minute to look over a side and the producer or auditor or whoever was like "well you know your time slot is for 3:30 and I can give you a minute but you'll have less time in the room" so I was like "OK let's just do it, that's fine". For me, personally, as long as I roughly know what the play is about I don't find that having an extended period of time with a piece affects my cold reading skills since... it's a cold reading. Your basically making it up as you go along and trying to follow your instincts and a few additional moments with the words, for me anyway, doesn't have much bearing on my ability to do that. Anyway, since none of the postings or correspondence I'd gotten said any different, I kind of figured I would be reading a side for this audition, and hadn't thought about a monologue. I had skimmed the play, the parts pertaining to my potential character particularly, and sort of knew what his deal was. Did I mention the play is the Miracle Worker, and the character the older half brother of Helen? Anyway, I was determined to be early for this one, my appointment was for 4:50 and I got to the green line platform at Park St around 4, a D train came a few minutes later and I was on my way to the Longwood T stop, a few minutes from the theatre. Except then the train went out of service at Fenway, a stop away from Longwood, I consulted my Iphone and decided the quickest thing was just to walk from there since it's basically the same distance and I would avoid getting a new train and going just one stop on it. Thank god for my Iphone, by the way, because I have a terrible sense of direction. I'm pretty good at following directions, and I've used Google Maps a hundred times to find a hundred different auditions, potential apartments, restaurants, stores, etc. Taking a different T-stop, I got a little turned around in the Fends, but found my way to the theatre at about 4:35, 4:40 and was brought in early. You see, they had slotted ten minutes per person, but they wanted a monologue. I assume it was a monologue, and not two, since they had never specified when I got up on stage I heard a "whenever your ready" from the director and said "Oh? You want a monologue? OK this is from The Glass Menagerie" and launched into Tom's speech to his mother. Mind you I was completely unprepared, still a little sniffly, my throat a little parched and my hands still thawing from the cold, but I've done that piece so many times I can basically pull it out of thin air and that's what I did. I gave it a solid beat of silence at the end, then turned to the auditors who seemed to be nodding and saying "yeah, pretty good" (subtext: for someone who didn't know they would be doing a monologue) and they said their "thank you, we'll let you know either way, might be a call back later" schpeel. And that was that!

In other news, reviews have started coming in for Uncle Vanya. If you read blog posts I don't link to from Facebook, then you might have seen one I wrote about secretly wishing in the back of my ego to have a reviewer comment on the effect of my guitar playing in our show. Well, right after I wrote that, I encountered Larry Stark's review on his Boston theatre website Theatre Mirror and this is from the beginning of the review: "Take for instance Mike Handleman playing a house-servant, with no lines to speak of. He turns up in several scenes, fetching things, but mostly learning to play a guitar. But when the farm's overseer comes in, the guilty snap with which he jumps up and bows, doffing his cap, defines not only him but an entire society." Hey! A positive notice! In a review! Of a play where I had next to no lines! This is a legitimate first for me. And it made me feel pretty proud. It doesn't reference the guitar playing as doing anything in particular, but it's cool that a little moment I came up with made that kind of an impression.

Larry's review as a whole was especially glowing, and so far all the press has been positive. The Globe review did not mention me by name which is fine, and felt to me... I don't know, kind of contrarian, the reviewer took issue with the translation (which I think is pretty good) and a few performances (which I also think are good) but hey, critics are critics. So far all the shows are selling out and audiences are enjoying themselves, and that's what matters.

happy new year

2012-01-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

Well, New Year's Eve was unspectacular, I hadn't been feeling well all day and by the time I got to the theatre to do our show, my energy was pretty low. Everybody else continues to put in damn fine work. And last night I will say I thought the pre show music worked as best as it has up to this point, in terms of my accomplishing what I wanted with the dramatic arc of the music. That was cool. It's going to be interesting keeping the music stuff fresh from night to night, I'm basically playing the same stuff from night to night and improvising little riffs during and in between pieces.

So, I guess the Boston Globe came to the show the other night, which is exciting. This is the first time a show I've been in will get a review from a major, major publication. Can I allow my ego and vanity some floor space, for a moment? I'll be honest; I'd really enjoy if the guitar playing in show made it into at least one of the reviews, of which we're going to have several I believe, in some kind of light of the effect it has on the show. It would be nice for my contribution to be recognized critically. There, I said it. It won't be the end of the world in the very possible even likely circumstance that in the however many words a critic is able to give over to discussing the merits of the production they don't mention the live guitar playing, but it would be nice.

Anyway, I have a bunch of auditions coming up for January, a total of five this coming month. Let's see, Monday is The Miracle Worker at Wheelock Family Theatre, Friday is a reading of a Strindberg play, Saturday is Hookman at Company One, Sunday is Salem Theatre Company, and the following Saturday is Fresh Ink.

In there somewhere the trailer for Crooked Arrows is coming out. I've resisted marking it on my calendar... but that's pretty exciting. It is getting real. I need to decide what I want to do. I've been leaning towards that I should just give Los Angeles a shot and see what happens, the worst possible outcome is I come back here and continue what I've been doing. Real life is scary. Here I come.

Opening Night

2011-12-29T13:58:00.000-08:00

Another day, another opening. Wait, it's the last opening of the year! Let's take a moment and reflect on all the shows I opened this year, there were a lot of them.

The Muse at Turtle Lane, Savage/Love at the Julie Ince Thompson/Cambridge Dance Complex, The Blue Room at the BCA, The Underpants at the Arlington Center for the Arts, Measure for Measure at the Adam's Pool Theatre, The Mousetrap at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, The Muse (again) this time at Theatre Row in NYC, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Footlight Club, Our Town at Riverside Theatre Works and now Uncle Vanya at Apollinaire.

Oh and I guess I should mention the film things... there was Welcome to the World (if you haven't seen that, here it is) then there was The Ex Factor which has yet to come out but is in the process of being edited and was my first real lead in a film/web series thing, then I shot that Emerson short that (of course) I never got a copy of...

And then there was the big one, Crooked Arrows, the trailer for which will be coming out soon and you can all see me acting real silly. Doing all that stuff, I sure did meet a lot of new people. I wonder if this year I met the most new people of any year in my life, or at least made a connection to the most people I ever have in the work we did together. I'm proud to say that for this entire year, I was constantly working on something and making some forward progress. Like, oh yeah, graduating from college. This past year was absolutely jam packed with happenings. It's hard to predict these things, but I bet in the future, 2011 will have been a turning point in my life. I feel like I've turned a corner and am on the path to a higher level of self awareness and hopefully success. I'm allowing myself all this optimism... that's not like me. Or wasn't like the "me" that I was a few years ago, after everything that had happened. But in spite of all that stuff, here I am and better for it. It's strange to try and process all of it, I wonder if it's worth even trying. Well, I've made a go of it.

Here's to next year being just as incredible, 2012 has a lot to live up to.

The First Laughs

2011-12-28T17:46:00.001-08:00

I'm writing from backstage of the final, invited audience dress rehearsal of Uncle Vanya. We are getting our first laughs! People are enjoying themselves! It's a great feeling, and I wanted to preserve it, in blog form.

Directing

2011-12-22T22:32:00.000-08:00

Reading other people's blogs lead me to realize that someone with whom I've been collaborating had collaborated with previously another person with whom I had also collaborated in a production which meant a great deal to me, and upon looking up found pictures of I didn't realize existed and... wow. What a trip down memory lane. Oh I guess I'll tell you it was John Kuntz's blog, the person is Adam Stone and he directed the production of Pericles I did several moons ago, which... man what an incredible show that was. I don't even know how to describe it. We turned the entire theatre into Diana's temple. It was there the entire time under white butcher paper, and then at the most pivotal moment she came to Pericles and revealed it, and it was just amazing. I also got to play a bad guy, a really, really bad guy, which was awesome. And I had one of my most incredible on stage experiences. OK so basically Pericles is this Mediterranean prince during like the Roman era and he's traveling around and he comes to Antioch and the court of Antiochus to try and marry his daughter, who is renowned for her beauty and stuff. Except Antiochus, who is super evil (and in our version wore an Iron Maiden shirt and was super metal, if you've seen my Iron Maiden shirt that's where it's from) has this riddle and if you can't figure it out he chops off your head, except the answer is that he's having sex with his daughter, which Pericles realizes and manages to squirrel his way out of. After that, Antiochus comes back super pissed that he figured it out and plots to kill Pericles. So the second night, I wasn't feeling it so much as the previous night and was trying to do something different so I took a rubber head from my pile of heads and was addressing my speech to it but then I thought "this isn't working it's too Hamlet" at which point I threw the head against the ground in rage... it being rubber, it bounced off the ground, spun in the air above my head and came back down... right back into my hands.

The crowd erupts in laughter. It takes all my will power as a performer to keep it together, wait for the laughter to go down to start my next line and put the head back down onto the table which is on stage with me. That was one of the most incredible, serendipitous acting moments I've ever had and since I got started about Pericles, I had to share it.

And then thinking about Pericles and more recently Our Town both of which were fantastic productions due in large part to the strong directorial visions of Adam Stone and Jason Weber respectively, got me to thinking about directing. When I really start thinking about it, I think it's something I would like to do, except... I'm afraid. I directed a few scenes for classes while I was an undergrad, but I've never directed an entire piece. Part of what intimidates me is that I feel before I could really do something I would need a work that spoke to me on such a deep level that I could find a story within it that absolutely had to be told. Or something pretentious like that. Basically I would need to find something that I really, really like. But that I feel is within my power to pull off. For example, I really like Othello. There is no way I could pull that show off though as a director. It's up there with King Lear and Hamlet on the "difficult to make work" scale. Part of me also feels like I couldn't resist my own urge to act, and I would inevitably cast myself and be unable to effectively direct myself or the play at the same time and everything would inevitably suffer.

Still, I imagine it would be an incredible experience... having that level of ownership and creative control over something, to be able to conceive and execute a vision all your own (with the help and influence of numerous collaborators, of course) and see that on stage. Maybe, probably, someday. In the meantime, I can fantasize.

Chappy Channukah

2011-12-21T14:33:00.000-08:00

I think Channukah is kind of weird but intriguingly post modern holiday but not in the way that it's become overly ironic which makes it both more entertaining and in other ways banal </thesis statement>.

I say this as a person who considers them self at least... I don't know, 25% culturally jewish and 50% genetically jewish. The genetics of course I have no control over, but the cultural stuff I do. At least to a greater degree, as they go hand in hand to a certain extent. Unless I wanted to change my last name from "Handelman" and get a perm to unjewfro my hair, some portion of the culture at large would realize "oh hey that guy, looks kinda jewey". But I also admire the civil right proponents, Allen Ginsbergs, Woody Allens and various other secular aspects of American jewish culture so I like maintaining some amount of cultural jewery that emphasizes those aspects while also not believing in God or supporting the state of Israel... or ever going to temple in my life (and of course then not having been barmitzved)... or circumcised... TMI?

OK! MOVING ON! Channukah has started. For you non jews out there, let me give you a brief history of the holiday, which is believe it or not, not especially significant in jewish religious practice or in the pantheon of jewish holidays. Channukah means "the festival of lights" and its significance to the old testament goes back to the Macabes when there was various religious strife with other non judaic groups in the region and there was this whole rebellion thing and they killed a bunch of people (this is the flow of the old testament, it's pretty dark and violent in places). Oh and then they wanted to relight the lights in the temple after taking it back from the heathens, but there wasn't enough oil, but instead it lasted longer, like eight days and it was a miracle of energy efficiency (or did someone just do a really good job of rationing their olive oil? Like when your making italian and your down to the bottom of the bottle and you can't get to the grocery store till the weekend, you make do).

In the latter half of the 20th century, primarily secular American jews of the middle class wanted to assert their post WWII American jewness and give their kids some presents around Christmas while also being jewish about it. This sort of goes in the face a little bit of jewish habits of assimilation with gentiles which took place over the thousands of years of history of jews in Europe when they weren't be killed or killing one another, but hey it's a new century and to these people getting in touch with their jewness with festive presents and latkes and chocolate coins and shit was important. And that's cool. I like those things. Especially up as a secular humanist, in my family we were into any kind of religious event that involved presents and food and stuff (this basically meant celebrating Channukah for a few nights maybe, then having Christmas and maying do a seder for Passover but also chocolate eggs on Easter but never any fasting or not eating leavening products because fuck that).

But thinking about it now... I don't know. It's all in good fun, but it feels kind of silly. I guess religious celebrations are inherently a little ridiculous, when you really stop and think about them. But they also give life and human civilization texture. Channukah though is basically Christmas-like replacement product for Jewish folks to enjoy, a Kosher winter solstice, if you will (without the pagan symbols or orgys or whatever... wait a minute I'm getting an idea for a mash up "everybody gather round the mistle toe and menora for the winter solstice fuck fest"). But, I mean, couldn't you just celebrate Christmas? Yeah OK jewish kid you get 8 days of presents but does anybody ever actually follow through and give out eight presents over eight sundowns and light all those fucking candles? Just pack it into one day, one glorious morning of tinsel and colorful paper and a new X-Box you know? Christmas is so far removed from Christianity, it's ridiculous. The whole way in which we celebrate it, with the Christmas tree and the feasting and shit, it's pretty inherently paganistic anyway. So I suggest we throw in the towel. And if you really want have a god damn menora, I guess.

*A note, this was meant to be my attempt at writing a humor piece while meditating on my relationship to my jewishness during this time of Channukah so don't get offended and let me know if you liked it*

Priscilla continued

2011-12-18T19:02:00.000-08:00

A few more thoughts on Priscilla Dreams the Answer. First, the name of the director was Melanie Garber, I guess that's kind of an addendum. My other additional musings have to do with the script. I'd thought not too long ago, "I wonder if there is such a thing as a play that is too short?" Everybody has been to plays have been too long, far too often in fact this is a major problem with plays in general. I guess part of this is our the ADD addled go go nature of our society, and that we have limited attention spans, all that stuff, but also don't make sit still in one place for a really long period of time because that's uncomfortable, you know what I mean? Anyway as a rule I believe less is more, shorter is better. And Priscilla Dreams the Answer is a pretty short play, it's about an hour long, which I admire and enjoyed about the play. But... I almost wonder if this is a case of a play being too short by even five or ten minutes, during which time I would have liked more backstory or more of a sense of character behind the second lead character/romantic interest James (I think his character was named James? Right? Let's go with that). I found that his character was introduced, Priscilla follows him on the game shows she quirkily enjoys and which he bounces around and then he enters Priscilla's life and you know everything that happens in the play happens. He's an interesting character, but where we have a strong sense of who Priscilla is, and even her boss and the aliens all have motivations which I felt I had a grasp on, but James was... I hate to say it, a little two dimensional? He has this quirk that when he goes through this process of internal searching he can answer any question and the play doesn't explain how or why that is and I actually appreciated that about the text and he takes his greatest comfort in empty TV sound stages, sounds good. But I don't know, other then a desire for companionship and his quirky love of bubble wrap, what is it about Priscilla that he connects to? I'm not really sure.

Overall I felt the play to be a collection of components all very artfully put together with strong characterizations, well written dialogue, I mean everything is good. But it didn't feel original, it felt like a pastiche of quirkiness and existential crises. And today, I figured it out, KURT VONNEGUT! Science fiction? Check. Humanism in the face of absurdisty? Check. Quirky characters? Check. It's like a very artfully adapted and staged but lost Kurt Vonnegut short story. This isn't really a criticism, but an observation. However I do feel that the most lasting pieces of drama are essentially original in some way, but I what do I really know.

Losing my Factory Virginity

2011-12-17T22:02:00.000-08:00

Can you believe that before tonight's performance of Fresh Ink Theatre's "Priscilla Dreams the Answer" I had never seen a full production at the Factory Theatre? It's bizarre to think I still haven't done a show there, since it's where so many of the fringe groups in Boston regularly perform and I am at this point a member of the fringe theatre community, so what's up with that? One excuse is that I'm yet to be cast in a show at the Factory, but that doesn't explain why I've never seen a show there. Oh well, that's just because I'm lazy. But I'm working on that!

So anyway, I thought maybe it would be nice to see Priscilla Dreams the Answer, it would fulfill my weekly play quota and I'd be supporting a new company. It wasn't really cinched though until I saw it had a write up in the review throughly applauding the production at which point I was like "shit well fine I'll buy tickets for Saturday" which I did and subsequently, this evening, I lost my factory virginity. Mind you I've been in the space once or twice before, and I'd always kind of wondered "how do you stage something in here?" The answer, like that, and I didn't even have to dream it!

BUT SERIOUSLY FOLKS, what did I think of the play? I liked it a lot. One thing which annoyed me was my own fault which was choice of seating, directly parallel with the couch where a bunch of the action took place, particularly a few key scenes, left me cut from the actors but that's just an issue of the cramped space and not anybody's fault. Overall I thought the real hero of the piece was the direction, which was very strong throughout. The director, who's name escapes me and because I'm not a professional reviewer I don't feel obligated to look it up, really nailed the pacing and tone of the script so that interconnectedness of the characters and the absurdity and universality of their situations shone through beautifully. Various moments, in particular the various dream sequences, were also just beautifully staged. The acting likewise was top notch, the ensemble really came together, even if at first the guy with the beard's wacky hobby shop owner didn't convince me at first by the end I was fucking sold. And oh man, that ending. Given the content of the script, which to me was fun and insightful and quirky and everything, but not really new or a revelation, shouldn't have gone off that successfully. But man, something about that ending just punched me right in the gut, just that last moment with the two of them asleep, something about that moment just brought a little tear towards my eye but not all the way out. Making my way through the piece, I was thinking "this is really funny and interesting, am I going to get some of that heavy duty you-only-get-this-in-theatre catharsis we're always looking for? Yeah I did, I have to say. I did. And for that the production receives my applause.

Remaining Thankful

2011-12-15T14:53:00.000-08:00

I feel like this post (as I mentally compose it) belongs it some kind of shitty self help book or motivational lecture, but here we go anyway because it's true.

Thanksgiving is over, for the moment we are technically in the midst of "the holidays" (for the moment, just wait until January, then February and what I'm talking about will truly manifest) and from a perspective of societal conditioning it's a time of year meant to reinforce our senses of gratitude, which as the over privileged members of the wealthiest, most sophisticated society in the history of the known universe we tend to lose sight of, and focus on our "first world problems" (I really enjoy that phrase because it's so true).

I for one am guilty of this, I always have been. It becomes especially difficult to remember that life is fundamentally good when it's as dark and cold outside as it gets during the winter in New England, and to forget about the great things one (in this case, me) has going for one's (my) self.

This is particularly true given the state of the world we live in, we have this incredibly wealthy, technologically sophisticated society and in our own borders people go hungry, can't afford or are even denied access to the right to a decent education (this is especially criminal in our public schools which are being devoured alive by the same forces behind ineffective charter schools which are propositioned as "the answer" but are really just a means to funnel state money into profit making eduventures but that is another post).

Even though Thanksgiving is over, here are things I'm grateful for. My health, running water, electricity, my very comfortable apartment, living in Cambridge, having a supporting family, my girlfriend, my acting career, being part of what's going to be a great production.

Last night especially I lost sight of all that, and was grumpy at the various tasks allotted to me as part of my not exclusively acting related role in this particular production. But then again, I'm working on Chekov, in a great theatre, with a great group of people and so many actors would kill for that opportunity so what do I have to complain about, really?

Exactly. Turning it around to buddhism for a moment... just that. Be in the moment. Appreciate what's in front of you, from the socks on your feet to the breath in your lungs. Seriously. Do that right now. OK continue worrying about things outside of your control, I do it, everybody does it and it's inevitable and futile. Now be in the moment. Repeat. Life isn't so bad. In fact, it is inherently good. That is the only thing resembling a religious mantra I require.

Failures in Life and Baking

2011-12-13T20:35:00.001-08:00

Things I'm not good at, part 1 section 1: Baking. Case in point, for Adia's birthday she asked for a carrot cake. I hadn't really thought this through, but I thought "we have carrots, eggs, flour, etc". I looked up a recipe online, and came across several issues. I realized recently that'd stopped consuming eggs in our apartment, I enjoy eggs every once in a while but if I were to make a list of things I am OK but not great at, cooking eggs would be one of them. For a while Adia had eggs every day with her breakfast, but this has teetered off, so this carton of eggs had been sitting in our fridge since October and had past it's sell by date sometime in that month. Earlier this month though when we went grocery shopping, I knew I would be making crab cakes, a recipe that involves eggs, so even though it's less economical I bought a half dozen pack of eggs (this is starting to sound awfully long winded bear with me). A few days before the carrot cake incident, we were sort of celebrating early, so I thought I'd try making merengues again, which I had attempted several months ago to mixed results (I didn't really bake them long enough, or properly integrate the sugar into the egg whites, or something, they kind of collapsed). This time it did go better, so I guess I'm not awful at baking. I can separate egg whites, beat them to stiff peaks, add sugar and vanilla and sort of bake them in 250 degree oven. And they came out OK!

When it comes to baking, I have problems with patience. With the previous merengue attempt, and also with the more recent one, I probably should have let them bake a little longer. In general in the past when not baking from a box, I tend to get impatient and pull things out before they are done (this was not the case with the carrot cake we'll get to that later). I guess I was impatient with the carrot cake incident, in that I looked up a recipe, and it required 4 eggs of which I had 3. Mistake number one. This is the reason for the long egg related preamble. If I'd realized I'd be making crab cakes, meringues, and baking a cake, I'd have bought the dozen fucking eggs. CEST LA VIE! Rather then I don't know, cutting the recipe in half or something I just soldiered on with 3 eggs instead of 4. Another issue, like many cake recipes, it called for baking soda and baking powder. We had baking powder, but no baking soda. I looked up how to switch out one for the other, and a guy said if you just want to use baking powder, just put in a shit load of it, more or less (his ratio was 1:3 baking soda/baking powder). This maybe would have worked better if I was just subbing the baking soda, but I used the amount of baking powder called for and then a shit load more of it on top of that. Also, rather than use regular sugar I used confectioners sugar because I have his confectioners sugar from when I made merengues and I can't put that shit in coffee or whatever so I wanted to use it up. I think this is doable, but it requires another conversion since confectioners sugar is much less dense then regular sugar and has less sweetening power per capita. Then again who likes super sweet deserts anyway? So I do all this, dump in the two tea spoons of cinnamon, mix it all up, oh and add the carrot which I chopped up in the food processor because who owns a grater? Yeesh.

My other mistake probably was not really knowing my oven. The recipe called for it to be at 350 degrees for like an hour, so I did that. At a certain point it started to smell really good like maybe it was done, I don't know, but I was trying to curtail my usual impatience and not open the oven letting all the heat out, and just wait the allotted time. At the end of which... my cake was burned. The middle collapsed. The resulting product... tasted like feces. Seriously it was inedible. And to top it off, before I even took it out my girl friend asked about frosting, wasn't I going to make frosting? Having no eggs or whipping cream or any of those things, but having butter and confectioners sugar I figured I could improvise a butter cream, how hard could that be? Butter and sugar, right? Well the butter should really be room temperature, mine was not it was cold. A recipe I briefly considered said something about adding milk so I added some milk and let's just my attempts to whip it together with my powered hand whisk thing were a fiasco...

I don't know I had to write this blog post. I guess I thought my adventures in baking were entertaining and blog worthy. Hopefully the result speaks for it self, because I'm not doing any editing on it. It's also fun to catalog our failures, so we can look back when we've surpassed them. Someday I may try again baking carrot cake from scratch, or any kind of cake, and hopefully what I've learned will make more successful.

Excitement

2011-12-07T20:55:00.001-08:00

I'm inexplicably part of a very exciting collaboration, the members of which convened this morning to discuss it's current state and future implications. I'm being all vague because I feel like if I bring up who's involved or what it is or what we are thinking of doing with it (I shouldn't really say "we", I pretty much feel like I'm along for the ride) it could jinx it. Anyway it's an exciting prospect, and here I am at the ground floor! I don't know, I just came away from our meeting this morning feeling all excited, you know? I guess I'll admit it's a new play, one which I previously blogged about being a part of, so if you really want you can search through my previous posts and you'll figure it out (not that you are that invested). But it's just cool being part of the shaping of something like this, and the aspect of it being shaped around me and my personality as an actor. And did I mention the people involved? I guess I did indirectly. Well, they are super awesome. And it's not like it's just me and some dudes sitting around and dreaming, this is a committed group with a solid piece in the process of being fleshed out, and that's exciting.

It makes me think of one of the main things missing from my life artistically; writing. I guess I'm writing this, that's something. But I really should be developing more stuff for myself, skits, movie and play ideas, *cough* stand up *cough*. Whether or not any of this stuff is any good, I mean it won't be at first, getting the bad stuff out of the way now I'll be ready for when it actually matters later in my career, when I'm in a place where I really need to start making opportunities for myself by doing what artists and actors inevitably do, creating for myself.

I saw Three Viewings at New Rep tonight, and enjoyed it throughly. There were a handful of aspects I have reservations about, in particular the age of the actress of the middle piece didn't feel like it added it up with the time line of events her story was telling, but overall it was a very well acted, well designed piece and I found it worth going to.

Uncle Vanya is going well. I'm particularly excited for next week, when I get to sit and just watch Johnny Kuntz work. Did I mention I love Chekov? Because I do.

I don't know where this second piece in a row came from. Well, I guess the excitement of this morning combined with reading blog entries from earlier in the year, it felt like I was much less precious about what I wrote. I need to get back into that mind set. Writing is one thing, editing is another, you know what I mean? You write, write, and write some more, and then edit it later. That's how it work.

Untitled (thought dump)

2011-12-05T14:48:00.001-08:00

This is my third or fourth or fifth or something-ith attempt to start and finish a new blog post in the past few weeks since I wrote my last one. I keep trying to get my thoughts down about the career anxiety I've been feeling lately, and that is a lot to unpack. Let's talk about some other things.

Exercise! Going well! I've been working out a lot, consistently hitting the gym at least three times per week, sometimes four or five, and gotten a few comments on the results from people who know me. Boom! Results! Amiright?! It really does feel good though being able appreciate tangible improvement in my physical appearance and overall state of mind. Normally this is a time of year where I get kinda depressed, but that's been less the case this year, I chalk a lot of that to the endorphins from all the exercise.

I haven't been keeping up with my "play a week" goal as much as I would have hoped, but I'd forgotten plays were kind of expensive and time can become scarce and knowing what to see can be challenging, because a lot of stuff isn't very good. I am seeing Three Viewings at New Rep this week, having throughly enjoyed Collected Stories and reading a very positive review of the piece at Hub Review (a source I generally rely upon, certainly if Thomas Garvey says something is good it probably is since he is a tough critic, an aspect of his work I respect don't get me wrong).

Next week though Vanya will be full swing, and seeing things will becoming even more difficult. First world problem! I've had some fun this past week standing in for John Kuntz as Uncle Vanya, since he's been otherwise occupied and the director has wanted to work a few of his scenes for the benefit of my fellow actors. God damn do I enjoy Chekov! I can't wait to start work on this play in earnest, even though my participation will primarily be from the sidelines.

A new development this week has been my girlfriend and I watching movies together in the evenings. We've fallen into a habit of watching TV together, particularly Food Network and a few comedies we both enjoy (It's Always Sunny, 30 Rock, Community, Modern Family) but this weekend she wanted to watch a movie together, so I looked at what's come out in the past year or two that I had meant to see but didn't get a chance, and oh Bridesmaids I'd meant to see that, for example, and it was very entertaining. The next night we watched I Love You Phillip Morris, starring Jim Carrey as a gay con man, which was also quite good and then last night was 50/50, also enjoyable. It's definitely worthwhile as an actor to keep up to date with what's happening in cinema, to see potential cracks and angles one could exploit to one's advantage, because basically the film industry is much more likely to try and repeat a past success then break new ground, so you want to know what's being successful.

This kind of brings me around to my career anxiety. I've been thinking maybe pursuing film is the way to go. Certainly if I can establish myself as a film and television actor, I'll be able to bypass a lot of bull shit towards doing theatre on the East Coast, and also make a lot more money. I also kind of like the longer lasting nature of film work. Our Town was such a good play, it was a really fantastic production. But anyone who didn't see it's run this fall won't get a chance to experience it, you see what I mean? That's kind of sad. And also beautiful.

Anyway, I'm envisioning one potential inroad to agents, managers, casting directors, etc will be to pitch myself as a Seth Rogen type because clearly I don't look like Joseph Gordon Leavit but I do have strong chops at comedy and improv. Going west is going to be pointless probably until Crooked Arrows actually comes out, however and knowing where to go from there is what's causing me this anxiety. I might try New York at the same time, just to see what happens. Inevitably I'll probably have representation in both markets. Wow the future is scary and exciting. Wish me luck.

Nostalgia

2011-11-21T14:49:00.001-08:00

Fade In

Hackneyed stand up on stage

Hackneyed Stand Up: Hey you know what's crazy? Childhood nostalgia! Ever watch anything from your childhood and think "wow! that sure is strange/sophisticated/simplistic/disturbing or otherwise different from how I remebered it as a kid? And man! Those disparate images and recollections bringing back all those prior associations and experiences, crazy, huh?! AMIRIGHT?! SHOW ME APPROVAL

Fade Out

I don't know why I structured the beginning that way. I guess I felt like the subject of this post was rife for a send up of... hackneyed stand ups doing stand up, or something. Anyway the subject is nostalgia. Now that I have all this down time, last night I was inspired to start watching old episodes of the early 90s pre Family Guy post The Simpsons animated comedy The Critic. I pretty vividly remember when this show was on TV circa 1994 in what felt to me like a more up beat phase of childhood, that being Berkeley California. I remember I was away from the crazy cult run little K through 2 school I was at while we were at Davis where I felt isolated and outcast because I was isolated and outcast because the people who were all members of this weird protestant cultish church and had put their children in this one school didn't like my secular intellectual partly Jewish parents and instead was at a quirky little montesori school where I had quirky friends and generally liked it there and was happy. Part of my family life that I remember most specifically and fondly, was all watching The Simpsons every Saturday or Sunday or whenever new episodes of golden age Simpsons episodes used to air during that period, and also The Critic.

Rewatching old episodes is like opening a psychic time capsule for me, as images I remember when watching and rewatching the show, particularly the myriad cut aways to movie spoofs (see Family Guy parallels) are recontextualized by my more mature understanding of cultural references and satire. Like this clip.

The show was ahead of it's time. Along with The Simpsons, it's DNA is definitely present in all the comedies you love, 30 Rock, Community, Family Guy... 30 Rock. Looking back on it now, I can't help but wonder how much the show and in particular it's protagonist helped shape my view of the world and my sense of humor. Jay Sherman is an easy guy for me to identify with, especially as an adult, artsy, intellectual, self aware, an outsider... also snobby, elitist, and as the show harps on for much of it's comedic effect, schlubby and grossly misshapen. The character is both what I aspire to be and not to be. But it's comedic sensibility reflects much of my own, and that's probably because I watched and identified with it in my childhood, along with the members of my family.

Well, that's all I can think of to say about that. But all this nostalgia stuff does tie in sort of Thanksgiving, right? One of my favorite holidays, a celebration of food and family and giving thanks for stuff. It's a harvest festival. An ancient tradition as old as agriculture. It's not particularly political, unless your Native American or have an agenda either way on indigenous issues in which case OK the back story is pretty political, thanks Howard Zinn you can sit down now. I agree about socialism. Moving on...

It's a pretty neat holiday! I like it because I get to cook and eat turkey, drink and watch football, back at the home I grew up in, with my parents and brother and girlfriend. I really don't like traveling to other people's houses for holidays, that feels to me against the point. And also because my immediate family always found ways to make such visits exercises in passive aggressiveness. But that's another post!

Things I'm thankful for... the myriad acting opportunities I've had this past year, graduating from college, advancing my career, advancing my craft, living in something resembling a democracy although that is increasingly debatable, I am thankful for the ability to debate the presence or non presence of democracy in the place that I live, all the people I've met, the new friends I've made and the one's I've held on to, oh and everything else. Happy thanksgiving, all you motherfuckers.

Audition A/Audition B

2011-11-16T20:28:00.001-08:00

Well, Our Town came and went. It was a pretty fantastic experience, every performance had some new discovery for me, and overall it was maybe the most satisfying live theatre experience I've yet to have in my career. That's pretty funny, considering I never thought I'd be doing Our Town when I was younger and if I knew I was I'd be more likely to guess I'd be playing George Gibbs and not Mr. Webb, but life is always full of unexpected surprises. I met some great people, made some new friends whom I hope will stand the test of time. It's an experience I'll look back on for a long time.

Also ending this past week, was Company One's Professional Development for Actor's class, which has been taking up my Tuesdays these past eight weeks. Yet another learning and growing experience, where I met a whole different group of talented individuals whom I hope to see in the near future. Tuesday was our show case, and we kicked it's ass! Particularly, I received positive feed back from audience members for a scene I did from Biloxi Blues, where the naive Neil Simon analogue (played by Matthew Broderick in the movie) loses his virginity to a prostitute. I also did more dramatic scenes from The Glass Menagerie (playing Jim! Jim and not Tom! Another role I wouldn't expect to find myself in) and Dinner With Friends by Donald Margulies both of which I was very happy with. Another great experience, worth reflecting on for some time.

The title of this post reflects my day today. This morning, I went to the BCA for Meals For Monologues, an event organized by CP Casting where actors could donate dried or canned goods to do two minutes of material in the form of a monologue for Carolyn Pickman of CP Casting and the head casting director for LDI Casting in Rhode Island. Prior to leaving my apartment this morning, I had thought I would use a piece from Crossing Delancey a romantic comedy where a pickle salesman tries to convince his more up town love interest of his inherent worth and to make him see what about him is lovable. I've only really used this piece once though, and knew it would be a risk to use it in this context and instead decided to go with a much more well worn and comedic piece from Suburbia by Eric Bogosian. My thought process was that they would be seeing a whole bunch of heavy handed "dramatic" monologues all day, and it would make more of an impact and also play more to my strengths as an actor to do something comedic. One possible complication, I hadn't used this particular piece in months, and I was standing in line waiting to go in for my two minute time slot, I had to think "wait how much of this piece do I actually remember?" and dig through my brain for all the verbs and wording and such not. If going up by myself in front of a couple of influential New England casting directors wasn't enough pressure, now I had to make sure I actually knew my piece, which I did but it made for a serious adrenaline cocktail.

Standing outside the door of the audition, I applied the Alexander Technique I've been working on these past few months to relieve my tension, get centered and find focus as well as put myself in a place to present my best self, the confident person with good posture and stuff. With the help of the technique and the need to do well, I went through the door, focused my adrenaline and hit the piece out of the park. It was probably the best I've ever done with the piece, I started out slow and simple and as the piece escalated and I felt the casting directors following my build up, discovered bits of physical comedy I hadn't done before and really worked each individual moment. At the end they were laughing out loud, and Carolyn told me "very well done" as I walked out the door. In short, I nailed it! Why couldn't I have done that in Stagesource? Oh well you win some and you lose some.

Later that night I had another audition back at the BCA with much smaller stakes, it just being for a small theatre company I think doing it's first real show in Boston, so I took that opportunity to test drive the other, more dramatic piece I rejected earlier in the day. If you put the two performances side by side, you might think they were completely different people because it was no where near the level I was performing at earlier in the day. This came down to several factors, I had none of the adrenaline I had earlier in the day. I've barely done this piece, I tried doing it sitting down which is not something I'd tried before or even rehearsed with. I really don't rehearse like I should for auditions, sometimes this pays off like it did earlier in the day, all the physical comedy came to me in the moment and it really worked because of it whereas in this case it caused me to more self conscious then necessary. I still felt OK about the audition, and afterwards I did a side which I thought was pretty good. Also considering the number of headshots I saw on the table, frankly I wouldn't be shocked if I got a call back but if not, oh well.

So that's a snap shot of where I'm at. Things coming up, a bunch of improv shows! I wrote last time about my front burner and back burner and improv is definitely going to get some time to itself now that I have Sundays and I'm not in the middle of rehearsing or performing a show. I am at the beginning of working on Uncle Vanya however, so that will be taking more and more priority as the weeks go by. And in the beginning of December, I'm doing a little Shakespeare scene recital thing with Hyperion, a group I worked was an undergrad. It seems to me like life (like time) is relative, it only appears to slow down, but it never actually does.

A Play A Week

2011-11-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

I find myself repeatedly using this space to chronicle not the actor or person which I am, but that I want to be. So to begin with, let's go down the list of things I've talked about and see where I'm at with them. The physical fitness/more physical as an actor thing is going well, I've been frequenting the Porter Square location of Planet Fitness with some frequency, consistently going at least three times a week, if not more! I feel good about that. I think all this physical activity is going to be a key part of avoiding a potential slump and/or seasonal affective disorder this winter, something I've struggled with in the past. Exercising feels good, and I am starting to perceive some results in my physical composition, even if they are fairly subtle, I'm making progress. Go me! I still haven't started doing yoga or taking dance, which is the other aspect of that particular goal, but I'll get there.

Stand up is pretty far on the back burner at this point. An analogy I heard recently is that in terms of multi tasking and time management, you can only have one or two things on your "front burner" at a time, of course for me the main thing is continuing to grow as an actor. In terms of time committed, second would be the physical fitness thing. Lately, improv has been on the "back burner" so to speak, since I haven't been able to rehearse with my troupe these past few weeks due to Our Town's performance schedule but we also have some shows coming up, so I'll be able to refocus on that stuff soon, which is cool. Also back there is guitar, again with Our Town it's been hard to focus on learning new stuff. And way at the back... is stand up. I keep thinking about going back out there, writing some stuff, hitting some open mics. But then I think about what else I could be doing with the two or three hours involved in those five minutes of stage time, and it's hard to get really motivated. No doubt though I'll give it another shot at some point.

Oh, and Shakespeare! Last night I auditioned for Shakespeare Now's Spring touring company, an ensemble of 7 actors who travel to Massachusetts schools performing some well known plays in repertory. How did it go? OK, I guess, not bad. I mean, it's arguably one of the most lucrative non union gigs in town, and a lot of people who have worked with Shakes-Now have gone on to more serious stuff, so it's pretty competitive. Also, I really have no personal connections within the company, that I know of. So long story short I probably didn't get it (besides all those other things my piece, while adequate, could have been better) although you never know. Regardless that's the last time I'm thinking about it.

My newest goal I've decided is time permitting, to make it out to see at least a play a week from the local theatre scene. I've kind of done that inadvertently recently, I saw Collected Stories, The Divine Sister, Slasher, and a Harvard undergraduate production of Othello, and on the improv front saw my buddies in Unforgettable Mousetraps perform with Awkward Compliment at the Somerville Theatre. Doing Our Town has made it sort of tough to see stuff, but all things considered I've been doing pretty well!

Going out and seeing plays is important for several reasons. Seeing stuff on stage you grow artistically, observing others in their craft, hopefully learning from them what you can do better or in the unideal circumstance of a let's say less than good show, what not to do. Seeing stuff locally your also supporting the local theatre scene, and engaging with what's going on around you. You know, if you or I want to work with Boston's theatre community, which of course we do (or are doing) it's good to know what people are putting up. I'm going to see a show tonight, and seeing that will give me an idea of what this company is all about, if they are someone I'd want to work with, and give me a better idea of what to do to get in their good graces, so to speak.

Well, that was a pretty good blog post, I'd say! I know people read this when I post it to Facebook, but I'm yet to get any comments. So for this one, let me conclude with a question: what are you doing to make yourself better, or to get farther in whatever it is you do? Let's start a discussion.

Taking a Breath

2011-10-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

First, if you haven't seen Our Town, you really should. It's very good. Probably one of the best shows I've ever been in. But don't take my word for it, come and see it. Seriously. I'm not joking or hyperbolizing, it's just good.

The first weekend was, I thought, all in all a success. Friday's night show was amazing, we had a big old packed house of receptive audience members who gave off such a great energy and were such a joy to perform for, that the show really sung. Saturday was trickier, it being the second show which can lead to a sort of weird energy sometimes when you come off the high of opening, coupled with the awful weather, and the subsequently much smaller crowd. Regardless the people who were that night said they really enjoyed it, I'm sure they weren't aware of the little trip ups we had along the way. Today's show again had a smaller crowd, but we hit the ground running and I thought it was equal to Friday's showing.

Now that the first weekend is out of the way... I can take a breath. For the moment, I can stop living and breathing Our Town all the time. I'm sure you know the feeling, you go into those final few runs pre tech, really putting the show together, polishing the final things to be polished before adding lights and sound. Then your in the space, on the stage, oh wait you have to make that entrance a few lines sooner, because the corridor is longer then how you blocked it. These steps are narrower then we expected, oh and they aren't completely built yet. Step into the light. Wait for the sound cue. Hold please, while I program this lighting cue. 12 hours later you go home. Come back the next night, do it for six hours, go home, come back, do that again. You really find everything there is to find in the role, in the space, in the moment with the lights and the sound and your fellow actors... it's exhilarating and exhausting. When you go into it ill prepared, unsure if the show will really come together and the problems can be fixed, it's terrifying. Comparatively, this was less of that then a lot of the tech experiences I've had, scrambling to make all the pieces fit together. And then, when opening night comes and everything clicks... what a fantastic feeling.

So that has been the past week for me. It's been maybe the most satisfying theatrical experience I've had to date, in terms of everything going fantastically technically, with a super group of people and most of all envisioning a goal for my own performance, and achieving it. A lot of that had to do with my director, Jason, who was a total joy to work with, and with my own advancement artistically as an actor.

But coming home from tonight's matinee, I take a breath. Six more performances to go... but until this Friday, I can think about something else! OK, this is me, doing that.

BOOM, acting

2011-10-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

I don't have a whole lot to blog about tonight. Except, tonight was the penultimate rehearsal of Our Town, and for my money I killed it. Part of what the director has been pushing us towards has been a super light, almost farcical tone for the first three quarters or so of the show, so that when it takes a serious turn at the end, the audience really feels the impact. This tonality is something the cast as a whole has struggled with, but that I found with my character early on, and spent the rest of the rehearsal process trying to harness throughout my scenes. At last night's rehearsal the play was especially down tempo, so our director really challenged us to make it "borderline Oscar Wilde" as we have in the past, and I especially embraced that challenge, I thought, and you know, really went for it.

Comedy is interesting. I think the best comedy comes when you are the most removed from your inhibitions, and completely in touch with your instincts. Admittedly, some of what I've struggled with in terms of really bringing my role to life has been my lines. I've known them for a while, but because we haven't had as much rehearsal as I'm used to, and it's in rehearsal that I really get familiar with a text, I've been a little iffy on them for much of the process. Leading into and then over the course of tech week, I would say I've gotten them to a really solid place, and having run everything in the space more then once, tonight I was able to take the director's challenge and really let loose. Comedy, like jazz, is all about space. You have to know how to let a moment breath. If your in a huge rush to fill it, then the audience won't appreciate the tension you are trying to create, and humor is a reaction to tension (or so goes my theory). It takes a lot of comfort and trust to make comedy really happen, you have to commit to your choices, commit to your spaces and commit to breathing. *In a yoda voice* Commitment! Specificity! These things will comedy make.

Anyway, tonight was I think the best work I've done in this role, and maybe some of my best work up to this point as an actor and I just wanted to capture that. It's going to be tough from here on out, not just trying to recapture the numerous discoveries I made tonight, but to try and build on them and make new ones. That challenge though is what I really appreciate about acting, and why I want to make this craft part of my life and my profession. I have tomorrow, and then nine performances to chase it, and I'm looking forward to the challenges and discoveries to come.

In short... BOOM, acting.

Comedy

2011-10-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

I saw the Divine Sister today at Speakeasy, it was funny! If you enjoy broad humor ala Mel Brooks, you'd probably like it. I started into it with hesitance, wondering it perhaps was too broad, but I ultimately gave myself over to it and enjoyed it. I had a few caveats, I get that it was a send up of 60s cinema, but the sheer number of varying plot threads including brief send up of the Da Vinci Code/60s spy movies and then this extended riff on Suddenly Last Summer(?) were a bit much, but those are textual issues. And I'm not really trying to write a review. Again, if you like Mel Brooks and fairly broad comedies (which the complaint I just made fits into the framework of, ala History of the World Part 1), check it out.

It was a pretty informative experience, and served as part of my overall effort to see more Boston theatre. It's not that I don't like going to plays, I'm just pretty lazy, and that shit's expensive. Luckily I have a source for comps that I've been taking advantage of which I hadn't previously, and when a performance time comes up that I can definitely make, I'm checking it out. This is also how I saw Collected Stories last week.

Anyway, I wouldn't call the humor in "The Divine Sister" subtle, but it was very capably delivered by the cast and I laughed a lot. Maybe my favorite moment of the show is when (my friend and teacher) Paula Plum's sexually repressed nun hears a charged remark from a cast member... and I'm not doing a very good job of describing this moment. Basically he goes into detail about his member, and Paula reacted in character, and even though it was a blatant penis joke it really worked for me. So, why? Well, Paula's delivery, specificity, her commitment to the bit, and the overall strength of her character and her choices.

These are things I've been thinking about, because The Divine Sister is the kind of over the top comedy that I hope to make my living acting in, and it was informative to be on the outside looking in on this kind of show, especially on a professional scale. I did a similar production of Steve Martin's The Underpants this past April, and this occasion seems like a good time to go into something that has reminded me of that experience...

You see, a week or two ago one of my cast mates stumbled across... a review. Personally, I thought it was a pretty good show, but this person did not. You know what, I'll just link to it and you can see for yourself. OK so it's not that they panned it, but they gave a fairly mixed review. Fair enough! Here's what they had to say about me in my role: "Versati was ... a lot. The character is a self-important, aggrandizing poet, and perhaps it was that type of character that I had so strong a reaction to, but Mike Handelman didn’t help me any. The character is hugely pompous and overblown with his own “poetic” conceits: I so understand the temptation to overplay. But Handelman seemed to channel some of the insane over-the-topness of (specifically) a Jack Black-ian persuasion. Handelman’s approach, although sometimes funny, battled the type of comedy written into the script, and usually ended up overshadowing and undermining the hilarity of the written jokes."

Better then no reaction at all, am I right? That's a rhetorical question. And although I take the comparison to Jack Black as sort of a compliment, and the reviewer admits that they were perhaps reacting more to the character in the text to my performance, I don't take their remarks too seriously. In the end any performance is a collaboration, and in my audition for the role I took the material in a very over the top direction, and the director must have responded to that because she had me continue with that throughout the production and I could have toned it down but that's not what the director wanted, and I thought it balanced out in the piece, and you can't please everybody.

Regardless, it makes me just a teensy bit... insecure. Not that I'm going to change what I'm doing, but it makes one think...

Guilty Pleasure

2011-10-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

If you aren't watching "Work of Art" on Bravo, maybe think about giving it a shot. It's basically Project Runway with visual artists, ta-da! And these days for me, it's what constitutes a guilty pleasure. Lately, television as a whole has taken on this weird duality of high minded art ( Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Community etc, these highly written shows in the style of The Sopranos or Larry Sanders or whatever) and utter trash which stimulates one's pleasure centers only in the most base ways possible... Bravo makes a whole line of these kinds of shows. This trend can be traced to the late 90s, The Sopranos and Survivor are I would argue the two most primal archetypes for the dominant forms of the TV landscape today. Work of Art almost sort of crosses them, if only in the sense that it's essentially a trashy, highly fabricated reality competition show in the vein of Project Runway, but it's about high art, or as one of the judges described it "a game show for artists". That's probably a little too high minded, and now that I think about it, the show really has nothing to do with the Soprano's... but it's entertaining regardless! Especially for someone like me, who has a limited stomach for guilty pleasure television unless there is some remote aspect of craft or information or SOMETHING other than people acting terribly to one another and crying. And Work of Art has the whole art angle as interpreted through a Project Runway/Top Chef lense, two shows I've enjoyed in the past. This season thus far though has been especially self aware, with the host China Chow addressing one of the artists in a cold monotone post judgement and being placed in the bottom "Are you crying because you aren't feeling well?" and then saying "feel better!" after she'd been eliminated. Shit, harsh, awesome. Also this season, the artist I am rooting for is named "The Sucklord" not just because his name is Sucklord and he makes art about action figures, but he's just a great reality show personality, full of snark and enough self awareness of everything to make the experience palatable, playing along but not blowing the whole thing off. I don't really have that much to add about this show. If you like Project Runway you'd probably enjoy it, although I haven't watched that other program since... season 4? The one where Christian Serrano won at the end. Anyway, check it out. I think my thesis about the Sopranos/Survivor dichotomy is a good one... and one that I came up with in the process of writing this post! Some cultural studies major should expand on it. If they haven't already. Probably they have. Ah well, originality is overrated.

The Weight (aka the actor's journey)

2011-10-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

I have begun the next phase of "the next phase" (a phase within a phase, a prelude to phases yet to come) of my acting career: dieting. Since I last spoke about it in my blog in the bodies in space entry, yes I've been going to the gym with increased frequency, three to four times per week for the past month maybe? In the meantime though, beginning with when I was working on R&G Are Dead, my eating habits have progressively been getting worse. I would say they had been worse, got better when I started living with my girlfriend and got back into the habit of cooking at home and eating vegetables instead of burritos from Felipe's for multiple meals of the day, but at some point I started eating a lot more junk food. Specifically processed sugar, cookies and mountain dew and all those other kinds of shit, which I used to not really do so much. I mean sure I'd have a scone a week or something from a coffee shop, or the occasional sugary drink or snack but I found myself indulging all the time and not stopping myself. It had to do with the brownies my girlfriend made me for my birthday, which I ate most of cause that's maybe my favorite desert and then from there things went downhill.

Then, the other day, I weighed myself... "oh I've been going to the gym, maybe I lost a few pounds", but then let's just say I wasn't happy with the result. Mind you I don't have a good recent basis of comparison, and actually I think my weight is where it was the last time I took it like six months ago, but still, like many Americans stepping off the scale I committed myself to taking action... but will I succeed where so many routinely fail?

A little about my history, I was a heavy kid. It weighed upon me, growing up, especially in the second grade when it first became a subject of ridicule from a certain 2nd grader in my new school, it had it's first real impact on my self esteem. But I grew taller, and my weight stayed the same, that old story, and I did thin out somewhat, more or less to the state you see me in today with some fluctuation.

And the name of this post is the actor's journey (besides the reference to the song by The Band, that's what that is) and this is something professional actors deal with, it's part of the job to look a certain way. Now, I'm a character actor, my weight is much less relevant to casting people then in the case of someone who was more of a "leading man" type, but this is going to be a life long journey and I don't want my physical type to affect my potential success, I'd like to look... well, good. And then feel good. And do good work. And have a good career. And not get diabetes, which runs in my family.

As to the nuts and bolts of this process, I'm still figuring that out. My strategy is just to eat less. Today, before going to the gym which I will do after I press "publish", I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my coffee, no added sugar or salt in any of the ingredients, so that's good, and I put it on one piece of bread folded in half instead of two. BOOM less calories. It's a start, onward from there.

Boring Weekend

2011-10-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

Well, by most people's standards, that was a pretty boring weekend. By my own standard, it was totally par for the course of my life at this moment, and I don't particularly mind it. Yesterday, I hung out with my girlfriend and went to the gym, tonight I was in rehearsal in Hyde Park until 10:30 or so, then came home and ate dinner. I know, I am the rock and roll lifestyle personified.

One thing I did that was interesting this past week, was go to see Collective Stories. And then, I had lunch afterwards with one of it's stars, Bobbie Steinbach! By coincidence! A few weeks, maybe a month or so ago, another actor associate of mine invited me to participate in an informal reading of a new work a writer he knew was working in, which needed a male 20 something supporting character, and the other actor involved other than the two of us was Bobbie Steinbach, who hosted the event at her home. This was in a way, a lesson unto itself in "making it" on several levels. My associate, or let's just call him my friend, I knew from a workshop I did and subsequently a class we were in together. Another associate/friend of mine needed to cast a role in a show, which this person would have been a good fit for, so I got the two of them in touch. As it happened, he had a conflict with the production dates, and didn't go out for it. But I have no doubt that this lead in part to him contacting me about this other opportunity, which was a chance to meet some new people, a writer (who are some of the best people to know and work with, because if you attach your voice to the voice of a character early in it's development, oftentimes it will develop towards you and you might end up playing the part, as I likely will if this piece ever goes up) and a well known actor, Bobbie, who I respected. I then see Bobbie in Collected Stories this past Thursday, which was very good and you should see it if you get the chance. I really came away with no major criticisms. Overall it was a very satisfactory production, entertaining, engaging, thought provoking, and worth seeing. Afterwards, having time to cool and feeling hungry, I went to a eatery near the Arsenal but not in the main complex that my friend turned me onto when we working in the space this past May, and as I was finishing my sandwich, I saw Bobbie and she invited me to sit and have lunch with her and her husband, it was a lovely time.

All of which came out of being out in the world, and when I saw an opportunity that applied to someone I knew, I shared it. You know, it's a tricky dynamic. On the one hand, acting is so competitive, and it can be very "dog eat dog". If it had been something I thought I would be a good fit for, and I knew someone who also could be up for it, I might not have mentioned it especially if I wasn't especially close to the person in question, which in the case of my friend in the scenario above I'm not. On the other hand, you can't really "make it" completely on your own, you have to get help from other people somewhere along the line, and people are more likely to give help to someone who has helped them in some way prior to that moment.

It's tough knowing when to help out, and when to hold back. Granted, helping anybody out has yet to hinder me in career, and when someone I know is successful I'm always happy for them. I'm also really not in a place to hold resentments of anyone else's success, seeing as I've been getting plenty of opportunities and oh yeah I was in a movie with Brandon Routh that's coming out this Spring, so I think I'll be OK for the foreseeable future. I think I mentioned in this blog though, how in the audition for Crooked Arrows I declined to share the new sides I'd printed out and brought with me with a fellow actor also auditioning for the part. I don't know if it made a difference, but the director did say to me during shooting "Michael, the reason you got the part in this film is because you were the only one to audition who was really prepared" so go figure. And you know what? I was prepared. I printed those sides, I learned them, I did my homework. Maybe I was also lucky that the casting agency called and told me there would be new sides on the website, it doesn't matter. What does is that I got the part in that case. And that one was sheer circumstance, nothing to do with anything I done for anybody prior to that. But the next one could be.

So today's lesson, always be on the lookout, for yourself and for ways to help other people out because karma can be your friend.

Whew! I was going to talk about the other stuff that happened this week, but that was a much more interesting post. Let's leave it at that.

Standing Up to the third power

2011-10-11T22:46:00.000-07:00

Tonight was my third attempt at stand up...

I'd like to write "and it was fantastic!" or "it was so gratifying!" or "I can't wait to do it again!" and I feel guilty because of all the nice encouragement I got when I posted I was going up tonight on Facebook, but... it was sorta "meh". I think I was the most comfortable I've been on stage as a stand up yet, out of my three times doing it, and hey that is progress. But I had an epiphany, starting out, to get your five minutes on stage at an open mic, you need to be committed to being in a room for at least, say two hours, in this case a rather loud room, watching person after person not really get any laughs before eventually getting up for your five minutes. To make matters worse for me tonight, after being told I would be going up shortly, the comic who I had been told would call me up called the person I was supposed to call up and then that person called someone else up, and so forth until I went and spoke to the guy organizing the event and he was very apologetic and diplomatic that a mistake had taken place. And you know, shit happens, it's fine, but it really killed any lingering excitement I had about reciting what I'd written in my notebook and had been preparing mentally for the past two hours. Appropriate to the hour (it was just after midnight) the crowd was pretty sleepy. My first few volleys went OK, but I pretty quickly lost momentum and I felt the crowd more or less tune out. I had hoped to take my buddy Chris Anton's advice and work in my "pseudo angry" character that I would do backstage, but I was so not into it at that point and so low energy, it wasn't really going to happen. I did sort of an imitation of it, and referenced said imitation, and that got kind of a laugh and sort of propelled me into my Hamlet bit. I should consider it an accomplishment that I held their attention for as long as I did, and with a fairly high brow joke about the presence of the Oedipus complex in Hamlet (high brow that is for an incest joke, HEY-OH!) but at the end of my five minutes... I just wasn't feeling it.

And I'm sorry to say it, but I feel like that's my relationship at this point to stand up in general. Granted this is only after going up three times at the same fairly difficult open mic night, but I just don't get the same joy that I do out of acting or improv, I don't really think it's a thing that justifies the amount of time and effort required for me to do just five minutes. I know some people really love it... but I just don't seem to. Maybe when I'm able to get there earlier in the night and subsequently go up before midnight, I'll try it again, but that probably won't be for a while. If I do

Discovery

2011-10-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

I've made some fun discoveries over the course of the past few rehearsals for Our Town. At first, when presented with the challenge of playing Mr. Webb, one of the play's two father figures to the couple central to the play's story, I thought of playing my own father. As is often the case however, changes happen, and with plans evaporate or morph. With the encouragement of the director, and through my own engagement and sense of play with the text, I've found Mr. Webb to be much closer to myself then I initially thought, but a different side of myself then I usually end up playing. I find it easy to inhabit the comedic "Woody Allen" archetype or a variation on that form for many of my roles, it's a template I return to frequently because I know how to do it and it works, and it reflects an aspect of my self which I can magnify appropriately for a role. That isn't the rhythm I'm finding for Mr. Webb though, who throughout the play finds himself in the position of "winging it", and with some hesitation but not so much as to be crippling, tackles the issue at hand and finds a solution with humor and bravado. Sounds like someone I know... that would be myself, but a more mature version of myself, who has experiences to draw on and knows how to handle situations and find answers to questions. Mr. Webb is in his own way, a take charge kind of guy. He has an easy going but confident manner, he stands up straight, he tells it like he sees it, but again does all this with his own charm and humor. I find myself really liking the guy, and rather then drawing on a comic stereotype of myself as a kid or variation on a man child, I'm playing an idealized version of my adult self, who doesn't always have the answer but when he doesn't is able to find a reasonable compromise.

My director has been extremely helpful in this process, and I've been having a great time. He's more of an outside in kind of guy (I wonder if that has to do with his design background, oh yeah probably), and in this production is interested in using different levels of stylization to achieve the best story possible. He has an awareness of theatre as a heightened reality but which is constantly grounded in the experience of the audience, taking in the play. The style of the play is a naturalism which appreciates it's own status as a style and acknowledges that it is not set in the present, and allows the characters to represent people from the past. I could go on trying to describe the aesthetic and the slight Brechtian elements (no stop don't be turned off it's nothing bad or crazy just slightly deconstructed), but I'll hold off for now.

Regardless, I'm having a good time and it will be a production worth seeing of a play not commonly done well. In other news, Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead came to a close, and I am left with mixed feelings. Certain aspects of the production could have been executed better. Rather then go into detail, I'll allow that anyone reading this from the show knows what I'm talking about, and I'm not blaming anybody just stating a fact. At the end of the day, for me as an artist, I didn't leave the theatre being all that satisfied with having done something worthwhile, and I mean that in the most selfish possible sense. I, the actor, was at no point in the spotlight in any substantial way or contributed to the production in a way that made a difference to the rest of the piece, and that was a little frustrating, putting the hours commuting, rehearsing, etc for no real pay off or gained experience which I could draw on in a substantial way in the future which I would not have gotten from just reading the play a lot, maybe.

On the other hand, I made a lot of friends and enjoyed the company of some really good people who I hope to work with again in the future, or just have a beer with at some point. And that's certainly worthwhile. It's kind of a funny contrast, in that I usually feel somewhat more of the former (satisfaction with my artistic contribution) then the latter (a sense of camaraderie and friendship among my peers) just because I'm kind of socially awkward and often have a hard time getting really comfortable with a group of people, and knowing they will take my sense of humor the right way. But I did have that in this particular dressing room, and I'll miss the folks I had it with. C'est la vie! Until the next one, right?

bodies in space

2011-09-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm chugging along at a comfortable pace. Taking stock post graduation, so far, so good, nothing I can complain about. Rosencratz and Guildenstern had a strong opening. I could complain about the time and effort I put into being in that show for a total of five or ten minutes of stage time with no lines in a 2 hour plus show with three weekends of performances... but I can't really complain about that. My role is just the perfect size that I was able to blow off two weeks or so of rehearsal right in the middle of the process to go be in a movie, anything else of any size would have created a conflict which have resulted in me walking out on the production to go make money, but I didn't have to do that. Also, I have made a bunch of new friends, more so than I would say I have on other shows I feel like these could be lasting connections I've been making. Of course, they probably won't amount to much more than "liking" an occasional post on Facebook and saying "what's up" at an audition, "oh not much, you?" "yeah same" I always say that even though I've had a bunch of stuff happen in the past year, I don't usually feel like going into it in a short amount of time. Especially with the movie thing, I feel kind of embarrassed describing the scope of this incredible achievement to people, but should I? If it weren't for the fact that I'm the only person I know, especially in my cohort, to reach that level I might feel less weird. But yeah, I kinda do, I went there. I feel weird as well that I didn't appreciate it as much as I could have at the time, I spent a lot of the time I was on set unhappy to be there, when it was a really great gig from which I benefited tremendously financially and from which I hope to gain further benefit professionally when it comes out and I do the paper work to get my SAG card, etc...

But enough about that. It's old news! I have all this stuff in the pipeline, R&G is up and running, Our Town is in rehearsals, Uncle Vanya will be going up in December, next year the film should come out... why aren't I more satisfied? I'm still hungry, which is a good thing, you have to be hungry as an actor, but I don't really have room for anything else. I'm more or less booked out until February, which is a good thing, but it leaves me without anything to chase after...

Which isn't even really true. I have a lot to work on as an actor, most of it having to do with my physical instrument. I guess I'm not in terrible shape, especially compared to when I was younger, but I have a long way to go in the physical fitness department. Ever seen me touch my toes? Me neither. I've been keeping up with my Alexander technique practice, that's helped my posture substantially, but I've been neglecting my obligations to the gym, my physical flexibility, and my overall physical presence and awareness. I was called out on this the other day, at the first meeting of a new scene study I'm doing with Rosalind Thomas Clark and Victoria Marsh of Company One. For the first class we had to present a monologue, and like Ross Macdonald before them, they called me out on a lack of physical awareness. Part of this was nerves and going first in the class (I do that a lot) but it's something I need to address before I can continue my progress. One thing among many...

But then I speak of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy

2011-09-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

A week ago on Stagesource, Stoneham Theatre posted an audition notice for Mercutio in their production of Romeo and Juliet. You might have seen the posting, I mentioned it to my friend Chris at a rehearsal for R&G Are Dead as I started to explain it's contents he said "of course it was on Stagesource, it's a Thursday of course I checked Stagesource, even though I'm committed to all these different things, what if there was something better!" Sidetracked, I just thought that was funny. Anyway of course I responded, because I knew Stoneham was doing R&J with age appropriate actors and I'd submitted for it but I think at the time they were looking for specifically high school aged actors, which although I can play high school aged, I am of course not. So when I saw the posting, I got excited and jumped to respond. One of my goals professionally is to do more Shakespeare, another one of my goals is to be cast in an equity show. Both of these are things that I'll achieve eventually, I don't doubt that I'll get there. This would achieve two of those goals, however, and in the form of one of those roles that I'd really love to sink my teeth into, one of Shakespeare's great comic parts.

I recieved a response within... twelve hours at least, and looked at the requirements. They'd asked for actors to either prepare the Queen Mab speech or R&J Act II scene i between Benvolio and Mercutio directly before the balcony scene. I chose Queen Mab, pulled my Arden off the shelf, and started going over it, untangling all of the crazy images of the speech and their meaning. I also shot off an email to my fantastic acting coach, who although she was directing a show about to go up at Stoneham I'd hoped would have some time to help with the piece. She did, over the weekend I continued reviewing it, I met with her on Monday and we broke it down. All of the things I didn't get, the pronunciations I had wrong, etc, she helped me with, we broke down into it's parts and found specific things about those parts and made a nice big comic showpiece of the speech. I felt really good about our work together, and I set about memorizing it as much as possible.

Tuesday I continued working on it, although not as diligently as I could have.

Wednesday, yesterday, was the big day. On the train ride to Melrose to meet my Mom who would then take me to the theatre for my 5 PM audition, I reviewed the speech and found that I had it pretty well and good in my brain, I thought. I was just at the point where I could recite it to myself, image to image, without looking at the paper, I was just right at that point. I got to the theatre, my mouth was dry. I went to the bathroom, drank some water from the faucet (there might have been a water fountain I didn't see one), and gargled cause isn't that a thing you do? I filled out the form, which the other two fellows and one lady (they were open to cross casting) directed me to, and waited. The girl went in before me. She was also doing Queen Mab. At the time I judged her piece before moving to another section of hallway where I wouldn't hear it, but without seeing it what can one really tell? Not much. She finished, I went in, introduced myself and then BOOM "Ohhhhhh I see QUEEN MAB has been with you!" and on from there. I thought the piece was going well, I was focused on my imaginary Romeo but caught a few glimpses of their faces. They seemed engaged, with a look of either fascination or horror or SOMETHING (let's say fascination), and I continued through what I'd prepared, through the intro, into the description of the chariot's components, into where Queen Mab rides and then... what does she ride over? Knees? Fingers? Lips? I'd lost my place! I went blank, stopped, "Annnnd I lost my place" I admitted somewhat sheepishly with a smile, which got a chuckle, pulled out my paper found where I was and continued. Of course I lost some momentum, became a little more self conscious then I had been, but got back on track and finished. Then they said "Thank you!" I said thank you back.... and left.

I suppose it could have gone better. I could have not went up on that line, I could have learned the speech a little bit better to prepare for that possibility. I could have been a little more spontaneous, I'm worried that my comic gesturing may have come off as planned or calculated and not as "in the moment" as I know I'm capable of. None of that really matters. That is a hard ass speech, and I prepared it in a week and delivered... Mike Handelman! Doing Queen Mab! As best as I could. I would not say I was anything other than myself in that audition. And especially for a character actor, yourself is the most you can be. The question is, how did I deliver technically (pretty well, overall I thought) and as a character actor, do I fit in with their idea of what they want their Mercutio to be? I would say I would be a very capable, entertaining and interesting Mercutio (IMHO as unhumble as that might sound) but nor am I an obvious choice for the role. I'd allowed myself to become invested in it, again two career goals in one, but now that it's over I'm at peace with whatever the result happens to be. As is necessary in the life of an actor, I've resigned myself to not getting the part, to getting a "thank you, but no" email or no contact at all. Those of you who are non actors might think that's pessimistic, but it's just the reality.

Knowing that I'm not an obvious choice for the role and probably wouldn't be getting it, I came into it thinking I would treat the experience as an exercise. The result of which would be, if nothing else, a comprehensive blog post on my experience preparing for and executing an audition piece, for posterity and viewing later on after I've done a whole bunch of Shakespeare and equity shows I can say "oh yeah I remember that one audition, back when I first learned Queen Mab..."

Guitar Post!

2011-08-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

If you follow me on Facebook, and if your on this blog I don't know how you could be unless you do, you know that I bought a new guitar with my Crooked Arrows money. It's a Godin Passion, basically a very fancy stratocaster with various bells and whistles but a stratocaster none the less. Fellow musician types (and non musicians too, I can imagine) know what it's like to be in kind of a slump, playing the same old stuff over and over again when you improvise, not realizing the level of playing you aspire to or are capable of, I'd been feeling that. Sometimes new equipment brings new inspiration, and this guitar has done that for me, without a doubt. Corresponding to this, I've started doing music recording stuff again, which is something I was into for a while in high school back in my early guitar days. Now that I have this fancy high powered mac book, I've been fiddling with iMovie as well, and putting together legitimate little videos instead of just the occasional Youtube quick capture. Here are some! Enjoy!

Time keeps on slipping

2011-08-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

If your of my generation, remember being in middle or high school and having Live Journal? Posting lyrics to songs to your journal or using song titles/lyrics as the title of your posts, or where you had the option of putting in a little tag "So and So is listening to this"? Consider the title of this post an homage to those heady days.

I find myself drawn to them at this time of year, the transition from summer to fall. It's strange to realize that for the first time in my life that switch is happening and I'm not starting the next phase of some academic agenda. Instead I'm just left with life itself, moving forward, establishing patterns, getting older. And also getting wiser, finding new experiences, all of those things that come with time's unceasing momentum.

I have a lot of stuff going on for the fall. Rosencratz and Guildenstern is opening soon, really soon. After that, I keep forgetting about this but I'm committed to play the narrator in this tribal/belly dance show (definitely something I found on Craigslist). After R&G I'm playing Mr. Webb in Riverside Theatre Works' production of Our Town not a show I had expected to find myself in... ever. Then I'm playing the Spearcarrier I mean Watchmen in Uncle Vanya at Apollanaire in Chelsea. So many things! All of that is carrying me through... my god, January. Which is about how long my movie pay checks should be carrying me as well.

And after that... it will be on to the next thing. I have a lot to decide this fall. Do I want to try for graduate school? New York? Los Angeles? I'm not thinking completely relocating, but I feel like I should be thinking of trying to branch out of Boston and into somewhere to try and take advantage of this movie momentum. And in the meantime, Boston stuff is going well. I'm in all these shows, for example. Three of them! Lots of actors have a hard time getting in one, much less committing to two at a time. I also need to join SAG at some point. And get a voice over demo recorded, and then possibly join AFTRA. I mean inevitably I'll need to join both, the question is when and how to best take advantage.

I was talking with a friend about all this, grad school vs New York vs regional theatre and he said that opportunities will present themselves and I should just take them when they do. At the time I disagreed with him, but then again that's how I got Crooked Arrows. But that was also being in the right place in the right time, aka luck. A lot of this business is luck. And I've been lucky so far. To get that good luck requires hard work and tenacity and being in the places which could turn out to be the right place, at that right time, nothing ever came to anyone for sitting around and waiting for it to happen. Even if it did, I wouldn't want it to happen that way, I like working. But working towards what? That is the question.

Linked from The Hub Review?!

2011-08-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

Today was spent playing in the Footlight Club. For the third act of R&G we have a pretty sweet pirate fight sequence lined up, with some great physical comedy and assorted shenanigans which tonight we spent rehearsing and constructing. It was fun! I get carried across the stage screaming and flailing before getting tossed over board, off stage. So I don't actually get tossed overboard but that's the story we're trying to tell. It's cool! You should check out the production when it hits September 16th (and runs through October 1st).

In other news, I actually responded to Thomas Garvey's review of All's Well with some of my thoughts on it and he responded back and linked to my blog! *Gasp*! Thomas Garvey read my hastily put together review of All's Well That End's Well? I seriously put more time in the comment I put to his original post than I did to my own on this blog. Anyway, that was a solid of him to do that, so I'm linking back to his original post, where you can find another guy's comment and his response, followed by my comment and his response basically agreeing to disagree very amicably and then linking back here.

http://hubreview.blogspot.com/2011/08/alls-well-that-ends-well-okay.html

I assume from that link I got my first "follower" on blogger. Hey man! What's up? Hope you like what your reading. I'll return the favor at some point.

That's a wrap!

2011-08-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was my last day on the set of Crooked Arrows. As an experience, it was exceptionally bitter sweet. We were back in Topsfield, so it was a different flavor of waiting around then I'd experienced working at St. John's, where I literally had absolutely nothing to do for the entire first three days on set. The Topsfield fair grounds stuff was slightly more involved, specifically I had to be on my little step ladder perch thing (if you go to the Crooked Arrows Facebook page and search their photos you can find documented evidence of this) watching the games and miming talking. I did also have some text to do on the last day, so I did that, and shortly afterwards was told I was wrapped at which point our Assistant Director, David Mendoza realized I was wrapped up in a bow wrapped (that's not a real film making expression I just made that up) and Steve, the director, made a very nice speech and there were many hugs and hand shakes and some applause and it felt very gratifying, and dark chocolately (bitter sweet).

I'm going to think back on the friends I made, and miss them. Probably, the crew people I got to know I'll see again on set, more than likely as an extra but they them's the brakes. I'll have an easier time of it with them knowing I'm not an idiot and capable of taking care of myself, while not screwing things up or making their job harder. I do have mixed feelings about film (so much waiting) but if and when I'm offered a chance to dive back in, you know I'll take it. Also, Facebook!

Anyway, afterwards I rushed to Jamaica Plain and the Footlight Club for a rehearsal of Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It was quintessential community theatre, everybody standing around the piano looking at sheet music, most of us not really singers trying to get something good sounding out of the traditional tune Ophelia sings when she goes crazy. It felt good and strange to be back. I have a lot more theatre ahead of me, between R&G and Our Town, but what's after that?

It's a question I've been pondering. There are definitely gaps in my training I need to fill, and the issue of getting in shape, but I've got a lot of momentum from this movie, or I could turn this movie into a lot of momentum if I play my cards right, and what are the correct cards to play? I've got some ideas. New York? Could be the next step. I'm thinking do these shows, take another class this fall with one of the casting agencies or theatre companies around here, do the month long intensive at Shakespeare and Company in January, then in February/March when hopefully stuff will start coming out for the movie don't book any more Boston gigs and start focusing on NYC, getting my stuff to casting directors, agents, managers, etc. Shit is going to get real.

All's Well That Ends Well DID INDEED End Well

2011-08-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog post as a theatre goer! Exciting! Last night was the final performance of CSC's production of All's Well That End's Well, you know, the one you might have auditioned for (I sure did) that went up in Boston Common these past few weeks. Well, normally I don't go to CSC's stuff, the crowds are huge, you get a crappy view, the productions are OK but don't seem worth the effort to me and I actually don't put in the effort to see that much theatre unless I know somebody in it or it's like, right in Harvard Square, even then I go to the theatre far less than I really should. But, my friend David Gardener has struck up a tradition of getting groups of people together on his birthday to come and see the plays every summer, and since Adia had gotten in touch with David about some bike stuff and he was all like "you guys should come to my thing" and she had a friend coming in from out of town who we needed to find stuff to bring on... we ended up going! We arrived at 6:30 for the 7 o'clock performance, which would probably be a mob scene under normal circumstances but due to the weather, it was cloudy and drizzling intermittently all day and the forecast predicting like a 90% chance of rain, not that many people came out. As such, we got BALLER ASS SEATS or spots, I should say, the likes of which would have netted in the hundreds of dollars to sit in the orchestra of an indoor production. I had read head lines vaguely extolling the virtues of this production, and realized that three people who taught in the semi-program I had attended, one of whom I'd taken multiple classes with, all of whom I'd seen in various other things, had prominent roles.

Long story short, I really enjoyed the show. Before writing this, I admit I checked in the Hub Review, local critic Thomas Garvey's art blog in which he reviews the first two thirds of All's Well, and compares it to "arena Shakespeare" but holds that the setting is incapable of capturing the play's "essence" which has to do with all this stuff about death and hedonism in society and the various things Shakespeare was working through in the latter part of his career. He has a point, but I felt like he's comparing it to some other ideal production of the piece, specifically his ideal production, and was basically saying it wasn't to his ideal. And that's fine. I hadn't read or experienced All's Well That End's Well, and I appreciated the ease with which the play flowed and moved, I thought it moved exceptionally well which I don't care what "thematic ideals" you are in pursuit of, that is absolutely necessary in staging Shakespeare. I did agree that the woman playing the lead was just OK, capable, but didn't do anything fantastic. Overall I thought the show was pitched to entertain and allow the audience to understand what the characters are saying and doing at any given time, both of which it accomplished very capably.

Done with deadlines

2011-08-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

Today is my first day off after being on set Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. My first day off this week from having a deadline "be on set by this time" or even my usual Sunday rehearsal for my next show "be in JP by this time". It's such a relief to just sleep, and wake up and not have to be anywhere at any particular time. And make coffee. I can just make a pot of coffee, put some water on to boil, pour it over the grinds, etc, all in my own good time. No rush to be at the train by a particular time. No hurrying up to wait.

This week was a whole lot of waiting... waiting... waiting. Three days of it before I did any shooting. Three days of getting paid, yes. But it was frustrating non the less for me as I don't like being paid to do nothing as much as I like getting paid to do something. Anything at all. But I was just sitting around. Not that I have any right to complain! Shooting on Friday went fantastic, and Thursday I got to see a "sizzle reel", just a rough cut of some stuff they'd shot in the first week in a sort of demo trailer and it looked great, and featured me prominently which was cool.

Some one asked me yesterday what I would do after this was over, how I would capitalize on it, and I'm not sure. I think try and get an agent. I think? I have new copies of my resume ready to go out, with my latest credits and "SAG Eligible" written across the top. I'd still like to try and book an Equity show in Boston. And hopefully do some more film work, maybe some commercials. And start doing voiceover. And go to graduate school. And also get my driver's license. Yeah I never did do that...

Well, in the meantime, after this shoot is over which for me will be next week I think, Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead goes up at the Footlight Club, and I was just cast this week as Mr. Webb in Our Town at Riverside Theatre Works. That'll be happening towards the end of October. Back to the theatre! What a relief that will be.

The other big project on the horizon, which will contribute no doubt to my getting an agent, will be putting together my demo reel. That will involve hunting down all the stuff I've shot in the past two years, and getting DVDs of it from the people I shot them with. Mind you, I've done a lot of stuff, so material isn't the issue it's getting access to it. Then hiring a good editor. Yep.

film craft vs stage craft (vs craft services? haha no): a meditation

2011-08-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the differences between acting for film and acting for the stage. I've read in interviews with film actors who started out in theater that doing theater is the best possible training for an actor, and I think that's true, because on stage you can't fake your way into a good performance. Whereas on film, you can, sort of. Acting is, ultimately, the lie that tells the truth. But the kinds of lies you can tell on stage vs on camera are different. From a directorial perspective theater, especially in it's contemporary form, has to be at least a little bit inherently meta. Whether you explicitly acknowledge that meta theatricality and make it part of your aesthetic or try to leave it alone as much as possible is a personal choice, but a stage actor has to be at least somewhat aware of the audience, and you as an actor have to convince them to accept that even though you are on a stage, this story is really happening. This comes down to communication and relationship, I think, that you are actually talking to the person who is on stage with you and not just reciting words which you memorized to say in a memorized way, but authentically reaching them. Stanislavksy called this "truth". Stage actors and directors talk a lot about that kind of shit, you maybe probably know that. Film directors and actors don't necessarily! It's funny that as a mode for naturalistic story telling, film has theater completely beat, but somehow theater is still more real because real things are happening on stage, moment to moment, whereas a film is completely constructed through editing and everything else. You can't fake authentic communication on stage, and I've been taught that if you try to force an emotion onto a moment on stage it will deny the possibility for authentic communication. You can force emotion on film, though, and have it work, I think. This is why method acting became so prevalent and so many method actors are such successful film actors, if you ask me. If the story the audience experiences on film is of you losing your best friend, and you think about losing your dead dog, the camera will read the remorse or sadness or whatever emotion you are creating in your interior life through your eyes and the audience will accept it. You really need to get there, though. It's hard to fake that kind of stuff on film, because the camera really sees everything in a way a theater audience doesn't. In the theater they see if you are connected, on film the camera sees everything else.

Do you see what I mean? Does that make sense? These are things I've been thinking about, especially as I grapple what medium to throw myself into as I move forward with my career. I really love theater, the immediacy, the connection but film is fun too in it's own way, and you can get away with things you can't get away with on stage. You often have more freedom, because the director is not so beholden to the intention's of the writer, but has much more free reign interpretively and is more likely to share that with you, as long as you make good choices or in my case really, funny choices. Excuse me while I go back to my day off. You know what that means, laundry!

2011-08-05T12:13:00.001-07:00

Three days down, a week or so to go. Making a motion picture is craaaaaazy. Hurry up and wait! Now just wait. Hurry and wait over there! Wait some more (better take a nap while I'm in my trailer). Hour for lunch! Hurry up and wait. COVERAGE! (for those of you who may not know, that is to say actual filming involving you, the actor). Wait some more. Hitch a ride back to base camp. Go home.

So far, so good. In fact very good. Steve, the director of the shoot, was ecstatic with my stuff from today, and it is generally a really great, really nice guy to work with. Everybody's very friendly, very helpful, it's nice. I'm getting used to the rhythm of film making on this scale. You get called usually at 6 AM, you might have a rehearsal at 7, but it's going to be a while before you actually go to set, and a while after that before you shoot anything. Usually for me, that means getting up on my step ladder and playing set dressing.

Today I was a little freaked out about my coverage. The script doesn't call for me to have any shots, but then I think the director noticed me working on my lines and they went in for some close up stuff. Realizing they would be doing that, I fervently reviewed them in between takes, cramming them into my brain as best as I could. When they got to my coverage, Steve, our director was extremely supportive, helped me chill out and when we went into shooting everything flowed and I FUCKING NAILED IT.

That was day three. At the end of which I realized I'd be called for day four, which is today. I wrote the first part of this post last night. Today I'm on set, figuring there wouldn't be much for me to do today, I thought to bring my laptop. I made friends with today's day player, meaning an actor with one scene who is just here for the day, and we chatted about acting, apparently he got his MFA at Brown/Trinity Rep which I'm thinking of applying to, that was nice. It's 3 o'clock, I'll probably be on set until 6. Yep. Tomorrow is a bigger shooting day for me. It's been a real learning experience! In other news: mad money mad money mad money. Film pays great.

Movie Making

2011-07-29T08:41:00.001-07:00

I had a feeling this might happen, but rather than allow myself to believe it and face disappointment I tried to forget about it, not think about it, and act as if it wouldn't. But now it is. I booked the role in the movie.

Pinch me; am I dreaming? But wait, this was never really my dream, not yet anyway. My dream for after I graduate was to join EMC, not SAG, to book a role in a show with a stipend like Company One or if I dared dream so big Actors Shakespeare Project. I do enjoy doing film, certainly as much as doing theatre, maybe even more I don't know yet. And I'm interested in pursuing film later on in life, but in my "life plan" that would come later after establishing myself as a stage actor. Certainly when opportunity knocked I was not going to stand still, however, and when the initial invite from Boston Casting came to my email, auditions for a movie "Crooked Arrows" of course I RSVP'd "yes", prepared the side as well as I could, and went down there. When the words came out of my mouth the casting director said "that was awesome!" and I was on my way. "Oh I bet I'll get a callback", then I thought "no better not to think about it, just believe that I won't" but then... I did. And that went extremely well. "Please slate your name and union affiliation" she said. "Hi my name is Mike Handelman and I am non union" I said into the camera, to which the director replied "non union? We'll fix that!"

Fast forward I'm home, waiting on the phone to ring, waiting, wondering "what is this going to mean for the month of August, I'm doing this play, my quiz, everything else" meanwhile New York is about to happen, I'm out of school, I'm checking all the pages for auditions, trying to keep myself from post undergraduate free fall. Yesterday the phone rings, and I got the job.

I think in acting, especially when you start out, it's not just getting "a big break" it's about ascending from one level to the next level. Obviously, doing this one job won't make me a movie star, or even a successful actor, however one quantifies success. But it is a step in that direction, and it is the next level of work I want to be doing, the kind that pays.

Did I mention that this gig pays? Oh shit does it pay. Blog you later, probably after 36 hours of shooting in three days.

Tension

2011-07-19T11:28:00.001-07:00

I had a lesson in Alexander Technique earlier today, and found myself to be very tense, more so than usual. As many of you probably know, in acting/movement classes they'll do some variation of exercise wherein you try to release as much tension as you can from some part of your body, probably your neck. I'm pretty good at identifying tension and letting it go, when called to do so, but today it was difficult not to keep putting tension into my neck when the teacher would move it. I explained to her part of it had to do with my callback last week and my show this weekend, the question of scheduling if the call back comes to fruition. Another issue being my mother. She just came out of surgery I guess last week, or the week before last. She had both her knee caps operated on, and partially replaced with prosthetics. I've seen her a few times since the surgery, and it's been difficult. She's keeping her spirits up, and at the end of the healing process she'll be much better for it, but it's not easy for anybody.

And about that call back... well, it went really well. Really, really well if I do say so myself. I walked in, slated "hi my name is Mike Handelman and I'm non union" to which the director responded "We'll fix that!" and I did the sides they'd given me, got a few warm laughs from the room, and was let go. There was at least one other guy there for my part. I had a moral quandary on the way out, they'd posted new sides on the website and called to let me know, but they must not have informed this guy or else he didn't get the message or didn't have them, which I did. He asked to see them, I hesitated to give them and he dropped it. I gave him a pat on the back and left. The point is I held on to the advantage I found myself in possession of, rather than sharing it. I felt a little bad afterwards, and I do know as I type this. I'm waiting for a phone call. I spoke to my friend about his experiences with Boston Casting and doing features and stuff, he asked when they were shooting, I said August and he said I could expect not to hear for a while. He gave me a good strategy as to how to write them and find out my status, and told me not to think about it. Clearly, I still am. Knowing would be nice. It might make August complicated, seeing as I have things I'm supposed to be doing but that I would have to drop or rearrange if I'm offered this part. Said part would also probably mean getting my SAG card and then possibly making a bunch of movie. I'm less interested in the money then the step forward this would represent for my career, and the potential experience.

Seriously though, not thinking about it. Thinking instead about The Muse which is going up this weekend in New York. I'm staying at my uncle's place in Manhattan and it's pretty fucking exciting. We're one of forty plays, some number of which will be published and one lucky play write will get a deal for artistic representation, which is pretty huge. The possibilities for us actors are there, but more abstract. I'm just going to act my ass off and do some touristy stuff in between.

In other news, I've started A Song of Ice and Fire AKA A Game of Thrones and I've almost finished the first novel. I thought I might finish it on my way to my Alexander lesson so I bought the second book this morning, but I'm still working on the first and enjoying it greatly.

In the meantime, waiting...

callback

2011-07-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is a big call back for me, it's for a role in the movie Crooked Arrows which is shooting in Boston this summer. "What kind of movie?" you ask, "A student film, an independent, that sort of thing?" No a real studio movie, the kind that takes a SAG card, I imagine. Which I don't have, but if I get this that could mean getting one. But then again I'm just dreaming. First I have to book the gig, and that's always easier said than done. And then I would need to figure out the month of August, I don't know what the shooting commitment would like, or how it would interact with everything else. Still, isn't the possibility exciting? I feel it's a good omen. It was one of two auditions that Boston Casting brought me in for in two weeks, another was for a commercial for the game Madden which I know I didn't get, because that was awkward as fuck and could you ever see me in a commercial for a video game about Football? Answer: Yah dude, nah bro. Such is life. Meanwhile, the mellow portion of my summer "vacation" is ending, rehearsals are beginning, the wheel turns. The Muse goes to New York the weekend after next, wow, so soon. That's been a fun challenge, revisiting that material but with a new scene partner. I could do the same things I did in the previous production, but that'd be stupid, and not very good art. I'm taking this opportunity, or trying to, to find new things and listen, listen, listen.

Rosencratz and Guildenstern started yesterday, I missed today's rehearsal because I had my quiz but then that was cancelled when no one showed up again. Bummer. Friday I have a show with my improv troupe, yay!

Stand up has come to a stand still. But this Tuesday I shall ascend the stage at the Middle East once more to try out some new jokes. People who've done it ask me if I've become "addicted" to it yet, and clearly, no I haven't. But I admire the craft of it, and I want to get better at it for the sake of getting better, if nothing else. I'm in no real hurry, though.

That's where I'm at.

Conversation

2011-07-07T01:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted, and I should keep this thing going.

I would talk about stand up, but the past two weeks I've skipped the open mic. I think next week I will try and go. Except next week I have Rosencratz and Guildenstern in Jamaica Plain... that might not work. I have done a little bit of joke writing. Specifically two premises that I reworked in the past few weeks. I can of course, rework them some more, but I'd like to get on stage and try them that way. We'll see.

More on my mind is auditions. I had one Tuesday, Wednesday and one on Thursday which is technically today. Two of them are paying! One was an Emerson student film which I must not have gotten. I sort of like auditioning for student films because who gives a shit either way, it's a student film. Wednesday's was at Brandeis, also a student film, and a pain in the ass to get to. I thought it went well. You can never know. Tomorrow I'm going out for an online sports caster in a movie about a lacrosse team. I'm a little anxious about how to big to play it. I think my best bet is just to be myself. It's cool I got called in for it.

My shows I'm doing are starting. One of them is going up soon, in New York! Exciting! This summer has been so far so good. I like the weather reflecting that it's summer. I don't mind heat so much, especially that my hair is all short now.

My friend and I have started doing sketch stuff, which may turn into a little webseries kind of thing, we'll see. I want to write and shoot it this summer. Easier said then done. That's all I have to say, I should go back to sleep.

Finding the Punch

2011-06-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

Another post about stand up. Tuesday is the next Middle East open mic, I'm back on forth on whether to go and do it or not. I talked to a friend in my improv troupe yesterday who spent many years doing work as a stand up, and she was encouraging, which was nice. One suggestion she had, which I'm aware of but haven't started doing yet, is recording yourself on stage to listen to later, which I think whenever I do it next I'll be trying.

I feel anxiety about the preparedness of my material. Not having really throughly prepared material hasn't stopped me from going up and doing it the past two weeks, but I feel like I need to fix that, that I need to get into a mode of WORKING on jokes (call back to a conversation I had with my friend James about working, don't worry you aren't supposed to get it), actively crafting them, but I don't feel the motivation, or the sense that I'd really know where to start in honing them and finding the punch (as in punch line) behind them. I have several premises, one or two one liners and several other ideas and stories floating in my head, a few of which I've tried to varying levels of success. It's tough only having five minutes, or this last time I did it when I got cut off early (which is what I get for showing up late) to work through material. Which is an argument for working on it off stage, and going up as much as possible.

Except I feel... lazy. Stand up isn't the same rush for me as is acting. But I feel compelled to pursue it. Ironic that I'm simultaneously lazy. People are impressed when I tell them about it, which is cool I guess. They say it must be exciting, and I respond "well it's very difficult".

This reminds me of an extremely awkward encounter I had waiting for the red line the other day. An elderly woman comes up to me, "are you Mike Handelman?" I tell that yes, I am, she lives around the corner from the Loeb and saw me last summer in Speech and Debate and then in Measure for Measure and wanted to know if I was doing Harvard Summer Theatre again which no, I am not, and I thanked her. It's nice to think that something about what I did in those shows made her remember my name, and that she wanted to see more of my work. It was awkward meeting a fan. I stumbled over my words somewhat in speaking to her, not because I was nervous but because it was simply strange and new.

Other things... I had a callback today. Not sure if I got it, haven't heard anything. Fingers crossed, although if I do get it, it will make things complicated with my other show which goes up about a month before. I did this same thing all of this past year, and it was pretty difficult, not crazy about repeating the process. But I need the experience and the credits, so if I do get it I'll have to say yes.

Tomorrow (today? it's Monday which I guess technically is today already) is my last Shakespeare class. What a ride it's been, I've certainly learned a lot. I'm a little nervous for our final presentation in front of a small audience. I'm sure I'll be fine, but I'd really like for my scene to go well, and it's been a challenge getting it from point A to point B.

In the meantime it's June going on July, I'm not rehearsing anything (yet), I'm just in summer mode. Summertime, and the living is easy, etc. I think I want to apply to grad schools this year. I just realized if I'm going to do that, I need to start sooner rather than later. Would you like to write me a letter of recommendation? No, I'm kidding. But seriously would you?

Standing Up Part II

2011-06-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Stand update (see what I did there?), last night I returned to the open mic and gave stand up yet another go. Whereas last time I emailed ahead for a slot, this time I rolled in around 11 and signed up in person, waited an hour or so, and went up after midnight with the joint more or less in after hours mode. Another change was that I loosened up a bit this time with a few beers, which seems like an obvious thing to do at any kind of open mic in a bar, but this added step definitely aided my efforts, which were improved over last time. It helped having some sense of moral support, having chatted with a few of the other dudes there, with whom I shared some mutual acquaintances, and the dude before me being so super high crazy energetic (he dropped a lot of gay slurs in his act in various contexts not in an explicitly offensive way but sort of in the Brechtian sense, at least I think that's what was going on) I went up and tried to match it. I then went into an extremely lewd routine about sex and the umm... culinary qualities. Ok let's cut to the chase it was about swallowing ejaculate. And in the middle of this bit, a scantily clad girl who was there for the Middle East's weekly 18 and up club night wanders through the open mic section of the club and I have to stop and say "OK why did she have to walk through right then?" which cracked the audience up, as well as myself, and although I got a huge response it kind of killed my momentum. But still! A response! It was a little frustrating also that since I was going up so late, my time was less than the standard five minutes, so I only really got through that bit and one very short one before I brought the next guy up, but oh well.

So where am I at with stand up? Well it's nice to feel some improvement from one week to the next, definitely. I know I need to continue honing my material, obviously, which is unto itself a life long pursuit. I wonder if to improve my writing I should start writing sketches and plays and those other things I've been meaning to try as a means to improve my overall sense of wording. I'll get there eventually. In the meantime, I may wait a week or two before standing up again, and take some time to do some of that honing I talked about, and really fill my five minutes WITH BITS!

Guitar Post

2011-06-16T20:59:00.000-07:00

I had a dentist's appointment this afternoon, and it so happens my dentist is in Kenmore and before heading over there I had a significant amount of time to kill... Guitar Center time! For a musician, well I guess for a guitarist, there is a kid in a candy store quality to hanging out at Guitar Center. All those instruments and amps and toys to play with! Previously I hadn't been able to find the newly relocated GC and settled for Daddy's Junky Music by Berklee, where I greatly enjoyed playing a Godin archtop guitar, something about that guitar really came alive in my hands. Conversely, a Godin single bridge humbucker "shreddy" guitar really didn't do anything for me after well, shredding on it for 30 seconds. Today I really enjoyed a Fender Telecaster through a Fender Amp, I think if I were to get a new guitar I'd get a tele. There is a real beauty and versatility in the simplicity of those instruments, I think.

I find as of late I have less and less mental space for guitar, although it goes up and down. I know that if I really focused on the instrument and the study of music there is another level I could reach, but I'm frankly kind of too lazy, and too concerned with bringing my acting further. It's something I've written about in other spaces. Another contributing factor has been my inability to forge long lasting collaborations with other musicians, like say... a band, which is like being in a second relationship with no sexual intercourse but requiring a great deal of effort, and which doesn't work if all parties don't contribute.

Maybe someday I'll have the time to achieve what I want to on my instrument. I guess it's kind of a "first world problem", a lot of people are truly passionate about music but can't advance past a certain point. I can't really foresee music for me as anything other than a highly enjoyable hobby and a useful special skill. Someday I'd kind of like to be one of those people who are proficient at guitar, bass, drums and piano. Now THAT would take some doing on my part, as I'm not so naturally musically talented as to be immediately proficient at all those.

I've been downloading a lot more music now that I have a new computer with a big empty hard drive. Right now I'm listening to some pretty tasty jazz fusion from John Mclaughlin. Then again I find his newer stuff kind of sterile. I got some Grant Green as well, which is not sterile and some Derek Trucks. Lots of guitar music. And that's what this post has been about.

Get Up, Stand Up

2011-06-16T15:42:00.000-07:00

So I did it. This past Tuesday, I signed up for an open mic, with maybe three jokes prepared, thinking I could fill the rest of the space with propensity and talent as a comic actor and improviser. Or maybe not. I had a revelation Tuesday, stand up is difficult.

How difficult? Very difficult. In almost every other context I've performed in, the audience was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and you had their attention at least for umpteen seconds until they inevitably tuned out to some degree and hopefully tuned back in. Also though, doing theatre or improv your main focus can't be on the audience it has to be on your scene partner, the story your telling, etc. Not so with stand up! It is all about holding the audience's attention, and a lot of that has to do first with your energy on stage. In a theatre context, I can exude confidence and stage presence pretty immediately at this point, I would say. Not so with stand up. Then again this particular venue was especially difficult, since the crowd's attention really was only half on the stage and the other half on their conversation, if that. I saw a few guys who clearly knew what they were doing really capture the room, and it was impressive. It takes stage presence, it takes a point of view, and it takes material that's worth of a damn.

I don't really have any of that yet, although at least I can recognize it, and that is a start. Of my jokes, the ones which were sort of at the comic who went before me's expense, which I ad libbed, were probably my most successful. I wasn't trying to make fun of him, but then again I sort of was, since he did an extended, rather unsuccessful IMHO bit on Hitler and how it wasn't as bad as he could have been, or something. It didn't really make much sense. It was kind of borderline offensive. I just had to point out "man that guy sure did do a lot of material on Hitler, that takes dedication." Hopefully I wasn't too snarky in a bad way, I tried to be sincere. I made a point that it was my first time doing stand up, that I was "losing my stand up virginity" and that at least got a good cheer from the sympathetic crowd as I bowed off after, I don't know, 90 seconds maybe.

I think I will do it again, slightly wiser, and with a few new ideas for bits and how to make the ones I tried the other night more successful. I've been harping on a quote lately, "the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step" I think it's Lao Tzu or something, but I don't actually know. I do know that I like it's implication.

Good, not great?

2011-06-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

Well, Stagesource is over, thankfully. I can focus on whatever is next, with the knowledge that I did that, and maybe hopefully I'll get a callback or something.

In the meantime I'm left to evaluate "how did I do" and field the question "how did you do?" and I thought it went well, but I didn't think it was the pinnacle of my ability as a performer. I can think of various aspects to the audition that I could have done better, that I have done better other times, with those particular pieces. Therefore, the title of the post. Or am I deluding myself, one way or another? Was it really good, and I just don't realize it? It certainly wasn't bad, I feel I know that. I got a laugh on my slate, that was a weird feeling, and it sort of threw me because then I had to stop and acknowledge the laugh before going into my pieces. I think it's a good thing that I did, I mean it must have showcased my comic timing on some level. OK so what was the laugh? I'd practiced with my coach how to do the slate, her attitude is NOT to do that whole self deprecating, meager "hello my name is so and so and I will be presenting such and such" and instead to say "Hi, my name is this and this is that!", take a breath and go. Mine went something like "Hi my name is Mike Handelman and this is Iago and The Underpants *cue room wide laughter*" which in retrospect was the biggest laugh I got out of the whole thing. I got a bit of one on my second comic piece when I went for it at the end, then it was over, I was out. It felt very quick, I must have come in well under two minutes.

And then I walked out of the Calderwood, and took the train home, still chasing that next level of work and how to bring it into the audition room. I feel like working with said coach I got the pieces to a higher level then what I presented, I think I got into my head again after we spent that time getting me out of it. That's the next challenge, being in my body, where the moment lives.

Today's kernel of wisdom

2011-06-10T20:57:00.001-07:00

Shakespeare is so fucking hard. Not to say I don't enjoy the challenge! But, well, my dream is to perform Shakespeare professionally and on a regular basis, and I'm a ways away from accomplishing that. Not much else to do other than keep working at it, yeah?

Oh and I take back my post about not getting anything, I did get something, it's very small but I think it'll be fun.

In other news, Stagesource is Sunday. I was timing my pieces today, and they were definitely not running under two minutes, but luckily I have a back up, which I'll probably use. Still thinking about stand up. Other auditions are on the horizon. That's all I've got for right now.

standing up

2011-06-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

OK so I'm gonna do it. I've started writing out a few bits I've had bouncing around in my head, and variations on them, the Middle East has an open mic night on Tuesday, I'm going to go and try and get through five minutes of stand up without suffocating on stage. I'm not particularly worried, I found with my quiz gig the other night I was shaky for a while and then I fell into a solid rhythm I think this will be the same thing. I know I'm funny, I know I have chops as a performer, particularly comedically, I just need to start honing them into the direction of... let's say stand up comedy to start. Basically I've been listening to a lot of What The Fuck with Marc Maron, which is usually all about the stand up world, and it's been leading me to get psyched up about this new venture. I'm still a little intimidated, I don't expect it to be easy, and going anywhere with it? Forget about it. But the beginning of any journey is the first step, and that's what I'm going to take.

tapering off

2011-06-09T07:25:00.000-07:00

As you can see my activity on this blog has tapered off. If you have been reading, leave a comment, and I'll probably post more.

I'll take a moment anyway, on the subject of tapering off, to have a thought. Is work as an actor now going to "taper off"? I realized after my last play I needed to recharge my batteries, but is recharging overrated? I kind of realized this streak of getting roles in things was going to happen sooner or later, and I'm wondering if that's now. Granted, I was offered a role, but I turned it down because it wasn't going to be a good experience. And then I didn't get something I wanted and thought I could get. Happens all the time to everybody. It's a little hard not to feel discouraged afterwards. In reality I shouldn't be worrying, more stuff is around the corner, but I'm already getting that itch to rehearse and perform, which is funny. Then again I don't want to start performing TOO soon, I'd like something in August or September. I would take July though. Or maybe next week. Yep, well, maybe I'll post when I have something.

saying "no"

2011-06-06T11:55:00.001-07:00

I said no to a role for the first time in my "professional" acting career. I won't say who it was, if you've spoken to me recently I've been telling the story. But it was a very small role in a production that seemed clearly to be going no where but the shitter, with a company that was clearly being run atrociously and purely out of vanity. So yay for saying no sometimes. I spoke to a friend of mine about it, who interviewed for said company, who confirmed my suspicion.

So, bullet dodged. It would have been a harder decision had I been offered a more prominent role, who am I kidding, but I'm glad it worked out. Today I really need to get to the gym, I paid $100 for a new gym membership at this place near Porter, now that I can't go to Harvard anymore, and I really should be using it. I should also be preparing for my Shakespeare class tonight, that'll be fun. I think we're presenting, my scene partner and I. I have some scancion and some line learning to do. Also coming soon, auditions. And quizmastering! Did I mention my second round of training was a bust? Yeah, it was, I went and the guy was there but nobody came to play the quiz, so I'm kind of going into hosting blind a little bit. Whatever though, I'll have a chaperone to help me out.

We are June, it is summer, weather is beautiful. I don't know what the future holds. Prior to this point in my life I could sort of predict what was next, another grade of school, another year of college, but all I know for certain is that I will keep getting older, and hopefully wiser as well. Here's to the great unknown, cheers.

Soliloquy

2011-06-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

Soliloquy, hard to spell, hard to perform well. Usually, when acting something, you have a scene partner to take cues and impulses off of. In doing a monologue, this is even more important, because you have to create an imaginary scene partner. Soliloquys are difficult because there is no scene partner, you are taking to the audience. This is especially challenging for me, because I'm so used to creating that imaginary person in my monologue work, I spent an entire semester with Will Lebow figuring out that trick but when say performing "Thou nature art my goddess" or "Thus do I ever make my fool my purse", two villainous soliloquys I've performed in the past, that doesn't really work. The latter I learned more recently, and have more seriously pursued as an audition piece, and today working with my monologue coach I had a breakthrough with it. The other difficulty of course is Shakespeare's fucking verse, and doing justice to it while using it as a guide an aid through the text. Working today though, I found the correct focus, and really hitting on the pentameter and the line endings, started really cruising through the speech for the first time, and really felt the language and it's ideas carry me. It felt good! Stagesource here I come.

Preparation

2011-06-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

Let's see how long I can keep this streak of updating nightly, shall we? Or am I the only person keeping score?

In response to yesterday's post, today's training was uneventful. I was supposed to read a chunk of the quiz questions, and practice doing the quiz and scoring simultaneously, which is a big part of the multitasking required in quizmastering. Except, the venue was in Quincy, in case you don't know Quincy as my fellow quizmaster but it, it is where twenty somethings go to die. So not a lot of turn out on a Wednesday for trivia night, actually no turn out, the place was empty. The bartender chalked it up to last night's play off game. We stuck around for an hour, and then gave up on the venture. I'm still getting paid, and it was nice getting to leave early, especially cause it's such a pain getting back, but the training would have come in handy.

In other news, the topic I was going to write about was preparation. How do you prepare for an audition. If they gave you something specific to prepare, that's easy, read the rest of the text or as much as you can get, piece together the given circumstances and make choices based on that work. Or, what about when you are presenting two contrasting pieces. That I find more challenging, actually. Being told what to prepare is kind of a crutch for me to lean on, "this is my text, now I work on it" and I feel there is less judgement because they know this is what they gave you, and this is what you did with it. I find monologue auditions of my own choosing much more stressful and difficult. Maybe because I haven't really locked down a good way of preparing monologues yet. I feel like in the case of a full performance, I have all this context around which to build and prepare, from the director to my castmates to the production itself, all that context gives me structure and goals to meet and a circumstance in which I rehearse. Working on my own, I'm sort of at a loss sometimes. I guess what I do is sort of run the piece in my head, think through the beats, the shifts and accompanying tactic changes, the relationship, etc. It's very intellectually driven for me, and sometimes that works, othertimes I get to the audition and the piece just doesn't take off. I've worked a lot in classes on how to prepare monologues, and I felt like this past semester was kind of a breakthrough but one which I'm yet to fully harnass so that I'm consistently doing work in auditions where I'm like "fuck yeah you saw that shit" which is what I want. I don't lack for material, I have five monologues in rotation, three contemporary and two classical and another contemporary I've been meaning to learn but haven't yet. Still all this is taking on poignancy because guess what's around the corner STAGESOURCE. This is my first time doing it, and now that I'm graduated, I'd really like to start making some steps forward in my career and Stagesource is an opportunity to do that if I get seen for the right roles. I also have to be ready for nothing to come of it. Acting is hard, huh? I am certainly (not) the first person to ever say that, ever.

I am... THE QUIZMASTER

2011-06-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

More like sweat master. You may or may not know that I sweat PROFUSELY. But I'm getting ahead of myself! Tonight was my first night training to become a quiz master with Geeks Who Drink, a bar trivia company (but we don't call it trivia, it's a quiz, whatever) new to Boston establishing QUIZ nights in several bars, including my eventual bar, which will be Tommy Doyle's in Kendall Square. I was going to start last week, but due to Mousetrap and other stuff, someone had to cover for me last week, and this week I went to train under them, and learn the rhythms of THE QUIZMASTER. And it's all about rhythm, I found, and making the eight rounds of questions an enjoyable two hours while getting in all the requisite information, plugging the bar staff, etc and did I mention setting up and breaking down the equipment? I also have to maintain a blog.

I had been kind of nervous about this. This is, actually, like my first real... job ever in my life, which is sort of pathetic I know but don't judge me. Anyway it's the first time I've ever had real responsibility, and it seemed a little overwhelming at first but after seeing it done for the first time tonight, I think I'll be able to handle it, and handle it well. Indeed, I'm quite looking forward to it! The job consists of delivering questions to the audience, encouraging to eat and drink, and being witty and charming and engaging as you do it. Basically, I'm looking at it as an opportunity to kind of work on my "schtick", my persona as a performer from the less fine-arts side of my craft, the part I've been engaging with in my blog. I see two sides to the actor, especially the comic character actor type, like myself. The artist, and the comic, the classically trained actor and the vaudevillian. It's fun getting in touch with my inner comic, the entertainer, I hope to subsidize my art through that practice for a while, and then beyond. I think this will be good fun, and an opportunity to hone my hosting chops for future gigs.

If anyone is reading and is curious, you can see my sink or swim at my first hosting gig next week at Tommy Doyle's in Kendall Square at 6:30 PM. The dude who I shadowed tonight will be there as a chaperone to keep me from train wrecking. Tomorrow is my second night of training, I'll actually read some questions this time, I think.

Simplicity

2011-05-31T21:11:00.000-07:00

I wrote about this whole thing in the post before last, but I was reminded in my Shakespeare workshop this evening how hard acting is. We were doing a simple excercise, to say across a room "I like you, I love you, I adore you, I worship you" with all the different connotations involved with each phrase to each individual person saying them, and to make them truly "land" with the other person, that is to make the other person hear and feel the sentiment, which is just, you know, what acting is all about. And it's hard! It reminded me how I've come to rely on not just my tendencies to "perform", but also stuff like character, subtext, backstory, the moment before, etc, to power my acting. That stuff doesn't really work the same way in Shakespeare, you have to understand the situation and the meaning, yes, but you really need to get the words TO the other person, and bring with them all the built in meaning and scantion work you've done. Telling someone you don't really know "I love you", saying it TO them and not to someone else, as yourself, because only YOU can say it to have it mean something and really meaning it, is difficult. It requires taking a risk. I knew that coming into the exercise, but I figured, you know, I take risks all the time. Stepping on stage is a risk, I do that a lot. But it was still hard, and reminded me how far I have to go, and all the reasons why I find acting so fulfilling.

Political Post

2011-05-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

As a younger person, I would say I was "into" politics and the philosophies involved. I do sort of take pride in my familial and cultural background in that I come from two strains of social progressiveness, one of which is southern and working class (yes political and social progressives existed in the south, and probably still do) the other jewish and intellectual. I find this kind of ironic, that my mother's family, which is the southern, working class part, had very progressive politics, intermarried racially, supported the Union during the civil war, etc and on my father's side is the old American left of Jewish pinko types, my grandfather was a lawyer involved in various labor disputes in the 20s, 30s and 40s on the side of the laborers and was a founding member of the Lawyer's Guild, the first integrated lawyer's union in the United States. I think all that's super cool, and I choose to take pride in it.

When I was in middle school, I fancied myself a communist, I had a notion of the kind of injustice which permeated our civilization, and our history as a country and a society, and I thought that to do away with it we ought to institute socialism, perhaps by any means necessary. As I got older, I became disenfranchised with communistic ideals, especially revolutionary communism, and my political views generally mellowed into some vaguely formed sense of democratic socialism. I certainly don't want to do away with democracy, but I'd like it if the social structures which are meant to serve the state and it's citizens were socialized, medicine, education, the prison system, etc. And if you haven't noticed, in the post Reagan era, the opposite has increasingly been the case to the point where the military is practically privately owned and ventures like the invasion of Iraq, in which millions of people have been killed or displaced, are not for the benefit of the people of America or the world, but corporate entities.

That's another post altogether. I told you that story, so I could tell you my feelings on memorial day. If you followed my Livejournal from the ages of 15 to 17 or so, I'd make some kind of socialistic rant about killing babies, that is not my intention. I find myself increasingly apathetic to politics and the news, unlike many members of my generation I was never all that impassioned by the prospect of Barack Obama's presidency, I was cautiously optimistic but deep down I had a sense things would turn out like they have, for the most part. I don't really read or follow the news, I read or hear about horrible things happening in far away places, the bureaucracy and corruption of our government, and I begin to feel bad. CNN or MSNBC gives me a headache, Fox News is absolute rubbish. It's a selfish thing, but I find my quality of life is higher if I avoid all the information on current events that's out there, because frankly here on my laptop there is absolutely nothing I can do to make a difference and that is the cold, hard, grotesque truth. I don't like facing things which are grotesque, I'd rather avoid it, again my quality of life is subsequently higher and I find being and staying happy challenging enough on my own, although no longer impossible as I previously thought it was.

What was I going to talk about? Oh yeah, Memorial Day. Today we remember fallen soldiers, by going to the beach and drinking beer and eating meat or do we watch a specific sporting event? Something like that. Certainly, it must be much more meaningful and reflective if someone you know is a veteran or was lost overseas, but for most people it's a day off and that's fine, I'm not judging that. Life is short and if something causes people to live it a little more, and to enjoy one another, well that's good. I for one went to see my parents, I drank some beer and grilled some steak, I haven't had a home made grilled steak in a very long time so I enjoyed the pleasure of it, as well as waxing philosophical with my father on a sunny day.

But what about this other thing that's going on, where we reflect on fallen soldiers. I struggle with an ambiguous attitude toward's our countries armed forces. Thomas Jefferson famously said the tree of liberty is watered by the blood of patriots. Upon reflection, there is something very Aztecan about that notion, "the roots of the tree of life are watered with blood", the Aztecs believed that without blood sacrifice the sun would not rise. Further inquisition has proven this is not the case. I feel a similar philosophy permeates and justifies today's military-industrial complex. We build jets and bombs and aircraft carriers, we kill innocent people, to water the roots of the tree of liberty. Then again, in the case of at least one modern war, WWII everybody's famous war because we were the unambiguous good guys against pure evil, that was more or less the case. Other things happened, Japanese internment camps, that sort of thing, but overall that is a war we can feel good about (if one can feel good about war its not a good thing). The Korean war, Vietnam, the Iraq wars, etc, not so much, eh? So what are we going to do with the history we are creating, the scarred individuals coming back from these conflicts, to say nothing of the people on the other side who were told they could expect democracy and prosperity but then again maybe not, how about instead a pile of rubble and cradling your dying children.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, these are just the thoughts that have come out as I've typed. That's how I'd like to structure this thing, just to let things flow out and try not to censor or edit anything. Just press "publish" when I've run out of things to say. Let me see, can I find an appropriate poem for the occassion... hmm. There are lots of inappropriate ones, more than I could count. Well, here is one I always thought was better than it actually was, but the metaphor I was trying for is kind of pertinent.

And neither did Joshua, the walrus

Made aquatic martyr of all underwater

Sacrificed, an aquatic lamb of god

Nailed ten times to a seven sided crucifix

Left hanging, until he bled a river of red

That stained the sea cucumbers crimson

Fed the fury and hatred in the hearts of sharks

And travelled across the city of sea lions

Until it roused the coming legion of clams

Rising to take revenge against the Carpenter

In tribute to their shucked and devoured brethren

By forcing him to build a fortress of walrus bones

A new mecca for crustaceans and mollusks

And holy pilgrimage for all the creatures of the sea

To shelter them from man kind's poison and pollution

The scent of his corruption, his misbegotten god

When from the depths of a trench rises a throne for Trident

So he may preside over a new oncoming age of oysters

Creeping to the beaches from the ocean, to over take us

Riding on the blood soaked waves of Joshua, his sacrifice.

So, what now?

2011-05-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

Well, that's it for the show I was doing. It was kind of stressful, for a variety of reasons, more so than I usually like a show to be, and it was bittersweet that by the time of the performance today we'd finally found our groove as an ensemble, I felt, but that it was our last show. None the less, I made a room full of new friends, and people I hope to work with in the future, and that's always good.

But what now? Like I said in a previous post, I've done six shows in 2011. I don't think there has been a week this year where I didn't have at least one rehearsal for something, as well as numerous auditions, tech rehearsals, and performances. For a second I thought that now, finally, I'd come to the end of this run and that I didn't have any more performances scheduled on the docket. But nope! The Muse, a show I did as part of a one-act festival this January, the first show I did this year, is going to a short play competition in New York this July, which we'll start rehearsals for sometime in the next few weeks.

But starting this week, I'm free! Sort of. Not exactly. Well, no. Let me break down everything I've got going on, I'm taking a Shakespeare with Actors Shakespeare Project, which meets on Mondays usually but is happening on Tuesday this week, Wednesday I'm going out for Shakespeare Now's Romeo and Juliet, and then I have training in Kendall Square to start running a bar quiz over there, Thursday is more training, Friday I'm auditioning for a student film.

Regardless, I feel like I'm going to have a lot more time, and soon enough I won't be sure what to do with it. I can be preparing for Stagesource, that'd be a productive thing to do. I think I'd like to work on my guitar playing, I really enjoy the guitar, and I know that I'm on the verge of a breakthrough with the instrument, but a breakthrough with anything isn't usually really a breakthrough but a long, slow process towards advancement. Regardless, if I start playing more and with more FOCUS on learning new things and not just noodling on 7th chords and the pentatonic, I can definitely get better.

Still, I can't shake this feeling of being something at a loss with what I'll do with myself. I'd really like to turn it into a period of growth and productivity, I'd like this whole summer to be like that. Things to do, start writing my own material, stand up, sketch, etc, learn new monologues, become more athletic, get in better shape, start taking dance/movement, and get more limbre. I think the "get in shape" part is particularly significant, for my career and overall well being. It's been kind of on my "to do" list for a while though, and I haven't made significant strides yet. Maybe this will be my summer! Here's hoping.

---

A poem from when I wrote poems.

My oatmeal is screaming in pleasure

As I sprinkle brown sugar and raisins

Across its porous and mushy surface

Did my oatmeal experience orgasm?

What biological excuse could exist for this?

Does oatmeal need motivation to reproduce?

Or is its pleasure purely arbitrary?

But now the oatmeal is screaming in terror,

When I scoop its flesh into my mouth,

I had no idea it could feel pain,

I suppose I should have figured

When it ejaculated into my OJ.

Performer's instinct

2011-05-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

I think I was drawn to acting by some inherent instinct I have towards performance. I remember being in kindergarten, and wanting to tell improvised stories I would make up to the class to try and entertain them. This, combined with a powerful sense of imagination and the desire to use it, is what ultimately drew me to this art form. I remember the first time I ever saw a live performance, it was in Davis California, it must have been my Mom's students performing at the local community theatre, I remember some vague science fiction theme and being utterly enchanted by the prospect of performing onstage. I imagined they were making it up, and deciding the situations, I immediately fantasized about being Batman.

I've always liked making people laugh, always. Shortly after seeing that play, my Mom signed me up for a program at the same community theatre, and I made my stage debut as a vain oak tree who refused to give shelter to a lost baby bird. Really sophisticated shit, I know, I was keeping it real as a four year old. That same instinct made me tell stories to my class, and to try and entertain people whenever possible. It always made me feel good. I think part of it was the sense of connection I felt. I wonder what would have happened if I'd continued performing as a little kid, doing children's theater and stuff like that, but instead I didn't do any performing until middle school when we put on an end of the year play, and I rediscovered it.

But I've always had that instinct to perform, to entertain. It's ironic now that in my craft as an actor, I'm actively trying, in a way, to subvert that instinct and move past it. My natural mode of performance is to "perform", to create the affectation of the character, to do things to entertain the audience, to sort of "mug" or "ham" but in own specific and refined way, where I don't think you can immediately tell. But I find that when I turn that off, and put my energy into authentically communicating and affecting the other person in the scene, that my acting becomes ten times better, I just have to flip that switch. It's hard sometimes though, when my acting teacher isn't there to say "that was good, but now do it this way" and I truly act from myself, and not from this instinct to create this other, performing entity, but from my own humanity to the humanity of the other person. I define acting for myself as the search for what is essentially human about every character I play, but I need to find that in myself, and bringing that to the stage, as much as is possible.

On a less heady note, a television program which I've been enjoying is Dual Survival on the Discovery Channel. Why? Because it's god damn entertaining. I used to be a fan of Man Vs Wild when it first came out, but after a while Bear Gryll's schtick became well, schticky, and then all that stuff came out about him staying in hotels and making up the gasses on a hawaiian island as being deadly poisonous. Not that I watch these kinds of shows thinking that there is a whole lot of "reality" in a "reality show" where a guy wanders through the wildnerness with helicopter shots, close ups, medium, and wide shots all over the place, I mean clearly a fairly sized crew is following him around and when he goes into that "cave" someone went first to make sure it lead somewhere, etc. But, I don't know, I just got bored with it. Dual Survival I continue to be entertained by, largely because of the personalities of the two hosts, one of which is gruff and rednecky, the other being this hippy dude "primitive technology" expert who never wears shoes, no matter where they trek out to, hilarity just ensues no matter what. If you haven't seen it, check it out, it's entertaining and somewhat informative, not that I'm planning on wandering out into the wilderness with a machete, a piece of flint, and a glass jar anytime soon.

Before signing off, I should mention I'm doing a show this weekend, and so far so good. I don't think I'm going to refer to productions by name in this space, unless I'm really specifically promoting something because I feel it needs promoting. I'm not promoting this particular project, because I doubt anyone will actually go and see it because they came here from a day old link on Facebook, etc.

Here is another poem from my collection.

I heard as a murmur ran across the curtain

The stage creaked and distant pipes clanged

A theatre recalling it's favorite production

Of Shakespeare's Scottish Play, felt it resonate

And with it, sensed the age of the place,

Saw ghosts emerge from the lighting rig

Filling the balcony above me, and these

Spirits of past productions inspire me

To take possession of the empty age

And act out my own remembrances

My fleeting moments of glory, as Hamlet and Lear

Once again, taking my turn with these famous words

Giving personification to the theatre, watching me,

Watching it.

Clever enough title for you?

2011-05-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

I think, therefore iambic pentameter. Clever, no?

I was trying to think of a title, and the phrase "I think therefore I am" came to mind. I remember first encountering that phrase in a chincy Star Wars expanded universe short story collection my Mom and I read when I was 8 or 9 called "Tales of the Bounty Hunters" (if you were at one time as much of a sci fi/star wars geek as I was, you may have seen or read it) and it had this super awesome IG88 short story about how he gains sentience and does all this cool stuff and takes over the second Death Star, at which point it kind of goes over the rails for me, but it was a cool book and I remember when he first breaks out of the imperial lab where he's created he stabs a scientist through the chest and his robotic hand comes out the other side clutching his still beating heart. This was like, the most violent thing I'd encountered in my young life at that point, with maybe a few exceptions but in general really extreme violence kind of freaked me out, but in this case it was pretty thrilling.

What does that have to do with my starting a new blog for the first time in several years? I don't know, I just want things to talk about. In general, I want to reflect my mental state and events as they occur to me, primarily around my budding acting career, but also more generally. If I can't go off on a tangent in my own blog, where else can I do so? In conversation with strangers? That does happen, I'll admit.

I hear someone shouting what sounds like weirdly militaristic commands outside the open window of my apartment. Probably a crazy person.

Back to the short story collection, I associate that memory very vividly from my childhood visiting California with my family while my brother must have been going to UC Santa Cruz. My earliest memories are of California, even though I was born in and consider myself to be "from" Boston, where I've resided since I was about 7, I suppose. I remember loving the place for the time I spent there that Spring or Summer, and wanting to get back to it for a long time after. Before becoming fixated on New York as my eventual future place of residence, I wanted to go to college and/or move out to northern California. I remember I was going to be a scientist, and marry someone in the arts, that was the plan at the ages of 12 and 13. Ironically, I'm pursuing the arts, and my girlfriend wants to be a pharmacist, ten years later.

I miss allowing the associations of moments and memories to bounce around and on to the page. I used to do that in my poetry, but then I stopped writing it, I think because I worked through what I needed to work through, my loneliness, the passing of a very dear friend, among other things. But this blog can be that! And more topical, as I chronicle my transition from student to starving artist, hurray!

Artistically, a lot has been going on this year. I've counted, and I did *counts on fingers* six plays from January to now in 2011, that's so much acting! And I didn't make any money for it! Actually, that's not true, the other day I did a shoot for the Dana Farber Institute, playing a medical assistant demonstrating how not to abandon a cancer patient in a hallway by... abandoning a cancer patient in a hallway! Played by one my fellow Harvard Extension acting classmates, which I thought was funny. That paid $40. Next month I start running a bar quiz in Kendall Square, that'll pay $50 a night plus $25 in free food and drinks, my first real income. I've also shot some cool film stuff, I played a character on drugs for a webseries, and half of a podcasting duo, a leading role (!) in another webseries which was super awesome fun cause I got to do whatever I wanted in the scenes, within the framework given, and ohhhh I did.

Now that I've graduated, I'm starting to think about how I can expand my craft. In particular, I want to learn to start writing and performing for myself, possibly by doing *gulp* stand-up, or writing and filming or performing my own sketch stuff. I say gulp, because in case you weren't aware, stand up is fucking difficult. How do I know that!? I've never done it! You say! Well I've been listening to hours of WTF with Marc Maron, and before that The Sound of Young America, and from my podcasting that is the impression I get. It takes a lot of time and effort to do it well. But then again, I'm really funny. And I do improv, and I'm good at that, and that's basically like writing spontaneously, so if I can get the juices going in the right direction, shouldn't I be able to apply that to other forms, ala sketch and improv?

These are the things I've been thinking about. Also, auditions. I have a bunch of them coming up. Including Stagesource, which I'm yet to start seriously preparing for, tick-tock, tick-tock, etc. I've been trying to arrange some monologue coaching and kind of failing, if all else fails I can start emailing professors or director/actor friends and generally preparing on my own. I have a callback for a kind of wonky sounding production of Hamlet this Sunday, then over the next few weeks, Rosencratz And Guildenstern Are Dead, a short film at the Art Institute, Boston Actors Theatre, Happy Medium Theatre Company and... Stagesource. Probably more will pop up too. I sort of feel like I should take a break from acting in plays, being in so many over such a short period of time has kind of drained me. But after a week or two of not doing anything, I'll probably be hungry to get back in rehearsals and on stage.

Oh shit! I'm burning through topics for future blog posts! Better cut this off. I think it'll be nice to repost old poems from when I used to write, in tribute to my former livejournal. Until next time. If there is a next time.

---

California Murmurs

From my memory, murmurs of California

Snippets of people and places surround me

Consuming what serenity I possess.

I'm haunted by voices from the playground

The sand beneath my feet at Santa Cruz beach.

Sealion's song rises to the boardwalk

Raising with it nostalgia to take me

And sweetly overcome my five senses,

Pulling me back to San Francisco Bay.

A chilled wind comes in on the ocean tide

I pull in the woolen cloak of memory

To keep whatever warmth will remain

Before the breeze brings back the present.