Returning to the Blogosphere

To quote Simon and Garfunkel, hello blogger my old friend,  I've come to talk with you again. Because actually this past year or so, I've been writing quite a bit, at the suggestion of my friend and acting teacher Michael Toomey. We met last summer (or maybe it was the spring? Let's say late spring or early summer) to work on some Shakespeare, at the time I had this idea (well I still have the idea it's just kind of dormant) to develop a piece exploring Hamlet through the lens of stand up comedy. I pitched this to Michael, and he basically said "Mike, why do you need to adapt Shakespeare's texts, can't you just write it yourself?"

And I haven't, at least not yet, but since that conversation I've been writing a lot more, mostly personal pieces not for public consumption exploring and understanding my own thoughts, but also some new poems... also not for public consumption, but maybe I'll put one up here sometime. Side note, did anyone reading this know me in high school when I published a body of poetry over live journal, most of which was awful? Good times but not really I was miserable in high school.

Anyway, I was reminded this thing I wrote in a few years existed, this blog, because the person I've been dating AKA my girlfriend has been reading Three Sisters for work, and earlier today we were talking about it and my experience playing Tuzenbach way back in 2013 for The Footlight Club and I remembered I wrote all these blog posts about the experience and I was like "holy shit, look at that, well this is interesting in a way I didn't think it would be at the time."

Because how could 23 year old Mike know in 2013 that 28 year old Mike would be interested in what he thought about Three Sisters? It's been so many years since I thought deeply about that play, I've done so, so much since then, including several break ups and relationships, starting a new life in a new city, finding my footing as a stand up comedian, a composer, and a writer, all this shit has happened and I feel so distant from that version of myself. But there he is, in those blog posts.

And here I am now, in this blog post, which maybe I'll look back on when I'm 33 and think "that's what I was thinking as a 28 year old?" Who knows.

I was really tickled by one of the lines in those Three Sisters blogs about how I didn't know if anyone would read it or find it useful or interesting besides my Mom (hi again Mom) because I do now, and hopefully my girlfriend does. And actually, not to toot my own horn but no actually I am giving myself a compliment, I had some pretty interesting insights into the arc of that character that I'd completely forgotten about, comparing him to Goethe's Young Werther and how he and Solyony are these mirror images of each other.

I wrote at the time that fundamentally they saw themselves as the heroes of there own stories, both romantic in nature, Solyony's vision of his story was epic and heroic whereas Tuzenbach's turns out to be a tragedy in nature, whether he means it to or not. That really resonates with me today. I think it's for us to relate to the world as the heroes of our own story, because we learn to relate to the world through stories in the form of films and television and I wonder if Chekhov or Shakespeare's audience was doing the same thing. Did they watch Hamlet, or Romeo and Juliet or The Three Sisters and imagine themselves as being analogous to those characters? David Wong writes at Cracked.com about how this kind of thinking creates a lot of dissatisfaction and misogyny, especially in men, who see stories about heroes accomplishing heroic things and being rewarded with beautiful women reduced to objects. Part of me thinks this is a fairly modern idea, and by modern I mean relating to the 18th century and romanticism, but then again story telling as a way of shaping how we see ourselves as a culture, a society and a people is a tradition as old as the spoken word, so who knows.

This relates to a lot of think pieces, you know the trendy ones about how millennial are garbage people who think there special because of course they are for being themselves? Which is something I'm guilty of, except wait I'm actually super talented, laugh out loud! Explicit arrogance! What is the tone of this piece supposed to be? Am I being satirical, self deprecating, or serious? Sorry I got caught in my head.

But I think that idea is in Three Sisters, Vershinin talks about it when he says that the sisters will pave a way for a new and better society. That these are characters are special and there lives are worthwhile, and Chekhov rather than giving us a straight forward dramatic story, shows the rhythms of people's lives on stage and how they give such great importance to everything they do, when in the end there just people and when the play is over, nothing is really different.

Having written this blog post, nothing is really different. I'm still not very good at ending my writing. But there is a document of me and my thoughts in this moment for you to read, and for me to read in the unknowable future, I'm curious to see what my thoughts are then.

A History of Musicianship (part 1)

Oh hi blogosphere, long time no see.

Probably you're reading this via a link on my Facebook page, in which case it's redundant to tell you I've composed and a score to a production of Titus Andronicus, and I've played it as a live accompaniment to the production four times now (with two more performances to go in this iteration of the production). But I'm taking a moment to frame that anyway, because that's what I'm writing about.

After tonight's show, I had multiple people come up to me and say something to the effect of "the music was great, I couldn't have conceived of the production without it" which means a lot to me, because the majority of the work that happened in constructing the show (which if you don't know, used a lot of devised theater techniques in the tradition of Lecoq, which is this French movement theater practice) took place before I was involved, and most of my compositions are a direct response to the work I encountered when I entered rehearsals.

Not all of it, if I remember correctly some percussion motifs were in place, and one of the central themes I wrote after I knew the production was looking for a music director. In fact, although I was familiar with the major details (the hands getting cut off, the people being baked into pies, etc) I'd never fully encountered Titus as a text until I saw a production last summer. When I saw the director post on Facebook that he was looking for someone to do music, my mind began whirring with all the potential dissonant and angular themes that would go along with a play about madness, dissonance and angularity being two themes I take a lot of inspiration from in my composing, I put my courage to it's sticking place, and responded "yes, me, I want to do it".

And now about a month later, here I am!

It's arguably the best work I've done as a musician (or at least the work I'm proudest of) but then when I think that, I think back on my whole history as a musician, and I want to write a blog post about it, so here we go.

I come from a pretty musical family, my father is a very accomplished classical pianist from when he was younger, my older brother was a flautist and a very gifted singer, my maternal uncle played guitar and sang in country bands all across the South, and for much of my life I felt like I had the potential for that same gift, I just never knew where or how to express it. The piano never spoke to me directly (it still doesn't, although someday I'd like to become proficient at it), and when the opportunity arose to learn a band or orchestral instrument in elementary school, I kind of shrugged. My parents bought a damaged classical guitar for me from a garage sale when I was in middle school, I took some lessons, but it never stayed in tune and it was hard for me to play at the time, so I didn't stick with it.

But at the same time, I knew music lived inside me. At one point, I thought I'd learn the sitar (which I'd still really like to do someday, it's such a beautiful instrument). I remember my mom describing the role my father's piano playing played in their courtship and thinking "ok so yeah to get a girl I should really learn an instrument". I vividly remember this one dream I had about an other worldly spherical lute, like a combination of a stringed instrument and a globe that didn't exist in real life, but in that dream I could play it proficiently. I've never told anyone about that before.

When I was in high school, my Mom bought me a Fender Stratocaster. Again, it didn't stick like it could have, and it gathered dust in my room. Around this time though, I was becoming closer to the burn out/musician crowd at my high school, to be fair not all of them were burn outs, and for a while I was the singer in my friend's goofy metal band, which we called The Devil's Agents.

I was deeply depressed about being stuck in high school (and being too awkward to get a girlfriend, and various other things), and I think that combined with the other members getting into other stuff, along with my penchant to turn everything into satire (even then I was a natural comedian/clown) which I don't think they were crazy about, lead to the band breaking up without ever officially breaking up.

That following summer between junior and senior year, several things happened. I started playing Guitar Hero, a lot. Like, I got really good at Guitar Hero. I could play all the songs on expert. I loaned my Stratocaster to my dear burnout friend Jason, and he was going to get it set up and give it back to me. He may have pawned it. He may have taken it to get set up, but then never picked it up. I'll never know. He died of a heroin overdose several months later.

Needless to say, what was already a state of depression deepened. I wrote a lot of poetry. Most of that was bad, some of it was passable. I asked for another electric guitar, my family, god bless 'em, bought me one, that I still own and play when I go home to Boston.

I'd realized at some point, "well shit, if I spent this much time learning the guitar as I have getting good at this guitar based video game, I'd probably be like, good at real guitar", so that's what I did. That year for Christmas I asked for some recording equipment, and I started recording weird ambient songs inspired by all the avant garde/electric Miles Davis and Pink Floyd I was listening to (honestly it was mostly Pink Floyd, now that I've been playing for ten years I can actually cite Miles as an influence but back then it was more an inspiration than anything you'd pick out in my music).

Jason also used to talk about how awesome it would be if we could be in a band together, we talked a lot about starting a technical death metal band (did I mention at the time I was also into technical death metal? I was).

But he died before we could do any of that.

There's more to this story, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'm going to publish this and call it Part 1 of my ten year history with the guitar (amongst other things), tune in next time for part 2 of however many parts it takes for me to be satisfied!

Thinking About a Sonnet

143 to be precise.

Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch 
One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay, 
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, 
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent 
To follow that which flies before her face, 
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent; 
So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind; 
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me, 
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind: 
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy 'Will,' 
If thou turn back, and my loud crying still.

It's the sonnet I took with me to work on during the intensive. I picked it because it was a week past the deadline of when I was supposed to have all my stuff in to the training assistant, and I'd been procrastinating on sitting down and finding a sonnet. My teacher had sent out an extensive list of sonnets which weren't too far out in their iambic structure so I picked one at random and read backwards from there. I think it may have been 145, but I don't remember.

I came to 143 and was immediately struck by it. Why? I had to answer this question at the workshop. Well, it's adorable, for one! Babies and housewives and chickens, what's not to love? And then it turns sexy and just a little (or a lot) dark.

Working on it with Dennis Krausnick opened my eyes to so much about Shakespeare and my work as an actor. Reading it to myself, I can't help performing it in my mind. And when I do in this moment, I'm struck by the "but" of the speech, it's antithesis, which becomes a musical theme in the lines. Behind, but, back. A big shout out to asses. I love the sway of these lines, to me they invoke the hips and butox of a beautiful woman.

"You have to get interested in big buts." Your friend, Dennis Krausnick (inside joke, Dennis and I are friends on Facebook though!)

And then at the end, "my loud crying still". I'm struck by the two potential meanings of still. Do you turn back and I'm still crying, or has my crying stilled, have I stopped? It could be either, and it's both!

Thinking about sonnets...

This has been an exercise in simplicity.

Audience Response

After seeing two pretty high profile shows these past two weeks (Hamlet at Arts Emerson, and the Lily's Revenge at ART) and also being on the receiving end of various audience reactions as part of Uncle Vanya... it seems like there should be a blog post in here somewhere, no?

I don't like to write reviews (except if it's of a show I'm in, in which case it will be unabashedly and acknowledgedly positive... I think I may keep doing that) because well, I'm not a critic! But I am a theatre person, so of course when I see things I inevitably respond to them as such. On the one hand, I am inherently aware of the artifice involved and try as hard as I can to go a long with it's intended effect while appreciating it as such.

One thing to be said about Hamlet and the Lily's Revenge, both of them had a lot of that going on. And both of them I enjoyed throughly, while parts of them I was less crazy about.

My Uncle Vanya cast mate Kate said something really profound after seeing the Old Globe's production of Hamlet... something to the effect of "it reminded me that even though it's a very famous/important company from a very famous/important city, things can still not work in a production and those things don't necessarily circumvent or prevent that or make that any less likely to happen" only she said it much more eloquently and profoundly and specifically in the context of our ensemble, a fundamentally fringe company making theatre in a place that is decidedly not a theatre destination or important place. But still, tonight we had audience members saying to us "that was the most incredible theatre experience I've ever been to or been a part of" so there you go!

How did I respond to those big productions from big fancy companies? Let's start with Hamlet. Other people's reviews I've read have said their Ophelia was problematic. Now, I don't know and I don't expect I'm likely ever to meet the actress who played Ophelia so I feel OK nodding generally in agreement with that assessment... but I mean, I don't know. What's Ophelia supposed to be like that she wasn't? OK well I guess a more compelling performer in the role... she could have been more intense. Other things she could have been too I'm sure that I can't think of. The point is, I don't claim to know Hamlet all that well. I guess I know it better than a lot of Shakespeare's plays, because I was sort of in a production of it in college (the anti-Hamlet I've blogged about previously) and for me the best way to become actually familiar with any theatrical work is to do it. Or probably to see it a bunch of times, and I think I'd only seen Hamlet performed once before, and watched the Ethan Hawke version... that's about my experience with the piece.

So who am I to try and deconstruct what did or didn't work about it? Other people have opinions based on past experience with the work. I only have my experience seeing it this one particular time. Ophelia feels easy to point out, because I read that in a review before seeing the show so I'm sure it colored my response to an extent. An had I known the actress playing her, or had a personal connection of some kind to her (as is often the case when I see plays) I'm sure I would have felt differently!

Anyway, how did I actually feel about the show separate from the meta context of the event itself which was as I was watching it bringing attention to the meta contextualization taking place *pause for breath*? Like I said, I liked it! It was funny. My Dad is fond of arguing that Hamlet shouldn't qualify as a tragedy because it's so full of funny lines. And I like the idea of staging Shakespeare in such a way that is entertaining while not undercutting or underselling the text or the story itself, because Shakespeare was fundamentally writing to entertain people, and so the profundity of violence and coarse Elizabethan phrases, along with the ruminations on human nature and inventing the human or whatever (also not whatever, he was a pretty great writer).

I had two favorite parts about the production, one was the sound design, specifically the use of foleys (which is a way of saying old timey sound effects) and the music. All of the players played their own instruments and sang, just like an old timey troupe of players would have done back up until the death of vaudeville more or less. The other was the conceit of a young Hamlet, Ophelia and Laertes. Hamlet was really good. All of the ensemble was awesome in their different parts, but Hamlet was really good. And I don't know, I know some versions of the text suggest he's in his 30s, but that never made sense to me. Insert argument for Hamlet being a teenager or whatever here. I don't care about the dramaturgy. I guess just as a still young person, with comparatively little distance between now and being 17 (although of course that gap is growing, it was an especially visceral experience) it elevated the stakes for me, somehow. And it gave the sense for me that the characters were more existentially trapped than if they'd been older people more able to reason. It made Hamlet's mistakes more justifiable as an inability to handle the sensory overload of his father's death/murder and his mother's incest. He's like, 17, of course he's going crazy at all this shit! Oh, and of course Ophelia doesn't know how to handle it either. Oh fuck and now her boyfriend killed her father, oh and she drowned herself (question mark?) oh no poor thing...

But then at the end, the players play their instruments, and Hamlet gets up and so does Ophelia and they dance together. And sincerely, that was my favorite moment of the play. I felt my eyes water just a little bit. It was so sweet and moving, their dancing in the afterlife or whatever it was or wasn't, and the audience clapping/applauding to the beat of the music.

I also liked Lily's Revenge. I'm even less able to be objective of the production, because I actually know people who worked on it. But I'm happy to say I throughly enjoyed it. I loved the costume and production design, which is clearly where most of those Harvard/ART "dollar-dollar bills y'all" went, and especially the movement (which was done by my dance teacher Yo-el, hi Yo-el!) and I thought it was really fun and engaging.

Was it innovative? That's a deeper and trickier question. I was talking to a friend of mine after the show who has much more history than I do with queer theatre, and was around when the various performance art aspects it was integrating were being conceived, and in that department he wasn't particularly impressed and for the sake of not misquoting him I won't go any further. I did recognize the constituent cultural studies materials around gender and cultural and societal norms being referenced and accessed throughout the piece... more or less, I think. And I guess it didn't read to me as a member of generation Y as an attempt to "shock" ala Rocky Horror, the popular reference template for this genre of work, although it did clearly gesture flamboyantly towards Brecht and all the verse and meta theatricality reminded me of Marat/Sade and Peter Weiss. So in that sense, it was of a piece for me of our current cultural landscape of repurposing and remixing. German post modernist theatre technique meets Japanese Noh theatre meets a drag show. The significance of which I'm still processing.

Anyhow, one way or the other it was definitely a spectacle, and an event I'm glad I experienced. As for the length, that didn't really bother me too much. The pacing and placement of intermissions was such that I didn't feel a compelling need to check my phone's clock and I'd been encouraged against doing so by being given a wax paper baggie thing to place my deactivated phone in to. Given the interactive nature of the production, I was concerned what significance that would harbor later on, but it was essentially a gimmick meant to remind you to engage with the "here and now" of the performance, one of the play's themes.

And of this moment, those are my responses as an audience member and "theatre person" to the plays I've been able to see when I haven't been in the theatre myself, doing my own show! I think I like this format, maybe I'll try revisiting it... maybe.

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. 

Dealing with Disappointment (And remaining grateful)

So, I had an audition and was called back for a local educational Shakespeare theatre company this week. You know the one. For the callback, I was asked to prepare sides for Mercutio and Bottom, two of my dream roles. Normally in these situations, I've learned to distance myself from the possibility of being cast, but seeing as I really wanted the gig, and also to work with the director, someone I know and respect quite a lot, I didnt. I allowed myself to want it, to think about getting it and that maybe i could and would. I really tried to prep the sides as best as i could.

Of the sides, one was Queen Mab, which I actually mostly know having learned it for another audition at Stoneham, previously blogged about. So i tried to relearn it. In addition, we were given the first scene between Demitrius and Helena. But the thing that really took me was Bottom's Dream, and what a dream of a piece it is. 

I read Midsummer Night's Dream when I was in middle school and then saw it in the round at Northshore music theatre, as we would do with Romeo and Juliet the next year. It was my first real exposure to Shakespeare. I remember liking the production, and Puck in particular. I'd hadn't given much thought to Midsummer since, it's one of those plays everybody does that theatre people poo poo as being safe or redundant as a production choice. I always figured, being a comedic actor, I'd do Bottom sooner or later. I did all the clowns in Shakespeare plays in college and at one time sort of aspired to make them my bread and butter. Little did I know just what a role Bottom is, and realizing that sucked me down the rabbit hole of desire that often leads to disappointment. 

I don't often indulge myself that way, of really wanting something like that, unless it's something with someone I know pretty well and can count on getting something in, and even then I temper my expectations. Because disappointment is painful. We've all been tnere, it's nothing new. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I maybe focused too much on Bottom and not enough on the two person scene that i did first and which was really my audition. My scene partner was great, she played the role and attacked it with a lot of energy, which I responded to and we improvised all sorts of fun stuff, it was really cool. But who knows how good I actually was, I don't, and it doesn't really matter. What they needed were people to drive to schools and do stage combat (the shows were Midsummer, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, far amount of sword fighting), I have neither a car or stage combat experience, so there you go. I shouldn't say that, of course they needed talented people, and there were plenty of them at the callback to choose from (who did have cars and stage combat experience). After that reading, I was released and I basically knew what that meant. But another girl in that position asked to read her second piece and they let her. I'm sure it didnt matter in the long run but if nothing else I wanted to show someone my Bottom (haha I'd already gotten into the character!) so i asked to stay and read it. They were very kind in indulging me, and laughed politely and complimented the piece. I thought it was pretty funny, but who ever knows, and ultimately irrelevant.

No, not irrelevant, being defeatist about it doesn't accomplish anything. The optimistic rationalist in me, the voice of other people who maybe don't work in this business for example is saying "but maybe they saw something and will think of you for something else because of it" and yeah, maybe. And of course it didn't hurt. And it gave me something else to take away, another layer to the experience, in that I was at the audition and I did my best to get in the most auditioning while I was there and try out this piece I'd been working on. One of the auditioners even said, when I expressed my delight at discovering Bottom, "if nothing else you have a new audition piece". 

I found out from a friend at the callback, while waiting to do last night's performance of Vanya, that he'd gotten the role and my heart sunk. It was offficial. I tried not to wallow in my disappointment but it was with me through preshow and the first act. I think my castmates sensed it and tried to indirectly cheer me up which was very sweet of them. By the time of act 4, I was busy doing show stuff I have to, and feeling better. After a beer, a glass of wine and some cathartic guitar playing at the reception my spirits were feeling buyoed. Such is the power of music, theatre, and alcohol, right? Oh and of course, the most important of all, friendship.

And now its on to the next thing. I have an audition Monday, oh and three more weeks of Vanya to do. I thought of writing "to get through" but the show's such a pleasure to be a part of, get through what? Perform in a beautiful production of a play i love by my favorite writer ever with people I like and enjoy being around? To quote the Vanya, "what a rough deal. Where's the rough part?" And furthermore "to gratitude!" 

Long Overdue for a... Blog Post!

Hello my poor neglected blog, how do I blog you? Let me count the ways. Actually I guess I probably blog about once a week. 

So let this be my weekly blogging. Seen a lot of theatre! What have I seen, let's see, 28 Seeds, Much Ado About Nothing with a Twist, Trog and Clay oh and Troilus and Cressida. All of which I enjoyed for different reasons, and which I could find things to criticize. Actually I think this is an interesting excercise, I'm going to compliment sandwich them one by one, meaning a positive note, a critique and a positive note. 

28 Seeds, I liked the music. Great songs and great instrumentalists who played with panache and style. Ok critique. I know the company spent some time workshopping the script, but I felt like it needed more. I felt the narrative was kind of disjointed and episodic, which was OK but I wanted a stronger narrative thrust to establish the characters, their individual conflicts and why we should care about them. As it was, they felt more like ideas and dare I say it cariactures although that feels harsh. Which isn't to say the actors didn't do some nice work. When I was in college Will Lebow had us watch a play and write two pages about a performance and if that actor had the three fundamentals be taught, intention, relationship amd high stakes. And they had that! So bravo. 

Next up was Fresh Ink. I thought this show was solid, with some really nice character work and especially strong use of lighting (all the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling were pretty cool, and I liked the sort of sepia quality they gave off like it was a live action black and white photograph). I did feel like the script was inconsistent, there was a stronger arc then in 28 Seeds and although the people in the play were quirky, they felt more or less like people and not just quirky character tropes. That said, the tone was very all over the place, and when it landed at the climax it felt like "OK this is the climax" but I didn't feel like the script earned the catharsis that the playwright was after or really landed the ending. Despite those flaws and inconsistencies, their were fun characters and funny lines, which the cast pulled off nicely.

I sort of feel like I just made the same review sandwich twice in a row, amIright? Liked this design aspect, thought the script was flawed, liked the acting. Well, to be honest, Troilus and Cressida is much harder to nail down to a culinary metaphor. I liked the idea of the production, and Troilus and Cressida is probably worth considering as the Bard's satire of war and the politics involved, and also it has some great pieces of text. But as a play, I don't think it was ever really finished, similar to Timon of Athens. According to some quote somewhere in it's Wikipedia entry, the version we received may have been edited or updated at some point to the fairly dark piece we have today from a previously lighter treatment of the Iliad, but who really knows. Ultimately, all of these pieces and plot lines get thrown up and Shakespeare starts to juggle them, then the action accelerates like something is about to happen, in this case Achilles kills Hector and then the play ends. Troilus ran close to three hours, which is just way too long, and in my opinion it had too many characters. I think for the production to work, it needed more of what ASP pulled out when it did Timon of Athens a couple of years ago, a whole lot of textual and structural rejiggering. In the case of Timon, they only kept a few of the characters and then the rest were portrayed by an ambiguous ensemble in painter's outfits (which I frankly never really got why that was, but whatever) and much of the story's thematic push came from sound design motifs and a really bad ass set. For this production, they had the Modern which they used in the round. Kinda cool, but I don't really know what it added. The set was some grey blocks that got moved around. There really wasn't much in the way of sound or lighting design. It had some nice performances, I liked Ross Macdonald as Hector, but many of the performances didn't feel lived in, more like some character traits and choices imposed over text. I think the solution was to dump as many of them as possible, pick one or two storylines and really tell those stories and make them work, as the play itself is just an overstuffed mess.

Then again, I'm talking like I have the recipe to make Shakespeare work, and I certainly don't, I'm a guy with a blog. And that's a tricky thing, because in Shakespeare's plays almost everything exists in relation to something else, so knowing what to cut and how to cut it without detracting from the whole is extremely difficult! I don't know how to make that play work, or how to make anything work, so I applaud Actors Shakespeare Project for bringing the show to the stage and I'm glad I got to see it, even if just to say that I have.

Oh, and the other show I saw recently was Bad Habit's production of Much Ado About Nothing. That was show was pretty much theatrical chocolate, it was just great. And I don't know what else to say about it! And also it was like two weeks ago that I saw it. Thinking back though, really strongly delineated characters, really crisp pacing and plotting, fun music, fun cast, really fun show.

What have I been up to? Well, I've been rehearsing Three Sisters and had the pleasure this weekend of delving into my big act four showcase scene, you know the one I'm talking about, with the declarations and the coffee. Man, what a fantastic scene. You know how sometimes theatre feels like a giant pain in the ass, all the commuting and memorizing and waiting around  but then you get to that moment where it's like "oh right fuck yeah this is awesome" and I had that working on this scene. So that felt good.

Oh and last week was the staged reading of The Last Jews by Larry Jay Tish with myself, my friend Chuck Schwager who brought me on board, the talented Amber Williams who I met that night and oh yeah BOBBIE STEINBACH who is of course awesome and it was kind of a dream come true being on stage with. I'm happy to say that it went really well, our audience of 30 or 40 people laughed a lot, had some great feedback and seemed to enjoy themselves throughly. For my part, I didn't blow it. So good on me!

Most immediately on the horizon... Crooked Arrows comes out this Friday. I'm excited and nervous to see myself, and also wondering how much of me you'll be seeing in the final cut. Whatever else happens with it, it will be a great cap to what was a fantastic experience. My fantasy of course is that it comes out and immediately Hollywood starts calling, but more likely it will give me some small piece of ammunition should I head that way, which I am actively considering. We shall see! 

Being Satisfied

So you might have noticed a recent Facebook post debating the merits of attending an audition when you've been wait listed. I might as well just tell you the audition was for Actor's Shakespeare Project. Before my focus was sort of reoriented towards film and television, my pipe dream had been to work with that particular company. I think as actors (or any kind of artist), it's important to have those pipe dreams, as well as tangible more easily realized immediate goals and to keep them in perspective with another. I would almost argue that they function best in sort of an inverse proportion to one another. That is to say, if your "pipe dream" is something way far out like be a movie star and it's a fantasy you actively engage with to the point of thinking "what would be the necessary steps" which is something I do with pipe dreams and practical goals a like, a good practical goal would be say getting cast in a community theatre production or getting a call back, I don't know. Everyone works differently. But for me, and I believe this is true generally, it's important to remain focused on the here and now, the immediate steps you can be taking to better yourself as an actor and advance your career... while also allowing some mental space to think "oh but what if". Anyway, for a while I was sort of fixated on being hired by Actor's Shakespeare Project. In pursuit of this goal, I actively sought out opportunities to work with and study under their company members. You might know I was in Paula Plum's workshop production of The Blue Room or when Jennie Israel came to Harvard to do an undergraduate production of Measure for Measure I auditioned (and by the grace of my prior collaborators at Harvard was cast as Elbow) and then went on to take their class they teach, Shakespeare Workout. I realized though, to be honest, I'm not good enough at Shakespeare to perform it at a professional level. Also, seeing some ASP shows, I could tell I just wasn't at that level as an actor and so allowed that pipe dream to go up in smoke. Speaking practically, I'm also just not really the type that they cast for right now as a comedic character actor. Shakespeare is full of those kinds of "clown" type roles, and as a company they have a lot of actors who are good at performing them. And in particular, my big niche right now especially in terms of professional theatre are generally adolescent or post adolescent type roles with nerdy or intellectual or outsidery character traits and those are less of a thing in Shakespeare (and more of a thing in film/television right now, so the switch in pipe dreaming).

Keeping all of that in mind, I was hesitant initially to request a slot for ASP's non equity auditions... but then I thought "what the hell". And then I heard back and I was wait listed. I went over the pros and cons, posted the issue to Facebook, etc and in the end no one ever got anything by not trying, am I right? It's also a piece of advice I give to actor friends who want to audition for something they couldn't get a time for, because of scheduling or if it's an AEA thing or whatever.  Just show up, ideally as early in the day as possible and say "hey I'd really like to audition, can you squeeze me in?" Because if you want something you have to go after it, and in the nest of baby bird's the loudest most obnoxious one gets fed first. Which isn't to say be obnoxious, be extremely polite and try to learn and remember people's names and stuff. But be persistent, and hopefully the people giving out worms will notice that and maybe you'll get one. Or not.

Anyway, I showed up right at 10 AM and held the door for Allyn Burrows as he entered the theatre which made me feel sort of like I was accomplishing something even if I wasn't. And after waiting about 45 minutes, someone cancelled for 3:36 and I was in. This was sort of an issue though, because my weekly guitar lesson is at 3:30... but it's in Porter Square and this was in Central and it lasts about an hour so if I get in at 3:36 I can probably be there by four... I thought to myself... and am I going to get another chance? OK I'll take this one. Went home. Went to the gym. Tried to nap a little. Headed back to the theatre around 2:45... and waited. They were running way behind, like twenty minutes more like thirty by the time I auditioned at 4:05 or so. This seemed to be because the three minute audition slots were turning into 5 or over audition slots as Allyn worked stuff with people in the room as is his right as the auditor. I got in, said hi to Allyn and Jennie, handed my stuff over and did my truncated Claudio from Stagesource. I had worked on the scene in SWO with Jennie and Allyn had been in the room for one of those sessions, so if nothing else I wanted to show them "hey, here I am still auditioning and here is where I'm at with my work and this piece" which took like forty five seconds, then Allyn made a comment "she's not buying it, is she" in his typical Allyn Burrows manner, they thanked me as I was on my way.

I ended up missing my guitar lesson. I didn't get any feed back or performance adjustments. It was kind of an all day thing. Leaving the theatre, it was not hard to think "well what was the point of that?" but now I think, and I believe "I did some good work in that room". I really think I did what I wanted to do with the piece, and showed them what I wanted to show them and that's pretty good. And it's probably better they just sent me off, because they were totally in the weeds, so I can count it as a mercy to my fellow auditioners who were able to go home sooner.

So I'm just going to be satisfied with what I did. Even if I don't get a call back, for the reasons listed above and since they must have auditioned like a bajillion people yesterday, I learned something from the experience about how to be content with what happens and letting go of preconceptions. Now it's just about putting the next foot in front of the other.

EDIT: Also, shout out to the guy I ran into who reads this blog! Hey man! Also anyone else reading this who I might have seen or who was at ASP auditions yesterday. What was your experience like? I'm all about starting a dialogue.