2012-13

Big Parts, Small Parts

Malvolio, Titus, James Tyrone Jr., Nixon--it's been a great run of roles.  These big characters have brought me fun, confidence, and great ensemble experiences, as well as a wider sense of myself (once you've played a king you never stop feeling a little bit more noble than you did before.)  It's going to be hard squeezing back into smaller roles, as all actors must, sooner or later. Opportunities abound in all but the tiniest walk-on parts, though, so when I retreat upstage to support my fellow players, I'll make the most of them.

And for now, I'll savor fully the taste of scenery between my teeth, as we head into tech for Frost/Nixon.  Nixon feels like the right role at the right time, for me.  And, like Malvolio, he's sure to be in my repertory for the rest of my career.

Becoming RMN

Knock Her Over with a Feather

I'm a happier man at the top of the run this year than I was last. 2011 started and ended well, but in the middle, the trail got rocky, not enough work, not enough confidence saved up from all-to-brief weeks of work for the long flat stretch of months during which all I seemed to do was ride the bus back and forth from NYC for auditions. And I seemed to grind my edges relentlessly on rocks in on camera acting classes in which I just couldn't seem to find the click; couldn't quite translate hard-earned stage skills into usable skills in the relentlessly-new-to-me and exotic terrain of episodic t.v. and film. It took a half dozen workshops and a wad of tuition money before, finally, I began to figure out how to get those smaller, less-used muscles to work.

But I stuck with it, and the new skills did finally begin to take, and the stage work grew more consistent, and my expectations for how it should all go have become better aligned with the realities of how things really are. By the time I got into late summer/early Autumn, I began to relax, enjoy what was I was doing at the moment, and looked ahead more eagerly than I had in months. Philadelphia finally felt more like home just as I was hitting the road for out-of-town gigs that would keep me mostly out of Philly for the next 18-36 months, depending on how it all goes. The New York Theater scene began to feel less alien. My own long-simmering writing projects began to feel more doable, and are now a way to balance my stage work, not least of all by giving me something to do when not on stage. My love life stabilized nicely. And, by now, I can say I'm the most genuinely content with myself in the world than I have... well, perhaps have ever been (my sister's reaction to that last statement was, "knock me over with a feather!")

So, as of now, 14 out of the next 19 months are booked, I get to travel a lot for both work and play (since I can keep my expenses ridiculously low by not paying any rent or mortgage, having given up on keeping an apartment until such time as I'm actually in one place long enough to use one,) I enjoy my colleagues and friends, and I'm in pretty good health. It's a good time....

And from it I hope to gain strength for the not-as-good times which will, of course, come 'round again. Life is nothing if not seasonal.*


*(which, by the way, is my answer to Bill Maher (whom we saw in concert at the Waikiki Shell on New Year's Eve, last night) when he asks: what is religion good for? What religions does well is help us gather ourselves for the cyclical seasons of our lives; spirituality, to me, is about sowing and reaping our spiritual harvests--harvests of both our individual and communal emotional lives. What religion does badly is... everything else. I'd like Maher to better understand the difference between Belief and Faith--the former is dangerous, the later, necessary.)

Custom Knock Offs

"So you see plays based on reviews."
Sometimes.
"Have you read the play?"
No.
"Did you read the novel?"
No.
"But it's a classic of world literature."
You can't read everything.
"But it's a classic."
(Repeat with dead-eyed stare) You can't read everything.
pause
"Maybe you're a critic yourself."
No (finish drink.)  Enjoy the show.


- Last night's conversation, in the bar at The Manhattan Theatre Club before the start of Venus in Fur, with the snottiest theatre patron I've encountered in memory, demonstrating what is, however, a common misconception of conventionally educated consumers of 'culture' that 'culture' consists of a checklist to be gotten through, a shelf of products to be consumed (Waldorf School educators and their unfortunate former students, for all their nonsense to the contrary, are among the worst offenders of such unreflective cultural elitism, which misses the point of culture--or at least, the kind of culture I give a damn about--altogether.)  


The day before, I walked into a small store in The West Village that sold various items handy for travel, shoulder bags, notebooks, easy-to-wear shirts. I choked on the prices:  $250 for a tasteful small notebook similar to a moleskin.  $500 for a tasteful cloth messenger bag.  Etc. I was assured these were all "one of a kind, custom designed" items, not to be confused with "mass produced" products of similar utility, though these were utility items, custom designed or not, indistinguishable from their mass-produced cousins--in fact, certainly knock offs of the mass-produced originals (knock offs of knock offs!) but somehow... better?


Do these moments have anything in common?


I'll let you infer the obvious, but one thing, among others:  I usually only run into this kind of wackiness in NYC, the home of all manner of unhinged striving and social fetish.

American Shakespeare Center's 'Tempt Me Further' Tour

I'm happy, grateful, and humbled to say that I've accepted the offer of an 11.5 month contract with The American Shakespeare Center for its 2012/13 TEMPT ME FURTHER tour, which performs in a variety of locales across the country, as well as at The Blackfriars Playhouse, in Staunton, Va.  The contract starts in July, 2012, and extends through mid-June, 2013.  I may be answering my phone less frequently during that time.


I recommend visiting the ASC website.  It does fascinating work.

Circuit-riding Actor

I would love to live in a smallish rural town--say, Missoula, or Bend, or Waitsfield, or Georgetown, Grand Exuma--a place in which I could feel physically and mentally rooted.  I grew up in the outdoors, working and playing--mending barbed wire fences, shoveling horse manure, skiing, skinny dipping--and in small communities, in which neighbors know too much about one another (or so they think, ready to treat gossip as gospel).  About the people in such places:  I miss their fewer veneers of social polish; their inability to hide what they're thinking, for good or bad.  Delight and contempt flash more readily in personal interactions in the small town's I've known before than in the cities I tend to spend most of my time in now.  Small towns are more Shakespearean than you know (and occasionally Jacobian.)

Unfortunately, being primarily a stage actor, in the early years of my career, I don't have the option not to live in a city.  It would take fame, fortune, and a private jet to make possible the commute from Missoula or Bend.  But, to my quiet surprise, being a circuit-riding, regional stage actor is bringing me back to rural communities for short stretches of five or eight weeks in duration: Durant, Oklahoma; Middletown, Virginia, Columbus, Georgia, and wherever I go next.  I'm satisfied to rediscover what is up out here, beyond the cultural radar, for good and bad--e.g., the denizens at Denny's after midnight--when I go there to review lines and blocking--can scare the b'jesus out of me, though there's nothing warmer than the smile of a young waitress on the night shift who, bored with the old faces, is delighted to meet a new one, and one with a mouth, ready to talk.

I have many, many thoughts about the experience of doing theater (or any kind of art) in the slow to medium-slow lanes of America, with the heavy star traffic visibly zooming by in the fast lane....

Character : Success

This NYT Magazine article is a must read for educators, parents, and students (of any age.)


I would like to add that I believe 'character' to be at least partly--if only partly--trainable well into adult life. I know adults who have leveraged already-strong traits to improve weaker ones, and I've seen other adults who have let weaker character traits sap strength from their more developed ones. (rehab is full of people who've spiraled down in that way.)


And perhaps it's not necessarily obvious which positive character traits may save your bacon in adult life.  In my case, what the researchers call "zest," may well be what's made late-blooming achievement possible, after I squandered assets of more than one kind throughout my twenties and thirties.  "Zest," for me, is a kind of desperation to experience life as fully as I've intuited myself capable of doing, but have--or had--as of yet failed to do.  Sheer desire for more has impelled me to fight against my own propensities to be distracted and irresolute, a fight I still wage.


When I was in grad school for philosophy (!), back in the 1980s, I wrote a (somewhat half baked) essay on desire as the quality most important in education.  At the time, I was enamored of Israel Scheffler's essay, Of Human Potential.  By "desire," though, I think I meant something along the lines of "character," as educable and trainable throughout one's life.


BTW:  that essay got me invited to join a PhD in Education at Boston College, but I declined, partly out of not being able to make up my mind, partly out of not wanting to go into a field--education research--that I perceived as having less status.  Sigh.  That was probably one of the biggest missed opportunities of my life (though if you think me insufferable now, just imagine me with a Ph.D. after my name).

John Patrick Shanley Says:

"Lose the game. The game is a trap. Stop protecting yourself. Pay the price."


- John Patrick Shanley, Facebook Update, Sept. 1, 2011