Underestimating O'Neill...

Eugene O'Neill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Onward and Upward...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Auditioning...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They offered her the role.

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Lightning in a Bottle...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

BACKSTAGE WEST REVIEW...

Praying Small

at the Noho Arts Center

Reviewed by Neal Weaver

JULY 07, 2010

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

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

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

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

Living the Examined Life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Fourth of July Memories...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

There Simply IS no weak link...

Good show last night.  Not quite a full house.  A little hesitant in spots for me, but that's the case sometimes after a few days off.  The proposal monologue is still giving me fits at times.

Our Backstage notice never did come out.  Not sure why.  Probably because they didn't have room what with the LA Fringe Festival and all.  At least that's my guess.

Angie put together a bunch of the reviews and framed them individually for the lobby yesterday...it looks really great.  We had a our dear friends Don and Donna Dieken in to see the show last night.  I think they enjoyed it.  Also my old buddy, Joe Hulser, came in to give it a peak.  He seemed to enjoy it, too.

A good crowd, overall.  They seemed to get the dark humor in the piece which is always gratifying.

What I especially love is watching the other actors grow and settle in to these roles.  Rob and Brad and Tara really are finding spots that they enjoy acting, one can tell, and expounding on those comfortable moments.  There is a scene toward the end of the play with Brad and I in a bowling alley (I think we're in bowling alley anyway...not quite sure WHY we're in a bowling alley, but we do the scene as though we were in a bowling alley...either a bowling alley or in Dresden during the firebombing of WWII, one or the other...I tend to think it may be a bowling alley...makes a bit more sense...but it's possible, I suppose, we could be in a Navajo Teepee during a pony raid...anyway, let's just say bowling alley for the sake of argument) that went particularly well last night.  It's a lot of fun to do that scene with Brad.  Very focused and specific and tight.  I like that.

Rob has turned his final and sad scene in a dive bar in the second act into an aria.  It's really amazing to watch and since the scene is pretty much all his, I DO get to watch it every night.  Just heartbreaking work.  Myself, I've never really liked playing "drunk" onstage.  I always come across a little too 'Foster Brooks' for my taste. I have trouble nailing the believability factor, oddly enough.  Not so with Rob.  His drunk comes across as a man that's been drunk for months, a physically depleted, emotionally bankrupt man with nothing to lose and no where to go.  Really just tragic stuff and Rob does it full out, no apologies and makes the whole scene about it.  It's too early in the play for me to let the floodgates loose and start crying but he makes it really hard to not do that.  It's a tour de force of a scene for him and one I honestly think will earn him an Ovation Award come January.

Rob has become the prime interpreter of my work.  He is the first person I think of when I'm writing something new.  He has become DiNero to my Scorcese, if I might be so bold.  He's doing the lead in my play Bachelor's Graveyard and after that the male lead in another play of mine, A Pedestrian God.  As far as I'm concerned he can keep doing the leads in my plays as long as he wants.  What's more, he'll be doing, although he doesn't know it yet, the lead in my newest and largest canvas, Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century.  That's a piece I'm holding on to until it's exactly how I want it.  I've halted work on it for the time being because Angie and I are sharing an old laptop these days, circa 1942.  It's missing a 'W' key and takes about a month and a half to boot up.  I'm typing on it now.  It tends to freeze now and then and one has to practically sacrifice a male baby to Loki, God of tricks, to get it to boot back up.  So until I get a better computer to write on, my work will have to wait.  I think Angie finds this especially tedious because nothing makes her happier than to look out the window into the office and see me clattering away on a keyboard, deep in thought while working on a new piece.

In Bachelor's Graveyard, Rob has a monologue about the Ali/Foreman fight of 1974 that is, quite literally, four pages long.  It's damned near impossible to act.  I know because I've tried it myself.  Every now and then he brings it up in conversation with me (they're in rehearsal for that play now) with a certain wry grin.  He knows I've written a damn-near-impossible piece of writing and instead of obsessing over it, he keeps plugging away at it.  What's more, I have not the slightest doubt he'll find the hook in it and make it amazing.  Frankly, I can't wait to see it.

Tara Lynn Orr, too, has found a rhythm, a centered spot, for her last scene in the play.  It's a doozy.  She's called upon to really let fly the dogs of empathy, as it were.  She played with it for quite some time, trying to find the exact place she needs to be emotionally for that scene, and finally nailed it.  It's a sterling piece of work.  She throws herself into it with a fervor.

It's such a pleasure to work with these seasoned pros, all of them.  The dressing room before and after the show is particularly fun.  We all sort of speak in an actor's shorthand because between us all we've probably got about five hundred plays under our collective belt.  So our conversation backstage is peppered with dry observances about the play and theatre in general.  It's been a long time since I've felt so completely at home and comfortable with a group of actors.  There is no weak link.  I've said it before, but a play is only as good as the weakest actor in it.  I'm delighted to note, we simply don't have a weak actor.

One of the ways I know this is because we are constantly making fun of each other's work...and no one is the least bit defensive.  Why is this?  Because we all know we're at the top of our game.  We know we're doing good work and we know everyone else in the cast knows we're doing good work and what's more we know how much respect there is for that among us.  It's a fun and funny dressing room.

Brad nailed it last night before the show when he said, "It's like drilling for oil.  You drill and drill a hundred times before you find it.  And when you do it's magic.  We've found it."  Now, this is not a bunch of people sitting around patting themselves on the back.  We all went through the storm to get here.  And make no mistake, it was a storm.  This was not, for many reasons. an easy show to mount.  But we did and we're doing our best.  And having been in a few plays myself over the years, I can say with complete truthfulness, our best is pretty goddamned good.  I'd put this cast in this show on any stage in America right now.  That's how proud and certain I am of being a part of this group of actors.

It's Fourth of July weekend, not known for a big turnout in the theatre.  Consequently we're a little light tonight in the audience.  We don't have a show tomorrow as we normally would because of the holiday.  The reviews we've received, LA Times and LA Weekly specifically, have helped a little, I think.  We still haven't found our core audience as productions past have.  But we still might.  It's hard to tell.  But I know this much, once the recovery community finds out about us, once the word of mouth starts working, once we reach the people that identify with this play the strongest, it could run for a long, long time.   I've seen it happen.  Twice in Chicago, in fact.  The first run for four months and the second for three months.  The recovery community heard about it and did not disappoint.  They came in droves.  And they kept coming.  And kept coming.  This could happen here, too.  I'm not discounting it yet.  And that makes two things happen...one, someone is going to make some serious money with the piece and two, we can all hold our head very high because we're doing something altruistic and right and noble.  And having been there before, that's a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

See you tomorrow.

The Big Three...

Above, Ralph Richardson, Lawrence Olivier and John Geilgud in their only film appearance together, WAGNER, starring Richard Burton.

I am fascinated with the great stage actors of the twentieth century.  Relics of a golden time.  I'm speaking mostly of the Brits.  Olivier, Geilgud, Richardson, Guinness, Redgrave, even Burton and O'Toole.  There are a few that are even now still around, Finney, Scofield, Courtney and of course, Hopkins.  I'd give anything to hang out with Sir Anthony all day and hear his stories.  Although from what I understand, Sir Anthony is completely bored with such talk.

Angie actually had the great pleasure, back in her casting associate days, of spending an entire day with Sir Anthony Hopkins.  She says he was the absolute picture of perfect British charm and politeness.  To this day I think she has a bit of a crush on Sir Anthony.

I have read everything I can get my hands on over the years with regards to these guys.  An era that will never come again.

Olivier, of course, was the top of the food chain.  Back in the day, my good buddy Jim Barbour, was an Olivier freak.  Loved him.  When we first met, many years ago, we would have endless, sophomoric conversations about the various pros and cons of the two great forces of twentieth century acting - Olivier and Brando.  In fact, we were doing a play together when news reached us of Olivier's death.  Jim was dumbstruck.  Just devastated.   Years later, I was down in Florida doing a play, when news of Brando's death reached me.  I immediately contacted Jim.  Our respective idols were now dead.

Ah, to be working in the theatre in those days...the 1920's through about 1965.  Back when stage was still considered to be the lion's den of performance and film still regarded as an easy but profitable way to make some money so one could return to the stage to do the real work.  When the great roles of Shakespeare were  considered the litmus test for any actor looking to be regarded among the greats.  Back when people spoke of an actor's Hamlet or his Lear or his Cassus or his Iago or his Romeo.  Doing a compare and contrast study of their work.

Along with Hopkins, Sir Ian McKellan is still around to carry this mantle, this royal pedigree handed from one actor to the next.  Finney and O'Toole are still around, too, but both are in ill-health now.

The stories are boundless.  Olivier and Geilgud swiching roles in the famous 1933 Romeo and Juliet...One night one would play Romeo, the next Mercutio.  They didn't really care for one another, Olivier and Geilgud, by all accounts.  Geilgud was of a refined and rigid school of thought concerning performing Shakespeare.  Olivier, on the other hand, was hell-bent on making The Bard accessible to everyone, speaking the text so as to make it universally understandable.  Geilgud was the poet, Olivier, the plumber.  And then there was the third member of 'the big three,' Sir Ralph Richardson, possibly the most inherently fascinating of them all.  He served as both Olivier's and Geilgud's best friend, and yet, according to many, was the one they both admired the most.  One can see his famed quirkiness in a few films...The Wrong Box, Richard III, the television mini-series, Wagner, in which Richard Burton played the composer and was the only time all three, Oliver, Geilgud and Richardson appeared together onscreen.  In private they called each other 'Larry, Johnny and Ralphy.'

In this blog, over the past 150 entries or so, I've recounted many of the stories of those days.  Oh, to have seen any one of them onstage.  I know people that know them.  Two degrees of separation, as it were.  I have worked with actors that have worked with them.  That, in itself, endlessly fascinates me.

Back when I was a very young actor, I worked with a guy, then in his seventies, that had done some eight or nine plays with Geilgud.  Sitting and chatting with him was sheer delight for me.  He told wonderful stories of being directed by the great Geilgud.  How he would tell his actors upon the first day of blocking, "Don't bother to write anything down for a couple of weeks because I shan't be using any of the blocking I'm giving you today."  How another time he stopped rehearsal for a full hour to swap gardening tips.  How he would, on occasion, rise to his feet and do long passages of Shakespeare from memory just to give the actors an idea of what he wanted.

I worked with another actor in NY years ago that had done a couple of plays with Olivier when he was running The National.  How Olivier would sometimes be directing a show and suddenly leap onstage and simply say, "Do it this way."  And then proceed to do exactly what he wanted the actor to do.  Heresy in this day and age.

Back in the old days in NY there used to be a huge, Equity lounge area in the old AEA office.  I once sat and talked to an old actor there for hours about working with Burton in Hamlet in 1963.  How Burton would sort of shuffle through the rehearsal every day and then suddenly and without warning do the role full-out for a few minutes and leave everyone in the room aghast at his fiery and intense talent and then just as suddenly go back to his apparent disinterest in the role.

I worked with an old-timer once in, of all places, Dallas, who had done Lear with Richardson and how when Sir Ralph did the death scene one day in rehearsal and said the last lines of the part, "Pray, undo this button," he let out a girlish chirp, like "a small bird had died" and then simply looked heavenward and closed his eyes.  The effect, this actor told me, was as "close to actual magic as I'd ever been."

We can still see some of the great performances on film.  Not exactly the same, but enough to give us an idea of what the actual stage performance must have been like.  In fact, right now I have a DVD sitting beside me of the 1955 Julius Caesar with Geilgud as Cassius and Brando as Mark Antony.  Watching Sir John next to everyone else in the film, Brando included, is like watching Michael Jordan, at the peak of his powers, play a game of pick up ball with a crew of high schoolers.

Ah, to have been there.  To have seen Oliver's famous 'Hamlet leap' when he jumped some twenty feet off a balcony on stage into the outstretched arms of a bunch of soldiers.  To see his famous Othello when he completely changed his physical gait and appearance and actually lowered his voice a full third to do the role.  To see his Malvolio in the role Kenneth Tynan called, 'the funniest Shakespearian interpretation I have ever seen.'  To see him turn to the audience in Richard III and say the line, "I am not in the giving vein today," and give everyone in the house chills.

To watch O'Toole shout his way through his now infamous Hamlet under Olivier's direction.  Uncut and four hours plus of O'Toole in bombastic splendor barking out the great words of the finest play ever written.  To see Olivier break the mold in Othello and making it nearly impossible for another actor to do it for a decade or so.  To see Burton from night to night in his NY Hamlet, some nights so disinterested as to be unwatchable and the next so brilliant as to erase any other Hamlet in memory.

There are a few films, one of them being The Dresser with Albert Finney and Tom Courtney, that give us an idea of what these times might have been like.  There is a scene in a recent O'Toole movie, a film called Venus in which O'Toole received his ninth Academy Award nomination, in which he recites a full sonnet while standing on a London pier, looking out over the foggy ocean, and one gets a glimmer of the brilliance.  Even in silly movies such as Arthur, in which Geilgud won a supporting actor Oscar as the dry and unflappable butler, Hopkins, one can see the absolute surety within which the actor worked.  He towers over that film with that performance.

Ah, to have been there.  To have seen that sublimity.  To have drank in the excellence and dedication.  To simply enjoy.

See you tomorrow.

 

The Rules of Writing...

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


See you tomorrow.