A Night in the Mountains...

Angie and I travelled up to the mountains (well, I call it 'the mountains' cause it seems rather high) to have a wonderful dinner of bar-b-q pulled pork and watch a jazz concert yesterday.  I ate way too much (it was way too good, so there) and then we drove over about a mile to the outdoor concert.  The jazz quartet was really good, the evening was entitled 'a salute to old blue eyes' which seemed to come as a shock to the quartet.  Apparently no one had bothered to tell them they were saluting old blue eyes and at one point the pianist said, "This is turning into a Sinatra night with all these Sinatra requests."  Nonetheless, it was great stuff.  Afterwards we went back to Don and Donna's place (Don and Donna Diekens, two of our dear friends out here in LA) and were introduced to Wii.  We did some Wii boxing (which is like a Jane Fonda workout) and then some Wii bowling (which brought out the competitive nature in me.  A lot of fun.  I really enjoy hanging out with Don and Donna.  They live in an absolutely drop-dead beautiful apartment in a gated community up there in the mountains.  Donna is a former show-biz type, terrific singer, and Don and her have been together since World War I.  Great couple, really funny and smart people.

Setting up a picture perusal with my new commercial agent, the really funny and professional Joan Messinger, this Tuesday.  Finally getting that stuff done and ready to be sent out.  Fingers crossed.  I think I'm going to enjoy working with Joan as my agent.  She's top of the line out here in the commercial business.

Angie's brother and his wife are coming into town from San Diego today.  We're going out to eat tonight at some very famous burger place here in town (I forget the name).  I've met him once before, nice guy, so we're looking forward to that.

In the lull here between signing with the new agents and actually starting on new projects so there's not a lot to report on the professional front.   Next week things should start hopping again.  So it's chore day here at the Peabody/Morts residence.  Mundanity at it's very sweetest.  Maybe I'll re-tar the roof.

See you tomorrow.

RV Dreams...

I've been getting a lot of offers to do stage work recently.  Just when I decided not to do stage work for awhile. Isn't that typical?  The Coach in Richard Greenberg's TAKE ME OUT, a new comedy project of transcribed I LOVE LUCY episodes at The El Portal Theatre (they want me to take a look at 'Fred Mertz'), a couple of others.  Just not interested, though.  After my last foray onto the stage and the daily bloody skirmishes with the director to get quality stuff on the stage, well, I figure I'm due for a rest.

Tomorrow I have meetings with both my new legit agent and my new literary agent.  Both came from contacts made during Praying Small.  I'm hoping for the best.

Once again we had to postpone my final commercial shots for the new commercial agent yesterday.  We're taking another stab at it today.

Angie and I visited the public library yesterday (my favorite place on earth, the public library) and I picked up the last five "Spenser" books by Robert Parker.  I've been a fan of this series since about 1985 when a buddy of mine first introduced them to me.  I love them.  Parker is the natural successor to John D. McDonald, I think.  His Spenser is sharp-witted, smart, sensitive and brutal.  Love the juxtaposition in the character.  Parker died last year so these are the last of the series.  If you're not familiar with them you can always count on two things in every book...a great gourmet recipe (Spenser is an amateur chef) and a blow-by-blow fistfight (he's also a former professional boxer).

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do next.  As I said, I'm holding off on doing any stage work because of the foul taste left in my mouth with the rehearsal process of PS.  This "Dinner Theatre for the Homeless" idea that my buddy, Melanie Eubank, has come up with is definitely something I'd like to do.  Not as an actor, of course, but I wouldn't mind contributing some short plays.  Service Work, we call it in some circles. Altruism is always a good thing for people like me.  That is to say, for people that have a natural predisposition to selfishness.  It gets me out of my head, which can sometimes be a very crowded and dangerous place.

The plans for the August engagement party are rolling along nicely.  Angie is checking into a lot of different karaoke outfits in Springfield.  I'm the one that really wants that.  I figure there will be a lot of drinking at the party and I was looking for a way to occupy my time while others did it.  Not that being around drinking bothers me too much anymore, but after a while it just gets kind of boring for me.  Listening to people speak a little too loud and repeating themselves over the course of an evening can get a tad tedious.  So I figure I'll be the DJ instead.  I've become an old fogey, I guess.

We're getting married, Angie and I, in November and our plans at this point are to rent an RV and drive over to the Grand Canyon and take a look around.  I know it sounds a little white-trashy, but that's what we wanna do.  We'll take the puppies with us and just take out.  No set agenda, no careful itinerary, just take out and see what happens.  If the Grand Canyon bores us we'll head up north and see what's up that way.  Although I'm told the Grand Canyon is quite a spectacular hole in the ground.

Looking forward to seeing a gaggle of people I haven't seen in ages at the engagement party.  Not since the halcyon days of SMSU.  Back when our biggest worry was the next scene we were doing in Howard Orms' acting class.  Or the next theatre history test in Dr. Mac's class.  Or the next mainstage show with Dr. Bradley.  Ah, to be young again.  My buddy and one of my two best men, Johnny Bader, is attending the party.  The other best man is Jim Barbour.  I've known them both since the eighties.  We've been through the wringer together, to say the least.  Anyway, John and I are planning on driving over to the now Missouri State University, formerly Southwest Missouri State University, and look around my old stomping grounds.  Maybe take a look at my old apartment (a few of us lived in what was then known as the "Belmont Apartments" which was essentially a den of iniquity).  A lot of tequila was consumed in that apartment.

So...more pictures today (I'm beginning to feel a little like Fabio), some rewrites on the new piece, maybe a short walk while Angie is off doing her thing, playing with Franny and Zooey, the most spoiled dogs on earth, and then a night of new Netflix.  Speaking of which, I've learned it is wise to keep a sharp eye on the Netflix.  If not, I end up with some movies or documentaries I have no interest whatsoever in seeing.  That happened last week.  Although at the time I ordered it, The History of the Little Big Horn seemed fascinating but by the time it arrived I'd sort of lost interest in Custer and his plight.

See you tomorrow.

Laurence Fishburne in THURGOOD at The Geffen...

Angie and I saw THURGOOD with Larry Fishburne yesterday at The Geffen.  It officially opens on Tuesday so we saw the last preview.  Full house, standing O, of course.  It's a ninety-five minute piece with no intermission.  A complete one-person show on the professional life of Thurgood Marshall, the late Supreme Court Justice and liberal lion.

It's a good piece.  Devoid of sentimentality and very much an intellectual exercise but a very good piece of theatre.  Fishburne has already done it at The Kennedy Center (where I imagine it must have been seen by President Obama) and on Broadway.  Apparently he rehearsed it originally at The Geffen (Fishburn, naturally, lives in LA so it was probably done that way to make it convenient for him) and then moved it east.

Clearly, Fishburne is a trained stage actor.  I've seen movie stars on stage many times and usually they fade and diminish with the demands of the stage.  There have been exceptions...Gene Hackman was towering in Death and the Maiden, Hoffman was a tiger in Death of a Salesman, Jack Lemmon very much a stage actor in Long Day's Journey into Night, Pacino, of course, very watchable on stage in Richard III,   And I've seen what are essentially stage actors that do film work: James Earl Jones, Michael Moriarty, John Malkovich, Kevin Spacy, Kevin Kline, Ian McKellan, Brian Dennehy.  But most of the time when an actor that works primarily in film takes the stage, it's embarrassing.  Not so with Fishburne.

He has the voice and presence to do Thurgood.  He is at home on stage and doesn't look or feel the least bit out of his element.  This is a guy, after all, that tackled Othello.

The set design is most impressive in its simplicity.  A long, polished, wooden conference table, a few chairs, a backdrop of a huge, white plaster American flag upon which various images are shown, a beautiful, wooden, parquet floor.  And a ton of sound effects used to shepherd the audience from one notable event to the next.  I wish my director for Praying Small could see this piece...he'd finally see when its appropriate to use sound effects.  They were not just thrown in haphazardly to garner cheap laughs, but used sparingly and judiciously to actually move the play along.

Fishburne also does something very difficult to do when traversing a one-person piece.  He occasionally talks not just at the audience but to the audience.  He acknowledges their existence, so to speak.  He plays on the laughs.  He uses the laughs as a diving board to the next moment.  It doesn't sound hard, but trust me, having done a few, most notably Harry Truman in Give 'Em Hell, Harry, it is.

It didn't hurt that the audience seemed to be made up of the most politically liberal bunch of old folks (it was a matinee, after all) in all of Los Angeles.  He was most definitely preaching to the choir yesterday.

But the most impressive part of Mr. Fishburne's play was his command and ease of and on the stage.  One never gets the idea he's in water a little too deep for him.

It was a very good piece of theatre, not emotional, almost entirely intellectual and historically-driven, as one might expect from such a subject.  The language and paring down of certain landmark court decisions made simple by the presentation and writing (the script by George Stephens).  Clearly the creators and Fishburne himself went to lengths to avoid any mawkish emotion.  In the final analysis the entire piece appeared to be something The History Channel would be proud of.

And, as Monty Python used to say, on an entirely different subject, more pictures today, hopefully.  Bearded and clean-shaven pictures for the commercial agent.  New 'outfits.'

Overcast and unusually cool today in Los Angeles.  A break from perfect weather.  Doing rewrites on the new piece today, teaching a bit, taking a walk in Griffith Park, a good day.  Another good day.  I've come to rather enjoy good days.

See you tomorrow.

Bits and Pieces...

More pictures today for my commercial agent.  From our last session (the 'goatee sessions,' I like to call them) we got about forty or so good shots.  We need about thirty five more from today's session.  I've grown a short and neatly trimmed beard and after a few outfit changes we'll shave the beard (more precisely, I'll shave the beard) and then take some more clean shaven.  It's very strange.  Not the copious amount of pictures, that's fairly standard, but the fact that we've only found one spot to actually take the pictures so that the lighting and the background is absolutely perfect.  That is to say, in our hot and dirty tack room.  Yesterday I journeyed over to Studio City to my photographers place (he couldn't leave to get over here) and we searched for an hour or so in vain for the perfect spot to take shots...somewhere where the lighting and background was exactly right.  We couldn't find one.  So it's back over here today and into the hotbox for more photos.

I was talking to a couple of buddies yesterday and the day before about this whole commercial enterprise.  I wanted some insight as to whether it's all worth it or not.  I'll keep names out of it.  One friend of mine, a young guy here in LA, said he didn't really pursue the commercial stuff too keenly, but he did it when he could.  Mostly he pursues film work, he says.  Having said that, he made approximately $22,000 last year doing commercial work.  Another buddy, a guy with a really good commercial agent out here, said he worked a total of four days on SAG commercials last year, nationally run commercials, and made $47,000.  So although perhaps not million dollar sideline jobs, it's very lucrative nonetheless.

Got my first check yesterday from some TV work I did a couple weeks back.  Not a huge check, but my first one.  Angie and I have decided to frame it.  We were delighted.

The engagement party plans are in full swing.  It should be a fun and auspicious weekend in Missouri this August.  Angie and her mother are having a lot of fun planning it.

Had my buddy, John Bader, over Friday night for some pizza (off my diet, but what the hell) and we watched Oliver Stone's old picture, Born on the Fourth of July.  I hadn't seen it since it came out years ago.  Back then I remember being quite moved by the film, a very powerful film, I thought.  Upon reviewing it, not so much.  It seems so heavy handed now.  A dead-on script without any real surprises.  I've been noticing that a lot lately with films I go back and watch again.  For a long time in Chicago I sort of stopped watching movies.  Lots of reasons for that, one being a complete lack of interest.  I was teaching all the time and when I finished the last thing I wanted to do was watch more histrionic acting.  So I stopped watching a lot of movies.  Consequently, now when I go back and watch a film I have a different perspective.  Very few hold up.  The exception is one I watched from start to finish a couple of weeks ago...Jaws.  I'm convinced that may be the perfect movie, scene by scene.  It holds up incredibly well.

Today we've got tickets (courtesy of our friend, Glenna Norris, a fine actress out here in LA) to see Larry Fishburn in Thurgood at The Geffen Theatre.  The Geffen is where my buddy, Jim Barbour, recently did Nightmare Alley.  It may be the most beautiful regional theatre I've ever seen.  When Glenna came over the other night to give us the tickets she mentioned in conversation that she had started her professional career at The Old Creamery Theatre in Iowa.  That's where I started, too.  She was about three or four years behind me.  In fact, she lived in the same company house that I did.  Small and incestuous business, this theatre world is.

The late Mick Denniston, from Springfield, MO, used to send his favorite up-and-coming actors to The Old Creamery (a professional theatre he helped found) and I think I was actually the first one he sent there.  After me, he sent another dozen or so over the years.  Glenna was one.  It was while there (1984-85) that I met Bader and my buddy, Jim Petersmith, also out here in LA now, and cultivated two life-long friendships.

I've decided to write a short play for a new project here in LA called "Dinner Theatre for the Homeless."  It's a program being started by my dear friend and talented actress and playwright, Melanie Eubank.  She asked me if I'd like to get involved a few weeks ago and I've been thinking about it since then.  I think it's an incredibly good idea.  She attends an uber-liberal Lutheran Church here in The Valley and the pastor there is very committed to bringing professional quality theatre to the indigent.  As is my habit, I've been letting the idea sit on the back-burner of my mind for a few weeks, percolate, as it were, and now I'm ready to write it.  Probably about a twenty to twenty-five minute piece.  Three characters.  I'll start as soon as I'm finished blogging, in fact.

Life is good.  It's a daily struggle sometimes.  But we're both incredibly happy together with a world of possibilities before us.  Our puppies, Franny and Zooey, are a constant source of amusement for us.  We don't go out much these days for a number of reasons but that's good.  We've both had more than our share of "going out" so an evening at home, a nice dinner, a good film, some pleasant and smart conversation, a cold glass of iced tea, an early night in bed with a good book...hard to believe, but I can't really think of a better way to spend my evenings.  Time, indeed, waits for no one.  Life is what we do while we're making other plans.  And lately, life and the making of plans, has been indescribably sweet.

See you tomorrow.

Southwest Missouri State University.

So Angela got our airline tickets to Springfield yesterday.  The engagement party is on.  She's happy about this.  And if she's happy, I'm happy, generally speaking.

Springfield, Missouri, holds a lot of memories for me.  I did two stints there as a student: 1979 - 1981, and then again from 1983 - 1984.  I haven't been back since then.

They were formative years for me, to say the least.  Milestone years.  Like most people that have had the experience of undergrad, there are images indelibly imprinted on my brain from those days.  Most, of course, have to do with plays I did there.  Some have to do with people I met there.  And still others have to do with dreams I dreamt there.

I was first introduced to William Shakespeare in Springfield, Missouri, as incongruous as that seems.  1980, I think it was.  I was cast in the tiny role of Curio in Twelfth Night.  It was the beginning of a life-long love affair with Shakespeare.  There was an actor, I've long forgotten his name, that played Sir Toby Belch in that production...as I recall, he wasn't even in the theatre department...who absolutely entranced me with his performance.  A whole new life opened before me as I watched him.  And it was perhaps the first time I realized (I was so youthfully arrogant back then) that there were things I simply couldn't do yet as an actor.  I wasn't good enough.  What a realization for a young actor.  Years later, when I was doing Brutus in Julius Caesar in New York, I often thought of that performance.  There I was doing that wonderful play in that wonderful role with The New York Times and The Village Voice in the audience...to ride on top of that language, that incredible language, over the course of an entire evening, is something unbelievably satisfying.  And the yearning to do it started right then, back in 1980, watching that performance.

My first stint there wasn't terribly memorable in terms of growth as an actor.  I was still very young and couldn't really get cast in the shows I wanted to do...rightly so, I suppose, since there were upper-classmen who had paid their dues for the big roles before me.  One moment that did stick out, however, was through a class I took with the legendary Dr. Leslie Irene Coger.  Oral Interpretation (I don't think they even TEACH -that anymore in school) was the class and my final consisted of writing and performing a one-person show.  I chose to do a forty-minute show on the life of Frank Sinatra.  I completely lost myself in it and Dr. Coger was incredibly supportive.  She held my work up in that show as an example of what she was trying to teach.  Later I used that work as a template, of sorts, for several shows I did in NY...Golden Eggs and Farley and Daisy.  And even later during my national, Equity tour of Give 'Em Hell, Harry.  One-person shows are a bitch if you don't know what you're doing.

My second stint there was much more successful in terms of landing good roles: Ken Tally in Fifth of July, McMurphy in Cuckoo's Nest, Vernon in They're Playing Our Song and Jimmy Winters in Oh, Kay!  Bob Bradley, the head of the department, Mick Denniston, the AD at Lander's Theatre and Dawin Emmanuel from the music department, all became mentors for me.  Bradley was a walking encyclopedia when it came to theatre.  Mick was someone I could relate to personally and Dawin simply snatched me up after seeing me in a play and said, "You're going to study with me now."  How fortunate I was to have met these people.  Mick and Dawin, sadly, are no longer with us, but Bob Bradley is still there and apparently attending our engagement party in August.  He was the first director to really let me run with a role.  Complete trust.  I shall forever be grateful.  He was also the first to encourage me as a playwright and even directed a show I wrote called The Flagger.

Springfield is also where I first met Angie.  And that was, as time was to prove, quite fortuitous as well.

As Angie has pointed out since then, we didn't really hang out a lot because I was part of the 'bad boy' set and she was not.  There was always controversy following me in those days.  Actually, in the days that followed, too, but my penchant for being outspoken started there.  As she has pointed out many times since then, "people either loved you or hated you.  I loved you."  Lucky for me.

I met some people there that are still good friends of mine:  Joe Hulser (who directed me in a Sam Shepherd play called Holy Ghostly) and lives less than ten minutes away from us here in LA, Dwayne Butcher, whom I still stay in contact with and Robert Fiedler, with whom I later spent a lot of time in NYC and who, sadly, passed away about a year ago.

It was during these years that I grasped the idea of being a professional actor.  It was no longer something unattainable.  I could do this.  That in itself was a seminal moment for me.

Howard Orms, Mike McElheney, Byrne Blackwood, Linda Park-Fuller, all teachers that made a mark on my psyche.  All extraordinary in their own way.

I look forward to toddling over to Craig Hall and Coger Theatre (if it's still called that) and looking around, remembering the old days.  Tent Theatre, the professional Summer Stock intertwined with the school, is over for the summer, so we won't be able to see that.  But we'll see whatever show is playing when we get there.  We'll arrive on a Thursday and leave the following Monday, so there should be time to see something, at least.

We're hoping to have a grand and intimate party on that Friday night at Rex and Rosemary's beautiful home in Springfield.  Rex and Rosemary are Angie's stepdad and mother.  They've been to visit us a couple of times here in LA and are fun and smart people.  I enjoy being around them.  We're trying to put together a karoake night (Angie and I don't drink so long cocktail parties aren't really fun for us anymore).  So we thought karoake might be a fun thing to do.  Still working on that, though.  Angie's close friends (and, by proxy, my close friends) Carolea Love and Mary Wilson (their non-married names) are organizing the whole thing and I have no doubt it will be amazing.  Back in the day I did plays with both of them, Company and They're Playing Our Song, respectfully.  I remember them both as having incredible voices and being very fine actresses.

We also plan to have an evening with Angie's Dad and Stepmom, who also visited us here in LA...really great people, too, and I look forward to seeing them and catching up.  Angie's dad is the very definition of 'laid back.'

So now that the airline tickets are purchased there's no turning back.  We're gonna have a party, as the song goes.  It should be a corker.  Many old friends will be there.  People I haven't seen since, well, 1984.  Hard to believe I haven't been there in 26 years.  And Angie tells me Rosemary is getting napkins made with our names on them...if that's not an auspicious reason for being in Missouri again, I don't know what is.

And on a purely personal note, I really look forward to having a family again...

See you tomorrow.

And So it Goes...

Praying Small closed after seven weeks on Sunday.  A good run and a fine piece of theatre.  Everyone involved can be proud of what we did.  I certainly am.

But on to other things.  I hated to let it go on one level and was relieved on another.  New projects, teaching a Naked Face workshop in September, new agents, new people, all very exciting.  Sam French now has the play and we'll see what happens there.

I don't learn lessons easily, it seems.  Lot of reasons for that.  But suffice to say, I tend to make the same mistakes several times (sometimes more) before the lesson can finally break down the barriers and get inside my stubborn head.  Even lessons that I actually teach to my students, I sometimes am the last to embrace.

Not everyone is as obsessed with quality of work.  I am.  I can't think of anything else when a new project has got its bit in my teeth.  And not everyone can even see that sometimes.  As we opened this play there were still a myriad of things still to be tweaked, still to be improved upon.  And yet there seemed to be an Ethel Merman-esque attitude that once the show opens it is frozen.  Nothing could be farther from my approach to theatre.  A show is never finished, never done, I'm never satisfied with it.  A flaw in my make up, no doubt, but one that I have to live with.  Nonetheless, as the playwright and leading actor, I had no power to make anything happen.  It was tremendously frustrating.  Lesson learned.  One I shan't repeat.

Unless something happens that I simply can't pass up, I don't see myself doing a lot of stage work in the foreseeable future.  Someday, yes.  Just not at this particular time.  Angie is delighted with this line of thought. She, of course, more than anyone else, has to live with my relentless pursuit of perfection.  And with stage work, that tends to be a bit drawn out.  She, more than anyone else, can see how tireless I am when it comes to my own work on stage.  And subsequently she sees how anxious I get when I am powerless to do anything about it.

I had a bit of a 'silent killer' relapse yesterday.  My own fault, of course.  Just went momentarily insane and ate a bunch of stuff that wasn't good for me.  Naturally, I then spent about twelve hours in bed.  As I said before, it takes a bit for me to learn a lesson.  I am much more prone to doing something over and over and expect different results.  Sometimes I'm simply not the sharpest knife in the drawer.  A taco shy of a combination plate, that's me.

Ninety nine percent of the time, when it comes to this newly-diagnosed type 2 Diabetes, Angie is right.  She's done her homework.  And yet I persist in tempting fate and occasionally partaking in things that are just downright bad for me.  And then I pay for it.  I am astonished that people get through this thing eating carrots.  I don't want a lifetime of carrots.  I've never particularly liked carrots.  And by 'carrots' I mean everything good I'm supposed to eat.  Oh, well.  This morning I'm having a nice portion of 'crow.'

I don't know what fate has in store for me next, professionally speaking.  I'm growing a short beard so I can finish up my pictures for my new commercial agent.  I've been told, for whatever reason, casting people out here can't imagine things unless it's in the picture.  They can't imagine a guy without a beard actually having a beard, for example.  Or if they're casting a doctor for something, they can't imagine someone wearing a white, lab coat.  The picture must have me in a white, lab coat.  Then, apparently, the casting people say to themselves, "You know, this is a shot in the dark, I'm going out on a limb here, thinking outside the box, as it were, but looking at this picture of this guy in a white, lab coat...now hear me out...maybe, just maybe he could play a doctor in this project.  What do you think?  Am I crazy or what?"

As Linda Ellerbee used to say, "And so it goes."

Also learned a lesson, hopefully one I won't have to re-learn, about submitting myself to short film projects in order to get the elusive "reel."  Saturday I had a couple of auditions for these 'short film' thingees.  In my mind, my ever-optimistic, professional mind, I saw myself working with a young, genius film maker.  Perhaps the next Spielberg or DePalma or Scorcese.  We do this short film together and like Coppola and the early Hackman and Pacino, a lifetime of working together would ensue.  Well, I guess it doesn't work that way. Hm.

So I travel over to Santa Monica on Saturday to read for this short film thingee.  I go to the studios where it's being done.  Long drive.  Murderous traffic.  I get there and there's a line of clip boards with about a dozen different short film titles.  One is expected to sign his or her name on the project he or she has been called for and then simply wait for his or her name to be called.  So I walk in, there are about 200 sixteen and seventeen and eighteen year old kids standing around and...me.  Took me about five minutes to realize this was not a scenario I wanted anything to do with.  So I left.  Took the long and congested ride back to the valley.  By the time I got here I was beside myself with laughter it was all so ludicrous.

I tell the story in the dressing room that night.  Rob Arbogast, a good friend and one of the best actors I've met in LA, says, "Here's a tip, Clif:  Only submit yourself for thesis projects on those things.  Otherwise you're gonna get a lot of that sort of thing."  Good advice.  And I intend to follow it to the letter.

I'm re-reading Olivier's book "On Acting" these days.  And once again, just like the first time I read it, I'm entranced.  This Larry fellow certainly knew a thing or two about acting.

That's it.  Back at square one and casting my line into the calm waters of LA's deep lake of possibilities.  We shall see what we shall see.

See you tomorrow.

"Will Act For Food."

"We live in a nation of second acts."  I forget who said that.  I've always liked that quote.

Good show last night even though a huge chunk of ticket buyers didn't show up...so we had a smaller house than expected.  My buddy, John Bader, finally got around to seeing the play last night.  I think he liked it very much.  Actually, I don't think he expected to like it quite as much as he did.  John's a picky guy when it comes to theatre, so a compliment from him is not only rare, it's often genuinely deserved.

Tonight we're shooting the piece for archival purposes and posterity.  Only two more performances left, tonight and tomorrow afternoon.  I was chatting a bit with Tara, who plays Susan in the show, last night before curtain and she turned to me and said, "I just can't believe something so good is just, well, stopping."  I know exactly how she feels.  Although I think we succeeded on nearly every level with this piece, the one spot we didn't succeed was finding the right audience.  Had we have found the right audience, this thing could have run for years in the right space.  

Not all is lost, however.  Things may still happen with it.  Not at the current venue, of course, but elsewhere.  Ideally, I'd like it to turn into something financially lucrative for the people involved.  That's simply not possible where we are now.  Again, there is still a chance.  It really is too good to just abandon.  And I'm not talking about the writing, although I'm proud of the writing, but the production itself, the astonishing work from the other actors.  The great work from the producer, Teal Sherer, and the designers.  People like Kyle Puccia, who has written absolutely devastatingly beautiful music for the piece.

I remember years ago I was doing my favorite musical of all time, Sunday in the Park with George, at a theatre on the East Coast.  It had been one of those times when the cast had really bonded.  Plus the show itself was really remarkable.  Outstanding group of artists, both in front of and behind the curtain.  We had lightning in a bottle with that one just like this one.

The day we closed I walked over to the business offices to straighten out my final bit of paperwork before getting on a plane the next morning and flying to my next gig.  For the past sixteen weeks we had been a family, we had been treated like kings, we were in the middle of something really cool.  I walked into the office of the business manager for the theatre and she started nagging me about not bringing my sheets over.  My sheets.  This upset her, apparently.  We had just closed the show an hour earlier and she was treating us all as people she couldn't get out of town fast enough to make way for the next crop of actors for the next show.  It was all terribly disillusioning and a prime example of how ephemeral this business is.  But that's the way it is.  That's how it works in this business.  A family one day, a pest the next.  

I discovered over the past few Fridays that after not doing the show for a few days I would come in rather tentative, sort of fragile in my performance because I was carefully thinking about lines as I was doing the play.  Not really being 'in the moment,' as they say, but rather thinking my way through the piece.  Last night I just said to hell with that before we started, I know these lines backwards and forwards, stop being so deliberate during my Friday night performances.  So I threw it all behind me and charged into the play without a second thought to the lines.  And, of course, they all came back instantly.  I was, as so often happens in my life, fearing fear itself, nothing more, nothing tangible.  Consequently it turned out to be a very exciting show, really fast and fearless.  Since I drive the bus most of the time in this play, well actually ALL the time, the other actors sort of pick up on my energy.  That happened last night and the play just took off right out of the gate.

I have a couple of non-paying, short film auditions today.  Working toward that ever elusive goal of "the reel."  It's very important that I have one soon.  It's absolutely paramount to getting other film and TV gigs.  It's frustrating.  Since coming to Los Angeles I've worked for free more than any time in my life since college.  I don't like working for free.  If other people think they can get us for free it lessens what we do artists.  This is a lesson I learned long ago from my close friend, Jim Barbour. "Well, why should we pay this guy such and such amount of money when he did two and half hours over at NoHo for free?"  I know that's a harsh sentiment, but it's true.  I don't mind doing it now and then for the right project, like this one, but to build a career around free work denigrates the work itself.  And in the end the only one benefitting is the producer, the theatre itself, or perhaps the film company, whatever...it's a less than ideal position to be in and I strongly caution actors about doing it too often.  Sometimes it becomes necessary to turn down a chance to do Hamlet if it's for free.  It is why we have unions in this business; SAG, AFTRA and AEA, so as to keep greedy producers from profiting from the artists' work.  I'm not saying that's what's happening now, but I've seen it happen time and again.  Sometimes we have to draw a line in the sand and say, I'm sorry, but I will not work for free.  Without me, this piece of work does not exist, so pay me for it.  Unfortunately, a lot of producers realize that there are thousands upon thousands of actors who WILL work for free because they are so passionate about the work itself.  They take advantage of this.  If one guy won't work for free, no great loss, because the next guy will.

A buddy of mine in Chicago had a professional postcard he often sent to agents, etc., that had a picture of him standing by the highway with a big sign that said, "Will Act For Food."  While amusing, I always thought this sort of depressing.

Sometimes working for free is simply a means to an end.  In that case, it's heartily recommended.  But don't keep doing it.  Do it for the right reason and then stop.  Otherwise a few years go by and you keep wondering how the producer keeps buying a new car every year and you're still taking the bus.  The sad and long history of the theatre is built upon people who know that actors are a vulnerable, passionate lot that will often give their gifts away for nothing.

But I have to do a few of these non-paying films for a short while so I can put together "The Reel."  The damned reel.

A lot of times we see actors who apparently get arrogant or too big for their britches once they've landed a lucrative job, be it in film, TV or on stage.  "What's up with this guy?"  Well, probably he's being so guarded about his work because he has had to suffer the indignity of crawling before producers most of his life.  Now that the producers are dependent on him, he is seen as "demanding."  Never mind that for years and years the poor schmuck was unapologetically taken advantage of by these same people.  Forced to do million dollar work for ten bucks or less.  Now that the shoe is on the other foot he is castigated for it.  "How dare he ask for what he's worth?"  I say, get every penny from them.  Get every cent you're owed.  Drive the new car every year and let them take the bus now and then.  

The exact same thing happens with really talented athletes, too.

Anyway, I digress.

Another scorcher in The San Fernando Valley today.  Fortunately both of my auditions are in Santa Monica again, not too far from one another.  So I can knock them both out this afternoon without driving to hell and back in this inhuman heat.

I really love doing this play every night.  I wake up thinking about it, as I did this morning.  We've reached a point where we're really comfortable out there, all of us.  We enjoy the time on stage and our chance to tell this story.  We are delighted when it effects people so strongly.  We all realize, on some level, that we're not just acting in a little play, we're doing something noble.  As grandiose as that may sound, it's true.  The piece speaks decisively about a subject that needs to be spoken to, a subject that need be addressed at every opportunity.  So the icing on the cake for all of us, every night, those of us involved, is the altruism that inherently comes with doing this piece.  We're not just acting at people, we're speaking to people. 

It's a nice feeling.  And one that I wish I could call upon in less than ideal times in my life.  Doing something for someone else simply because it is the right thing to do is at the very heart of emotional stability, be it on stage or on a street corner.  It is, I sincerely believe, the first and most important step to wisdom.

See you tomorrow.

Working with Ingmar Bergman...

One of nearly two hundred pictures taken yesterday in the tack room...

A whirlwind of activity in the past few days.  On Tuesday I met with my new commercial agent, Joan Messinger, a veteran agent here in Los Angeles and a very nice person to boot.  She's an old friend of Angie's and came to see the show last week.  I think she liked it very much.  So Tuesday morning I met with her for an hour or so to figure out what next on the commercial agenda for me.  This is a whole new ballgame for me, this commercial business.  But it's something great, in the overall scheme of things, and hopefully we can be mutually beneficial to one another.

At the meeting all I had to take in was my one resume shot and my resume itself.  She already knew I could act, having seen the show and all, but, as she and her partner, Kim, pointed out, that's not terribly important in the commercial industry.  She pointed out, patiently and kindly, the pros and cons of my foray into this new and unknown aspect of the entertainment business for me.  The bad part is I'm not SAG yet and some commercial people probably won't see me because of that.  The good part is I'm a forty nine year old new face with acting chops.

So the first thing, she said, was to get pictures.  So I met with a photographer yesterday for a few hours and took about 180 shots of myself in about ten different outfits.  And still not done.  I can only take shots with my goatee because I have to keep that for one more week of Praying Small.  Once the show is closed, I grow a full beard, take some more shots in more outfits then shave it off and take some more shots in still more outfits.  It's the vanity part of the business that I've always been uncomfortable with, frankly.  Other actors, I know, love this aspect.  They love the new pics, the new "looks."  For me, it's simply a means to an end.   I do have to admit there's a certain fascination with the the self-indulgent idea of taking hundreds of pictures of myself and then pouring over them all to find the ones that "fit."  But it's a fleeting fascination and quickly bores me.  Nonetheless, after taking all the shots yesterday, Angie and I dutifully sat at the computer and picked and discarded pictures for several hours.  After a bit, like a kid with a new toy, I simply got up and did other things while Angie stayed with the photos and made choices.  One of them is featured above.  I like to think of that one as my "educated NYPD guy with two kids in college, who is fresh on the scent of a brutal serial killer terrorizing NYC"  That's how I amused myself throughout the tedious process of staring at my face for hours...making up names for the different looks.

So we had fun picking out all of the different "looks" and then playing dress-up for the photographer.  He came to the house and we had to find a perfect place with a perfect backdrop with the perfect lighting.  We tried a lot of different spots.  Finally, and I found this amusing, we found the ideal spot: in the tack room in the backyard next to the horse stalls.  Now, yesterday it was about a hundred degrees here in LA.  The tack room was about a hundred and ten.  So I had to have a towel handy to wipe my face after every few shots because I was sweating like a whore in church.  We'd take some shots and then I'd change into the next "look" and go back out to the tack room and start again.  We were sitting in front of a bunch of bales of hay so they had to be photo-shopped out.  As a friend of mine said to me many, many years ago when I was standing in the middle of a crowded mall singing "Try To Remember,"...SO...you wanna be an actor?

The whole process at this point is kinda new and exciting, actually.  Kind of like playing "dress up" as a kid.

Anyway, once the hundreds of shots are done, some with a beard, some clean-shaven, some with a goatee, dozens of "looks," I'll take the best seventy-five or so and have them printed out on four by six, glossy cards, take them into Joan and her partner Kim, then they spread them all out on a table and select, apparently, the best eight or ten shots and start sending me out on auditions.

Now, actually DOING commercials is not new to me.  Over the years I've done a few.  Most of them local spots where I was hired while doing a play in that area.  The most lucrative was a Pizza Hut spot I did in NYC a long time ago with a director who thought he was Ingmar Bergman.  All I had to do was take a bite of pizza, look at the camera, and say, "WOW!"  Cut.  That's it.  Apparently, my "WOW" left something to be desired.  This guy, I've long forgotten his name, would pull me aside and whisper direction to me as though I were about to take another swing at Hamlet's "Rogue and Peasant Slave" soliloquy.  He would give me images to consider as I wended my way up to the emotional explosion of "WOW."

"Remember, Clif, the first time you laid eyes on the lover of your dreams..."  Or, "Try and think of the first time you saw a shooting star."  I particularly liked that one. Or, "It's as if everything you ever dreamed of suddenly came true all in an instant."  This was clearly a great, fucking pizza.

After a few takes, the cynical and never far from the surface, part of me came out.  The director said "Action," the camera rolled, I took the small bite of pizza, looked straight at the camera and said, "WELL, FUCK ME!"  All the guys on the set start laughing, the director...not so much.

At any rate, you can see, Gentle Reader, my amusement regarding commercial work.

I was told the other day, on a different note, to be careful what I wrote in this blog because my honesty would  come back someday and "bite me."  Well, I've thought about that a great deal over the past couple of days.  I've decided to ignore that advice.  I started this little blog to write and record exactly what it was like to start out as an unknown actor/playwright in the new city of Los Angeles.  That is my goal and my sincere desire.  I want to record my frustrations and triumphs, my disappointments and successes, my awe and humor while exploring this whacky business.  It's not meant to be mean spirited, but at times, I have let my temper do the writing for me.  So be it.  If I only write about how wonderful everything is, how incredible everyone is, well, that would be just a big lie.  And what's the point in that?  It would be like Sammy Davis Jr. writing a blog.

Not gonna do that.

So, tonight, and I blush a bit to confess this, I've been hired to do a few lines on the reality show, "Gene Simmons and The Family Jewels."  Silly show.  Angie loves it.  Apparently, Gene is going to a 'sleep disorder' clinic and I will have a quick scene with him in the waiting room.  All "adlib," as the casting lady told me.  This should be interesting.  And, of course, I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Also, I have a few short films coming up.  This is something I've decided to do in order to get a "reel."  Very important, this "reel," I'm told.  I don't have a reel.  I don't even have a rod.

So Saturday I've got two auditions for short films.  I've already had a couple of these.  I guess I didn't get them because I haven't heard anything yet.  But, as Angie and my new agents, Joan and Kim, tell me, "It's a numbers game.  Just keep showing up and eventually something will land."  So I'll keep showing up.  It's not like I have a choice, you know.  Either that or go and sit everyday, all day, at Schwabb's Drugstore and hope for the best.

Today I'm working on getting Praying Small in a format known as 'Final Draft,' which is the accepted way to send a new play out to someone.  This one is going to Sam French, the top dog in the play publishing business.  Praying Small has been flopping around for several years now, garnering amazing notices, getting tremendous critical acclaim and now it's time to get it published.  I've not been terribly ambitious about my writing throughout the years, but it's time to get over that.  If I don't start acting as a cheerleader for my own work, God knows no one else will.

Beautiful day in Los Angeles, as usual.  The temperature is climbing already and another 100 degree day is expected.  Angie and I are debating whether to start the AC...we keep changing our minds about it.  Ah, life in the suburbs.

See you tomorrow.

Underestimating O'Neill...

Eugene O'Neill.

Sometimes plays and scripts don't translate so well upon first reading them.  That happens a lot with my work.  It happens a lot in general, but I especially think it happens with my work.  For one thing, there aren't too many people that want to take a couple of hours and really read something.  I mean read with a discerning eye and sweeping imagination.  And what sometimes happens is even when a reading is given, the actors still don't quite grasp the scope of what they're reading.  This happened, for example, with a reading I held in my front room of my new play From the East to the West.  One of the actors I invited was an old friend from Chicago.  We read the play (this is when I discovered what a remarkable actor John Schuck is - he read the lead role of "Harry" in that sit-down") and discussed it a bit and then I went back to work on the second act.  A few months later I mounted a three-day, full-performance benefit for the theatre with the play.  I directed it and played "Harry" myself.  It went well, generally speaking.  Anyway, she came to see the play and afterwards talked to me a little bit.  She said, "I had no idea how dense this play was at the reading.  I didn't get it.  I didn't realize how many levels it worked on."  That's the way it goes sometimes.  It happened a bit, even, with Praying Small.  Some involved with it didn't have a clue as to the depth and scope of the piece.  This became readily apparent as rehearsals progressed.  It's maddening to the playwright, but not unexpected, I guess.  I think some of this comes from directors and actors working on scripts that don't have much depth or scope and consequently they feel the need to add depth and scope.

It's happened to me, in fact, as an actor a couple of times.  I was asked to perform Jamie Tyrone some years back in Moon for the Misbegotten, the Eugene O'Neill play.  It is a sequel of sorts to Long Day's Journey Into Night, his masterpiece.  Actually, not so much a sequel as a continuation of one of the character arcs.  After doing Long Day's Journey, I swore to myself it was the last O'Neill I was ever gonna do.  Just too much angst and depression and bitterness involved with old Eugene's work.  It's hard stuff.  And it took a lot out of me.

So I was asked to play Tyrone again.  My first instinct was to say 'no.'  I read the script a few times.  I found it to be self-indulgent and, yes, even boring.  But the deal was too sweet; name above the title, great money, great housing, and a chance to get out of Chicago in January and February.  Once we started working on the piece I once again discovered what a deceptively good playwright Mr. O'Neill was.  Talk about your levels.  It's easy to perceive his work as 'accidental' writing.  It doesn't seem at first glance to be so terribly important, mostly just a lot of regret about earlier behavior.  Long Day's Journey shares that aspect, too.  Moon for the Misbegotten turned out to be a devastating piece of theatre.  Very moving stuff.  I had been wrong.

This is one of the reasons I'm very, very selective about who gets to read my stuff before it is put on it's feet.  And also one of the reasons I'm very leery of 'workshopping' a play.  Mostly because, and I know this sounds just awful but it's true, people just don't 'get it.'  So when I have a new piece, and I have one now called Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century, I have maybe a handful of people I'll allow to read it out loud and then hear what they have to say: John Bader, Jim Barbour, John Schuck, Rob Arbogast, Brad Blaisdell, Michael Moriarty, Jeff Wood, Michael Colucci...that's really about it.  And Angie, of course.  She has a surprisingly good eye for scripts, I'm learning.

It happened to me again as an actor when I did Run For Your Wife, the silly British farce.  I was traveling down to Florida to play it.  The AD called me a few weeks earlier and asked me what role I'd like to play.  I read the play, was quietly appalled at how stupid it was, and called him back and said, "Well, the whole play sucks.  But I guess the role of Stanley sucks the least, so I'll play that one."

We went into rehearsal.  Nothing improved in my mind.  It still sucked.

And on opening night what was originally an hour and forty five minute play lasted nearly two and half hours because of all the time we spent holding for laughs.  I was flabbergasted.  Agog.  Beside myself.  Bamboozled.  This thing simply ate up the stage.  Audiences were gasping for breath.  I had been wrong.

So it happens.  Happens to me, happens to lots of people.  I like to think I have a pretty good eye for writing for the stage.  But I've been wrong on a few occasions.

We have one more week of Praying Small and it would appear it ends there.  We haven't been able to secure an extension or found anyone interested in re-mounting it.  Disappointing, but not terribly so.  After this experience I'm sort of done with live theatre for awhile anyway.  It was simply too stressful and angst-ridden.  Theatre should be, optimally, a joyful experience, both to rehearse and perform.  It should be, ideally, a cathartic and explosive process.  I lost a lot of sleep and spent way too much time arguing with this one.  It wasn't fun.  Oh, well.  It happens.  Just the risk one takes when birthing something new.  Sometimes it turns out to be amazing and sometimes it doesn't.  The milk is spilled.  Crying is pointless.  Move on.

So we'll do the last week and do our best.  Last night was another full house and the performance was genuinely felt by all, I think.  Tremendous audience response.  I was very pleased.

Today a meeting with a new agent.  A lot of computer work on the play (it's being submitted to Sam French, finally).  A long walk with Angie and the puppies.  A nice breakfast.  A soothing nap in the afternoon.  Reading a new novel.  Things could be a whole helluva lot worse.

See you tomorrow.

Onward and Upward...

Played to a small house last night.  Which had me a little nonplussed as I left.  Four reviews, three of which were in the the large publications that couldn't have been more complimentary, and still we struggle for an audience.  The notices could not have been better had I written them myself.  The NoHo Arts district is not that far from where I live, neither is the stretch of road known as 'theatre row.'  There are small theaters everywhere in this town.  Literally hundreds of them.  From 30 seats up to the 99-seat Equity Waiver types.  There are more small theaters in this town than Chicago, maybe even more than New York.  And they all seem to rely on friends and family for support.  I do not see a core audience of devoted theatre-goers.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see it.

However, as I left the theater last night, there were three people waiting at the side stage door.  They were overwhelmed with the production.  Really moved by the proceedings.  I'm hazarding a guess that they were not stalwart theatre-goers, but instead 'friends of Bill.'  The play had sincerely spoken to them and they were in tears.  For all the angst and strife and debilitating ham-handedness that went into this process, when I speak to people like that, it all rolls off me for a moment.  The play had made a difference in their lives.  They, the three of them, were truly Salinger's 'fat lady.'  The people I wanted to reach, even if it was only three.  The people that we act for.

I had two film auditions yesterday, one of which was so casual and callous as to be funny and the other really nice and professional and serious.  The first I attended, right across from Paramount Pictures, was in a tiny office in a casting director's suite of rooms.  The guy didn't even look up as I did my thing, the cold reading of the few lines in the script.  No camera, no direction, nothing.  Just in, read a few lines, out.  The whole thing lasted less than two minutes.  At first I was incredulous.  Now, mind you, this whole process of auditioning for films is relatively new to me.  I'm not used to it.  There were about ten or so guys sitting around in the outer office, guys about my age, obviously there for the same role.  In and out each of them would go as I sat there.  This is moving really fast, I thought to myself.  When my name was called I trundled back to the little room with my pic and res and, the casting director briefly acknowledged me, put his head down to look at my picture and said, "Okay, whenever you're ready."  I read the four or five short lines, waited a second, realized the audition was over and left.  By the time I got out to the parking lot I was actually laughing at the pointlessness of it.  He never looked up.  I'm not sure he even caught my name.

The second was in Los Feliz.  I think it was, anyway.  There they had a camera up and a very nice casting associate that explained the quick scene, read opposite me and chatted amiably when it was over.  It, too, was in a small office and there, too, were a bunch of guys my age clearly up for the same role.  Now, these were not big, star-studded films I was reading for, but rather small, low-budget, SAG things.  In the first I was playing a British, nerdy, sociopathic, murdering entomologist (yes, that's right) and in the second a slimy, lustful producer.  And this morning I have yet another of these small-budget film auditions.  This one a sad and disillusioned father who's son has decided to flee from the draft during the Vietnam war.  The reading is at Universal Studios, which is very close to where Angie and I live.

Los Angeles, I think it comes as no surprise, is definitely a film and TV town.  That could not have been made any clearer to me yesterday.  Unless I'm hired to do something for one of the big theaters in town, The Geffen, Circle Theatre Group, whatever, I think my stage days are over for awhile.  Too much work, too little (if any) pay, too little appreciation.  It's time to make some money.  The stress of mounting my own work on stage is just too much for me right now.

I was talking to a couple of friends yesterday following the auditions, John Bader and Rob Arbogast, and they both told me this is the way it is.  Both have done a ton of TV and film work out here and both sort of gave me a bemused, 'told you so' response to my surprise at the brevity and off-handedness of the audition process.

As I said yesterday, I learn something new every single time I audition for something, anything, and yesterday was certainly no exception.

It was a sloppy, if impassioned, show last night.  As always on Fridays, after a week away from the words, I struggled here and there to find the exact phrasing.  There were some terrific moments and some others that were a bit adrift.  But the soul of the piece was there and the three patrons that waited for me at the stage door made it all worthwhile.

My goals for the play have been met.  The good work has been recognized.  I've gotten representation out of it.  And even though the process itself was nearly the death of me, as Angie continually reminds me, I've gotten exactly what I wanted from it.  And not only that, I had the opportunity to work with some top-of-the-line, crackerjack actors.  Rob, Brad, Tara, Bonnie and Melanie are simply wonderful artists and performers and it is a pleasure to share their stage every night.

So onward and upward.  Five more performances left of Praying Small.  I shall charge the breach with every single one, too, and not let up until the last shell has been fired.  But once the last shell IS fired, in the words of Chief Joseph, I shall fight no more forever.  Or at least until I get my dander up about another project that I simply have to put up on stage.  The next time, however, I'll have artistic control and I'll make sure all the cards are in place for a genial process.  I have an idea for a new play that I've been thinking about for about a week now...a play I'll write for a few close friends and put up for a limited run somewhere.  I've been outlining it in my head.  A murder mystery, of sorts.  A good piece of drama to sink our teeth into.  Roles for myself, Jim, John, Brad and Rob.  I'll put it in the hopper and maybe write it someday soon.

In August Angie and I head back to Missouri for a big engagement party.  Angie is very excited and happy about it.  And, generally speaking, if Angie is happy about something, so am I.  Moving on.  Trying something new.  Writing what counts.  As my buddy, Brad Blaisdell, said last night in the dressing room, "Don't sweat the small stuff.  And ultimately, it's all small stuff."

See you tomorrow.

Auditioning...

Well, I have a couple of auditions today.  Film stuff.  One at eleven thirty this morning and another at four thirty this afternoon.  I'm looking forward to them, truth be told.  I have been teaching others to audition for about ten years now with my studio, Naked Face.  The past ten years or so in Chicago it is how I have made my living, teaching acting (with a few years off as a drug and alcohol counselor) and audition techniques.  It started out as a sideline gig, a way to make some extra money, and much to my delight and surprise, quickly turned into a full-time thing.  There were days, particularly in the last few years, when all I did for eight hours straight was see students, one after another, in my studio in Chicago.  Through word of mouth and hardly with any effort on my part, a lucrative coaching business was set up.  I had a waiting list, in fact.

Not so much here in LA.  I'm trying to build a clientele, but the truth is I'm just not a known entity out here.  And for many reasons, word of mouth is slower and less dependable here than in Chicago and New York.  And since no one knows my work, things are a bit slower, to say the least.

I was thinking last night, I haven't had to audition for something since about 1998.  That's not a boast, its just something that happened.  I had a carefully set up network of theaters where I'd worked, people I'd worked with, places where I'd done stuff before, directors I knew, playwrights, etc.  No one ever asked me to actually audition for something.

So now I have to.  And it doesn't bother me in the least.

Some actors abhor the audition process.  It's a chore, a necessary evil for them.  The idea of being judged gets them all a-quiver.  I can certainly see why this would be.  I know some very famous and talented actors that have somehow made it to the top of their profession without being particularly good at it.  DeNiro comes to mind.  He's terrible at auditions by all accounts.  Can't cold read very well and is deadly dull at monologue work.  And yet I don't think there are too many that would say Bob DeNiro can't act.  From all accounts he has some dyslexia problems, too, which he's spoken of openly.  Scorcese, of all people, once said he gave the worst audition he'd ever seen when he read for Mean Streets back in the early seventies.

Here are some things I know about auditioning.  Usually I charge a hundred bucks an hour for this information.  You, Gentle Reader, get it for free just for tuning into my blog today.  (This is written with a grin, mind you.)

First, auditioning and acting have virtually nothing to do with one another.  Apples and oranges.  Auditioning is all about making an indelible impression.  Acting is about, well, it's about a thousand things, but making an impression is only one.  And it's not high on the list.  Auditioning is a competition, acting is not.  In the minute or so one has to make that impression one has only the time for one, maybe two, large brush strokes.  Subtlety is not high on the list of imperatives.

One of the things it is easy to forget about this auditioning business is that the guys behind the desk want you to be good.  They want the actor to come in and blow them away.  Usually they're as bored and uneasy with this process as the actor is.  Especially after seeing about a hundred or so actors before you.  They WANT to be knocked out.

I think it would be especially beneficial for every actor to be on the other side of the table at least once.  To see how much that side wants to be wowed.  It would make everyone's life a lot easier if the absolute perfect actor were to walk in and slam dunk the part.  The question then becomes, what do they want?  What, specifically, are they looking for?  This is a tough question and often times even the guys behind the desk don't know.  They just know it when they see it.

Reminds me of an actor once asking Olivier after reading for him for about an hour, "What do you want from me?"  Olivier allegedly said, "Well, for starters, I'd like you to be better."

Another thing often forgotten by actors, even veteran actors, is that the audition starts at the door, not when the material starts.  I always have my students actually leave the room and walk in every single time they run through their stuff.  The audition starts at 'hi, my name is...'

A big thing to remember is confidence.  It is ninety percent of the game.  Confidence seeps from an actor's pores.  I used to mentally work myself up into a quiet frenzy sometimes.  I would play mind games with myself and by the time I actually got to the audition I was practically affronted by the entire idea of having to read for someone.  My inner dialogue was something like, "Do you have any idea who I am?  Clearly, you don't or you wouldn't have me go through this process.  You don't have the foggiest idea of what I'm capable of."  And then it becomes a no-lose situation.  If they don't hire you, it's their fault, not yours.  It's a fine line.  It can't be arrogance, but at the same time, it can't be a 'Gee, I hope they like me' attitude, either.  Friendly, but supremely confident.  If one gets the call back, the first question should be, "What do you want?  What are you looking for in this reading?"  That's when the real work begins.

One thing to remember is to always 'play the space.'  If you've been rehearsing Lear's storm speech ("Blow Ye Winds!  Crack Your Cheeks!") in an outdoor theatre you can't very well do it the same way in an office with two chairs.  This is a mistake made so often it's unbelievable, even among veteran, savvy actors.

Never play to the guys behind the table.  Don't make them act with you.  They see hundreds of actors and the last thing they want to do is be coerced into doing the scene with you.  Pick a spot above them or slightly to the side to focus.  Everyone breathes easier.

Remember that sometimes the work of the actor has absolutely nothing to do with getting the part.  Sometimes you're just not what they're looking for.  It might be something so simple as the fact that they want someone shorter than you for the role.  Nothing to be done about it.  Don't take it personally.  Unless, of course, you have some special 'acting shoes' that make you two inches shorter.

Usually, and I say this from many, many hours spent as a playwright and director on the other side of the table, the decision is made within the first ten seconds or so.  If you bring in a two-minute monologue, often times the decision to either call you back or move on to the next person is made within the first few seconds of it.  The rest is just courtesy.  So make it short and sweet.  Do your thing and get out.

Talent is and always has been the great equalizer.  A great picture or a fantastic resume or a high-powered agent's submission will only get you in the door.  After that, if there's nothing there to back it up, it's all moot anyway.  A guy who comes in with one credit on his resume, the third guy on the left in a high school production of Julius Caesar, and then proceeds to blow me away will get the call back over the guy with seven Broadway productions but bores the bejesus out of me.  Talent is the great equalizer.  Always has been, always will be.

Don't play silly ego games.  "My, what a nice tie that is."  It's embarrassing.

One of my favorite audition stories is one Michael Moriarty once told me about Shelly Winters.  It was the mid-eighties and Ms. Winters was being asked to come in and read for a stage role about to go into rehearsal in New York.  She was called by the casting director and asked if she wouldn't mind terribly if they asked her to come in and actually read for the part.  Ms. Winters said, "Of course not, I'm an actor, that's what I do."

So the next morning she got out her big overnight bag and carefully placed her three Emmy Awards, her two Tony Awards, her two Oscars, her three Golden Globe Awards, her SAG Awards, her New York Film Critic Awards, her Los Angeles Film Critic Awards and her four Best Actress Citations from the Academy of Arts and Science and trundled off to the reading.  Upon arriving, she carefully took them all out of the bag and placed them, one after another, all lined up just so, on the table in front of the guys behind the desk, all without saying a word.  Then she said, "Now, exactly what are you looking for in me today that you haven't already seen?"

They offered her the role.

So, it's off to audition today.  As I said, both are for film roles, so it's a whole new ballgame for me.  As with every audition, no doubt I'll learn something today.  The trick is not to obsess.  Once it's over, I'll go about my business.  I have a play to do tonight, a rather large role, in fact, and that will be my focus once the readings are over.  Yes, of course, I'd like to do well with both of them, but if for some reason I don't, there will be another one on Monday, I'm sure.  Life goes on.

Angie, who has been in the casting business for many years, tells me things are about to heat up.  June is notoriously slow in this business.  July is when things get cooking.  Well, it's July.

See you tomorrow.

Lightning in a Bottle...

Well, we got the hat trick...three great reviews from the big three here in Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly and now Backstage West.  And for icing on the cake, a great one from The Tolucan Times, too.

I have no idea what the future holds for this play.  It can't stay in its present venue because another play is scheduled to move into that space.  And even if it could I'm not sure it would be economically viable.  These are simply the hard facts of producing theatre in this town or, for that matter, anywhere else.  There are irons in the fire.  Who's to say if any of them will get hot enough to sustain the play somewhere.  God knows, we did the best we could.

Whatever happens from here on out, it's fairly clear we'll have to start over from square one.  No one's fault.  Just the way things are.

I have enjoyed acting this play once it got on its feet in front of an audience.  There are a thousand nuances and choices that change and morph every night.  I have always contended the role of Sam Dean is a role that requires fire and explosive indecision.  I have tried to play it that way although those choices were not popular in rehearsal.  A quiet, defeated, morose Sam Dean just didn't seem very interesting to me.

From the first time I read these words out loud, seven years ago, I have seen this character as a man raging against the dying of the light, as a man unable to change, a man confronted with a paradigm shift and resisting it for all he was worth.  Therein lies the essential drama of the piece.  An actor content upon simply saying the words with irony and sad acceptance is a pedestrian choice, I've always felt.  It would be tantamount to playing Willy Loman with suicide in mind from the very beginning of the play.  It's just not that fascinating.  The hard and fast rule of acting (if there is such a thing) is to let the audience in on the decision making process.  That's how I've tried to do this thing and will continue to in our final two weeks at our present venue.

Now, there is something to be said for playing a character underwhelmed by his circumstances.  Not a lot, but something.  I once watched William Hurt, a fascinating actor in the right role, do Hamlet in that way.  The play felt a week long.  Olivier starts his landmark film of Hamlet with these words: This is the story of a man who could not make up his mind.  Watching Hurt in the role was like watching a man who had already made up his mind and admitted defeat.  A subtle and ultimately nearly unwatchable choice.  That's how I felt when I started working on Sam Dean.  At every opportunity I chose to be explosively disgruntled as opposed to tired and staid.  And, as I've documented in this blog over the past several months, these choices were not met with a lot of encouragement.  They were deemed, "too large for the space."

I don't believe in overacting or underacting.  There is no such thing in my mind.  Doesn't exist.  There is only honesty and dishonesty.  If the actor believes completely in his choices he can do anything on stage, be as big as he or she wants, and in doing so the moments of quietude and subtlety are enhanced to an unimaginable degree.  It is the same principle as 'earning ones pauses.'  If the silences in a play are unearned, that is to say, not worked for and not used sparingly, the play loses impact.  It has taken me nearly thirty years to crystalize this line of thought.  But I believe it to be unimpeachable.

My only regret is that I didn't communicate this idea better during the rehearsal process.

Sometimes an actor knows he's right, he feels it in his bones, and yet he can't make others see it.  Misunderstandings develop, unnecessary quibbling over interpretation ensue.  This sometimes happened with this play and I regret it.  My final weapon, a phrase Sir John Geilgud often used, was my moral high ground as the playwright.  Looking back this was probably a weapon I should never have unsheathed.

We never reached our core audience, the recovery community, with this production.  Or at least we haven't yet.  I think that might have made the difference, and still might in the months to come.  We have had a number of Ovation voters (to the uninitiated, these are the people who decide if a play is worthy of an Ovation nomination, LAs version of the Tony) attend and from word-of-mouth it would appear we have some strong allies with that group of people.  Impossible to accurately gauge this, but I'm hopeful.  It would be sad if in another six months or so the nominations and accolades came about for a show that was long closed and forgotten.  But then again, this happens a lot, not only here, but in Chicago and NY, too, so I guess that's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.  I was once involved with a play in NY that virtually swept the OBIE Awards and by the time the ceremony rolled around we were all out of town doing other projects.  None of us, with the exception of the director, could even attend the awards.

Theatre is ephemeral.  It is one of the reasons it can be so exciting.  What an audience sees on any given night is the one and only time that moment of lightning will ever be captured.  I remember years ago I watched three of the most amazing stage performances I'd ever seen - Terry Kinney, Kevin Anderson and John Mahoney in a Lyle Kessler play called ORPHANS - and some time later seeing the film version of it.  Didn't even come close to the overwhelming emotion I had felt watching it for the first time back in June of 1985.  It was a Steppenwolf transplant to New York, directed by Gary Sinise, and it was truly lightning in a bottle.  All three performances were quite simply unassailable.  Upon seeing that play I walked around the streets of mid-town for about an hour trying to comprehend what I had just seen.  Now, THAT is what theatre, at its very finest, should be about.

A couple of years ago I ran into an actor in Chicago that I hadn't see in fifteen years or so.  Just walked into each other on the sidewalks of the North Side one day.  As we approached each other I vaguely recognized him (we had both, of course, aged a bit) and he shouted, without preamble, "Arnold Wiggins!"  We stopped and chatted.  He said, "For the past fifteen years I've thought of your performance in Boys Next Door at least once a week.  I've never gotten over it."  Theatre is ephemeral.

Two more weekends of doing our best in this play.  It's a lot to be grateful for.

See you tomorrow.

BACKSTAGE WEST REVIEW...

Praying Small

at the Noho Arts Center

Reviewed by Neal Weaver

JULY 07, 2010

Clifford Morts' drama seems at first to be just another routine entry in the current crop of plays about alcoholism and the importance of Alcoholics Anonymous, but writer-actor Morts is literate, intelligent, and quirky enough to prevent his work from sinking into the merely generic.

Sam (Morts) is the worst kind of drunk. He drinks his way out of his job, he goes drinking and loses the family car, he can't take criticism and lashes out at anyone who attempts to talk sense into him. His marriage seems to be a genuine love match, but he constantly taxes the patience of his wife, Susan (Tara Lynn Orr), and the loss of the car is the last straw for her. She throws him out and changes the locks. In a drunken rage, he attempts to smash in the door, and when the cops are called, he resists arrest and finds himself in deep legal troubles. This and the early death of drinking buddy Roman (Rob Arbogast) finally drive him to admit he needs help. But he's initially resistant to the tenets of A.A. because of their reliance on God; Sam has his problems with the Almighty. But when Sam is taken on by a tough, sharp, perceptive sponsor, Greg (Brad Blaisdell), Sam can finally allow himself to get the help he needs.

Morts' Sam is a complex man, witty, smart, and educated; and his initial courtship of Susan is dense with cultural and pop-cultural references. We can take him seriously because he questions his actions at every step of the way and refuses to settle for easy answers. Orr neatly captures Susan's charm in the early scenes and her growing desperation as her situation worsens. Arbogast is totally convincing as the unregenerate, self-destructive Roman. And Blaisdell finds the strength, perception, and weaknesses of the clear-eyed Greg. Melanie Ewbank and Bonnie Cahoon provide fine support in multiple roles, and director Victor Warren reveals an eye for emotional nuance, drawing fine performances from his cast. 

Presented by and at the NoHo Arts Center, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.
June 11–July 18. Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (818) 508-7101, ext. 7. www.nohoace.com.

Living the Examined Life.

Los Angeles is an interesting city.  So very different from New York or Chicago.  And I don't mean just geographically, although that's certainly true.  There are six million stories in the Naked City, I think is how the old phrase went.  Well, it's true here, too.  I don't know this city, yet.  Not like I eventually got to know NY or Chicago.  If something is not in Glendale or Burbank or North Hollywood or...well, anywhere outside of 'the valley,' I don't really know it.

When I log onto something so pedestrian as, say, Facebook, I realize just how little I know of this city.  People are out doing things at places I've never even heard of, have no idea where they are, not even a clue as to how to get there, even if I were so inclined to do so.  I wonder how long that will last?  I feel a bit like the character in Lyle Kessler's marvelous play, ORPHANS, the young man that has no idea where he is until he finally, after many years, gets his hand on a map.

It took me about a year to get the lay of the land when I moved to New York many eons ago.  After that, I finally felt I had an inkling as to the general idea of where things were.  Took me a little longer in Chicago, but eventually in that city, too, I began to understand where I was over a period of time.

It's disconcerting, this ignorance of where things are in the City of Angels.  Makes me feel like I'm still a visitor here.  I look around, talk to people I've met here, and realize they don't seem to suffer from the same sense of being lost.  They seem to know where they are and how to get to somewhere else at any given time.  Now, I know this feeling is only fleeting.  It happened to me in the other two cities I chose to call home for many years, too.  And eventually, one day arrived, and I no longer felt that way.  It's a vulnerable feeling that I'm not terribly fond of.

A theme I have explored tangentially in my writing is this wary and suspicious feeling I have about not just growing older, moving into a middle-aged, calmer, less hectic period of existence we all find ourselves as we age, but growing older without regret, growing older with grace.  One of the many beautiful and ephemeral things about youth is the idea that one is the center of the universe.  The unspoken and sometimes unconscious thought that if it ain't happening to me, it ain't happening.  What an egotistical line of thought and yet, at the same time, vastly preferred to the knowledge one gains upon aging that we are not the center of the universe.  That, in fact, other things are happening all around us, things we're not a part of, that are important and fulfilling as well.

Most writers, to a certain extent, feel like outsiders.  Observers.  Collectors of minutiae.  Vats for storing images and moments to be examined at a later time, perhaps, in a play or novel or short story.  And consequently, I think, most writers feel as though they don't belong to a moment so much as have been called upon to remember a moment.  That's our job, we become the designated drivers of memory.  And it seems for many of us, there comes a day when we realize we weren't really a part of our little history, the passing of our lives, so much as the chronicler of the days and weeks and years and decades that have sped along so unbelievably quick.

And then, if my own experience is any indication, there comes a day when we realize that the things that are happening elsewhere, other places, with other people, aren't that enviable in the first place.  That settling down with a wife or husband or children or whatever is sometimes the only destination that makes any sense.  Time passes everybody by and T. Wolfe nailed it when he suggested none of us could go home again, ever.

When I was first starting out in New York, I worked as a waiter in this restaurant where everyone seemed to go out at night and have a wonderful, indescribably fantastic time.  I mostly worked the lunch shift and I was surrounded by a set of smart and hip and up and coming artists and actors.  I felt as though I were none of those things.  I would spend my nights in rehearsal somewhere or working on a new project or writing into the wee, small hours on a new play.  There was, at that time, a cool, new place in Chelsea that everyone was going called Limelight (I'm dating myself here).  It was a club, a former church, in fact, that had been turned into a nightclub with several different large rooms that specialized in different forms of entertainment.  It catered to the young and hip, of course, and didn't distinguish between the 'straight' crowd or the 'gay' crowd or 'women' or 'druggies' or anyone else.  As I understood it, there was a place for everyone in that club.

Now, I have never been a 'club' kinda guy.  They've always bored me, frankly.  And it was during this period of my time in NY that I really grasped that for the first time.  One night, I decided to take my new friends up on a night out at The Limelight.  They had been inviting me out for months.  I was really excited.  Finally, I had a night where I didn't have a rehearsal or some other pressing piece of 'stuff' in my life.  I could attend the cool functions of the in-crowd.  So I met up with a bunch of them around ten o'clock that night, outside the ex-church-turned-Gomorrah.  We waited in line for a long time, finally got let in, and walked straight into a wall of sound.  Impossible to communicate it was so loud.  And as the night wore on and I watched and recorded the festivities, I began to realize how utterly pointless and time-wasting this was.  This is what I had been missing?  A shoulder-to-shoulder night of swaying and sweating in an old church, mindless grins plastered on everyone's faces, stripped to the waist and dancing (I never cared for dancing), precariously holding a plastic cup of Corona, a whole brigade of young hipsters carefully eyeing the other side of the room to see if perhaps something more engaging was happening there?  This was it?

It takes a night like that every now and then to make one realize that the grass is not greener next door, that the life one has carefully sculpted for oneself is exactly the life one wants.  And more importantly, there is a reason for wanting that life.  Because it fits.  Because it is the life envisioned.  The other life, the one hears about and sometimes lives vicariously, is a mirage.  It is the life left unexamined.  It is usually just a lie.

So I remember being with the group of young up and comers, the hip crowd, the beautiful and handsome, the stripped-to-the waist dancers the following day at work.  A little hung over, certainly tired from the long night, and listening to the stories of how much fun was had, how crazy the night had been, how unexpected and surprising, how unimaginably, well, fun.  And I grasped how much I enjoyed my own life, how my choices to live the way I do, to daily examine the things I find important to me, to be with the people I've chosen to be with...how all of this is not an accident, but rather a sure and carefully planned path.

But, you know, it takes one of those nights now and then, even at my age, to make one appreciate and savor the quiet and centered life that has been chosen.  It takes a night like that to make one satisfied with a new book or a new play or a new conversation.  It takes a night of the unexamined life to truly comprehend the examined life.

Youth is indeed wasted on the young.  GB Shaw definitely named this feeling for all of us, we older and wiser souls of the examined life.

So it's good to be reminded I don't know where I am half the time in Los Angeles.  It's good to feel like life is happening elsewhere.  I need to feel that now and again, because it makes the realizations I occasionally have much sweeter.  I am exactly where I want to be.  And though I may not know how to get to Studio City or China Town or Manhattan Beach, I know how to get to my own desires and promises.  Because they're all here, right in front of me, all the destinations of a lifetime of careful choices about what's important and what's not.  I'm in my own limelight, the one I've created for myself, the only limelight that matters.  Because the grass in my yard is blindingly green.  And I made it that way just for me.  And the really cool thing is knowing that.

See you tomorrow.

Fourth of July Memories...

Fourth of July.  Brings to mind the show 1776.  For the longest time an underrated musical.  Sort of disappeared for awhile.  Then made a big comeback in the late nineties with a revival in NYC.  It is one of my favorite non-Sondheim musicals.  First time I did it was at Mill Mountain Theatre with a wonderful cast of some twenty or so actors.  Jim Barbour doing Jefferson, Bev Appleton as Adams in one of my favorite performances of that era of my life.  Raymond Sage as a stirring Rutledge.  And a very fine actor, unfortunately I've forgotten his name, as Dickenson (the role I always secretly wanted to play).  I was doing Richard Henry Lee in that production.  Some years later I took a swing at Adams myself.  But the Mill Mountain production was the better one, I have to admit.  Bev was the perfect Adams.  He fit that role better than I did.  And Jimmy, of course, a very fine Jefferson.  But more than the talent involved in that show, which was formidable, was the camaraderie we shared in that play.  Having done a few skits in my life, I know that sometimes a cast clicks and, well, sometimes it doesn't.  No one's fault, just the way it is.  My second 1776 cast didn't click so well.  I mean, it was fine, but not wonderful.  But the first one, the one in Virginia, we had a blast together.  That's the one I remember fondest.

That cast was a poker cast.  I loved it.  After the performance every night we would all gather in the kitchen of the old Mill Mountain housing and play into the wee small hours.  Nickel ante.  Nothing serious.  If you won or lost twenty bucks in a night it was a big night.

The theatre had purchased the area above a couple of storefronts across the street from the stage, which incidentally was beautiful, one of my favorite LORT theaters I've ever worked.  Anyway, the housing area, above these stores, consisted of about twenty or so nice-sized rooms, a commons area to watch TV, etc., a huge communal kitchen and a nice little balcony off the back.  Some years earlier the place had been a bordello, a whore house, and every now and then the buzzer would buzz and I'd go down the long stairs and answer the door and some old guy would be there to inquire about the women.  Word hadn't gotten completely around that a bunch of actors stayed there now.  Once, when I was doing You Can't Take it With You at that theatre (I did about 15 shows throughout the nineties there) I answered the door and there was an old guy, kinda drunk, with bib overalls on, about half his teeth missing, and he said, upon seeing me, "Um, can you still get women here?"  I paused a second and said, "Well, yeah.  But you're gonna have to spring for a dinner and talk endlessly about how good she was on stage tonight."  He just stared at me and then sort of staggered away.

Anyway, nightly poker in the theater housing.  What great memories.  We all took it very seriously.  This wasn't an excuse to drink.  No, we gathered up our nickels and dimes and quarters every night and played some very serious poker.  Sometimes till dawn.

That was the show I learned to play, I blush to confess, 'Pass the Banana.'  This was a highly unprofessional thing that a bunch of testosterone-laden guys would play every night much to the chagrin of the stage manager. Remember, this was big-time professional theatre, now.  It worked like this:  one actor, at the beginning of the show, would bring a banana onstage with him.  Because of our circa 1776 costumes, there was always ample places to hide it.  And he would, at some point, clandestinely pass it to another actor onstage who would then pass it to someone else and so on.  At the end of the night, whoever had the banana would have to buy the first round of beers for the entire cast after the show.  There were only two rules:  the audience could never see the banana and you could never refuse it if someone tried to give it to you.  Just a terribly unprofessional thing to do.  I loved it.

1776 at Mill Mountain Theatre.  One of my fonder regional theatre memories.

Barbour used to accuse me in that show of upstaging him with my baggy tights.  He would swear that I was wearing these baggy tights just to draw focus.  Used to drive him nuts.  The truth was they were just baggy.  There was nothing I could do about it.  And I kinda thought they fit my image of the slovenliness of Richard Henry Lee, too, so I never tried to get new ones.

Not surprisingly, most of that cast went on to really make a mark in NY theatre.  A bunch of actors that were hired for that one show, all of us doing supporting roles, that later went on to do mostly leading roles in big theaters around the country and in New York.  Just one of those happy accidents.

A good show last night.  One of my old college professors, Dr. Linda Park-Fuller was in attendance.  I think she really liked it.  Full house.  Very vocal audience.  Everybody was having a good night onstage.  I enjoyed myself quite a bit.

Ange and the puppies and I are gonna have a quiet fourth.  Just gonna grill a bit here at the house and watch some old movies.  The kind of day I adore.  Hanging out with my soon-to-be-wife and my puppies.  Life is good.  Life is surprisingly and undeservedly good.

See you tomorrow.