The Rules of Writing...

NEW REVIEW GO PRAYING SMALL Clifford Morts' intelligent drama about one man's struggle with alcoholism speaks compellingly of love, loss, the quest for self-forgiveness. An alcoholic named Sam (Morts) with a good job and a loving wife (Tara Lynn Orr) loses both. Filled with rage but unwilling to seek help, he's finally picked up by the police -- and only then does he begin his long, slow climb back to sobriety and self-respect. Relayed in nonlinear flashback, the play rivets our attention through the depth and breadth of the central character, an intrepid, introspective Everyman with a strong sense of irony, who references Thomas Wolfe and repeatedly mulls why it is that one can't go home again. There's humor here, too. The likable Morts delivers a dynamic performance, supported by a strong ensemble that includes Rob Arbogast as Sam's former drinking buddy, a sad fellow who sinks to the dregs of existence and never finds his way out. Designer Lacey Alzec's black, minimalist set comes off as unduly oppressive, while Coby Chasman-Beck's lighting effectively underscores the play's various shifts. Victor Warren directs. NoHo Arts Center, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Fri- Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 .p.m.; through July 18. (818) 508-7101, ext. 7. (Deborah Klugman) 


New LA Weekly review in, as you can see above.  Another pretty decent one.  Should be one out by Backstage today, too.


In some ways, although just a relatively short blurb, she nailed something interesting that I hadn't really given a lot of conscience thought to - the repeated short scene in the play and tying it in to the reference to Thomas Wolfe's  famous line, you can't go home again.  It's a tremendously insightful thought.  And again, not one I did, at least I don't think I did, on purpose.


I'm reminded of the reporter that asked Hemingway about The Old Man and the Sea.  After repeatedly trying to get Hemingway to admit to writing a novel about the essential struggle between good and evil, God and the Devil, the author finally blurted out a bit angrily, "It's a novel about a guy who catches a fish and then loses it, God Damn it."


When I read the short blurb last night, however, I began thinking about Ms. Klugman's thesis.  And it does, I have to admit, make perfect sense.  But I also have to admit I didn't have that in mind when I wrote it.  It is one of the questions most often asked about the play, "Why do you repeat that scene and then finally resolve it at the end of the play?"  Ms. Klugman has explained it as well as I ever did...it's Sam's physical enactment of his inability to 'go home again.'   Well, whadaya know.  


John Irving says he has never planned out a novel in his life.  He has a vague idea of where he wants to go and then takes off.  Sometimes he gets there, sometimes he doesn't.  On the other hand, Norman Mailer has said that his novels are very carefully outlined before he writes a word.  Both of those guys are pretty good at what they do, so who's to say.  


Writing for the stage, of course, is a whole lot different than writing prose.  I've done both, actually, written both ways, that is to say.  I've written with an exact goal in mind and have spent the bulk of my keyboard time trying to find a way to get there.  I've also, as in the case of Praying Small, simply sat down and started typing.  Sometimes the intangible and unexplainable muse finds itself into the room and the rest is easy.  And other times the muse doesn't want anything to do with a particular project and I'm on my own.


My favorite playwright, although I think it safe to say he's not the best playwright, but he's damn good, is Lanford Wilson.  I'm told a lot of Fifth of July, one of my favorite plays by Wilson, was written in rehearsal.  He jotted down lines, notes, phrases and elipsi, as the actors improvised.  I can't imagine writing that way.  Nonetheless, Fifth of July turned out okay by it.  One would have to have an unusual amount of trust in the actor's sense of the play.


Arguably one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, Long Day's Journey Into Night, was almost entirely written over one forty-eight hour, angst-ridden period.   Eugene O'Neill's secretary said he locked himself in his den and every so often would shove a few pages under the door for her to type.  She said she could hear him in the next room pacing and shouting and mumbling and weeping.  At the end of two sleepless days, most of that great play was written.  O'Neill then apparently got blind drunk and slept.


Another seminal play of the twentieth century, Death of a Salesman, was written over a long, long period of time with Arthur Miller carefully editing and re-editing the final version.  The playwright himself didn't have the foggiest idea what he had by the end.  In fact, he's on record in his book Timelines as saying he wasn't even sure it was very good.


Sam Shepard, perhaps the most inconsistent and yet explosively talented of his era, didn't edit anything in his early years, which is readily apparent if one reads anything written before Fool for Love.  And yet when Shepard was really cooking his work is unassailable.  Absolutely brilliant.  


I'm not sure how Mamet works, but I can only imagine it to be really dilligent and thoughtful.  David Mamet is an unbelievably smart guy, usually the smartest guy in the room by a mile or so, so I can only think his work as a playwright leaves nothing to chance.  He is knowledgeable, it seems, on any subject under the sun, which makes his sometimes scatological dialogue a mystery.  Unlike GB Shaw, Mamet isn't interested in showing us how smart he is.  He's only interested in saying the right thing for the character at the right time, regardless how dumb it may make the character or, for that matter, Mamet himself, seem.


And then there's Tennesee Williams.  Williams was never satisfied with a play.  Never.  He was actually re-writing the ending of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof the night he died.  There were pieces of notebook paper with new dialogue all about his body.  This, mind you, twenty one years after the play had won The Tony and The Pulitzer Prize.


The gist of all of this is there are no rules to writing.  The only rule, in fact, IS that there are no rules.  


Who knew how Shakespeare approached a play.  We'll never know.  Although I do like the apocryphal story of he and his leading actor, Richard Burbage, getting drunk one night and Burbage, a huge ego, told him, "You can't write a role that I can't play."  The story goes that Shakespeare then wrote Hamlet, the story of a man who can't make up his mind.  The only thing a great actor has trouble playing is indecision.  The very soul of acting is making a choice.   And Shakespeare wrote a four-hour play about Hamlet being unable to do so.  Funny if the story were actually true.


Picking up the script today and looking at the lines.  Have to go into the theatre and help Bonnie do her 'put-in rehearsal' as Susan.  One of those necessary but tedious things that pops up now and again.  She's stepping into the role for a couple of performances next weekend.  


Angie and I have decided to go to the mall today and look at things we can't afford.  That should be depressing, joyous and amusing all at once.


See you tomorrow.

Writing by Committee.

Pictured above, perhaps our greatest living playwright, David Mamet.

A really good show Sunday afternoon.  Relaxed, in the moment, unharried and a bit quirky.  I had fun.  I think the other actors were 'on,' too.  Tara and I had a few 'what's next' moments in our first date scene, but in a non-panicking sort of way.  We've both settled into the dialogue enough so that a minor misstep doesn't really throw us.

Despite the fact that the houses are nearly full now, the bulk of our core audience has still eluded us, that is to say, the recovery community.  Don't know what, if anything, can be done about that.  We gave a comprehensive push to get the right people in to see the piece on opening weekend; facilitators, administrators, managers, etc. of various recovery centers in and around Los Angeles.  The 'word-of-mouth' element has not really worked yet in that community.  Yes, there are some, a few, every night, and I have no doubt they are espousing the show once they leave.  Many have caught me in the parking lot to tell me so.  But the truth of the matter is, that community will be our legs should the piece hope to enjoy a long run.  Not to say I'm not terribly pleased at the turn-out otherwise.  I am.  And ostensibly, any audience could give the piece legs.  But in the final analysis, the recovery community, tens of thousands strong in LA, will be our bread and butter.  And getting that group in is simply a matter of making them aware of the play's existence.

For many, many years I was simply a hired gun as an actor.  Traveling from New York to whatever regional theatre was next.  Just show up, rehearse, learn the lines, make some choices, get a little, sometimes a lot, excited about whatever I was working on, showing up opening night and voila', add water, shake, and a full house and crowded run.

People like what they know.  Even in the liberal and much-touted world of the constant, liberal theatre-goer, the guy that claims to want to see the 'new' stuff, sometimes marketing the 'new stuff' is a chore.  This is why new play festivals are a gamble, even among the more established theaters.  With the exception of Actor's Theatre in Louisville, The Asolo in Sarasota, and maybe Playwright's Horizon in NY, most theaters are a bit frightened of new work.  The subscription base simply won't support it, despite their protestations otherwise.  It is always safer to mount another Death of a Salesman or Rainmaker or Equus or Wit or Proof or South Pacific than it is to find an exciting new piece, never seen, and hope it flies.

It's the same concept in the restaurant business.  Why do you suppose Houlihan's or Appleby's or even McDonald's keep people coming back?  Because they know what to expect on the menu, that's why.  They know the Big Mac they buy in Spokane will be exactly the same as the one they buy in Jersey City.  They like it that way.  We are creatures of habit.  If we saunter into a McDonald's in Jefferson City we don't want to see flounder in a crusty mustard sauce on the menu.  We want the two all-beef patties with the special sauce.  Even if the flounder in the crusty mustard sauce is a hundred times better.  That's beside the point.

I completely understand this, being a creature of habit myself.  I don't blame people for wanting what they know.  The theaters mentioned above have made a niche for themselves doing new work.  They've based their entire marketing strategy from day one on it.  Their patrons KNOW this is what they do and it's what they've signed on for.

Last Sunday night, following my show, Angie and I saw our friend's Nickella and Jed's new staging of their musical Sick People in Love.  I've blogged about this piece earlier, months ago, in fact.  I'm a fan of it.  It's a quirky little piece with some really fine words and music from Nick and Jed.  They have been incredibly trusting with their creation by constantly putting it in front of people and asking for feedback.  A process that makes me start sweating and shaking even to think about.  Writing by committee has always been one of my worst nightmares.  I hate workshopping.  And I've carefully outlined why in this blog before so I won't go back into it.  Nonetheless, that's what they've done with this piece.

David Mamet once told me this sort of thing would quite possibly kill him if he ever had to do it.  And he meant it literally.  Putting his work out there after months, years of working it, and have a room or theater full of people then tell him how to do it better would make him fall to the floor and die.  I couldn't agree more.  Yet it's done all the time in the theatre and is considered by some the exact proper sequence for creation.  I don't get it.  But, I'm the first to agree, sometimes it works.  Sometimes it's just a huge recipe for disaster.  Most of the time, I'd go so far to say.  But sometimes, every now and then, it actually works.  I don't know if that's the case with this new piece, Sick People in Love, but I have sat a few times, utterly confounded, as these two fine artists have sat and studiously taken notes as the audience nonchalantly pick the piece apart.  And then, a little later, the next staging, I see some of those ideas actually incorporated into the piece.  I am agog.  My silent question is always, "Do they still write with the same amount of passion and certainty as they incorporate someone else's idea?"  I can't imagine that anyone would.  But Nick and Jed are two very open and discerning people.  Very bright and decisive.  Nickella is one of the finest instinctual actresses I've ever had the pleasure of watching.  She did a leading role in my aborted play, From the East to the West, five months ago.  In fact, she may be the only actor I've ever directed that, aside from blocking, I never once felt the need to offer a note.  Her performance was so centered in her gut that to tamper with it would have been sheer lunacy.  A lot of directors I know sometimes direct just to hear themselves directing.  I long ago learned the beauty of the truism, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Nick came into that play right on the money.  Any extraneous advice from me would have just muddied her work.

But back to this idea of writing by committee.  It's clearly a staple of television and film.  This is one of a thousand reasons why television and film is so inconsistent.  There are too many writers.  Too many chefs in the kitchen.  I remember seeing a movie, a large, studio picture, a few years back and when the credits got to the 'screenplay by' frame, there were, I kid you not, about fifteen names on the screen.  Not surprisingly, the whole thing was a hot mess.

But, as I mentioned before, sometimes, once in a blue moon, it works.  Look at how many writers are credited for Casablanca.  One of the great films of all time and the writing is unmistakably brilliant.  But a whole bunch of writers, not to mention three directors, had their hands in that one.  My favorite, and funniest, I think, is the screenplay credit for Zefirelli's Romeo and Juliet.  It says, "Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.  With additional dialogue by Sam Taylor."  I'd like to have lunch someday with Sam Taylor.  I've got a few questions for him.

On the other hand, I don't mind sitting around my front room and having a few trusted and smart friends over to read something and then make thoughtful comments.  I've done that many times.  The last time was in December of 09 when I had my friends Jimmy Barbour, John Bader, the wonderful actor John Schuck and Joe Hulser all over to read From the East to the West.  We read it and then sat around and shot the shit.  The upshot being that what I then wrote based on their comments was in fact a superior piece of writing than what I had done alone.  Some of the stuff, of course, I simply ignored politely.  Most of the time they voiced ideas I had long ago thought of and discarded.  But a few of the comments were dead center on the nose and I unapologetically stole them.  That sort of thing never bothers me.  I steal all the time as a writer and actor.  At the end of the day it doesn't say From the East to the West by Clifford Morts with some pretty cool suggestions by John Schuck, John Bader, Jim Barbour and Joe Hulser.  Nope.  It says, "From the East to the West by Clifford Morts.

Reminds me of something Stephen King once said when an interviewer asked him how he felt about what Hollywood had done to his books.  They were apparently sitting in King's library in his home at the time.  He said, "What?  Hollywood hasn't done anything to my books.  There they all are, perfectly fine."  And he pointed to several rows of his books sitting on the shelves, all lined up and looking brand new and ready to read.

Angie and I had to leave after the first act of Sick People in Love because the old 'silent killer' was having it's way with me.  I began to shake and sweat and get dizzy.  Blood sugar decided at that moment to plummet.  The next day, yesterday in fact, I was sitting in the doctor's office once again, trying to balance the medication.

Had something odd happen when I got home Sunday night following the performance of Praying Small.  I had an email from the critic from The LA Weekly.  She told me how much she had enjoyed the play and was asking if she might have a copy of the script to read.  In all my years in this business I have never, not once, heard of a critic contacting a playwright before the review was published.  The request, as it turns out, was completely innocent, absolutely innocuous.  But it was very strange nonetheless.  How she got my email is a mystery.  I have two emails, one for business stuff, that one is easily obtainable, and one private one that only close friends, family and colleagues have.  She had emailed me on my private one.  It's a mystery.

The dreaded bi-product of this old diabetes, insomnia, is plaguing me once again this morning.  A few hours of sleep and then up for the night.  Angie is very concerned about this part of the disease.  As am I.  I mean, I've always been an early riser, but 3:30 is a bit silly even for me.  When it strikes, this insomnia, I mean, there's nothing to do but get up and make some coffee and endure it.  So here it is, 4:22 in the morning and I'm up and open for business.  Heavens to Betsy.

LA Weekly, I'm told, will be online this afternoon.  Keep your eyes peeled.  If the surprising email from the reviewer is any indication, it should be a good one.

See you tomorrow.



  

Refusing to Take a Knee...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.  More senseless, pointless, egocentric battles with the director last night.  It's gonna be the death of me.

In other news...quiet house last night.  And full.  Kinda surprised me that such a large house would be so terribly quiet.  Too quiet, as they say in old westerns.  Nonetheless as I was meeting Angie after the show up front, I was stopped by a group of folks who'd just seen it and they were wildly enthusiastic.  So once again I was reminded that quiet doesn't mean bored.

There is a great deal of very dark humor in the piece.  Sometimes we get a house that really lets go and yucks up a storm at the humor.  Sometimes, like last night, not so much.  Friday night, strangely, was very much a yucking house.  Lots of laughs in the right spots.

Couldn't sleep last night because I was in a semi-rage over the director stuff.  Best not to go into all of that now because I'm still miffed and I'd probably just start ranting.  Suffice to say, it's simply inexplicable.

Had a quick audition yesterday for a 'documentary pilot,' whatever that means.  Read a few lines of a script into a camera and left.  Very good pay for what appears to be little to no work.  My kind of gig.

This weekend we had both Backstage and L.A. Weekly in the house.  Those should both be out by Wednesday and Thursday of this week.  No idea whatsoever what to expect.

Had Rob Arbogast over yesterday and helped him work on the role of the villain for a new film he's up for.  Unexpectedly had a really great time helping him find the pyrotechnic side of this guy.  One of my favorite film villains of all time is Gary Oldman in a movie called The Professional.  It is a virtuoso performance.  Bombastic, smart, edgy, surprising, unpredictable and some might say, over the top.  But it's a reminder to me that there is no such thing as overacting or underacting.  There is only honesty and dishonestly.  As Rob and I were working on the script yesterday (a surprisingly good one, in fact) we were keeping that amazing performance in mind.  Sort of using it as a blueprint for Rob's character in the film.

Once I pointed out the possibilities of being so gregarious with this character, Rob quickly caught on and started having a great deal of fun with it.  The old adage is true - it's more fun to play a bad guy than it is to play a good guy.  The restraints are taken off and the actor can stop editing himself so much and really go for broke.

There are a lot of great bad guy performances out there...Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, Malkovich in In the Line of Fire, Hackman in The Hunt for Red October, Lee J. Cobb in On the Waterfront, Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear, Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West, Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs and of course, the granddaddy of them all, Olivier in Richard III.

And they're all roles that one remembers upon seeing these films.

I've had the opportunity to play the bad guy a few times onstage and it's just downright fun.  The racist prosecuting attorney in To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind.  Had a ball with that one.  The sociopathic killer in Wait Until Dark.  Jigger in Carousel.  And perhaps the most fun, Jessop in A Few Good Men.

So once Rob got the hang of it and started playing a bit, he was a joy to watch.  Moving quickly from menacing to amusing, exasperated to controlled.  Swinging every club in the bag, as a friend of mine used to say.  I think he's got a good shot at the film.  He's definitely got a hook into the guy and that's what counts.

I spent a lot of my teaching time in Chicago working with young actors.  People that needed firm guidance.  They wanted me to tell them exactly how to do the role.  This can get really tedious for me.  With Rob I enjoy myself so much more because once he grasps what it is we're doing with the character he starts, almost immediately, to fly on his own.  It's the difference between working with a pro (my preference) and an amateur.

Matinee performance today of Praying Small.  All of the actors, myself included, are pretty much exasperated with the power struggle between the playwright and the director.  The mounting period for this play has been so difficult.  A battle at every turn.  Trying to do what's right for the play.  Keeping it simple and honest without a lot of frills and extraneous, well, stuff.  Trying to preserve the dignity and importance of the piece.  Fighting to eliminate chicken noises and bear noises and strange laugh tracks and Three Stooges music and background crowd noise and overwrought blocking and clown noses and chess clocks and giant clocks on the wall and added, unwritten characters and huge pauses between scenes and, well, on and on.  I honestly cannot remember the last time I've been involved with such a difficult rehearsal period.  I just hated going to rehearsal every day because I knew there would be another argument.  And yet, unlike most other plays, I had to keep at it because this one was mine.  I wrote it.  I own it.  It didn't exist till I made it.  So I had to protect it.  Usually I would have bowed out long ago and just said, 'let's agree to disagree' and moved on.  But in this case I had no option but to fight for my words.  To daily run interference for my creation.  And all the while trying to learn one of the largest roles I've ever done.  It has utterly exhausted me.  And more, it has constantly affected my already tenuous health.  Stress is really bad for diabetes sufferers, I'm told.  Well, if I were to point an accusing finger at something that has hampered my management of the old 'silent killer' it would definitely be the stress of rehearsing this play.

I fought Golden Gloves for about five years back in the day.  I remember fighting an incredible welterweight by the name of Roger Leonard...he later went to the Olympics.  Roger beat the bejesus out of me.  I took two standing eight counts from him in a three round fight.  He had a hook I couldn't see coming and he clocked me with it about three dozen times.  My trainer told me between rounds two and three, "Just take a knee, Son.  You're gonna get hurt."  But I refused to.  In my mind, I told myself he was going to have to kill me to beat me by TKO.  So I stayed at it.  I lost all three rounds (now, mind you, I went 19-3 my last year, so I wasn't THAT bad).  But Roger outclassed me.  He was simply a faster, stronger fighter.

The process for this play reminds me of that fight all those many years ago.  I just couldn't stop.  I couldn't quit fighting.  Because there was a lot more at stake than my health.  There was personal integrity.  What I thought of myself.  I think once someone relinquishes that, it's all over.

Finally, about last night, I never really felt in the game.  Always just a half beat off.  Couldn't quite get into the center of it.  Couldn't quite enjoy the moment.  Always thinking of the next beat, the next moment, the next line.  I knew it and yet I couldn't stop myself.  It's an ugly spot for an actor.  Hopefully, the actor is proficient enough technically so that no one aside from himself really notices.  I hope no one noticed last night that I was having an 'off' night.

So until I have to go to the theatre and confront whatever off-stage drama there is there, I hope to have a relaxing Sunday with Angie and the puppies.  We have a lot of hurdles in front of us, Angie and I, regarding our financial stuff since she's no longer working.  But nothing can be done about that until tomorrow.  And worrying about tomorrow never did anyone any good.  Yesterday is gone, nothing to do about it.  Tomorrow isn't here yet, nothing to do about it.  But today has the promise of the here and now.  Today I have the opportunity to be kind and caring to the people in my life that make it worthwhile.  Today can be molded.  Today is all any of us really ever have.

See you tomorrow.  

You Can't Go Home Again...unless you're a different person.

Backstage West in the house last night.  This is the industry paper for actors, directors, writers, etc. in Los Angeles.  Tonight another of the big three, The L.A. Weekly, a weekly (obviously) paper here devoted to arts, culture and music.  Both should be out next Thursday.

I'm told by the ever-vigilant, critic-watchers that the Backstage reviewer was "stoic" although he seemed to enjoy it and concentrated silently throughout.

A vocal house last night.  One lone, jubilant standing ovation participant at the end.  No doubt a program person.

This morning I've got a class to teach and then an audition for a "documentary pilot" at noon.  Not sure what that entails but it's good money and they contacted me about coming in to read today.  It's in Beverly Hills.  So I'll trek over that way after finishing my teaching and see what happens with that.

Thomas Wolfe famously wrote the all-encompassing line, "You can't go home again."  I think it was in Look Homeward, Angel.  He was talking about a lot of things with that line, not of course, simply going home.  He was talking about our human tendency to try and recapture a moment, a place, a time in our life that has past, that we cannot revisit no matter how hard we try.  Maybe rekindling a love affair, or trying to pick up a feeling, a specific moment, that has disappeared.  It is one of the saddest lines in all of literature.

Since beginning this journey with Praying Small and the press its received I've had a few emails from the past. Got one last night, in fact.  People I haven't seen or heard from for thirty years or more.

Got an email from an old high school teacher last night that left me a bit perplexed.  Said he wanted to "pick up where we left off."  Personally, I didn't know there was anything to "pick up" to begin with.  He said, "I think this writing thing is something good for you, good for your future."  Hm.  Having been writing plays successfully for nearly twenty years, I wasn't quite sure what to think of that.

But I was, in fact, transported back to a time in my life, my late teens, growing up in central Missouri, miserable without actually knowing that I was miserable.  Not even knowing why.  Now, of course, I know why.  I was living with a raging, abusive, out-of-control alcoholic family.  But I didn't know that then.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I honestly believed, because I didn't have anything to compare it to, that EVERY family drank to paralyzing excess every night of their lives.

But this is not going to be a therapy session today.  I was simply intrigued because I actually use that line of Wolfe's in the play.  You can't go home again.  And God knows I have tried so many times in my life.  So many times I've tried to recapture something that was fleeting, both good and bad.

But then I began to think further on the line and I came to the conclusion that it DID actually work once in my life...when I moved to Los Angeles and began seeing Angela.  We had been seeing each other many years ago in college and when I moved here and "picked up" where we had left off, lo and behold, it worked.  It absolutely worked.  Never before or since.  Naturally, there were lots of changes, lots of things that were different, one being our age.  But hard compromises were made and now we're engaged to be married in November.

We are two completely different people than we were then, both of us with quite literally a lifetime between seeing each other, or in my case, several lifetimes.  But it was perfect timing for us.  Perfect kismet.  And now, against the laws of nature itself, we are both incredibly happy with the outcome.

I don't usually dwell on the extreme personal in this blog, some references, an occasional nod in that direction...mostly I save that kind of writing for the stage which, oddly, is far safer.  Behind the veil of drama and characterization it seems somehow less intrusive to speak openly of a complicated past.  And of course, in my case, the specter of addiction was always a hard and true factor in nearly every relationship I've had, be it with a lover or with a teacher or, for that matter, the local mailman.  Everything was colored by that truth in my life.  And acceptance being the answer to all our problems, I've accepted it.  And moved on.  Not wanting to change the past, but hopefully learning from it and not spending an eternity 'doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.'

A nebulous blog today, but that's okay.  I just wanted to touch on that.  That hopeless moment we've all experienced it seems at some point in our life when we've made the vain attempt to 'go home again.'

Last night after the show I had a flurry of texts back and forth with my dear friend, Jimmy Barbour, who is in NYC recording his newest CD.  We have both reached a time in our lives where changes have to be made.  He's having a tough go of it in NY right now.  He doesn't care for that city, the metropolis where, in the past, he has had so many professional victories.  These days, for Jim anyway, NY holds some tough memories.  And I completely and unashamedly understand.  I, too, have felt the same way.  It is one of the reasons I shall never, under any circumstances, set foot in Chicago again.  There's just too much blood under the bridge.

Jim and I are joining forces this September to teach a workshop here in Los Angeles.  He'll be teaching the interpretation of musical theatre and I'll be doing my naked face scene work.  And both of us will be teaching a new way to look at performing Shakespeare.  We have a slew of folks already verbally signed on for the workshop and I'm sure we'll have many more.  I look forward to it.

Jim is another strange case in my life where I was, to a certain extent, able to 'go home again.'  We never tried to pick up and relive our halcyon days of working together in regional theatre all those years ago.  But we have revived a friendship based on trust and unconditional support.  Regardless of our trials and tribulations over the past two decades, we have always been friends.  We have been since the moment we met in a parking lot in Kentucky, of all places, back in May of 1988.

The same is true of my buddy, John Bader, who is currently in Iowa carefully monitoring his mother's delicate health.  When John moved to LA many years ago, I was still in NYC plugging away at a career in tatters because of excessive behavior.  But John and I remained friends regardless of my own irresponsible choices over the years.  He has never been less than encouraging.  And now we speak daily as he anxiously awaits a moment of sadness with his family in the midwest.  He is incredibly supportive of everything I do here on the West Coast.  Always giving advice and being gentle and honest with me.  His companionship since moving to this new and strange land has been unswerving and completely uncompromising.  Not sure I could have done it without him.

Thomas Wolfe had so, so many things on his mind when he wrote that sentence, you can't go home again.  But I've discovered that sometimes you CAN actually go home again.  You just can't go back to the same neighborhood.  You can't ride the same bike.  You can't stand in the same yard.  You can't sneak in the same backdoor.  You can't lay awake at night and listen to the same grown-up, far-away, drunken, senseless chatter.  You can't dwell on the same doors being slammed.  And you can't be the same person.

See you tomorrow.  

LA Times Review...

OF LOVE AND RECOVERY

"Sobriety doesn't make life easier, it makes livin' it easier."  Such candid truisms punctuate the self-circumscribed humor and grit of "Praying Small" with admirable determination.  Clifford Morts' much-acclaimed 2003 study of one man's journey to recovery receives a respectable West Coast Premiere at NoHo Arts center.

A stylized prologue segues into Alcoholics Anonymous-birthday remarks by protagonist Sam Dean (author Morts, essaying the role for the first time).  What follows is a boomeranging, nonlinear look at Sam's trek, from successful Manhattan yuppie status to rock bottom and back, repeatedly revisiting the key moment of regret when wife Susan (Tara Lynn Orr) finally had enough.

Director Victor Warren keeps his committed cast atop the zigzags around set designer Lacy Alzec's  minimalist porticos and Coby Chasman-Beck's intense lighting plot.  Morts' unfussy Everyman quality, pitched directly between the young Ed Asner and middle-period Bob Hoskins, counters a fleeting sense of authorial restraint.  Orr is imposing as Susan, her emotional acumen most impressive the given fragmented structure.

Their colleagues do yeoman work in multiple roles, wwith Brad Blaisdell in particular a standout as Sam's quietly tough-loving sponsor.  Rob Arbogast finds raw humanity in downwardly spiraling fellow drunk Roman, while Melanie Ewbank's authority figures and Bonnie Cahoon's functionaries keep up with Morts' singular schematics.

It's an honest, laudably non-polemic piece for a niche play, at some levels beyond conventional criticism.  Certainly, anyone who has struggled with its core issues, and/or those love them, should consider "Praying Small" de rigeur.

David C. Nichols

Making God Laugh.

No Times review, either online or in the paper.  I have no idea what's going on.  My buddy in Colorado, Michael Catlin, a fine, former LA actor, seems to think they might save it for the Sunday edition because it's a special notice.  I don't know.  All I know is we need the review right now.  We need the word out there about this play.  We need outside confirmation that what we have done is worth seeing.

It was a bit of a surprise that the Times even showed up in the first place.  We didn't expect them.  In fact, our producer, the astonishing Teal Sherer, received the call the very afternoon they attended.

I almost stepped away from the theatre back in 1989.  I was in NY and couldn't get arrested.  Try as I might I couldn't get in the door.  Couldn't get an agent.  Couldn't get my plays mounted.  Couldn't get hired to do anything in a decent house.  I was just one more of a thousand twenty-something actors wandering around New York City.  Some with talent, some not.  Either way, it didn't seem to make much of a difference.

As I've mentioned before in this blog, I started studying with the brilliant actor Michael Moriarty in 1987.  I learned more from Michael in one night about acting than I had, it seemed, in the previous eight years.  Michael was never interested in teaching the actor how to rehearse, like most acting teachers, but only in teaching one how to perform.  Teaching one how to get a job.

He's a tremendously positive teacher.  Always starting criticism with positive comments.  Saying first, "you do such and such very well here..." and then moving gently into the real criticism.  As a world-class actor himself he was always more than aware of the young actor's fragile ego.

So at the time I was working at a restaurant on Fifth Avenue in the city.  I was climbing the ladder of in-house, restaurant politics quickly.  If I had wanted I could have moved quickly up that ladder and been making some very good money in the restaurant business.  But it was wearing me down.  The servility alone was making me a bit crazy.

One day in class, I did a few monologues from a new one-person show I was doing at the time called Our Generation.  As was Michael's custom, he started out by asking how I was doing.  I told him I was thinking of getting out of the business.  That I had been in NYC for almost four years now and hadn't had a real break come my way.  He nodded and asked me to show him what I had that night.  Following the monologues he didn't offer any criticism, he just asked me to see him following class that evening.

When class ended I stuck around.  After the last student had wandered out he asked me to take a seat.  He said, very simply, "You are one of the best I've ever seen at this.  You are in the one percent of one percent.  You mustn't quit.  See you next week."  It meant more to me than I can ever say, even today.  So I kept plugging away.  And eventually, if not becoming a "star," I got to the point that I didn't have to do anything but act to make a living.

Some years back I read an interview with Joe Pesci in Rolling Stone.  He was talking about his early years as an actor.  He, too, had a similar story to mine.  He was working as a restaurant manager in NYC.  Gigs were occasional.  Some years better than others.  He decided to quit.  Just make a living in the restaurant business. And then he got a call from Martin Scorcese's people about a call back for a new film called Raging Bull.  He decided to give it one last shot.  And, as we all know now, it changed his life.

Eventually, I did end up bowing out of the theatre business for a few years.  I had an epiphany of sorts and decided to go back to school and get my C.A.D.C. (Certificate of Alcohol and Drug Counseling).  I chucked my stage aspirations for a few years and decided to get my hands dirty doing "real" work for a change.  I became a counselor on the north side of Chicago, working with newly sober and low-bottom alcoholics.  It was demanding and heart-breaking work.  In fact, it was during this period that I wrote Praying Small.

After a few years in the mud I came back to the theatre.  I realized my noble epiphany was misguided.  That the work I could do in the theatre was every bit as noble and life-changing as my one-on-one work as a counselor.  I don't regret it.  Not for one instant.  Being poor and an artist is infinitely preferable to being rich and a counselor.  Besides, my sorjourn into the counseling world was a useless period of running into brick walls, anyway.  The relapse rate, I discovered, was nigh on %100.  Addiction is not something one can be talked out of, I discovered reluctantly.

Now, in Los Angeles, I feel a bit like I did all those years ago in NY when Michael offered me those kind and  well-timed words of encouragement.  I keep sending my resume out and hearing absolutely nothing in return.  I don't have an agent or a "reel" yet.  I am spinning my wheels, it would seem.  I can't get anyone in the industry to come see my play.  I watch others around me land audition after audition and I sit idly by waiting for my cell to ring.  And considering Angie's and my financial concerns, it would appear I'll soon have to do something else to make a living for awhile.  Something I haven't had to do for a good many years.

We shall see what we shall see.  My old buddy, Father Joe Sampson, of a parish in Brooklyn, at one point my best friend in the world and someone I credit with saving my life, once said to me, "Do you know how to make God laugh?  Tell Him your plans."

Having said that, we shall, indeed, see what we shall see.

See you tomorrow.

Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century

Above, the terrifying sign hanging above the entrance to Auschwitz.

We should get a review today from The Los Angeles Times.  I'll post it in a separate blog if it comes out later.

As is my habit, I'm up inordinately early, having my coffee and eating a banana.  Around seven I'll wander up the street and pick up The Times at out local bodega.  They probably don't call them 'bodegas' here in LA but that's what they're called in NY so I still do.

In the first few years of my living in NYC I had a place for awhile up in Washington Park, way uptown on the west side of Manhattan.  A little ratty apartment on 172nd street.  It was above Harlem and below the Bronx in an isolated little area full of old Jews and European transplants from the fifties.  One morning, shortly after moving there, I walked to the little bodega on the corner to get bagels and coffee.  As I waited behind an older woman to pay for my stuff, I noticed, as she paid for her stuff, the tattoo on her wrist.  It was a concentration camp tattoo.  Numbers in ink etched into her wrist.  I was stunned for a second.  Never seen one in person before or since.  I was so shocked, in fact, that I must have been staring because when she turned around she noticed me.  She looked briefly at her wrist and then back to me and smiled thinly.  I couldn't say anything.  Just stood and stared.  She nodded quickly to acknowledge that what I was seeing was real and walked out.  I still think now and again about that moment twenty four years later.

Shortly thereafter I began reading everything I could get my hands on regarding the holocaust.  Not with any goal in mind, just to get my mind around it.  I still don't think I have fully.

Later, I wrote a one-person play called If This Is A Man based on a book by Primo Levi about his time in a concentration camp as an Italian Jew.  Did it with a theatre, now defunct, called The Kraine Theatre on the lower east side in NY.

Over the years, film and television have tried to capture the images and mindset of the holocaust.  They inevitably fail.  Even our imagination can't conjure up the horrors that took place.  Dante' himself would have been rendered speechless.

When I visited Europe a long time ago I took a tour of Auschwitz.  I shall forever remember the sign above the entrance in German...Arbeit Macht Frei..."Work Sets You Free."  Today I find it incredible that The Salvation Army uses the same catch phrase for their terrible and secret Adult Rehabilitation Centers all across America.  They are not a particularly bright lot, these guys, these "ministers," so I"m sure the irony completely escapes them.

I saw the ovens, the barracks, the "hospital" where the nefarious "experiments" took place.  I have never, and I mean never, been so emotionally overwhelmed.  By the end of the day I was far, far past tears or wailing or anger.  I was simply stunned.

To this day, when things or situations in my own life tend to become unmanageable, I think of that tour.  I try and place myself in that situation, as far as my mind will let me, anyway.  And almost immediately I realize all over again how lucky I am.  How fortunate to have been born too late for it.

My new play, Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century, deals with three separate couples in three different eras.  One of the couples are a young boy and his mother.  The play starts with them waiting to be assembled by the NAZI's for a train to Auschwitz.  The boy is worried about his dog.  Who will take care of it?

Three hours and three acts later, he is experimented on himself in that very room I witnessed in that camp all those years ago.  I have the perfect young actor in mind to play the role if I can get it produced sometime in the next year.  Young Matthew Shane, who was quite possibly the only bright spot in the night of one-acts we recently mounted at NoHo ACE.

The play is a blank stage play, sixteen characters for sixteen actors, a huge canvas, obviously.  I'd like to get it done somewhere decent with good actors, committed and passionate.  We'll see.

Our next door neighbor's rooster (yes, I live in an area of LA full of barnyard animals, it seems)  is starting to crow.  Bits of light may be seen in the sky.  It's already warm and fresh outside.  Another day in a beautiful city blessed with beautiful weather.  What the hell kept me in Chicago, that terrible, dirty, corrupt city in the bible belt for so long?  I don't know.  I didn't know any better, I guess.  But now, ah, now, I do.

See you tomorrow.

What's good? What's not?

Above...Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye.

I am a presidential history junky.  I have the oddest facts about presidents and their administrations at my fingertips.  And I read a lot about this sort of thing whenever I can.  I was thinking about, of all things, FDR's wonderful first inaugural address in 1933 yesterday.  A line that goes right up there with Kennedy's 'Ask not what your country can do for you...'  Roosevelt was trying to calm the nerves of a very nervous nation when he said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  What a brilliant line.  I don't know who's responsible for the line.  But it was the exact right thing to say at that moment in history.

I was thinking about that line because it is relevant to so many things in my life today.  Angie's current situation, my situation.  Fear itself.  It is a massive hurdle in our lives and often times turns out to be only a pebble in our way.  Fear.  In AA they have two definitions for it:  Fuck Everything And Run or Face Everything And Recover.  The latter of the two being preferable, of course.  Fear itself.  What a massive amount of time we seem to spend mulling that over.  Fearing fear itself.

There are so many things invading our lives today.  The oil spill in the gulf seems to be threatening our very planet itself.  There is no end, apparently, in sight.  Just trying to grasp that fact should scare the bejesus out of any thinking person on earth.  Another 'no end in sight' scenario seems to be Afghanistan.  And then there's the massive divide in this country today with regards to the partisan trains of thought on how to govern a country.  Hatred and fear (see Arizona) everywhere.  Tea Party renegades spewing anger and fear at every opportunity.  Liberals striking back blindly.  Financial recovery still just a mirage, it seems, in this country.

Angie and I know three people that lost their jobs this past Friday.  Seemingly inconsequential in the large scheme of things but devastating on a personal level.  Money scarce, employment scarcer.  And all of this, large and small, pointing directly toward a country immobile, seemingly, with fear.

It concerns me.  It frightens me.  And it makes me feel impotent.

Still waiting for the LA Times review of Praying Small.  I guess it will come out tomorrow in the weekly 'entertainment' section of The Times.  I hope so, anyway.  There is simply no reason to continue to strive for good work if no one recognizes it.

There's an amazing Brando performance out there in a film called Reflections in a Golden Eye.  It is a 1967 film, directed by John Huston and starring Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, back when she could still act.  The film itself is rather middling.  Over dramatic and directed, out of character, by a John Huston briefly infected with the whacky and odd, late sixties influence of a dearth of talentless new wavers.  But in the middle of this sepia-toned, groovy film, is a performance by Brando that is extraordinary.  These days students of film and great acting look at this piece of work in reverence.  But at the time, the critics nailed him to the cross.  It is one of the reasons Brando stopped giving a shit about his own work.  He never came right out and said it, but the general consensus seems to be today that Brando stopped striving for great work after that film because it seemed no one could tell the difference anymore between great work and bad work anyway.

I sort of feel that way these days.  I honestly believe we have something important and transcendent on our hands with Praying Small.  Despite the many obstacles we overcame to get it there, the words survived the mediocrity with which they were treated.  And yet, outside of a few wandering souls on any given weekend in North Hollywood, no one seems to care.  Or perhaps this is only my perception.  I hope so.

When Brando did the Huston movie way back in '67, he gave it his best shot.  He actually, for the first time in about ten years, tried to do good work.  And no one noticed.  We do now, of course; history is that way sometimes, but at the time it was treated as just another introspective Brando performance.  The nuances and concentration were lost to a bevy of critics used to broad brush strokes.

Again, this is how I feel with PS.  I wouldn't exactly go so far as to say pearls before swine because I don't think that's true.  Nightly, it seems, we have a few that actually 'get it.'  The same sort of thing had my ire up when I did a short, benefit run of my play, From the East to the West, a few months ago.  A friend of mine, a Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright, in fact, told me, "this is the best script I've read in years.  It's brilliant."  And yet, on THAT VERY SAME DAY, I was told, "it would be a great disservice to you to let an audience see this."  What is one to do?  Which words mean something?  Both?  Neither?  It's sort of like the old advice from Moriarty about critics, "If you believe the good ones, you gotta believe the bad ones, too."  So who does one believe?

Trying to get people in to see Praying Small is like trying to get cats to walk in a parade, it seems.  Why is this so difficult?  It wasn't in Chicago.  It wasn't in NY.  Maybe it's just the general theatre mentality in Los Angeles.  I don't know.  I honestly don't.  Angie, a former casting associate and theatre-going veteran out here, seems to think people are both gun-shy and beaten down.  They've seen such a plethora of really bad live theatre work out here they are virtually blind to good work when it unexpectedly arrives.  Again, I don't know.

In Chicago, word leaks out.  Things get around.  Discoveries are made.  Critics champion good work when they find it, regardless of the size of the house.  I don't see that happening here.  There are two completely different mindsets when it comes to watching theatre in Chicago and watching theatre in LA.  Maybe it comes down to something so simple as mounting a searing drama in the heat of the summer.  But that doesn't quite make sense because it seems in LA there is ALWAYS the heat of the summer.  The weather isn't a factor out here.

I worry about this.  Ideally, of course, I'd like to write and act in television and film here in this city.  But my background, rather extensive if I don't say so myself, is in the theatre.  I know good work.  Not only that, I know how to make it happen.  And yet I still see good work and bad work lined up side by side all the time and no differentiation is made between the two.  I remember a couple of months ago when I was involved with a night of one-acts at our theatre and one of the actors, an older lady, said, "This is going to be a huge success.  People are going to LOVE this."  I looked at her as if she were mad.  She actually thought, and I say this without rancor, she was involved with something wonderful.  Even then, before we opened, I knew it was dismal.  And yet, and yet, I seemed to be the only one.  It's an LA thing, to be sure.

Or maybe I'm just too sensitive about such matters.  Maybe I'm just too demanding.  Too much of a perfectionist when it comes to my work.  Maybe there IS no discernible difference between Love Shack and Handel's Messiah.  Maybe I'm the one that is off-kilter about all of this.

In any event, a scatter-shot blog today.  I awoke this morning with a host of fears on my mind.  Usually I snap out of this defeatist attitude after an hour or so with the ever-optimistic Angela.  But she's still asleep so I'm stewing in my own negativity for awhile as the fog burns off LA on this soon-to-be-crisp and clear and flawless day.

We shall see what we shall see.

See you tomorrow.

Franny and Zooey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFiDisSOzv4

My friend, Jim Barbour, actor/singer extraordinaire, put this little montage together.  See link above.  Kinda cool, huh?

I've been so engrossed with Praying Small as of late I've sort of let my teaching slip a bit.  So these days I'm trying to drag in new students.  That's been my focus for the past couple of days.

Franny and Zooey are our dogs.  Franny is six months old and Angie and I saved him from a shelter in Bakersfield, CA, of all places.  Angie found a picture of him online and sent it to me with the text, "this is your son."  Loved that.  A couple of days later we drove the two hours or so up to Bakersfield and took him off death row.  He seemed to know immediately that we were a family now.  He curled up instantly in the back seat and slept.  He had been found, they told us at the shelter, wandering the bad part of Bakersfield (as opposed to the 'good' part, I suppose) at approximately six weeks old.  Someone had obviously just put him out and said, 'good luck.'  He is a ragamuffin of a puppy.  Constantly getting dirty, constantly in mischief of some sort, constantly bothering Zooey trying to get her to wrestle with him, constantly happy.  He is one of the great things in our life today together, Angie and I.  

He curls up and sleeps every night right by my head on the pillow.  When he awakes every day he is wildly enthusiastic about the start of the day.  It is nigh on impossible to not be happy along with him.

Angie has had Zooey since she herself was a puppy.  She's about eleven or so now.  A soulful dog with intelligent eyes.  She loves company.  The moment someone comes through the door she is on their lap and making friends.  The addition of Franny to our little family has taken years off her.  She completely ignored him the first couple of weeks and then finally resigned herself to him.  It was as though one day she just said to herself, 'okay, looks like you're staying.  Let me teach you the ropes.'  And that was that.  Now they are inseparable.  

The really weird thing is this:  long before Angie and I got together I had often told friends I wanted two dogs and I wanted to name them Franny and Zooey, a tip of the hat to one of my favorite books of all time by J.D. Salinger.  When I arrived in L.A. and Angie and I began seeing each other I was amused to find she had a dog named Zooey already.  The next step was obvious.  Thus, Franny and Zooey.

They are the light of my life somedays.  Actually nearly every day.

When I sit down to write everyday, I always take breaks to play with them.  When I return to the keyboard I am refreshed, happy and content.  That is what they do for me.  They are wonderful companions.  And Angie and I love them unconditionally.  And they return the favor.

A lot of writing today on my new piece, Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century.  Not ready to show it to anyone quite yet.  Very close but not quite.  It is the best thing I've ever written.

See you tomorrow.

They Come. They always Come When I Need Them.

A quiet house yesterday.  Not a bad house, just a quiet one.  One rather got the impression they were taking notes as if in a classroom.  Had a couple of 'program people' down front that were clearly getting all of the inside stuff about recovery.  In fact, one of them leapt to her feet in a solo standing ovation at the end.  When I came out for my curtain call she was standing all alone and clapping furiously and weeping.  The program people get this thing, sometimes in a really emotional way.  That has always been the case with this play.

As I mentioned before, the L.A. Times guy was there the night before.  He led the standing ovation for the house, in fact.  I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that was a good sign.  A half hour before the show ended he, apparently, was leaning forward and intently staring at the stage.  Funny how the reviewer is watched so closely for signs of reaction.  I've never been a critic (actually I did review one play way, way back in college for the university paper - typically, I gave the show a middling review and had people mad at me for weeks), but they must be used to that.

We've also got an NPR review out there somewhere.  No one thought to ask her which public radio station she worked for, so we're not quite sure what or when she said something.

Up early today because I fell asleep on the couch accidentally and woke all akimbo, neck and back screaming in pain.  Oh, well.  I haven't fallen asleep watching TV in years.

Interesting performance yesterday because of the relative silence of the audience.  Everyone moved things along quite vigorously.  I actually like it when that happens.  Reminds me to stop acting and get on with things.  Being an actor and consequently having a performance ego roughly the size of the BP oil spill, I sometimes forget that people are there to see and hear a STORY, not to watch me act up a storm.

Today I'm back at the clinic to get a retinal scan.  See what kind of damage the diabetes (the silent killer) has done to my eyes.  Clearly there has been damage, we just don't know the extent yet.  We'll find all of that out today plus pick up some more medication.  I hate this stuff but I have to do it.  Yesterday, during the show, I could actually feel my blood sugar plummet at one point.  Fortunately, there's a spot in the show (I never leave the stage for over two hours) where I can actually EAT.  So as it happens, it worked out okay.  Right after I started feeling a bit weak and sweaty and dizzy, the scene where Brad and I share a lunch happened.  So my blood sugar went back up.

One of my great fears with Praying Small are the transitions from scene to scene.  It is, thru the years, the most glaring mistake a director can make while directing this show.  And sure enough, this version has some, too.  But our PSM and booth guy, Ali, shares the same frustrations as I do about these holes in the show, so together we're plugging them up and moving the show along.  Yesterday we found a couple of spots where we can just get on with it.  I'm sure no one is paying good, solid cash to watch me stand alone on stage and do absolutely nothing at various moments during this show.

We also, Ali and I, fixed a sound cue that was driving me completely bonkers.

I can't wait to see what happens this week with The Times.  If the notice is a rave, we may get a rush of ticket sales.  We need them.  We need them badly.  The recovery community has to get word of this.  If they know about it, they will come.  But they don't know about it at this point.  We have tried to get the word out but it's incredibly difficult because we can't advertise to that community.  It's ethically a very fine line.  One we simply cannot cross.

My buddy, Jim Barbour, and I are racking our brains trying to figure out a strategy to keep the show going after its July 18 closing date.  There are several options that may present themselves.  Options I'm not at liberty to go into at this point.

The show is running fairly smoothly now.  There are only a couple of spots where I find myself thinking of extraneous things onstage.  I never would have thought it possible a couple of months ago to have all of these lines down.  And not only to have them down, but to be waiting for my entrance each night without panic about them.  They come.  They always come when I need them.  They're getting in my muscle memory now.  A very good thing, indeed.

See you tomorrow.