One Great Thing

Update 2012

2012-01-25T01:10:00.002-05:00

Some seriously awesome new-year stuff to report!

In reverse order:

RODRIGO GARCIA WORKSHOP
On Thursday of this week I will be performing in a workshop at CalArts with Rodrigo Garcia, famed director of the Glenn Close vehicle Albert Nobbs. He is doing a guest artist lecture for the Film Directing Program that includes scene study work with myself (and others) on material he's written. It's an amazing opportunity to work one-on-one with a director I really admire. I thought Albert Nobbs was an exceptionally smart film filled with fully dimensional performances from everyone in it. (Glenn Close and Janet McTeer, of course, in contention for Oscars.)

That's not Janet McTeer.

MASTER CLASS
Last week I took an incredibly informative Master Class with commercial casting director Chris Game. I am still figuring out how to maximize my performance within a frame on film, and I was able to get some exciting tips from him that have already changed my approach for the better. He was fast, smart, energetic, and gave it to us straight, which I appreciated. It's always good to hear what life is like on the other side of the table in auditions; he pulled the curtain back on that mystique a lot.

ACTORS KEY
This dovetailed nicely with another commercial workshop I took with Stuart Stone at Actors Key in Burbank. Super nice, very informative and right on with the re-direct.

THESIS IN FEBRUARY
After the holidays I met with CalArts film director Will Orellana who cast me as the lead in his (untitled) thesis film. Will is someone who's work I've been watching develop for three years and I'm excited by his vision. Getting to work with Kate's peers has been invaluable. Shooting begins in Mid-February, but a lot of background research on my part has begun already.

WEB PRESENCE
Before that I created a personal YouTube Channel where I can consolidate clips of my work that have been floating the internet. You can check it out at the link above; it includes Jon Hoche's Rehearsal Journals for the Vampire Cowboys shows we did together, some class projects Kate did with me for Film School as well as drafts of my acting reel.

HONEY BADGER COMMERCIAL
Also on the YouTube Channel is the commercial I did with director Harold Hyde for internet voiceover sensation Randall and his new Honey Badger App for the iPhone. "Randall" is the genius comic entrepreneur who's made serious dividends from his viral video and the tag line, "Honey Badger don't give a shit." An absolute blast to shoot and the app itself is a lot of fun, too.

The biggest news for last:

In January, right at the top of the new year, I shot my first national commercial!

That's actually all I can say about it until it airs, but it's been one of the best, most agonizing secrets to keep. I can now join SAG and start setting the world on fire like a pro. I will be a made man.

Acting Reel 2

2012-01-08T22:41:00.000-05:00

New clips came in! Here's some of what I've been up to last year in the West.

Acting Reel

2012-01-02T16:39:00.008-05:00

Here is some footage from film and TV work I did back in New York. Clips from my tenure in L.A. will be added as soon as I get my hands on it!

Another Day at Work

2011-11-20T15:21:00.000-05:00

In L.A., cars are king. Obvious. Okay. So the normal outgrowth of that truism is that businesses are located off the highway. So is mine: “Pho Citi”, a Vietnamese noodle and soup place. Trash is constantly swirling around in little tornadoes of cigarette wrappers, ancient plastic bags, and pigeon feathers. Each passing car blows the detritus away and back, around and around, right in front of our door.

Yesterday, a deliveryman left the door open to wheel in his handtruck of rice stick noodles and suddenly a fat, greasy road-pigeon was wreaking havoc inside the restaurant, launching itself into the low-hanging Ikea ceiling lamps and shitting on the tables.

Customers were screaming with surprise, fear, and disgust. Every time the bewildered pigeon tried to escape it would fly head-first into the plate-glass windows that face the highway. A sickening smack could be heard each time, feathers drifting down lazily behind it.

Some customers were yelling. Some were trying to scare it in the direction of the open door. Some used their hands to protect their bowls of steaming Vietnamese soup. Nearly everyone had left their seats and stood in postures of readiness.

The pigeon was now seriously out of it. Walking in circles, then hovering in the air, hitting the window, flapping its wings, molting all over. A customer from a table in the corner began trying to chase it out from behind while someone from another table tried to chase it out from the front, resulting in the bird shooting straight up in the air and hitting a ceiling lamp. Our ceiling lamps resemble the kind you might imagine would be in a police interrogation room and they were almost all swinging back and forth on their long cords in a sinister way.

This had been going on for five minutes of pure adrenaline. An ad-hoc peanut gallery began to form and shout orders at the intrepid pigeon-catchers. The cook, Daniel, an 80-pound Chinese man from Vietnam, watched from behind his kitchen window with a bemused smile on his face.

It’s hard to describe how complicated my emotions were as this was going on. On the one hand, this was the most exciting thing to happen in three months. There was a truly pathetic comedy of errors unfolding and I was just as mesmerized by the goings on as everyone else. On the other hand, I was the only staff on site besides Daniel. It was obvious he was not going to join the fray. He works seven days a week and has not had a day off in months. Since I was the face of the restaurant for the time being, a part of me felt duty-bound to save the dignity of the Pho Citi brand and resolve the matter swiftly and without further embarrassment.

But then I began to think of all the mistreatment I and the other staff had suffered under the mismanagement of the owner, Sandra. I would get a certain measure of revenge on her when reading about this encounter on customer review websites like Yelp and MenuPages.com. This job had nearly crushed my soul, why should I do more than the minimum to save face for someone who clearly had no regard for me? I wrestled with this silently for a time as the commotion continued.

At first I tried to contain the situation by grabbing an empty cardboard box from the stockroom and throwing it on top of the creature. This was a disaster, and anyway the box was too small. It had previously contained to-go soy sauce packets. Scaring it out was clearly not working, covering it with a box was unsuccessful…I reasoned then that it would only leave if it wanted to. I looked around for something like bird food that I could use to coax it out with.

The best I could do was a bright green slice of lime.

Hoping against hope with my back to the door, I crouched to the ground and made clicking noises in the back of my mouth with my tongue the way you would get a horse to eat a carrot or an apple: kick-kick-kick-kick. Kick-kick-kick-kick. Kick-kick-kick-kick.

A purple eye turned towards me. Then the whole head. Suddenly, a hopping bird was advancing on me. Maybe to see what horse I was talking to. I backed further and further away until I could feel the breeze from the road. And then the pigeon was gone. It spread its wings and flapped into the daylight, around the corner and out of sight. I turned back into the restaurant, lime in hand.

People had already begun to sit down. I looked around to see if any of the customers had been a reporter and if we would make the news. No one was taking any damning notes and no one looked horrified anymore. No one asked for my name or the name of the owner. The deliveryman continued to bring in boxes of noodles. One table had just finished eating when the pigeon had come in and now were ready to pay. Daniel rang his cook’s bell: another bowl of soup was ready to go out.

Things almost instantly returned to normal and my attention was returned to the work of running the place on my own.

I never saw that pigeon again.

Access and Inspiration

2011-10-25T16:41:00.001-04:00

It is becoming more and more clear to me that on-camera work centers on the idea of access. The camera's proximity provides unprecedented access to the inner workings of your mind, and the most minute thoughts play out on your face (without you having to put them there as a bit of "business" the way you would in theater). A teacher once told me, "Emotion is the sweat produced by the work of pursuing your objective." If you put attention on creating an emotion, you're not trying to get something from your scene partner, you're trying to get something from yourself and it takes you out of the game.

Take your breathing. It happens naturally as part of the autonomic system of your body. As soon as you put attention onto breathing it becomes a chore, and all you can think about is making yourself take a breath at the right time. Putting attention on breathing disrupts the ease with which it comes out. Emotions are autonomic, too. Without working at all, the gears can be seen to be turning when someone looks into your eyes. The face can be read with more clarity because the eyes are blown up to four feet across on a screen, and the eyes are what tell us everything.

This is something I need to hammer into my new consciousness because a great deal of who I am as a person is going to play out onscreen autonomically, without my permission, and who I am needs to be something more vulnerable and less guarded if I'm to have success in this field.

My natural inclination is towards humility, self-deprecation, and "letting the work speak for itself", but these things are all keeping me from engaging the camera (and thus, the viewer) with intimacy. If you're up close but can't get inside, the whole enterprise is frustrated and the work becomes good, but not great.

Something else I've been thinking about is how to take ownership of myself and my career without being obnoxious or entitled; how to go after what I want and believe I deserve it; how to create an atmosphere around me that says, "I am in control, you can relax," rather than, "Do you like me?"

This is particularly hard in an industry town where everyone you meet seems to be in the same market as you and the prevailing attitude is that actors are a dime a dozen. How can you hold your head up high and feel pride?

I think you need to hold on to the things that inspire you personally. To believe in love and family and artistic passion and strive to make yourself better, to improve in such a way that you can say to yourself, "I am better than I was before; things are moving forward even if other areas of my life have stalled or are not on fire yet." If your passion is acting, keep acting and taking classes and digging into what mystery is right outside your grasp. If it's writing, keep churning out those drafts. Keep taking inspiration from the outside world to find the characters that speak through you.

I am having a wonderful week because I just got more involved with the artistic side of my time here as opposed to the staying afloat side which took precedence for two months. It's like a breath of fresh air to keep striving at what I want to be doing. I'm fortunate that I have this time, and I'm going to spend it very wisely.

Secret Video

2011-09-04T11:18:00.002-04:00

This is the view from backstage of the game show I was on as an actor (playing a contestant). The creators did a mock-up of the game for investors to try and sell it to networks. I had been in two previous run-throughs as the main contestant, but suddenly when the money comes in, they wanted me as an alternate. I got so mad I filmed this video just to break my non-disclosure agreement. Then, of course, a guy didn't show up (classic LA flakiness) and I went on after all. It's all in the past, but for those in the know, this was what it was like from the wings. You may not be able to tell, but that figure at the bottom of the screen is eighty-thousand dollars. The jackpot was 3.2 million.

Atmosphere

2011-07-14T21:39:00.001-04:00

Here are some photos of the neighborhood and environs that I have just been able to put up.

Paco Taco

2011-06-08T15:28:00.000-04:00

David and I went to this little treasure downtown last week. Mexicali Taco Co. It's some of the best mexican food I've had since I've been here.

This is the cachetada, which I had with chicken (their specialty), and I also had the famous vampiro which is like a garlic cheese quesadilla. Both were superlative, although I thought the cachetada was better and I had two. I can't believe I never had one of these before!

These guys are the best, highly honorable and great energy. Very friendly and charismatic.

Discipline

2011-06-08T13:25:00.001-04:00

I am finding it very hard to stay disciplined out here. For the moment, no car and no job, so everything is a little easy-breezy and then you look at the clock and the whole day is gone. It's difficult to believe it's not perpetual summer break. I have to make lists every morning of what I need to do, and somehow those lists stay long no matter how many items I knock out.

Here's some big items I did knock out:

1.* Go to the Actor's Work Program and get help finding a job. This is one of the best resources I have found and I wish I had known about it sooner. The Actor's Fund (amazing in itself) has an offshoot that specializes in career development. The operation in NYC is absolutely top notch, I can't say enough things about how professional and smart everyone was when I went a few months ago during the run of Agent G. In LA, the rigor of the program remains to be seen, but I went to orientation and my first workshop, and I am underway. In NYC, the AWP felt like a sanctuary in Times Square where you could go and it was open and friendly, people are buzzing around and there's a computer lab. In LA, the offices are in the SAG building and the layout makes you feel really uncomfortable. You have to wait in an anteroom and then you get shuttled into a conference room where you can't see anything but a secret, anonymous hallway. Everything seems to be behind a closed door. As if you don't spend enough time alone out here, brawp.

2. Get Health Insurance. There is a great blog I mentioned a while ago (that has been priceless) called New Yorker in LA which directed me to the ehealthinsurance.com website. After a week of back and forth and researching, I am now on a Kaiser Permanente HMO plan that should work. Big ups to Mom and Dad for helping with that.

3. Get a Library Card. This one I've wanted to do but was intimidated by the application requirements I saw online, when in fact they're super chill about giving you one. I should have known. There's two really nice library branches within walking distance, Cahuenga and Los Feliz. Very excited to try them out. Kate and I got our cards together and took out materials the same day. She said, "I think I found my new favorite plaaaaaace," because there are so many crazy characters walking the stacks. Absolutely fascinating, unusual people. One was a guy who seemed to be talking to himself about the "order you had to go in", which was apparently Dog, Rabbit, Snake, Bear. You could not go Snake, Bear, Rabbit, Dog. Hmm.

*So get a job and get a car where the actual numbers one and two, but those are going to take a touch longer than I thought. I remain optimistic. I have a number of great people who came out here before I did who are in my corner and it's making a big difference.

There's a great line in Malick's The Thin Red Line (one of my all time favorite movies) where Nick Nolte says to John Cusack, "From now on you don't have to tell me that you agree with me or that you think I'm right. Ever. We'll just accept it as given." Find acting work is kind of an uber-number one, or super-objective, so we'll take that goal as given. It's running underneath everything else I do.

Back in the Saddle

2011-05-31T17:18:00.001-04:00

Okay, everyone. I am back in LA after appearing in one of the most successful shows of my theatrical career: The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G. Time now to concentrate on camera work. But before I move on, let me say a quick thank you. Now that I am over the jetlag and the madness of the graduation ceremonies and screenings at CalArts, I can give a proper shout out to the people who materially supported my stay in NYC.

First and foremost, my parents and sister.

Next, the brave souls who let me stay with them at their apartments:
Adam Mazer, Dan Rogers, Natalie Eilbert and Matt
Brian Morvant and Samantha Mason
Aaron Weiner and Jamie Klassel
Alison and Bill Washabaugh
Temar Underwood and Andrea Smith
Amy Waschke

Next, those who took me under their wing:
Jon Hoche and Erica Swindell
Angel Desai

And those who got me side gigs to keep the cash flow flowing:
Julie Leedes and Chris Ceraso with MTC
Billie Levinson from The Actor's Work Program
(Jon Hoche, Brian Morvant, Kris Ayers: thanks for the leads!)

You guys all made it possible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

ES&L II

2011-04-25T15:13:00.000-04:00

Another punctuation and acting intersection from Lynne Truss:

But, as many classical actors will tell you, it can be just as effective to lower your voice for emphasis as to raise it. Poets and writers know this too, which is where dashes and brackets come in. Both of these marks ostensibly muffle your volume and flatten your tone; but, used carefully, they can do more to make a point than any page and a half of italics.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

2011-04-18T11:02:00.001-04:00

I started Lynne Truss's book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" last night on loan from Aaron, and in the first twenty pages came across this absolute gem:

The reason it's worth standing up for punctuation is not that it's an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning. Punctuation herds words together, keeps others apart. Punctuation directs you how to read, in the way musical notation directs a musician how to play. As we shall see in the chapter on commas, it was first used by Greek dramatists two thousand years ago to guide actors between breathing points...

AGENT G First Reviews

2011-03-28T12:48:00.000-04:00

Jon and I at it again.
Photo: Jim Baldassare

Theatermania
The play's tone shifts after the battle, when its hero, Hung Tran (a robust and expertly calibrated turn from Paco Tolson) brings The Playwright (played with wryness and a certain sweet nerdiness by William Jackson Harper) to the stage. Hung, an incarnation of Nguyen's cousin, a Vietnamese refugee who survived a horrific journey in the China Sea, demands that Playwright tell his story truthfully, announcing "You're here to help turn this story out correct, playwright."

I have to give mad props to Andy Propst from Theatermania, the guy has shown me so much critical love in NYC, and I am lucky to have someone so thoughtful in my corner.

That Sounds Cool
After seeing Agent G, I'm not just a believer again, I'm a thoroughly obsessed fan: Nguyen's latest is not just a tale of Vietnam, filtered through war movies, noir drama, and spy flicks, but the tale of an artist daring to find his voice without compromising his aesthetic.

Hello, Aaron Riccio. Aaron reviews everything under the sun and is always on point.

nytheatre.com
The ensemble of five is superlative. Paco Tolson and Bonnie Sherman are spectacular as, respectively, Hung and three different (and very important) white women; Harper is funny and then moving as the beleaguered Playwright; Amy Kim Waschke breathes life into numerous stereotypes as, among others, a Vietnamese boy and a young Vietnamese woman who works as the housekeeper at a whorehouse. Stealing the show constantly is Jon Hoche, who plays seemingly a zillion different antagonists to Hung and/or The Playwright...

Martin Denton. A living legend who works tirelessly to legitimaize the work we all do downtown. Thanks as always, man.

ComicCritique.com

The ensemble matches this litter of intentions each with their own shuffled deck of attitudes and identities, particularly Bonnie Sherman and Amy Kim Waschke, who incarnate an extraordinary library of pop poses and genuine emotional textures, while tenacious comedians Paco Tolson and Jon Hoche screw their incalculable chops to the shticking place.

William Jackson Harper is nervously, exasperatedly masterful as the conflicted-nebbish Playwright who invokes Woody Allen’s and Kevin Smith’s self-referential models to hide behind, but in the last scene there’s nowhere to hide.

Thanks, Adam McGovern!

Also check out friend of the company Jenn Kim's interview with Qui and I at Pink Ray Gun here. She came to the show on her birthday. Amazing.

Sucker Punch

2011-03-27T12:52:00.000-04:00

This is an article/rant about the geek world vs. Zach Snyder and the reaction from fans of comic book material to adaptations/appropriations of it in pop culture. Fascinating and well written.

Read it here.

AICN interview with Yuen Woo Ping

2011-03-27T12:44:00.000-04:00

I liked this interview with fight choreography legend Yuen Woo Ping. Here's my favorite part, as it's something I've been trying to ariculate for a long time regarding fights in movies these days. You can read the whole thing here.

I’m not afraid of long takes, because long takes have more visual power. As you said, you can just sit there and watch the whole scene all together and it’s more enjoyable. The second reason is because it’s more realistic. It’s not fake. You can see very movement and every action in the fight through long takes. If it’s filmed with short takes, all you see is just the editing work, not the actual martial arts work. It’s just really important for you to see every movement is not fake. There definitely are a lot of difficulties with filming long takes, because you have to do it in sequence and all together, so the point is the actors must know martial arts. If they don’t know martial arts, I will train them to let them get into it.

Provocation and Racial Humor

2011-03-10T12:37:00.000-05:00

Theatre, in the main, deals with provocation. It uses bodies and words to express thoughts and feelings very immediately. Because it is dramatic it often deals with controversy and the underbelly of human relationships. Therefore, to participate in watching it is an act of bravery and courage. It is not easy to spend time in the underbelly, but that is where we learn the most about ourselves; from the areas we ignore for comfort's sake.

People always say edgy racial humor has to be looked at from the perspective of the people behind it: what was their intention? Is the joke coming from a place of love, hate, ignorance, thoughtlessness or keen attention? Are they using comedy to shine a light or for an easy laugh? I think Chris Rock is a genius comedian and he is clearly as smart as they come, but the jokes themselves could wound an audience in the wrong hands.

It's not always possible to know the intention of the artist. So what then? If you're watching something funny but think it might be offensive, or you think something is racist but is supposed to be funny...how can you tell whether or not the artist can get away with it?

What are the signals that let you know can trust the artist enough to allow them to transgress politeness and safety with you?

I don't know, actually. Probably that the work is somehow a reflection of the artist as a person. That's the big one. Every race has an iteration of "I know, right?" comedy that skewers the culture they grew up in.

Another indicator is the emotional subtext. Are the jokes mean-spirited? Are the laughs cheap because they are based solely on an accent or underlining what makes X or Y different? Is it mocking or well-articulated? Is it a roast or a rant?

With a play, for example, is the joke delivery method being used this way for a reason? A lot of good clowning and comedy is based on creating goofy characters who speak funny, but are the jokes in the service of something more?

There really is no accounting for the feelings of all people, but most racism in comedy is cheap. Usually you can tell whether the intentions of the creators are enlightened or not.

Qui Nguyen's play The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G deals with race. A lot. It also deals with sex, class, war, and responsibility. It deals with reconciling who you are with the American dream. It deals with the collision between your own life and the life you give to your art. It is hilariously irreverent and will likely ruffle a lot of feathers. I know the artists and I know their intentions. Come check it out for yourself.

Detachment

2011-02-01T14:55:00.000-05:00

New Yorkers are famous for being cold. They bump you out of the way with their shoulders on the sidewalk even if there's room. They say things like, "Fuck you if you can't take it." They thrive on hardship and adversity because they can then claim how hardcore they are for surviving it. Not everyone is this way. They can also be incredibly generous and kindhearted, but make no mistake: those are some of the coldest, hardest streets on Earth and you need thick, thick skin to walk them.

So coming from this harsh, unforgiving environment to sunny California and the laidback atmosphere has been a lot to handle. I usually don't warm up to people until I've known or worked with them for months, remaining guarded until the New York facade thaws. (A lot of my friends are actors I've been in shows with and they will probably tell you I wasn't that much fun to hang out with until we were in production.)

So imagine my dismay when discovering that film sets are basically like the first day of rehearsal of a play. No one knows anyone and the first tentative overtures to friendship are loaded with baggage. People talk up how important they are and who they've worked with. They try out jokes and see how far they can go. They flirt and try too hard. I really have not experienced this level of open salesmanship before and it appears to be an L.A. thing. In New York, yes actors were a commodity, but here they are also the pitchman. Performing is only a third of what The Actor in L.A. is; the other two parts are advertising and advertising.

For a long time I worked in a New York theatre circle that respected good work and would promote from within based on merit. The salesmanship and self-promotion could've been better on my part, but I felt like I could make a name for myself based on the acclaim of the work itself--which is all artists really care about anyway. Making work.

Well, that got me only so far. In the position I'm in right now, getting hired means having a website, a reel, headshots, postcards, a top class with a top casting director that has stars dropping by, and an oversized personality. (Part of capturing "the truth" on film also means that the talent is skewed towards improv performers and non-actor wildmen like Puck from the Real World who are unpredictable.) I may have always been the CEO of a business called "Paco the Actor," but while in NYC I must have given power of attorney to the art department and they ran the place into the ground.

I'm proud of the work I've done and the career I've carved out for myself, but opportunity is something to always be searching for actively and that's never been clearer to me than here in Los Angeles. You have to bring your A-game every time out and get yourself out there in every way you can. Online, in the face, in the ear, on a postcard. Never rest.

L.A. Domination Phase One: Student Films

2011-02-01T02:23:00.002-05:00

I've been doing student films. They've got high-quality equipment, brief shooting schedules, and opportunities for networking. The personnel have also been told by professionals what professional conduct is and aspire to it. (For those keeping score, Phase Two is to take my newly improved bad-ass reel and score L.A. representation. Phase Three is go out on big time auditions that will bring home the bacon. Phase Four: commence domination.)

I have participated in five productions since I've been here and have learned a ton. Perhaps the most important thing I can offer so far of that knowledge is this:

YOU HAVE TO HAVE PATIENCE.

Simple, right? Yes and no. It takes a lot of stamina to stay focused and in the game take after take, and there is a lot of waiting around. It really helps me to envision the end product and to keep in mind that everyone is working hard to make you look good... no matter how little they actually pay attention to you.

This was a hard lesson for me to get drilled into my brain. Do people on film sets really pay little attention to the actors? It can certainly feel that way. It's not so much that they aren't paying attention to you as it's they're paying more attention to their own jobs (which have nothing to do with your feelings or ego. Another hard lesson.)

On a film shoot, the director is trying to make the conditions optimal for "capturing" moments, like lightning in a bottle. So they'll spend hours tweaking the lights or switching filters or changing the frame so that when the actors get there, the chemistry between the characters can crackle and the flashes of lightning will be contained in a flawlessly composed bottle. I've found film directors are not really into rehearsal because capturing a scene also means capturing "real" reactions and running it too many times can lead to a "canned" performance.* I thought this was a load of poop until I started seeing it happen in people's work. The camera is just too close. It sees everything. It can tell if you are ahead of the curve as opposed to really in the moment. When you don't know what the other actor is going to do, it really makes your body come alive and be a receptive instrument. When we are receptive we may do things physiologically that we don't even know we're doing, and that is the very juice that film directors want to get. The rawness of truth.

*David Fincher is only one famous exception to this, having shot 99 takes of the opening scene of The Social Network. "To beat the acting out of them" to get to the truth. Hmmm.

This need for conditions to be right entails every department needing the director to answer their 500 technical questions. The director constantly has their attention on deciding something. Adding more something here, racking focus a touch sooner there or something similar. This means that you have your own questions about how the scene went and they...kind of can't deal with it right now. I have frequently felt the need to have my performance validated, or at least commented upon, but you really have to just let them tell you if they need something different and trust yourself. Twenty people hold their breath when the camera rolls, and maybe three of them are thinking about your work. The rest are looking at the shadows on the wall or the glare on a window or if your hair is coming undone. "It's a director's medium," they said and they weren't kidding.

And it's not a bad thing, it's just a different thing. Theater actors are used to getting fawned over. We get a full month of a director's undivided attention. Big moments in a play are agreed upon/constructed together after hours of hot debate and mutual negotiation. Once everything is blocked and everyone has come to a consensus and you're ready to go, the director turns their attention to the technical elements and the actors are on their own. In film, you're in tech the whole time. (This is not news or even a new analogy, but like I said, I had to drill it in there because it's so different and repeating it here just makes sense.)

Constantly starting and stopping in the middle of lines, readjusting to hit marks...sometimes you'll give an amazing reading and you'll have to do it again because the boom was in the shot or a plane went by. There really does always seem to be a plane going by. Every time there's a new camera setup you wait for what feels like forever and maybe you haven't even said your first line yet.

Most people find tech to be the worst part of doing a play because of the starting and stopping and the slamming on of the brakes in the middle of getting your moment on. I felt that way until recently. In fact, each time you do a take you get another opportunity to knock it out of the park. If you're having trouble with the mechanics of the scene or a certain moment you get to give it another shot. Another chance to get it closer to honesty or truthfulness. Because your scenes are thoroughly broken down into their component parts, you get to be highly specific with every beat. And we all want specificity, right?

Los Angeles

2011-01-22T14:07:00.000-05:00

I'm in L.A. now. It's amazing.

The Weather
I was secretly terrified of the weather, that it would be like summer year-round. Dismally hot and sticky, with deadly strength-sapping humidity like I'd become accustomed to after 8 years in NYC. Actually, here it's closer to my favorite time of year, Fall, mostly cool and breezy but nice and hot in the sun. Well, the sun is everywhere. My favorite phrase to describe the sun in the time I've spent here is, "It's beating down on me!" I usually say this in the car with Kate because she blasts the heat no matter the season or time of day so that adds to the effect.

This is right outside our house from the porch. We also have a backyard complete with lawn chairs from the previous tenants.

The Neighborhood
I am living with Kate and two roommates in a big-ish place in Silverlake. Silverlake has ritzy spots and depressed spots but we're in a great family neighborhood on a tree-lined street minutes away from Brooklyn-esque culture like coffee shops, thrift stores, vegan restaurants and a great vintage movie theater. Our house is in the vicinity of Los Feliz, Echo Park,and Sunset Junction, so there is a lot of great people watching and atmosphere.

Santa Monica Blvd and N. Hoover St.

Business
I've had the good fortune to be able to connect right away with friends of mine who've made the trip out before me and their wisdom has been invaluable. Getting to know a whole new business culture and entertainment industry protocol is going to take some time, but thanks to my friends going to endless coffees and hang-out dates with me, it won't take as long as it might otherwise. If any of my New York theater friends are reading this and thinking of moving into film, start now with your on-camera projects. Having a reel is absolutely critical. Go to NYU or Columbia or wherever you need to to get yourself on film. I've seen a bunch of really cool independent actor-generated footage and I encourage you to make that kind of stuff or find it in NYC. I was fortunate enough to have an NYU thesis film, a Law&Order, and some good indie stuff in the can already, so I'm assembling it now and putting my own together. More on that soon.

Vegan Restaurant

In New York, "one-on-ones" are the meetings you can take with Casting Directors and Agents. Here, they're called "workshops". I've been doing a lot of these in an effort to jump start my name-recognition for pilot-season given that I've only just got here.

I've also got a profile on Casting Networks (you have to sign up again if you've already got one on the East Coast--"different servers" they said) and have been submitting myself to some cool projects. I've been called in for a bunch of things and booked most of them, although whether or not I opted ultimately to DO them has been mixed. The film work I have is mostly from 2005-ish, so the more I can get myself in something recent, the better. Nobody cares about Off-Broadway because they don't know what it is. If they can't put it in a DVD player, it never happened. Awesome.

Kate on a picnic this summer

With Dalton at Venice Beach

Griffith Observatory, right by our house

Dalton and Louise on their visit

I played a DP in a plagued student film, here's my cast shot for the credits. Broad comedy, people.

More to come!

More Assorted Research

2010-12-11T22:41:00.000-05:00

Subterranea is trying to get off the ground and here's some funny things that have crossed the ol' path over the course of some research.

Confluence

2010-12-07T22:02:00.000-05:00

I checked out a friend's blog last week and saw the "It Gets Better" video from Jon Berry, the director of the US Office of Personnel Management. As with the others, it's a very affecting testimonial, but my friend picked up on something he said which is still with me a week later: God doesn't make junk.

The simplicity and far-reaching implications of this statement are so profound, and again I must give props to "E" for noting how universally applicable it is. It is perhaps the best catch-all personal affirmation I have heard, no matter the circumstances. Unless those circumstances involve you not believing in God. Hm.

The week I saw that video was the same week I went to an open call for The Public Theater's Timon of Athens. I hadn't read it, so in preparation I went over the text on my Kindle (excellent for portable collected volumes of public domain texts like Shakespeare) and in doing so came across this line:

"Why dost thou call them knaves? thou know'st them not."

The context in the play doesn't really have much to do with the American culture war, but in the abstract it seemed immediately resonant with regard to adolescent bullying and the thinly-veiled homophobia in congressional politics.

The man was a genius!

November

2010-10-26T00:43:00.000-04:00

October is drawing to a close and the million things that were so important that had to be done this month have, in the main, been taken care of. Here are some of the things I am thinking about.

Getting out to see Kate in her new apartment and seeing what we can get up to in the neighborhood.

Getting better at driving.

Finishing my reel.

Visiting at home and seeing friends.

Prepping Subterranea for a limited production next season.

I think the most dangerous place to be in November will be between me and a camera. Got a lot of learnin' to do, and hours logged is the only way to get comfortable. That and classes, I suppose.

Had a very fruitful past few weeks including

readings of Lloyd Suh's Great Wall Story and Larry Kunofsky's The Myths We Need,

workshop performances of Qui Nguyen's The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G,

and seeing some great new work from The Vampire Cowboys Saloon artists and David Deblinger (his one-man show Beyond Measure was directed by my friend Aaron Weiner for a few nights at Nuyorican Poets Cafe).

Oh, and almost winning an Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in last season's The Brokenhearteds by Temar Underwood.

Missed it by thiiiiiiiis much.

You know what else is interesting? Kate said something enlightening to me about my approach to Shakespeare. My position was that the writing is poetry, the most beautifully constructed sentences in English, and the audience should be able to hear you honoring that in your delivery of it. Not recitation or too flowery, but understanding the depth of the verse and employing it in such a way that they know you know it. She said, playwrights do not want to hear their lines read as poetry, they want to hear them read as lines. Like, between people with needs.

That's horribly simplifying it, but I think she's right. Every time I approach Shakespeare I feel this American Standard voice coming out of my mouth and not necessarily the character. Mostly because I want to do justice to the language I love so much, but that's not even how Shakespeare would've wanted it to be done. He'd be onstage using the language to compete with drunks, animals, political maneuvering and the talkative crowds. There may or may not have been any poetry at all when you might get a tomato thrown at you for being boring.

Internet Research

2010-10-18T15:53:00.002-04:00

The fastest way for an actor like me to get immediate dramaturgical immersion in the crazy ass world of a play like Agent G is to hit up Wikipedia and Youtube. Here is some preliminary research I've culled from The Cloud.

WIKIPEDIA
The Vietnam War
This page is historical background and major events.

Boat People
This one has a wealth of "External links" to follow up on the Vietnamese immigration experience (some of them first hand accounts).

Viet Cong
The villains of Agent G.

South Vietnam
Basically background on the South before the Fall of Saigon, which effectively ended the war and led to the reunification of North and South.

YOUTUBE
Choson Ninja
This is a Korean "ninja technique" tutorial channel with some very strange but interesting moves. The earlier videos are interesting to me.

"California Gurls" Katy Perry(feat. Snoop Dogg)
They wouldn't let me embed this video, but you can watch it here. Then again, you probably know the song already.

viewer discretion advised

The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G: First Bite

2010-10-18T13:16:00.000-04:00

art by Jeremy Arambulo whose stuff is consistently amazing

So this is the poster for Vampire Cowboys' next show (lovingly amended to "Agent G") the First Bite workshop of which will be next week at the Battle Ranch at 8pm Monday and Tuesday. The website has all the details.

It's been a long time in table/reading development and we're hard at work trying to give it a stage life now. We'll probably be presenting only the first act, but already there's film noir, sci-fi, Miss Saigon, James Bond, Pirandello, Katy Perry and horribly funny plays within the play. Oh, and some amazing fights that take place basically in a box. No shortage of edgy, fun theatre candy here.

The action sequences are really good so far and I thought I would preview the process a little by offering my notes on what is historically known as "The Beer Fight."

SECTION ONE

1. Ninja Running w/ looks and katas

2. Two sword dodges (Amy)

3. Nunchuck dodge into left crescent (Jon)

4. Right roundhouse (Amy)

5. Paper block/hand block/paper strike (Bonnie)

6. Nunchuck dodge/paper parry/nunchuck dodge/paper tap (Jon)

SECTION TWO

1. Right sword kick parry into left crescent (Amy and Jon)

2. Simultaneous knife disarm and paper strike (Bonnie)

3. Sword block, twisty move, spin paper strike (Amy)

4. Take nunchuck hit into running (Jon)

SECTION THREE

1. Triple paper/knife attack (Bonnie, Amy, Jon)

2. Hand grab into double hand neck chop (Bonnie)

3. Backward dodge (Jon and Amy)

4. Head/hair slam (Bonnie)

5. Outside shoulder tap, inside fist (Amy and Jon)

6. Take stomach hit into running (All)

SECTION FOUR

1. Running sequence right then left

2. Pop up into right cross (Bonnie)

3. Catch return punch, fist crunch, domino kick

4. Take superman punch to the ground

5. Neck grab, human shield left then right

6. Right kick and toss away

7. Nunchuck dodge left and right, disarm, right nuts kick

8. Over the shoulder reset

9. Nunchuck strike right (reset under), strike left (reset under), strike left with nunchuck pop out

10. Flourish!

By this time I will be a complete mess, but the show must go on. We'll all be addicted to five-hour energy shots by the end of this week. That's three weapons, unarmed combat and a shitload of running.

Feel free to print this out and bring it with you if you would like to follow along ;)

SUBTERRANEA

2010-10-04T00:04:00.000-04:00

Ensemble Studio Theatre's Octoberfest reading series is under way, and Subterranea was performed twice last week to great success. I would have posted about it here, but Jon and I literally were staying up all night making changes and revising based on what we learned in the rehearsal room. Octoberfest is a pretty amazing event with about a million shows going day and night. We were nestled in between some of the most exciting playwrights out there now, all of us giving our shows another baby step forward in development. It felt like the big leagues.

The team was as follows:

Nick: Paco Tolson
Dick: Jon Hoche
Ensemble: Erica Swindell, Julia Crockett, and Amy Waschke

Director/Stage Directions: Robert Ross Parker

These actors gave so much, and rolled with our punches every time we met. Trying this, trying that, getting out of the comfort zone, dealing with cuts, trying out dialects...it was amazing to watch them tackle all of that and we were honored to have them aboard.

We are also proud to announce that the machinery of production is revving up, and we are actively meeting producers to get this thing off the ground. It's an extremely exciting time. Thanks to Graeme Gillis, Annie Trizna, Tim Scales, Kate our stage manager, and Heidi Handelsman for their staff support at EST.

American Theater magazine article

2010-10-01T20:36:00.003-04:00

Here is a link to the article in American Theater on Qui Nguyen, co-artistic director of Vampire Cowboys, in which I am quoted. It's by Michael Criscuolo. When he approached me to submit my two cents on working with Qui he warned that what I wrote may be used in part or not at all. I wrote about three pages to make ensure some pithy nugget made it past the editors, and voila!

The article in full is reposted below if you just hate following links or can't wait to get to it.

If this were the beginning of a Qui Nguyen play, it would probably start with a high school dweeb accidentally opening a gateway to Hell. Or a ninja-style throwdown between two Manhattan street toughs and a Brooklyn gang lord. There would be a gleeful torrent of elaborate fight scenes, machine-gun barrages of snappy banter and enough profanity to make David Mamet blush.

Now, if this sounds more like a movie or a comic book than a play, don't worry: that's the idea. For most of the past decade, Nguyen has been on a self-appointed mission to make theatre safe for dorks. As the resident playwright for New York City's Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company(where he is also co-artistic director), he has written an onslaught of irreverent, action-packed geekfests designed to (a) show the hipster and fanboy crowds that theatre can be cool and fun, and (b) make several genres that have long been associated with other media—science fiction, horror, martial arts—palatable for theatrical consumption.

Since 2007, all of Nguyen's plays for Vampire Cowboys—which include the horror movie-inspired Alice in Slasherland, the blaxpoitation samurai mash-up Soul Samurai and Fight Girl Battle World, his love letter to sci-fi—have sold out their runs, primarily on strong word of mouth. Nguyen's rapidly growing fan base, built from both the indie theatre and Comic-Concrowds, anticipates his plays with the kind of giddy enthusiasm usually reserved for the latest Harry Potter movie. The crowd at one of Nguyen's shows can be a show unto itself—waves of raucous laughter crash through the theatre while loud cheers and gasps of awe and terror converge like Voltron. It's like watching Independence Day and a Dane Cook concert simultaneously.

Critics and peers are also starting to get with the program. Soul Samurai nabbed a GLAAD Media Award nomination, and Fight Girl scored a New York Innovative Theatre Award nomination for outstanding full-length script. In 2006, Vampire Cowboys landed the NYIT Foundation's Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, a cash prize "for consistent production of outstanding work." And this past spring, the company was awarded a prestigious Obie grant.

This season, Nguyen kicks things up another notch with two projects that promise to take him where he hasn't gone before. Beginning Mar. 31, Vampire Cowboys premieres his newest play,The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G., at New York's Incubator Arts Project. The semi-autobiographical tale—which aims to turn the lesser-known genre of Asian identity plays on its ear—features Nguyen himself as a lead character, struggling to write a meaningful drama about his cousin's true life journey to America, and constantly getting razzed by the other characters for putting himself in his own play.

Then, Nguyen takes his act to the West Coast with Krunk Fu Battle Battle, a new hip-hop musical commissioned by Los Angeles's East West Players that runs May 12-June 26. The project, about a kung fu teen who battles a shogun and his henchmen, marks Nguyen's musical theatre debut and the first time in recent memory he'll be premiering a new work without his longtime Vampire Cowboys collaborators by his side.

Nguyen at left (photo by Nathan Lemoine); right, Paco Tolson, Temar Underwood and Melissa Paladino in Fight Girl Battle World, by Vampire Comboys, 2008 (photo by Theresa Squire)

Despite the exuberant absurdity of making a snarky teddy bear a major character in Alice in Slasherland (achieved with animatronics) and of Soul Samurai's bloodthirsty title character greeting the audience with a casual "Moshi moshi, muthafuckahs," Nguyen is no gag writer. "I don't set out to write comedies," he says, explaining that his initial goal is "usually to make the audience cheer." Taking his cue from action/adventure genres, Nguyen says he's "more interested in writing something that's high-adrenaline—it's about that kind of thrill that you get." That thrill fuels his never-ending desire to attempt the seemingly impossible on stage, like disemboweling a demon (which he did in Alice in Slasherland) or staging an outer-space dogfight (a highlight from Fight Girl, done with hand-held mock-ups and puppeteers).

Still, he realizes "there's going to be something inherently funny" about seeing such moments performed live on stage, and confesses that he relishes making "people's heads explode with laughter." Nguyen is quick to point out that his plays are never meant to be campy: "When we're doing a samurai play, we're legitimately trying to do a samurai play"—but he admits his plays are intended to simultaneously celebrate and send up whatever genre he's tackling. Case in point: The scene in which a sword-wielding Ophelia (yes, Shakespeare's Ophelia) singlehandedly takes on an army of ninja zombies in Living Dead in Denmark, Nguyen's tongue-in-cheek zombie sequel to Hamlet, hilariously (and intentionally) evokes both Kill Bill and Charlie's Angels while blazing its own iconic trail.

Given his proclivity for rapid-fire, profanity-laced repartee, strong-but-sexy female protagonists and a preference for creating new genre archetypes, it's not surprising that Nguyen's idols are screenwriters Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith and comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan. Though he's a playwright of color, he insists he has no political or racial axe to grind. But, as his colleagues insist, that doesn't mean there's not more going on underneath the surface of his blood-splattering antics.

Vampire Cowboys co-artistic director Robert Ross Parker, who directs all of Nguyen's plays for the company, thinks his creative partner's humor "comes from approaching style and genre very seriously." Actor Paco Tolson, a Vampire Cowboys regular, marvels at the "giddy disregard for limitation in Qui's work. There are no taboos. Race, sex and politics are all fair game to him." (Italics and embolding mine, of course. -PT) Carlo Alban, who played lead roles in both Denmark and Slasherland, calls Nguyen "a quiet revolutionary, a subversive, a ninja." And Maureen Sebastian, who portrayed the title role in Soul Samurai, praises Nguyen for stretching "the boundaries of what a script can do," and, in turn, "what American theatre can do."

Nguyen's distinctive style came about, in part, in reaction to his grad school instructors' insistence that visual, action-based stories were more appropriate for film than theatre. "It was about talking, talking, talking, but never showing," he recalls. "Do you think Shakespeare thought about that? In Romeo and Juliet, they shouldn't have a sword fight because we're a talking medium?" Nguyen rebelled against such conventional notions and began churning out a body of work that comes off like a collection of rowdy mash notes to pop culture.

The love affair began in his hometown El Dorado, Ark., where his Vietnamese parents reared him on kung fu movies because they wanted him to see stories where the heroes were Asian. Furthermore, they boldly taught him that most of the world was Asian and looked like him, so he wouldn't feel out of place in ethnically barren Arkansas. It was a calculated exaggeration that gave Nguyen, in his words, "great self-esteem" and a trove of inspiration.

Nguyen's heritage provides the source material for The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G., in which the author insists he will not be playing himself. ("I'm no actor" he says; the role of "Qui" will be played by a professional.) In the script, however, as Nguyen the character gets bogged down by uncertainty, Nguyen the writer increasingly explodes both style and form, playing with a revolving door of genres. "When people meet me and find out I write plays, they assume a lot of times that I write serious Asian drama," he says, eager to crack viewer expectations wide open with a well-placed theatrical roundhouse kick.

With Krunk Fu Battle Battle (which features a score by Beau Sia and Marc Macalintal), Nguyen takes the plunge into musical book-writing, a job for which East West's artistic director Tim Dang thinks the playwright is well suited. "Qui's writing is 'now,' it's 'today,'" Dang says. "It ventures out into hip-hop, poetry, anime, but it can still be accessible to a diverse audience." Those qualities led Dang to commission Nguyen, whose career he'd been following for several years, to pen the family-friendly tuner. For Nguyen, it's a happy return to the aesthetic territory of Soul Samurai. "My favorite things in the world are early '80s hip-hop, comic books and samurai stories," he says, excited about the opportunity to once again write something that incorporates all three.

No matter what genre he's working in, Nguyen's goal remains the same: "to show that theatre is just as cool as waiting in line to see the latest movie blockbuster."

Michael Criscuolo is a New York-based actor and writer. He is currently starring in the premiere of Tim Errickson's play, Endless Summer Nights, for Boomerang Theatre Company.

Lonely Leela

2010-09-09T00:15:00.000-04:00

Dear friend Rehana Mirza's multimedia play Lonely Leela is getting a showcase through New Georges next week and we had our first rehearsal today. It's an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland/Alice Through the Looking Glass and it's mostly set within the fantastical world of the internet wherein the inhabitants are all puppets designed by Spica Webb. Today was mostly getting to know what you can do with her puppets and how to best facilitate a wide range of expression. There are finger puppets, hand puppets, sock puppets and rod puppets, each with different demands on the actor. They mainly have gigantic eyes and hilarious tufts of hair. The script is wild and deals with a ton of unexpected actions from the characters and I kid you not, every spare moment I had I was trying to get one of them to look like they were riding a segway as called for in the text.

I think challenge-based productions are a ton of fun and necessitate new ideas, bringing out the best creativity juices. Very excited.

Some Summer Things

2010-09-02T11:41:00.001-04:00

A few things that blew my mind this summer.

1. Conor McPherson's film The Eclipse starring Ciaran Hinds, Aidan Quinn, Jim Norton and Iben Hjejle. This has all the trappings of a supernatural story (McPherson's white whale and perpetual theme of his plays) and has three moments that scared me more than any movie I've seen in years, but it's really about the complicated relationship between three writers over the course of a literary festival in Ireland. Ghost story, yes, but it's mostly an intimate, meditative film with a European pace. The acting and writing are off the charts. This is something I saw late at night while Kate was sleeping, and a few times I was sure I woke her up because I screamed out loud. That's right, I said it.

2. Justin Cronin's novel The Passage. This is still in hardcover and can be found at bigger retailers where people sit in the aisles all day and it is at these places that I have been reading the shit out of it for free just like I did with Stephen King's mostly excellent Under the Dome. I'm not even done (it's about 500 pages), but I don't care, it's that good. It's going in. I feel like I looked into this book based on the jacket reviews from other writers (including King) not knowing anything about it and was rewarded handsomely so I won't tell too much, but it's a showcase of what it means to be entertained as you read. In the same way that Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is a reading experience, Cronin has thought of everything and uses a wide array of narrative devices to keep things engaging. Don't want it to end. The only thing is that it is apparently a first novel in an upcoming trilogy and the groundwork-laying for the coming volumes is fairly obvious. I got through 200 pages and was like, "You're sure taking your sweet time with this character introduction," you know what I mean? Still amazing. Light years better than Guillermo del Toro's The Strain which is, at bottom, the same story.

3. Antichrist by Lars von Trier starring Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. I saw this late at night, too. This is classic von Trier. Pompous, gorgeous, sublimated fear of women. I am still really confused by it and by the things I saw take place, but it is highly polarizing by design. Cannes audiences loved or hated it, with people walking out and exclaiming things. People from every side are up in arms over some of the things that take place, and that of course is the point. He's a provocateur. It's pretty innovative cinematographically, writing and story aside, and it's almost worth it for that. Not for the squeamish or those without a sense of humor as black as night.

Was very disappointed to not be able to see much theater this summer although Kate had two award-winning productions at the Looking Glass.

I also had the pleasure of working with her on some of the most enlightening short film work I've done. We wrapped The Diary Thief with the help of so many friends after shooting in every far off corner of the city with basically no crew during the worst heat wave I've ever had in New York. I am actually sitting here sweating my face off as I write this since it's still blazing outside.

Tzipora Kaplan, also of Kate's production company See Films, directed a music video I was in at her office and it was a ton of fun. No pics yet. It'll premiere with a slew of other original music videos on my birthday at Bar13 near NYU.

Just trying to get as much camera time in before LA.

New York Innovative Theater Award Nomination

2010-07-20T10:26:00.002-04:00

I am happy to finally be able to report here that the NYIT Awards, which are the TONYS of the Off-Off Broadway world, have nominated me for Best Actor in a Featured Role for my work in Temar Underwood's play The Brokenhearteds. It's an honor and a great encouragement for Temar's fledgling company I Mean! Productions. You've got to hear him say the company name out loud. It's hilarious.

Here's an official announcement with myself sharing the headline with Susan Louise O'Connor and Harris Yulin (!!!) on Theatermania.

This is my third IT Award nomination after being up for Featured Actor in Vampire Cowboys' Fight Girl Battle World and, along with the cast, winning Best Ensemble for that one, too.

I'm thrilled and excited for everyone who is included here and for the recognition of this level of theater-making that the awards provide.

The Tenant

2010-07-16T20:03:00.000-04:00

Something else happening now that is really intriguing me is the work happening at rehearsals for Woodshed Collective's adaptation of Topor's The Tenant. First of all, the level of intelligence and dramatic inquiry going on at these rehearsals is blowing my mind. It's kind of a complicated story how it all works and where it's going, but what is so intriguing is the process.

Teddy Bergman (Woodshed Co-Artistic Director) and Stephen Brackett are co-directing a site-specific piece that involves peering into the worlds of the various tenants who share a building with the protagonist. In the Polanski movie version, the lives of the others are just hinted at, and multiple playwrights have been employed to flesh out each room's tenants. Sarah Burgess is writing our segment, and Jocelyn Kuritsky and Black-Eyed Susan are performing it with me.

A question that is immediately clear from our first investigations into a piece like this is how to dramatize the internal lives of literary characters and communicate their rich thought processes. What is so wonderful about the source material is excavating the justifications for the characters' extreme actions, something which is fairly virgin territory. We're blazing a mental path, but without an omniscient narrator or voiceover, how can we physically lead the audience along it?

Auden Reznor

2010-07-15T18:57:00.001-04:00

Two quotes recently slammed together in my brain as I went about my Thursday.

The first is from The Cambridge Campanion to W.H. Auden. Oddly, enough, it's not a bit of literary criticism from a critic but from Auden himself writing in the introduction to his 1935 anthology The Poet's Tongue, quoted by Stan Smith in the introduction (I tried but didn't really make it too far past the introduction, to be honest):

'Of the many definitions of poetry, the simplest is still the best: "memorable speech."'

This rattled around in my brain and then collided with a quote by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails from an interview regarding the release of their then-new album With Teeth, something that has stayed up there for about four years waiting to be utilized in my blog. In his characteristically laconic (and arguably adolescent) style, he likens the songs on the album to "twelve good punches in the face."

What is poetry? Why is it something I like in my limited experience of it? What is any (literary) art form valued for? I determined that I like poetry and plays and books because they wrestle the expansiveness of human experience and feeling into the rigors of language.

The epic nature of human experience cannot be circumscribed neatly within the scope of our language, and yet, against all odds, some people try. How to describe it? When our best writers use words (with all their strictures) to engage with amorphous things like life and emotion, the experience of reading is transcendent because the words rise above their ordinary meanings, their base origins, and evoke more than they should.

Words, well written, give us a means to engage with our greatest human questions.

Good writing should have the same impact that a track from With Teeth has. It should feel like a punch in the face. Was Reznor being poetic when he said that? According to Auden, yes. God knows what that meeting of minds would be like.

Music and it's qualities are still a mystery to me, though, and I have no idea why I like one thing over another. Sometimes I'll love the melody and hate the lyrics, sometimes the opposite, sometimes I will hate a song and it becomes my favorite in time. I can only think to say that sometimes, when everything is aligned, a good song's effect is magical. They're musical poetry.

Updates

2010-07-14T21:47:00.003-04:00

Hey, All of You, my legion of loyal blog followers who have been missing my pithy posts about what's going on in my brain for the past six months! There's a lot to talk about.

The first thing is that my manager's office SirenSong Entertainment now has a fabulous web presence here. You can click on my profile and see pictures, read press quotes, and get career updates.* It's a very impressive site and you can find many other incredible actors there including frequent collaborators Will Harper and Hoon Lee. Huzzah to Donna DeStefano and her industrious interns!

*Just as I was writing that line, the half-melted italian ice I was eating spilled all over me and all over my bed. Watermelon. Goddammit!)

The second thing is that I have, with the aid of my dear friend Jon Hoche, co-written my first ever play, Subterranea. Jon and I play estranged brothers named Nick and Dick Brotowski who are thrust together by fate to fight Nazis at the center of the Earth. We had been toying with the ideas and their execution when Carla Ching, artistic director of Second Generation Theater Company (2g), offered us a proving ground in the form of their new play festival In The Works this past June. It was a giant step forward for us and we are so grateful for their support. (We are also indebted to the rest of our cast*: Jackie Chung, Cindy Cheung, and Erica Swindell--as well as our director, Robert Ross Parker.) The best thing about the process was to work so closely with trusted and admired colleagues. It was a dream come true.

*Jesus Christ, the phone is ringing off the hook! My friend Gabi just called and we caught up on the last six months. He's currently head of production at Digital Kitchen and recently got back together with his girlfriend. That's the short version.

Also, I was in Michi Barall's new play Rescue Me Off-Broadway with another stellar creative team. I listed them all already so I won't get into it here, but they were so much fun and I learned a lot from them. Mostly, though, I learned never to operate puppets after taking claritin. No, iced coffee does not mitigate the attendant drowsiness.

More to come, as always.

Tom DiCillo

2010-04-14T00:19:00.000-04:00

Check out this Village Voice interview with director Tom DiCillo. I've liked this guy for a long time, but wait until you get to the last question. Holy shit.

A Conversation with Doors' Documentary Director Tom DiCillo

Talking with the independent filmmaker on the eve ofWhen You're Strange

By Eric Hynes

published: April 06, 2010

Paul Ferrara

Ironically, Jim Morrison needs a light.

Details:

ALSO:
Feature: On the Johnny Depp-Narrated Doors Doc When You're Strange

With a résumé that stretches back 30 years, Tom DiCillo knows the highs and lows of independent filmmaking better than anyone. After serving as cinematographer on Jim Jarmusch's first two films, he made beat-inflected movies of his own, starting withJohnny Suede (1991), which showcased a young Brad Pitt, and the low-rent hit Living in Oblivion (1995), which satirized shoestring filmmaking right at the height of indie self-satisfaction. In the decade that followed, he went from promising auteur to direct-to-video afterthought—before returning with 2006's flawed but heartfelt modern fable,Delirious. His new film, the rock documentary When You're Strange (see review, right), would seem like a major departure, but DiCillo's veneration of Jim Morrison and the Doors speaks to the filmmaker's unflagging affection for idealists, bohemians, and iconoclasts. The 56-year-old free spirit talked to The Village Voice about the joy in creation, the business of selling out, and that blasted Oliver Stone movie.
Why revisit the Doors in 2010? The biggest thing that kept me awake at night was this terror of "Who am I to try to say something new, or different, about the Doors?" Ultimately, I had to treat it personally. Jim Morrison would have to exist like a lead character—that I had written. In other words, someone I would not judge, someone I would just accept and present in the most truthful way. There's a whole strata of people whose experience of the Doors is the Oliver Stone movie. I don't put it down—it's the movie that Stone wanted to make. But it's not about the Doors. It's about four guys that he kind of fantasized and fictionalized.

In the film, you describe Morrison's poetry as "symbolic and pure," and that latter word could also describe key characters in many of your films, like Michael Pitt's good-natured vagabond in Delirious, Sam Rockwell's anarchic jester in Box of Moonlight, and Steve Buscemi's filmmaker in Living in Oblivion. Why are you drawn to this notion of purity?

Maybe that comes out of my respect for anything that is truly original. My experience is that, most of the time, original work is ignored, trampled upon, or passed over for stuff that is screaming for attention—stuff that, after a glance or two, falls apart. My heart goes out to it because I know how hard it is to try and remain pure in this business.

Is that why the idea of "selling out" still bothers you? You end the film with the words: "As of this date, none of their songs have been used in a car commercial."

That fact remains, and it's not a judgment—it's a statement. I believe that's part of what people respond to about the Doors. Because, what the fuck, man—does everything have to be for sale? The argument from a number of people who have seen the film is that, well, Dylan's music has been used by Victoria's Secret. U2, everybody has done it. And all I can say is that's their choice. To me, I value stuff that is made because it's made. The creation of something to me is a miracle. No matter what it is. The fact that it has to be instantly for sale in order for it to be valid is something that has plagued me throughout my career.

The irony is that by not doing it for the money—by making what you want and being honest about it—you actually have to spend more time thinking about business. When younger filmmakers seek you out at festivals, what do you tell them?

Being in this business requires an ability to take a successive number of punches to the gut, a kick in the balls, a kick in the head. And just as your head clears, someone hits you in the back. So how do you tell someone, "Do you have what it takes to not only endure that, but to keep going without getting bitter or resentful?" To just accept the fact that where you are is where you are. The only thing that really matters is somehow making another movie. Because what's going to sustain you is a belief in the joy of creation. If you don't have that joy, you will crumple.

Rescue Me, The New York Times Review

2010-04-05T11:10:00.000-04:00

When The New York Times mentions your name in print, it is therefore incumbent upon you to then put it on your blog. Here is the quote:

Between fourth-wall-breaking jokes, the game cast, including the clever Off Off veteran Paco Tolson (“Goodbye Cruel World”), brings to life plot summaries and meta-analysis of Greek tragedy. The director, Loy Arcenas, fills the space quite nicely; attractive video clips of family trees explaining the House of Atreus and jokey TV show snippets complement the story of Iphigenia (Jennifer Ikeda), who is sacrificed to appease Artemis (David Greenspan, wearing pressed pants and a devilish smile).

I am very proud of our show and everyone in it, and all of our hard work really is doing something.
For more information on who's who working on the show or to buy tickets please visit the revamped Ma-Yi Theater website.

I also got a nice bit in nytheatre.com's review. You can read the whole thing here. Below is the quote.

The ensemble is excellent. Jennifer Ikeda makes Iph a quivering bundle of opposites: vulnerable yet tough, wry yet sentimental, wise yet naive. Julian Barnett brings quiet despair to the role of Orestes. As choreographer, Barnett has created a range of poignant and joyful dances. David Greenspan is a dryly imperious Artemis/Athena. He plays these female roles without drag, wearing a shiny black suit, evoking an MC for a celestial cabaret set on Mount Olympus. Oni Monifa Renee Brown and Katherine Partington move eloquently as the dancing priestesses, while Leon Ingulsrud winkingly evokes Elvis in his role of King Thoas. Ryan King makes a sympathetic Pylades, Orestes's best friend. Paco Tolson nearly steals the show with his rapidfire switches between personas and accents as a lackey, CNN anchor, a host of witnesses being interviewed on TV, and a herdsman complete with a puppet sheep.

Rescue Me (a postmodern classic with snacks) by Michi Barall

2010-04-02T01:10:00.001-04:00

(David Greenspan as Artemis and Jennifer Ikeda as Iphigenia, photo Brain Barenio)

Michi's show is a real triumph.

It's smartly written, it's been beautifully designed and directed, the actors and dancers are terrific. I watch the work everyone has put in over these last arduous weeks translating into happy audiences night after night. I feel thankful to be in the company of such professional storytellers, exploring, learning with them.

There are funny moments, touching moments, dramatic exciting moments, heady philosphical moments, and they all add up to an evening of theatre that takes you somewhere. Yes, it is post-modern. It's in the title. By dispensing with traditional narrative techniques, Michi actually gives a modern audience a chance to experience an ancient play without the usual stuffiness and attendant boredom. The melange of styles and formats match the tones and themes of the individual scenes, again amounting, ultimately, to a richer experience.

Check out these two raves:

CurtainUp
"Hungry for a Greek play that doesn't taste like ancient leftovers? Then try Michi Barall's Rescue Me (A Postmodern Classic with Snacks) at the Ohio Theatre. Barall deconstructs Euripides'sIphigenia in Tauris and reworks it into a contemporary story with popular hit music and modern dance. Under the auspices of the Ma-Yi Theater Company and directed by Loy Arcenas, it retains the flavor of fifth-century Athens but uses our present-day cultural idiom to enhance the classic."

TheaterMania
"This winningly irreverent and loose adaptation ofIphigenia in Tauris is like seeing Euripides' tale through a funhouse mirror, a humorous, captivating novelty rather than a recognizable reflection of the original. Although its mix of anachronistic appropriation and meta-theater isn't groundbreaking -- in fact, it's arguably already a cliché of downtown theater -- the combination proves giddy and infectious. Better still, under Loy Arcenas' inventive direction, the production engages both those familiar with the source material as well as the uninitiated."

Tech Rehearsal

2010-03-20T02:09:00.001-04:00

Rescue Me has been a very fluid process with many things being found, discarded, and reconfigured often. Now that we have spent two days teching in the Ohio Theater downtown, a lot of what we had envisioned in the rehearsal room is inevitably (and predictably) taking new shape on the actual stage. The days are long and there is a lot of artistic negotiation, but the upside is that we are starting to lock things down and get bits of business and blocking down to a science.

One of the things I like the most is, yes the designers can't really work until they can be in the theatre, but it gives you such a rush of enthusiasm to get all of the costumes, set, and goodies at once, and then off you go with all of the imaginary things made real. Having the tactile experience of the technical elements in concert launches you into the run with great energy... It's by necessity that tech comes last, but emotionally it feels by design; after all the austerity and privation of rehearsal, you are rewarded with a surfeit of technical riches just before you do it for a paying audience.

Of course, this is also a scary ass time because you've got to make all the technical stuff work and everything is new and the audience is paying to see you in TWO DAYS. In my experience it takes a full day to get through Act I and then another day to get through Act II, on the third day you get a dress rehearsal in the afternoon and then your first preview that night.

Somehow I'm always in shows with a hundred ensemble characters and the tech can be a nightmare changing in and out of every costume in time for the next scene, but we've been pretty fortunate so far with this one. There's one big hairy moment we'll have to look at during the dress, but I'm sure it'll work out. It's all about teamwork and we have a really great team.

The Lady Drug Dealer And The Heist

2010-03-15T20:58:00.003-04:00

Today Temar and I hosted the first I MEAN...Productions table reading at our apartment. His new play, The Lady Drug Dealer and the Heist, is an amazing riff on the unreliable storyteller and laugh-out-loud funny for nearly all of its hour-plus running time. I remember being backstage during the run of The Brokenhearteds and hearing him talk about some of the ideas he had for his next project and him saying, "It's going to be a play about drugs. I think it'll be called Doing Drugs. Everyone is going to do a ton of drugs. The marketing will be: 'This summer, Paco Tolson is...Doing Drugs.' 'Andrea Marie Smith is... Doing Drugs.' Et cetera..." That's how I remember it, anyway.

Well, those dreams from last summer are now on 86 pages of paper and a lot of those pages are characters snorting, smoking and drinking. We do a ton of drugs. It's also about friendship, loyalty, and finding out who you are and what you care about. And race. And Astoria. And ghosts.

There was no fanfare, it was really just for him to hear it out loud, but it was a riot and the start of something very promising. When it was over though, he kicked everyone out. In a gentle way.

Since I always like to see who played what in the production history pages of published plays, below were the actors and their roles.

Gray: Temar Underwood
Jimmy: Paco Tolson
Reggie: Mike Mihm
Benjie: Jon Hoche
Miz: Andrea Marie Smith
Odessa Powers: Maha McCain
Hunter/Morrison: Ian Campbell Dunn
Stage Directions: Paco Tolson, with help when his mouth was full of chips.

The Elephant Man

2010-03-11T00:04:00.000-05:00

So in between running around town like a madman trying to feed Alvaro's rabbit and go to the gym and put my reel together and catch up with friends and rehearse this play I found myself at the Jefferson Market Library. They have a good drama section although you can't really argue with the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library (ever since seeing Good Will Hunting I've thought going to the library was awesome--probably before that, actually: I went on my first ever date at the Jones Library in my hometown). Anyway, I was returning Topdog/Underdog, Valparaiso and A Life in the Theater (it was a good haul, all very good reads) and I got out The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance.

I read it in Union Square on a bench in about 45 minutes and my god this play turned me upside down. It's a very experimental language play for the seventies and it reminded me a lot of Suzan-Lori Parks' Venus (naturally, what with the freakshow aspect), and although it's not crazy deep with the character building, the themes and use of subtext are some of the most significant I've seen in the past few years. Yes, years. Some Pinter comes in the same orbit, but the Pinter I've been reading of late (at the Perf. Arts Library no less) is all classic stuff.

Topics covered include the nature of altruism, social performance, the effects of capitalism on decency, what constitutes mercy, and religion's place in a world of commonplace horror. From the back cover:

"During it's opening season, The Elephant Man won all the major drama awards including three Tonys, three Obies, The Drama Desk Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award."

No shit. I had never heard of this guy before and here he is winning everything under the sun. Apparently, Billy Crudup did it on Broadway a few years ago, too. I see the picture in the bathroom at Telsey, but I have no idea whether that was good or not. Wish I had a patron now more than ever. How else am I gonna see this stuff?

Refine, Clarify, make Specific

2010-03-09T09:59:00.001-05:00

For me, the work in rehearsals lately has dealt with puppetry and dance. I am a very spastic person, so getting technical and minute is hard for me but it's exactly what the work demands. It's almost like counting out your stage life and dialogue to a beat:

1. Crouch "Daughter

2. Look side Of

3. Creep Agammemnon,

4. Swing arm And

5. Make wave Bright gem

6. Shake head of Clytemnestra...."

This is very exciting and will ultimately be very rewarding, but right now it is kicking my ASS. I suppose it's really no different than typical stage blocking, but with that you're just, "Cross left and pick up the cup on 'This cup?'" and not elaborate, sharply defined modern dance-y moves that punctuate each line. Maybe I'm just struggling with dancing, something I have never been a genius at even when it was easy things like waltzes in musicals when I was in High School.

It's actually been really enlightening to work with a puppet because you really start to see where things don't work and why. Usually, it's because you're not thinking of the puppet as your scene partner but as something separate from yourself. A character of mine interacts with a puppet played by me, so if the storytelling of our relationship is told in a succession of looks back and forth, those looks better be damn clear.

Here's an example:

A character asks me, "Is it yes or no?"

I'm looking at this other character.

The hand puppet looks at me.

I look at him

He shakes his head "No"

I look out to the character and say, "Well...no..."

The puppet cocks his head sideways.

So if you look at the wrong time or miss one altogether, the beat is mush and you lose the thread of what's going on in between the lines. Repetition, I think, is the only thing that can get someone as spastic as me to get over the herky-jerky, split personality nature of this kind of performance into a relaxed, settled in, comfortable state where the puppet and I are actually flowing together.

hunger

2010-02-26T22:12:00.001-05:00

hunger directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender

This is from an interview with Steve McQueen for Eye for Film:

Could you talk a little bit about the choices of the look of the film?
It’s one of those things. It was really tough but I also wanted to do a good job. What I mean by that, is that if you think of painters like Goya, who painted the worst images of war in such a way that they were engaging. One has to make movies like these engaging but not as one sees often – and I apologise here – in most American movies, where there is violence which is pornographic or sexy. It becomes much more, what can I say, numbing, as it if it doesn’t matter to me. But if you look at violence as something which has consequences, in the way that you direct the film, is in relation to that event.

Taxes and First Rehearsal

2010-02-24T00:17:00.001-05:00

It's very late and I'm trying to get all of my deductions entered onto my tax forms for my "show up early and see what happens" yearly adventure to the Equity building and their VITA program. This is always, always a pain in the ass because all my receipts are on tiny slips of paper shoved in a plastic bag. I waited too long to get a bona fide appointment (again) for the free tax preparation, so now, as last year, I must venture out hours early to get onto the waitlist and see if they can fit me in before rehearsal starts at 3pm. It's a great program, they have 8 appointments a day, and in between those scheduled appointments they take on stragglers like myself from the waitlist. Maybe 15 are seen per day. Ugh.

While I try and do this I will procrastinate by giving an update on Rescue Me. We had a very warm and friendly first read-through. The script is funny and open to a lot of collaborative contribution from the actors and the design team. Something made clear from the beginning was that the process will be very organic and tailored to what everyone is bringing into the rehearsal room. We're going to organically find out what we have over the course of the next few weeks and that, for me, is always a very exciting place to be.

There are a lot of music, dance, and multimedia elements built in, too. Can't wait to see how we can play with those before tech.

Spring/Summer Listings of Shows in the NY Times

2010-02-21T13:13:00.001-05:00

Qui first pointed me to this "things to look for this summer" spread in the Sunday Times, and as I read it I noticed many of my favorite companies and many artists from my cohort were represented with some really amazing shows, not least of which is Ma-Yi's Rescue Me (p.8 online).

Big Ups to:

Ensemble Studio Theatre, Lenin's Embalmers
Vampire Cowboys, Alice in Slasherland
The Play Company, Enjoy
Kristoffer Diaz and his play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity at Second Stage

I am sure there are more, but these are all shows I know personally through having workshopped or read them, and I'm so excited for such a talented group to come out strong in the next few months.

Broadway World Profile

2010-02-17T12:27:00.002-05:00

For many years I have seen shows I've done written up in press releases and articles on Broadwayworld.com, but they never created a profile on me with a hyperlink to other credits or photos like so many of my friends who were in the shows with me. This was very frustrating. I knew there was stuff on me there but they never got around to making me legit . . . until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you my name underlined in red!

Also available for your perusal is the press release for the premiere of Michi Barall's play Rescue Me (A Postmodern Classic with Snacks) that will be Off-Broadway in March, produced by the inimitable Ma-Yi Theater Company. Tickets available now.

Dance Theater, people. Dance Theater!

Knights of the Roundtable Ensemble

2010-02-07T17:18:00.004-05:00

A giant shout-out to a company that has a worthy mission, talented administration, and genuine love for theater and storytelling: Roundtable Ensemble. The producers of Goodbye Cruel World and Babel Tower, this small band of dedicated people made two wonderful repertory productions happen (no small feat in itself), wrangled a ton of personnel, allowed us all a tremendous amount of creative freedom (as well as comps--Thank you, Barry Shapiro!), and selflessly brought the work to audiences from senior centers, foster homes and schools among others.

Joshua Weiss, Kelly Ann Moore and Andrea Ghersetich deserve a tremendous amount of credit for the hard work of these past two months, and my hat is off to them. Henry Cheng, our GCW stage manager and Roundtable veteran, also gets a giant shout-out for being such a thoughtful and gregarious presence without whose commitment and energy we would all have surely fell on our faces.

Check out their website and consider helping them carry out their mission for many years to come.

Recent Movies I Liked

2010-02-03T10:38:00.015-05:00

These are not necessarily recent movies, but movies I saw or re-watched recently that I thought deserved a shout out on the blog:

1. Red Road

This is just an amazingly well-shot, well-acted thriller from the UK that in actuality explores a lot more than you think it does as you watch it. It's an exploration of modern urban blight, human weakness, and revenge. Really methodically paced, so you can just marinate in the performances and the cinematography. The final act is devastating.

2. Fierce People

This came out a few years ago and I caught it on the Sundance channel about three-quarters over. At that particular moment I saw a sequence where Anton Yelchin has an acid trip and the music was simply too beautiful to ignore. As soon as the light guitar started playing this hypnotic wonderful score, the narrator of the filmstrip he watches of his anthropologist father in the amazon begins talking to him about how he is a member of the tribe and it was so well done I finished the movie and then went back and watched the beginning the next night it was on. The beginning is pretty light, but the end payoff is earned and there is a lot about adolescence and longing that seemed pretty universal to me. Great performances by Donald Sutherland, Yelchin, and even Chris Evans.

3. Long Day's Journey into Night

Ralph Richardson really makes O'Neill's language sing in this adaptation. I read the play in college and thought, "Man, this is really long. I like it, but it's sooooo looong." Well, Richardson's character is the eogotistical theatrical patriarch of the Tyrone family and it's that imperiousness and command of language that pushes you through it. I can't wait to see some of his other work, he is a master. Watched this for research for GCW. Not so much.

4. Lawrence of Arabia

What can I say about this one? Another long movie but cinematically worth every minute. The acting is top shelf and the photography absolutely breathtaking. I'd never seen Omar Sharif in anything before either and I was really impressed all around. This was Dalton's pick and he did not disappoint.

5. RocknRolla

Hats off to Guy Ritchie for getting such a lovable crew of thieves together. This cast could not go wrong. I pretty much liked everyone before I saw this, but the work here pushes them each a little outside their Hollywood leading men image and makes them all really goofy. Really goofy. I can only imagine what fun it must have been to work on this. Got to hand it to Mark Strong, man. The guy can really do it. And he's starting to become a household name after Sherlock Holmes and the upcoming Kick-Ass. We'll see.

6. In The Loop

Wow, surprise movie number six that I watched this very afternoon. Had to watch it with subtitles to get all of the dialogue, but by god this is right on the line between funny and scary, mainly because it deals with the ineptitude of government and outrageous behavior in politics. Hilarious seemingly improv-ed set pieces of miscommunication and incompetence in the grand, dry English tradition. Great accent research, too. I could listen to the Scots and the British and all the regional dialects in between for days.

7. Day Night Day Night

And now that I wrote about a funny/scary movie it made me think of this one which is actually just flat-out terrifying scary. It basically chronicles a female suicide bomber being groomed by faceless, nameless handlers as she prepares for her mission to kill herself in Times Square. Not filled with heart pounding action sequences or even a ton of dialogue, the movie is instead an intimate study of routine and stubborn humanity. The camera exhaustively follows her going through actions that are entirely mundane yet loaded with menace because of the context. A scene in which she washes her face and brushes her teeth on the morning of the deed is slowly, sickeningly heightened as she meticulously uses every item in her toiletry bag and then throws those items away in turn: face cream, followed by her toothbrush, followed by the toothpaste, never to be needed again. There is also a lot of disturbing metaphor for the process of filmmaking as a whole. Getting details correct, getting the presentation just so, hair, makeup, costume, lighting. . . all these things appear in the film in some way or another but through the twisted lens of terrorism. To say nothing of the fact that the lead woman is walked through all of these details by people of different races, frustrating the natural human desire to lump one people together as the clear enemy. A very haunting, finely crafted movie that takes its time and is all the scarier for the investment. Some very powerful New York verite location shooting, too.

Transitions

2010-02-01T20:38:00.003-05:00

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how to synthesize what I've been learning about on-camera work with my theatre work. Specifically, experimenting with the use of physical stillness and exploring the idea of motivated movement. That is to say, getting rid of physical and vocal "filler." My friend Maria mentioned the idea of Doggie Zen to me long ago: dogs commit fully to whatever they are doing, and the thing they are interested in is the only thing they care about. They either get what they want or they change their focus to a new thing and start over again. I want to fully invest in what is actually the meat of the scene and have my body serve my objective (and clarify it, not muddle it). Should be eeeeasy.

Looking back, my theatre stuff was mostly from the more is more school. I felt if I wasn't engaged in some bit of business then I was invisible and not doing my job. Like a shark needing to move constantly. I was interested in listening, I guess, but a kind of furtive, aggressive listening. The more I watch great performances on film and mature physically, the more it seems to me that camera technique has a lot to offer stage technique and the two are not mutually exclusive as I've always thought.

Part of the successful execution of this synthesis as I understand it is the idea of unity. When you understand what it is you want to say, all of the disparate elements of performance should align to help you say it. "Movement" in my book never included stillness yet it can be just as powerful. I am now trying to use it as a tool for clarity. For example, finding in rehearsal decisive moments to move and introduce behavior that align with what other forces are in play. If you cross at this word or that word, does that illuminate your objective or does it draw the eye away from some one else's action? Does it advance you somehow in obtaining what you want? I guess I'm saying I am understanding the importance of taking ownership over your body, owning the choices you make. Or at least making them mean something, tying them in to the script. This is probably very elementary, but it just goes to show how when you coast on impulse you can get very lazy.

A lot of people do not like watching film actors onstage because they do disappear. They generally make choices that are too small or they don't have the physical life to magnetize audiences. I've seen a number of amazing film performances that are impossible to physically recreate onstage, but the idea of imbuing a shift of the eyes or a shallow breath with so much emotional energy has got my mind whirling, trying to find ways to give a giant minimalist performance in a 99-seat theater.

For me, the only way to give small moments their due and make them big is for their significance to be tied to a turning point or revelation in the text, or something repeated that echoes a previous moment with new resonance. In film, the score will swell and the camera can push in close and most of the work is external. In theater, I think an actor and director have to draw upon the audience's entire experience of the play to earn big moments. You have to lay in repetition as shorthand for history because you've really only got a short shared time together. And once you have established what world you're in and what behavior signifies what for a character, then you have established a pattern from which you can successfully break out of for massive effect. Physically and emotionally.

So: I am going to actually MAKE choices, be sure that they are unified with the world of the play, and then exploit the actor's shared history with the audience for effect. Pretty eeeeasy.

This blog was originally intended to be a forum for dialogue on craft and the arts, so that's where this post is coming from. But where else can I shamelessly post reviews? I'm trying to balance it all out.

nytheatre.com

2010-01-27T17:07:00.004-05:00

Here is the GCW review from nytheatre.com

Highlights include this very satisfying shout out to the whole cast:

At the center of the excellent six-person cast is Paco Tolson as Semyon (and a few other characters); he's a terrific everyman, at once put-upon and swaggering, vain and frightened out of his gourd. William Jackson Harper is sensationally good as Gran-Skubic and Curran Connor is deliciously slimy and vaguely malevolent as Semyon's neighbor Kalabushkin (both Harper and Connor also take a few other roles, too). Aaron Roman Weiner is very funny in a variety of guises—the butcher, clad in a blood-encrusted apron; the meek mailman who believes in the Cause, whatever the cost; and a decrepit old woman who lives in Semyon's building. Tami Stronach and Cindy Cheung show their versatility by each playing one of the glamorous actresses and also Semyon's drudge-like wife and mother-in-law (again, among other roles).

And here's to Robert:

The show's pace is fast and furious and the fourth-wall-breaking moments, which include most notably live sound effects played by whichever member(s) of the ensemble aren't needed for a particular scene, are great fun. If you think thought-provoking theatre that's literally about important issues like life and death, economics, politics, and the social contract can't be wildly entertaining, well, here's Robert Ross Parker to prove you wrong.

That's what we like...

Feeling the Love

2010-01-26T15:41:00.004-05:00

Here are two other reviews out now.

Showbusiness Weekly

Review by Ethan Kanfer

In 1928, the Soviet Union was only 11 years old, but playwrights like Nikolai Erdman were already giving voice to a frustrated citizenry by satirizing the regime’s hollow rhetoric and tangled bureaucracy. Not surprisingly, the state hit back, and Erdman’s creativity — and his citizenship — was stifled by the Stalin government. Erdman’s Samoubiitsa (The Suicide) didn’t see a full production until after the author’s death. To bring this historical artifact to light is in itself a worthwhile gesture. But Goodbye Cruel World is more than just a museum piece. Thanks to some high-octane performances and Robert Ross Parker’s sprightly adaptation, this fable of an Everyman in trouble is both informative and riotously entertaining.

Humiliated by his inability to find gainful unemployment, Semyon Semyonovich, played by Paco Tolson, scrapes together enough cash for a rusty tuba and an instruction book. His hopes of a career in music are dashed, however, when the instrument proves more difficult to learn than he expected. Growing increasingly despondent, Semyon considers shooting himself. Word quickly spreads, and soon our unlikely hero becomes finds himself surrounded by seemingly well-intentioned visitors.

In an effort to further their own causes, representatives of various special interests clamor to claim this tragic figure for their own. The State, The Proletariat, The Arts, Industry, The Church, and The Intelligentsia all believe they can curry political favor by turning hapless Semyon into a poster boy. An instant celebrity, Semyon is thrilled that his luck has changed. But there’s a problem. He’s not so sure he really wants to die, and now, with pressures mounting on all sides, he might have to go through with it.

Under Parker’s taut direction, the committed, versatile cast handles everything from slapstick beats to seething diatribes with deft precision. They are aided by Nick Francone’s comically dreary set and Theresa Squire and Antonia Ford-Roberts’s vaudeville-Bolshevik costumes. As enjoyable as the character’s antics are, however, there is a poignant side to their self-deluded speeches.

From flat bromides about the coming Revolution, to a wistful rendition of the Communist anthem “The Internationale,” Goodbyeis filled with touching depictions of what happens to the human spirit when a utopian dream becomes a totalitarian nightmare.

TimeOutNY

What makes director-adaptor Robert Ross Parker giggle? Based on his occasionally darling but overlong farce Goodbye Cruel World, he likes (in this order): pillowy wigs, Pythonesque sketches, execrable Russian accents and kazoos. He also wants his actors to enjoy themselves, so while a deliberately ramshackle set creaks cheerfully, his six antic performers (playing almost 20 characters) do their best to crack one another up.

Such rambunctiousness makes Parker’s zingy adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s biting satire, The Suicide, play like a lovable college production: It teeters from gleeful anarchy into simple sloppiness and doesn’t totter back. But with actors like inveterate scene-stealer Paco Tolson and comedy quarterback William Jackson Harper charging hard at every joke, even sophomoric humor deserves a passing grade.

Erdman’s play—a bitter, hilarious swipe at Soviet repression—is basically one gag. When rumors spread that Semyon (Tolson) wants to commit suicide, hordes of hangers-on materialize on his doorstep. The intelligentsia wants to wield his death as a political tool; the church hopes to claim him as a martyr. The joke: Socialist Stalin created a brisk free market in deaths. Belly laugh!

Parker adds literal bells and whistles to the narrative, getting the cast to multitask as musicians who drum out punctuation whenever anybody makes a funny. The stage business works well, and it’s always fun to watch actors racing through quick changes. But Parker’s choice of material is actually too good: His sweet-natured construction is friendly and featherlight while Erdman’s humor has a black, dangerous undertow. It’s not just in the high jinks, then, that Parker’s company sometimes finds itself helplessly carried away.—Helen Shaw

Here's To Comic Invention

2010-01-25T20:03:00.009-05:00

Photo of a photo by Jim Baldassare

The New York Times just published an amazing review of Goodbye Cruel World. I can't say how happy I am for everyone. Night after night I laugh and feel lucky to share the stage with people who are so funny and generous. Every time out it feels like the show is richer and more playful. Really excited to get into these last two weeks!

Photo by Jim Baldassare

Here it is in print:

January 26, 2010

THEATER REVIEW | 'GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD'

A Less-Than-Serious Suicide

By JASON ZINOMAN

To be or not to be, that is the punch line.

In “Goodbye Cruel World,” a comedy about death that will appeal to fans of “Weekend at Bernie’s” as well as those of Joe Orton’s “Loot,” Semyon (Paco Tolson) announces that he will shoot himself at the count of ... 1,000. After the flaws in this plan are exposed, Semyon communicates a series of distinct excuses not to kill himself through a multitude of precise facial expressions and body language while counting to the more manageable number of 15. It’s a small triumph of comic invention.

Robert Ross Parker, the co-artistic director of the cult theater troupe Vampire Cowboys, has staged this colloquial adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s 1928 corrosive comedy, “The Suicide.” This rarely produced gem is a door-slamming farce wrapped inside a humanist attack on the Soviet regime. The original play, in which Semyon calls the Kremlin to tell the person answering the phone that he doesn’t like Marx (no one seems to care), was so biting that it was banned even after Stanislavski himself made a personal appeal on its behalf to Stalin.

The passing of time has made the play less provocative — although it was probably too dark for commercial audiences when it ran for less than two months on Broadway in 1980. Mr. Parker does not strain for relevance here and while he may gloss over some of the work’s darker absurdities, his target is pure, silly farce. And he hits it, dead-on.

Like Jimmy Stewart’s character in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Semyon, an unemployed bumbler, comes to the realization that he’s worth more dead than alive. But instead of finding a guardian angel, his death wish invites a parade of exploiters looking to schedule a media-savvy suicide at noon. The most entertaining charlatan has to be Aristarch (William Jackson Harper, as a delightfully weepy hypocrite), who argues that Semyon must die for the noble cause of helping Aristarch’s career.

“I would shoot myself,” he concedes, “but unfortunately, I can’t, on principle.”

The production’s conclusion, which builds upon the send-up of the righteousness of acting on principle, is more sweet than bitter. As comedies about mortality go, this one is rather joyful. The saddest thing might be the realization of what the theater world lost when this play was banned. Erdman lived a long life, but after getting the message from Stalin, he understandably stopped writing for the stage. In a way, “The Suicide” was his.

“Goodbye Cruel World” continues through Feb. 6 at the ArcLight Theater, 152 West 71st Street, Manhattan; (212) 696-6699.

Opening

2010-01-17T10:19:00.008-05:00

Photo by Carol Rosegg

Tonight is opening night (matinee) and after three full-house energizing previews we are now fully prepared to rock it for the rest of the run.

It's difficult to express how much fun it was to rehearse this. Every single person brought intelligence, sophistication and craft to their roles, and every day as characters began to take shape it became harder and harder not to break in the middle of scenes. Robert's direction is so deft and the designers so in concert that we were still laughing our heads off during tech working out musical bits, parading costumes around and making some stage magic from the set.

I have learned a lot from the last few shows and cannot wait to get out there tonight.

All details can be found here at the Roundtable website.

Here it is in print:

Goodbye Cruel World

by Nikolai Erdman

adapted and directed by Robert Ross Parker

from a literal translation by Marina Raydun

The ArcLight Theater

152 W71st St. Downstairs (1 Train to 72nd)

Jan 14th - Feb 6th

Thursdays - Saturdays @ 8pm

Saturday Matinees @ 3pm

with Paco Tolson, William Jackson Harper, Cindy Cheung, Curran Connor, Tami Stronach and Aaron Roman Weiner.

Lights and Set: Nick Francone

Costumes: Theresa Squire and Antonia Ford-Roberts

Sound and Music: Shane Rettig

Stage Manager: Henry Cheng

Assistant Director: Adam Mazer

Starring Role

2009-12-22T23:47:00.003-05:00

Theatermania just posted an article on Goodbye Cruel World with a headline that starts with "Paco Tolson to star in..." Holy shit! With a big picture! It's not one of the publicity photos but one of my old headshots.

I cannot believe it, man.

Read the article here.

Photo Shoot

2009-12-21T13:46:00.004-05:00

Had a prolonged moment of theater geek yesterday.

Goodbye Cruel World had a publicity photo shoot at an address near 34th street. Theresa Squire who is working on our costumes has a studio near there so I assumed it was her place we were going to. She's been the go-to photographer for the preliminary press shots with Vampire Cowboys, so I assumed we'd hit costumes and photos in one fell swoop.

I was early and called ahead to see if I had the address right and to see if someone would be there, and a curt voice said something like, "Yes, come on up." I didn't think it sounded like either Theresa our our other designer Antonia, but I dutifully followed the directions to #509.

I stopped at the door. The door said "Carol Rosegg". Not only was I half an hour early but now I was also convinced I was in the totally wrong place. Carol Rosegg is one of the most famous theatre photographers in New York. I would sometimes wile away the time at my old job looking through page after page of her work on the internet admiring photos of some of my theatre heroes in action imagining the day when she would take my picture from the center orchestra. I didn't even want to knock on the door because if I was in the wrong spot then I would embarrass myself in front of an industry giant. I stood there frozen and then went for it anyway.

I pulled the handle and it gave a little, then clanged loudly in the empty hallway. It was locked. Awesome.

I turned away trying to figure out how I had gone wrong when I heard someone on the other side get up and cross to the door. A woman answered and said, "Hi, I'm Carol. You're the first one here. Just have a seat and read your Voice." I was so surprised that I went in and instantly dove into the paper trying to wrap my brain around what was going on. Was she expecting someone else and thought I was them? I could just picture Bill Irwin or Nathan Lane knocking on the door in 15 minutes saying, "Okay, I'm here let's do this--hey, who the hell is that guy?"

Eventually the others arrived and we got started. It quickly became clear to me that I have a ton to learn about getting my picture taken, but Carol was very cool about it and ushered us through some composition and framing suggestions. It was a really fun experience and Cindy and Tami were in amazing costumes out there with me so we had a lot of improvisational fun. We had a tuba with us as per a scene in the play and that ridiculous prop was prominently featured (I ended up playing it during the session and it tasted like rust). We had a blast. I can't wait to see how the pictures turned out!

2009 People of the Year

2009-12-10T13:13:00.003-05:00

So much to talk about!

First up, Martin Denton and the good people at nytheatre.com have named me one of 2009's People of the Year!

At the New York Innovative Theatre Awards Martin and Rochelle gave a rousing, articulate speech about the hard work and commitment that goes into making art. I remember sitting in the audience and really digging what they were saying. "They really get it and believe in it," I thought. And that is part of what makes this recognition so special for me. We're all in it together and although they're not performers, they're a big part of who we are and what we do. They understand the struggle and participate themselves. Their staff sees a zillion shows a year and I know I am one of the great multitude who rely on this website for the word on what is going on in the community. I remain completely floored.

Two of the three shows mentioned in my POY bio were shows I did with Vampire Cowboys (Soul Samurai and Fight Girl Battle World) and I have to say I owe a huge debt to them. They are a tremendous group who have done outstanding work for many years and taken me along for the ride. Part of what makes them so special is the quality of the collaboration, and in both of those shows I was a member of an incredible, true ensemble. The third show was Temar Underwood's The Brokenhearteds and again, all of us were up there as one and they all blew my mind. We did it all together.

Secondly, two shows are lined up for next season. The first is Robert Ross Parker's production of Goodbye Cruel World in January with Roundtable Ensemble. The play is an adaptation (Robert's) of a play called The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman and it's fast, furious, and physical in the best comic traditions. It'll be at The Arclight Theatre on 71st street, more details to come.

Following on the heels of that will be the Off-Broadway premiere of Michi Barall's play Iph, Then with the Obie-award winning Ma-Yi Theater. Visionary director and, ahem, Obie-award winner Loy Arcenas, who directed their brilliant production of The Romance of Magno Rubio and the workshop of I__NY, will return for this as well. That'll be sometime in March/April at The Ohio. More details to come.

Toshiki Okada Interview

2009-10-18T22:22:00.003-04:00

Further along in the investigation I found this interview with Okada at the website Performing Arts Network Japan where he describes what fascinates him about hyper-real language and the genesis of his performance philosophy. You can read it in its entirety here.

My favorite excerpts are below.

From this you invented the unique script language that is now being called “super-real verbal Japanese. What was the process that led to this?
One of the things that led me to start writing these scripts full of inarticulate lines, these lines that never seem to get to the point, clearly came from my experience from a part-time job I had once of transcribing the contents of interview tapes. The tapes were from interviews with local people in regional communities conducted by a think tank seeking ways to stimulate the culture and economies of the communities.
Making the transcripts was a tedious job, but at the same time there was something very interesting about it. That was because as you transcribed it word for word, you couldn’t understand what the people were trying to say. But somehow, by the end of the conversation it began to make sense and you could see what they had been trying to say, even though their words themselves were not saying anything clearly or articulately. This surprising realization was an important one for me.
However, when I am writing a play I don’t use the technique of transcribing from tapes of spoken conversations. I write it all myself. So, some people might say I should try to write scripts that are more articulate (laughs). But if I did that, part of what is important to me would be lost. I reproduce the real, inarticulate way that average people actually speak, because one of the things I want to express is what lies within that ineptness, the larger content.

Is it that you want the audience to experience the fascination of being able to understand the overall gist of what is being said even though the individual details of what is said are virtually incomprehensible?
More than that, there is the fact that this is what our verbal life is actually like. That is the important thing to me. What I am saying is “Isn’t this the way we actually speak?” Of course, it is possible to criticize this kind of verbal life, but I have no interest in saying whether it is good or bad, or criticizing it. We are actually living in this kind of verbal environment. Some people might say that since we are living in such an inarticulate world, we should at least try to use articulate Japanese in our theater. But I think that is a rather limited attitude. To me this Japanese that people actually use is even richer and more positive.

In addition to the unique character of your scripts, we also see very unique body movement by the actors in your plays.
This goes back to the influence I received from Hirata, about diverting the consciousness of the lines by shifting consciousness to the body. In this respect I have continued to follow Hirata’s example. But, just as focusing too much attention of the words kills them, shifting too much attention to the body movement also kills the body presence. Therefore, you can’t shift the consciousness to the body either. So, where should you focus the consciousness…? To explain what comes next is very difficult, and we can speak in terms of image or signifié (thing to be signified), but in essence what I mean is that there must be something within the human being that precedes the script or the bodily expression. When you say something or make a gesture, there must be some underlying reason, something inside that is the origin. That is where I want to take the consciousness. That is what I am now encouraging the actors to develop within themselves in the studio when we practice and rehearse.

Is that image different from the “impulse” that Stanislavsky talks about? Or the “motivation” that Japan’s New Theater directors often speak of?
I don’t know Stanislavsky or Strasberg or New Theater well enough to answer that. In fact it might be the same. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if it was the same. All I am saying is that having a source within where every word or movement originates is an extremely essential element of theater.
However, the image that I think is essential is not the image of the “recipient”, the person watching the play. If the image of the recipient is the sadness or joy that emerges after they read the play, that is not the image I am referring to. As far as I can see, I would say that the large majority of performances present the script from the image of the recipient. But I believe that acting in a way where the lines are spoken on the basis of an image gained from the script is completely wrong. What I am talking about is the image in the internal point of origin of all words and movements.

When you work with actors in the studio, you substitute the physical exercises that most theater companies use before starting a rehearsal with an exercise where you have the actors practice speaking by just talking on and on about things that have occurred during their day. What is the purpose of this unusual form of training?
Rather than thinking of it as practice in talking, the purpose is to get the actors to recognize how they actually move their bodies when they are speaking normally in daily life. And also to get them to be aware of the fact that those movements do not originate in the words they are speaking. To explain this a little further, this exercise gets people to see how difficult it would be to think up such complex movements if the everyday things they are talking about were written down and given to the actor as a script and the actor had to try to create those movements based on that script. So, once you understand this, my exercise is training that helps the actors create as fiction the same actions that fit the normal, everyday body use.
Another purpose is as a form of training to gain an appreciation of just how rich this that I am talking about is. In other words, how rich the origin before words is. By rich I mean that there is a much larger volume of information underlying any words that we speak. There is no way to put everything in that original image into words. The words are no more than the tip of the iceberg we see, and it is an attempt to create awareness of this. State from the opposite direction, for an actor to try to create the minimum amount of image necessary when delivering some lines from a script, that is a meaningless and uninteresting thing. So this is also a kind of training to get the actor to grasp what is happening within themselves so that they can create an image from that vastly larger well of information from which the lines of the script have originated.
I am always telling the actors that the body and the words are not connected or integrated. In reality, it is extremely rare for body movements to complement or reinforce the words we are speaking, and most of the time our movements are completely unrelated to our speech. I think that nature of the body is something very rich. And in that sense, I think that our natural, real body movements are richer than those of actors on the stage. That is why I want to get closer to the richness of the actual body by creating plays that are modeled on reality.

Physical/Theatre

2009-10-18T21:47:00.003-04:00

So I've been working on a workshop of a play by "hyper-colloquial" playwright and choreographer Toshiki Okada and investigating the relationship between text and movement. These videos were absolutely mind-blowing and game-changing in that investigation.

This clip deals with the concept of "The Image" and how it is the foundation for both what the actor is saying and the jumping off point for how they are moving. When you talk about something you are simultaneously imagining it and that imagery has a physical life.

This clip is that idea in action.

October is Here

2009-09-30T22:30:00.008-04:00

So updating the blog was definitely not on the menu for tonight, but I'm excited to announce a few things.

1. I will be joining the Vampire Cowboys in presenting their First Bite workshop of Alice in Slasherland at the end of October at the infamous Battle Ranch in Bushwick. Wow, that's a lot of branding. Expect more of what you love from this amazing company in full effect in three weeks. Details here!

2. I will be joining Dan Rothenberg and The Play Company in work-shopping Aya Ogawa's translation of Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada's Enjoy, also in October. I've always wanted to work with them and especially after their masterful co-production of Lloyd Suh's American Hwangap this year. Man, oh man. The Enjoy workshop will be in-house, so not open to the public, but I'm still really excited. I think some people I really admire are in it too, and just to be in the room with them is going to be a total trip.

3. The VC Saloon series is back and the great Dustin Chinn's Let's Ninja Science Ranger Team Get! will have yours truly as the Blue Ranger in a time-traveling, irreverent, Voltron-esque comedy. Can't wait. Details.

4. There's more brewing but I'll wait on that. Saw a bootleg version of Ong Bak 2 my sister let me borrow? Pretty amazing stuff. More later!

Support Systems

2009-09-20T00:44:00.003-04:00

If you can, you guys should come see Temar Underwood's The Brokenhearteds. I don't mean on closing Sunday, I mean tomorrow. Or next Thursday. We've got one weekend left in the run and we're counting on the men and women of the theatre to show some love and support to an ambitious new black playwright. Not because of that in itself but because everyone got their start somewhere and this is a hell of a start for Temar.

Everyone should see it because it's about us, man. It's about our generation and the things we do for love and art and I guarantee there is something in it for you somewhere because he writes about what we are living. There was an article in the Times this very week about political maneuvering straight out of our show. The characters are artists or dreamers of one kind or another. The people we know and aspire to be. It's like looking in the mirror every night.

Martin Denton, first man and champion of the indie theatre had this to say:

Boisvert keeps it moving briskly, and manages the complicated final sequence—featuring three scenarios playing out simultaneously on stage—deftly. Underwood himself plays Ezra Wesley with real gravitas (he also has a terrific cameo as Peter's boss at the newspaper). Mike Mihm feels precisely right as Peter, the vaguely existential, sexy anti-hero whom we can't help but root for. Andrea Marie Smith is appealing as Halle, and Jon Hoche is chilling in a number of different roles, including the Pakistani Fareed and, perhaps more so, an American CIA operative. Paco Tolson gives another of his trademark excellent performances as Milan and a few other characters (he has a wonderful comic turn as James Blitz, a highly-strung TV news show host).

All in all, The Brokenhearteds makes for entertaining and insightful viewing, and welcomes a talented new playwright to the New York theatre scene.

If you're Equity, use your card. If you're a savvy Facebooker, use the discount codes. If you're a friend, don't wait until the last show.

New Dramatists

2009-09-15T17:39:00.004-04:00

Last night I had the honor of being a part of the New Dramatists new members welcome event that featured readings from each of the six new playwrights. My friend Qui Nguyen just got in and it was a great time. Saw a lot of old friends and colleagues and did a lot of catching up all around.

The excerpts I heard that night were mesmerizing and surprising in their own ways, mostly due to their brazen theatricality. The new frontier of theatre seems to be headed back into a physical, ritualistic use of the actor as an instrument of transportation. Each of the readings used the actors as true storytellers and used the full complement of the actor's skills to maximize expression, including dance and song. Even the minimalism of Richard Maxwell's actors served as an electrifying conduit to something profound and beautiful deep in the language (precisely because of it, I thought).

It was quite a night.

Acting Master Class

2009-08-19T22:05:00.004-04:00

Okay, everyone. If you're reading this, if you're an actor, if you're a nerd or a geek, and if you're into the great performances of the ages, then you're probably already one of the millions who have seen Neill Blomkamp's film District 9 that opened last week. If not, and you have a strong stomach, then go see it and treat yourself to a master class in on-camera acting. The film entire consists of one character's cathartic journey towards understanding and redemption, and that character is played by South African actor Sharlto Copley.

There are SF elements, action, and a killer story, but that's kind of all window-dressing. Sharlto Copley is the consummate everyman and his corporate drone character gets put through unbelievable trials. There is never a false note in his performance as we sit witness to his descent. I'm probably going again if the budget allows, he's that good and my budget is that small.

There have been things I've seen this year and this summer that were strong showings from established names (Sam Rockwell in Moon comes to mind), but Copley's role demands depths of emotion and raw objective that are simply not to be found in anything else I've seen yet. To say more would be to spoil it, but I watched him for two hours and, as an actor, my brain was saying, "Yes, yes. Mmhm. That's what the real deal looks like. That is a realized, successful performance. Motherfucker!"

(I tried to nick some pictures from the movie off of the internet but google apparently doesn't have a great selection to choose from. I didn't intend this to be like a teen fan site a la the Jonas Brothers, but then I thought sometimes people just deserve love.)

Hats off, Sharlto Copley, hats off!

The Brokenhearteds

2009-08-19T08:43:00.006-04:00

Rehearsal for Temar Underwood's political thriller The Brokenhearteds is underway and we've blocked act one! There is a lot of optimism and excitement based on the camaraderie of the cast, the inventiveness of the director/design team, and the producer's professionalism. There is also a bit of the best kind of fear. Everyone is being challenged by the demands of the text which I've described to myself as "Chekovian Noir." The characters are involved in political intrigue and action while at the same time their relationships to each other are emotionally raw and vulnerable, wrapped in dark human comedy. Very hard. High risk, high reward, though. Working on it for the people.

Now, on to act two. Tickets are on sale, so check out the website for more.

Also, Qui Nguyen's blog Beyondabsurdity has up-to-date links to great reviews of the Fight Girl remount. Thank you, Pink Ray Gun and L Magazine!

Thank You, ComicCritique.com

2009-07-18T14:10:00.003-04:00

Read some blog praise for the remount of FGBW here!

Artwork by Jeremy Arambulo.

FGBW

2009-07-16T15:00:00.005-04:00

"Here it goes, here it goes, here it goes agaaaaaain...."

Ah, those places we missed. Ticopria. Il Nova 7. Dancorprium. Pena 15. Qward. Blark. Flimrack. Milkshake.

It's been a long strange trip putting together a full-on remount for only 6 performances, but the reward is getting to feel that goofy, improbable joy of being ridiculous again. Feeling the energy and love from the audience. It's amazing and addictive and unforgettable. We're not done with the run, but I just wanted to thank everyone who stepped up and made it possible. People who traveled, people who took on more responsibility, people who urged friends to come (and came a second time themselves), people who joined the team, and of course, the people who put up with us while we were working on this beast.

Good hard work, everyone.

TheaterOnline.com Bird House Review

2009-07-15T08:47:00.003-04:00

Here is the review in its entirety. I think this is one of the ones that truly understands what the experience of seeing this play is. Enjoy!

BIRD HOUSE

Reviewed for TheaterOnline.com By: Ashley Griffin

There are some evenings at the theater that just make being a critic worthwhile. After wading through many not so great nights, a show will come along like a breath of fresh air and make you feel not like a critic, but like an audience member having a magical evening at the theater. This is why we do what we do.

Is Bird House a perfect show? No. What makes it extraordinary is that I couldn’t care less. Bird House overcomes tremendous challenges, inherent in the very nature of what it’s trying to accomplish, and somehow finds the formula to do what so many shows attempt, and come up short on.

Written by Kate Marks, and directed by Heidi Handelsman, Bird House tells the story of two beings (are they children? Birds? Siblings? Human?), the bright and innocent Louisy, and the sweet, adventurous Syl who live happily together in their tree house, until Syl ventures off to be a hero in the far away war torn Lop Side. Alone for the first time, Louisy falls victim to the whims of tiny creatures at her doorstep. When the two sides collide, impossibilities become real, and both realize the lines between right and wrong are not as clear as they thought.

What makes Bird House so breathtaking is that it manages to create a believable world ruled by dream logic. In our best dreams, the feelings, and emotions stay with us long after we wake. But if we try to explain what exactly happened in our dream, to describe the plot, the characters that appeared, relay the words that were said however real and important they seem to us, their logic becomes nonsensical, and vanishes when we try to describe it. To create such an experience is one of the most difficult tasks imaginable (just look at all the failed attempts to bring Alice in Wonderland to life in as striking detail as it exists in book form,) yet Bird House manages it.

That it does so is truly a testament to the communal effort of all those involved. And I do mean all. Remove one element, and the whole thing would crumble. The beautiful set by Sara C. Walsh is perfect from the moment you enter the theater. Its most striking element is the tree house itself, which looks straight out of an episode of Sesame Street or Johnny and the Sprites. It not only fulfills its function, it at once makes us feel at home, and comforted. Even the tree that holds it in place is structured so as to make the theater’s lighting plot look like the tree’s branches. When the dark Lop Side world encroaches in – well, it does what every creepy fairy tale wood was meant to do – create an encroaching danger, loneliness, and sadness on what was once so safe and comforting. And just as Jim Henson created both the world of Sesame Street and Labyrinth, so these two worlds, though starkly different, are beautifully unified.

The costumes (including hair design) created by Jessica Pabst are extraordinary. They flowed so seamlessly that I almost don’t know what to say. It’s difficult to analyze them as they were so much an organic part of the world – as was the lighting design, Video/Projection Design, and the beautiful puppets (created by Lighting Designer Rebecca M. K. Makus, Video/Projection Designer Alex Koch (who also designed the sets for the beautiful Irena’s Vow,) and Puppet Designer Andy Toad). The music by Quentin Chiappetta was haunting and lovely.

All four principle actresses were extraordinary. I had the pleasure of seeing, and reviewing the two leads, Cotton Wright (Louisy), and Christina Shipp (Syl) in Much Ado About Nothing, and Belles respectively. Both are wonderful actresses who, as lovely as they were in the previous productions in which I’ve seen them, have only grown, and I was thankful to see them be able to really let loose in roles that truly offered them the chance to go wild in the best possible way. Their honesty, and depth were the heart, and engine of the play and they never let it run down for a minute. Much as in a dream it’s possible to find yourself experiencing events as two people simultaneously, so in Bird House you identify with both Syl and Louisy.

The other two women, and I hesitate to call them supporting, for they had just as important, and almost as large of roles as Ms. Wright and Ms. Shipp were revelations. Special props must go to Kylie Liya Goldstein who played the nine-year-old Myra with the depth of a forty-year-old actress. It’s no surprise that she has serious Broadway credits to her name. Wendy Scharfman likewise played Rita with the joy one would expect from a young child and managed to layer both true heartache, and wise omnipotence into a character whose ultimate role we’re not quite sure of until the end. Ora Fruchter and Anthony Wills Jr. were fantastic as the puppeteers. Special props must go to Mr. Wills who not only handled a set malfunction with such cunning that it should be left in the show as is, but garnered show stopping applause for his puppet Ant’s death.Director Heidi Handelsman did a seamless job of envisioning the impossible (as good as the script is, one feels that the beauty of the show would be lost if simply reading it on the page), and Writer Kate Marks has accomplished what other writers only dream about. I certainly look forward to seeing their work in the future, as well as that of the KNF Theater Company.

Despite some minor elements (two projected characters are often confusing, and it is difficult to understand what they’re saying) Bird House is a magical play. The guest who I brought with me to the theater (who’s ticket was comped) declared that this is a play she would gladly pay to see, and wants to come back with some of her other friends.

I wouldn’t mind seeing it again myself.

Bird House: An Impossible New Play by Kate Marks

2009-07-14T08:20:00.005-04:00

Kate Marks is a playwright whose vision knows no bounds. I have had the pleasure of seeing her new show Bird House twice now, and each time I was absolutely floored by her verbal dexterity and imagination.

The actors, puppeteers, designers, director and even the producers have given this beautiful play incredible support. The language energizes fearless clown-inspired performances, complete with haunting lullabyes, cowgirl ballads, and marching songs. The look and feel of the two worlds of the play resonate on a level beyond logic and emotion. On the blasted "Lop Side", a war-torn wasteland, an endless dirt floor is punctuated by a lone scorched tree and a blackened dresser, something so domestic and incongruous that immediately you intuit the discomfort and danger of the place. A fierce, malevolent wind periodically blows projected items across the stage. On the Bright Side, the tree house in which the main characters live is comprised of a gorgeous patchwork of found wooden objects that deserves an hour of inspection just to see how many pieces it's made of and where the pieces came from. It is airy and full of comforting things you might see in your own kitchen.

The play is a challenging one in the sense that it demands a lot of the audience. Birds fly out of a character's mouth, an army of ants invade, the wind blows furniture around--this is not a living-room play by any means. It is the story of two people and how they grow together and apart, and how the world changes us. If you like essential human truths like I do, there are plenty of lines that will follow you home that articulate those feelings you've always had but never new what they were. To me, going to the theater and seeing lives played out onstage is one of the most precious outlets we have for self-relection as a people, and Bird House delivers big-time.

A Double-Post Wednesday Night!

2009-07-02T00:36:00.003-04:00

This is straight from Chris Kelly's Huffington Post...post called "God is my Doorman: Mark Sanford for Non-Christians." Enjoy.

Hemingway said that the problem with Henry Miller was that he got laid in the afternoon once and thought he invented it. Governor Mark Sanford got laid in Argentina two weeks ago and the way he continues to go on about it, you'd think he cracked cold fusion. The man won't shut up. If Henry Miller talked about his sex life as much as Governor Mark Sanford talks about his sex life, people would have started thinking he was some kind of perv.

So today Mark Sanford needed to amend the number of times he kissed the Spider Woman in the last year, for those of you keeping score at home. Now it's five, including two overnights in New York, one for general fornication and one more - approved by his wife! - that was supposed to be just to talk about old times. Sort of an adultery exit interview.

The fact that someone as unconscious as Jenny Sanford was in a position of authority at Lazard Frères makes it amazing that there's a banking system at all.

One thing Mark Sanford isn't doing is resigning. Why? Because God Himself wants Mark Sanford to stay on as Governor of South Carolina. Just ask Mark Sanford:

"Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign - as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise - that for God to really work in my life I shouldn't be getting off so lightly."

And if anyone knows about getting off, it's Mark Sanford.

But more importantly, the Almighty insists that Mark Sanford stay in office. South Carolina is his punishment. Like when Job got boils.

And the citizens get to help God help Mark Sanford be a better man. Which I think we can all agree is what public service is all about.

"While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride."

That and years and years of adultery. But mostly pride.

Here's what I always thought I kind of missed out on as a Catholic, instead of whatever horseshit Mark Sanford practices: Self-diagnosis. When it came to sin, we didn't get to call our own balls and strikes like that.

"If I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one - and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm."

Again, what else can we do for you, Gov. Sanford? I'm glad the taxpayers have this chance to let you improve yourself, but is that enough? Next time you're boning someone in South America, can we hold your dick?

Okay, now clearly Mark Sanford is just a twitching loon who should be locked up before he hurts someone. What's cool is that he isn't even out of office yet, and he's already talking about God opening doors.

Our former favorite disgraced Christian egomaniac, Sarah Palin, waited until the week after the election, when she told Fox News:

"Faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator's hands - this is what I always do. I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door. And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

The open door to which they refer, of course, is from Revelation:

"I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name." -- Revelation 3:8

American Evangelicals love Revelation, because it doesn't make a lick of sense and then everything explodes. Kind of like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But they love Revelation 3:8 most of all, because it sounds like God's promise that you'll win the lottery.

Evangelical business advice always comes back to Revelation 3:8. God opens doors. Like this one: Your opportunity to buy these timeshares.

God wants you to get rich working from home. The same way he opens the door to
a Palin Administration. Immediately followed by the Apocalypse. Don't say you weren't warned.

I'm not sure Mark Sanford's going to like the door that God opens for him, though. According to Revelations 21:8, adulterers and liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.

Forever.

Even if you've been to Argentina, and gotten used to the heat, that's still gonna hurt.

Zing!

An unusually thought-provoking Wednesday night, right? I had this and the Blais essay both emailed to me and thought the world should read them. One for the sheer pride and honor I take in the hometown of my memory and the second for the bat-shit craziness of politicians.

These are the things I'm thinking about when I'm not running lines.

From the Amherst Bulletin, or My Hometown

2009-07-02T00:33:00.001-04:00

Professor feels at home in town's 'peaceable kingdom'

By MADELEINE BLAIS

Published on June 26, 2009

Sorry, Berkeley, Montreal, Washington, D.C., and Boston: You just lost out, in that order, to Amherst as the top college town in North America, according to Katherine Cohen, founder and CEO of IvyWise and ApplyWise.com.

This is no big revelation to those of us who live here.

I grew up next door to Amherst, in a town called Granby, which reveled in the rhythms of its ordinariness. My friends had horses, we ate homemade rhubarb pie, and most of the town's elders practiced a certain kind of penny-pinching Republicanism.

We scoured spring pools for the first flowering growths after winter. We nailed pails to trees to catch the sap. We really did swing on birch trees. At times we jokingly dismissed Amherst as 32 square miles of wishful thinking surrounded by reality (I checked with the town manager to make sure my surface area was correct), but in truth we basked in its ambient glow. It made us feel part of a larger, more sophisticated world, the world where in the 1950s earnest globe-trotting professors brought back slides from distant places and dutiful faculty wives served punch out of real punch bowls.

We were invigorated by the presence of the students at Amherst College and UMass, the children and grandchildren of presidents and shahs, the children and grandchildren of sales clerks at Filene's and firefighters from Hingham, gathered in the same place, with a common purpose, to build a better future. We lived, happily, on borrowed pride. Emily Dickinson wrote her poetry in a stately house on Main Street a century before I was born, but, even as a child, I was spooked by her telepathy. "There's a formal feeling in the house the morning after death," she wrote. How did she know what it would be like at 5 Center St. in the next town over when my grandmother died so many years after the poet's own death?

As schoolchildren in 1963 when President Kennedy visited Amherst College to dedicate the Frost Library, we were expected to tune in. We were expected to listen when he said: "I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft . . . And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction."

Personal distinction - Kennedy's expression - is one of the bulwarks of this town where, as the T-shirt makes clear, only the "h" is silent. Amherst is a strong taste where even the trash trucks have attitude. Emblazoned on the back of Amherst Trucking: "I recycle, therefore I am."

Amherst is dependably eccentric - where else does the police log report that three bicycles arranged precariously high up in a tree turn out to be an installation by art students, illustrating what principle of composition I am not certain.

In Amherst, the crosswalk signals in the center of town make chirping sounds instead of an ugly buzz. The pepper spray used by the police is alleged to be organic. Street vendors sell soy votives and a weekly farmer's market boasts up to 30 kinds of apples. The new movie theater used to feature vegetable-dyed M&M substitutes and to this day there is a handy dispenser filled with nutritional yeast to shake onto one's popcorn.

Above all, Amherst is a place bound by words and bound by nature.

The first is abstract, the other concrete, but both are willful, unsettling, and mysterious in their power.

"There's an atmosphere in Amherst of wanting to learn about things: not just books, but gardening, history, natural creatures, the landscape, the weather, the arts, politics, whatever keeps people curious and alive," says a friend, the poet Susan Snively. "In any case, I'm glad I don't live in Gravel Switch, Kentucky."

I lived away from the valley for many years, but when it came time to make one of the most profound decisions of my life, to pick a place in which to raise my family, I returned, convinced that this was at heart a peaceable kingdom which honored the land and the mind in equal measure and which valued seasons of all stripes, including the seasons in a person's life.

Amherst resident Madeleine Blais is a journalism professor at UMass-Amherst and author of "Uphill Walkers," a family memoir. She also wrote "In These Girls, Hope Is A Muscle," the story of the 1993 ARHS girls basketball team which won the state championship. The column first appeared in the Boston Globe.

Stardom

2009-06-30T11:53:00.003-04:00

Plumbing in the kitchen still not fixed. Landlord AWOL. Kitchen sink remains unusable. Just washed a load of dishes in the F'in tub. Ugh.

But I am heartened by the fact that Marlon Brando went through the same experience when he was coming up, before he became big.

What's that? He didn't? Oh, man...

A Big Push

2009-06-29T12:40:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I need a really big push to get moving on things even when they're the things I want to be doing and the things I need to be doing. Getting layed-off is as big a push as I'm probably going to get in terms of getting my career business taken care of (and now I'm also under the gun trying to find an apartment before september).

Push away!

1. I have been working out in McCarren Park and looking for monologues at the Performing Arts library at Lincoln Center.

2. I've been running lines for Fight Girl on my iPod.

3. I've been reading up on arts philosophy and taking meetings with friends on long-distance-relationship-philosophy (After an incredible dinner with Kelli and Caroline last night making food for hours, our sink pipe finally corroded and sprung a leak this morning, dousing Kate's feet).

4. I've been taking care of business with Unemployment to ensure I get a good-sized check every week (Four simultaneous jobs in Q1 of 2009 = Hey-O!).

5. I've been getting tips from friends on how to maximize the audition experience on both ends and, of course, going on auditions.

6. I am updating my blog.

For a long time I think the comfort and flexibility of my day job was good, but the time to step it up career-wise came and went and I was a little too complacent in that setting to make a move. But now the job exists no more and I am free to kick ass again. Soul Samurai was a huge boost for me and now another door has opened with this remount of Fight Girl and I have a chance to bring the pain once more. I am going through the door this time.

Republican Family Values In The News

2009-06-25T00:18:00.004-04:00

In the immortal words of playwright Dustin Chinn:

"Oh, politicians. Will you ever tire of whores?"

FIGHT GIRL BATTLE WORLD Returns!

2009-06-23T12:38:00.006-04:00

Below you'll find the trailer for FGBW. I stole it directly from Qui's blog. Seriously. I saw it there and I said, "Embed immediately!"

Cut, paste, published under my name.

Lee Strasberg, back me up on this:

When you steal a good thing, we say, "Good for you, darling."

Only when you steal something that isn't worth stealing,

something artificial that stops you or interferes with you,

do we question it.

-Strasberg at The Actors Studio, p.45

Amen, you crazy bastard.

It'll be at the illustrious HERE Arts Center this time around, home of Soul Samurai and many other amazing shows by smart downtown companies. It was a great pleasure to work there this past February and I cannot wait to do it again.

Enjoy!

Rainy, Connecticut

2009-06-21T20:58:00.004-04:00

Just did another reading at The Lark followed by an out of the blue opportunity to debut a new play at Shakespeare-on-the-Sound's reading series in Rowayton, CT. It was called A Bed the Size of Portugal by Mat Smart. Awoye Timpo, my friend from days of old, directed it and there were a lot of laughs all around.

Wanted to stay in Rowayton (5 min from the Darien stop on the MetroNorth) to see Joanna Settle's production of Midsummer but it threatened rain and, as it's an outdoor theater, was ultimately cancelled. The show has music by Stew, whose stuff I love, so it was a double disappointment there was no show that night. The trip up from Grand Central was a good 50 minutes, so not too bad. Will try and get out there again before it closes.

Life Liner

2009-06-14T09:58:00.004-04:00

Kate has posted a new video to her website that is simply amazing. It's called Life Liner and it can be found in the "about" section. I make a cameo appearance and I think it's an amazing accomplishment. You really get to know more about her and who she is through it. Enjoy it here.

Reading at The Lark

2009-06-09T19:22:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow I will have the pleasure of doing a reading with a friend from Brown, Mike Crane. He was one of the best loved and most sought after actors of my youth such as it was in college, and he was a stalwart of his class at NYU. The play is Deirdre O'Connor's Assisted Living at The Lark tomorrow at 8pm, part of the playwright's workshop reading series. Go here for the other details.

I mean, if you like going to readings at The Lark then this is perfect for you.

If you don't know what I'm talking about then just check it out and take that chance you promised yourself would be your New Year's resolution. "Get out there, socialize and meet people!"

That was mine, anyway.

Links

2009-06-03T09:08:00.008-04:00

This is Maureen Sebastian as Daisy and myself as Naruto backstage at Japan Day 2009 in Central Park. Jon Hoche was Uruhara and Bonnie Sherman was Sailor Uranus. We did fights that Qui Nguyen choreographed. The other pics are on Facebook! Blondes DO have more fun, by the way.

In other news, given my mission to disseminate word on the noteworthy and on the arts in my life, if you have a blog of your own (or a personal website) send me an email and I'll post a link to it. I know a lot of you have them and I visit them often but I just haven't had the time to sit down and give you a tangible internet shout. I want to do it. As you can see from the incredibly high number of comments people have left on previous posts, I get mad web traffic so... Well, just do it.

Coming Up

2009-06-02T18:28:00.002-04:00

Everything they say about Rockband is true. I stayed up until 1:30 last night rocking out to songs I hadn't heard since middle school (I got a 99% on vocals for White Wedding!), switching back and forth feverishly from drums to bass to guitar to the mic while drinking my favorite beer and shoveling kettle corn down my pipes. (Yes, I know that beer has wheat in it. I also know that sugary snacks are bad. It was Monday night and no one tells me what to do on Monday nights!) Weirdly, I kept hearing someone shouting "Fuck yeah!" every time I did something right. It turned out it was me, completely hopped up on the vibes.

A good jam session after a successful reading with friends: priceless. Thank you, Dustin!

The Axe Begins to Fall

2009-05-28T07:50:00.005-04:00

Unemployed in Five... Four... Three...

Somehow I'm super-busy and still facing down not having a job by the middle of next week. What?

In any case, come check out another reading I'm in: Dustin Chinn's hilarious play The Rise and Fall of The United States of Asian America at the Wild Project on Sunday the 31st and Monday, June 1st for FREE!

Also, Lloyd Suh's play American Hwangap is getting amazing reviews and stars some big names, also at the Wild Project. It's only running until the 7th, so definitely make it there, people!

Doin's

2009-05-22T18:07:00.003-04:00

Okay, people, I am back to recap about four months of neglect on this damn blog. I was home in Amherst this past weekend and it occurred to me (repeatedly, as it always does when I stop being crazy busy) that the only time I update this thing is when I'm in-between projects and have some time to reflect. I had initially wanted to use this blog as a forum for discussion of art and what I was working on, but whenever I'm working on something it is usually all-consuming and thus, no posting. Are you one of the five people who was like, "What the hell is going on here? No posts since April 11th"? If you're reading this now then you probably are, actually. Awesome. Hellooooo.

So: first things first. I am in a reading of Jon Kern's kung-fu-identity play Tapefaces at Walkerspace this saturday at 3pm. It's being produced by the inimitable 2G (Second Generation) Company and they rock. Qui Nguyen directs. It's free, so if you get a chance, come check it out. Many great friends are also in it: Jon Hoche, Amy Waschke, Jodi Lin, Temar Underwood and Dustin Chinn. Having a ton of fun working with them all, onstage and off. Actually, I shared a good cry with Dustin and Temar at Mahmoun's on St. Marks last night when I put some hot sauce on my falafel and in return it practically burned out my soft palate. Thanks for being there, guys.

Other production news: The Vampire Cowboys are remounting Fight Girl Battle World in July and it'll be a sick reunion for that team, too. Noshir is in LA, and can't make it, but otherwise everyone else is back. The one and only Jason Liebman takes his place as Adon-Ra, the other last human. Check the website for more.

I've been freelancing with Professional Artsists and Paradigm for a little while, and the things I'm getting sent out for have been amazing money gigs. Now I just have to book one. I'm learning a lot on my feet and trying to bone up on some of my fuzzy audition areas and playing the numbers game. My manager Donna has really been amazing and has wrangled me into many rooms I'd have never seen the inside of even months ago. I'm building up a growing list of supporters in the casting community and any day now I will be able to give my relatives something to watch out for on TV. Some of them have always liked the theater stuff, but others have always wanted me to be on their favorite after-dinner shows. I'm going to try and do both.

Kate is working hard on her new play Bird House which is also going up in July at The Mint's space. KNF Co., the producers, are amazing, savvy women and threw a crazy burlesque benefit a little while ago. Elizabeth and Jon were MVPs, getting their faces painted with us and generally being game for anything. More on her show soon, although you can also check out their website. I particularly like their description of what the play is about and its relevance. Kate also has a kick-ass new website for her own self (http://www.katemarks.net/). She participated in a music video festival last month and it was a huge hit. The video starred our good friend Mina Vesper as a woman in a disturbing relationship with money set to the Violent Femmes' "Promise". None of us will listen to that song the same way again.

End Days seemed to close right when things were really heating up, but there's another production happening in PA, so maybe it'll come back around in the future. The process of performing that show was a nightly ordeal with me (and what felt like my personal dresser, Veronica) dashing through tiny backstage spaces to do innumerable quick-changes. And when we weren't racing to throw my robes on or fix my beard I was chillaxing forever with absolutely nothing to do but hang out in the EST office. That is when I really became addicted to Facebook. Now that I do not have mandated free time, the chatting and posting has slowed to a trickle. A lot of people came to the show through Facebook Word of Mouth though, and for them I am very, very thankful.

Hot on the heels of End Days I got a chance to work with Youngblood playwrights Eli Clark and Dorothy Fortenberry for a Brunch and a Bloodworks reading, respectively. It was really good to be back with that crew. A lot of friends I don't see as often as I'd like are out there on 52nd street and it was great to hang with them and meet new kids, too.

My nephew Jalen had his confirmation this past weekend and it afforded a chance to see him, my brother Joe and his wife Deborah, and their families and friends. My sister drove me up from the city (very impressively done), I played Prince of Persia for the first time, played Boggle for the zillionth time, and got a lot of time in with folks and then came back to Greenpoint. It was awesome.

I have been watching a ton of movies with my Smart Partner at the 52nd street project and the films lead us to discussion which will be published in the literary journal Fivey. The movies include (in no order): Quantum of Solace, the Haunting in Connecticut, Underworld 3, My Bloody Valentine 3-D, and fast and Furious. Quality pictures....um, yeah. Well it made him happy.

Okay, until next time.

End Days Pics

2009-04-11T10:00:00.005-04:00

Perhaps the theater will give us access to the press photos after the run, but until then I have resorted to nicking them from the internet. Here are two I never saw before and we're in our third week of shows!

End Days Reviews

2009-04-02T23:57:00.005-04:00

Here are some I was able to find just tonight:

TheaterMania
"Lisa Peterson's tightly directed production is perfectly calibrated to mine the play's humor without losing sight of the complex family dynamics in Laufer's script . . . She's aided by an excellent ensemble cast. . . Tolson -- who also doubles as Rachel's drug-induced hallucination of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking -- strikes comic gold in both of his parts."

Variety
"Two acts are too short a time to spend with Deborah Zoe Laufer's lovable characters in "End Days." The sweet-spirited script . . . brings out the best in all five performers, especially a daring Dane DeHaan. His portrayal of Nelson, a doggedly happy bullied teenager, gives the play its heart and soul. While a snide Stephen Hawking and an uncommunicative Jesus vie for the minds and hearts of the traumatized Stein family, Nelson miraculously represents the reconciliation of faith and reason."

Backstage
"Director Lisa Peterson gets smart performances from an outstanding cast and tightly shapes the play. Friedman's performance particularly shines -- his Art is sad, funny, and dynamic. Tolson's double turn as Jesus and Stephen Hawking -- who becomes Rachel's invisible pal after she reads his book -- is impressively funny. Ephraim's angry, sweet teen, O'Connell's desperate mom, and DeHaan's simple optimist are all expertly portrayed."

****

Waited a long time for these to come out, and they're good, too. I know I've been having an absolute blast working on this. Just doing my part to get the word out.

End Days at Ensemble Studio Theatre

2009-03-27T07:35:00.012-04:00

So there hasn't been a post here in two months mostly because I have been busy working three jobs and resting in between each of them in a regenerative haze. Soul Samurai was one of the most amazing experiences of my theatrical life, and I just wanted to shout out to everyone who was involved that we did some amazing shit together, all of us. It was like sitting on top of a rocket.

While we were performing nights at HERE, I was shuttling back and forth during the day to Ensemble Studio Theatre where I was rehearsing Deb Laufer's amazing play End Days. It was a series of firsts for me including working on a Sloan play (plays that get grants for productions that bring science and scientists to the mainstream), working with surgical-precision director Lisa Peterson, and operating an electric wheelchair. Oh yeah.

(These past months have also seen another first: me getting cut in the head with a samurai sword. I'm totally fine, but it was a big eye-opener. Suzette, Abby and Qui all get huge thanks for making sure everything went down smoothly. I actually had an amazing run of luck following that incident--including booking End Days--and Kate likes to attribute it to all the attention I got from them :-) For those of you with an aversion to stitches, humans can apparently be stuck back together with super glue. Oh yeah.

So End Days is in previews for the next two weeks and then we open on the 30th. I'm playing Jesus and Stephen Hawking in an inspired dual role, and the show features great actors who have done very significant work. Just Google any of the following names and you'll find some credits that will make your jaw drop: Peter Friedman, Didi O'Connell, Dane DeHaan and Molly Ephraim. These peeps are kicking ass and taking names. It's an honor sharing the stage with such theatre royalty.

We run until April 19th, evening shows are at 7pm, people!

Get tickets here!

Soul Samurai Interview

2009-01-12T11:55:00.003-05:00

Hey Guys!

Qui Nguyen's esteemed blog Beyondabsurdity is featuring another interview with me about working on Soul Samurai and the artistic process. It's about creating a character and what goes into putting the show up.

Check it out here.

The Nexus of Art and Activism

2008-12-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

This absolutely blew my mind.

In 1990, poet Adrienne Rich was chosen for the National Medal of the Arts and she refused it based on the disconnect between her work and the "work" of the Clinton Administration. Her poems are literary celebrations of art as a human birthright and the kinship of humanity, and thus she felt she could not accept an award from a president and a government whose America was comically unequal, entrenched in corporate greed and had set a disturbing precedent for the dismantling of arts funding.

The actual refusal letter to the NEA is at the bottom of the webpage, but the letter she wrote describing her reasoning is at the top and is pretty long. Long and amazing. Read it here.

My parents gave me a copy of Dark Fields of the Republic when I was in high school. I had just taken my first poetry class. I just read some of it again, now that I am a little more prepared for understanding it, and that led me to her letter from the 90's. Unbelievable that something so resonant today should be found today, unearthed after 15-odd years.

Shit Gets Real

2008-11-23T17:41:00.000-05:00

First of all, Ma-Yi Theater Company's workshop of I__NY was awesome. Everyone involved was a total pro, and there was some serious food for thought afterward. They took you high and then they took you low and set some serious things before you for further personal processing. In the theater, if you're not talking about it when you leave, then I think the show was a misfire. That doesn't mean you have to go home and write a dissertation for a production to have any worth, I just think you can continue to learn and grow as a person even though you're sitting in the dark watching something. So: kudos to Ma-Yi. They did a great job.

Second of all, my horrible spending habits have come home to roost. According to some recent calculations it will take me fifty (!!!) years to pay off my credit card. I shit you not. 2058.

And so the mandate for "Change" has reached Pennsylvania Avenue and Lorimer Street.

I am taking a page out of the Obama playbook and will be revamping an old, crusty system. I am stepping up my efforts to budget, working longer hours, drinking as much free corporate coffee as I can stand (Pumpkin Spice! Dark Magic! Breakfast Blend! Levicorpus!), and trying radical new fiscal strategies that will hopefully keep me off of a WPA workgang on the West Side Highway. . . I just have to seriously tap into my love of filing paperwork and everything will work out in the end. Right?

Third, I was recently in a reading of The Physicists by Freidrich Durenmatt at EST. Now this piece took a lot of time to grow on me, but it really began to grow on me. At heart, despite all the absurdity, it's basically a reiteration of the famous axiom, "With great power comes great responsibility." I don't think that's just from Spider-Man, I think the Greeks said it first or something, but it's a play that begs us all to look at What We Are Doing and ask ourselves why we do it. The meat of the play is the role of scientists in the practical application of their discoveries vis-a-vis atomic energy, but it's more universal than that. Why do we do what we do? Because we're good at it? Because the work is its own reward? Are we doing it because we're trying to accomplish something? Are we innocent of the impact of our actions if we did not intend or forsee that impact? Check out this quote:

Mobius: There are certain risks that one may not take: the destruction of humanity is one. We know what the world has done with the weapons it already possesses; we can imagine what it would do with those that my researches make possible, and it is these considerations that have governed my conduct. I was poor. I had a wife and three children. Fame beckoned from the university; industry tempted me with money. Both courses were too dangerous. I should have had to publish the result of my researches, and the consequences would have been the overthrow of all scientific knowledge and the breakdown of the economic structure of our society. A sense of responsibility compelled me to choose another course. I threw up my academic career, said no to industry, and abandoned my family to its fate. I took on the fool's cap and bells. I let it be known that King Solomon kept appearing to me, and before long, I was clapped into a madhouse . . . Reason demanded the taking of this step. In the realm of knowledge we have reached the farthest frontiers of perception. We know a few precisely calculable laws, a few basic connections between incomprehensible phenomena and that is all . . . We have reached the end of our journey. But humanity has not yet got as far as that. We have battled onwards, but no one is following in our footsteps; we have encountered a void. Our knowledge has become a frightening burden. Our researches are perilous, our discoveries are lethal . . .

The character of Mobius had himself committed to an asylum so his ideas could never be released unto a world that would use his ideas for evil. That is pretty bold. How many of us would have the courage of our convictions to do something like that?

I mean, we have lawyers drafting memos that justify torture. Why? Because they're good at writing memos? Because they were just doing their jobs? We have businessmen who cheat their own employees and screw their customers. Why? Because they know about tax shelters and loopholes? We as a people are witnessing all of our systems breaking down because the people with the knowledge have been using that knowledge for evil. Either because they didn't know what would happen or because they didn't care. When we as a people and as individuals know for ourselves what we want, what we want to change, and what we believe in, then we can start practically applying our knowledge for good.

The Argument

2008-11-16T10:46:00.000-05:00

"My Dear, Hamlet is not a guy like you."

I have fought with myself for a long time about the logistics of doing Shakespeare. For a long time I thought that as long as you could decipher olde english you'd know what you were really saying, and thus be able to just speak with clarity and intention. It took me a long time to come to appreciate that the classical language is not simply olde english but poetry; poetry that requires much more than simply knowing what you're saying. The language is heightened and the actor must honor that, but how? I've seen actors on both ends of the style spectrum fail to move audiences because of the disconnect that Peter Brook describes in the quote below. People either A.) try play their characters as if they were not in a classical play but a naturalistic film scene or B.) send it up in epic, bombastic and mannered "style." Check out his thoughts.

From The Empty Space:

Imperial gestures and royal values are fast disappearing from everyday life, so each new generation finds the grand manner more and more hollow, more and more meaningless. This leads the young actor to an angry and impatient search for what he calls truth. He wants to play his verse more realistically, to get it to sound like honest-to-God real speech, but he finds that the formality of the writing is so rigid that it resists this treatment. He is forced to an uneasy compromise that is neither refreshing, like ordinary talk, nor defiantly histrionic, like what we call ham. . . If you ask an actor to play in a "romantic style" he will valiantly have a go, thinking he knows what you mean. What actually can he draw on? Hunch, imagination and a scrapbook of theatrical memories, all of which will give him a vague "romanticness" that he will mix up with a disguised imitation of whatever older actor he happens to admire. If he digs into his own experiences the result may not marry with the text; if he just plays what he thinks is the text, it will be imitative and conventional. Either way the result is a compromise: at most times unconvincing.

So this is the dilemma and I don't know what the answer is.

On the Eve of the Election, a Prayer

2008-11-03T20:58:00.000-05:00

Election Benediction

(a non-secular election prayer)

I admit, I don't pray very often.

I prayed when my children were born

that they be healthy and whole.

I prayed when my daughter got sick,

when all of the doctors and all of the treatments

couldn't make her better.

And I prayed when, finally, she was well again

in profound thanksgiving.

When my son sang his heart out in his first high school play

I prayed to be deserving of the joy that filled my heart,

hearing his confident voice, watching his agile body.

I prayed when he went off to college

and I prayed on September 11th

when he called from his New York apartment.

And when his father and sister went to New Orleans to help, I prayed then, too.

I've prayed when I've been most afraid,

bone tired or thoroughly spent.

I know you're supposed to pray more than that-

more frequently, more selflessly.

I acknowledge my negligence in the realm of spiritual correctness.

And I'm sure there are others like me

who mostly look to God when out of luck or out of time.

(I bet God understands that about people.)

These days I have a new prayer practice

One born of hope, not fear.

These days I pray for America

and I pray for Barack Obama.

I pray for his wife who sustains him,

for his children and all of our children,

who compel him to reach for the heights he is seeking.

I pray for him to win the election

because even though my religious adherence has been minimal

I know a miracle when I see one.

The man is not the miracle.

Through the confluence of hope and history,

the miracle is the capacity he creates to inspire so many millions of us

to engage again, or for the first time,

in our nation's political process -

to work together for peace, for prosperity, and for the planet.

I never sang, "God Bless America" unless I had to in school.

It seemed arrogant to me, like asking for divine special treatment.

Bless America instead of India? Not Peru or Mozambique?

"This Land is Your Land," was my patriotic favorite.

I'm older now. The bifocals I wear make it easier to see shades of gray

and stand, like everyone else, with my hand on my heart

when the band plays loud martial songs.

My prayer is nonsectarian.

"Baruch atah adonai," it begins, because that's how I first learned to pray.

And then, tentatively, I say it,

"Please God, bless America.

Help people get to the polls.

Help others to count the votes fairly.

No fraud this time, or intimidation

no Florida hanging chads.

Help us move closer to the dream, closer to the promise of our creed."

I teach in a wonderful public school with kids of all colors and faiths.

I borrow their words when I need them,

in Arabic, Creole, Chinese.

"Tal ouy ban sac, Barack Obama," I say in Khmer to end my prayer.

"Vaya con Dios," the same thought but in Spanish.

God be with you, Barack Obama.

I'm hoping to cover all bases.

Whether the way is a cross or a crescent,

Whether Allah, Loving Kindness, or Christ

Bless audacity.

Bless hope.

Amen.

Written by Susan Markman, Pelham, MA 2008

Election Benediction

2008-10-30T21:35:00.000-04:00

The blog Daily Kos, known far and wide as one of the best sources for progressive political thought and action, has just featured the writing of a rising star in the literary world.

Her name is Susan Markman. She is my mother. I am incredibly proud of her and her achievement tonight. Her piece expresses the breathlessness that stirs in people when presented with profound possiblity. I've been talking a lot to people about searching out plays and art that deal in human truths. Well, here it is.

You can read her poem Election Benediction here.

I'll post the entire text on its own tomorrow. For now, just checking it out on Daily Kos is worth it. The site is famous and seeing her work there sent Kate and I into fits of starry-eyed adoration. Not for the first time.

Enjoy.

Pics from Elizabeth

2008-10-26T23:36:00.000-04:00

Blaxploitation

2008-10-24T23:58:00.000-04:00

The Soul Samurai workshop approaches.

One of the best parts about working with Vampire Cowboys is that in the researching of roles for the show you fall in love with the genres you're mashing up. I have recently taken in the delights of Shaft, Superfly, Black Mama White Mama, Foxy Brown, Samurai Champloo, and Hara Kiri. The Mack, Shogun Assassin, and (my favorite title so far) Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song are lined up for this weekend.

Blaxploitation. The genre is controversial, and a few people have come up to me saying is it cool to do that in this day and age? Didn't that genre cherry-pick the worst aspects of black culture and then help codify and normalize those stereotypes nationwide? Well, yes and no. In my opinion, the answer needs to be contextualized.

In the beginning (as I understand from the documentary Badassss Cinema--absolutely required viewing), the films coming out reflected the revolutionary energy of the times. They featured potent, powerful and proud black characters who were impervious to racists and suffered no fools. They offered performers of color the opportunity to play lead roles of substance that Hollywood had always denied them. Because these were initially independent movies, they afforded entrepeneurial outlets, a sense of cultural ownership, and again, pride in black craftsmanship. They celebrated the slogan "Black is Beautiful" and put the day-to-day worlds of Harlem and the ghettos of LA on the big screen.

(Superfly has a still photography montage that is basically a photo essay on Harlem in the 70's.) Combined with the soul and funk music of the legendary artists Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield, the result was a profound experience at the movies for people of color who were desperate for stories and images that spoke to them and their lives.

As with most film, the characters were larger-than-life icons. Shaft was a detective who was cooler and badder than anyone in the room--a black 007. Preacher, the pusher from Superfly, commanded a small army and lived like a king, enjoying clothes, money, women, and prestige. Foxy Brown was a sexy afro'd independent woman who could infiltrate and take down a prostitution ring (and whose boyfriend was a black DEA agent! What?)

A lot of characters were pimps and ho's, crime bosses and hitmen, this is true. However, that negativity was usually counter-balanced by the appearance of Black Power activist characters and/or community watch groups who confronted the underworld figures about the damage they were doing to the neighborhood.

To me, these are usually the best scenes and provide the most dramatic fireworks. In Superfly, the confrontation is in a diner. A watchdog gang in daishikis accost Preacher about his peddling drugs and his disregard for his own people, as it is blacks who are buying his cocaine. Characteristically, Preacher responds, "What you need to do is get a gun. And then get guns for all those blacks you care so much about. And when you do that, I'll join you and be there on the front line shootin' whitey. But until then, stay the fuck outta my way." Or something similar, but the politics and concern with social justice and cultural elevation was usually put front and center at some point. John Shaft enlists the aid of his former friend, now an activist, in the rescue of a mobster's daughter, and they spar over who's helping the people the most. There's an incredibly powerful scene in The Mack where the pimp's brother says that instead of visiting him in jail, he created a people's movement that would actually do some good. The empowerment of the people was worth more than some phone calls or envelopes of money because it would truly help his brother when he got out. He argues that the pimp is essentially still in a prison of the mind because he's playing right into The Man's hands by selling drugs and women. The Mack responds by saying he has a right to pursue his business anyway he likes. . . because this is America. He says, "Being rich and black means something, don't you know that? It's crazy to stay in the ghetto once you've seen the way out." Or something similar, but essentially, huge questions are raised and social justice is prioritized in the middle of a film about an unrepentent pimp.

After this initial period, Hollywood saw how popular the movies were and how much they made. They began cranking out shitty versions of their own, replacing the black artistic staff behind the camera, and turning the style into formulaic crap and wildly over the top characterizations. The negative aspects were seized upon, commoditized, and encouraged by the industry (not unlike the gangstery thuggish hip-hop of the past ten years).

Eventually people cooled to the nonsense. This is the heartbreaking part, because they eventually screwed the black artists. When they saw that they had taken an art form and turned it into a trend--and that that trend had run it's course--they again shut the door in the faces of actors they had made famous. Many were never hired again despite being matinee idols and stars in their own right.

So, yes and no. Blaxploitation, in my opinion, began as something incredibly empowering and beautiful and devolved into something cheap and harmful. There was always a sense of whimsy and silliness and overblown characterization, but with the influx of money and studio interference, the movement got away from its roots and became another cliche of hollywood genres like the western and the romantic comedy.

I think what we are setting out to do with Soul Samurai is honor the essence of this tradition and have a lot of fun with a style that is inherently theatrical and dramatic. Everyone is doing research on their own to inform the characters they play. We talk a lot about what Pam Grier movie we saw last night or what we're excited about incorporating and how it relates to what we have to play in our scenes. Who should see X to get an example of Y.

It's a challenging task, but we're endeavoring to do it with honor and respect.

We're aiming to blow your mind.

And your soooul.

One Great Thing

Update 2012

Acting Reel 2

Acting Reel

Another Day at Work

Access and Inspiration

Secret Video

Atmosphere

Paco Taco

Discipline

Back in the Saddle

ES&L II

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

AGENT G First Reviews

Sucker Punch

AICN interview with Yuen Woo Ping

Provocation and Racial Humor

Detachment

L.A. Domination Phase One: Student Films

Los Angeles

More Assorted Research

Confluence

November

Internet Research

The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G: First Bite

SUBTERRANEA

American Theater magazine article

Lonely Leela

Some Summer Things

New York Innovative Theater Award Nomination

The Tenant

Auden Reznor

Updates

Tom DiCillo

A Conversation with Doors' Documentary Director Tom DiCillo

Talking with the independent filmmaker on the eve ofWhen You're Strange

By Eric Hynes

published: April 06, 2010

Paul Ferrara

Ironically, Jim Morrison needs a light.

Details:

Rescue Me, The New York Times Review

Rescue Me (a postmodern classic with snacks) by Michi Barall

Tech Rehearsal

The Lady Drug Dealer And The Heist

The Elephant Man

Refine, Clarify, make Specific

hunger

Taxes and First Rehearsal

Spring/Summer Listings of Shows in the NY Times

Broadway World Profile

Knights of the Roundtable Ensemble

Recent Movies I Liked

Transitions

nytheatre.com

Feeling the Love

Here's To Comic Invention

A Less-Than-Serious Suicide

Opening

Starring Role

Photo Shoot

2009 People of the Year

Toshiki Okada Interview

Physical/Theatre

October is Here

Support Systems

New Dramatists

Acting Master Class

The Brokenhearteds

Thank You, ComicCritique.com

FGBW

TheaterOnline.com Bird House Review

Bird House: An Impossible New Play by Kate Marks

A Double-Post Wednesday Night!

From the Amherst Bulletin, or My Hometown

Professor feels at home in town's 'peaceable kingdom'

By MADELEINE BLAIS

Published on June 26, 2009

Stardom

A Big Push