Theatricaling

Oh my... so! Let's blog some shit! Yeah!

What have I been doing? Uncle Vanya, that's what, five times a week for the past four weeks, that's how much. After tonight's show, a young guy introduced himself to me, and complimenting my guitar playing, asked "so how is doing this show for you? Stressful?" and I said "stressful? Shit no. I hang out, play some guitar, chill out back stage, do my three lines, play some more guitar, hang out some more, do a few cues off stage and then have a beer." And that's the way life should be. My friend Anne, who's playing Nanny, said to me the other night "you're probably ready to play a bigger role now, right?" And thinking about it, I've made so many little discoveries with the music from night to night, and with my few little interactions on stage, as "small" as my part has been I've got nothing to complain about. Especially with my guitar playing... I've gotten to be so much better of a musician from this show. There's something very pure and simple about jamming out on a few russian folk tunes for thirty minutes every night, solo on stage. You really do develop a different level of chops playing in front of people, which despite the fact that I've been playing since I was 17 (which is what, six or seven years now?) I haven't done that much of in my guitar playing career. So that's been really satisfying. And hearing myself develop and change how I approach the music night after night, finding new nuances, new variations, new ideas in these simple melodies. Again, totally solo. And in front of crowds of thirty people, which forces you to focus and when an idea gets tired move on from it because even though it's a very private moment on stage, ultimately I'm performing for a room full of people. Among other things, I hope it's really solidified my confidence as a musician. As an actor, I have no problem doing my thing in front of people because that's what it's all about. But like I said, I haven't done a lot of live music performance before this and the times in the past when I had I used to get surprisingly nervous, believe it or not. But I think I have my sea legs under me. And it helps I played these tunes for the entire duration of the last run of the show, and now coming back to them and playing them for four more weeks I really know them in and out.

And I've discovered so many new things in the process about playing the classical guitar, for the first three weeks of the run completely with my fingers, a technique I've become light years more comfortable with (again that thing of chops from playing in front of people) and now this week I've started bringing my very anachronistic plastic, bright red "jazz" style guitar pick on stage with me (jazz style in this case refers to the dimensions of the pick which are very small and subsequently make it ideal for the kind of precise technical stuff you'd be doing in a jazz setting, that's it) and discovering brand new things in the process.

So that's all been very fun. Don't tell the cast, but I've been meaning to sit down and record all of this music at home to make a nice CD to give everyone as a memento of our experience. Oh wait probably some of my cast will read this... well don't tell those other people! Or do, and then they'll be expecting it and I'll be forced to put up or shut up and get it done this week because only five more shows to go, oh my god!

In other news, I've begun auditioning for things as opportunities that fit within my schedule have been springing up. In between the relatively close proximity of this show with Rosencratz and Guildenstern and that show with Three Sisters, I haven't been able to audition for a lot of things I would have liked to have gone out for, but oh well. And now I'm doing the winter intensive at Shakespeare and Company, which is very, very exciting, but limits even further what I'm able to audition for. But, now things are coming down the pipeline that don't start rehearsing until February, and as they trickle through Stagesource I've been responding. What are they? I don't feel like saying, because two of them I didn't get and the third isn't until next weekend and I don't want to go and jinx it!

Other than that, with Uncle Vanya wrapping up I can look forward to getting out and seeing more of the local theatre (with a Boston accent, theatuh)! This afternoon, I made it out to 44 Plays for 44 Presidents from Bad Habit Productions and directed by my buddy, Jeff Mosser! Who I interviewed about it! So I was pretty excited, because the last show I saw from Bad Habit in this same space, Much Ado About Nothing With A Twist was awesome so I'm a fan of the company and of Jeff. How was it?Well, I can't be critically distant because it's Jeff, but I liked it! It brought up some really interesting questions about how we interpret history and also the darker epochs that reveal themselves of colonial aggression, genocide, racism and war that make up the fabric of American history. I mean, have you ever thought that essentially the entire political climate beginning from the decision to allow slavery to be abolished in the North and continue in the South was one big build up to the Civil War? One of the most violent conflicts in world history up that point? Have you? Well I did after seeing this show! Oh and it was very funny and entertaining. So I recommend checking it out! Here's a tagline for Bad Habit, "Both fun and thought provoking, 44 Plays for 44 Presidents is a People's HILARIOUS History of the United States!" There you go! Use it, I dare you.

Time Management

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

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

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

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

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