Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Last Tango in Los Angeles: Attacking the Script.
Last Tango in Los Angeles: Attacking the Script.: "There are fleeting, secret moments during the rehearsal of this play in which I think to myself, 'This play is not do-able. At least not p..."
Attacking the Script.
There are fleeting, secret moments during the rehearsal of this play in which I think to myself, "This play is not do-able. At least not professionally." Now, of course, that's just silliness, but I still think it. I was privately thinking it last night in rehearsal. The music, so dense, so exacting, that to envision taking it to the next step, that is, memorizing it and making dramatic choices and being comfortable enough with it to play inside the music itself, just seems incomprehensively distant. Again, I know this to not be true. But knowing something and feeling something are two different things.
Years ago I played 'The Chairman' in a musical called 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' based on the Charles Dickens' unfinished novel. Later, I believe, the actual name was shortened to simply DROOD! (with the exclamation point). I remember thinking the same thing about that piece. In fact, the author of that piece, Rupert Holmes, astonishingly, even writes in the notes for the play that The Chairman will, in fact, 'go up' on his lines at some point during the run and it would serve everyone well, if a 'handsomely bound' manuscript be kept within easy reach on stage so that he might grab it when he 'goes up.' I have seen that unlikely notation in no other play I've ever done, before or since. And yes, that character certainly has a massive amount of lines. I was doing the musical with some real powerhouse musical-theater actors: James Barbour, Mitch Kantor, Jennifer Piech, Paige Davis, and I believe, if I remember correctly, we had a ridiculously short amount of time to mount it, something like three weeks. We took the advice of Mr. Holmes and did, in fact, make a script available on stage. And sure enough, about three or four weeks into the run, I 'went up.' There is another character onstage at all times along with The Chairman, ambiguously named The Stage Manager. He had the 'handsomely bound' manuscript in front of him. I remember just going blank at one point, adlibbing a bit, furiously searching my brain-files for the next moment, finding nothing and then simply turning to the actor playing The Stage Manager and saying, "Yes, well. Pray, tell me, what, exactly, er, did Mr. Dickens have in store for us next?" He quickly fed me my line and we were off again. A few years later I actually met Rupert Holmes in New York and had the opportunity to thank him for that piece of written advice. He said, "Yes, well, we learned it the hard way ourselves when George Rose did it on Broadway. Strangely, he always went up in the exact same place as you."
In any event, this is how I feel about 'The Adding Machine' at times. I can't quite comprehend how we're going to do this. We're two weeks into rehearsal at this point and I'm not only still on book, I'm still struggling with the notes. It seems no matter how prepared I think I am for rehearsal I'm still caught off-guard.
This is not your father's oldsmobile. Not by a long shot.
Every night on my way home from rehearsal I tell myself emphatically, 'I will NOT be caught off-guard again.' And the next day I am. Oy. Very frustrating.
All I can say is 'The Odd Couple' looks very inviting right about now.
Got a call from Chad Coe yesterday, the wonderful actor that played the lead in my play, From the East to the West. We're going ahead with the filming of that piece. The budget is in place, finally, the equipment gathered (Chad has a lot of connections in town), the location scouting done, and now I have to do some re-writes on the script. The play, incidentally, has been nominated for a Broadway World 'Best New Work' award. It contains some of my favorite writing. I'm still not satisfied with the second act, but I like it better now than I did this time last year. When read in Chicago a few years ago, somehow the press got wind of the reading and a week later this blurb was seen in the theater section of The Reader: "The long-awaited new play from Clifford Morts is called From the East to the West. This reporter attended a reading of it recently and can only say WOW." Very nice blurb, but the 'wow' never took place in Chicago, much to my chagrin. The 'wow' had to wait for Los Angeles.
Today, it's back to the music before our next rehearsal later on. We're attacking a huge, nine minute song I have about halfway through the show. It's called Zero's Confession and to be blunt, it's a bitch. It's giving me nightmares. It's also one of the most dramatic and unsettling pieces of music I've ever heard. I'll listen to the piano part about 100 times before I take it on tonight. And no doubt, I'll still be surprised. I'll still be caught off-guard. I'll still be delighted and frightened all at once. I'll still wonder what in hell I was thinking when I took this part. And I'll still think this very well may be the best thing I've done in decades.
See you tomorrow.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Christie Hargrove. Rest in Peace, Old Friend.
A few days ago, my friend and college chum, Christie Hargrove, died unexpectedly on Thanksgiving eve in Nevada, Missouri, a small town in the southern part of the state. Evidently there was a fire in her small apartment and she died of smoke inhalation. Her beloved dog died, too.
Christie was a little younger than I am so we didn't really mingle in the same circles in college. But I often saw her in 'the green room' in the theater building and on opening night parties of various plays I was doing. She was always in poor health, later in life wheelchair-bound. We always exchanged pleasantries and she always seemed delighted to tell me what she thought of whatever play I happened to be doing. She had a discerning eye when it came to the stage. She never once talked about her condition or showed any sign of self-pity. I remember her laughing a great deal.
We reconnected on 'Facebook' many years later (last year, in fact). Facebook is good for that.
Her last post on Facebook, a few hours before she died, was this, "I want to be kissed. Not a peck on the cheek, but a full-fledged kiss."
She has been sending me private messages on Facebook for quite awhile now, commenting on whatever project I happened to be involved in at the time. She wrote to me a few months ago, "Of all the people I knew back then when we were in college, I always thought you'd be the one that was going to become a star. You were the guy everyone always talked about. People spent hours discussing your work on stage and how different and better it was than anyone else. I always couldn't wait to see what you would do next."
I messaged her back the following day. "Thank you, Christy (sic). I had my own demons to battle first, as it turns out, but things look good now. As they do for you, it seems."
She messaged back, "I saw you once on TV and a friend of mine saw you in a play in New York. She said you were really good."
I messaged back, "Thanks. I was probably too drunk at the time to remember."
A little while later, she posted that she'd be directing a comedy for her local community theater group in Nevada, Missouri. She wrote that she was off to auditions one night and then later posted that no men had shown up for the audition and she didn't know what she was going to do about that. I told Angie that night I wish I was in a position to drop everything here in Los Angeles and fly to Missouri and just do that role for her myself. She had come so far and was so excited about directing this little community theatre gig. But apparently, a few days later, she found an actor and they rehearsed the play and it was a big success, lots of laughs. She was beside herself with pride and joy. And then, a little later, she posted she would directing the wonderful play, 'Harvey,' next year at the same theater.
And to make it all even sweeter, she was scheduled to have a new surgery which would eventually allow her to have more mobility and get out of her apartment more. By now, her health had all but made her a shut-in. She posted on Facebook all the time, telling the world about her new laptop, the movies she was watching, the food she was making, the hi-jinx of her dog, the hope she had for the future, her frustrations with the doctors she was seeing. I read them all. And now and then I would even hit the 'like' button next to her posts.
Angie came into the bedroom the day after Thanksgiving. I was laying in bed reading. She was crying and told me that Christie had died in the night. I put my book aside and lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Christie Hargrove.
I'm not going to even begin to write about injustices and irony and cosmic, black humor. Suffice to say I, like everyone else, don't understand why good people are taken and bad people left behind. An hour or so later I saw on the news that a man had kidnapped a little girl, raped her repeatedly, and kept her prisoner for weeks. He was caught, subsequently, and now apparently is in jail awaiting a trial. I thought, "Why not him, Big Guy? If You needed one more, why not him? Why Christie, a woman who never said a bad thing in her life about someone else, a woman who played the hand you gave her with grace and dignity? If You just had to have another soul, why her?"
Now, I'm fully aware of how sophomoric my line of thought here is, theologically speaking. Fine. I don't give a fuck. I'll ask again today. Why her?
Death and loss has been an unwelcome recurring theme in my life. My mother in 1987, dozens of friends in New York throughout the 80s to the great plague, AIDS, even more, including one of my closest friends, Robert Fiedler, to alcohol abuse and drug addiction over the years. At the risk of cliche', I am certainly no stranger to death.
And while I'm on the subject, why not me? God knows I spent decades putting myself repeatedly in harm's way. For a long time, I wanted to die. I prayed for release. I just didn't have the cojones to do it. So I took the coward's long, slow method and drank enough over the years to kill a score of men. And yet, nothing happened. Just more misery. More life.
I think it goes without saying that that part of my life is long over. And yet...and yet. Every time I try to make sense of this great poker game we're in, I just get angry. I'm angry right now. I'm incensed over this apparently random and senseless loss.
I've decided to dedicate my performance in this new play, The Adding Machine, to Christie in my bio in the program. I suspect she would have loved it. The play, that is. 'Tis a small thing, to be sure. But it will make me feel better.
Angie knew Christie better than I did. She is devastated by this. She is, if possible, even angrier than I am about it.
This morning I scrolled down and looked at Christie's last post again. "I want to be kissed." I wish I could kiss her right now. Not a peck on the cheek, but a full-fledged kiss. I wish I could do that right now.
See you tomorrow.
Christie was a little younger than I am so we didn't really mingle in the same circles in college. But I often saw her in 'the green room' in the theater building and on opening night parties of various plays I was doing. She was always in poor health, later in life wheelchair-bound. We always exchanged pleasantries and she always seemed delighted to tell me what she thought of whatever play I happened to be doing. She had a discerning eye when it came to the stage. She never once talked about her condition or showed any sign of self-pity. I remember her laughing a great deal.
We reconnected on 'Facebook' many years later (last year, in fact). Facebook is good for that.
Her last post on Facebook, a few hours before she died, was this, "I want to be kissed. Not a peck on the cheek, but a full-fledged kiss."
She has been sending me private messages on Facebook for quite awhile now, commenting on whatever project I happened to be involved in at the time. She wrote to me a few months ago, "Of all the people I knew back then when we were in college, I always thought you'd be the one that was going to become a star. You were the guy everyone always talked about. People spent hours discussing your work on stage and how different and better it was than anyone else. I always couldn't wait to see what you would do next."
I messaged her back the following day. "Thank you, Christy (sic). I had my own demons to battle first, as it turns out, but things look good now. As they do for you, it seems."
She messaged back, "I saw you once on TV and a friend of mine saw you in a play in New York. She said you were really good."
I messaged back, "Thanks. I was probably too drunk at the time to remember."
A little while later, she posted that she'd be directing a comedy for her local community theater group in Nevada, Missouri. She wrote that she was off to auditions one night and then later posted that no men had shown up for the audition and she didn't know what she was going to do about that. I told Angie that night I wish I was in a position to drop everything here in Los Angeles and fly to Missouri and just do that role for her myself. She had come so far and was so excited about directing this little community theatre gig. But apparently, a few days later, she found an actor and they rehearsed the play and it was a big success, lots of laughs. She was beside herself with pride and joy. And then, a little later, she posted she would directing the wonderful play, 'Harvey,' next year at the same theater.
And to make it all even sweeter, she was scheduled to have a new surgery which would eventually allow her to have more mobility and get out of her apartment more. By now, her health had all but made her a shut-in. She posted on Facebook all the time, telling the world about her new laptop, the movies she was watching, the food she was making, the hi-jinx of her dog, the hope she had for the future, her frustrations with the doctors she was seeing. I read them all. And now and then I would even hit the 'like' button next to her posts.
Angie came into the bedroom the day after Thanksgiving. I was laying in bed reading. She was crying and told me that Christie had died in the night. I put my book aside and lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Christie Hargrove.
I'm not going to even begin to write about injustices and irony and cosmic, black humor. Suffice to say I, like everyone else, don't understand why good people are taken and bad people left behind. An hour or so later I saw on the news that a man had kidnapped a little girl, raped her repeatedly, and kept her prisoner for weeks. He was caught, subsequently, and now apparently is in jail awaiting a trial. I thought, "Why not him, Big Guy? If You needed one more, why not him? Why Christie, a woman who never said a bad thing in her life about someone else, a woman who played the hand you gave her with grace and dignity? If You just had to have another soul, why her?"
Now, I'm fully aware of how sophomoric my line of thought here is, theologically speaking. Fine. I don't give a fuck. I'll ask again today. Why her?
Death and loss has been an unwelcome recurring theme in my life. My mother in 1987, dozens of friends in New York throughout the 80s to the great plague, AIDS, even more, including one of my closest friends, Robert Fiedler, to alcohol abuse and drug addiction over the years. At the risk of cliche', I am certainly no stranger to death.
And while I'm on the subject, why not me? God knows I spent decades putting myself repeatedly in harm's way. For a long time, I wanted to die. I prayed for release. I just didn't have the cojones to do it. So I took the coward's long, slow method and drank enough over the years to kill a score of men. And yet, nothing happened. Just more misery. More life.
I think it goes without saying that that part of my life is long over. And yet...and yet. Every time I try to make sense of this great poker game we're in, I just get angry. I'm angry right now. I'm incensed over this apparently random and senseless loss.
I've decided to dedicate my performance in this new play, The Adding Machine, to Christie in my bio in the program. I suspect she would have loved it. The play, that is. 'Tis a small thing, to be sure. But it will make me feel better.
Angie knew Christie better than I did. She is devastated by this. She is, if possible, even angrier than I am about it.
This morning I scrolled down and looked at Christie's last post again. "I want to be kissed." I wish I could kiss her right now. Not a peck on the cheek, but a full-fledged kiss. I wish I could do that right now.
See you tomorrow.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Christmas Lights and Boxing Matches.
Today, like many others around the country I suspect, is 'take the Christmas stuff out of the garage and put it up' day. I like this day. I like the process. I like the whole feeling to it. We might have to buy some new lights because Angie thinks some of our strings are burnt out. I don't rememeber that they have, but we'll take a look. I feel very domestic on this day, swaying precariously up on my ladder as I string the lights around the house. Very Ward Cleaver.
We're cooking up a massive kettle of chili to enhance the day's Christmas spirit. Not that chili has anything to do with Christmas, although I suppose it might if you lived in Mexico City. Angie has a lot of ornaments, etc., from 'olden days' so I always get little anecdotes and family stories as we unpack the Christmas boxes. I've already heard them all, of course, but I listen again patiently. Part of her 'take the Christmas stuff out of the garage and put it up' day is repeating the stories attached to the various ornaments.
Yesterday I had a very productive day with our musical director, Alan Patrick Kenny. This mammoth song I have in the middle of the show called 'Zero's Confession' is the hardest piece of music I've ever had to learn. It went well although it's still light years away from performance. The song, as I've mentioned before, is about ten minutes long and by the time I'm halfway through I feel like I've been singing for an hour. But we keep plugging away at it. One measure at a time.
We also worked on two of my 'ballads' with Mrs. Zero (played by a wonderful singer/actress, Kelly Lester). Kelly is a 'real' singer, as opposed to me, a 'pretend' singer. She's got an astonishing soprano voice that appears to cover something like seven or eight octaves. The result is something akin to Beverly Sills singing a duet with Tom Waits. Nonetheless, strange as it sounds, the outcome is really quite beautiful.
Oddly, I'm off today. No rehearsal. I'm tempted to simply put the score out of my mind and attend to the Christmas stuff. Of course, I can't do that, and long about 3:00 I suspect I'll plug this music in and start warbling along with it.
Last night I watched one of my new Netflix DVDs...it's called "ALI versus Chuvalo, The Last Round." As any longtime reader of this blog knows, I'm an amateur boxing historian and revel in DVD footage of old heavyweight fights. I won't dwell on this because I know that hardly anyone else is a boxing enthusiast but the DVD changed my mind about George Chuvalo, a tough, journeyman contender in the 60s and 70s. Chuvalo, I think, was a better fighter than I ever gave him credit for. He, like so many others - Oscar Bonevena, Jerry Quarry, Ron Lyle, Cleveland Williams, Buster Mathis - had the great misfortune to come along at the same time as Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman. If that had not been the case I think there was a very good chance Chuvalo would have been a champion. At least for a little while. But, as fate would have it, he reached his peak as a fighter at the exact same time as arguably the greatest fighter in the history of the game, Muhammad Ali. They fought in Toronto in 1966, before Ali's layoff, and Chuvalo didn't stand a chance, although he put up a good showing. Fighting Ali at that point in his career was like fighting a shadow. He simply couldn't be hit. The one interesting thing about the fight, however, was that it sort of served as a precurser to Ali's later all-out wars in the 70s with Frazier and Foreman. Up to that point no one had any idea if Ali could take a shot because, well, he was simply too fast to hit. But at one point during this fight, Ali comes down off his toes, stops dancing, and goes toe to toe with Chuvalo. And in the process took a few cannon shots to the head. To everyone's surprise he was completely unfazed. Remember, Ali was, at that point, quite possibly the most hated man in America. Nearly everyone wanted someone to finally and forever shut his mouth. So here it is, round 11 in a tough 15 round brawl, and Ali stops moving and slugs it out for a little while. Unheard of. And lo and behold, as sportswriters shook their heads in confusion, Ali outslugged a slugger. As Chuvalo himself said, "I realized early on that I couldn't outbox him. And then about halfway through the fight I realized I couldn't outslug him, either." He was the first of many fighters to discover this uncomfortable fact.
Many consider Ali's fight against Cleveland Williams in the Houston Astrodome in 1967 to be Ali's greatest moment as a fighter. And it probably was. But this fight, a year earlier, was when Ali unwrapped perhaps his greatest gift to a shocked public: his ability to take a punch. To the observant, five years later when he fought Joe Frazier in Madison Square Garden and took Joe's best shots right on the chin without flinching, it came as no surprise. As the very fine boxing writer, the late Red Smith, wrote after the Frazier fight, "He proved he not only could take a punch, he could take one better than anyone in the history of the game."
And now, if you'll excuse me, my dogs, Franny and Zooey, are staring at me. I'm trying to ignore them but they're relentless. It's time for a walk.
See you tomorrow.
We're cooking up a massive kettle of chili to enhance the day's Christmas spirit. Not that chili has anything to do with Christmas, although I suppose it might if you lived in Mexico City. Angie has a lot of ornaments, etc., from 'olden days' so I always get little anecdotes and family stories as we unpack the Christmas boxes. I've already heard them all, of course, but I listen again patiently. Part of her 'take the Christmas stuff out of the garage and put it up' day is repeating the stories attached to the various ornaments.
Yesterday I had a very productive day with our musical director, Alan Patrick Kenny. This mammoth song I have in the middle of the show called 'Zero's Confession' is the hardest piece of music I've ever had to learn. It went well although it's still light years away from performance. The song, as I've mentioned before, is about ten minutes long and by the time I'm halfway through I feel like I've been singing for an hour. But we keep plugging away at it. One measure at a time.
We also worked on two of my 'ballads' with Mrs. Zero (played by a wonderful singer/actress, Kelly Lester). Kelly is a 'real' singer, as opposed to me, a 'pretend' singer. She's got an astonishing soprano voice that appears to cover something like seven or eight octaves. The result is something akin to Beverly Sills singing a duet with Tom Waits. Nonetheless, strange as it sounds, the outcome is really quite beautiful.
Oddly, I'm off today. No rehearsal. I'm tempted to simply put the score out of my mind and attend to the Christmas stuff. Of course, I can't do that, and long about 3:00 I suspect I'll plug this music in and start warbling along with it.
Last night I watched one of my new Netflix DVDs...it's called "ALI versus Chuvalo, The Last Round." As any longtime reader of this blog knows, I'm an amateur boxing historian and revel in DVD footage of old heavyweight fights. I won't dwell on this because I know that hardly anyone else is a boxing enthusiast but the DVD changed my mind about George Chuvalo, a tough, journeyman contender in the 60s and 70s. Chuvalo, I think, was a better fighter than I ever gave him credit for. He, like so many others - Oscar Bonevena, Jerry Quarry, Ron Lyle, Cleveland Williams, Buster Mathis - had the great misfortune to come along at the same time as Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman. If that had not been the case I think there was a very good chance Chuvalo would have been a champion. At least for a little while. But, as fate would have it, he reached his peak as a fighter at the exact same time as arguably the greatest fighter in the history of the game, Muhammad Ali. They fought in Toronto in 1966, before Ali's layoff, and Chuvalo didn't stand a chance, although he put up a good showing. Fighting Ali at that point in his career was like fighting a shadow. He simply couldn't be hit. The one interesting thing about the fight, however, was that it sort of served as a precurser to Ali's later all-out wars in the 70s with Frazier and Foreman. Up to that point no one had any idea if Ali could take a shot because, well, he was simply too fast to hit. But at one point during this fight, Ali comes down off his toes, stops dancing, and goes toe to toe with Chuvalo. And in the process took a few cannon shots to the head. To everyone's surprise he was completely unfazed. Remember, Ali was, at that point, quite possibly the most hated man in America. Nearly everyone wanted someone to finally and forever shut his mouth. So here it is, round 11 in a tough 15 round brawl, and Ali stops moving and slugs it out for a little while. Unheard of. And lo and behold, as sportswriters shook their heads in confusion, Ali outslugged a slugger. As Chuvalo himself said, "I realized early on that I couldn't outbox him. And then about halfway through the fight I realized I couldn't outslug him, either." He was the first of many fighters to discover this uncomfortable fact.
Many consider Ali's fight against Cleveland Williams in the Houston Astrodome in 1967 to be Ali's greatest moment as a fighter. And it probably was. But this fight, a year earlier, was when Ali unwrapped perhaps his greatest gift to a shocked public: his ability to take a punch. To the observant, five years later when he fought Joe Frazier in Madison Square Garden and took Joe's best shots right on the chin without flinching, it came as no surprise. As the very fine boxing writer, the late Red Smith, wrote after the Frazier fight, "He proved he not only could take a punch, he could take one better than anyone in the history of the game."
And now, if you'll excuse me, my dogs, Franny and Zooey, are staring at me. I'm trying to ignore them but they're relentless. It's time for a walk.
See you tomorrow.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Stephen Sondheim's 80th Birthday Celebration.
I ended up finally watching 'Sondheim's 80th Birthday Party' on PBS last night. I missed it the first time it was on a few nights back but I TiVo'd it and watched it last night. I have to say, I liked it so much I actually went back and watched parts of it again. It is literally a 'Who's Who' of the people working at the very top of their game in the musical theatre world.
Patti Lupone has been belting it out since the mid 70s. She sings 'Ladies Who Lunch' in the celebration and I was thinking there just aren't too many people that can sing that song right in front of Elaine Stritch and still make it all their own. Lupone can. And she does. I have always wondered how Ethel Merman became such a huge presence in the theatre...yes, she could certainly belt. But she couldn't act much and she couldn't dance and she wasn't good looking. I answered my own question last night as I watched Lupone. Although there is really no comparison when it comes to talent, I realized as I watched her last night how powerful it is when a personality like that is melded with a talent like that. She is our latter day Merman. I couldn't take my eyes from her. Sheer force of nature. Merman must have been something like that in her heyday.
And of course, Patinkin sang from 'Sunday in the Park with George.' I saw he and Bernadette Peters do it in NYC way, WAY back in 1985. It was the second musical on Broadway I ever saw (the first being 'Dreamgirls). Along with the Steppenwolf production of 'Orphans' at West Side Arts (I was later to play on that very same stage), 'Sunday in the Park' is the most influential piece of theatre I've ever seen. Mandy Patinkin is one of those performers you either love or hate. I love him. I love his intensity, I love his 'over the top' mannerisms, I love his narcissistic presence, I love his crazy-good voice. Mr. Patinkin has a questionable reputation in the theatre world. Any one in this business has no doubt heard stories of how 'difficult' he can be to work with. But I have a close friend who has done two shows with Mandy. He tells me that he never saw that side of him. He told me that yes, Patinkin is rather stand-offish to his co-workers, but he says it's not because he has any sort of chip on his shoulder but rather that he finally realized that Patinkin is simply acutely shy. I understand and identify with that completely. I, too, have now and again gotten bad report cards from fellow performers. And I, too, have trouble opening up to actors I'm working with on stage sometimes. Again, I adore Mandy Patinkin and his talent. A rather over used phrase in this business is 'he has a gift.' In Mr. Patinkin's case it is overwhelmingly true. He has a gift. His work always astounds me.
And, of course, Bernadette Peters. There is a moment in the show where six or seven top leading ladies in the theatre today all sit on stage and one by one rise and sing an amazing Sondheim song. Each seems to top the last. Elaine Stritch ends the segment by singing/talking/belting 'I'm Still Here,' a song that has become her signature tune. But before her, Ms. Peters sings, simply and powerfully, 'Day After Day After Day.' She is mesmerizing.
The special ended with what appears to be every current singer on Broadway filing to the stage and singing, en masse, 'Sunday' from 'Sunday in the Park.' The stage is filled with performers. It's an awesome sight. And beautiful. Sunday in the Park with George is my favorite musical of all time, even more so than 'Sweeny Todd,' which many today consider his masterpiece. I disagree. As fond as I am of 'Sweeny,' it is 'Sunday' that still raises my arm hairs today. I did the show myself many years ago in Virginia. It is one of my fondest memories in the theatre.
It is very fitting that I should see this special at this time because I'm smack dab in the middle of rehearsals for 'The Adding Machine,' by Josh Schmidt and Jason Leuwith. I have described it recently to friends as 'Sondheim Squared.' Interestingly, I was chatting with another friend the other day and he said, much to my surprise, that 'Sondheim had ruined musical theatre. He destroyed the beautiful melodies of Broadway. Well, after watching this piece of genius last night I agree with him even less than I did before. I used to say to people that Stephen Sondheim was our Mozart and Andrew Webber our Salieri. I believe it more than ever now.
So...Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim. There is Sondheim and then there is everyone else. When he dies, every other composer in the world moves up a notch.
See you tomorrow.
Patti Lupone has been belting it out since the mid 70s. She sings 'Ladies Who Lunch' in the celebration and I was thinking there just aren't too many people that can sing that song right in front of Elaine Stritch and still make it all their own. Lupone can. And she does. I have always wondered how Ethel Merman became such a huge presence in the theatre...yes, she could certainly belt. But she couldn't act much and she couldn't dance and she wasn't good looking. I answered my own question last night as I watched Lupone. Although there is really no comparison when it comes to talent, I realized as I watched her last night how powerful it is when a personality like that is melded with a talent like that. She is our latter day Merman. I couldn't take my eyes from her. Sheer force of nature. Merman must have been something like that in her heyday.
And of course, Patinkin sang from 'Sunday in the Park with George.' I saw he and Bernadette Peters do it in NYC way, WAY back in 1985. It was the second musical on Broadway I ever saw (the first being 'Dreamgirls). Along with the Steppenwolf production of 'Orphans' at West Side Arts (I was later to play on that very same stage), 'Sunday in the Park' is the most influential piece of theatre I've ever seen. Mandy Patinkin is one of those performers you either love or hate. I love him. I love his intensity, I love his 'over the top' mannerisms, I love his narcissistic presence, I love his crazy-good voice. Mr. Patinkin has a questionable reputation in the theatre world. Any one in this business has no doubt heard stories of how 'difficult' he can be to work with. But I have a close friend who has done two shows with Mandy. He tells me that he never saw that side of him. He told me that yes, Patinkin is rather stand-offish to his co-workers, but he says it's not because he has any sort of chip on his shoulder but rather that he finally realized that Patinkin is simply acutely shy. I understand and identify with that completely. I, too, have now and again gotten bad report cards from fellow performers. And I, too, have trouble opening up to actors I'm working with on stage sometimes. Again, I adore Mandy Patinkin and his talent. A rather over used phrase in this business is 'he has a gift.' In Mr. Patinkin's case it is overwhelmingly true. He has a gift. His work always astounds me.
And, of course, Bernadette Peters. There is a moment in the show where six or seven top leading ladies in the theatre today all sit on stage and one by one rise and sing an amazing Sondheim song. Each seems to top the last. Elaine Stritch ends the segment by singing/talking/belting 'I'm Still Here,' a song that has become her signature tune. But before her, Ms. Peters sings, simply and powerfully, 'Day After Day After Day.' She is mesmerizing.
The special ended with what appears to be every current singer on Broadway filing to the stage and singing, en masse, 'Sunday' from 'Sunday in the Park.' The stage is filled with performers. It's an awesome sight. And beautiful. Sunday in the Park with George is my favorite musical of all time, even more so than 'Sweeny Todd,' which many today consider his masterpiece. I disagree. As fond as I am of 'Sweeny,' it is 'Sunday' that still raises my arm hairs today. I did the show myself many years ago in Virginia. It is one of my fondest memories in the theatre.
It is very fitting that I should see this special at this time because I'm smack dab in the middle of rehearsals for 'The Adding Machine,' by Josh Schmidt and Jason Leuwith. I have described it recently to friends as 'Sondheim Squared.' Interestingly, I was chatting with another friend the other day and he said, much to my surprise, that 'Sondheim had ruined musical theatre. He destroyed the beautiful melodies of Broadway. Well, after watching this piece of genius last night I agree with him even less than I did before. I used to say to people that Stephen Sondheim was our Mozart and Andrew Webber our Salieri. I believe it more than ever now.
So...Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim. There is Sondheim and then there is everyone else. When he dies, every other composer in the world moves up a notch.
See you tomorrow.
Friday, November 26, 2010
A Great Day on the Beach.
What a wonderful Thanksgiving Angie and I had. We took our yearly trek over to beautiful Manhattan Beach to our friends Tammy and Mark Lipps. Tammy and Mark have a jaw-droppingly spectacular home over there, a few blocks from the beach. The morning is filled with a trip to the beach for a competitive game of touch footbal ala' the Kennedy family and then appetizers, wine and beer and chit-chat. Finally around four the massive spread is put out, buffet style. Following that a spirited game of 'Celebrity' which I'm proud to say I introduced to the proceedings last Thanksgiving. It has become a yearly event now. Two years running, Angie and I have won. It's a great way to end the holiday. At one point I looked around and the entire table (there were about 20 of us for the day) was literally weeping with laughter. Don and Donna Dieckens, our very close friends, were there as well, and I have to say Donna (who's partner was Tammy Lipps) very nearly made me pee my pants a few times. Funny stuff.
We are so very grateful to have friends like Mark and Tammy and Don and Donna. Smart, amusing, ironic, involved, perceptive people. My favorite kind. Mark, playing with his youngest son Graham and Angie's daughter Lauren, very nearly toppled our defending champion status.
I'm not sure who brought them, but there was a tin of super-exclusive, European cookies there that I very nearly single-handedly finished myself. Not especially healthy for a diabetically-challenged guy like myself but it was, obviously, a day of splurging.
Today I'm back in an all-day rehearsal for the show. I played a couple of the songs on the CD for Tammy and Donna, both amazing vocalists and musicians themselves, and they were both suitably awed by the music. Donna kept saying, "Oh, my God, this role is written for you, Clif." She's right. Hence, my involvement. I completely agree with her.
Wednesday night I had a long rehearsal with the musical director concentrating solely on my work in the play. Accomplished a great deal. I am learning to sing the piece without tensing up. This is common sense for trained singers (which I am not) but tough to assimilate for someone like me. For me, 99 percent of the time, the acting and singing are learned in tandem. That is to say, I learn and incorporate both at the same time. This role, however, which requires so much singing, can't be learned that way. I have to, for necessity's sake, learn one and then the other. It's a departure from my usual approach and consequently a bit daunting.
Thanksgiving is a purely American holiday, ostensibly dating back to the pilgrims. It was undoubtedly concieved for an entire nation to reflect on gratitude. Naturally, it's morphed into a very commercial driven holiday. Nonetheless, the iniitial concept is still observed. Angie and I have so very, very much to be thankful for this year. Although we, like nearly everyone else, struggle daily with all of the issues one might think; finances, careers, day to day setbacks and victories, kindnesses small and large, we live lives we both adore. Our days are filled with unconditional love and lots and lots of laughter. That, in and of itself, is quite literally priceless. Our weeks and months are overflowing with close friends, hopes and plans, goals and accomplishments. We have enough to eat, we are warm and we are always, always very gentle with each other. We instinctively realize and understand how fragile and rare our relationship is, how very rare our good fortunes are. We have both been through the fire and we deeply appreciate the lack of it. We have lived in the valleys and, consequently, revel in the views from the mountaintop. We have a God in our lives that is nebulous, personal, kind and uncomplicated all at once. He or She, for whatever reason, has chosen to watch over us benignly. We go to sleep smiling and we wake up smiling. And that's just not too shabby.
Happy Holidays, Gentle Reader. I wish for you what I myself finally have: peace and love in your life. 'Tis a nearly uncomprehesively beautiful thing.
See you tomorrow.
We are so very grateful to have friends like Mark and Tammy and Don and Donna. Smart, amusing, ironic, involved, perceptive people. My favorite kind. Mark, playing with his youngest son Graham and Angie's daughter Lauren, very nearly toppled our defending champion status.
I'm not sure who brought them, but there was a tin of super-exclusive, European cookies there that I very nearly single-handedly finished myself. Not especially healthy for a diabetically-challenged guy like myself but it was, obviously, a day of splurging.
Today I'm back in an all-day rehearsal for the show. I played a couple of the songs on the CD for Tammy and Donna, both amazing vocalists and musicians themselves, and they were both suitably awed by the music. Donna kept saying, "Oh, my God, this role is written for you, Clif." She's right. Hence, my involvement. I completely agree with her.
Wednesday night I had a long rehearsal with the musical director concentrating solely on my work in the play. Accomplished a great deal. I am learning to sing the piece without tensing up. This is common sense for trained singers (which I am not) but tough to assimilate for someone like me. For me, 99 percent of the time, the acting and singing are learned in tandem. That is to say, I learn and incorporate both at the same time. This role, however, which requires so much singing, can't be learned that way. I have to, for necessity's sake, learn one and then the other. It's a departure from my usual approach and consequently a bit daunting.
Thanksgiving is a purely American holiday, ostensibly dating back to the pilgrims. It was undoubtedly concieved for an entire nation to reflect on gratitude. Naturally, it's morphed into a very commercial driven holiday. Nonetheless, the iniitial concept is still observed. Angie and I have so very, very much to be thankful for this year. Although we, like nearly everyone else, struggle daily with all of the issues one might think; finances, careers, day to day setbacks and victories, kindnesses small and large, we live lives we both adore. Our days are filled with unconditional love and lots and lots of laughter. That, in and of itself, is quite literally priceless. Our weeks and months are overflowing with close friends, hopes and plans, goals and accomplishments. We have enough to eat, we are warm and we are always, always very gentle with each other. We instinctively realize and understand how fragile and rare our relationship is, how very rare our good fortunes are. We have both been through the fire and we deeply appreciate the lack of it. We have lived in the valleys and, consequently, revel in the views from the mountaintop. We have a God in our lives that is nebulous, personal, kind and uncomplicated all at once. He or She, for whatever reason, has chosen to watch over us benignly. We go to sleep smiling and we wake up smiling. And that's just not too shabby.
Happy Holidays, Gentle Reader. I wish for you what I myself finally have: peace and love in your life. 'Tis a nearly uncomprehesively beautiful thing.
See you tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is all but upon us. Angie and I are heading over to beautiful Manhattan Beach to share the holiday with a group of friends at the Lipps household, Tammy and Mark. Tammy is responisible for our amazing wedding reception dinner (we still have, believe it or not, a log of filet mignon frozen in our fridge). She's an astonishing chef and afterwards we always play parlor games...I'm hoping to get a spirited game of 'Celebrity' going again. I first came upon this game on Sanibel Island many years ago while doing theatre down there at a horribly named yet high quality joint called 'Pirate Playhouse.' I did about 15 plays down there back in the 90s, everything from Two by Two to Boys Next Door to Run For Your Wife. Great place to work; wonderful, beachfront accomodations, beautiful surroundings, good actors (for the most part), sassy place to be around the holidays if you live in NYC as I did at the time. I always worked it so I could be down there around November, December and January. I had some really great holidays on that tropical island...I specifically remember laying on the secluded nude beach on Christmas Day. Great memories.
Like a lot of professional actors, I spent a number of holidays in the company of other actors away from home. We nomads would gather at someone's place and make our own family holiday. I remember one Thanksgiving on Sanibel, getting up at dawn and cooking the turkey, drinking tons of wine all day, having a great feast and then playing a five-hour bridge tournament. I think we were doing Wait Until Dark at the time and, strangely, all of us played bridge. Not a lot of bridge players left in the world.
Another time, I was in Chicago (although at that time I was still living in New York) and I was doing 'Carousel' at the famous but now defunct Candlelight Dinner Theater. We had a show Thanksgiving night and all of us gathered at my place for the turkey lunch/dinner. I was cooking and I misjudged the time it would take to cook the turkey so we all had to eat in about ten minutes and then rush to the show.
Another time in Connecticut doing '1940's Radio Hour.' We had a double header that day and between shows the entire cast went out for Indian food.
Another time in Virginia doing 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and we cooked the huge Thanksgiving dinner and then walked up a big hill and went sleigh riding all afternoon.
So most of my holidays are marked not by family memories but rather by what play I happened to be doing in what state.
One of the memories that I think about often is a Thanksgiving I had in Little Rock, Arkansas. I was doing 'Lost in Yonkers' at Arkansas Rep. The cast gathered in my small, one bedroom apartment the theater had provided for me (again, I was living in NYC at the time) and again, I was cooking the turkey. There were about eight or nine of us. One of the people there was a slight, shortish young man, very quiet, very polite. I'm ashamed to say I don't remember his name. I think he was the lighting designer for the show. In any event, the rule that year was that after everything was on the table and before we could eat, each person was asked to write a short (two or three pages) essay on what they were thankful for. It was terribly emotional. When I outlined the rules for the day, I didn't realize how moving some of the essays would be. When it came time around the table for this young man to read his essay, all was very quiet. Again, no one knew this guy very well, he kept to himself during rehearsals. As he began to read we heard his story. His parents had died early in his life and he had been shuffled from one foster home to another. His sister was developmentally challenged and living in a state run 'home.' He had worked his way through college, getting his degree in light design at the University of West Virginia. Aside from his temporary foster living, he'd never spent Thanksgiving with another person. Always alone. He adored actors because he was so very shy himself and was amazed that people could get on a stage in front of other people. A year earlier he had been diagnosed with Cancer. He'd lost a lot of weight but was now in remission. As he spoke, the silence in the small dining room was palpable. He ended by quietly reading that this was the best holiday he'd ever had. There was no self-pity in his reading, no whining, no self-indulgence. He was just happy to be around other people on Thanksgiving. I got a phone call about six months later that he had passed away.
Tomorrow I spend Thanksgiving with my beautiful and loving wife, a group of very close friends, in an astonishing house in one of the most elegant neighborhoods in the country. Before I take my first bite tomorrow I shall think of this young man. It has been about fifteen years since he died. Every year before I eat I take a few seconds to think of him. And the hope he represented. I take the time to be thankful. Since that day many years ago, I've spent many Thanksgiving dinners alone myself, resigned to the idea that it would always be that way.
Of course, he is only one of millions that persevere in the face of great cosmic injustice. And his small and thankful essay that year will stay with me all of my life.
I cannot begin to write about all I am thankful for. The list this year, 2010, is so long and filled it would simply be impossible. I had, over the past decade or so, come to despise the holidays. Christmas music and lights and all the trappings of the holidays made me indescribably sad. I began volunteering in Chicago for homeless shelters on Thanksgiving. And when the food was all doled out I would sit with strangers, the addicted, the hopeless, the bottom rung of society, and eat and talk and pretend I wasn't lonely. And each and every time I would take a few moments to remember that doomed young man in Virginia all those years ago. I shall do the same tomorrow.
See you then.
Like a lot of professional actors, I spent a number of holidays in the company of other actors away from home. We nomads would gather at someone's place and make our own family holiday. I remember one Thanksgiving on Sanibel, getting up at dawn and cooking the turkey, drinking tons of wine all day, having a great feast and then playing a five-hour bridge tournament. I think we were doing Wait Until Dark at the time and, strangely, all of us played bridge. Not a lot of bridge players left in the world.
Another time, I was in Chicago (although at that time I was still living in New York) and I was doing 'Carousel' at the famous but now defunct Candlelight Dinner Theater. We had a show Thanksgiving night and all of us gathered at my place for the turkey lunch/dinner. I was cooking and I misjudged the time it would take to cook the turkey so we all had to eat in about ten minutes and then rush to the show.
Another time in Connecticut doing '1940's Radio Hour.' We had a double header that day and between shows the entire cast went out for Indian food.
Another time in Virginia doing 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and we cooked the huge Thanksgiving dinner and then walked up a big hill and went sleigh riding all afternoon.
So most of my holidays are marked not by family memories but rather by what play I happened to be doing in what state.
One of the memories that I think about often is a Thanksgiving I had in Little Rock, Arkansas. I was doing 'Lost in Yonkers' at Arkansas Rep. The cast gathered in my small, one bedroom apartment the theater had provided for me (again, I was living in NYC at the time) and again, I was cooking the turkey. There were about eight or nine of us. One of the people there was a slight, shortish young man, very quiet, very polite. I'm ashamed to say I don't remember his name. I think he was the lighting designer for the show. In any event, the rule that year was that after everything was on the table and before we could eat, each person was asked to write a short (two or three pages) essay on what they were thankful for. It was terribly emotional. When I outlined the rules for the day, I didn't realize how moving some of the essays would be. When it came time around the table for this young man to read his essay, all was very quiet. Again, no one knew this guy very well, he kept to himself during rehearsals. As he began to read we heard his story. His parents had died early in his life and he had been shuffled from one foster home to another. His sister was developmentally challenged and living in a state run 'home.' He had worked his way through college, getting his degree in light design at the University of West Virginia. Aside from his temporary foster living, he'd never spent Thanksgiving with another person. Always alone. He adored actors because he was so very shy himself and was amazed that people could get on a stage in front of other people. A year earlier he had been diagnosed with Cancer. He'd lost a lot of weight but was now in remission. As he spoke, the silence in the small dining room was palpable. He ended by quietly reading that this was the best holiday he'd ever had. There was no self-pity in his reading, no whining, no self-indulgence. He was just happy to be around other people on Thanksgiving. I got a phone call about six months later that he had passed away.
Tomorrow I spend Thanksgiving with my beautiful and loving wife, a group of very close friends, in an astonishing house in one of the most elegant neighborhoods in the country. Before I take my first bite tomorrow I shall think of this young man. It has been about fifteen years since he died. Every year before I eat I take a few seconds to think of him. And the hope he represented. I take the time to be thankful. Since that day many years ago, I've spent many Thanksgiving dinners alone myself, resigned to the idea that it would always be that way.
Of course, he is only one of millions that persevere in the face of great cosmic injustice. And his small and thankful essay that year will stay with me all of my life.
I cannot begin to write about all I am thankful for. The list this year, 2010, is so long and filled it would simply be impossible. I had, over the past decade or so, come to despise the holidays. Christmas music and lights and all the trappings of the holidays made me indescribably sad. I began volunteering in Chicago for homeless shelters on Thanksgiving. And when the food was all doled out I would sit with strangers, the addicted, the hopeless, the bottom rung of society, and eat and talk and pretend I wasn't lonely. And each and every time I would take a few moments to remember that doomed young man in Virginia all those years ago. I shall do the same tomorrow.
See you then.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Never Show them the High C...
A day off from rehearsal yesterday. Badly needed, actually, because my voice was a bit on the raspy side after five hours of music rehearsal on Sunday. Back in the saddle today, however, so I need to start working on the music again.
The ensemble in this piece does a lot of singing. As of Sunday, they had just finally found a really good tenor (the music in the piece is incredibly difficult for the ensemble) and then the next day the baritone had to leave the cast for personal reasons. So now a search is underway for his replacement. Oy.
Hopefully, all of that will be dealt with today.
I was thinking yesterday that I've heard Ron (our director) say out loud on several occasions that we need to 'serve the play.' I'm terribly pleased to hear comments like that. He also said the major job, in his opinion, of a director is to simply correct any mistakes made in the casting. I liked that comment, too. The last play I did involved a director that was intent upon making the entire evening about his directing, text be damned. Consequently the entire rehearsal process turned into a battle to maintain the integrity of the text rather than move forward and try and present a fascinating story. Every rehearsal became about trying to keep the director's 'improvements' out of the play. It was exhausting.
Angie and I had my buddy, John Bader, over for dinner last night and I played a couple of the songs from the show for him. Although John is not really a musical theater kind of guy, he immediately realized what a monster this piece is. He also concurred with me in that he thought this was a play I had to do.
So today I put the blinders back on and start on the music again. Today my goal is to find a way to make it through a long song I sing about a third of the way through the play without peaking too soon. I'm remembering a rare piece of advice from Marlon Brando in his book, Songs My Mother Taught Me. I, like many actors, picked the book up thinking Brando would break his decades-long silence about actually talking about his process. He really doesn't in the book. But he does, now and again, offer a little tidbit. One of them is, '...never show the high C. If you've got a high C, only show them the B.' Good advice. In essence he's saying always keep something in reserve. It's especially apt advice for this show I'm doing now. It would be so easy to blow out the engines early and show the audience all I've got. Can't do that, though. That's a rookie mistake and one I've been in danger of committing lately.
I just finished reading Tennessee Williams' Memoirs and there are several interesting things in it. One is his assessment of the great Laurette Taylor as she was working on 'The Glass Menagerie.' He reports that in rehearsal in Chicago for the play, all of the actors were, very early in the rehearsal process, weeping and gnashing their teeth and going for broke throughout the play. Except Taylor. She carried the script with her right up to the end, although it became clear she wasn't referring to it. She kept her voice neutral, her emotions in check and was carefully observing what the other actors were doing. In fact, he was concerned that her performance would be flat because of it. But suddenly, as opening night neared, she put the script down and blossomed. There was a late rehearsal that he recalled, about three nights before the first preview, in which Taylor said, rather off-handedly, 'I'm going to act tonight.' What happened next, of course, was theater history.
The same happened in rehearsal for 'Death of a Salesman.' In Elia Kazan's book he writes of his concern for Lee J. Cobb in the role of Willy Loman. "We couldn't hear him, for one thing," Kazan writes. "And when we could hear him, it was timid and weak." But, like Taylor, the veteran Cobb was simply biding his time. He, apparently, held off even longer than Taylor. Opening night, of course, he was incredible. I can't say that I'm a fan of this approach although there's no arguing with success. I've always been of the mind that what you do in rehearsal you will do in performance. It's a valuable lesson for young actors to learn, in fact. However, having said that, I think there's something to holding off on the emotion inherent in this play, The Adding Machine. In film it's called 'saving it for the close-up.' In the live theatre, it's just common sense.
So starting today, I hold back. I mark the 'high C.' Never show them everything you've got. The difference is, unlike Cobb and Laurette Taylor, I'll let Alan and Ron (the musical director and director, respectively) know what I'm doing. I can only hope they'll trust me.
See you tomorrow.
The ensemble in this piece does a lot of singing. As of Sunday, they had just finally found a really good tenor (the music in the piece is incredibly difficult for the ensemble) and then the next day the baritone had to leave the cast for personal reasons. So now a search is underway for his replacement. Oy.
Hopefully, all of that will be dealt with today.
I was thinking yesterday that I've heard Ron (our director) say out loud on several occasions that we need to 'serve the play.' I'm terribly pleased to hear comments like that. He also said the major job, in his opinion, of a director is to simply correct any mistakes made in the casting. I liked that comment, too. The last play I did involved a director that was intent upon making the entire evening about his directing, text be damned. Consequently the entire rehearsal process turned into a battle to maintain the integrity of the text rather than move forward and try and present a fascinating story. Every rehearsal became about trying to keep the director's 'improvements' out of the play. It was exhausting.
Angie and I had my buddy, John Bader, over for dinner last night and I played a couple of the songs from the show for him. Although John is not really a musical theater kind of guy, he immediately realized what a monster this piece is. He also concurred with me in that he thought this was a play I had to do.
So today I put the blinders back on and start on the music again. Today my goal is to find a way to make it through a long song I sing about a third of the way through the play without peaking too soon. I'm remembering a rare piece of advice from Marlon Brando in his book, Songs My Mother Taught Me. I, like many actors, picked the book up thinking Brando would break his decades-long silence about actually talking about his process. He really doesn't in the book. But he does, now and again, offer a little tidbit. One of them is, '...never show the high C. If you've got a high C, only show them the B.' Good advice. In essence he's saying always keep something in reserve. It's especially apt advice for this show I'm doing now. It would be so easy to blow out the engines early and show the audience all I've got. Can't do that, though. That's a rookie mistake and one I've been in danger of committing lately.
I just finished reading Tennessee Williams' Memoirs and there are several interesting things in it. One is his assessment of the great Laurette Taylor as she was working on 'The Glass Menagerie.' He reports that in rehearsal in Chicago for the play, all of the actors were, very early in the rehearsal process, weeping and gnashing their teeth and going for broke throughout the play. Except Taylor. She carried the script with her right up to the end, although it became clear she wasn't referring to it. She kept her voice neutral, her emotions in check and was carefully observing what the other actors were doing. In fact, he was concerned that her performance would be flat because of it. But suddenly, as opening night neared, she put the script down and blossomed. There was a late rehearsal that he recalled, about three nights before the first preview, in which Taylor said, rather off-handedly, 'I'm going to act tonight.' What happened next, of course, was theater history.
The same happened in rehearsal for 'Death of a Salesman.' In Elia Kazan's book he writes of his concern for Lee J. Cobb in the role of Willy Loman. "We couldn't hear him, for one thing," Kazan writes. "And when we could hear him, it was timid and weak." But, like Taylor, the veteran Cobb was simply biding his time. He, apparently, held off even longer than Taylor. Opening night, of course, he was incredible. I can't say that I'm a fan of this approach although there's no arguing with success. I've always been of the mind that what you do in rehearsal you will do in performance. It's a valuable lesson for young actors to learn, in fact. However, having said that, I think there's something to holding off on the emotion inherent in this play, The Adding Machine. In film it's called 'saving it for the close-up.' In the live theatre, it's just common sense.
So starting today, I hold back. I mark the 'high C.' Never show them everything you've got. The difference is, unlike Cobb and Laurette Taylor, I'll let Alan and Ron (the musical director and director, respectively) know what I'm doing. I can only hope they'll trust me.
See you tomorrow.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Angie's Birthday Weekend.
Angie and I traveled down to San Diego for the weekend to attend her niece's 15th birthday party. Angie's brother's wife is Mexican and apparently the 15th birthday, in that culture, is a big deal, much like the 13th birthday is a big deal in the Jewish tradition. There's actually a name for it (starts with a Q) but I can't remember what it is. In any event, Kenny (Angie's brother) went all out and rented space at the The Hampton Inn, catered it, tons of food and deserts, a DJ playing music that was incomprehensible to me, lots of 15 year old boys and girls dancing the night away. It was actually a pretty cool thing.
And as the evening progressed I felt older and older and older. Usually, Angie and I are considered the hippest of all the adults by our friend's kids. I suspect this is because Angie has the amazing ability to make anyone she's talking to feel like they're her best friend of all time and I'm always good-naturedly grumpy and tend to cuss a lot. Kids like that. But as we sat there in the convention room, all decorated and looking very 15 year old chic, we both felt terribly, terribly grown-up. We were on the 'suit and tie' side of the room with all the other parents and, like everyone else on that side of the room, were clearly considered the interlopers.
Kenny showed a slide show to get the evening rolling, a sort of 'this is your life' kinda thing of Sophie (the 15 year old), complete with really wonderful music. And much to my surprise, right in the middle of it, I sort of got quietly choked up. It was just so clear how much Kenny, usually a mildly acerbic but hail-fellow-well-met kind of guy, adored and loved his daughter. I was grateful he didn't play 'Butterfly Kisses' underneath the slide show. I would have wept out loud.
Rosemary, Angie and Kenny's mom, traveled all the way from Missouri for the party. She'd just come back from Columbia (she and her husband Rex are always jet-setting it all over the world, bless their hearts) and is going in for major back surgery in January, so it was a big deal that she'd made the trip. And if Angie and I felt old, I'm sure Rosemary, who's as cosmopolitan as one can get, must've felt old right along with us. Even Angie's daughter, Lauren, and her long-time boyfriend, Nate, both in their early twenties, were relegated to the 'grown-up' table. At least they seemed to recognize some of the music, which is more than I can say of me.
So we had to scoot out of San Diego early Sunday morning because I had a marathon music rehearsal for The Adding Machine at noon.
I came into the rehearsal, once again, highly prepared. I'd been working on one of my songs that was scheduled for the day like a maniac. It didn't help. I was quickly overwhelmed with the music. About halfway through this particular song are a few high Fs. I found that as I 'acted' the song, I tend to get a little keyed up physically and I'm not really a trained singer so my throat had tightened up as the song progresses. It's a long and comprehensive and emotionally draining song, kind of along the lines of 'My Boy Bill' or 'Molasses to Slavery to Rum' and I musjudged my ability to pull it off. I have to learn how to sing it and show great consternation without letting my throat tighten up. Real singers do this with ease. Not me. Consequently I have to re-think the whole thing. The troubling part of it all is that it caught me off guard. I don't like being caught off guard in rehearsal.
Also, the librettist, Jason Loewith, was there for the first hour or so to answer questions and explain the genesis of the piece, the trials and errors of its first production, etc. Jason is clearly a tremendously talented guy and very, very smart. He impressed me. He's been in Chicago for a long time now and we know a lot of the same people, although we'd never personally met there.
The funny and cool thing about this show is that I'm surrounded by world-class singers and musicians. I was astonished at how quickly they picked up this really complicated, difficult music. It was the first time we had all been together in the same room and it quickly became clear that I would have to work twice as hard to keep up with them. So be it. When it comes to theatre I don't believe in excuses. Whatever it takes, even if I have to hire a private vocal coach, I'll keep up. Allen, our musical director, is quite possibly one of the best I've ever worked with and I'm guessing I've worked with about 30 or 40 musical directors in my time. He's kind and encouraging and yet it is abundantly clear he will settle for nothing less than perfection. I like that in him.
I leave every rehearsal a little overwhelmed. Actually, a lot overwhelmed. Good. It's been a long, long time that I haven't felt completely in command of the material at hand. It's good for me. Keeps me humble. I have a great deal of work on it ahead of me today before our next rehearsal later on in the afternoon.
Angie's birthday was yesterday. She turned #%$@*&^. (Okay, I'll say it, 48.) Angie, aside from a lifelong fondness for very good wine, has lived a ridiculously healthy lifestyle and consequently looks far younger than that. Good for her. Me, I've lived like a nihilist with a death wish and look about ten years older than I am.
This Thursday, Thanksgiving, we're heading over for our annual get-together at the Lipps household, Tammy and Mark. Tammy turns out a spread as though cooking for the King of Siam every year and it promises to be a culinary event. Maybe, like last year, I can get a spirited game of 'Celebrity' going after the turkey.
So...a little more coffee and then I'll don the headphones and start on the music again. Oy.
See you tomorrow.
And as the evening progressed I felt older and older and older. Usually, Angie and I are considered the hippest of all the adults by our friend's kids. I suspect this is because Angie has the amazing ability to make anyone she's talking to feel like they're her best friend of all time and I'm always good-naturedly grumpy and tend to cuss a lot. Kids like that. But as we sat there in the convention room, all decorated and looking very 15 year old chic, we both felt terribly, terribly grown-up. We were on the 'suit and tie' side of the room with all the other parents and, like everyone else on that side of the room, were clearly considered the interlopers.
Kenny showed a slide show to get the evening rolling, a sort of 'this is your life' kinda thing of Sophie (the 15 year old), complete with really wonderful music. And much to my surprise, right in the middle of it, I sort of got quietly choked up. It was just so clear how much Kenny, usually a mildly acerbic but hail-fellow-well-met kind of guy, adored and loved his daughter. I was grateful he didn't play 'Butterfly Kisses' underneath the slide show. I would have wept out loud.
Rosemary, Angie and Kenny's mom, traveled all the way from Missouri for the party. She'd just come back from Columbia (she and her husband Rex are always jet-setting it all over the world, bless their hearts) and is going in for major back surgery in January, so it was a big deal that she'd made the trip. And if Angie and I felt old, I'm sure Rosemary, who's as cosmopolitan as one can get, must've felt old right along with us. Even Angie's daughter, Lauren, and her long-time boyfriend, Nate, both in their early twenties, were relegated to the 'grown-up' table. At least they seemed to recognize some of the music, which is more than I can say of me.
So we had to scoot out of San Diego early Sunday morning because I had a marathon music rehearsal for The Adding Machine at noon.
I came into the rehearsal, once again, highly prepared. I'd been working on one of my songs that was scheduled for the day like a maniac. It didn't help. I was quickly overwhelmed with the music. About halfway through this particular song are a few high Fs. I found that as I 'acted' the song, I tend to get a little keyed up physically and I'm not really a trained singer so my throat had tightened up as the song progresses. It's a long and comprehensive and emotionally draining song, kind of along the lines of 'My Boy Bill' or 'Molasses to Slavery to Rum' and I musjudged my ability to pull it off. I have to learn how to sing it and show great consternation without letting my throat tighten up. Real singers do this with ease. Not me. Consequently I have to re-think the whole thing. The troubling part of it all is that it caught me off guard. I don't like being caught off guard in rehearsal.
Also, the librettist, Jason Loewith, was there for the first hour or so to answer questions and explain the genesis of the piece, the trials and errors of its first production, etc. Jason is clearly a tremendously talented guy and very, very smart. He impressed me. He's been in Chicago for a long time now and we know a lot of the same people, although we'd never personally met there.
The funny and cool thing about this show is that I'm surrounded by world-class singers and musicians. I was astonished at how quickly they picked up this really complicated, difficult music. It was the first time we had all been together in the same room and it quickly became clear that I would have to work twice as hard to keep up with them. So be it. When it comes to theatre I don't believe in excuses. Whatever it takes, even if I have to hire a private vocal coach, I'll keep up. Allen, our musical director, is quite possibly one of the best I've ever worked with and I'm guessing I've worked with about 30 or 40 musical directors in my time. He's kind and encouraging and yet it is abundantly clear he will settle for nothing less than perfection. I like that in him.
I leave every rehearsal a little overwhelmed. Actually, a lot overwhelmed. Good. It's been a long, long time that I haven't felt completely in command of the material at hand. It's good for me. Keeps me humble. I have a great deal of work on it ahead of me today before our next rehearsal later on in the afternoon.
Angie's birthday was yesterday. She turned #%$@*&^. (Okay, I'll say it, 48.) Angie, aside from a lifelong fondness for very good wine, has lived a ridiculously healthy lifestyle and consequently looks far younger than that. Good for her. Me, I've lived like a nihilist with a death wish and look about ten years older than I am.
This Thursday, Thanksgiving, we're heading over for our annual get-together at the Lipps household, Tammy and Mark. Tammy turns out a spread as though cooking for the King of Siam every year and it promises to be a culinary event. Maybe, like last year, I can get a spirited game of 'Celebrity' going after the turkey.
So...a little more coffee and then I'll don the headphones and start on the music again. Oy.
See you tomorrow.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
...that score.
I love the music to The Adding Machine. It is brilliant and confusing and soaring and dissonant and melodic and worrisome and, ultimately, genius. Yesterday's rehearsal was all music. I actually had the hubris to think I was ready for it. I've been neck deep in it for a week now. Listening to it over and over, counting it out, tapping my pencil on the desk as I sang along with the soundtrack, completely absorbed by it. I sashayed into rehearsal thinking, "Well, at least I'm prepared." I was wrong. I was not prepared.
It vascillates from 3/4 to 2/4 to 6/4 to 9/4 (I don't even know how to COUNT 9/4!) and then starts all over again. It goes along fine and then suddenly and without warning veers into atonal stuff that makes it nigh on impossible to find a pitch. After less than an hour with the music director (an astonishingly talented young man who's done the show before in Cincinnati) my eyes were rolling into the back of my head and I was staggering around holding onto my music stand in order to stay upright.
Just when I thought I had a good, healthy chunk of it under my belt, I was proven absolutely wrong. Now, I love a good challenge, generally speaking, but good god, this stuff...
After a bit last night, Alan (our musical director) looked at me and said, "You play an instrument, don't you." I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I've played sax all my life." He said, "I can tell because even though you're not actually counting this stuff out, many times you're instinctively doing it right...it's because you've read music all your life and something is bypassing your brain and just doing it. People who play musical insruments do that." Frankly, I think he was being kind. At one point I just stopped the proceedings and asked for a break. I told him during the five minute pause that after doing this play-acting thing for over thirty years, I knew very well when I was inside my area of expertise. This was definitely not one of those times. To his credit he just laughed and kept encouraging me.
I actually had math dreams last night.
After a few hours, the young singer/actor that plays the character of Shrdlu (real name) came in. He's got a master's in music theory. Beautiful tenor voice. Extraordinary vocalist. Within half an hour he, too, was spinning in confused circles and asking for a break.
I wish I could re-print just a page of this stuff for you, Gentle Reader, to see. It's mind-boggling. I finally told Angie last night that the best I can hope for at this stage is to simply do it and do it and do it and maybe hope for a draw. I've done some tough music in my time...Edwin Drood, Company, etc. But nothing like this.
One thing is clear: if we pull this off it will be an amazing evening of theatre. The trick, like everything else, is to get it inside me. Become so familiar with it that someone could shake me out of a dead sleep at 3am and I'd wake up singing it. Repitition is the soul of art, as Sir Ralph Richardson once said. Just do it and do it and then do it again.
Oy.
Off to San Diego today for a family thing with Angie's family. Should be fun. Haven't been to San Diego since 1984. Visited the famous San Diego zoo back then. Won't have time to do that today, but it's a lovely city and one that I've always adored. We're holing up in The Hampton Inn for the night and then shooting back here for rehearsal tomorrow at noon and another long day of music theory. And I thought Sondheim could get complicated...he's a girl scout compared to Josh Schmidt (the composer of The Adding Machine).
But don't mistake my whining for dissatisfaction. I love it. I love every moment of it. I live for these kinds of challenges. I'm almost hesitant to leave for the day, just so I can get back to work on it. But I'll be blaring the CD in the car all the way there and back. Putting it inside me. Making it a part of me. Training my muscle memory, making it mine.
See you tomorrow.
It vascillates from 3/4 to 2/4 to 6/4 to 9/4 (I don't even know how to COUNT 9/4!) and then starts all over again. It goes along fine and then suddenly and without warning veers into atonal stuff that makes it nigh on impossible to find a pitch. After less than an hour with the music director (an astonishingly talented young man who's done the show before in Cincinnati) my eyes were rolling into the back of my head and I was staggering around holding onto my music stand in order to stay upright.
Just when I thought I had a good, healthy chunk of it under my belt, I was proven absolutely wrong. Now, I love a good challenge, generally speaking, but good god, this stuff...
After a bit last night, Alan (our musical director) looked at me and said, "You play an instrument, don't you." I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I've played sax all my life." He said, "I can tell because even though you're not actually counting this stuff out, many times you're instinctively doing it right...it's because you've read music all your life and something is bypassing your brain and just doing it. People who play musical insruments do that." Frankly, I think he was being kind. At one point I just stopped the proceedings and asked for a break. I told him during the five minute pause that after doing this play-acting thing for over thirty years, I knew very well when I was inside my area of expertise. This was definitely not one of those times. To his credit he just laughed and kept encouraging me.
I actually had math dreams last night.
After a few hours, the young singer/actor that plays the character of Shrdlu (real name) came in. He's got a master's in music theory. Beautiful tenor voice. Extraordinary vocalist. Within half an hour he, too, was spinning in confused circles and asking for a break.
I wish I could re-print just a page of this stuff for you, Gentle Reader, to see. It's mind-boggling. I finally told Angie last night that the best I can hope for at this stage is to simply do it and do it and do it and maybe hope for a draw. I've done some tough music in my time...Edwin Drood, Company, etc. But nothing like this.
One thing is clear: if we pull this off it will be an amazing evening of theatre. The trick, like everything else, is to get it inside me. Become so familiar with it that someone could shake me out of a dead sleep at 3am and I'd wake up singing it. Repitition is the soul of art, as Sir Ralph Richardson once said. Just do it and do it and then do it again.
Oy.
Off to San Diego today for a family thing with Angie's family. Should be fun. Haven't been to San Diego since 1984. Visited the famous San Diego zoo back then. Won't have time to do that today, but it's a lovely city and one that I've always adored. We're holing up in The Hampton Inn for the night and then shooting back here for rehearsal tomorrow at noon and another long day of music theory. And I thought Sondheim could get complicated...he's a girl scout compared to Josh Schmidt (the composer of The Adding Machine).
But don't mistake my whining for dissatisfaction. I love it. I love every moment of it. I live for these kinds of challenges. I'm almost hesitant to leave for the day, just so I can get back to work on it. But I'll be blaring the CD in the car all the way there and back. Putting it inside me. Making it a part of me. Training my muscle memory, making it mine.
See you tomorrow.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Table Work.
I have, in the past, blogged about my frustration with 'table work.' Table work is when the actors sit around a table and read thru and discuss the script in chunks, say, five pages and then talk, another five pages and then talk, etc. That's what we're doing now in The Adding Machine. It's a perfectly viable approach and I have many friends, actors whom I respect mightily, that love doing it. For me, it's frustrating though.
When I first started coming up in the business, near the turn of the 19th century it seems sometimes, I essentially, for many years, did two types of theatre: Fast, rotating summer repertory and grass root, original plays in small houses in NYC's off-off Broaway scene. In both cases the key, the very essence of the work was about putting it up fast and furious. It was all about necessity. In stock, you had to do it, cause they's all the time you had...two weeks, up with Funny Girl, opening night, next day first readthru of South Pacific, two weeks rehearsal, put it up, slip it into the repertory with Funny Girl, one day off, read thru Camelot, two weeks to put it up and get it into the rotation...and all this time you're performing the shows at night and rehearsing 6 to 8 hours in the day. That's how it worked. I'm not even sure if that's how summer stock works anymore, haven't done it in ages. As for NYC's off-off scene, the rehearsal space rates were so high it was impossible to rehearse a show too long. Economical considerations alone made us work fast. We simply had no choice.
So the question for me then becomes, is a play better served with an extended rehearsal period? Maybe.
I remember some years ago doing a play called 'Born Yesterday' at a large, Equity theater on the East Coast. I was in the 'hired gun' phase of my career and spent most of my years literally skipping from one city to the next doing plays back to back to back. Great times, and utterly exhausting. There are very few major theaters on the East Coast in which I didn't work. Anyway, so this director doing Born Yesterday loved to hear himself talk, loved to do 'table work,' loved to pontificate. I specifically remember one day sitting around that table, well into our second week of sitting there, and listening to him draw comparisons to the Vietnam War and the rather slight, but well-written play Born Yesterday. My eyes were spinning. We rehearsed that play for five weeks and ran it for six weeks. Drove me crazy. I was ready to perform it after two weeks. Was my performance noticably better with the additional three weeks of rehearsal? I don't think so. Was it more 'layered,' more comprehensible, more palatable for the audience? I don't think so. My job is to say the words loud enough for the guy in the back row to hear. To get too much more complicated than that is, well, bordering on the senselessly self-indulgent, really.
Now, The Adding Machine is different, granted. It is a tremendously complicated piece of writing and honestly deserves some table work. Nonetheless, it still makes me a little bonkers. And yes, it is important for the actor to know what he's saying (although I'm of the opinion it is less important than most). And the source material, Elmer Rice's play, like Sondheim's Sweeny Todd, does not, at first glance, readily lend itself to musical theater.
I like gearing up for a rehearsal, almost like a prize fight. I nap, I eat the right things, I do my homework, and by the time rehearsal is ready to start I'm focused, I'm ready to be shot out of the cannon. This, no doubt, comes from my early years in stock and off-off. And the simple truth is, not everyone likes to work that way, which is perfectly all right. I'm reminded of the old Russian director, Boleslavsky, I think it was, that insisted on at LEAST six months of rehearsal. I think I would have just fainted dead away.
Today I have a few hours flying solo with just the musical director. Looking forward to it. The dialogue in this piece poses no threat to me. I'm not the least bit concerned with it. But the music is tremendously complicated. And today is all about the music.
See you tomorrow.
When I first started coming up in the business, near the turn of the 19th century it seems sometimes, I essentially, for many years, did two types of theatre: Fast, rotating summer repertory and grass root, original plays in small houses in NYC's off-off Broaway scene. In both cases the key, the very essence of the work was about putting it up fast and furious. It was all about necessity. In stock, you had to do it, cause they's all the time you had...two weeks, up with Funny Girl, opening night, next day first readthru of South Pacific, two weeks rehearsal, put it up, slip it into the repertory with Funny Girl, one day off, read thru Camelot, two weeks to put it up and get it into the rotation...and all this time you're performing the shows at night and rehearsing 6 to 8 hours in the day. That's how it worked. I'm not even sure if that's how summer stock works anymore, haven't done it in ages. As for NYC's off-off scene, the rehearsal space rates were so high it was impossible to rehearse a show too long. Economical considerations alone made us work fast. We simply had no choice.
So the question for me then becomes, is a play better served with an extended rehearsal period? Maybe.
I remember some years ago doing a play called 'Born Yesterday' at a large, Equity theater on the East Coast. I was in the 'hired gun' phase of my career and spent most of my years literally skipping from one city to the next doing plays back to back to back. Great times, and utterly exhausting. There are very few major theaters on the East Coast in which I didn't work. Anyway, so this director doing Born Yesterday loved to hear himself talk, loved to do 'table work,' loved to pontificate. I specifically remember one day sitting around that table, well into our second week of sitting there, and listening to him draw comparisons to the Vietnam War and the rather slight, but well-written play Born Yesterday. My eyes were spinning. We rehearsed that play for five weeks and ran it for six weeks. Drove me crazy. I was ready to perform it after two weeks. Was my performance noticably better with the additional three weeks of rehearsal? I don't think so. Was it more 'layered,' more comprehensible, more palatable for the audience? I don't think so. My job is to say the words loud enough for the guy in the back row to hear. To get too much more complicated than that is, well, bordering on the senselessly self-indulgent, really.
Now, The Adding Machine is different, granted. It is a tremendously complicated piece of writing and honestly deserves some table work. Nonetheless, it still makes me a little bonkers. And yes, it is important for the actor to know what he's saying (although I'm of the opinion it is less important than most). And the source material, Elmer Rice's play, like Sondheim's Sweeny Todd, does not, at first glance, readily lend itself to musical theater.
I like gearing up for a rehearsal, almost like a prize fight. I nap, I eat the right things, I do my homework, and by the time rehearsal is ready to start I'm focused, I'm ready to be shot out of the cannon. This, no doubt, comes from my early years in stock and off-off. And the simple truth is, not everyone likes to work that way, which is perfectly all right. I'm reminded of the old Russian director, Boleslavsky, I think it was, that insisted on at LEAST six months of rehearsal. I think I would have just fainted dead away.
Today I have a few hours flying solo with just the musical director. Looking forward to it. The dialogue in this piece poses no threat to me. I'm not the least bit concerned with it. But the music is tremendously complicated. And today is all about the music.
See you tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
First Readthru.
First readthru, Equity meeting, vote for the deputy, all that stuff last night. Meeting the other cast members, working through all the scheduling stuff and taking a tour of the labyrinth facilities. A typical first meet of a new show.
There are nine in the cast, five men and four women. Needless to say, everyone comes with a solid theatre background, it would appear.
Last night was simply a table read so we could hear the material out loud. However, we didn't use the music. Which is a tad awkward because the show is musically driven, to say the least. Ron Sossi, the director, wisely chose to steer clear of discussing the 'meaning' of the piece. The play upon which this is based, Elmer Rice's groundbreaking The Adding Machine, was cutting edge material at the time of its release in 1923, exploring Hindu reincarnation while mixing it with Judeo-Christian views of 'morality.' This aspect of the play is fairly cut and dried. Instead, Ron chose to simply offer images and preliminary ideas about how to physically play this stuff. The old 'cart before the horse' approach, which, fortunately for me, is exactly the way I like to work. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what we, the actors, think the play is about anyway. This is true of all artforms, not just theater. No, Ron, again wisely, was more interested in pushing us toward an eye for performing this thing. The inherent message in the play, which is there regardless of our efforts in performing it, is for the audience anyway, not the artists. This is the underlying truth of any allegorical material. So I was oddly relieved that he chose not to open a forum about 'what we're trying to say.' That is self-evident, and if its not, well, the rest is for nought anyway.
However, we didn't have the extraordinary score to guide us last night. A couple of the cast members hadn't heard it yet, in fact. I can only imagine what was crossing their mind. It's not a good 'read.' Ninety percent of the plot and theme are in the lyrics and music. So to simply read them out loud as dialogue can be incredibly misleading in a piece of this sort. I, of course, have listened to this score ad nauseum already, and each time I'm impressed all over again. Imagine having the first table read of Sweeny Todd without that magnificent music to lend credence and weight to the evening. Same thing. So as I looked around the table last night, I could see that a couple of the cast members simply didn't quite grasp the scale and gravitas of the piece. Which is okay. They'll catch up soon enough when they listen to the score and we start hearing that angry, twitching, soaring music in rehearsal.
The complex itself is really quite amazing. The Odyssey is really three seperate theaters. All three are state-of-the-art houses in one building. Essentially it's a live theatre cineplex. We were taken on a comprehensive tour of the houses. Very impressive. The theatre, incidentally, celebrates its 41st year of continual operation this year. Again, very impressive. The average shelf life of most smaller, non-profit theatres in this country is more along the lines of ten years. Forty-one years is somewhat of a minor miracle.
Today I plug this incredibly difficult music in and start to work. I've already, during the protracted audition process, listened to it quite a bit, so I'm somewhat prepared to begin work on it in earnest. I had a few ideas last night as we were reading through it, nothing in concrete, just a place to start. Gotta start somewhere. Sometimes one has to go back and start over a few times, but I've discovered it's best to at least make a beginning.
So there you have it. First day down, back in today to begin the long 'nuts and bolts' part of the journey. I am uncomfortably aware of how far the journey is, too. Because of the inordinant challenges in this particular piece, we've been given a far longer rehearsal period than is usual. I'm glad of that. So very much to do. So very much to learn. It is, to my way of thinking anyway, the most beautiful part of the process...the clean, white, uncluttered, bare stage in front of us. The exquisite moment when nothing exists until we make it exist. Admittedly, the nightmare moment for some actors. For me, my favorite moment. The moment of endless possibilities.
See you tomorrow.
There are nine in the cast, five men and four women. Needless to say, everyone comes with a solid theatre background, it would appear.
Last night was simply a table read so we could hear the material out loud. However, we didn't use the music. Which is a tad awkward because the show is musically driven, to say the least. Ron Sossi, the director, wisely chose to steer clear of discussing the 'meaning' of the piece. The play upon which this is based, Elmer Rice's groundbreaking The Adding Machine, was cutting edge material at the time of its release in 1923, exploring Hindu reincarnation while mixing it with Judeo-Christian views of 'morality.' This aspect of the play is fairly cut and dried. Instead, Ron chose to simply offer images and preliminary ideas about how to physically play this stuff. The old 'cart before the horse' approach, which, fortunately for me, is exactly the way I like to work. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what we, the actors, think the play is about anyway. This is true of all artforms, not just theater. No, Ron, again wisely, was more interested in pushing us toward an eye for performing this thing. The inherent message in the play, which is there regardless of our efforts in performing it, is for the audience anyway, not the artists. This is the underlying truth of any allegorical material. So I was oddly relieved that he chose not to open a forum about 'what we're trying to say.' That is self-evident, and if its not, well, the rest is for nought anyway.
However, we didn't have the extraordinary score to guide us last night. A couple of the cast members hadn't heard it yet, in fact. I can only imagine what was crossing their mind. It's not a good 'read.' Ninety percent of the plot and theme are in the lyrics and music. So to simply read them out loud as dialogue can be incredibly misleading in a piece of this sort. I, of course, have listened to this score ad nauseum already, and each time I'm impressed all over again. Imagine having the first table read of Sweeny Todd without that magnificent music to lend credence and weight to the evening. Same thing. So as I looked around the table last night, I could see that a couple of the cast members simply didn't quite grasp the scale and gravitas of the piece. Which is okay. They'll catch up soon enough when they listen to the score and we start hearing that angry, twitching, soaring music in rehearsal.
The complex itself is really quite amazing. The Odyssey is really three seperate theaters. All three are state-of-the-art houses in one building. Essentially it's a live theatre cineplex. We were taken on a comprehensive tour of the houses. Very impressive. The theatre, incidentally, celebrates its 41st year of continual operation this year. Again, very impressive. The average shelf life of most smaller, non-profit theatres in this country is more along the lines of ten years. Forty-one years is somewhat of a minor miracle.
Today I plug this incredibly difficult music in and start to work. I've already, during the protracted audition process, listened to it quite a bit, so I'm somewhat prepared to begin work on it in earnest. I had a few ideas last night as we were reading through it, nothing in concrete, just a place to start. Gotta start somewhere. Sometimes one has to go back and start over a few times, but I've discovered it's best to at least make a beginning.
So there you have it. First day down, back in today to begin the long 'nuts and bolts' part of the journey. I am uncomfortably aware of how far the journey is, too. Because of the inordinant challenges in this particular piece, we've been given a far longer rehearsal period than is usual. I'm glad of that. So very much to do. So very much to learn. It is, to my way of thinking anyway, the most beautiful part of the process...the clean, white, uncluttered, bare stage in front of us. The exquisite moment when nothing exists until we make it exist. Admittedly, the nightmare moment for some actors. For me, my favorite moment. The moment of endless possibilities.
See you tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The Adding Machine, A Musical...The Odyssey Theater. 2011. Be There or Be Square.
So I haven't had a chance to really sit down and blog because, well, I've been too busy. I love being able to say that and write that. I've just been too friggin' busy. And it's all been career oriented.
After a marthon audition process (about 7 or 8 hours total over three days) The Odyssey Theater Company, arguably the most prestigious and respected and award-laden company of its kind in Los Angeles, offered me the leading role of 'Mr. Zero' in the award-winning musical, The Adding Machine, last night. Even though there were other offers on the table from other venues, I immediately accepted. And the reason was simple: it's a brilliant piece of theatre. Roles like this for fifty year old guys come across about once every ice age. Not counting my own play, Praying Small, it is quite possibly the best role I've been offered in a couple of decades. It fell in the midst of a whole slew of other roles, some much more lucrative, but the moment I listened to the music last week, I knew this is the one I would do. The score itself is the best I've heard since Sondheim's Assassins. And to my knowledge, this is only the fourth incarnation of it and the first on the West Coast.
Every now and then in the actor's life a massive thing like this comes along and afterwards lots of things change. So, for a moment, let's call a spade a spade. The uncomfortable truth is this: even though my Idaho-sized ego sometimes would like to think differently, the bare truth is no one on the West coast knows or cares who I am, professionally speaking. And the only way to change that is for something like this to come along. Yes, I could go out to Palos Verdes or Manhattan Beach or wherever and do another Oscar Madison or another Tennessee Williams play or take a large role in one of my own pieces, but really, that's just sort of figuratively spinning my wheels in the long run. Those options are sideways movements for me, not loping steps forward.
Years ago I was working with the brilliant actor and my NY mentor, Michael Moriarty. Now, Michael has certainly had ups and downs in his career. He's been to the mountain top and he's also scrambled for roles worth doing. It was late Spring, as I recall, and I'd been offered a number of roles for the summer in various regional theaters around the country. One of the offers included a buttload of money but some mediocre roles in a highly visible venue. Another offer included a string of challenging roles, real ball busters, in a venue that no one of 'importance' would ever see and the money offered was quite literally about a quarter of the other one. And at that time in my career I really needed the money. I was torn. So one day I walked over to Michael's beautiful, huge, apartment on 58th street to ask his advice. And he told me something I'll never forget. It was so simple. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, of course, "Clif, you've got your whole life to make money. And you will. You'll make it hand over fist one day. But if you turn down Hamlet for a buck fifty for Guildenstern at a hundred bucks you're a fool." I was remembering that yesterday when I accepted the role.
I will attempt to chronicle the long journey I'm about to take in these blog pages over the next few months. I know, deep down, when something has completely captured my imagination like this role. I woke up this morning wanting to start work on it immediately. I wanted to start putting that beautiful, haunting, genius and angry music inside me already. I wanted to instantly start working off the many images coming to me. Alas, I'll have to wait until 7:30 tonight when the entire cast is assembled for the first read-thru.
Additionally, this is a piece that comes to me with absolutely no preconceived notions about how to play it (aside from the recorded soundtrack, that is). Some actors shriek defensively at the very thought of seeing someone else do a role they're about to do themselves. That's horse hockey, as far as I'm concerned. I'm guessing that's some sort of practice that originated in academia. Steal, steal, steal, is what I say. I steal unabashadly, I don't care if it's Brando or Ralph Richardson or Meryl Streep or Buddy Hackett. If it's good, I'll take it.
But I can't do that with this piece. It is too new. To my knowledge, it's only been done in Chicago (2008), New York (2009) and since then only Minneapolis and Cincinnati (2010). I've heard that Seattle Rep tried to acquire the rights earlier this year but it fell through. I can only surmise (I don't know this for sure) the owners of the piece are being very protective and decided instead to let a theatre like The Odyssey do it; a theatre with a forty year history of doing cutting edge and highly acclaimed work.
In any event, it has landed here in Los Angeles. The Odyssey is down the street from The Geffen over in Westwood. It's a beautiful, three-theatre complex that has been lovingly and expertly transformed from an old warehouse. Ron Sossi, the director of this piece as well as the artistic director of the theatre itself, has a long and stellar reputation as being one of the best in Los Angeles. He will certainly have his hands full with this property; it's as layered and complex as one can imagine. The role itself, the one I'm doing, is the quintessential 'anti-hero.' That is to say, a character not terribly likable at first glance, an 'everyman' of sorts, just struggling to get through life the best he knows how with his limited intellect and skewered moral principles. I adore playing characters like that. It is the Willy Loman of the musical theater.
So. The journey starts tonight. And it's been a long, long, LONG time since I've been so eager to take it.
See you tomorrow.
After a marthon audition process (about 7 or 8 hours total over three days) The Odyssey Theater Company, arguably the most prestigious and respected and award-laden company of its kind in Los Angeles, offered me the leading role of 'Mr. Zero' in the award-winning musical, The Adding Machine, last night. Even though there were other offers on the table from other venues, I immediately accepted. And the reason was simple: it's a brilliant piece of theatre. Roles like this for fifty year old guys come across about once every ice age. Not counting my own play, Praying Small, it is quite possibly the best role I've been offered in a couple of decades. It fell in the midst of a whole slew of other roles, some much more lucrative, but the moment I listened to the music last week, I knew this is the one I would do. The score itself is the best I've heard since Sondheim's Assassins. And to my knowledge, this is only the fourth incarnation of it and the first on the West Coast.
Every now and then in the actor's life a massive thing like this comes along and afterwards lots of things change. So, for a moment, let's call a spade a spade. The uncomfortable truth is this: even though my Idaho-sized ego sometimes would like to think differently, the bare truth is no one on the West coast knows or cares who I am, professionally speaking. And the only way to change that is for something like this to come along. Yes, I could go out to Palos Verdes or Manhattan Beach or wherever and do another Oscar Madison or another Tennessee Williams play or take a large role in one of my own pieces, but really, that's just sort of figuratively spinning my wheels in the long run. Those options are sideways movements for me, not loping steps forward.
Years ago I was working with the brilliant actor and my NY mentor, Michael Moriarty. Now, Michael has certainly had ups and downs in his career. He's been to the mountain top and he's also scrambled for roles worth doing. It was late Spring, as I recall, and I'd been offered a number of roles for the summer in various regional theaters around the country. One of the offers included a buttload of money but some mediocre roles in a highly visible venue. Another offer included a string of challenging roles, real ball busters, in a venue that no one of 'importance' would ever see and the money offered was quite literally about a quarter of the other one. And at that time in my career I really needed the money. I was torn. So one day I walked over to Michael's beautiful, huge, apartment on 58th street to ask his advice. And he told me something I'll never forget. It was so simple. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, of course, "Clif, you've got your whole life to make money. And you will. You'll make it hand over fist one day. But if you turn down Hamlet for a buck fifty for Guildenstern at a hundred bucks you're a fool." I was remembering that yesterday when I accepted the role.
I will attempt to chronicle the long journey I'm about to take in these blog pages over the next few months. I know, deep down, when something has completely captured my imagination like this role. I woke up this morning wanting to start work on it immediately. I wanted to start putting that beautiful, haunting, genius and angry music inside me already. I wanted to instantly start working off the many images coming to me. Alas, I'll have to wait until 7:30 tonight when the entire cast is assembled for the first read-thru.
Additionally, this is a piece that comes to me with absolutely no preconceived notions about how to play it (aside from the recorded soundtrack, that is). Some actors shriek defensively at the very thought of seeing someone else do a role they're about to do themselves. That's horse hockey, as far as I'm concerned. I'm guessing that's some sort of practice that originated in academia. Steal, steal, steal, is what I say. I steal unabashadly, I don't care if it's Brando or Ralph Richardson or Meryl Streep or Buddy Hackett. If it's good, I'll take it.
But I can't do that with this piece. It is too new. To my knowledge, it's only been done in Chicago (2008), New York (2009) and since then only Minneapolis and Cincinnati (2010). I've heard that Seattle Rep tried to acquire the rights earlier this year but it fell through. I can only surmise (I don't know this for sure) the owners of the piece are being very protective and decided instead to let a theatre like The Odyssey do it; a theatre with a forty year history of doing cutting edge and highly acclaimed work.
In any event, it has landed here in Los Angeles. The Odyssey is down the street from The Geffen over in Westwood. It's a beautiful, three-theatre complex that has been lovingly and expertly transformed from an old warehouse. Ron Sossi, the director of this piece as well as the artistic director of the theatre itself, has a long and stellar reputation as being one of the best in Los Angeles. He will certainly have his hands full with this property; it's as layered and complex as one can imagine. The role itself, the one I'm doing, is the quintessential 'anti-hero.' That is to say, a character not terribly likable at first glance, an 'everyman' of sorts, just struggling to get through life the best he knows how with his limited intellect and skewered moral principles. I adore playing characters like that. It is the Willy Loman of the musical theater.
So. The journey starts tonight. And it's been a long, long, LONG time since I've been so eager to take it.
See you tomorrow.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Tennessee Williams, Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant.
Had a read yesterday for A House Not Meant to Stand, Tennessee Williams' last full-length play before he died. I don't know that play. I believe Gregory Moser did it at The Goodman in 83 right after Williams died, if I'm not mistaken. In any event, it was a quick audition, very nice folks over at The Fountain Theater. I, for whatever reason, have picked up a couple of books on Williams lately. They are interesting in the sense that they give a glimpse into what it was like to be a successful playwright in the forties and fifties. The times have changed. Williams was a bona fide celebrity due to his writing in those days. One of the books I'm reading is 'Memoirs' by Williams himself. He was 61 and still eleven years from his death when it was written, although he was a lifelong hypochondriac and was convinced he was dying even as he wrote the book. The book makes clear one thing at least: his last great play was 'Night of the Iguana' in 61 and Williams spent the next 22 years chasing another great play. He never wrote one. Oh, he wrote plays, just not good ones. His reason for this is interesting. He claims he wrote at the genius level (1937 to approximately 1960) only when he was desperate. Desperate in love, in life, in his art. I'm not so sure about that. Having read nearly everything he's written, I think he just ran out of stories. Also I think socially, we caught up with him and he no longer had the ability to shock. Many, if not all, of his work in that period dealt with issues too sensitive to have a public forum. Consequently, Streetcar, Cat, Rose Tatoo, even Iguana became antiquated. And they became that way very quickly because society, Broadway in particular, was loosening up at an alarming pace. How could Tennessee Williams and his subtle allusions to questionable sexuality possibly hope to compete with, say, Bent or Virginia Woolf? In addition I think his addictions caught up with him. Having done a little addictive drinking myself back in the day, I can say from experience that drinking and writing (when done at the same time, that is) don't compliment one another over the long run. Now, this is not to say he didn't write some masterpieces. Cat, Streetcar and especially Menagerie are all great, sometimes brilliant, plays. His personal favorite, oddly enough, is Summer and Smoke. I did that play in D.C. some years back. It's not a great play. It has moments of great writing, but it is not a great play. But I honestly believe Menagerie and Streetcar ARE great plays. I've done both. Menagerie twice. Cat has all the elements of being a great play and the reason it does is the one thing Williams didn't like about it. In the time it was written, Williams couldn't write openly yet about Brick's sexuality. He hated that. And yet, that is the strongest aspect of the play. After reading 'Memoirs' another thing becomes apparent, too. Williams, being a sexual creature at heart, was far more interested in his next 'encounter' than he was in writing the next great American play. This can be the death of a writer, artistically speaking. It certainly was for Williams, I think. There is an energy, a driving force, if you will, behind a writer's work if he's not satisfied on a personal level. Because of the puritanical times, Williams was clearly not satisfied with his love life. Consequently there is a trapped and caged quality to his writing as that plays out in his psyche. Once that quality is no longer there, he simply becomes another writer describing it. Now, Menagerie is a different story altogether. I think it follows Hemingway's rule that everyone has one great novel or play in them and that is one's life story. Menagerie is Tennessee Williams' thinly disguised life story on stage. And it is riveting. Beautiful, haunted, angry, rageful writing veiled in poetry and southern manners. I'd give a lot to go back and see Laurette Taylor as Amanda Wingfield in that play. She must have been luminous.
Gore Vidal once said something interesting about Tennessee Williams. He said, "His genius is not in his writing, but in his sense of being violated." I think there's a lot to that. After 1960 or so, Williams no longer felt 'violated.'
So...thus concludes my master class on Tennessee Williams. Sorry.
I have been feverishly working on the music to The Adding Machine these past couple of days. Again, this is simply brilliant stuff. Josh Schmidt has written a masterpiece of the modern theater. Everytime I work on it I'm stunned all over again at how good it is. And I'm here to tell you, this is hard shit. Although not a musical theater kind of guy, really, even though I've done about 60 musicals or so, I do have a sense of this kind of thing. But this. This is really tough stuff. I'll be working on it all day.
I have a very interesting television read tomorrow. It's for National Geographic, of all things. More on that as it develops.
And finally, Angie and I Netflixed 'North by Northwest' a couple of nights ago. Angie had never seen it, oddly. And I'm here to happily report it's as good as I remember it. Hitchcock was amazing. Simply amazing. And Cary Grant...well, after seeing it again after many years, I was once again reminded why Cary Grant was a great movie star. Nobody did Cary Grant like Cary Grant. He's just such a joy to watch. The very definition of 'effortless.'
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm about to refill my coffee, plug in my headphones, and get back to work.
See you tomorrow.
Gore Vidal once said something interesting about Tennessee Williams. He said, "His genius is not in his writing, but in his sense of being violated." I think there's a lot to that. After 1960 or so, Williams no longer felt 'violated.'
So...thus concludes my master class on Tennessee Williams. Sorry.
I have been feverishly working on the music to The Adding Machine these past couple of days. Again, this is simply brilliant stuff. Josh Schmidt has written a masterpiece of the modern theater. Everytime I work on it I'm stunned all over again at how good it is. And I'm here to tell you, this is hard shit. Although not a musical theater kind of guy, really, even though I've done about 60 musicals or so, I do have a sense of this kind of thing. But this. This is really tough stuff. I'll be working on it all day.
I have a very interesting television read tomorrow. It's for National Geographic, of all things. More on that as it develops.
And finally, Angie and I Netflixed 'North by Northwest' a couple of nights ago. Angie had never seen it, oddly. And I'm here to happily report it's as good as I remember it. Hitchcock was amazing. Simply amazing. And Cary Grant...well, after seeing it again after many years, I was once again reminded why Cary Grant was a great movie star. Nobody did Cary Grant like Cary Grant. He's just such a joy to watch. The very definition of 'effortless.'
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm about to refill my coffee, plug in my headphones, and get back to work.
See you tomorrow.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
A Brilliant Score.
I mentioned a couple days ago that I had a very long audition for The Odyssey Theatre, a critically-acclaimed and highly successful theater out here in LA, for a musical based on the Elmer Rice classic play, The Adding Machine. I hadn't read The Adding Machine since college, to be honest. I'd sort of even forgotten what it was about. The lead character of Zero (the role I'm up for) is a fifty year old, not-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer, kind of guy who gets fired from his job after 25 years. In a moment of rage he kills his boss and is set to be executed. He discovers that none of it is 'real' and...well, I don't want to spoil the end. Anyway...
So it was a long audition, relatively speaking. And Sunday I go back in for another marathon session. They gave me a couple of the songs and the CD of the piece, so I could learn the difficult music a bit. Sunday I assume I'll be reading opposite some of the women under consideration as well as working with the Musical Director to see if I can handle this score.
This score.
Yesterday, after zipping around for a few more auditions, I finally got down to listening to it for the first time. I was in Chicago when the wonderful actor Joel Hatch was doing it and I remember it was getting a lot of press then and ended up winning a number of Jeff Awards. Subsequently it traveled to NY and made a big splash there as well. This production will be the West Coast Premiere.
This score.
Angie was futzing around in the kitchen preparing another astonishing dinner when I plugged in the headphones and started listening. I won't sugar coat it. This is the single most brilliant piece of music for the musical theatre since Sondheim was at the peak of his powers. It's sort of like if Stravinsky and William Finn had collaborated on a piece. It's absolutely overwhelming in its power and audacity. It reminds me a great deal of Sondheim's Assassins, one his most overlooked gems.
Within ten minutes of plugging in and listening I was hopelessly hooked. Completely involved. Just sort of staring off in the distance listening to this genius-level stuff. It's that good. I called Angie in and took the headphones out and had her listen to some of it. We were both just sort of standing in the middle of the room letting this incredible score wash over us. After a bit she turned to me and said, "You have to do this. This is the role of a lifetime." Angie has exquisite taste in theatre and I'm learning to listen to her instincts. She's right. It's one of, if not the, most powerful role I've run across in many, many years.
I've not been cast in the play yet, and frankly, I don't know if I will be. I have to learn the two songs I was given and show them what I have on Sunday. But I can say this, I haven't wanted a role so badly since...well, I can't remember since when.
The music is set perfectly within my range. There are a few high Fs and a G or two, but as an old friend of mine from New York used to say, a professional opera singer, "You don't have to live up there, just go visit now and then." The really interesting thing is that the character of Zero is not a great singer, doesn't have to be and clearly not expected to be. But he's surrounded by characters that DO sing beautifully. Consequently, when he sings there is a significant and purposeful difference. It is first and foremost an acting role. Nonetheless, notably, he sings throughout.
I don't believe in 'jinxing' a role by writing or talking about it. If I get this thing it will be because I worked hard for it. And I have every intention of doing that over the next few days.
I have a couple of other big stage auditions coming up today and again Monday. I will, of course, go to them and give it my best shot. But in the back of my head is this mammoth role and this extraordinary opportunity. One of the shows I'm reading for pays a hell of a lot more money. But roles like this come up very rarely and sometimes you have to go with your gut. Sometimes money is secondary. Not often, but sometimes.
I also trekked over to Hollywood yesterday for a PSA audition for an Alzheimer's television spot. Good Lord. What a circus that was. The producers didn't put the 'sign-up list' out until the last second and when they did it was pandemonium. Seventy year old ladies pushing and shoving and talking trash to each other trying to get their name on the list. Eighty year old men nearly coming to blows. I stepped back and watched all this and waited until the fuss blew over. It was astounding. Crazed, old actors and actresses turning into wildebeasts and elbowing each other just to get their name a little higher on 'the list.' Turns out the joke was on them, though. After about a half hour, the monitor came out and started calling us in based on the time that was previously set up. The 'list' had nothing to do with the order of the audition. I looked around. Lots of geriatric, shame-faced people. This is SUCH a weird business sometimes.
So spending the morning getting into my Tennessee Williams mode. That's the read I have today. Thinking of jonquils and magnolias and gothic guilt. Nobody did it like Tennessee.
See you tomorrow.
So it was a long audition, relatively speaking. And Sunday I go back in for another marathon session. They gave me a couple of the songs and the CD of the piece, so I could learn the difficult music a bit. Sunday I assume I'll be reading opposite some of the women under consideration as well as working with the Musical Director to see if I can handle this score.
This score.
Yesterday, after zipping around for a few more auditions, I finally got down to listening to it for the first time. I was in Chicago when the wonderful actor Joel Hatch was doing it and I remember it was getting a lot of press then and ended up winning a number of Jeff Awards. Subsequently it traveled to NY and made a big splash there as well. This production will be the West Coast Premiere.
This score.
Angie was futzing around in the kitchen preparing another astonishing dinner when I plugged in the headphones and started listening. I won't sugar coat it. This is the single most brilliant piece of music for the musical theatre since Sondheim was at the peak of his powers. It's sort of like if Stravinsky and William Finn had collaborated on a piece. It's absolutely overwhelming in its power and audacity. It reminds me a great deal of Sondheim's Assassins, one his most overlooked gems.
Within ten minutes of plugging in and listening I was hopelessly hooked. Completely involved. Just sort of staring off in the distance listening to this genius-level stuff. It's that good. I called Angie in and took the headphones out and had her listen to some of it. We were both just sort of standing in the middle of the room letting this incredible score wash over us. After a bit she turned to me and said, "You have to do this. This is the role of a lifetime." Angie has exquisite taste in theatre and I'm learning to listen to her instincts. She's right. It's one of, if not the, most powerful role I've run across in many, many years.
I've not been cast in the play yet, and frankly, I don't know if I will be. I have to learn the two songs I was given and show them what I have on Sunday. But I can say this, I haven't wanted a role so badly since...well, I can't remember since when.
The music is set perfectly within my range. There are a few high Fs and a G or two, but as an old friend of mine from New York used to say, a professional opera singer, "You don't have to live up there, just go visit now and then." The really interesting thing is that the character of Zero is not a great singer, doesn't have to be and clearly not expected to be. But he's surrounded by characters that DO sing beautifully. Consequently, when he sings there is a significant and purposeful difference. It is first and foremost an acting role. Nonetheless, notably, he sings throughout.
I don't believe in 'jinxing' a role by writing or talking about it. If I get this thing it will be because I worked hard for it. And I have every intention of doing that over the next few days.
I have a couple of other big stage auditions coming up today and again Monday. I will, of course, go to them and give it my best shot. But in the back of my head is this mammoth role and this extraordinary opportunity. One of the shows I'm reading for pays a hell of a lot more money. But roles like this come up very rarely and sometimes you have to go with your gut. Sometimes money is secondary. Not often, but sometimes.
I also trekked over to Hollywood yesterday for a PSA audition for an Alzheimer's television spot. Good Lord. What a circus that was. The producers didn't put the 'sign-up list' out until the last second and when they did it was pandemonium. Seventy year old ladies pushing and shoving and talking trash to each other trying to get their name on the list. Eighty year old men nearly coming to blows. I stepped back and watched all this and waited until the fuss blew over. It was astounding. Crazed, old actors and actresses turning into wildebeasts and elbowing each other just to get their name a little higher on 'the list.' Turns out the joke was on them, though. After about a half hour, the monitor came out and started calling us in based on the time that was previously set up. The 'list' had nothing to do with the order of the audition. I looked around. Lots of geriatric, shame-faced people. This is SUCH a weird business sometimes.
So spending the morning getting into my Tennessee Williams mode. That's the read I have today. Thinking of jonquils and magnolias and gothic guilt. Nobody did it like Tennessee.
See you tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Four Broadway World Nominations for FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST announced.
So last night I get home around 10:00 after a very long and arduous audition with The Odyssey Theater Company's The Adding Machine, a west-coast premiere of a new musical based on the classic Elmer Rice play, and I've gotten an email from a friend telling me my play, From the East to the West, has been nominated for four Broadway World, SoCal Awards: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Ensemble and Best New Play.
http://broadwayworld.com/article/Voting_Opens_for_2010_Broadway_World_Southern_California_Awards_20101109
There's the link.
How it got nominated and by whom, I have no idea. But there you have it. Now, I have to admit, I've never heard of the Broadway World Awards, but I'm told by another friend that they're a fairly big deal. That the online zine is the largest in the world of professional theater on the web. Hm. Well, okay, then. I'm pleased, of course, just a little confused. It was a short run, and even though we filled the house for the entire engagement, I hardly expected anything from it. It was, however, enormously successful in terms of the positive feedback we and the play received. It took place this past Februrary and mostly it was done to convince the producing director of that theater to consider it for a full run. He didn't like the show, ultimately, however and I assumed that was that. He said, "It would be a grave disservice to you to let anyone see this." At the time I was a little dismayed by the comment for a couple of reasons. First, he'd never actually seen the production, but was repeating what a friend of his had told him and second, because the play was getting standing ovations and incredible feedback from people who HAD, in fact, seen it. Nonetheless, I moved on thinking that was that. I ended up submitting the play to another theater in Chicago and getting the go-ahead for a world premeire production there. And now this.
Needless to say, I'm delighted.
If one goes back and looks at the day to day blogs from that time, it's easy to see how excited I was at that time for the play. Tremendous cast: Nickella Moschetti, Chad Coe, J.R. Mangels, Alex Robert Holmes and Malcome Devine. All young actors that attacked the script and just blew it out of the water. Particularly fine work from Nickella, who just made the role hers.
In any event, the award, apparently, is sort of a 'People's Choice' type thing for the theater. So click on the link and cast your vote! The real honor, as I see it, is from the nomination itself.
I talked to my co-founder of theGathering Theatre Company last night about it, James Barbour, and we both agreed perhaps we should consider mounting From the East to the West in our first full season after these nominations. Not a bad idea.
The Odyssey Theater Company is one of the most highly respected theaters in LA. My agent submitting me for the lead role in their mounting of a new musical called The Adding Machine (yes, based on the Elmer Rice classic piece). So I went there last night and did a little singing and a monologue and they ended up keeping me there for about two hours reading different stuff in the script. They gave me a CD and some sheet music to learn so I can work with the musical director on Saturday. I certainly haven't been cast in the role yet (it's the lead) but things look good. So today, needless to say, is all about learning that music.
Today I'm up for a PSA spot on Alzheimer's. An extremely well-paying print ad type thingee. I told Angie if anyone has a shot at that, it's me. I look addled half the time anyway.
Tomorrow, a read for the Tennessee Williams play, A House Not Meant to Stand at The Fountain Theater. Another critically acclaimed venue here in LA. And again, the lead role of Cornelius in that play.
And as I mentioned before, Monday I'm up for The Norris Theater's production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. The role of Oscar Madison, a role perfectly suited to me that somehow has escaped me for many years. I love doing Simon's work.
So a fine day yesterday. And a few fine days ahead. Wish they could all be like this.
See you tomorrow.
http://broadwayworld.com/article/Voting_Opens_for_2010_Broadway_World_Southern_California_Awards_20101109
There's the link.
How it got nominated and by whom, I have no idea. But there you have it. Now, I have to admit, I've never heard of the Broadway World Awards, but I'm told by another friend that they're a fairly big deal. That the online zine is the largest in the world of professional theater on the web. Hm. Well, okay, then. I'm pleased, of course, just a little confused. It was a short run, and even though we filled the house for the entire engagement, I hardly expected anything from it. It was, however, enormously successful in terms of the positive feedback we and the play received. It took place this past Februrary and mostly it was done to convince the producing director of that theater to consider it for a full run. He didn't like the show, ultimately, however and I assumed that was that. He said, "It would be a grave disservice to you to let anyone see this." At the time I was a little dismayed by the comment for a couple of reasons. First, he'd never actually seen the production, but was repeating what a friend of his had told him and second, because the play was getting standing ovations and incredible feedback from people who HAD, in fact, seen it. Nonetheless, I moved on thinking that was that. I ended up submitting the play to another theater in Chicago and getting the go-ahead for a world premeire production there. And now this.
Needless to say, I'm delighted.
If one goes back and looks at the day to day blogs from that time, it's easy to see how excited I was at that time for the play. Tremendous cast: Nickella Moschetti, Chad Coe, J.R. Mangels, Alex Robert Holmes and Malcome Devine. All young actors that attacked the script and just blew it out of the water. Particularly fine work from Nickella, who just made the role hers.
In any event, the award, apparently, is sort of a 'People's Choice' type thing for the theater. So click on the link and cast your vote! The real honor, as I see it, is from the nomination itself.
I talked to my co-founder of theGathering Theatre Company last night about it, James Barbour, and we both agreed perhaps we should consider mounting From the East to the West in our first full season after these nominations. Not a bad idea.
The Odyssey Theater Company is one of the most highly respected theaters in LA. My agent submitting me for the lead role in their mounting of a new musical called The Adding Machine (yes, based on the Elmer Rice classic piece). So I went there last night and did a little singing and a monologue and they ended up keeping me there for about two hours reading different stuff in the script. They gave me a CD and some sheet music to learn so I can work with the musical director on Saturday. I certainly haven't been cast in the role yet (it's the lead) but things look good. So today, needless to say, is all about learning that music.
Today I'm up for a PSA spot on Alzheimer's. An extremely well-paying print ad type thingee. I told Angie if anyone has a shot at that, it's me. I look addled half the time anyway.
Tomorrow, a read for the Tennessee Williams play, A House Not Meant to Stand at The Fountain Theater. Another critically acclaimed venue here in LA. And again, the lead role of Cornelius in that play.
And as I mentioned before, Monday I'm up for The Norris Theater's production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. The role of Oscar Madison, a role perfectly suited to me that somehow has escaped me for many years. I love doing Simon's work.
So a fine day yesterday. And a few fine days ahead. Wish they could all be like this.
See you tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Another Pleasant Valley Tuesday.
My agent was in a flurry of activity yesterday. He set up 4 or 5 auditions in about six hours. Everytime I'd hang the phone up, he'd call back with another time-slot for me. . A rare and wonderful day, really. Wish they were all like that. Of course, the rest is up to me now. When it rains, it pours, as they say.
I had the opportunity, speaking of auditions, to sing a bit for the highly regarded Blank Theatre Company yesterday, too. Finally got to meet the driving force behind that group, Daniel Henning. Very nice guy. They're remounting a milestone play from the 30's, first done by the legendary Group Theatre, if I have my facts correct, called The Cradle Will Rock. Not sure I'm exactly right for anything in that show, but it was fun to sing for them in any event.
Sunday's staged reading of Bachelor's Graveyard was enthusiastically received, to put it mildly. My five wonderful actors, Rob Arbogast, Benjamin Burt, Adam Silver, Carmine Dibenedetto and Otniel Henig all came through with flying colors. In the middle of that play, there is a ten to fifteen minute monologue about Muhammad Ali that is sort of the centerpiece of that writing. Rob Arbogast tore into it with relish. Tremendously exciting work from Rob. The monologue builds to a fever pitch with jungle drums and vocal reaction from the other actors and just when the audience thinks it can't go any further, it does. Just stellar work all around. I was very, very pleased.
The comments and reactions following the evening were all satisfyingly positive. In the final analysis the entire night was a complete success. A small step for our fledgling company, theGathering. But an important one. Our first public exposure. Such a very, very long ways to go. So many possibilities ahead of us. But a great first step. We'll take a break, of sorts, through the end of the year and then rev back up to full speed in January with another reading of a new play of mine called The Promise. It's already cast and the very talented Larry Cedar will be directing. Same bat-time, same bat-channel, same bat-theater.
Today I'm doing another little bit of singing for another stage production coming up. A couple of contrasting songs and a monologue. I haven't had to do a monologue for auditons in many a moon. Sort of looking forward to it, actually.
It has gotten delightfully chilly in Los Angeles over the past few days. It won't stay that way long, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it while it lasts.
Next week I've been asked to come in for a reading of Oscar in The Odd Couple, a role that has somehow escaped me over the years. It's a decent Equity Contract in a theatre that's a little far away for my taste, but do-able. Neil Simon, a playwright that has been unfairly maligned over the years, mostly in academia, is one of my favorites. I've done four or five Simon plays over the years and always enjoy myself a great deal saying his words. It's funny, when actors talk about 'timing' and 'pacing' they're usually referring to people like Mamet or Sorkin. But Simon, in my opinion, is the king of that sort of thing. There's usually only one or two ways to say a Simon line, he doesn't leave a lot of room for error. His work, at its best, is a textbook example of timing and pacing. And he makes me laugh, most importantly. Even his dumb stuff, like FOOLS, a play I did a few years back, is out loud funny in spots. And I vividly remember reading his play, Rumors, some years ago and literally putting it down now and then as I convulsed in laughter. I'm a huge fan of Neil Simon.
I've done The Good Doctor, Plaza Suite, They're Playing Our Song, Lost in Yonkers (6 times) and Fools. I've probably left a couple out, in fact. But the upshot is, every single time I've had a really, really great time doing his stuff. And of course, there's a reason he's the most successful of all modern playwrights: he's funny. The audience eats him up. He's just funny. And The Odd Couple, arguably, may be his funniest.
Also up for Tennessee Williams' last play, A House Not Meant to Stand. I haven't read it yet. Somehow it's that rare Williams piece I never got around to reading. But even bad Williams is usually better than most other plays.
So about to start a whirlwind period of auditioning. When I first came to LA I sort of rolled my eyes, figuratively speaking, at having to do all this auditioning again. I had reached a place in NY and Chicago in my career where I didn't have to audition any more. Not the case here. Now, however, I'm beginning to enjoy it, strangely enough.
And finally, an amusing thing happened a couple days ago. My wife, Angie, has been a casting director in this town for over twenty years. Without going into too much detail, she has hobnobbed and become close friends with the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Richard Dreyfuss, Hal Holbrook and many, many others. Now, we're talking 'come over for dinner and hang out' type friends. Unlike myself, celebrity doesn't really give her even a moment's pause. Me, I'll always be a small-town guy from Missouri deep down and every time I see someone recognizable I always get a little thrill. Angie could care less about that stuff. So we're driving through West Hollywood a couple days ago and all of a sudden Angie nearly runs the car off the road. She yells in my ear, "OH MY GOD LOOK!" She's pointing at the sidewalk. I sit up quick and start looking around. I'm thinking maybe Obama is walking down the street. Maybe Jimmy Hoffa. Possibly O.J. has escaped and is running down the side of the road. Back story: Angie, inexplicably, is hooked on Dancing With The Stars. I hear it droning in the background every Monday and Tuesday as I work in my office, getting occasional updates on the performances of Jennifer Grey or Gary Coleman or Andy Griffith or Fatty Arbuckle or Mark Spitz or whoever happens to be dancing this season. So the car is veering from one side of the street to the other as she cranes her neck to see. It's Derek Hough from that show. Uneventfully traipsing down the street carrying a bag of yogurt. Me, I wouldn't know him if I were locked in a jail cell with him. Angie has been breathing heavily now for two days.
And there you have it. Los Angeles in a nutshell.
See you tomorrow.
I had the opportunity, speaking of auditions, to sing a bit for the highly regarded Blank Theatre Company yesterday, too. Finally got to meet the driving force behind that group, Daniel Henning. Very nice guy. They're remounting a milestone play from the 30's, first done by the legendary Group Theatre, if I have my facts correct, called The Cradle Will Rock. Not sure I'm exactly right for anything in that show, but it was fun to sing for them in any event.
Sunday's staged reading of Bachelor's Graveyard was enthusiastically received, to put it mildly. My five wonderful actors, Rob Arbogast, Benjamin Burt, Adam Silver, Carmine Dibenedetto and Otniel Henig all came through with flying colors. In the middle of that play, there is a ten to fifteen minute monologue about Muhammad Ali that is sort of the centerpiece of that writing. Rob Arbogast tore into it with relish. Tremendously exciting work from Rob. The monologue builds to a fever pitch with jungle drums and vocal reaction from the other actors and just when the audience thinks it can't go any further, it does. Just stellar work all around. I was very, very pleased.
The comments and reactions following the evening were all satisfyingly positive. In the final analysis the entire night was a complete success. A small step for our fledgling company, theGathering. But an important one. Our first public exposure. Such a very, very long ways to go. So many possibilities ahead of us. But a great first step. We'll take a break, of sorts, through the end of the year and then rev back up to full speed in January with another reading of a new play of mine called The Promise. It's already cast and the very talented Larry Cedar will be directing. Same bat-time, same bat-channel, same bat-theater.
Today I'm doing another little bit of singing for another stage production coming up. A couple of contrasting songs and a monologue. I haven't had to do a monologue for auditons in many a moon. Sort of looking forward to it, actually.
It has gotten delightfully chilly in Los Angeles over the past few days. It won't stay that way long, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it while it lasts.
Next week I've been asked to come in for a reading of Oscar in The Odd Couple, a role that has somehow escaped me over the years. It's a decent Equity Contract in a theatre that's a little far away for my taste, but do-able. Neil Simon, a playwright that has been unfairly maligned over the years, mostly in academia, is one of my favorites. I've done four or five Simon plays over the years and always enjoy myself a great deal saying his words. It's funny, when actors talk about 'timing' and 'pacing' they're usually referring to people like Mamet or Sorkin. But Simon, in my opinion, is the king of that sort of thing. There's usually only one or two ways to say a Simon line, he doesn't leave a lot of room for error. His work, at its best, is a textbook example of timing and pacing. And he makes me laugh, most importantly. Even his dumb stuff, like FOOLS, a play I did a few years back, is out loud funny in spots. And I vividly remember reading his play, Rumors, some years ago and literally putting it down now and then as I convulsed in laughter. I'm a huge fan of Neil Simon.
I've done The Good Doctor, Plaza Suite, They're Playing Our Song, Lost in Yonkers (6 times) and Fools. I've probably left a couple out, in fact. But the upshot is, every single time I've had a really, really great time doing his stuff. And of course, there's a reason he's the most successful of all modern playwrights: he's funny. The audience eats him up. He's just funny. And The Odd Couple, arguably, may be his funniest.
Also up for Tennessee Williams' last play, A House Not Meant to Stand. I haven't read it yet. Somehow it's that rare Williams piece I never got around to reading. But even bad Williams is usually better than most other plays.
So about to start a whirlwind period of auditioning. When I first came to LA I sort of rolled my eyes, figuratively speaking, at having to do all this auditioning again. I had reached a place in NY and Chicago in my career where I didn't have to audition any more. Not the case here. Now, however, I'm beginning to enjoy it, strangely enough.
And finally, an amusing thing happened a couple days ago. My wife, Angie, has been a casting director in this town for over twenty years. Without going into too much detail, she has hobnobbed and become close friends with the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Richard Dreyfuss, Hal Holbrook and many, many others. Now, we're talking 'come over for dinner and hang out' type friends. Unlike myself, celebrity doesn't really give her even a moment's pause. Me, I'll always be a small-town guy from Missouri deep down and every time I see someone recognizable I always get a little thrill. Angie could care less about that stuff. So we're driving through West Hollywood a couple days ago and all of a sudden Angie nearly runs the car off the road. She yells in my ear, "OH MY GOD LOOK!" She's pointing at the sidewalk. I sit up quick and start looking around. I'm thinking maybe Obama is walking down the street. Maybe Jimmy Hoffa. Possibly O.J. has escaped and is running down the side of the road. Back story: Angie, inexplicably, is hooked on Dancing With The Stars. I hear it droning in the background every Monday and Tuesday as I work in my office, getting occasional updates on the performances of Jennifer Grey or Gary Coleman or Andy Griffith or Fatty Arbuckle or Mark Spitz or whoever happens to be dancing this season. So the car is veering from one side of the street to the other as she cranes her neck to see. It's Derek Hough from that show. Uneventfully traipsing down the street carrying a bag of yogurt. Me, I wouldn't know him if I were locked in a jail cell with him. Angie has been breathing heavily now for two days.
And there you have it. Los Angeles in a nutshell.
See you tomorrow.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Instincts, Electronic Cigarettes and Brando.
Friday I received my new 'e-cigarette' in the mail. It's a cumbersome thing, much larger and heavier than I expected, and I don't really like it, but it'll do in a pinch, I suppose. You know, I have some regrets in my life, some I could have avoided and some that probably would have taken place regardless, but starting smoking is very high on that list. It's an indefensible habit and one, God help me, I thoroughly enjoy. But it is an addiction and one that I can't seem to shake. So for the moment, anyway, the best I can do is try not to bother anyone else with it. Thus the 'e-cigarette.'
I know it sounds odd, but the truth is, I didn't take even a puff of a cigarette until I was 23 years old. I didn't like them. I didn't especially like the smell and I couldn't imagine ever enjoying it. I started, like most actors, for a show. I was doing a play, a musical actually, called 1940's Radio Hour, and my character was a Frank Sinatra clone who chain smoked incessantly. So in my youthful arrogance, I decided to learn to smoke, for stage purposes, and then figured I'd quit once the show was over. But, of course, that was not to be. I continued to smoke and here it is 26 years later and I'm still smoking.
Whadayagonnado?
So yesterday I had a read for a new film. The audition was over in Hollywood, of course, and by appointment only. I walked in, let the monitor know I was there, sat and looked around. Right across from me was a guy, clearly, up for the same role. I knew this for a couple of reasons. A) He had the same snippet from the script that I had and B) He looked like me. After a little while, one of the production assistants came out and called him in. I was sitting right beside the door so I could easily hear his audition.
As is my habit, I didn't dwell on the script once I got it. I'm a very good cold reader and I don't like planning out an audition. Some actors plan it out to the second ('breathe here, pause there, raise your voice on this word, stare menacingly here, etc.'). I hate that. I like to just see what happens and keep it honest.
Anyway, so the character I'm up for is a tightly wound, tense kind of guy, having a conversation with his priest in a waterfront bar. He's a blue-collar sort, recently widowed, keyed-up and quietly threatening. Says so in the script. He's telling the priest what a crock religion is while dangerously downing more shots and beer. Not a difficult scene, to my way of thinking. So the actor opposite me goes in. After a bit I hear the words from the script I'm holding. But instead of being 'quietly dangerous and tightly wound' I suddenly hear this guy shouting and playing it like he's in a 4,000 seat amphitheater. It's a small room. I'm thinking to myself, 'this has got to be the worst reading I've ever heard.' This guy is shouting everything. Like he's on the brink of madness. You could hear him in Van Nuys.
After a bit, he comes out, smiles warmly at me and starts to gather his things and leave. Obviously I'm next. But then the director himself comes out, young guy, wearing the obligatory Steven Speilberg 'I'm a director' ball cap, and stops the guy. They're standing right in front of me.
"That was a teriffic reading," Says the guy in the 'I'm a director' ball cap. "And I'd like to ask if you can come by Monday and read for our producers."
"Why, sure," Says the bad actor.
"Good," Says the ball cap guy. And exits back into the room.
The bad actor is blushing from the compliment and happily finishes packing his knap-sack and exits.
Leaving me to sit there and wonder what's wrong with the universe.
A little more time goes by and the monitor comes out and asks me to go in.
I go in and sit. The director has my resume and headshot in his hands and says, "Very impressive resume. Lot of New York stuff, I see here."
Thanks.
Whenever you're ready.
So I say my name and do the scene. I do it quietly and dangerously, letting my eyes and demeanor do most of the work. I have a slight Jersey waterfront dialect. I play it slightly wounded with an 'edge-of-violence' feeling. It's a good read. I've been doing this over thirty years and I know when I've nailed something and when I haven't. The audition ends, the director says he'll call either me or my agent about it. And that's that.
So on the drive back to the valley, I'm thinking to myself, "Have I lost my mind? Am I seriously deluded? Am I completely out of touch with what I think is good and what actually IS good?"
This is a weird business. It's useless to second guess ourselves in this business. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. Or something like that. A friend of mine immediately tears up his 'sides' the moment he leaves an audition as sort of a physical incarnation of 'letting the role go.' I think I"m going to start doing that. Not that this was a role I'd kill to do. It's not. It's a low budget thing, not very well written, transparent and probably will not be seen by too many people. Nonetheless.
In any event, the reading for Bachelor's Graveyard is tonight. We shall see what we shall see. I think I have a lot more faith in this project than my cohorts, but that's okay. Sometimes you just have to go with your instincts and trust them. I've done that for a good many years and it's served me well. I think I'll do it again today.
Speaking of instincts, I found, while flipping through the thousand channels we have, a showing of Marlon Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty last night. And all over again, just like everytime I see Brando's work, I'm impressed. Not at the film itself, it's not that good, but Brando. He plays the role foppish. An incredibly bold choice. The critics at the time crucified him for it. But in retrospect, what choice did he have? Gable had already stamped the role some 22 years previously with immeasurable testosterone. Brando wisely realized that was a fixed race and decided not to do it that way. The result is utterly fascinating. His Fletcher Christian is far and away the most interesting of the four versions done of the movie (the silent version, Gable and Mel Gibson being the other three). Consequently, due entirely to Brando's ambiguous portrayal, the moment when the actual mutiny takes place in the film is incredibly suspenseful. It's a brilliant piece of work that he took a lot of flack for at the time of the release. Looking back on it now, though, it's just head and shoulders above everything else in the film.
Up very early, as is the norm for me, and the clocks have fallen back an hour. An exciting and unpredictable day ahead of me. I'm going to show a new piece of writing today. And, as in the case of the audition yesterday, people will either 'get it' or they won't. And if they don't, well, Monday's just around the corner. And my lovely, smart, sexy, beautiful, sassy, sleeping wife thinks I'm all that and a bag of chips. Not much is more important to me than my writing, but that's one.
Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes it eats you.
See you tomorrow.
I know it sounds odd, but the truth is, I didn't take even a puff of a cigarette until I was 23 years old. I didn't like them. I didn't especially like the smell and I couldn't imagine ever enjoying it. I started, like most actors, for a show. I was doing a play, a musical actually, called 1940's Radio Hour, and my character was a Frank Sinatra clone who chain smoked incessantly. So in my youthful arrogance, I decided to learn to smoke, for stage purposes, and then figured I'd quit once the show was over. But, of course, that was not to be. I continued to smoke and here it is 26 years later and I'm still smoking.
Whadayagonnado?
So yesterday I had a read for a new film. The audition was over in Hollywood, of course, and by appointment only. I walked in, let the monitor know I was there, sat and looked around. Right across from me was a guy, clearly, up for the same role. I knew this for a couple of reasons. A) He had the same snippet from the script that I had and B) He looked like me. After a little while, one of the production assistants came out and called him in. I was sitting right beside the door so I could easily hear his audition.
As is my habit, I didn't dwell on the script once I got it. I'm a very good cold reader and I don't like planning out an audition. Some actors plan it out to the second ('breathe here, pause there, raise your voice on this word, stare menacingly here, etc.'). I hate that. I like to just see what happens and keep it honest.
Anyway, so the character I'm up for is a tightly wound, tense kind of guy, having a conversation with his priest in a waterfront bar. He's a blue-collar sort, recently widowed, keyed-up and quietly threatening. Says so in the script. He's telling the priest what a crock religion is while dangerously downing more shots and beer. Not a difficult scene, to my way of thinking. So the actor opposite me goes in. After a bit I hear the words from the script I'm holding. But instead of being 'quietly dangerous and tightly wound' I suddenly hear this guy shouting and playing it like he's in a 4,000 seat amphitheater. It's a small room. I'm thinking to myself, 'this has got to be the worst reading I've ever heard.' This guy is shouting everything. Like he's on the brink of madness. You could hear him in Van Nuys.
After a bit, he comes out, smiles warmly at me and starts to gather his things and leave. Obviously I'm next. But then the director himself comes out, young guy, wearing the obligatory Steven Speilberg 'I'm a director' ball cap, and stops the guy. They're standing right in front of me.
"That was a teriffic reading," Says the guy in the 'I'm a director' ball cap. "And I'd like to ask if you can come by Monday and read for our producers."
"Why, sure," Says the bad actor.
"Good," Says the ball cap guy. And exits back into the room.
The bad actor is blushing from the compliment and happily finishes packing his knap-sack and exits.
Leaving me to sit there and wonder what's wrong with the universe.
A little more time goes by and the monitor comes out and asks me to go in.
I go in and sit. The director has my resume and headshot in his hands and says, "Very impressive resume. Lot of New York stuff, I see here."
Thanks.
Whenever you're ready.
So I say my name and do the scene. I do it quietly and dangerously, letting my eyes and demeanor do most of the work. I have a slight Jersey waterfront dialect. I play it slightly wounded with an 'edge-of-violence' feeling. It's a good read. I've been doing this over thirty years and I know when I've nailed something and when I haven't. The audition ends, the director says he'll call either me or my agent about it. And that's that.
So on the drive back to the valley, I'm thinking to myself, "Have I lost my mind? Am I seriously deluded? Am I completely out of touch with what I think is good and what actually IS good?"
This is a weird business. It's useless to second guess ourselves in this business. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. Or something like that. A friend of mine immediately tears up his 'sides' the moment he leaves an audition as sort of a physical incarnation of 'letting the role go.' I think I"m going to start doing that. Not that this was a role I'd kill to do. It's not. It's a low budget thing, not very well written, transparent and probably will not be seen by too many people. Nonetheless.
In any event, the reading for Bachelor's Graveyard is tonight. We shall see what we shall see. I think I have a lot more faith in this project than my cohorts, but that's okay. Sometimes you just have to go with your instincts and trust them. I've done that for a good many years and it's served me well. I think I'll do it again today.
Speaking of instincts, I found, while flipping through the thousand channels we have, a showing of Marlon Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty last night. And all over again, just like everytime I see Brando's work, I'm impressed. Not at the film itself, it's not that good, but Brando. He plays the role foppish. An incredibly bold choice. The critics at the time crucified him for it. But in retrospect, what choice did he have? Gable had already stamped the role some 22 years previously with immeasurable testosterone. Brando wisely realized that was a fixed race and decided not to do it that way. The result is utterly fascinating. His Fletcher Christian is far and away the most interesting of the four versions done of the movie (the silent version, Gable and Mel Gibson being the other three). Consequently, due entirely to Brando's ambiguous portrayal, the moment when the actual mutiny takes place in the film is incredibly suspenseful. It's a brilliant piece of work that he took a lot of flack for at the time of the release. Looking back on it now, though, it's just head and shoulders above everything else in the film.
Up very early, as is the norm for me, and the clocks have fallen back an hour. An exciting and unpredictable day ahead of me. I'm going to show a new piece of writing today. And, as in the case of the audition yesterday, people will either 'get it' or they won't. And if they don't, well, Monday's just around the corner. And my lovely, smart, sexy, beautiful, sassy, sleeping wife thinks I'm all that and a bag of chips. Not much is more important to me than my writing, but that's one.
Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes it eats you.
See you tomorrow.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
A Year...
I have officially been in Los Angeles for a year now. In the words of Augustus McRae from Lonesome Dove, "Quite a ride, Woodrow, quite a ride."
A couple of film reads today I'm up for. Nothing terribly important, but possibly some good stuff for the perpetually changing 'reel.'
Angie's birthday is coming up so I'm thinking of birthday presents. Topping the list are new clothes for me. Haven't quite figured out how to make those sound like a birthday present for Angie, but I'm working on it.
We've been hunting for a new couch (and a chair) recently and yesterday scanned IKEA in hopes of finding something suitable there. We actually did find a nice couch, but it wasn't 'perfect' so we passed. But more importantly we discovered there are hotdogs for only 50 cents inside IKEA at the, um, IKEA hot dog place. Go figure. Being a lifelong fan of hotdogs in general, I stored the knowledge away for another time.
I was momentarily enraged to read yesterday that the transit cop in Oakland received only two years (half of which he's already served) for murdering, on tape, in cold blood, the young black man in the train station. The young man was face down, cuffed, completely docile when the cop pulled his gun (mind you, this is all on tape) and shot him in the back. The young man died a few hours later. The cop claims he thought he was pulling his Tazer and accidentally pulled his gun instead. Why would anyone Tazer someone already cuffed and face down?
Michael Vick received more prison time for arranging dog fights.
I had a flashback to Chicago when I read of this. In that god-forsaken city cops routinely shoot black people and don't even see the inside of a courtroom for it. In fact, just before I left, a cop had just gotten a slap on the wrist for gunning down a 13 year old boy after he pulled a comb from his pocket. The cop, naturally, said he thought the comb was an AK-47 or some such nonsense. Today he is back on the force ostensibly shooting more black people. I'm constantly amazed that more people, white people, aren't as incensed about this that I am.
There is a racial divide in this country as wide and ominous as The Grand Canyon. Personally, I'm not sure it can ever be crossed. Maybe I'm a skeptic, but if you'd lived in Chicago as long as I did, you might feel the same way. Oakland, Chicago, Washington D.C., three cities where the divide has reached critical mass. It is a terrible and shameful blight on this nation's countenance. And every time a cop gets away with it, the canyon gets deeper and further across.
I, or you, or anyone can't hope to address all the incredible injustices in this country, but this one, renegade cops operating above the law, is one I've spent a few years lamenting. It's funny what a badge will do to people. Not all cops, of course, but too many that I've known, see it as giving them a moral right to resolve situations by killing people. Yes, this is a bit strong, but I've spent years watching it time and again in Chicago (twenty two times the national average in incidents of citizens being gunned down by officers of the law) and now this particular case in Oakland. It is, quite simply, unacceptable. Policeman must be held accountable for their actions. Otherwise, we need to abandon the pretense of 'serve and protect' and just outfit them all with brown shirts.
Anyway.
So I've been here a year. My, what a year can do. Marriage, new house, new career, union affiliation, new plays, new agents, reconnecting with old friends, new puppies...in a sense, it's still overwhelming. And nearly every single moment has been a kind of beatiful dream.
To quote a line in Bachelor's Graveyard (premiering this Sunday at 8:00pm in its first public showing), "Yes, sometimes, sometimes, everything works out okay."
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to make some coffee for my wife.
See you tomorrow.
A couple of film reads today I'm up for. Nothing terribly important, but possibly some good stuff for the perpetually changing 'reel.'
Angie's birthday is coming up so I'm thinking of birthday presents. Topping the list are new clothes for me. Haven't quite figured out how to make those sound like a birthday present for Angie, but I'm working on it.
We've been hunting for a new couch (and a chair) recently and yesterday scanned IKEA in hopes of finding something suitable there. We actually did find a nice couch, but it wasn't 'perfect' so we passed. But more importantly we discovered there are hotdogs for only 50 cents inside IKEA at the, um, IKEA hot dog place. Go figure. Being a lifelong fan of hotdogs in general, I stored the knowledge away for another time.
I was momentarily enraged to read yesterday that the transit cop in Oakland received only two years (half of which he's already served) for murdering, on tape, in cold blood, the young black man in the train station. The young man was face down, cuffed, completely docile when the cop pulled his gun (mind you, this is all on tape) and shot him in the back. The young man died a few hours later. The cop claims he thought he was pulling his Tazer and accidentally pulled his gun instead. Why would anyone Tazer someone already cuffed and face down?
Michael Vick received more prison time for arranging dog fights.
I had a flashback to Chicago when I read of this. In that god-forsaken city cops routinely shoot black people and don't even see the inside of a courtroom for it. In fact, just before I left, a cop had just gotten a slap on the wrist for gunning down a 13 year old boy after he pulled a comb from his pocket. The cop, naturally, said he thought the comb was an AK-47 or some such nonsense. Today he is back on the force ostensibly shooting more black people. I'm constantly amazed that more people, white people, aren't as incensed about this that I am.
There is a racial divide in this country as wide and ominous as The Grand Canyon. Personally, I'm not sure it can ever be crossed. Maybe I'm a skeptic, but if you'd lived in Chicago as long as I did, you might feel the same way. Oakland, Chicago, Washington D.C., three cities where the divide has reached critical mass. It is a terrible and shameful blight on this nation's countenance. And every time a cop gets away with it, the canyon gets deeper and further across.
I, or you, or anyone can't hope to address all the incredible injustices in this country, but this one, renegade cops operating above the law, is one I've spent a few years lamenting. It's funny what a badge will do to people. Not all cops, of course, but too many that I've known, see it as giving them a moral right to resolve situations by killing people. Yes, this is a bit strong, but I've spent years watching it time and again in Chicago (twenty two times the national average in incidents of citizens being gunned down by officers of the law) and now this particular case in Oakland. It is, quite simply, unacceptable. Policeman must be held accountable for their actions. Otherwise, we need to abandon the pretense of 'serve and protect' and just outfit them all with brown shirts.
Anyway.
So I've been here a year. My, what a year can do. Marriage, new house, new career, union affiliation, new plays, new agents, reconnecting with old friends, new puppies...in a sense, it's still overwhelming. And nearly every single moment has been a kind of beatiful dream.
To quote a line in Bachelor's Graveyard (premiering this Sunday at 8:00pm in its first public showing), "Yes, sometimes, sometimes, everything works out okay."
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to make some coffee for my wife.
See you tomorrow.
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