Unwelcome Epiphany of the Evening

The two hardest working actors in my class, one of the MFA directors, and I ran through our Big Ten for each other today.  It was enormously helpful, and depressing.  I felt as if all my work on them flushed down the tubes as soon as I was back in that big rehearsal room with the loud hissing from the air conditioning system and saw (saw, rather than felt, because I'd gone numb) myself stiffen up mentally and physically.  Beats and operatives disappeared.  Intentions disappeared.  Why?  Because I'm not yet being rigorous enough in craft.

Craft is there (at least for me) to liberate me from fear.  Craft can't do that if I'm not thorough about it, however.  It's not good enough to do a 'mental' score.  I need to make written notation of everything that is pertinent to performance.  I can't claim that I'll ever be 100 percent about this, so I hope I'm not always going to have to do it.  But, for now, there's no other way.

Also, I must properly warm up my vocal and physical instrument.  I must ground myself mentally and spiritually before stepping out onto stage (or in front of the class).  This is a must.  I must make my panic a discrete, containable entity, not to be denied, but not for me to identify with, either.   

p.s.  I would-be date told me in an email that I was being much too like a "chic" in the wild contortions I put myself through in seeking to find the right etiquette for the situation I had imagined myself to be in.  Oooooo.  Damn.  Nailed to rights.  Embaaaaaaaaarrassing.  I'm gonna have to cowboy up, next time out, and let the chips--or chicks--fall where the may....  Of course, the bad haircut I got today isn't going to help me any until my hair grows out again.  America, it's a tough town.

p.p.s.  I'm up too late because if I go to bed I have to be conscious again in a shorter time period than I want to accept.  I'm also a shot of vodka down and bleary eyed, so...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I've been working inefficiently toward the beginning of the fall term next week, getting work done, in dribs and snatches of memorization and personalization of text, but in no systematic way.  I'm resisting the end of freedom and re-entering Actor Boot Camp for the next eight or nine months.  I enjoyed these past weeks working in summer stock with a measure of autonomy.   

As part of my routine for resisting my inevitable loss of freedom, I've been watching "Dirty Sexy Money" on t.v., because I met Craig Wright last spring. Craig seemed to claim to despise the show--or at least, despise the process of t.v. writing that makes it so impossible for him to write what he really wants--but I've been enjoying it.  It has a trashy soap opera feel that almost takes me out of the story but the actors are so good at alternating between honest realism and honest theatricality, and the writing is often so good, that I forget to be annoyed. Craig Wright is all over it.  If you've seen his plays or heard him speak, you can't miss his touch in the dialogue, or style of argument.  His training by the Jesuits is much evident.

More helpful to me, though, has been watching "The Diving Bell and The Butterfly," which I only found because Neal Corl mentioned it to me a while back.  I can only watch it for about twenty minutes at a time.  It's been too intense.  My plan is to get to the end, and then, when I'm relieved of the anxiety of not knowing what's coming, to watch it again, and that way I can relax into it's pacing, which alone is refreshing.  There's a lot in this film for me, right now, on the brink of going back into a structure I find sometimes hard to bear.  The movie reminds me that I have a choice of tuning my mental resolve; of tightening it, even as I must continue to let go of restrictive mental habits that won't help me. 

Latest Revision of Big Ten

1)  Petruchio - Claudius  (mischievous/earnest - guilty/unrepentant)

2)  Henry IV - Polonius  (authoritative/insecure - paternal/selfish)

3)  Richard III (Act V) - Capulet (greeting guests) (megalomaniacal/self-hating - elegant/crude)

4)  Oberon - Tartuffe (animalistic/intellectual - self-righteous/seductive)

5)  Sir Peter Teazle -Caliban (disappointed/lusty - childlike/cunning)

 Alternate:  Richard III (Act I) (sexy/repulsive)

My current menu of tools from which I can work:

spacial relationships

floor pattern

architecture 

tempo/pace

level

kinesthetic response

shape

theme

comedic/dramatic

weight 

direction (in/out; up/down; front/back; sides)

movement quality (sustained - staccato, e.g., flick, dab, punch, skip)

vocal pitch and placement

dialect

qualities (adjectives, ideally encompassing many contrasts, expressed through accurate actions, not as 'moods.'  Be careful trying this at home, you don't want to hurt yourself.)

place

moment before

use of imagination/self

paraphrase

dropping in

Cicely Barry tools

scansion

play/character research (vote sheet type stuff)

body worlds (breath, bone, liquid, muscle, gut)

elements (earth, air, wind, fire)

subtextual stabs

decisions

realizations

actions

objectives

Recognize any of this?  This list is my training, to date, in a nutshell (from Shakespeare & Company and private coaches as well as from UH).  Remember, The Big Ten is an exercise in contrasts as well as practical preparation for upcoming auditions.  I'm not consciously using the entire above list, but at this point, I can choose from it, and the hope is that I'm using much of it somewhat instinctually.  

And most important of all?  In the next few days, forget all of this and just do it.  I heard you, Sam.

(note:  I park a lot of stuff on this blog that should go into a notebook or file.  It's easier for me to find here, though.)

A Woman in Neither Port

Recently, I wrote about the consumer-shopper trap of Match.com.  Well, I recently got myself in a wee pickle, arranging for two first dates within a week.  Now, I've juggled plenty of first dates in like manner, in the past, but it was never much of a problem, because they were such casual meetings that it was a simple matter to thank my date for a lovely evening and either just not ask her out again or politely phone her to say I'd met someone else with whom I'd hit it off and wish the woman I didn't fancy all best, and good luck.  But, this time, I saw trouble brewing, because I saw chemistry bubbling in both cases.  What I did NOT want to happen, though, was find that I'd had fun, flirtatious evenings with two different women and would have to find a way of jacking only one of them around.  I didn't want to wind up 'comparison shopping' for a girlfriend because it's both rude and tiring.  So, instead, after the first first date, I politely withdrew from the second first date, before ever meeting the woman in person.  I decided to give the first first date a chance of moving on to a second date and third date, etc., etc., and either develop into something or wither on its own, without any double dealings on my part.  Well, considering I never heard back at all from the second first date, my guess is I wound up jacking her around after all.  Damnation.  That feels bad.

Further trouble:  my peripatetic life has left me unable to pursue someone of interest to me in Portland (a very cool gal, indeed, who has no need of waiting around for ME, I'll tell you), while also making would-be dates hesitant, in Houston, because I have no idea how long I'm going to be here--another two years, tops, probably no more than nine months--making me a risky bet. 

To top it off, I'm playing Sir Peter Teazle--an old bachelor married to a much younger woman-- in one of my monologues next week, so there's much room for me to feel doubly ridiculous right about now.   

Maybe Sisyphus Was On to Something

One reason I pursue acting is it's not what I do best, and I can almost accept I'm not particularly better than anyone else would be at it, if they set their mind to doing it (something of a big "if," even among actors).  If I can accept my limitations in my art I may have half a prayer of accepting them in the rest of me. Paradoxically, this makes me no less determined to get as good at acting as I can.  This might be an odd way to live my life, especially in America, given our cults of easy success (on the one hand) and weird religiousities, into which we usually toss our 'spirituality' (on the other).  Maybe Sisyphus kept at it because the options bored him.

Working on My Big Ten

I'm off-book for Oberon, Polonius, Henry IV, Richard III (first speech), Capulet, Caesar, and Caliban. I'm having trouble deciding on pairings. I understand this is true of everyone, including students from past years. Jack would like us to make these 'contrast' in so many ways, that we get ourselves tangled up in options. I'm doing all verse pieces by characters for whom I'm age appropriate, so I'm finding that characters fall into a relatively narrow range. They're more or less all older authority figures. Here's a possible order:

• Richard III (Act I) - Caesar 
• Polonius - Richard III (Act V)
• Sir Peter Teazle - Henry IV
• Watchman (Agamemnon) - Caliban
• Oberon - Capulet ("Welcome, Gentleman....")

The qualities I'm contrasting with these characters (one pair per character) are:

• Sexy/repulsive - Heroic/timorous
• paternal/selfish - guilty/unrepentant
• ? - authoritative/insecure
• loyal/faithless - childlike/cunning
• animalistic/intellectual - elegant/crude

Pieces that have fallen off my list for now:

• Cassius
• Claudius
• Trigorin
• Tartuffe
• Petruchio (I just don't like this prick)

Portland Friends

I did not have the time to visit everyone I wanted to see in Portland, and to those of you I missed, I send regrets, and hope to catch up with you soon--probably during December break. Those friends I did see... aaahhhhh, what an enormous pleasure and balm to my soul! I would say that I "miss you," which is true enough, but being away from you makes coming home all that much, much more sweet. I'm glad we're in each other's lives.

xo,

David!

Out with the Old, In with the New

One of the biggest challenges of grad training is learning to work with people who not only have different and conflicting temperaments, but who react to stress in very different ways. The atmosphere can be volatile, or oppressive, though 'volatile' is probably better for doing good acting, since 'oppressive' can lead to squashed instincts. I don't care much for either, even when I've done more than my part in creating and sustaining both, at different points.

I had an enormously positive summer. My seven-week contract in Oklahoma grounded me and boosted my confidence on stage. I made a couple of new friends and future collaborators. My visits to Lake Tahoe and to Portland reminded me, in spades, that I have good friends, supportive colleagues, and more eager, future collaborators, back home. Back in Houston, I need to move through and beyond the more difficult moments in my learning experience here, and embrace what is to come, without looking back at what is most definitely past.

One area of very positive and new development in Houston: local theater artists whom I respect have begun to contact me about current and future work, which is exciting. Tomorrow, I'm taking part in a living room reading of a new play by a local playwright, and I'm looking forward to hanging out with him and his colleagues. So, there are signs that the coming year in Houston may be less claustrophobic than the last year could sometimes be.

Another positive sign of things to come: from all accounts, each and all of my classmates had a good summer, full of productive and confidence-inspiring work. A good way to begin the fall term.

Back in Houston...

... damn it.

My Big Ten

Five audition pairs to be peformed on August 24th:

Polonius - Caesar
Cassius - Tartuff or Ergon
Richard III - Oberon
Claudius - Petruchio
Trigorin - Capulet

Alternates I'm still considering:

Caliban
Richard III (Act V speech)
Macbeth

Plus, I need an audition pair (for fall season) to be performed August 26th. The roles for which I'm going are Midas, in Mary Zimmerman's "Metamorphoses," and the redneck cop in a new play, called "Overpass," about hurricane Katrina.

I should be in a panic because I'm so far behind, but I'm not. Denial has its uses.