09.03.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:01 am by Administrator
Tonight’s the opening of Drew Fracher’s 60s version of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. We’ve worked diligently for four weeks, twisting lines and physicalities to fit 1968 hippydom — but an idealized, imagined Never-NeverLand version of that very bi-polar and upsetting era… My personal journey has been coming from an aged general dislike of the Shakespeare romantic comedies, with their archaic and often inexplicable “wit” — and the often disconnected chemistry of the leading lovers… Coming from this challenging prejudice against the material and the conception of me as a linguistically acrobatic Romantic Lead, and then having to patiently follow Drew’s supportive and incisive direction, and finding choices that finally seem to work. Our two preview audiences have been diverse in the Laff-O-Meter responses, but both seemed to warm to the concept and the characterizations quickly. Post-performance buzz has been charged and charmed — but audience members who linger and lavish loving praise are naturally going to be verbally positive.
I’m tired from the start of Wright State duties, too few hours of rest, bad nutrition, no jogging, and the commute for Benedicking around. But I’m the one who signed-up for the assignment, and I don’t regret this odd life of moonlighting and make-believe. But I should be journaling about the experience, ’cause I keep thinking my 53-year-old arms are going to tire of the juggling act shortly. How many years, especially with the new administrative duties at WSU, can I act and teach and be familial in sufficient and responsible doses?
Current physical complaints: irritatingly achey right knee, bruised and protesting right elbow and forearm, and myopically worsening vision. Oh, and not drinking enough water to keep the voice lubed, either…
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08.05.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:22 pm by Administrator
Taking Elliot on college visits has got the ol’ Grey Matter a’tickin’ about what my intentions are, as an acting teacher in the Professional Actor Training Program… Yes, as the name says, the program is meant to train students to be professional actors, but each of the faculty has her or his own strengths and techniques to offer.
Mine are geared towards the day-to-day process of a stage actor (not film or t.v.) performing a role with dynamics, consistency, personal revelation, clarity, and adherence to the director and playwright’s intentions. All of which could be summed up as performing a role, eight times a week, regardless of the material, “artistically.” Craft (technique and conscious choices) mixed with inspiration of the moment (responding to your cast-mates, to the audience, to what is really happening on a given night).
I teach what I do (the practiced and practical), as well as what I wish I could do (the ideal and the elusive). Stage acting is all I’m truly qualified to teach, because it’s what I do — thus I am so joyous about aiding young actors to approach a script, to discover a reliable personal process for the standard four-week rehearsal period, and then — most importantly, and all-too-seldom addressed in college acting classes — how to sustain a professional run. I fully confess not having found the way yet to simulate the 32-show (8 shows times four weeks) experience in the classroom, but I’m content to give step-by-step, reliable, compelling methods to “play” a part. Many different parts, in fact.
I am not a fan of personality-based techniques when mis-applied to the more demanding range of stage work. Romeo ain’t the same as Prince Hal, who ain’t the same as Lysander, etc. Juliet may be played by the young female ingenue in a company, but she’d also better be able to play Hermia, Ophelia, etc., with their own unique, different characteristics.
Acting must be a combination of the external and internal, the emotional and intellectual, the mechanical and the meaningful, however you want to phrase the vast array of paradoxes which accompany every stage performance. It’s different every night, but it’s similar. New every night, but with the technical prowess to make it consistently seem new — every night — to the audience, regardless of how the actors feel.
I am a product of the PATP, from the original faculty and approaches, but WSU has always offered a diverse grab-bag of ways (emphasize that plural — “wayS”!!!) to act, to think of yourself as an actor. It may not be as broad and inter-disciplinary as the smaller, more expensive liberal arts colleges, but Wright State’s PATP is an incredible four-year journey toward becoming the actor you can be, that you want to be, not just some malleable puppet fresh out of our mold. With the dedication of the student, we produce individual artists, capable of any number of characters, even in rotating repertory situations.
I’m emerging from the days spent shopping for Elliot’s “perfect” education even more proud and boastful about my training — and what I believe we’re currently offering at WSU. As we sail into the new seas of semesters and curriculum revision and replacing our beloved Mary Donahoe, I’m beginning to look forward to serving our Acting and Musical Theatre classes in the coming 2010-2011 school year. It is an awesome responsibility, but we’ve got a great history and amazing graduates.
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07.31.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:12 pm by Administrator
We’re shopping again, this time for our youngest son’s future. Where shall he go to college and what shall he study? What friends will he make in the next four years, who may very well prove to be his oldest friends and/or closest when he has reached his fifties, like us? What debt will he be saddled with, affecting all of his career and location choices after college? And how much will he be adversely affected by his mom and dad’s opinions, no matter how much we’re dedicated to him following his own bliss?
When you crawl into the car for a college visit, you’re driving into the past, present, and future of a human destiny, a life-path, a Big Choice with Many Unforeseeable Ramifications… So you try to look for the foreseeable consequences. You try to keep track of the smiles or laughs or shining eyes of your son as he hears about the campus, the classes, the traditions, the costs… And you cast your net as wide as possible for The Best Place for this fantastic boy who’s been your delight for eighteen years. But now he must move on.
No wonder I cried so often watching TOY STORY 3.
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07.21.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:09 pm by Administrator
I first read John Irving when I was in my first or second year with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, in 1979 or 1980. GARP, of course. And I felt such a strong kinship to the author, to his character, to his view(s) of the world. Marvellous, like you hear a lyric or read a poem, and you feel — less alone. You’re suddenly validated as a human being who cares about some things for which others care nothing. Your values, morals, priorities are affirmed, after years of assured isolation; I’d read Camus’ THE STRANGER while in high school (thanks to my Advanced English teacher, wish I could remember her name) and had rather identified with that cold outsider, also. Rather. The sense of looking at life, observing it, but not really taking part.
My first love (I was a senior in high school) pulled me into what I thought Life could be, of course. I thought I might have some value as an entity, as a being; I could be funny, perhaps, thought intelligent, perhaps, and could be needed, perhaps… Physically and emotionally needed.
But GARP (and now TWISTED RIVER) also spoke — screamed! — to the side of me so dreadfully dreadful of loss. Losing loved ones. Losing your identity because those you love fall out of love with you. Losing love because you find yourself becoming someone else, or being discovered as the Unworthy One after all the years you fooled some one into loving who they thought you were.
I hate being stereotypical about anything, but I am one of those actors who sought escape from his own life, his own boring Self, by pretending to be Others. See how Others lived, thought, acted. Paradoxically, I found myself with the life and identity of an actor, a good one, liked because of my delivery of others’ words, thoughts, feelings; yes, thank Goodness, often those thoughts and feelings matched my own. Then I could stand on a stage, pull an audience in, let them feel less isolated for a bit of an evening.
But oh how I truly wish that I could own the words, invent them, not merely rent the face of anOther for an evening…
That’s a long way of saying thank god, the universe, whatever for John Irving and the others who have made me feel less of an oddity. Less of an outsider. Of a stranger.
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07.18.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:10 pm by Administrator
No, no, no, NOOOO!!!!! I’ve spent the majority of my life being governed by the academic year, first as a student and now as a teacher. Before kindergarten and those few years (1981 through 1987) before I began professing — maybe ten years worth of “free”, non-school scheduled Time. We all have to work, yes, to make a living. And we have to do the things we love, perhaps as more of a sideline, to make a Life. Or perhaps the real Order of Things, at least pour moi, is Family and then Acting — and then teaching. The latter is the sideline.
Hard to tell your sons that you must do the things you love to do, you definitely must find them, follow your bliss, never deny those raisons d’etre (hey, I only had four years of French in high school, thank you, Mr. Lott) — BUT you must also feed your family, provide for them. Such realities don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and they don’t have to break your heart. Let the Passions feed the Practicals. But never, ever let the Livelihoods kill the Loves.
All of which is my mind-set in noticing that I’m maybe six weeks away from Fall Quarter, three classes, maybe thirty students or thereabouts. Those things are fine, usually great, if I’m healthy and well-fed, well-slept, simultaneously acting… But the bureaucratic paper-pushing and policy-making and people-poking (and you can’t be an administrator without poking people — and being poked in return) and the hypocrisy… Well, I guess I need to play the Objective, not the Obstacles; help people, keep them from being hurt, try to keep other people from hurting others… Speak my mind and my heart and know that others will disagree.
Sigh. Back to my novel, my sons, memorizing some lines…
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07.12.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:58 pm by Administrator
Didn’t write a single blog about my rehearsal process and now UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL has been performed. Lovely crowd in the beautiful Glen Helen building — which included so many familar villagers, friends, students, some family… And I got laughs and good moments of stillness, silence. So I hope it came across as well as it was going out on my end. I thought I was clear, very precise with the diction and the ideas. Was tremendously moved (into “real” emotion) in some parts and really found the energy needed for others. Funny, I’ve been reading a biography of Stanislavski as I’ve been working on the show and it only confirmed (in my humble opinion) that only a true, working (not retired and not amateur) actor knows what the hell acting is all about.
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06.25.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:18 am by Administrator
I’m doing a one-shot performance of Glen Berger’s UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL, a one-man-show or monologue, at the Glen Helen Building in Yellow Springs on July 9. Part of a village-wide celebration and exploration of the arts found in this little Ohio “hippy town.” Amid the pottery and paintings and dancing and music, the organizers have wisely thought to approach some theatre folk. And I was lucky enough to be able to do this, as a freebie, no admission charged, and less than one-hundred seats. Thus I trust I’m not offending the powers-that-be in my union. It’s a royalty-free gig, since we’re upholding all of the restrictions. And I get to revisit a script that speaks to me even louder than it did before, in two previous incarnations at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati and at the Dayton Theatre Guild. And the lines have returned slowly, but steadily — and I have fourteen days to go.
Picked up my battered suitcase of Lovely Evidences from the lovely Shannon Rae Lutz at the aforementioned ETC yesterday. I’d pulled her into the theatre basement prop storage early, but she was her usual generous self, diligently searching for Baedakers guides and evidence tags and fossilized turtle excrement amid the endless shelves of bric-a-brac and paraphenalia and gee-gaws. (Tremendous pleasure for a writer to spend time in a decades-grown prop basement.) So now the case rests, with it’s precious cargo, in the garage. And I need to find my Librarian’s “lecture suit” in the area Goodwill stores.
Thought I’d experiment and use the ol’ blog as my LINTEL acting journal, and spill some ideas and reflections about the way I actually do what I do… Absorb the lines, the thoughts, the feelings of a character, then get on my feet and find how he moves, and then put those choices (instinctive and conscious) on a lit stage. And see how the crowd affects it and is affected by it.
I have some colleagues at the university, on the acting faculty, who teach things I don’t. Which bespeaks the strength of the Wright State Professional Actor Training Program. We’re not a One Way school, we give our young artists the right to be artists, to find techniques which work for them instead of being made to swallow What Must Always Be Done. I believe in making choices, taking a script apart by defining beats, key words, obstacles, tactics, and, yes, objectives. But I don’t agonize over articulating objectives, goals, Ideal Futures, victories, whatever you want to call the desires of the character… It’s not The Key to acting, it’s not The Essential First Step for me. I usually find what a character’s fighting against first. By repeating the lines aloud while I memorize them, scrutinizing the sound and meaning of the words as I go. Why does the Librarian say these words at this time, why MUST he say them, what is he pushing against or with? What is in his way, the obstacle, the conflict? Because dealing with that is the way I unconciously play an objective. “That which hinders your task IS your task.” You don’t have to be a brain surgeon or an acting teacher to have to recognize a human need; you don’t even have to be able to put it in words. You just have to commit to playing it. Night after night after night. With a professional, compelling consistency. Perhaps only a standard four-week, eight-shows-per-week run can teach beginning actors the internal and external techniques needed for an actor’s job. It’s certainly not a matter of having an emotional or intellectual or physical breakthrough in one acting or speech or movement class, because an instructor has bullied you into it. That ain’t technique, that’s dependency. And it ain’t a teacher or director’s job to make you dependent.
I fully confess my dependency on playwrights. They’re my addiction, to great words, lovely crises, stirring characters… Good writers pull you in, make the choices obvious (even the complex ones), make it so easy and thrilling to be in the character’s mind/body/machine every night and go for the ride.
In LINTEL, the Librarian relates and relives his quest to find (and believe in) the man who turned-in a 113 years-overdue book. He will methodically progress through his own 24 year-old struggle to decode, detect, discover, and declaim the clues of two lives — one extraordinary and one, his own, all-too-common. Just like Bruce Cromer playing the Librarian, the little man pursues the larger soul. And finds himself, his true self, his humanity along the way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, big ideas, big abstractions, like the claptrap out of an acting prof’s maw. But I will try to detail and define the true process as I go.
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06.22.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:44 pm by Administrator
It’s lovely and wondrous and refreshing and splendid to finally be free of academia for the summer — but I miss my son Charlie so very, very much. He’s started his “post-graduate” life, has a “civilian” job and the traditionally-low-paying first theatre job (well, his first in San Francisco), and I think he’s happy and healthy. But as I slide into my forgetful, fragile, fitful fifties, I know there are other things I was supposed to teach my boys, important lessons which will carry them through the worst of times when I can no longer be there, physically, to help them. Not that I have any true wisdom for my poor trio, I’m just an actor who pretends to be a professor… But I have had a good Life, chockful of learning moments; shouldn’t I be boring them to death with those? Eliciting the pained protests of “Yeah, yeah, Dad, you told me about that already, fer chrissakes don’t you remember telling me about that five-hundred times (as if it had any relevance to anything the first four-hundred-ninety-nine blabbings which I endured)…” Isn’t it my god-given right to either write yet another unnecessary textbook about acting or at least shove the unwanted ramblings of age at my own progeny?
I will try to expend that urge and energy in my garden instead; dirt always listens to the hands that crumble it.
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05.06.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:02 am by Administrator
It is so weird for me to have my batteries seems so drained all the time. The Energizer Bunny’s been shot or something, winged by a malicious Elmer Fudd. Maybe it’s because I’m not going to rehearse someplace in Cincinnati in the evenings, with a two hour commute added to the night’s demands. Maybe my system needs that type of mental and physical activity to recharge me for the day’s classtime. (Introverts need personal time to rev up the body and soul; extroverts need social activity. I guess being in a professional rehearsal or performance, I feel more at home, more where I belong… Teaching is always more of a risky business for yours truly.)
I’m also homesick for my absent sons, worried about a beloved friend’s health, and wondering if my acting career is going to go through a dry spell after so many lush years of project-after-project. Sigh.
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04.17.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:03 pm by Administrator
Funerals are the most unsettling form of “comedies of manners” for yours truly… Some aging, religious spokesman — who never knew the deceased — speaks platitudes to a group of grieving ones (or those who were brought by the grieving), standing beside the ghastly inert shell of the departed. I should have just sat in the back, at a distance, as I planned. But a friend waved me into the middle of the seats (actually, I was on a side couch), where I had to go through the expected motions and mumblings. But I really just missed my old college buddy, who would’ve hated the gathering and the format and the pausey mis-timing of the whole production. We were on the Wright State stage several times, in FRANKENSTEIN and a commedia piece and LITTLE MARY SUNSHINE and STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, and surely others I’ve forgotten. But I remember broad-smiled, twinkle-eyed, square-jawed Bill; he had a great laugh, used it often, and what a master of the pencil!!! To see him and Byron together at a party or in a dressing room, as they riffed off one another — that was how I’ll remember my friend; not by the artificial and awkward posturings of a funeral “ceremony”…
His departure age and means were shocking, but I guess a broken heart can only travel so far. Then it seeks an alternate destination.
(I want to be cremated, cheapest means possible, with friends just smiling broadly at a good memory; no need to gather and go through public motions. I value private grief far more than the shared. “These are actions that a man might play… But I have that within that passeth show… These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”)
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