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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Up... And Running!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Topping From The Bottom

I had one of my favorite discoveries thus far in the R&G rehearsal process just the other day when I discovered this weird new persona for Alfred; a gender-queer street smart bad ass drag queen doing what he has to do to get by. This runs contrary to my initial intention, and to Stoppard's script, but since we've cut all of the really explicit rape jokes and Alfred's exchange with Guildenstern, and also considering my physical size and the world of the play as my director has been shaping it... it makes the most sense. At first, I was interested in the idea of Alfred as a victim, someone who's been put through a lot, has probably been assaulted and is clearly used when necessary in a sexual way by the player. So I was interested in how that affects someone's physical state, you know when someone has been a victim of trauma it affects them in a certain way. Except I realized with Alfred, and remembered from people I've been close to the in the past who I know had gone through those kinds of experiences, it doesn't necessarily translate to weakness and in Alfred's case it's made him very tough and weirdly strong and resilient. I mean, just considering my physical size, I don't look like someone who takes a lot of shit when you remove my gentile personality from the equation. And neither does Alfred. Danielle is really interested in bringing this ongoing sense of menace and danger to the Players as a unit, and it's been really enjoyable exploring that with Alfred. And with the gender-queer aspect, Alfred wears the dresses and plays the women because he wants too and because he does it damn well, and when he gets down to business with the evil king in the dumb show, he really gets into it.

All of this power and toughness though is in spite of his intrinsically low status, arguably in the text as written Alfred is the lowest status character in the play. This kind of changes when you remove the rape element, and instead of Alfred being a smallish 14 or 15 year old as he would have been in Shakespeare's time and so might be traditionally played in a straight reading of Stoppard's text, he's me, a 6'2" 200 pound 23 year old dude, so I have to bring the truth of "what if I were this person" and not "what if this person in the text was me" does that distinction make any sense? I guess I mean I have to bring the character to myself, rather than vice versa. And I've been exploring that, and this new sense of physicality and having tons of fun with the costume (the full version of which I saw today and it's pretty great), and especially the physical comedy.

Which is a fairly efficient segway into the other thing I wanted to blog about tonight. As of tomorrow morning, every Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning at 9 AM I'll be reporting to movement class with Yo-el Cassell courtesy of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. As you may now, Commonwealth in it's third or fourth year of offering an apprenticeship program where you give them a bunch of money and in return they give you training, farm you out to do a "selection of scenes on this theme" style show in the 'burbs and you understudy and/or play a spear carrier in their main stage production. This year, in addition to all that, their offering parts of their training to the public, which will include me. So I'll be in with the apprentices and whoever else responded to the Stagesource post and had $500 doing Alexander Technique, Grotowski, Laban (don't know who that is but I'll find out), dancing and generally getting sweaty early in the morning for the next month. I'm excited! Having not done a BFA, movement is a big gap in my training and I'm looking forward to filling it in, becoming a more rounded actor and of course blogging about it.

Briefly, before I sign off, progress has been made in the podcast front. I have a tentative partner in the venture, someone I'm very excited to be working with and hopefully we'll be recording some stuff in the next few weeks. Till then!

Playing at Coins/Jugar de monedas

Well, Three Sisters is still over but Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead is just beginning! I take that back, because we're a couple of weeks into rehearsal and we open in just under a month. So actually, I untake it back, because now is the time when shit gets serious.

So far so fun though! I'm having a great time playing Alfred, in the context of my last couple of roles this is just what I need, a super fun, goofy, comedic supporting character who has some really nice moments and a decent helping of stage time but neither is he on stage every other scene. This means I'll get to come on, do my bits with the tragedians, get some laughs, go off while the other characters talk for another twenty or thirty minutes, come back on, get laughs, etc. Also, there will be music and funny trumpet sounds. It's gonna be a good time.

My director mentioned something about the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston and my blogging about the bilingual show experience, so let's blog about that! As we've gone from just giving bits and pieces a basic shape and are now moving into really refining them, the challenges are beginning to change. At first, rehearsing in Spanish at all was a challenge because it was like "what is going on at all?" but now that I better understand the scenes in English, and having taken far too many years of Spanish to have my low level of proficiency I can basically follow what's going on.

The problem I faced last night was the timing of entrances and physical bits. The script calls for a moment where Rosencratz confuses Alfred for Queen Gertrude, puts his hands over his/her eyes and says "Guess who?!" which our director wasn't super into, but to make it work we've blocked it where Rosencratz is going off and he basically bumps into Gertrude and then, not knowing what else to do, does the "guess who" bit. If you've ever had to do any kind of physical comedy on stage, it's all about timing to the point where it's almost like a dance. Things need to happen in a certain order, in a certain way and at a certain pace all in conjunction with the text, to get the laugh. The nature of this particular bit is that I'm coming around a corner and Rosencratz bumps into me, right? So I'm trying to land in conjunction with the text and the actors on stage where we arrive at the same time, but the two Rosencratzes play the scene at a different pace and energy level which I have to accommodate in my timing.

Do you see what I'm saying? It would be really interesting to talk to my cast mates and see if they've been influenced at all thus far in the process by the work of their Spanish/English language counterparts. Maybe I'll try to have a conversation with them and blog about it.

Uno dia, dos ensayos (one day two rehearsals)

Today was an adventure. Did you know, tomorrow I'll be playing guitar in the 8th grade talent show of Martin Luther King Junior K-8 School in Dorchester? It's true, an acting buddy of mine referred me his fellow actor who teaches there, was putting together a talent show and needed a guitar player. And thus I took a train and a bus into Dorchester.

On the way there, I thought about my relationship to that part of Boston. What relationship? Well, when I was born my mother taught at a program for teenage mothers in Dorchester. While they were having babies and joining the program as a means of accessing resources and staying in school with their infants, my mother had me. I remember as a kid, seeing pictures of myself as an infant with her students. Later, she told me a few horror stories about the various drugs particularly crack which was in an epidemic phase in many parts of the United States. But some inspiring one's as well. I'll tell you more at another date.

It was kind of an adventure getting to the school. I consulted Google Maps, who told me there was a bus I could catch from Umass Station which I then missed by about 30 seconds when my train ran late. Using Google Maps and Next Bus I was able to triangulate my way back into a route to the school. After a ten minute walk and a five minute bus ride then another five minute walk... I got the school, and met the kids I would be performing with. What song will I be performing with them? Who You Are by Jessie J, that's what. It was really cool getting to hang out with these kids even just for a little bit, and hear them sing and get to watch the process of them rehearsing together even just a little bit, working out Man in the Mirror and the other numbers their performing, realizing "oh yeah these kids are pretty good, they are just 14". It was also kind of fascinating seeing into their anxieties about performing for their peers. I mean, for me at this point it's pretty much automatic when the show starts you go on, no matter where you might be at and I've been in some plays where there's been reason to question where everybody was at. But being 14 and singing, SINGING in front of EVERYBODY, I'd forgotten that. Not that I did much singing when I was 14. Strangely, I can kind of identify with them through my guitar playing, which I haven't done a lot of in front of people. Uncle Vanya was definitely the most I'd ever done, and actually one of the most defined ways in which I grew from that experience was in how much more comfortable I am playing music for people.

Anyway, the performance is tomorrow, and the more I think about it, the more I look forward to having the opportunity to connect with the kids on stage and in the audience. I mean, that's what art is all about, right? Something else I haven't done in my 6 or 7 years of guitar playing and general performing has been playing as an accompanist. I did during Marat/Sade, and it was really cool, but that's about it. And I think this will be too.

The other thing that struck me about the experience was realizing that if I weren't so set on being an actor, to the point that I don't really know what else I could do with my life... I could have been a teacher, maybe. A music or theatre or english teacher. I don't know how happy I would be as the person I am today, but what if I'd been a different person? I could see how that could have happened and teaching would be something I'd be OK with, I think.

Anyway, I'll blog more about it after I've actually done it. The reason the title of the post is in Spanish was because today was my first bilingual theatre rehearsal ever! Exciting, right? And very challenging. I mean, it's such a trip, trying to do theatre in another language entirely. Granted, I sort of know some Spanish... but actually not really. It wasn't made easier that everything we went over had been worked previously at a rehearsal I wasn't present for but that was OK I'm a fast learner. Will I be though when it comes to this Spanish stuff? Yeah actually, I hope so. And it will give me a totally different perspective on this process, no doubt. I mean, the first step will be studying the passages in English where the tragedians interact with each other, The Player and of course the pair of the title. Then figuring it out in Spanish. I think it'll be a fun exercise. And I'm already having fun in the role. It's getting late, and I have to get to a performance early in the morning, so this too will have to wait till a future blog. But hey, I'm blogging! Aren't I? I feel pretty good about that.

Blogging Along the River of Babylon (no significance just sounds cool)

Well hello readers of my blog! Why am I addressing this as an epistle? Well, why not. Did you know that before the novel entered it's modern 19th to 20th century incarnation, epistolary fiction was a very popular form? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for example. I learned in that my college expository writing class where I was supposed to have read a bunch of them but didn't really and still got like an A-.

Anyway, I feel like catching up on a few things with y'all. For instance, this is going to be the first of no doubt numerous blog posts on my second go around with Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This time as you know, I'm playing Alfred and at this rate when I inevitably do the show again because people do this play kind of a lot maybe I'll be Hamlet and the time after that, who knows! Anyway, so yeah, from my end of things we've had two rehearsals with the Tragedian ensemble mostly exploring physical character work type stuff through acting games, mimes and practicing dying different ways (as the player hammers him, his troupe of players are very into deaths) and a little bit of rough playing around sort of workshopping a few of the "play within a play" tableau type sequences. So far, so fun! As it turns out, we'll be the ensemble of tragedians for both the English and Spanish versions of the production. At the rehearsals I've been to, we didn't have the Player's Spanish speaking counterpart but that will be a serious trip figuring out how to coordinate those sequences in a language I don't particularly speak, para un pequito (which I think means except a little bit).

Last night was the first I'd been in a room with what was close to being but wasn't quite as if often the case the full cast for our read through, in English but trading off and stuff. And man, this play is dense. Our director Danielle has cut it down substantially in the hopes of making it run two hours or less and will probably cut it even more before we're through. To be honest, even having been in it, big parts of this play are still a little over my head. But then, I've never really put the full energy necessary to sitting down with the entire text, reading it through and putting all the pieces about the nature of drama and metaphysics together. Hearing it read again though, those things clicked for me in some new ways, so maybe I'll make it part of my blogging project this summer to chronicle both the bi-lingual experience and my own musings on the piece's dramaturgy.

As that is just now beginning to crawl along, Three Sisters is running to the finish line! But first we must overcome the massive hurdle... OF TECH WEEK. Tonight is supposed to be our first off book run, and I feel mostly ready. This past Sunday was our first stumble through and it definitely highlighted the problem passages for me, which isn't to say that this from a memorization stand point this translation is anything but problematic. But the character is there, the arc is there, the relationship with Irina is there and in theory this is the best and most fun part. Actually getting to do it!

As an actor getting the opportunity to act it's important to stop every once in a while and think "wow this is so great, I'm acting!" because hey, getting a shot at working your stuff in a room of people is hard to do so be grateful when it happens. In that way, acting is different than most creative pursuits. Painters, writers, musicians they can just sit and do there thing and take down their output even if it's going into a void. But acting doesn't exist in a void, inherently it requires an audience! Technology and Youtube and stuff has brought us closer to the model of a recording artist or writer, in that with the internet you can put yourself out into the world, but it's incredibly hard to create traction. Generally with theatre, some of that exists, although not always and that's one kind of experience that it's much more complicated to manufacture. So you know, I've hit on this theme before, remain grateful.

Speaking of being grateful, I had an experience to be grateful for yesterday, an audition for a part in a feature film. Specifically, The Way Way Back which was written and is being directed by the writers of The Descendants and will have Steve Carell in it. Exciting, right? I read for Charlie, an 18 year old hippy stoner dead head guy, who one of the leads a 14 year old kid has a brief interaction with at a beach party. It required me to act spaced out and do a sort of weird spacey dance and deliver a few lines. Which I did! I tried to keep it interesting and make fun dynamic choices while also bringing in the world of the party, the guy putting me on tape had me go gradually bigger and bigger with it, which I did hopefully without blowing out the frame, so to speak. And maybe I'll get a call back. More likely not because those are just the brakes. But again, I was grateful for the opportunity, and that's where you've gotta be.