Guitar Post!

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

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?!

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!

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

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

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

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!

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.