Guitar Post

I've been playing guitar a lot lately. It's funny how these things happen. Guitar took on a really important role in my life from when I first started, and later started taking lessons getting more serious but I started finding real success of a kind with acting it took a back seat, and that frustrated me a little, that I couldn't keep taking it to the next level in the way I knew I could if I really focused. Of course, I've never set out to be a professional musician, music has always been about catharsis for me, and it continues to serve that role. It's always come in handy in my theatrical life, like when I played arrangements of the RC Peaslee score to Marat/Sade on my guitar which elevated my role from a very minor ensemble member to something more vital and it felt fantastic to be creative on stage in that way. A similar thing has happened with Uncle Vanya, the director saw an opportunity with my guitar skills, first to have me instruct my cast mate who needed to learn to play for the show and then use my musical ability as atmosphere. So, in the course of doing that show, I've been a lot of guitar. Mainly Russian sounding classical guitar, a couple of pieces the sound designer picked out and my guitar teacher helped me arrange and some improvisation on my part. It's been a cool experience, the whole thing. I've been playing mainly acoustic guitar, but today I picked up my electric and got the microphone directed at my amp and into Garageband and just noodled out this jam without thinking too much about it (which was the point of the exercise, to capture a spontaneous moment of music). I was feeling a blues, but a happy one. So there's plenty of major pentatonics in with the minor, and some wonky, jazzy, diminished stuff. Check it out, this is where I'm at.

Waiting...

My week of Uncle Vanya performances and other auditions has come to a close, and now the hard part... waiting. I've probably talked about this before, the anxiety I feel sometimes when I don't have a project lined up that I know I'll be occupying myself with in the present or near future. I've been aware of it from the beginning, and this weekend it really dawned on me that Uncle Vanya will come to a close. And now that we're out of weekend 2 of 4, next is weekend 3 and then the final performances. Out of the course of this past batch of auditions, I've been hoping to have something lined up, and now that they are all over and with varying degrees of perceived success or failure attached to them, I just have to wait for the phone to ring or the rejection email to land in my inbox. Speaking of which, isn't that irritating when they say "we'll get back to you" or "we'll let you know either way" and of course you don't... and after a few weeks you get the message. But that's just one of the realities of the acting world, nothing to be done about it.

Anyway, let's do a run down. Monday was the Miracle Worker; perceived sense of success to failure ration, let's say 6 out of 10. I thought I did pretty well, but I have no connections to the company and I'm sure they have a sizable existing roster of actors my age and there are all kinds of factors completely out of my control mostly having to do with the "type" they want to cast in the role, etc, etc.

Friday was Crimes and Crimes, perceived ratio 3 or 4 out of 10, I went into my 10:45 AM audition slot having had no coffee (always a mistake) and was probably too big, broad and general in the audition and I got the sense that the auditor just didn't like what I was doing and dismissed me as such. As far as I'm concerned, that one is off the table.

Saturday was Hookman with Company One, and I'm going to say... 6.5 out of 10. I thought my monologue went over well, but at the same time I think I've done the same piece better in other auditions and was trying to recapture that rather then just being truthful in the moment etc. Then again, my side reading went very well, I was luckily (and maybe consciously? Who knows) partnered to read with my scene partner from when I did the scene study with Company One so we had an existing sense of comedic chemistry and were generally very comfortable reading on stage with one another and they laughed audibly multiple times during our reading. Again, I took the class with them, so hopefully they recognized me from that but again probably a lot of actors read for the one male role, so who knows.

Yesterday was Swimming in the Shallows with Salem Theater Company, and without putting a number to it, that's the one I'm most optimistic about. I auditioned for them over the summer, and they seemed to really enjoy my work, but then due to scheduling stuff with Crooked Arrows I couldn't make it to that particular call back. But this audition felt more like a call back, I had done some work on the sides ahead of time and I felt like I was really jiving with the director, who gave me several different angles of direction over the course of my working with him. It also seemed to be very thinly populated, only three people in my slot, the other two being women. But, again, there's no way of knowing. And here's to uncertainty!

One Audition Down!

Well, today was audition number one: Wheelock Family Theatre! How did it go? WHO FUCKING KNOWS! No, but seriously, pretty good I thought. Here's a play by play; the last few auditions I've gone on, I've been a few minutes late. In the past, it hasn't seemed like that big of a deal, time slots felt like they were pretty loose at the auditions I was going on locally. But at these two, and at one in particular where I got what came close to being a hard time when I was there right smack on my time slot but wanted a minute to look over a side and the producer or auditor or whoever was like "well you know your time slot is for 3:30 and I can give you a minute but you'll have less time in the room" so I was like "OK let's just do it, that's fine". For me, personally, as long as I roughly know what the play is about I don't find that having an extended period of time with a piece affects my cold reading skills since... it's a cold reading. Your basically making it up as you go along and trying to follow your instincts and a few additional moments with the words, for me anyway, doesn't have much bearing on my ability to do that. Anyway, since none of the postings or correspondence I'd gotten said any different, I kind of figured I would be reading a side for this audition, and hadn't thought about a monologue. I had skimmed the play, the parts pertaining to my potential character particularly, and sort of knew what his deal was. Did I mention the play is the Miracle Worker, and the character the older half brother of Helen? Anyway, I was determined to be early for this one, my appointment was for 4:50 and I got to the green line platform at Park St around 4, a D train came a few minutes later and I was on my way to the Longwood T stop, a few minutes from the theatre. Except then the train went out of service at Fenway, a stop away from Longwood, I consulted my Iphone and decided the quickest thing was just to walk from there since it's basically the same distance and I would avoid getting a new train and going just one stop on it. Thank god for my Iphone, by the way, because I have a terrible sense of direction. I'm pretty good at following directions, and I've used Google Maps a hundred times to find a hundred different auditions, potential apartments, restaurants, stores, etc. Taking a different T-stop, I got a little turned around in the Fends, but found my way to the theatre at about 4:35, 4:40 and was brought in early. You see, they had slotted ten minutes per person, but they wanted a monologue. I assume it was a monologue, and not two, since they had never specified when I got up on stage I heard a "whenever your ready" from the director and said "Oh? You want a monologue? OK this is from The Glass Menagerie" and launched into Tom's speech to his mother. Mind you I was completely unprepared, still a little sniffly, my throat a little parched and my hands still thawing from the cold, but I've done that piece so many times I can basically pull it out of thin air and that's what I did. I gave it a solid beat of silence at the end, then turned to the auditors who seemed to be nodding and saying "yeah, pretty good" (subtext: for someone who didn't know they would be doing a monologue) and they said their "thank you, we'll let you know either way, might be a call back later" schpeel. And that was that!

In other news, reviews have started coming in for Uncle Vanya. If you read blog posts I don't link to from Facebook, then you might have seen one I wrote about secretly wishing in the back of my ego to have a reviewer comment on the effect of my guitar playing in our show. Well, right after I wrote that, I encountered Larry Stark's review on his Boston theatre website Theatre Mirror and this is from the beginning of the review: "Take for instance Mike Handleman playing a house-servant, with no lines to speak of. He turns up in several scenes, fetching things, but mostly learning to play a guitar. But when the farm's overseer comes in, the guilty snap with which he jumps up and bows, doffing his cap, defines not only him but an entire society." Hey! A positive notice! In a review! Of a play where I had next to no lines! This is a legitimate first for me. And it made me feel pretty proud. It doesn't reference the guitar playing as doing anything in particular, but it's cool that a little moment I came up with made that kind of an impression.

Larry's review as a whole was especially glowing, and so far all the press has been positive. The Globe review did not mention me by name which is fine, and felt to me... I don't know, kind of contrarian, the reviewer took issue with the translation (which I think is pretty good) and a few performances (which I also think are good) but hey, critics are critics. So far all the shows are selling out and audiences are enjoying themselves, and that's what matters.

happy new year

Well, New Year's Eve was unspectacular, I hadn't been feeling well all day and by the time I got to the theatre to do our show, my energy was pretty low. Everybody else continues to put in damn fine work. And last night I will say I thought the pre show music worked as best as it has up to this point, in terms of my accomplishing what I wanted with the dramatic arc of the music. That was cool. It's going to be interesting keeping the music stuff fresh from night to night, I'm basically playing the same stuff from night to night and improvising little riffs during and in between pieces.

So, I guess the Boston Globe came to the show the other night, which is exciting. This is the first time a show I've been in will get a review from a major, major publication. Can I allow my ego and vanity some floor space, for a moment? I'll be honest; I'd really enjoy if the guitar playing in show made it into at least one of the reviews, of which we're going to have several I believe, in some kind of light of the effect it has on the show. It would be nice for my contribution to be recognized critically. There, I said it. It won't be the end of the world in the very possible even likely circumstance that in the however many words a critic is able to give over to discussing the merits of the production they don't mention the live guitar playing, but it would be nice.

Anyway, I have a bunch of auditions coming up for January, a total of five this coming month. Let's see, Monday is The Miracle Worker at Wheelock Family Theatre, Friday is a reading of a Strindberg play, Saturday is Hookman at Company One, Sunday is Salem Theatre Company, and the following Saturday is Fresh Ink.

In there somewhere the trailer for Crooked Arrows is coming out. I've resisted marking it on my calendar... but that's pretty exciting. It is getting real. I need to decide what I want to do. I've been leaning towards that I should just give Los Angeles a shot and see what happens, the worst possible outcome is I come back here and continue what I've been doing. Real life is scary. Here I come.

Opening Night

Another day, another opening. Wait, it's the last opening of the year! Let's take a moment and reflect on all the shows I opened this year, there were a lot of them.

The Muse at Turtle Lane, Savage/Love at the Julie Ince Thompson/Cambridge Dance Complex, The Blue Room at the BCA, The Underpants at the Arlington Center for the Arts, Measure for Measure at the Adam's Pool Theatre, The Mousetrap at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, The Muse (again) this time at Theatre Row in NYC, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Footlight Club, Our Town at Riverside Theatre Works and now Uncle Vanya at Apollinaire.

Oh and I guess I should mention the film things... there was Welcome to the World (if you haven't seen that, here it is) then there was The Ex Factor which has yet to come out but is in the process of being edited and was my first real lead in a film/web series thing, then I shot that Emerson short that (of course) I never got a copy of...

And then there was the big one, Crooked Arrows, the trailer for which will be coming out soon and you can all see me acting real silly. Doing all that stuff, I sure did meet a lot of new people. I wonder if this year I met the most new people of any year in my life, or at least made a connection to the most people I ever have in the work we did together. I'm proud to say that for this entire year, I was constantly working on something and making some forward progress. Like, oh yeah, graduating from college. This past year was absolutely jam packed with happenings. It's hard to predict these things, but I bet in the future, 2011 will have been a turning point in my life. I feel like I've turned a corner and am on the path to a higher level of self awareness and hopefully success. I'm allowing myself all this optimism... that's not like me. Or wasn't like the "me" that I was a few years ago, after everything that had happened. But in spite of all that stuff, here I am and better for it. It's strange to try and process all of it, I wonder if it's worth even trying. Well, I've made a go of it.

Here's to next year being just as incredible, 2012 has a lot to live up to.

The First Laughs

I'm writing from backstage of the final, invited audience dress rehearsal of Uncle Vanya. We are getting our first laughs! People are enjoying themselves! It's a great feeling, and I wanted to preserve it, in blog form.

Directing

Reading other people's blogs lead me to realize that someone with whom I've been collaborating had collaborated with previously another person with whom I had also collaborated in a production which meant a great deal to me, and upon looking up found pictures of I didn't realize existed and... wow. What a trip down memory lane. Oh I guess I'll tell you it was John Kuntz's blog, the person is Adam Stone and he directed the production of Pericles I did several moons ago, which... man what an incredible show that was. I don't even know how to describe it. We turned the entire theatre into Diana's temple. It was there the entire time under white butcher paper, and then at the most pivotal moment she came to Pericles and revealed it, and it was just amazing. I also got to play a bad guy, a really, really bad guy, which was awesome. And I had one of my most incredible on stage experiences. OK so basically Pericles is this Mediterranean prince during like the Roman era and he's traveling around and he comes to Antioch and the court of Antiochus to try and marry his daughter, who is renowned for her beauty and stuff. Except Antiochus, who is super evil (and in our version wore an Iron Maiden shirt and was super metal, if you've seen my Iron Maiden shirt that's where it's from) has this riddle and if you can't figure it out he chops off your head, except the answer is that he's having sex with his daughter, which Pericles realizes and manages to squirrel his way out of. After that, Antiochus comes back super pissed that he figured it out and plots to kill Pericles. So the second night, I wasn't feeling it so much as the previous night and was trying to do something different so I took a rubber head from my pile of heads and was addressing my speech to it but then I thought "this isn't working it's too Hamlet" at which point I threw the head against the ground in rage... it being rubber, it bounced off the ground, spun in the air above my head and came back down... right back into my hands.

The crowd erupts in laughter. It takes all my will power as a performer to keep it together, wait for the laughter to go down to start my next line and put the head back down onto the table which is on stage with me. That was one of the most incredible, serendipitous acting moments I've ever had and since I got started about Pericles, I had to share it.

And then thinking about Pericles and more recently Our Town both of which were fantastic productions due in large part to the strong directorial visions of Adam Stone and Jason Weber respectively, got me to thinking about directing. When I really start thinking about it, I think it's something I would like to do, except... I'm afraid. I directed a few scenes for classes while I was an undergrad, but I've never directed an entire piece. Part of what intimidates me is that I feel before I could really do something I would need a work that spoke to me on such a deep level that I could find a story within it that absolutely had to be told. Or something pretentious like that. Basically I would need to find something that I really, really like. But that I feel is within my power to pull off. For example, I really like Othello. There is no way I could pull that show off though as a director. It's up there with King Lear and Hamlet on the "difficult to make work" scale. Part of me also feels like I couldn't resist my own urge to act, and I would inevitably cast myself and be unable to effectively direct myself or the play at the same time and everything would inevitably suffer.

Still, I imagine it would be an incredible experience... having that level of ownership and creative control over something, to be able to conceive and execute a vision all your own (with the help and influence of numerous collaborators, of course) and see that on stage. Maybe, probably, someday. In the meantime, I can fantasize.