Holiday Blog Post (prelude to training

I'm writing this from my mother's laptop in my parent's house, taking a moment to appreciate the luxuries implied by both, that I have a house within easy reach, with parents and a brother, heat, electricity, running water, food and computers to visit over Christmas.

I think that sense of gratitude was an important theme for me in 2012, I certainly blogged about it more than just on Thanksgiving the obligatory occassion in which we all take note that we could be much worse off. Perhaps it's inappropriate to frame it that way, but it's true. Whatever your situation you could be far more destitute than you are now, just by virtue of the fact that you're able to read this and therefore you either own or have access to a computer, do you ever think about that shit? Truth.

Other than that, I'm grateful to have my parents, both of whom are in their sixties and who one day I will not have, also truthful. And my brother, who's only here a few times a year now that he's down in Columbus which is a much further trek than where he used to live in New York.

And that I'm here with Adia, who I'll miss terribly (as well as all my friends who are with me in spirit) while I'm off at Shakespeare summer camp... well, winter camp, or whatever, for the month of January. For which I leave on either Friday or Saturday, it's still being negotiated when exactly I'll do that. And then I'll be gone for an entire month, away away away from the real world, how's that shit? Pretty wild man. I wonder how I'll feel coming back from all that time doing Shakespeare, Linklater, Alexander, and all the rest of the stuff they teach you.

I'm really excited. And I don't tend to get excited about things easily, to be honest... towards most things I feel a weary, vague anxiety much of the time. No that's not true, I still get excited. And I'm excited about this. Because I love acting! I love training, I love the study of the craft. Almost as much as I love getting up and doing it. But I really, really do appreciate those aspects of it, but I've never been in a true, full out conversatory enviornment where I was able to live and breathe acting. And from all the people I've talked to who have done it, I've gotten the impression that the intensive is a life changing experience and how many of those do we get to go through, as artists or otherwise?

So just a few more days of real life, then it's off to Shakespeare camp, and I can't wait.

To Train Or Not To Train? (it's a rhetorical question)

Hello blog. I'm writing this chunk of blog post from backstage at Uncle Vanya. Which, have you bought your ticket to yet? Its pretty great. Anyway this is week two, and we've been extended through November 11th! So there goes your excuse to miss this once in a life time piece of theatrical inspiration. 

So speaking of which, I saw the Globe Theatre's production of Hamlet today at Emerson. How was it? I liked it. I enjoyed having such a young Hamlet, it put the play in a context that made sense for me. My closest connection to the text was from doing that sort of anti Hamlet in college that I've referenced which actually had a vaguely similar conceit. And I liked all the minimal staging and the effort to bring some of the atmosphere of the old globe to the Paramount. Anyway, I'm going to try and read it this week and come up with more of a response. 

During intermission, I got an email confirming I'd been accepted to the month long intensive training with Shakespeare and Company, out in Lenox. Before you congratulate me on anything, it's not an accomplishment so much as an inevitably of my application. Which is to say, it's $4000, for the month of January in Western Mass, and considering the economic situation of most actors I don't imagine it's especially competitive. But it's sort of ironic that I received my official acceptance while watching a Shakespeare play, and since I wasn't cast in that show I blogged about going up in that same time frame, I'll probably do it.

And I'm looking forward to it. All of the people I know who've gone through the training speak very highly of it, and this will be my first exposure to a conservatory-esque environment, as opposed to all the evening and extension classes that have made up my training, I'll live and breath acting and Shakespeare for at least a month, and that's exciting, right? It'll be hard too, being away from home and my friends and family and especially my girlfriend. But worth it, I hope.

So thats where I'm at, and also figuring out what to do next. The trouble is it will keep me from doing a show until March or April, which will leave December relatively barren, and that kind of worries me, as I always feel my best when I'm active creatively and doing stuff and having a reason to leave my apartment. Especially during the winter time, which is always tough, with the cold and reduced day light, etc.

But I have this blog, my music, oh and my podcast which has been going actually pretty well. It took me a few tries after the first one to get in a groove but I released a new one and have another on the editing dock I'm happy with. So far I've had three "guests", one of them recurring in the form of my friend Jesse, and some other peeps I have in mind to invite on. My goal starting out was just to get to where I dont suck and I feel I'm accomplishing that. The question now is, when do I go on iTunes? Usually in your first day or two on the service you get listed as a new show and with that some base number of downloads which then drops off. How much it drops off depends on how good your product is. I've moved to a new, higher quality recording method, and have gotten much slicker at editing. Sooner or later I've gotta bite the bullet and take those steps. Which, actually I'm excited to do.  

And excited for what the future holds! Which, well, is anxiety until I get cast in my next thing. But there auditions, and since I keep booking things I must be doing something right. Whatever that is, I've just got to keep on keeping on, doing what I do. 

Is it Spring yet?

One of the best things about living in New England is Spring. It's probably my favorite season. I guess tied with fall. And also, summer. Basically all the seasons that are not winter. I really enjoy going out in a light or medium coat. This is of course especially true after like five months of crappy weather, basically the stretch from November to somewhere in March where things start to turn...

And we are fast approaching that turning point! Exciting, yes? We had a few days in February where it got up into the 40s and 50s, and man were they delightful... more so than when the weather did that in November and December that was just creepy. But now that the days are elongating, the angles of sun light actually match up with those kinds of temperatures.

Speaking of Spring, that's when Crooked Arrows will be arriving at a theatre near you (if you live in select markets) May 18th! Wow so this thing I've been talking and thinking about will be becoming concrete and then onwards from there! I want to speculate on what this could mean for me, but I won't because I don't know and won't know until after it comes out so what good is speculating?

Meanwhile in the present, I did my second round of ADR yesterday. Fun fact: ADR stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement. I did a bunch of this in LA while I was out there, I think they wanted while they had me in person to just record a bunch of extra stuff while they could and it was actually a pretty fantastic experience, both in learning a new skill set and in collaborating with the film's director Steve Rash. This was also quite an experience, as this time I actually had to redo lines so that they synced up with my performance on camera, I essentially had to lip synch myself. Generally with Chad Bryan, because I had such a strong understanding of the character, I could knock out my stuff in at most three takes also depending on the complexity of the text at hand (some of his lines get pretty wordy) but this took me like ten or twelve takes to nail down the exact rhythm that I was saying the line at. Later on, I had to deliver one of my lines from a place of actual... sincerity. Generally, Chad is kind of a smug bastard. He's a big lacrosse nerd at heart, and he loves the game so much that he can't help but run around to all these prep schools and do his little online show of live commentary on the games and over the course of the movie he goes from viewing the Crooked Arrows as pitiful to really admiring them. And it's in a moment of sincere admiration that he talks about the conclusion of the typical sports movie cliches and delivers a heart felt line about how they won't give up. So I really had to drop down out of Chad... but I still wanted to fight to keep some of him in there, but stepping away from the cartoonish persona that I was dependent on to drive the character while keeping the shading of those characteristics... the best take and the one I assume they'll go with was the one where I was able to drop way out, and then at the end bring it back in. That also took me like ten or twelve takes to really nail down, and it was hard!

But I'm a better actor for it, and I'm glad that they decided to go back in and add that heart to my character. I think it will reflect better on the film, on Chad's role and on me as an actor in relationship to all of that. All in all from what I was able to glean, I think it will be a really entertaining family film. So that's that.

In other news, I had my audition for Three Sisters on Sunday, and I felt like it went really well. In the four major plays of Chekov of which I am a big fan, Chekov is probably my favorite playwright ever, there are maybe half a dozen roles I'm in a place age and I guess life wise to play right now. Konstantin in the Seagull being a big one, the young communist in The Cherry Orchard who's name I can't remember is another, and Tuzenbach and Andrei in Three Sisters are two others. And if nothing else in that audition, I got to play those two roles, just a few pages at a time, for a little while. And it felt very satisfying. Chekov is just such an actor's dream to play if you know where to look for the nuances of his writing which I frankly do because I had good teachers who taught me how. I can't make the callback on Thursday, which is unfortunate, but I felt like I put forward good work and the director said they would keep me in consideration and that's all I can hope for.

Oh and lastly, why can't I make it to callbacks on Thursday? BECAUSE THAT IS WHEN SWIMMING IN THE SHALLOWS OPENS. Holy shit. How long has it been? Like a month? A little less than that I think? Wow. This is going to be a great show. It hasn't really hit me yet, here we are in tech, this is the moment where everything really comes together. And then an audience enters the room, and BOOM ACTING *MAAAAAAGIC*. Seriously, it's going to be a great show, hopefully if you are reading this you got an email invitation but if not consider yourself invited! It's really been a fantastic experience with a fantastic group and I've been able to push myself to do things I've never done or thought I would have been capable of a few years ago.

So come see it. That's all for now, ciao!