A Little More Inside

Because I know you diligently read every single item I post with great fervor and admiration, Dear Reader, you'll no doubt immediately reference from this title my post of May 13, 2010. Just in case you need refreshing: An link. Just in case you fear linkage: I'm in rehearsals for an original comedy called Love Me (an link [you see what I did there]) in which I play the central character's inner monologue embodied bodily on-stage. Wacky? Oui. Fun? Often. Challenging? No question about it.

Over the course of two weeks, things have progressed rather nicely. Because of various conflicts I have and the general nature of my role, I haven't been to about half of the rehearsals so far. Now things are gearing up and scenes are stringing together, so I'm called all the time and finding myself grateful for that. It helps me create connections with these fellow actors with whom I share stage time, but not necessarily any real scene work. The big exception to that is of course Aaron -- the real "me." Even he isn't allowed to look at me whilst on stage together, but I'm finding the tennis game of playing the same role from different perspectives growing more and more simpatico with him. There's a nice give-and-take, and we continue to find new techniques to make it work.

It's kind of funny, actually, how little I can solve these challenges by any kind of logical approach; it is far more productive to proceed instinctively. It seemed like such an artificial trope, this inner monologue (I.M.) incarnation, that I was inclined to set some ground rules as a first step. Address audience in this case, address Charlie in that, don't manipulate objects, etc. As with regular ol' acting, however, my instincts prove much smarter than my rational brain. The most important thing is to keep a flow of ideas (no matter how ragingly inappropriate) coming so more can catch in the sieve. This is an old acting lesson--and one I just have to keep on relearning, it seems--but particularly important when one is playing someone else's id or super-ego.

Of course, some conventional acting wisdom is less helpful, if not downright disruptive. For example, staying in eye contact with your scene partner as much as possible. Also, in many cases, we want to see an actor fighting his emotions in order to achieve some goal; this is the idea behind crying on stage, the point not being the tears, but to keep working through that crying. However, when you have an alter ego playing out your practical or scenic obligations, the best thing you can do to tell the story is flat-out show his hidden or outwardly controlled emotions. I jump around and shout a lot in this play, and I just have to keep reminding myself that such no-nos are exactly and precisely what I'm there to do.

There are a few scenes in the play when we get to blur these rules in entertaining ways. For example, Aaron and I come a lot closer together in a scene in which he's hammered drunk, to the extent that we are literally back-to-back, holding one another up for our elaborate drunken swaying. At this stage of rehearsal, the ensemble is getting comfortable enough for more physical choices and choreography in general, and this is of course a favorite stage of things for yours truly. From the start we are now establishing that not only do I have physical control over Aaron, but sometimes he over me as well (when he's particularly using his imagination, for example). There are also three or four moments in which I get to initiate some of his subconscious gestures by directly operating him like a puppet. There's great fun to be had in these moments when they're more adversarial. At such times, Aaron has to justify in the "real" world why he tripped or bit his nails at a particular moment, and heck: that's just fun stuff.

In terms of my off-stage work, I really should be jogging and stretching more. I'm not in the worst shape, but my exercise for a while now has been predominantly silks work with the amazing Cody Schreger, and there's not a whole lot of shimmying involved in Love Me (pity, really). What there is a lot of is running around and contorting and falling. The trouble is that this all happens in rehearsal until 10:30 or so, and so, when I wake up at 6:00...no running for me. Must get on it now, because June 10th is just over that hill...

Hate the Player, Not the Game

The other day I had an especially trying one at el jobbo del day, the details of which we needn't repeat, even in my imagination. (Today is looking up; I already had to kill a mammal with nothing but my cunning and a serving spoon.*) Luckily, Friend Adam had already extended an invitation to join him for some recreational activity that evening. I dutifully tromped over to the outer limits of Queens, where many n00bz were pwn3d (read: many inexperienced players had their digital avatars removed from the game by force). Of course, by "many n00bz," I mean "me, over and over again," and by "were pwn3d," I mean "trounced, most likely by 'tween boys with a 100-word limit on their available vocabulary." It was my first time playing XBox Live, you see. In spite of my adamant liability to my fellow teammates -- something I really do feel quite bad about -- I did feel considerably happier after my little adventure.

Never mind that there are some indications video games can be helpful in alleviating depression; games that conference in other live players can have a decidedly social aspect to them, not to mention the sheer teamwork involved. In the games of Halo I played the other night, our team never could have won the rounds they did without talking through what was going on. It was better communication, in many cases, than I experience in a given day at el jobbo del day. But I write not here to draw insinuations of insults by comparing a fictional war game to a real-life office environment (not here, anyway) but rather to discuss the prejudice against games.

What prejudice? You may well wonder. People love games. They watch reality TV for the games people play, and football for the games titans play. We even have fantasy football, in order to play a game outside of the game. Gambling is a short-form game, and driving is a rather high-stakes action game. Games abound. Even video games are getting a great deal of respect these days, comparatively speaking. Gaming consoles are bleeding cool into what was once a domain of the ubergeek, and even housewives are getting excited by the Wii whilst stock brokers eagerly anticipate the next Call of Duty installment. Heck: "Gaming" and "gamer" have been appropriated into terms associated almost solely with video games, as far as the mass audience is concerned.

In spite of all this acceptance, imaginative gaming (and I'm coining a phrase here) continues to get a bad rap. Perhaps it's because of all the acceptance; I think it's an ingrained habit for we humans to define ourselves by what we reject, what we do not believe in, and if we're accepting all this other gaming, maybe we need something to point a finger at and say, "Bleargh!" I don't understand it, frankly. I never have, and that inability to understand has resulted in countless awkward social predicaments from about age five on up to now. However, it's also resulted in some of my most rewarding experiences in life. So I stick with being a little different in this sense.

What do I mean by "imaginative gaming"? I mean improvisation. I mean games that are relatively free from conventional constraints. I mean role-playing games (RPGs), but I don't mean the kind that can be played on a computer (as of now, that is) nor do I mean only RPGs. I perceive a unique category of games that spans a bunch of different categories, yet has very much earned a distinction in being rather more openly creative than the rest. I'm basically naming something here that I like, personally, but I'm inclined to believe that I'm not alone in this specific preference. Expatriate Younce outlined some categories of RPG play for me a couple of years back (gamist, narrativist and . . . and . . . LOOK, A SEAGULL!) but these are more styles of playing than descriptions of the game itself. Imaginative gaming is any game in which the players are the ultimate authority over the rules. It is a play in which the sense of play is more important than any other element -- meaning the game itself is based on how well it is played, not how well it is won. Moreover, if this scares you or sounds ridiculous, imaginative gaming is as applicable to buying groceries as it is to making up stories around a table. Movies can be written with it, and difficult negotiations can be compromised with it.

We've all been in the position of working with someone whom we don't particularly appreciate or enjoy, and in some ways playing with such people is much worse. (And I'm perfectly comfortable admitting that I have been just such an undesirable player on more than one occasion, for more than a few people.) Memories such as these make us cautious, and resistant to new experiences. We want to be able to control outcomes, or at least be supported in the belief that control is a factor at all. But the beauty of a game is that we get to be surprised by what occurs, and we get to test ourselves against adversity of all kinds, within a contained environment. Maybe learning to play well with others is one of these challenges. I personally believe that anyone can be a welcome addition to play, if only you can find a good way to play with them.

All this is just to say: Try not to hate the player but, even if you can't achieve it, find a love for the game. It's all some kind of game, after all, and the games that are most true to life are the ones in which we create our own rules.

*My cunning is less lethal than the spoon; luckily (for me) the little guy had run across the wrong side of a glue trap.

Organ I zatioN

Lately I've been paying some attention to things like the collaboration, productivity, administration and general logistical aspects of work. By "work," in this context, I mean any effort geared toward a specific goal. But I also mean my day job. So, rehearsing a play, yes, revising a short story, yes, and figuring out how to order toner cartridges with great efficiency: yes. This is part of my newish strategy of looking at my life as more interrelated than disparate, but that perspective is also coming pretty naturally to me just now. Recently I've had to take on extra responsibilities at el jobbo del day, due to the laying off of others who were far more experienced at said extra responsibilities, and this has been a drain on my time and energy for other ventures. However, it has also yielded some surprising rewards ("not more money--that's just what he'd expect us to do...") and the main of these has been a discovery that I'm really rather interested in questions of leadership, organization and procedure.

Last summer I obsessed for a while over a Flash game called Fantastic Contraption. The gist of the game is to use common elements to engineer a machine to achieve some transportation goal. I was not especially clever at it, but got a great sense of accomplishment from overcoming successive failures until the goal was reached. In a sense, it was reminiscent of a good, difficult rehearsal, in which I try everything and become more and more dedicated to solving a problem the more failures I experience. In a rehearsal process, there's a philosophy of which I'm a fan that says that there are no bad acting choices; not really. Only good, or better. (Or, as I believe to be grammatically better: gooderer.) The idea being continual improvement in effectiveness, not to mention nurturing an environment in which people can be free to experiment creatively, without fear. It creates constantly improving solutions, and really big mistakes -- the kind from which you learn more, and quicker.

Of course, when it comes to most office work, big mistakes are terrifying things. They involve large sums of money, or people's legal statuses, etc. Yet it seems to me that there is too significant a dichotomy between those who keep their heads down and follow procedure, and those who innovate within an office environment. Is all that negative reinforcement directed toward getting people in line with procedure helping, or in fact hampering the work process? I'm not trying to make a sweeping statement here (horribly inefficient: sweeping) about the rules of the theatre lending insight into the process of the office. The current flows both ways. Much of the administrative structure in an office makes better sense and allows better allocation of resources than your typical theatre process does, and it's ridiculous to argue that structure can't apply to artistic endeavors. Structure is, of itself, an artistic endeavor.

There's been a lot of discussion recently on new forms of organization in corporate America and -- almost as though someone's been reading this here 'blog -- the comparative value/cost of multitasking and single-focus effort, amongst other process notions. I don't claim to have a significant contribution to make to these debates (though multitasking is broken and wrong) but every so often I'm excited by the idea of getting things done in a new way. It's oddly satisfying to me, at my day job, when I feel I've made even the smallest change that helps the whole contraption move better. Such ideas for change usually come about because I'm sitting still, thinking about the situation, and unafraid. It's a state that reminds me of the moment-to-moment pauses in my writing process. Does a conventional work environment allow for much of this? I'd say not. I'd also say, it ought to.

The funny thing is, I'm good about gradually organizing things at el jobbo del day, but in my life -- not so much. The first explanation that springs to mind is laziness, the second, lack of motivation (read: money). Yet I question these responses, precisely because they spring to mind. They're motivated by an energy similar to what administrators typically imagine will motivate their employees, stress, and I wonder what the response might be after a little time taken to sit quietly and mull over the situation. In fact, perhaps it's difficult to do this in the rest of my life because I relent to the stress more outside of the office, rather than carving out those moments to ruminate on it all.

Managing others is a skill; managing yourself is a hard-won talent.

Burnt Foliage

I know that you've been fervently checking in on Odin's Aviary to find out how this week's adventure in last-minute original work turned out for our intrepid hero. Hourly, nay -- minute-ly, you direct your browser this way, hoping for some whiff of report on last night's show, the final follow-up to this week's chain of entries charting the development of my earth-shattering new work: Whoopsie Daisy. Well, I've news indeed, and thanks for tuning in: I'm not going to write about Blueprint yet. It consists of two performances, we've had one, and I'll tell all after the last opportunity everyone has to see it for themselves, this Sunday evening. It's my Aviary. I can do whatever the hell I want.

Plus, I'd be surprised if anyone reads any 'blogs on purpose over the weekend. Apart from yours truly, that is.

I do hope my readership will return to this entry on Monday, however, because I'm here to finally write a bit about another big event in my work this week; specifically, the closing performance of my second staged reading of Burning Leaves. I wrote briefly about having the first of two readings of this play on Monday, before the incipient madness of my creative process for Whoopsie Daisy had taken root. Thereafter, I've been understandably preoccupied, but that isn't indicative of any shortage of effect that Burning Leaves had on me. Rather, I wanted to get the other piece of work on its feet so I could turn my full energy to evaluating my latest experience with Tom Rowan's play; may it not be the last.
The second and final presentation took place under strenuous conditions for me, and I don't just mean its coincidence with my other process this week. It wasn't until 9:00 pm Wednesday, which was an altogether long day anyway, with a full day of work, then a rapid introductory rehearsal for Blueprint on the upper west, a dinner with friends, and finally the night was freezing and the theatre wasn't all that much better. So there felt like a lot to overcome; which isn't necessarily a bad thing for us actors, but there's always some question about whether that obstacle will add to the performance, or override it. All-in-all, I was actually more satisfied with the climax in the second performance, but prior to that I felt a bit flat. It piqued my desire to work on the play under a longer rehearsal process. My character, Matt, has a such a complex inner landscape at the point in his life with which the play concerns itself, there was very little chance of my getting a credible handle on it for a reading. Unless, I suppose, we do six or seven more of them.

There was a very interesting range of ages and experience in our cast, and I was a bit preoccupied by it throughout the process. I suppose that has as much to do with my recent rites of passage as with my comrades-in-arms. In addition to Tom and Gaye-Taylor Upchurch, my fellow collaborators for this process included Kevin Confoy, Abigail Gampel, Allison Goldberg,
Hana Kalinski, and Alexander Paul Nifong. I was a little thrown at first, to be honest, by the sheer impression of youth Alex gave as the high school boy with whom Matt becomes involved. It's completely appropriate to the age of the character, but it also made me rather automatically a little more defensive in performance. In my previous experience, the actor playing his character, Jesse, brought a sense of control and intention to it that allowed me to accept with more ease the depth of affection Matt might develop for him. With Alex's Jesse, at first, I worried about what was to be made of my character falling for someone so obviously naive. We found a balance through rehearsal, but that balance really paid, off, I thought, in Wednesday night's performance. I can't say what caused it (which is a little frustrating) but I thought Alex gave a very grounded, nuanced and intentional performance of Jesse that night, one which pulled the whole thing together for me in a lovely way. His work was good throughout, but Wednesday it was great.

There was much discussion of acting "technique" during this process, and more than a little breathless excitement over this and that from the younger actors of our cozy tribe, all of which I found to be very interesting and, speaking frankly, a little funny. Not to say anything against these actors! Indeed, they were an inspiring reminder of how great it is to do what we do. What was funny to me was how distant from such discussions I have become; I don't think of it that way anymore. (I'll leave it to you, Gentle Reader, to determine if that's progress, or simply laziness.) Funny, too, was this kind of subtext or suggestion beneath the questions that there was some kind of answer to the question: Just what process makes for the best performance? When asked by the woman reading stage directions (she asked me twice, for unknown reasons) what technique I used, I answered that I use whatever works best moment-to-moment in the story, then mentioned that I found a lot of usefulness in Meisner work. I couldn't be sure how satisfied she was with this answer. There is, in my opinion, no concrete answer to the question. There is only good craft, well-applied -- a thousand paths to the same summit.

Plus, we're not all that freaking important. Actors are often, at their greatest moments, cyphers. It may seem like a somewhat hollow occupation, but I don't think so. I feel it's one of the most transcendent roles a human being can fulfill.

Tom has written a great line for Jesse, who is just starting a study of acting: "The words hurt, if you really say them." It's a moment of discovery for the character that we not only get to witness, but participate in, as we've just watched him connect emotionally with a text he's performing. This is what Burning Leaves is for me, one of those stories that I connect with, wherein the words hurt (and make me laugh, and make me think). I'm not remembering a long-lost love when I fight through the tears, nor am I imagining some other scenario, nor am I using psychological gesture. When I'm doing it well (not "right": well), I'm saying the words, and letting them work on me. I'm also feeling my audience's presence and allowing that to work on me, and I'm listening to my body, and my fellow actors, and my imagination, and its all just funneling through me. Is that easy? Hell no. Do you need to train for it, and use technique? Hell yes. But leave Stanislavski and Meisner and Hagen in the rehearsal room. On stage, you're not there for them, nor even for your craft, but for everyone who happens to be in that room, in that willing community of surrender and imagination.

Bleyargh. What am I doing up here? Where'd this soapbox come from?

So obviously I'm a little biased, but I think Tom Rowan's play deserves to have a hell of a long life. I hope he gets it produced soon, and have some ideas about spreading the word of it in my little way. Is this simply because I identify with it personally? Sure, but what other criteria shall we use for theatre? I'll leave the promotion of existential drama and Shepard plays to others (there are certainly enough of them to support it all). For my money, a heartfelt story that's clearly expressed is worth a dozen Bogart deconstructions. (At least.) This was a tremendous experience, and I hope to work on it again with the same people, theoretical discussions and all.

Give us a grant. A big one. That is all.

301: Human Rights

Compliments BoingBoing.net:

Everyone is Leading Someone(s)

I've been pondering me the nature of good leadership of late. I think my interest is in part due to my recent desires to direct, to take the reins on a show of my own and lead it through the scabrous paths of the New York theatre scene. I often have a great idea, and then take a really, really long time to think about it. I'm not sure if this is just my way, or a way of sifting out ideas without staying power, or what (what = sheer laziness), but I can be very meditative about a new task. I like to do things right, and do them right the first time, which is of course an interesting strength/weakness sort of trait. For this particular meditation, I have been borrowing data from all sorts of sources in my day-to-day life, quite subconsciously. Sources like observations from my day job, observations from commercial transactions, news reports about various international governments and -- yes -- lessons from actual directors with whom I've worked. I've also been reminded of certain lessons from my Directing for the Stage class, taught by the late Dr. Kenneth Campbell. What it's all left me with so far is something like this:

• Lead by example. This simply covers a lot of ground. It's cliche, and simple, and so often over-looked or excused in its failure. Some people even argue that you should set an example you can't fulfill, so everyone's striving for it together. I say be real, and be the best you can.


• Leaders should infect with enthusiasm, not terrify with consequences. Maybe it is called for at some point: the terror technique. But if so, I'm not sure that I've ever seen it. Called for, that is. I've seen the terror technique. It's my noisy next door neighbor, figuratively speaking. I know way too much about him, quite accidentally, and never know how to respond when confronted by him. The terror technique, he makes no sense. You get much better results with enthusiasm. My boss switched it up to enthusiasm just this morning, and, man, have I gotten things done and cleared since then. Of course, this may also have something to do with her acknowledging a personal need to . . .


• Be organized. It's true there have been plenty of inspired leaders who couldn't find matching socks in the morning, and plenty of perpetual followers who can pull their second-grade report card in under sixty seconds. I'm not saying this is the key to good leadership, but it helps. A LOT. People are a lot more willing to listen to someone who shows up early, doesn't allow interruptions and knows where they left their glasses. Of course, keeping oneself organized is a whole other ballgame from keeping other people so, which is why a good leader must know how to . . .


• Delegate intelligently. Another cliche here. Although: really? I always hear, "Must be able to delegate responsibility," but rarely is it qualified with something suggestive of delegation being a skill of varying effectiveness. The trouble with delegation is that it takes a very finely honed sense of perspective, and an intimate understanding of the people around you, and very few people seem to appreciate this. You can't do it all, and even if somehow you can, it makes working for you miserable, because necessary information gets centralized so thoroughly that if you disappear, so does a great deal of effectiveness. How to delegate intelligently, exactly? It would take its own entry (or book) in all likelihood, but I suspect it has something to do with being able to perceive the big picture right alongside the details.


• You're only as capable as you are flexible. The leader has to have the ability to stick his or her nose into every aspect of the endeavor. Also, the insight to know when to go with a specialist's opinion over his or her own. Orchestration is a good word. You may not be able to play every instrument in the band, but you damn well better know what each and every one can sound like, and be able to pick it up without knocking it out of tune.


• Communicate. Seriously. About everything. On some rare occasions a secret or particular dissemination of information may be useful, but the rule should otherwise be to talk about everything, all of the time. And I do mean talk. Getting things done comes of talking; talking is the real-time interaction that provides the most information and the best understanding, even between people who are having trouble understanding the actual words involved. Collaboration is communication.


• Whenever possible, begin every response with an observation and affirmation. And for that matter, start every conversation with a question. Beginning that way invites the person into communication, rather than laying something (yet ANOTHER THING) on him or her. Once you're in the exchange, you'll get much more helpful responses if the person you're dealing with hears you saying "yes" with your voice, even when you have to disagree. "Yes" maintains energy, affirms worth, and allows people to feel like you're listening. (It helps you out too with your long-term positivity.) In acting it's called "accepting and building," taking something you're given and making something more with it. This may sometimes be a matter of turning lemons into lemonade -- you're still going to get fewer squirts in the eye this way.


• Know what you're about. I'm not saying by this that a leader has to have it all figured out. (On the contrary: How pointless.) No, I mean to say that people need something to latch on to if they're going to follow someone. Maybe it's just because they also need something to criticize or catch you failing to fulfill, but some singular quality that's demonstrable helps people focus in on you. Something personal must separate you from the crowd, and it's just helpful that you understand your own je ne sais quoi. Mystery can be your trademark. Just know it, if it is. It may become a target at some point, but so what? You aren't the important thing:


• Make calls, and take responsibility for everything, credit for nothing. We tend to resist images and examples from kings and emperors (we're more comfortable with ship captains, for some reason), but there is something about that dynamic that everyone craves, or at times needs. We're more inclined to follow decisive people, and more inclined to work hard for them when we know they have our backs. This is difficult advice, because it can be so easy to misconstrue. A leader isn't always right, and a leader must have a chorus of input from his or her followers at all times, but he or she must also mediate, resolve, and take things forward. When things go wrong, the good leader protects his or her team. When things go right, the good leader makes sure the team members involved get the credit. It's a lot to take on, but in my opinion you're wasting your time if you do it any other way.

That's what I think so far, anyway. I must admit that it's not based on a whole lot of personal experience. Most of my leadership roles to date are the result of coincidence and/or default. Soon I hope to take that in hand. For now, I remain content to meditate a while longer.

I Wasn't Kidding

I've written here already about my recent exploits in (read: surrender to) teh Facebookz, and how I think it relates to my general life and specific creative journey, blah blah blah. Embracing my past yadda yadda savoring the moment etc. etc. and so on. And so on. As usual when I'm writing about anything in the moment of experiencing it, I have found that I was completely wrong or, at least, utterly naive. That's a bit harsh: I was assumptive in my appraisal of the over-all effect of going all-in on a "social networking" site. Teh Facebook(c) has reached deeper into my history than I had imagined it would and, owing largely to the way in which it is structured, has allowed me to contact and be contacted by people I really am curious about from my sordid suburban past. Last night, I reconnected with my first-ever drama (you called it "drama" in my neck of the woods) teacher. This is the guy who got me seeing what I do today as something more than showing/goofing off, something that was done. And now I can check in with him anew. Madness.

One interesting personal side-effect I've noticed from this world-wide-interwebz experience of mine is that people I know, know one another, too. This is not surprising in the big picture; actors tend to spend much of their social time together throwing out names to establish connections by association with one another (an occupation I loathe...but could probably benefit from learning to enjoy, somehow). People know people. That's how people are. This isn't Russia. (Is this Russia?) This isn't Russia. [ <-Ahoy, movie quote! ] It's not absurd to find connections between dots when you bother to search. I just don't search very often, and now the Internet does it for me. Thanks, Internet!

The other interesting thing that I've noted brings us back around to the actual mission statement* of Odin's Aviary (*Now 12%** more missionier! [**Actual missioniness subject to personal experience and position of Saturn at time of missionesque experience.]). Specifically, I'm invited to re-explore the origins of my bizarre and unnatural quest to infuse my life with acting gigs. Some people you get back in touch with are naturally from your later life, or even as far back as the transition from youth to adulthood. Still others show up from times of sleep-overs and recess. Most recently, owing in large part to being found by my old theatre teacher, I've begun to get back in touch with people I knew in that most developmental of educational stages: intermediate school. Or: middle school. Some even call it "junior high." But in my aforementioned neck of the woods, it was "drama class" and "intermediate school." This was the time in my life when a real stage entered it -- as in the wooden kind, with curtains and lights and EVERYTHING. The smell of sawdust in an largely abandoned school building on tech day. The temper tantrums of students and teachers alike. The declamatory style of eleven- and twelve-year-olds playing middle-aged characters (my particular forte at the time). Intermediate theatre.

In so doing, the people I used to know now know that I'm still doing what we did. Before. Which is to say, not everyone who participates in theatre in high school and junior high continues to do it. I know: It's SHOCKING. I kid (ALL CAPS = sarcasm), but I keep getting notes from people saying that it's nice to see I'm still at it, and all I can keep thinking is, You mean you're not?! Yet another thing I haven't thought through. I believe everyone is inclined to imagine the people they used to know in the same or similar context as that in which they used to know them, but for me to assume everyone found as formative an experience in their 7th grade as I is a bit beyond the pale. Still, I can't help but mirror their surprise at my continued involvement, and marvel at their lack of involvement. I want to ask them when the last time they set foot in a theatre building was. I want to know where that all went for them, if anywhere.

And then: Is it surprising that I'm still doing this? I mean, discounting for a moment the possibility that the people I grew up with might view a career in theatre as a childish or irresponsible thing (and I really hope to give them more credit than that), was there anything about me in my youth that suggested I wouldn't keep at it this long?

Come to think of it, there may have been a thing. Or two. Let's face it: Every effort up until one is old enough to reap a few consequences can be filed away as experimentation, or a learning experience. There are even some times of life when this is so expected as to be nearly ubiquitous, such as the teenage sexual experimentation, or the toddler this-whole-walking-thing learning experience. I know people who've written off everything that happened to them prior to year 20. Plus, when I started theatre, I had far fewer advantages than now. Theatre taught me a lot about how to effectively interact with people, gave me tools for overcoming my social awkwardness, and a good dose of metabolic puberty didn't hurt, either. Come to think of it, if I had known me back then, I would have penned me for an English teacher myself. So there were a few reasons why my far-flung friends of yesteryear might be surprised to find me treading the boards to date. Oh, and one more reason, at that.

I didn't learn to act for about a decade.

In some sense, one is never done "learning to act," of course, but that's not what I'm referring to. No, I mean to say that for the seven-odd years prior to my college theatrical experiences, I thought I was acting, and I simply wasn't. I was working hard, and I loved what I was doing, and I was doing a great many things as well or better than some, but acting was not one of them. It wasn't until I got to my third official acting teacher, in college, who had a penchant for axioms and anagrams, that it sank in. He says, "Acting is reacting." I don't know how many times he said it before this happened, but one day: PING! Acting is reacting. There's a lot of ways to express this idea (or, really, host of ideas) -- listening is key, don't "act", stay in the moment, make the other person look good, etc. I try to comfort myself for what would seem like wasted time with an idea from Sanford Meisner -- that it takes at least twenty years to learn how to act -- but of course all the years spent not acting were in fact necessary for me to learn this lesson. Some people understand it intuitively, even at eleven years of age. I was not such a one.

What I did understand from a young age, even before I understood that I understood it (take a moment; that was almost as self-referential as an actor's 'blog), was that I wanted to do this, whatever it really was. I remember watching older actors doing their thing, kids in higher grades than I and movie stars alike, and thinking, God, what do they do that makes this so good? That's a question that has driven me a long way, down a windy road, and it still takes over the wheel now and then at that. Good thing, too, because I still have a lot to learn. When I would see videos of myself on stage in intermediate school, I would wonder why it looked and sounded so different from my inner-perception of it. At age eleven, when most of my friends were doing their damnedest to get off school property just as soon as they could each day, I was disappointed if I didn't have rehearsal to stay for. I didn't realize I had made a choice about the rest of my life, but every time I got to take the stage, my world aligned somehow and I meant everything I did, even without really knowing what I was doing.

It's good to remember that. Thanks, friends, both old and new.

Jumping In

It's a wonderful feeling to be caught. Not in the red-handed manner, mind, but literally and physically caught -- as in, in interruption of your speedy progress toward something a bit on the hard side. Like the ground. It's also a great feeling to catch, especially if you're catching somebody who's in danger of said impact, but I covet a bit more the feeling of being caught, possibly just because it's a rarer experience for me. In teaching acrobalance to the youth of America, I'm more frequently the catcher. And, I admit, I have relished and relived some good catches I've made (one time I had to spin a falling girl around so that she, in effect, did a back flip before I set her on her feet . . . yeah, I revisit that, now and again . . .). But nothing quite beats the combined sense of vulnerability, gratitude and connectedness of having been caught. If you're open to the experience, that is.

I've been working on a short comedy for the past few weeks that performs as part of a one-act play festival/competition this weekend. It's called Jump (no; the other one) and it was penned by Josh Sohn, the gentleman I unexpectedly performed for in a reading back in the spring. It's an interesting situation, this production. As a part of a competitive series that contains 37 plays -- some of them longer than others -- we only perform twice if we fail to advance, three-to-four times if we go farther. So the whole thing has a curious similarity to a high school production experience, wherein you work for a rather long time, perform one weekend and that's it. Fortunately, it being a short play (under 20 minutes, I believe), the ratio of rehearsal-to-performance doesn't feel totally absurd. It is also strange to work on a pretty straight-forward, narrative comedy with strangers again.

I've gotten very comfortable with performing with my Zuppa del Giorno cohorts, and when we plunged in to Jump, I had a period of adjustment to contend with. We did not speak the same comic language right away. It was not collaborative in the same way as I have grown accustomed to with Zuppa, which not only made me reticent to put my ideas out there in rehearsal, but more than a little affronted when I received suggestions from fellow actors. (That's messed up; I'm still working out why I felt that defensive, initially.) And finally, and I believe for the first time, I'm the oldest person in the room. Everyone else in this show is early-to-mid-twenties. Which, well, is something I'd do best to grow accustomed to.

It's funny about comedy (ha ha): It requires a lot of trust. Stage comedy is like the do-or-die theatre -- there's little room for interpretation of audience response. Oh, we try to justify our experiences. "They were a quiet, attentive audience." "I saw everyone smiling, though." "It's this house; it's too hot/cold/separated/claustrophobic/post-modern..." When it comes right on down to it, though, live comedy is like a deathsport in which there's no overtime, and no one's allowed to a tie game. The only people who have it rougher than a stage actor in this regard (and I believe Friend Adam will back me up on this) are stand-up comedians. They practically stand up there and say, "Okay, world. Here's your chance to crucify me. No one else to blame but myself." Then again, too, good actors have to take a similar stance; even if they have a supporting cast of a dozen or more.

I've written here before about my rules of acrobalance, and how widely applicable I find them to be. Perhaps the most applicable is the idea of shared responsibility, summed up by the dictate, "Always be spotting." I wasn't familiar with the term "spotting" prior to learning circus skills, except as a part of a verbal sequence I was taught in my very first summer job, with Beltway Movers. (When lifting something heavy with someone else, you were told to say, "spot," meaning "brace yourself," then, "pick," meaning "we're lifting now." When lifting things such as pianos and trundle beds, I often added my own, more-flowery, four-letter words to this sequence.) Spotting, in a circus context, is to be ready to catch your fellow daredevil. When I teach, I teach everyone to always be ready to catch everyone else. It keeps people alert to think this way, which is generally helpful. It also reinforces that idea that all responsibility is shared. In this context, when something goes wrong or disappoints, no one is at liberty to blame anyone else, because each individual must always consider what he or she could have done to make it safer, better, or both.

As it is with acrobalance, so let it be with comedy. (And all other things.) Over the few weeks of rehearsal, I and my new friends have found a great deal more trust. I trust them to catch me if I fall and, more importantly, I've found the trust to forget myself enough to be ready to catch them at any moment. We'll have a very short time of fulfillment for our work to date, and it's entirely possible that we'll never see one another again thereafter. And, come to think of it, it's pretty amazing how we actors have to cultivate this sense of trust over and over again. Not just because it's a great thing in itself, but also because actors are continually being used. We will work for little-to-no pay, we accept a million tiny violations of our rights that others are alarmingly ignorant of, and frankly, get viewed as objects or sources of pleasure as often as we are as people. Put all that together, and it's pretty amazing that actors find any trust at all amongst themselves, much less intimately and repeatedly.

There's a popular axiom amongst circus performers: Leap and the net will catch you. I think perhaps for actors it should be, "Just jump. I'm sure it'll at least be interesting."

"Those Who Can't Do, Teach"

The implication being, naturally, that if one could really succeed at something, one would have neither the time nor interest to teach it. And, by inference, we can allow that to mean that to teach is a default activity. Teachers end up teachers because they could do nothing else, and teaching is an unsupervised, disinteresting field.

Now, I admit up front that I am about as biased as can be about this pithy little saying, so full of pith as it may be. My mom was an elementary school teacher for years before becoming a minister (which is in many ways just a different sort of teacher). My dad teaches college-level courses now. I have been teaching workshops in a variety of subjects to a variety of students over the past few years, and even spent a year teaching in an NYC school. I believe in teaching. In fact, if I have dogma of any kind, it probably lies in the practice of teaching more than it does the practice of religion. So be it. Can't disabuse me of it. Teaching, and teachers, are important. And further more, it's something that can be quite difficult to do well. I know the above quote is half-joking, but I still eschew it. It is totally and entirely eschewed by my person.

Some time ago, Friend Heather began a process to get Zuppa del Giorno signed up through the NEIU (no; the other NEIU) as an official "rostered teaching artist," and we passed our initial interview back in February. Last weekend, I took the road more-traveled, and landed in Scranton, PA, to complete the application. We received some brief orientation and demonstrated our ability to not-immediately-destroy malleable minds. We're in like Flynn, in other words, which bodes well for Heather's continuing struggle to avoid the confines of a day job. (Less so for me, as I stubbornly remain in NYC, where the cost of living is inversely proportional to the average pay for actors.) In fact, the good people at the NEIU seem quite enthusiastic about our participation in their program, which helps to organize residencies for teaching artists in public schools. We could be spending up to a month at a go teaching our unique brand of creation, development and performance to students we really get to know. It's an exciting move forward in our educational work.

In addition, we'll periodically receive free training in educational and personal interaction theories and techniques. They briefly described what to expect in terms of that, and it sounds both useful and interesting, focusing on reaching out to all different kinds of dominances in an individual's learning process, and without losing sight of the fact that at all times one is dealing with a person, a unique individual who exists outside of a classroom as well. When I worked for Wingspan Arts during the 2006-2007 school year, many were the times I wished I had more training in my interaction with challenging students. It seems as though I'll get some of that, finally, and at no cost to me. Additionally, I'm fascinated with the processes of learning and intelligence, especially so since tackling Italian. When it comes to a foreign language class, despite my best intentions, I'm the challenging student.

I used to regard "resorting to" teaching as giving up on my acting career, way back when I was a college student. College affords us a lot of space to draw conclusions unrelated to real-life experience. The fact is, I've probably learned more in recent years from being a trainer or teacher than I would have had I been enrolled in school the whole time. Plus, a teaching-learning environment is one of those unique opportunities in life to practice the craft of an actor without artifice, and I don't mean simply because one is often in a "stage" relationship to an "audience." In fact, in my opinion a good teacher uses that particular paradigm sparingly. A good teacher, much like a good actor, is more concerned with connecting to and communicating with his or her students than with enforcing any separation or dominating aura of authority. Sure, discipline enters into it, but discipline won't invite absorption of knowledge. Eye contact. Listening. Humor. These are the keys to transforming people into little dry sponges, thirsty for learnin'. And doesn't that sound appealing?

As I tentatively turn my interests toward directing plays, I'm reminded of something David Zarko once said to me about division in rehearsal (and, if memory serves, he was paraphrasing Brecht): It's important to keep rehearsal and training in separate spaces--not just in time, but if possible literally in separate rooms. The thinking behind this is that actors need to associate the space in which they work with how they're expected to behave. In a classroom, in training, mistakes can (should, in my world) be made, but the emphasis is on a narrow goal that can generally be defined in terms of right and wrong. Whereas, in an ideal rehearsal room, actors must allow for willfully getting things "wrong" all the time, in order to explore, to make discoveries, and above all make their work true. It may seem a subtle difference but, believe me, it's not.

When I teach, I have a concrete goal to be achieved, and that satisfies me. When I act, the goal is in the process, never-ending, which offers a rather unique series of satisfying moments. These bleed into one another in various ways. The success to be found in both, I think, is in doing them equally well.

Mutually Beneficial

Last Monday, routed through my association with Cirque Boom, I performed at a benefit for the NYFA. They're wonderful people. They even sent me a thank-you card for the event. They paid me, and they formally thanked me. It's enough to make an actor feel sort of worthwhile. (Which we'll have to put a stop to immediately, of course. If we start feeling worthwhile, nobody will be able to enlist our services for little-to-no money, and before you know it it'll be work, work, work for actors everywhere!) And, in the week that followed, I developed a busking/greenshow routine to perform in the half hour before The Women's Project's show, Corporate Carnival, which I performed in all week down at The World Financial Center (see video here). So it's been a very busky, walkabout-performance sort of past week for yours truly. This is a form of performance that represents a lot of the income a specially skilled actor can pick up here and there. People are constantly interested in creating memorable events, or events with themes, or just an "event" in general, and performers seem a really creative way to do that. I applaud people who are interested in employing creative artists for their affairs.

It does not, however, mean that it's necessarily a good idea.

An actor has to be smarter about his or her craft than anyone who employs him or her when it comes to this kind of job. If you're cast in a regular play, with rehearsal time and a script and a director who's competent, there isn't necessarily a need to be the authority in the room. You may do your job best, in fact, by being a bit more of an empty vessel, ready to receive the influences of the process you're about to put your all into. But when you're asked to pitch your innovation into the ring for a semi-improvised solo performance, you'd better see in all directions at once and be ready for any and everything. Because -- and here is the rub -- the people asking you to do something generally have very little understanding of what exactly they're asking you to do. I believe the thought that goes into this sort of notion is something along the lines of, "Oo! Live performers! It'll be like Moulin Rouge!"

To be fair, the two gigs were very different (in spite of both having the word "carnival" in the title, a detail that made my inbox a very confusing place for a while there). The benefit was a costly evening affair in a restaurant in midtown, with wealthy arts patrons and alcohol, and the greenshow (so named because of the tradition of apprentices-to-the-theatre trying out their acts before the show on the "green" outside) was for all sorts of working types in a public space during the daytime. The purpose of the first was largely to entertain. The purpose of the second was also to entertain, but more important was to spread the word of the upcoming free show and thereby garner more audience for it. Still, there were common lessons to be learned by the performer in both.

• Be a performer, not a salesman. For some reason, the more your act promises to assault the audience, the more excited your producers are likely to be about it. Perhaps it's their imaginations vicariously enjoying the power play; I can't say. Whatever it is, you mustn't succumb to it. The secret to a great busking act is to make something that invites people to participate, rather than forcing them into it. There are many ways to do this. If you're a walk-about character, you can simply look eccentric enough to elicit comments, and that's your in. If it's a little more presentational, you could dress normally, and invite attention more with your actions. Either way, you're not going to get people to play by telling them they have to play.



• Suit the performance to the environment. This seems obvious, but often times predicting your environment can be tricky. Maybe you don't know exactly how it's going to be set up (see the NYFA event) or exactly how much expectation your audience has of finding a performance going on in a given space (see the Women's Project busking). Be prepared to adapt. The performance I prepared for the benefit turned out to be totally inappropriate for how the space was laid out and what people were there to do, which was pay attention to one another. I tried to adapt, but couldn't be flexible enough to put people at ease and still entertain. I had more luck later in the week, when I went from a very invasive hypnotist character to a very simple, friendly guy who occasionally does physically eccentric things.



• Speak. I love silent characters, and play them whenever I get a chance. When I busk on my stilts this is fine, because it serves to somewhat undercut the magnificence of a nine-foot man. Plus, you've already got their attention. I planned a mime-like character for the benefit, which seemed like a great idea at the time (he was a consumptive poet, who wrote on mirrors with paint marker) but ultimately did not play out to my . . . uh, benefit. It takes special circumstances to effectively play a silent character in a busy environment. When in doubt, use your gob and be heard.



• Love what you do. Busking is freaking tough. It takes a ton of energy, concentration and thinking-on-one's-toes and -- as if that weren't enough -- is rarely unequivocally appreciated. So it helps if whatever activity you're utilizing in your act, be it singing, dancing or self-aggrandizement, is something you genuinely enjoy. Because you'll be a doing a lot of it. And you'll often be the only one who cares.

I would be remiss, however, to offer tips to the performers of public acts of entertainment without nodding my sagacity toward the audiences as well. So, a few tips for the rest of you:

• It's okay. Everything's going to be okay. Remember when you were five or so, and you'd go out on the playground and someone you didn't know at all would just start playing with you? That's all this is. And it doesn't hurt, I promise. We are neither homeless nor crazy; just playful. And it's only humiliating when you fight it.



• Change is good. Have you ever been to a cocktail party, and run out of things to say? Awkward, no? You know what changes that? Good stories. Which come from good experiences. Which comes from saying "yes" to opportunities that come at you from outside your routine. Keep saying "yes." See where it takes you. It's hard to frown whilst saying "yes."



• Your status is safe. We aren't here to discredit you, or lay disparaging remarks at your doorstep. If anything, we're here to revel in our own shortcomings, such as they are. There really is no need for pithy responses and one-ups-man-ship. Don't you get enough of that in the daily struggles of normal life? Let it go and be amused, if by nothing else than at least by the fact that there are still people in the world more concerned with your enjoyment than their own dignity.



• We don't want your money. Okay, well, yeah, we do. Give it to us, if you feel that's an appropriate compensation for whatever we do. (It'll feel surprisingly good to do so; I promise.) But we'll take a receptive audience over a monetarily generous one any ol' day. You don't have to hang back, or hide your appreciation. As that guy on the subway often says, "If you can't give a penny, a smile gets me by, too."

I should conclude by confessing that I'm feeling a little old for busking. I don't mean to say it's beneath me, in any way. Busking can be one of the most rewarding examples of that mysterious alchemy between an audience and a performer, and I treasure several experiences of that I've had. It's just that I couldn't help but remember how joyful I used to be about getting out on a floor to do that, how simultaneously terrified, in my twenties. Now I found myself thinking, "Meh. Here I come, trying to give you something you didn't ask for." Which attitude, of course, might account for some of my angst in the doing of it. Either way -- chicken or egg -- I think I'll be taking a little break from busking. I think that will be best for both of us.

Stories about Story Games and their Story-Gamers

Weekend the last, I did it again. I ventured south and stopped in at Camp Nerdly 2.0, a role-playing and story-gaming conference that is held annually in NoVa, and which was co-founded by Expatriate Younce. You may recall that I attended teh Nerdly for the first time last year (and if'n you don't, see 5/8/07), which was a somewhat grandiose personal return to gaming in general. I was a D&D geek back in my early teen years, but lost touch with that community as I got older and committed more time to theatre, and other distractions. My best and oldest friends, however, still game regularly. They're good at it. Camp Nerdly is my opportunity to take a little time off from acting to visit them in their world and, uh . . . act.

The breakdown of my time is very nearly a progression from discomfort to comfort. The games I feel most at-home with are, naturally, those more focused on characterization, improvisation and storytelling. The ones I feel like a nerd who's out of polygonal dice in are those in which the emphasis is on . . . well, polygonal dice. And other devices and systems of applied conflict resolution. (Most of the other Nerdlians thrive on these, because they're wicked smart; if a game involves math, I tend to feel as though I'm trying to figure out my taxes.) The first game I played was called AGON, and involved a bit of such conflict resolution. Fortunately, Friend Davey was there to see me through the 1d12s (if I was lucky) and the interconnectedness of the players' rolls. Thereafter I played Valkyrie, a game in "playtest" (in development) that was mainly a team strategy game involving cards and quantity relationships. After that was a brief sojourn into a board warfare-strategy game called Memoir '44 (the success of which I very much owe to Davey again), and then another playtest, this one for an RPG based on Hamlet called, aptly enough, Something Is Rotten. The Upgrade was my first "jeepform" experience, which is essentially a role-playing game that takes after improvisational theatre, and the last game of the weekend was Zendo, a competitive deductive-reasoning game. So by-and-large, I progressed from incapability to comfort, insecurity to confidence. Rather like a rehearsal process.

I'm not sure I had the same profundity of insight this year as I had last, but I attribute that to there being less novelty this time around, less of a surprise in having had a good experience. I did spend some time meditating on the similarities between theatre and gaming, naturally, and found a few ideas that are helpful to both. One unexpected benefit, however, was to spend so much time playing with two old friends in such a way that we were often mentally working hard together. Think about it: When you see your friends, do you more often aim to relax and let go of strategy, or engage in complicated efforts at problem-solving. Both types of activity hold merit. I don't do nearly as much of the latter as I'd like, particularly with my buddies in NoVa.

AGON is a game set in mythic Greece, in which the players work as a team to complete some kind of mythical mission (think Odysseus), but also to come out on top, as the hero who accumulated the most glory (think Jason ["and the Argonauts," not "Morningstar" {although, you know what--think him, too}]). This game was run by Remi Treuer, who did a great job creating an engaging story and rolling with unpredictable players, though the mythos got a little bent in the process. (In this world, Kore [Persephone] and her mother apparently had some kind of resentful relationship causing spring weather when she descended to the underworld, and Orpheus was double-timing Eurydice with her.) I was way out of my depth with the system (which is relatively simple, but...you know...) but suffered more from having a pretty weak sense of the character I had designed for myself. I had meant for him to be a spy sort, a cunning lurker, and he ended up serving the game best by singing (of all things) most of the time.

In Jason Morningstar's Valkyrie, one plays a German dissident during the latter eccentricities of World War II. One does so for as long as one can, I should say, since there is the distinct likelihood that one will be investigated by the SS and summarily executed during the game. In fact, only Friend Davey survived the experience in the same avatar throughout. Again, I was a slow monkey on this system, but I certainly picked it up better than I did AGON, and the teamwork appealed to me far more than the blend of teamwork/glory-hounding. Plus the game makes for Nazis killing Nazis. That's, like, the universal equation. In spite of the thrill of succeeding to assassinate Hitler and create an uprising against the Nazi party, the game did ultimately lack much of an involved character-play or storytelling element, at least the way we played it. Not that I necessarily consider that a fault, mind. It was hella fun, and you could do it with a campier crowd than we determined conspiracists.

Thereafter, Clinton R. Nixon (whose name I must admit I envy) invited me to play Memoir '44, and I had immediate post-traumatic stress over every lost game of Risk I ever played. But when Clinton R. Nixon invites you to play something, only fools dare refuse. Let me tell you something: Risk is for little jerks who can't figure out the concepts behind checkers. (That'd be me; fortunately, Friend Davey was there with his able strategisms once again.) The best part about Memoir '44 is the way it weaves chance into strategy through its use of randomly drawn cards for available actions. I'm buying it. End o' story. (Though I may go for one of the less based-on-actual-human-tragedy varieties. So now: True end o' story.)

Kevin Allen Jr. is featured in ma' 'blogroll. If you've never yet been to The Mountaintop Lair of Alex Trebek, go immediately, and once there, shave your head in devotion. It. Is. A. DELIGHT. (If you're an utterly cynical geek [which I is].) I met him at Nerdly the First, and when I saw he was running a game that was a "hack" of Hamlet, I knew I had at least one time-slot permanently filled. Something Is Rotten was very much in playtest, so half of our time was spent in (fascinating) discussion of how to make it operate better as a game. There was actually some confusion on my part as to whether Kevin was aiming to actually make a game, or rather use gaming to gather ideas for a story he wanted to write. It hardly mattered. The playing was great fun for me, weaving in references to the play some times, and at others completely disregarding conventional concepts of the characters. For example, when I played the Hamlet-type, he was outwardly angry with the Claudius-type, something he could never do in the play. And at one point I jumped in as a yokel waiter in a diner, spreading the rumor that the circus (or, the players) were coming to town. I walked away renewed in my enthusiasm for the idea of blending improvisational theatre -- audience and all -- with gaming, which has been a topic of much musing 'twixt Youncey and me.

The Upgrade continued the trend of the improvisational, though this with less of a story-telling aspect, and more of an emotional and status-combat interplay. Clinton and Jason (Jason had also been in on playing Something Is Rotten, which naturally ruled) ran this game, which is modeled after reality TV, specifically shows that involve couple-swapping. The game is considered a "jeepform" one, which is a Finnish style of game that has the most in common out of any game I've ever played with the sort of long-form improvisation that Second City is famous for. J and C were assisted in the running by a couple of more experienced "jeepformers" by the names of Emily Boss and Epidiah Ravachol, who played ancillary characters and offered great perspective on how the game went when all was said and done. I could go on and on about this game, but the most significant experience of it for me was how uninvolved I made myself. This was owing to being AMAZED at what I was witnessing. Over the course of a couple of hours, I watched a large group of non-actors progress at amazing speed through stages of development as improvisational actors. By the end, something amazing had happened. People were no longer chasing punchlines, but feeling involved in their characters' struggles. We had a group scene with six people in it and boisterous action throughout, and as if by magic, everyone managed to pass the focus without interrupting, overlapping or lagging the action of the scene. DO YOU HAVE ANY CONCEPT OF HOW DIFFICULT THIS IS? I'm still reviewing the events in my head. I'm sifting through cause-and-effect, and believe I'm heading toward the conclusion that a relatively non-competitive game environment, if nurtured and given its own time, promotes communication. Profoundly. More on this . . . well, for the rest of my life.

My Nerdly excursion ended with Zendo, and that was fine. A little anticlimactic, but challenging and fun. It was interesting: Davey and Mark and I were planning to sort of huddle to ourselves over this (or another) game. But people became interested. By the end, there were some eight-to-ten people playing or watching (mostly playing), who had been drawn in by the camaraderie. My initial impulse was to resist this, to stick with the monkeys the scent of whose poop I recognized. But we're not monkeys, and Nerdly is all about making those new connections through games and teamwork. It seemed to me this year, for whatever reason, that Nerdly was less well-attended than last. That's problematic for me, because it's an event that is fun, cheap, accepting, beneficial and, ultimately, important. You can develop and expose your game there, you can meet new friends, etc. But what's really unique and important about Camp Nerdly is the way it improves seemingly everyone who attends. Everyone grows, opens up a bit, and learns. Never mind that it happens through gaming. Or, rather, take note. Games are good for you. I want to make Camp Nerdly live, and next year, if I don't have a career obligation that irrevocably conflicts, I'm going to run a game there.

More about it down the line. My thoughts about gaming as it applies to theatre require their own entry.

Balancing Act{ing}

Rewind to 2001, before the towers fell; months before, in the spring. Shortly after my one-year anniversary of having moved to New York, I got two jobs that have fundamentally affected every bit of acting work I've had in the seven years since. The first was that I actually found enough bravery (or naivety) to attend an open call for a touring company that required singing. The result was a production of Der Talisman -- a flippin' MUSICAL, of all things -- which happened to be directed by some dude named David Zarko. This dude wasn't even at my audition or callback. He was a freelance hire. David, of course, went on to become the producing artistic director of The Northeast Theatre, where I have gone on to do the lion's share of my professional theatre work to date.

The other formative gig was a show I've mentioned here before, Significant Circus, directed by Kate Magram. In the years since, Kate and I have shared other collaborative efforts and developed a pretty rad friendship to boot. Amidst all this work and play, it can be easy to lose track of who did and said what and when, and how we got to where we find ourselves at any given moment. (That's how it is when you are involved in a true collaboration to create a play, too. Someone will ask you, "Whose idea was it, the dancing donkey in Act Four?" and you'll reply, with great conviction, "I have absolutely no idea.") What amazes me, when I stop for a moment to consider it, is this one thing Kate contributed to my life. I can point to it, which is part of what makes it so remarkable. Look! Right there, it is!

In a word: acrobalance.

(In a compound word, I suppose I should say.)

Yeah. That stuff that has gotten me work, and that all the actors I've worked with in the past five years know me for? Kate's fault. All about Kate. Didn't know a thing about its existence prior to knowing Kate. Furthermore, because I learned it from Kate, I have loved it more than I otherwise would have, and it has had more influence over the rest of my life than it likely would had I learned it from someone else. Some of the most amazing things I've done on stage, some of the best, most interesting ideas I've come up with, never ever would have had a chance of existing in real life without Mz. Magram. It baffles me a little. She has changed me as an actor and person. Let me explain.

I have never been an athlete. In fact, and spent a good portion of my earlier years as a portly chap. When I was around 16, grandpa's genes kicked in with a vengeance and I lost 40 pounds in a few months. Suddenly I could move easier, and looked more the part for more central roles in plays. In college, I realized I did truly dig incorporating my whole body into parts as much as possible (and, still occasionally, more than is necessarily called for). I also realized that I didn't have any particular technique(s) for doing so. In college, and after graduation, I tried different things, and they were all good -- stage combat, Suzuki, Viewpoints -- but none of them thrilled me. I wanted something I didn't know. Ever feel that way?

I was lucky enough to find it. As I recall, part of what won me the part in Significant Circus was that I did a diving forward roll on a concrete floor in my audition. (A similar move cemented my audition for d'Artagnon in college; apparently a willingness to risk debilitating injury is like catnip to directors.) Then I got to my first rehearsal, and Kate asked me to balance myself against the feet of a beautiful woman while we lowered me down to kiss said beautiful woman.

"What?"

Acro-balance, partner balancing, however you want to term it, has some basics. These are what Kate taught me, and what I teach all over the place now as part of workshops for Zuppa del Giorno, and to sort of pay forward all the free training she gave me.

1. Shared responsibility. The name "partner balance" is in a way more apt, because the essence of all the postures and moves is to distribute weight between two or more people in a way that looks impressive and/or beautiful, and uses one another's weight and effort in tandem. It requires a great deal of communication between partners, verbal and physical, which can be tricky to learn. In fact, there's no way to take responsibility entirely on one's self for any aspect of it. More significantly, there's no occasion in which you can blame the other for anything. There is always something more you can be doing to help your partner(s). This is shared responsibility.
   


2. Half the ability lies in trust. Never mind all those trust games you played in high school, or at the team-building workshop you were subjected to on some three-day "weekend." In acrobalance, generally speaking, the base needs to be responsible for making the pose balanced, and the flier needs to be responsible for maintaining a strong shape (and both are responsible for communicating [see above]). Control freaks beware: Nothing wrecks a balance faster than a flier trying to change the balance, except maybe a base who refuses to adjust. And you'll be doing it again and again with this person, which as we know is long-term trust which, as we know, is as challenging as it is rewarding.
   


3. Drawing straight lines into the ground. There's no defying gravity. Maybe you can make it look like there is, but there ain't. There are moves that require enormous strength and control, but the most important basic skill one can learn is to create a benevolent relationship to gravity. Get that down, and any move is open to you with a little effort. So straight lines. Straight limbs can hold weight by grounding it into the ... uh ... ground, and angles that direct weight toward the ground are more stable and architecturally sound.
   


4. Always be spotting. We get tired, and we are used to having to fight for our own time to relax, so it's not surprising that people tend to let down their guard when they're not in the spotlight. Acrobalance, though, is high stakes. You're working as a group to achieve something, and trust is a twenty-four-hour necessity. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, be ready to catch someone else when they fall. Not if; when.
   


5. Down. Things go wrong. People are fallible. Physics is complex. When something is flirting with F.U.B.A.R. -- and more so when you're intentionally, repeatedly approaching that something -- you need to have an agreed-upon vocabulary. When the fit hits the shan, we say "Down!", and that's what we do. Safely. Together.

Pretty simple stuff, but as with any simple, broadly applicable ideas, they make for a good regular practice. I have been practicing these with some regularity for years now, and teaching them to others. These "others" probably promptly go out and try the same moves whilst blithely forgetting these five concepts behind them, but, I don't know; I've found that the harder I work on moves, the more I need to remember these guide points. I need reminding of them, but I'll never forget them, because Kate taught them to me so well. Especially the first one.

I think it's pretty obvious how these concepts apply to life in general, and acting in particular (keep them in mind; explore the possibilities; from Kate to me to you, gratis [you're welcome]) so I won't spin on much longer here. This is just to say thanks to Kate (and to her friend, Leah) for reminding me once again of important keys to finding balance.

Pleasure Reading

Despite my recent ire vented vis-a-vis the "staged reading" (see 2/27/08) I have had a lot of good opportunities and experiences with staged readings lately. (It's just that man can not live by bread alone, you understand.) NYU's "First Look" acting company has been keeping me busy with involvement in their Steinberg Lab, and tomorrow I perform the second and final reading of Riding a Rocket Ship Into the Sun, by Alex Davidson (sorry Alex--couldn't find a better link) of their graduate play writing group. Last week I did a reading completely separate of NYU, too, for a person I regard as a promising playwright, Josh Sohn. Readings are interesting practice. They have a strange combination of elements from things like straight playing, improvisation, public speaking and occasionally musical chairs. They are short-lived, and the attention is invariably more on the text than on the acting. Which, in a way, makes them a kind of odd perversion of conventional theatre. Conventional theatre, in this context, defined as theatre that says, "Hey everybody; this is really happening and you want to feel it happening as much as possible so we'll all happen to pretend it's really happening okay? okay."

But anyway. All the irksome details aside (bound to a chair or stool, ultra-brief rehearsal time, no money in it), it's the gray areas of a staged reading that can make it really fun for an actor. For example, you don't get terribly specific notes from your director (if, indeed, there is a director; last Thursday's had none) which means one's compulsion toward perfectionism (see 2/29/08) doesn't get tweaked too badly. A staged reading, assuming it adheres to certain standards, can be a wonderfully relaxing experience for an actor. It is what it is, as a former boss of mine is fond of saying. Also, a staged reading has the benefit of being very direct in its relationship to its audience. This is hard to describe; it's as though because no one's expecting to entirely believe in the verity of moments on stage, the actors have more permission to listen to the audience's responses and adjust accordingly. Within reason, of course.

The script I've been reading most in the Steinberg Lab is one in which I play a would-be private detective from upstate. It's great for exercising my deadpan and drawing in little nods to types like Bogart's Spade, and other fast-talking PIs. The writer (who shall remain nameless until she decides to present the work for public consumption) has a good sense of comedy that she's still learning about, which is pretty fascinating to explore in conjunction with her development of this play. The only downside of the whole thing is that -- cripes and jimminy -- it can be freaking tough to spit-fire dialogue one's reading for the first time. The class has suffered through more than a few incidents of stumbled pronunciation or cracked character on my part, which kills me, given the specificity of the style.

Riding a Rocket Ship into the Sun has actually been surprisingly beneficial for me. It reunited me with the director I worked with on my very first project at First Look, Kathryn Long, and who frankly spoiled me for many of my experiences following that. It's also a piece in which I play a "heavy," which I haven't done for years and find challenging. It's generally not what people see when they look at me, so I'm not overly upset by the rarity of that type of role. I do enjoy playing those characters, however I often find it difficult to fill out such roles without a lot of posturing and BS. RRSS has let me explore ways of just being in that capacity and, it appears, with some success. The responses to my reading have been wonderfully positive. I would guess that this ability came about simply from age and experience, save that I felt the discovery in rehearsal. If I hadn't worked on this script, it might have been years before I had another opportunity to figure out how to convincingly play a bad dude.

Working with Josh was the definition of brief. I got an email two Tuesdays back, rehearsed at his apartment Sunday night and performed Thursday. It was part of a play-writing group of which he is a member, so the event was informal and full of comrades. There was no director, and Josh's notes were naturally playwright-erly in nature, so "informal" really sums it up pretty neatly. I participated in two out of three pieces. In one, Errand, I played a jilted husband confronted with his best friend/business partner's return (his BF being the one what run oft wid his wife). In the other, entitled Dry Run (see Josh's link--Josh: this play from a short story of yours?), I played an interesting younger character in an interesting relationship, dealing with his significant other, who was rather freshly returned from a mental hospital. Both pieces took fairly standard scenarios and did some interesting things with them. Errand left room between the lines to show the confusion of a character who was used to forcing his life around, and discovering finally that it doesn't ultimately work. But it was Dry Run that was really interesting to me, and a real challenge. In it, I found a real parallel to follow between a typical male/female conflict of philosophies, and a struggle with mental illness. It was, in other words, not wholly alien to me. Plus there was a great, strong inner conflict for my character. That invariably sparks my enthusiasm as an actor. Not a lot's changed for me in that regard since my college days.

So staged readings: Not all bad. Don't let my cynicism fool you. It's just frustration over not having a show-show at present. Actually, I have another staged reading potentially coming up, this one for the Steinberg play mentioned above. It should lend itself well to the medium.

I only hope they give us chairs with backs for this one.

Temporary

"So, tell me: What do you have to offer to our workplace?"

"Well, I'm a straight-shooter, for one. I don't waste a lot of time with people telling them what they want to hear. I get right down to business, skipping any unnecessary introduction, or exposition, and say what's on my mind. A lot of people call that "keepin' it real," but I have never felt comfortable using slang not of my particular demographic, you know? Still, it applies. No one has to ask me a question to know where I stand."

. . .

"So, um . . .. What do you have to offer our workplace?"

"Didn't I say already?"

"Just that you're a straight-shooter."

"Right."

"Okay. Well, what do you need from us? What are you looking for in a workplace?"

"Oh, man. What DON'T I need? Fo' reals. Okay: I need a place that really, really needs my skills, so that I can work for them whenever they can get me. That's because I'll leave all of a sudden. I'll get a job acting out of town, or maybe even in town, but all-the-time-ish, and when I go away for a month or more at a time, I need to be sure said job will still be there when I get back. Plus, it has to pay as obscenely well as possible. I mean, like, you should look at the books and go, 'He gets paid WHAT? For doing WHAT?' 'Cause when I leave town, or go away for months, I'm actually losing money. That's right. I'm leaking like a sieve. What can I say? That's love. In addition, I need a place that's ready for me not to come in every morning, even when I am in town and available. Auditions, you see, and callbacks, occur in the mornings, and you just never know when one will crop up or prove fruitful. Hell; callbacks can go most of the day under some circumstances, with absolutely no warning. And don't even get me started on film and television schedules. Ninja please!"

"Ninja? Wait, go back . . ."

"OH! And I need health insurance. Because the actor's union is practically phasing it out for all but the most successful actors. We'd go on strike about that like SOME unions I know of, but it would essentially be striking against ourselves. And no one would show up, most likely. Unless there was a catering table. Also, 'kay, I need where I work to be cool."

"Cool?"

"Yeah. Not, you know, hella cool, or even wicked rad, but just . . . cool. 'Cause I'm thirty now. And I just can't be intimidated into furious activity by the implied threat of the dire importance of what we're doing anymore, you know? When your boss gets you to stay late or move more frantically just by looking a little bit like he or she might cry or scream at any moment?"

"Yes, actually, I do sometimes--"

"There you go. Can't do it anymore. Need cooler than that."

"Huh. Okay. Well."

"Can I ask you a couple of questions? Just to mix it up?"

"I suppose . . . yes. Ah, sure."

"Great. How's the coffee here?"

"The coffee? In the kitchen?"

"Yeah. The last place I worked, no kidding, it was like sulfuric acid, only more bland. I swear I must have spent about $400 on morning cups alone last year, just to avoid the home-brew."

"It's nice, I think. I drink tea."

"Weird. Okay, now, is this kind of lighting in the rest of this place? Because this is nice, and I'm not spending any more of my life in a fluorescent-tube maze. School was that way, almost every job I've had since has been that way--no more. I want warmth. I want glow. And I want it now."

"I'm pretty sure the rest of our facility is roughly like this. Lamps."

"All right! I'll take it."

"Well, uh . . . don't call us, we'll call you."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"Well, Mr. Wills, you just spent your audition time pretending you were in a job interview. Which was pretty entertaining, mind, but it doesn't really inform me as to your ability to portray Peer Gynt.. So: Don't call us, we'll call you. And thank you."

"Thanks, uh, thank you. It was fun."

"Okay. Bye-bye now."

"Bye, yes. Bye. I'll, uh, I'll wait for your call?"

"You do that."

fine

The Complete Urban Guide to Proper Umbrella Usage

The Umbrella: Some have argued its worth beyond even that of fire, or the wheel, or individually package snack foods. Known by many names--bumbershoot (or bumpershoot), parasol, canopy, sunshade--and appreciated by many cultures, the umbrella is an essential tool in humanity's war against the elements. Canes, hats, sock garters, they've all gone the way of the Dodo as far as standard equipment goes, but the umbrella has persevered in the face of fashion, and with good reason. It is versatile and seemingly infinite in variety, it is simple yet effective, and it's nifty.

This is why, dear friends, after enduring yet another day of the perils of a rainy city, I feel obligated to share with you the secrets of that ancient, nigh mystical martial art surrounding the sensitive and affective use of the umbrella in an overcrowded urban en(and "in")vironment. These many secrets of both external and internal practice have been passed down only orally through the centuries, handed from generation to generation of master, all the while cleverly disguised under the nomenclature "common sense." I think you will find, however, when next you visit New York (or Chicago, Washington D.C., Bangor, etc.), that there is nothing at all "common" about this "sense." Let's begin . . .

• Rule the First: Best Defense for Rain, No Be There.
  I paraphrase Mr. Miyagi, of course. (Pat Morita, it is widely known, was a long-time secret practitioner of The Way of The Not Retarded With An Umbrella In Public.) This rule is pretty simple. If it's raining, don't go out. You won't get wet. Oh sure, you may spill some water on yourself at some point, but come on. Take some responsibility for yourself. While you're at it, call in sick to work. Think about it. Public transportation will be full to the brim with people convinced they're getting to work faster by not driving, all the while slowing down the public transportation with their numbers. In such an environment, it's an act of charity to fore go one's usual strident work ethic, and charity is one of the 99 Virtues of this style.



• Rule the Second: Second-Best Defense for Rain a Hat.
  It's true. Hats still work. It may seem ridiculous to us, but not so long ago our ancestors (read: grandparents) wore hats out that had a little more style than just a logo and a standing deck on the front. These hats were not just stylish, but practical, with lots of air underneath to separate one's scalp from the elements and, more often than not, a wide brim all the way 'round what prevented elements from getting all elemental in our faces. This simple alternative, when combined with a long coat, will protect all the essentials from said elements.



• Rule the Third: You Need a Coat
  No, really. You do. I know, I know, but -- you do. It's the city. Water's going to come at you from directions you never dreamed possible, and it doesn't care how good your legs look in those shoes/pants/eccentric ruffles.



• Rule the Fourth: As With the (Hu)Man, So With the Bumpershoot
  So you are rash, young Padawan, and have chosen the Way of the Umbrella over the Ways of Responsible Delinquency and/or Hat. So be it. First: You still need a coat. I'm not letting go of this one. Coat, cloak, poncho, whatever--deal. Second, you are unique. You are special unto your own self. Your umbrella must reflect this. If you are larger than most, you may need an umbrella of greater radius, with corresponding longer neck. If you are more diminutive, so shall your umbrella be. Play to your strengths! Far more often than you may imagine, someone of insufficient height takes it upon his or her self to wield a Vorpal sword of a parasol, thinking bigger to be better. This is plainly untrue, and further, is contradictory to the virtue of Not Being a Punk-Ass, another of the 99 Virtues of this style. Further still, with an over-large umbrella, you are imperiling not only others, but yourself, owing to still another of the 99 Virtues: Tendency to Kill Umbrella-Punk-Asses.
  


• Rule the Fifth: Know Your Place
  What is your "place"? TWoTNRWAUIP is a sophisticated philosophy and way of life, not just a highly effective art-form, and it recognizes that set rules and forms will ultimately limit our ability to adapt to different challenges. For example, a person who's 5'10" in D.C. might think of his or her self as a tall him or her. Odds are, however, that such a one will find themselves in the shorter margin of humans at some point on a visit to N.Y.C. Ergo, one should learn to judge one's opponent(s) on an individual basis. This is harder than it sounds. To practice properly, one must meditate daily on images of reeds in the wind, unconcerned about the battles of ego that might occur in rainy urban conditions. There is no shame in taking the lower stance. Especially if you're a 4'9", slow-moving, grocery-shopping grandmother.
  


• Rule the Sixth: Movement is the Key to Successful Movement
  Herein lies all the complexity of the technique--that formless form that only masters of TWoTNRWAUIP may someday achieve. One must move with precision and ease through the myriad bumbershoots, maneuvering smartly whilst maintaining a sufficient velocity of foot travel, rather like a traceur (a practitioner of le Parkour), or those cooks who chop stuff really quickly. There are many movements, most of which only life can be the teacher of, but the key to them is this: It is not enough to avoid impaling yourself; you must avoid impaling others. Also: Understand that your umbrella is, oddly enough, wet, and can moisten others. Additionally: What is WRONG with YOU? STOP BEING RETARDED.

Dang. I think I need to meditate a little more.