On Giving Notes and Muhammad Ali...

Some time back I was watching an interview with Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer. Dundee was with Ali his entire career. He's a squat, little man with a glaring Brooklyn accent, exactly like a boxing trainer is supposed to look and sound. Right out of Central Casting.

So one of the questions asked was, "How did you train Muhammad Ali? With his ego and natural gifts, what could you tell him to make him better?" Dundee said early on he discovered he couldn't train Ali the way he trained other fighters. So what he did was this: if Ali were working in the ring and he wasn't doing something Dundee wanted him to do, say, throw the jab off the hook, Dundee would tell him in the corner between rounds, "I love the way you're throwing that jab off the hook. I've never seen another fighter do it so perfectly. It's a thing of beauty, watching you throw that jab immediately after the hook. I don't know how you do it, Muhammad." And then Ali, who was NOT throwing the jab off the hook, would get off the stool and go out and do exactly that. And more importantly, actually think it was his idea. Great insight from Dundee into working with this genius of a fighter.

It is a great thing for a director to know, too. Not that I employ it so shamelessly as Mr. Dundee. But sometimes its best to let the actor think he's come up with something on his own. As I've said before, I'm an actor first, a playwright second and a director third. I adore actors. They are the most fascinating, child-like, intelligent people I know; full of doubt and confidence all at once. And when they're at the top of their game, they are thoroughbreds. I have worked with so many directors that simply don't understand this.

So sometimes its necessary to use this backward sort of encouragement. "I love the way you're taking that tiny pause before the line in order to nail that laugh. Really nice moment for you." That's all that need be said. The next time through, you can be absolutely sure that tiny pause will be there.

This is not patronizing. Not in the least. I believe its making a point without the carnage of actually giving a note. Note-giving is a delicate thing. I used to work with this tin despot of a director down south that would give hours, HOURS, of notes...caustic, horrible notes that included personal attacks, long, weeping stories from his own childhood, a performance unto themselves, these note-giving sessions. I used to think, "Are we rehearsing a play or watching a one-man show?"

So, last night we threw off the sickliness of the night before and attacked the piece with renewed vigor. The play's lead actor, Chad Coe, came in rearing to go. He'd obviously done a lot of "processing" over the past 24 hours and was shockingly cleaner, sharper and more focused. His is the most difficult character in the play. I'm very careful with how I direct him because of that. Its just simply not a case of "you cross here and say the line." Its a tough-assed role to do. Glad he's doing it, in fact, and not me.

The other two principal actors in the play have their curious strengths and weaknesses, too. Nickella Moschetti, playing Eileen, is one of the most instinctive actors I've seen in many, many years. Frankly, I have no idea what her process is and I honestly don't care. I worked with another actress like her years ago named Katherine Kelly in Glass Menagerie. They seem to be incapable of being dishonest onstage. There is some governor in their internal engine that won't let them be fake. This can be daunting to another actor like myself who's just openly fake sometimes. Working with people like that makes me sigh and put my acting tricks away. Just tuck them all away in a bag somewhere. Cause if I'm not glaringly honest with her onstage, I come out looking very, very stilted and manipulative. Nickella makes me a better actor because of this. That's saying something.

J.R. Mangels is working on the other big role. I get J.R. I completely know where he's coming from. Like myself, he can sniff out a laugh line from about two miles away. And he knows, he KNOWS, he'll get the laugh, too. And like myself, sometimes he has to purposely NOT go for the laugh in order to serve the greater good, the play itself. He's a fun actor to watch.

So here we are, this little band of Charlie in the Boxes, at the exact halfway point of the rehearsal process. We open this thing on February 16, right around 8:00 at night. Eleven days, thirteen hours, or something like that. And I've gone from being a tad stressed and rather doubtful, to being full of optimism and rather sprightly.

Today we're adding the music and sound to the mix. Sort of like sprinkling some pepper into an already spicy chili. Should be fun.

See you tomorrow.

The Dreaded First Run-thru...

We ran the play last night. It was everything I expected it to be at this point: sloppy, slow, tedious, ugly, dishonest and chaotic. Aside from that, not so bad.

I was particularly bad. I'm wearing several hats on this one: actor, writer, director, producer, sound designer and cheerleader. The only thing I did well last night was cheerleader. That may have had something to do with the short skirt and matching sweater with the embroidered "E/W" on it that I chose to wear. I wanted to just wear jeans but Angie said the cheerleading outfit brought out my eyes.

Years ago I saw the great George C. Scott onstage with John Cullum (also a fine actor) in a terrible play called Boys of Autumn. It was about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer grown up. Huck (Scott) was an old hermit and Tom (Cullum) was on the run as a child molester. Talk about beating your sacred cow. Anyway, the play was pretty bad; talky, uneventful, full of rambling monologues. But, hey, George C. Scott. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. Scott barely moved a muscle during the performance. Stood like an old oak in the middle of the stage while Cullum walked around him most of the night. His performance, even in this dreck, was mesmerizing. And that growling, tender, scary voice of his.

That's my role model for Harry (the character I'm playing).

The problem is that he's George C. Scott and, well, I'm not.

We haven't even begun to plug in all the technical stuff - lighting, sound, props, etc. So that was bothering me. Also, I'm beginning to second guess myself. This doesn't come as a surprise. It happens in every play. But the thing to do, and this comes from a butt-load of stage time, is to remember that there is a reason the first choice was settled on to begin with. Trust that choice. I'm trying to.

My buddy, John Bader, watched it last night. And for a few minutes we discussed the play at intermission. Amidst all the gobbledygook (that's what I heard, anyway, cause my mind was a million miles away) I heard him say, "What are their objectives?" That stopped me. Wow. It suddenly occurred to me I had to go back to Acting 101 again. Indeed. What ARE our objectives?

It is the little things I miss, as often as not. It is sort of like attempting the triple gainer before you've learned the cannonball. As a director I have skipped over a few things, not because I didn't know they were there, but because I just assumed everyone knew about them. And what is it they say about "assume?" Heavens.

So Johnny is right on this one. Wrong on some other things, I think. But dead on with this comment. It is the lifeblood of the actor's work...what do you want? That's the building block for everything...what do you want? What do you want? It informs everything, every choice, every reading, every nuance and shading, every movement. What do you want?

I also learned last night that I don't have the stage stamina that I once had. In a role this large and with this much emotion involved, I pooped out. I got tired at round five or six. I didn't have the whole fight in me. This will come back, I'm sure. But it caught me off-guard last night.

As always, I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night because I was thinking of a thousand things that needed fixing. We still have 12 days left to put it all together. But the rubber is meeting the road now, the idealism of the rehearsal process has come to an end. We have reached the "put up or shut up" moment.

Fortunate for me I have some really fine actors around to make me look good. To make the play look good. To rescue this dismal business. I'm only joking, of course. But a part of me is really wary right now. Can this be done? Will anyone be the least bit interested in all this yammering? Can we fascinate? Are we on the right path? Does anyone even care?

Oy.

See you tomorrow.

On Dialects and Perception...

Watched Brando in a movie from 1967 called Reflections in a Golden Eye last night. It's one of those southern gothic things...based upon a Carson McCullers novel, Brando's accent is so thick at times it's almost impossible to decipher what the hell he's saying. Angela kept turning to me and asking, "What did he just say?" Elizabeth Taylor is also in it and she's at her callous best. But the movie is pretty bad. Brando stepped in as a favor, more or less, to Taylor and John Huston, the director, after Montgomery Clift died. When I first saw it years ago I was dumbfounded by Brando's eccentric dialect choice. And then a couple of years after that I listened to a live radio broadcast of an interview with Tennessee Williams. Suddenly it hit me. Brando was doing a dead-on impersonation of Tennessee Williams. How clever.

But the whole thing got me thinking about accents. Nearly every actor thinks he can do great accents. Nearly every actor is wrong. I used to do a lot of work down at a LORT D theatre in Virginia called Mill Mountain. I loved that theatre (they went under about six months ago, alas). Anyway, a good buddy of mine, Ernie Zulia, was the Associate Artistic Director there for some years and I would sometimes wander over to his office for a very specific fun thing I liked to do: look at the thousands of resumes and headshots he would get in the course of his day. I could spend hours doing that. And Ernie, cool guy that he is, used to just pile them up on a big chair as they came in. I'd walk into his office and he'd point to the stack of resumes and just go on about his business and I'd sit there quietly ruffling through them and occasionally giggling. So I noticed that nearly every actor in the stack felt compelled to list their "accents and dialects." They would say, somewhere down toward the bottom of the page, usually under the "miscellaneous" section: Dialects: British, American South, New York (those were always the big three) and then they'd get a tad more specific - German, French, Russian, Australian, Indian, Italian, etc. Sometimes they'd get weird - Cherokee, was one I remember. Huh? Casting Director: "Um, could you give those lines again, this time try it in a Navajo dialect." Actor: "I'm terribly sorry, I can only do Cherokee." Casting Director: "Ah, yes, I see that now here on the resume. Pity."

The other thing that used to tickle me was the "Age Range" that was sometimes listed up near the Height and Weight and Contact Number. This was really just unpredictable. Actors with wonderful credits on their resume, seemingly clear-thinking, talented people, would just fall apart when it came to this "Age Range" business. I remember one guy put down: "Age Range - 18-96." Oh, boy. So again, a scenario came to mind. There's a play called Night of the Iguana. One of the principal characters in it is an old man named Nonno. Nonno is decribed in the play as being 97 years old. Casting Director: "So, if you wouldn't mind, please, take a look at Nonno on page 26." Actor: "Excuse me?" Casting Director: "Yes, Nonno on page 26, please." Actor: "Do you have my resume in front of you?" Casting Director: "Yes, yes, right here." Actor: "And what does it say?" Casting Director: "Pardon me?" Actor: (getting upset) "What does it SAY?" Casting Director: "Say?" Actor: It says AGE RANGE - 18 to 96! Nonno is 97! I CAN'T DO 97! I CAN PLAY 96! 96! NOT 97!"

Actors obsess over their resume and headshot. It's understandable. We control so little in the business we've attached ourselves to so when we finally have something we can control, like a resume and headshot, we tend to get very obsessive. We show the pictures to everyone to get their opinion: friends, relatives, acting teachers, cab drivers, anyone who will take a moment to look at an 8x10 shot of us. "Do you think that little smile is too much like a smirk? Cause I really don't wanna come across as a smirker. What do you think? That blouse. Do you think it looks like something Melissa Gilbert would wear? Cause I really don't wanna bring Melissa Gilbert to mind. My hair. What do you think? I've parted it about a eighth of an inch higher than I usually do cause I'm trying to come across as a little smarter than I am in real life. What do you think? Is the picture of me smarter than the real me?" It gets silly, really it does.

But, having written all that, I love it. I just adore it. I would sit for hours in Ernie's office all those years ago, giggling at the resumes and headshots...but not AT the actors, I wouldn't think they were fools, no quite the opposite, I LOVED their little peccadillos, their private obsessions on how others perceived them. Actors are the most amusing, interesting, aware people I know. I love being around them...my own kind. And I love reading what they hope for themselves and love reading what they've done that they're proud of. Actors, with their resumes and pretty shots of themselves, are exactly like people....only more so.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go practice my mid-central-urban-ethnic-second generation-Irish Maryland dialect.

See you tomorrow.

Sick People in Love

Been sick as a dog for a couple of days. The old adage is true, "If you don't have your health, you don't have anything." Much better today.

On Sunday I saw a beautiful, quirky, little musical under development called Sick People in Love. Years ago I became infatuated with a musical called Falsettos, by William Finn. All through the night on Sunday, I was reminded again and again of that show. I saw it twice, in fact, once with Michael Rupert in the lead and once with Mandy Patinkin in the the lead. Rupert was better in the role but, as always, Patinkin was more fun to watch.

Anyway, the music in Sick People in Love reminded me of Finn's intricate melodies in Falsettos. Sick People was written by Nickella Maschetti and her husband (who's name escapes me at the moment). The dialogue is often sharp and witty with a couple of unexpected long monologues dropped in the middle of the piece. And, delightfully, a talking, singing boar's head.

Afterwards, the generous authors, allowed a "talk-back." That is to say, the audience (all invited) were allowed to suggest ideas and share their thoughts with the creators and actors. I, personally, am never comfortable with this sort of thing. Not to say I haven't done it. George S. Kauffman once said, "Human beings have four basic needs: the need to procreate, the need for food, the need for shelter and the need to re-write someone else's play."

The audience seemed a tad confused by the whopping monologues in the midst of this beautiful, little piece. I, too, thought at first they were out of place. Upon reflection, however, I don't. In fact, rather than an obstacle, I think they present an opportunity...sing half of it, speak half of it. Another musical I rather like, Working by Stephen Schartz and Studs Terkel, comes to mind. So add incidental music, simple melody lines, a little water and shake. Easily fixed and at the same time the information and subtle metaphors in the monologues are still there.

As a playwright I have always considered monologues to be arias.

The other thing that came to mind on Sunday was the fact that the audience can really only see about ten percent of what the author's see in their mind's eye. Plays are meant to be seen; not read, not contemplated, not workshopped, but seen. I think everyone can identify with sitting around some lame high school english class reading Romeo and Juliet out loud. Or in my case, Julius Caesar. Here I am sitting there at the age of seventeen, trying to grasp Shakespeare's allegorical history. Years later I saw JC on stage with Martin Sheen and Al Pacino and Edward Hermann in Joseph Papp's famous production in the park. It was meant to be seen, to be experienced. It was altogether a different play than the one I read in english class all those years before. See, plays don't come to life until they're onstage. Plays are quite literally Frankenstein's Monster, dead pieces of meat before the lightning is utilized...and the lightning is the audience, the final ingredient, the bit of brandy dripped onto the writing at the last second and the fire blazes up.

So I'm sitting there watching Sick People in Love and thinking to myself, "How extraordinary this moment is. I'm watching something from nothing. I'm watching someone else's vision being shaped from dust. This is Providence."

Now, of course, I've been there a few times myself. Early on I found myself in this artistic trial by fire. We read a play of mine called Death in Des Moines (based on Thomas Mann's Death in Venice) years ago in NY. The comments afterward lacerated me. Then and there, in that little studio on the upper west, I decided to never do this again. Don't get me wrong, I think at times, a little workshopping never hurt anybody. But its a very, very delicate thing. The absolute right people have to be in the room. And the comments can't be sweeping re-writes of the show itself. They must be specific. They must be helpful. They must be, in the true sense of the word, criticism. Often times what happens is that once the play is heard by an outsider, he then comments on what HE would have done with a similar idea. No. That's not workshopping, that's ego. In fact, it's detrimental to the project itself.

I hope NoHo considers producing this piece, this lovely Sick People in Love. James Mellon, the AD at NoHo, likes the piece a lot, I think, and not surprisingly, had the the single most astute comment of the evening. What a beautiful thing to have this great space called NoHo to create and breath life into our creations.

I could see the two young authors flinch a little as the comments roiled in Sunday night. To them I say, don't worry about it. Use what you like, utterly discard what you don't. This is your vision, your piece. Creation is not a democracy. Incorporate other ideas and let fly the dogs of new possibilities. Besides, at the end of the day, YOUR name is under the title, no one else's.

Sick People in Love is a small piece of joy. I can't wait to see it fly someday.

See you tomorrow.

On Put-ins and Generals...

For reasons beyond anyone's control, I've had to recast a supporting role in the play. The actor taking the role is coming in today. He comes highly recommended.

So today, consequently, we'll have what's known as a "put in" rehearsal. We literally put the actor into the show.

I've been here before as an actor. The first time was years ago in a six month tour of The Fantasticks. I was put in as El Gallo. The actor playing the role was in charge of teaching it to me which was unfortunate because apparently he was bitter about leaving the show. Had nothing to do with me but he was being replaced for some reason. The weird part was that he was the one putting me in. Just the two of us rehearsing the role, alone in a dusty rehearsal space with nothing but a few chairs and a step ladder (El Gallo spends an inordinate amount of time sitting on this silly ladder during that simple, but elegant play). I'd had a few days to memorize the songs and lines (back then I could actually DO that in a few days). So he was assigned, by some clause in his Equity Contract, to do this. He resented me deeply. Even though he immediately acknowledged that I'd had nothing to do with the replacement, he still wasn't too warm towards me. It was a long time ago and I don't remember a lot about it except one line he said to me during the put in. At one point El Gallo has to ride in on an "imaginary" horse. I ride up to the ladder, dismount, and as I recall, immediately sing a song. I asked him, "Okay, so what I do with the horse?" He said, without missing a beat, "Oh, fuck, I don't know, ask Uta Hagen what you do with the fucking horse." All these years later I still smile about that one.

Some years later I was asked to step into the opera singer's role (Tito) in Lend Me a Tenor at a small, Equity theatre down on beautiful Sanibel Island, Florida, called Pirate Playhouse. Yeah, I know, really dumb name for a theatre. I had two days to learn it and get in front of an audience. I was in rehearsal for something like twenty hours in two days. Which was a good thing. The bad thing was the director didn't believe in "marking" it, so he made me play it full-out for those two days. By the time I was in front of the audience I had virtually no voice left. This is the problem with directors that have never been actors - they don't understand what it takes to do the actual work. This guy certainly didn't. He'd never been on stage in his life.

It is a sorrowful thing, but somewhere in the early twentieth century the theatre in this country began to be run by directors and not actors. For centuries, here and in England, the theatre was run by actors. "Actor/Managers" they were called. Nowadays, nearly every major theatre in the United States is run by a director; more often than not, a director who has never acted a day in his or her life. Pity. What this means in the over-simplified, final analysis is that now most theatre in this country is about blocking rather than acting. It is singularly responsible, in my opinion, for a butt-load of bad theatre.

My next put-in rehearsal was a few years later for an innocuous little British farce called Run For Your Wife. I never got this play. Really dumb little show. But audiences LOVE this thing. They devour it. The first time I did it, the play itself ran an hour and forty minutes. On opening night it ran two hours and fifteen minutes...the added time was because we had to HOLD FOR LAUGHS. That means that the actor has to wait a bit because the laughter is so loud, he has to "hold." Fortunate for this put-in rehearsal, I already knew the lines.

So the put-in rehearsal is nothing new to me. I like to work fast anyway.

One final note about this business of directors running the theatre these days. It's natural, of course. The director runs the rehearsal process, so, by proxy, he runs the theatre itself eventually. I don't like it and I think it churns out bad work, but that's beside the point. A lot of theaters around the country call themselves "actors theatres" including the famous one in Louisville. Not surprisingly, however, that theatre is run by directors. Go figure. The exception to this rule for a long time was Chicago's prestigious Steppenwolf. Actors completely ran that thing: Sinise, Jeff Perry, Terry Kinny, Malkovich, John Mahoney, Laurie Metcalf, a few others. But now even that artistic giant is in danger of being over run by the renegade ego of the director.

NoHo Arts Center, where I work as the playwright-in-residence, is run by an actor. This is one of the things that drew me to it. An actor makes the final decisions. As it should be. His name is James Mellon, and, like myself, even though he does a lot of other things - direct, write, produce, sing, etc. - he is an actor first. To the layman this might sound like a small and possibly unimportant distinction. To me it is a huge slab of encouragement. It is tantamount to a soldier running the army that has actually been in a battle as opposed to a civilian running the army that has only watched movies about battle.

Controversial? No, I really don't think so. Just common sense.

See you tomorrow.

Making a Roadmap.

Sat around and did some table work last night. I know, I know, I wrote earlier how much I hated table work. Well, I do. But you have to do it at least once. And we skipped that part of the rehearsal because of our time constraints, so the cast and I decided to do it last night. And it was a good thing. Often what is obvious to me is not always so to the actor. And vice versa, I might add.

The funny thing is, the play apparently stands quite nicely on its own. This is a relief to me. As we all sat around the stage last night reading a bit, discussing it, going back to the text, doing it again, talking about a beat here, a beat there...well, a sort of weird thing happened. As we got into the second act. We stopped interrupting ourselves. We all just sort of hunkered down onto the play and started acting it. Didn't really occur to us to stop and discuss. So while we started out with good intentions, eventually all of us just wanted to act the play.

The second act of this thing is fraught with emotion. This is not "teacup acting" as a buddy of mine used to say about doing anything written by GB Shaw. It's also not typical "southern gothic" acting either (you know, as in a lot of Williams and Inge and those guys...everybody sweating and staring off into the far country, remembering some dead relative). This is. instead, quite definitely "early steppenwolf" acting. The entire play seems on the verge of breaking into a deadly fistfight at any given time. The press, early on, was calling this "Rock and Roll Theatre." In Chicago they called it "In your face acting." Whatever its called, that's what seems to be happening.

The best experience I've ever had in the theatre occurred twenty five years ago. It still remains unmatched in my mind. It was a production of the play Orphans at the Westside Arts in NYC. Steppenwolf had brought it to NY with Terry Kinney, Kevin Anderson and my buddy, John Mahoney. I didn't know John then, but we have since become friends. A dear, sweet, talented, funny man.

So I'd been in NY less than a week. My friend Robert Fiedler (who passed away this year, sadly) suggested we go see this "hot, new play" called Orphans. I had, up to that point, seen Hurley Burley (third row center, Sigourney Weaver on stage buck naked for about fifteen minutes less than twenty feet from me, thinking to myself, I LOVE THIS TOWN), Dreamgirls (the only time I've ever seen an internal standing ovation when Holliday belts out I'm Not Goin' at the end of the first act), and Kevin Kline in Arms and the Man (kinda dull, actually). So we go see Orphans. The play opens with Kevin Anderson sitting in a window sill blowing bubbles from one of those bubble bottles, the kind we had as kids. The great jazz artist, Pat Metheney, scored the entire piece. The stage lights were blue tinted, the music started low and began to build, Anderson sat placidly in the window doing his thing, the music continued to build...and build...and build. Finally, the entire theatre was rocking from the volume. Complete stillness, imagery, an eccentric pose on stage and this music is so loud the seats are shaking. Suddenly, after what seems an eternity, the stage lights bump up and the play starts. Doesn't sound like much when I describe it, but my God, it was terrific theatre. Gary Sinise had directed the piece. It was a magnificent start. After that the play is an emotional roller coaster. In my head, I always knew theatre could be this way, so immediate, so startling. But I'd never actually seen it with my own eyes. I was transported. Awash in the possibilities.

Since then I've stolen that opening (not literally) many times. I think there are two ways to start a play...either sneak up on the audience with a sort of fascinating ambiguity or come right out and slap 'em upside the head. Praying Small is the former, EAST/WEST is the latter.

That was a great week of theatre, my first week in NYC. A couple of days later I saw Mandy Patinkin in Sunday in the Park with George (to this day, my favorite musical theatre piece). He parted my hair for me. Even though I ended up doing a lot of musical theatre in my career (because I could sing), I was never a huge fan of it. But Patinkin...well, I'm not sure I can even describe how good he was in that role. He stamped it, in my opinion, the same way that Brando stamped Streetcar or Robert Preston stamped Harold Hill. I have seen the play many times since then (I even DID it) and can't get Patinkin's defining work out of my head. The role belongs to him forever, as far as I'm concerned.

Now, remember, these actors were all working on a new play when they did this. There was no compass, no video, no roadmap for any of them. Brando was doing the words to Streetcar for the first time, Patinkin was singing the soaring music of Stephen Sondheim for the first time, Robert Preston was spitting out the words to Trouble for the first time, and Kevin Anderson, Terry Kinney and John Mahoney were exploring Lyle Kessler's sad and brilliant play for the first time.

So last night as we sat down and earnestly read through From the East to the West I was thinking, "These guys are the first to do it, they're stamping it, they're defining who these characters, these people ARE." They are MAKING the roadmap as they go along, building the compass for what, hopefully, will be hundreds of actors to follow. They are not just pretending, this group of blazing, young pros. They are actually creating from dust a new thing altogether. How perfectly exhilarating.

Sometimes, like a few moments last night, the best I can do is watch them and shake my head.

See you tomorrow.

On Popcorn and Steak...

"All great truths are simple." Tolstoy

Time to talk about The Naked Face. A quick history...the term itself comes from Sir John Gielgud. My mentor and early acting teacher, Michael Moriarty, stole it from him. I stole it from Michael.

In essence, it is a reference to the singular repose of the actor while performing. There are actors we've seen that do it with complete authority; Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Moriarty, of course, Judi Dench, Joan Allen, Stanley Tucci and John Gielgud all come to mind.

"Acting is not about emotion. It is about the supression of emotion." This is the underlying premise of the technique.

There is an old acting adage, it is more interesting to watch someone try NOT to cry than it is to see them cry. A truism to be sure.

Actors wanna attack the "big moments." It's only natural. Moriarty used to always say about that - treat the steak like popcorn and the popcorn like steak. To the uninitiated that simply means to throw away the instinct to "play" the big moment. Here's the thing...the playwright owns the big moment. It's already there in the words. There is no reason; in fact it is downright detrimental in most cases, to act ON TOP of the words. The words already give the moment import. Now, as always, there are exceptions to the rule. My buddy, John Cook, a fine actor in Chicago, used to say, "There is only one rule in acting - and that is, there are no rules."

The actor need only say the lines with clarity and conviction (brings to mind George Burns' famous quote, "Acting is all about sincerity, if you can fake that, you've got it made.") and let the AUDIENCE place what they WANT to feel upon him. Hopkins and Dench and others do this with complete authority. They are fully aware of what they're doing.

Example: If the line is, "My dog just died." The emotion is inherent IN the sentence. The actor needn't enhance it with a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

This is, of course, a massive simplification. And again, there are always exceptions. But this is essentially where we are in the process now with From the East to the West. I am, strangely, the biggest culprit at this point. I tend to act up a storm when it is completely uncalled for. Yup, yup, yup. Thank God this young cast of pros do what I say and not what I do.

The play is blocked. We're acting it now, working the moments, the beats, as it were. Editing the work. Not the actual text, but all of the bells and whistles that we, the actors, are trying to place on top of the text. This is, in my opinion, the reason there is so much bad theatre in the world. And God knows, there is. The actors just do, well, too much. Makes the entire evening of theatre unavoidably tiresome.

The most common note I give in rehearsals is this, "Throw it away." By throwing it away, I simply mean to not give the line so much weight. Let it stand on its own. EAST/WEST is chalk full of "moments." The actor, instinctively, wants to play them all. Not necessary. If everything is important then nothing is important. The audience can't make the distinction about what is urgent if we play it ALL as urgent.

As a director, the late Paul Newman used to constantly say, "Earn your pauses." He was saying exactly this. If an actor decides to take a big, dramatic break in the dialogue, he had better be sure the audience will allow him to do that. More often than not, the pause has not been "earned" and the audience is simply waiting for someone else to talk. They don't have the advantage of a film close up (although most stage actors feel they are on camera even when they're not - this is to be expected - we are children of film and watching great work in the movies is what made most of us want to become actors in the first place...unfortunately, the stage doesn't work like that). So consequently it becomes about "focus." Who has it? Who doesn't have it? Who gets to say the line WITH it. This is where the director, ostensibly, comes in.

Richard Burton once gave advice to a young actor on stage. The young guy was taking this long, long dramatic pause before saying his line. Burton allegedly told him, "You do realize, don't you, Love, that no one has the slightest idea you're about to speak. In fact, worse, they think you've forgotten your line." The young actor was aghast. "What do you suggest?" Burton said simply, "Clear your throat, then you can wait all day if you want."

It's called an internal pause and is really the only way to get around the dreaded dramatic silence on stage coming from the over-zealous actor. It's simple. Make a sound, however slight, the stage audience turns to you, you've got the focus, pause all fucking day...then say the line. It's a trick, a device, but one that can work in the right hands. Chances are you won't read about it in any of Uta Hagen's writing. Or Sanford Meisner. Or Bobby Lewis. Or Stella Adler. These guys, bless their hearts, are more interested in teaching an actor how to "rehearse" than they are in teaching him how to actually save his ass in front of an audience.

Personally, I hate pauses. Used to live for them. I still take them because at heart I'm an actor. As a director I scold myself all the time for them.

So here we are at the turning point of rehearsal. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we define and crystalize the drama itself. This is where we make conscious decisions to treat steak like popcorn and popcorn like steak.

Can't wait to get to it tonight. And I have a cast of young professionals that are sharp as knives. They "get" the idea of "throwing it away." They understand the concept of "letting the audience do the work." They wait patiently for their chance to do the play by a flash of lightning. They are, every single one of them, a better actor than I was at that age. I fucking love that.

See you tomorrow.

On Critics and Lightning Flashes...

Like most people in the theatre I have a love/hate relationship with the critics. Michael Moriarty, who has had some of the most soaring reviews possible and, during the late seventies, some vicious notices, too, most notably from the late critic for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael, once told me this one night after I had gotten one of the bad ones: "Critics are like eunuchs at an orgy, they can watch but they sure as fuck can't join in." I have always remembered this.

The last time I did Deathtrap, one of those plays I kept getting hired for over and over, I was a bit bored with it. So I consulted with the director and decided to do the character of Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeves played it in the movie with Michael Caine) with a slight, self-conscious stutter. At the time I thought it a fairly good idea. Plus it had the added benefit of making me shake loose some line readings I had already set in stone (from having done the play so often). Apparently one of the critics didn't get it (or maybe my stutter was just not believable) and the review read something like, "If Mr. Morts had bothered to learn his lines, he might have made an effective Clifford." Oh, boy. I was furious. And, as always for the actor, powerless to do anything about it.

Early on I got into a habit of looking up old reviews before I did a character. I would trot over to the Lincoln Center Library and pour over every written word about the play I was about to do. On occasion it was really useful. I have no compunctions about stealing from another actor, particularly if they happen to be a good actor. One I remember is when I did Wait Until Dark. I found a review of when Robert Duvall had done the play on Broadway in the sixties. The critic (I forget which one now) commented on how frightening it was when Duvall had casually put on a butcher's smock before attacking the blind girl with a knife so as to not get any blood on his clothes. That bit is no where in the script. It was the actor's invention. So I stole it. And sure enough, when the reviews came out for the play, every single one mentioned the butcher's smock.

There are others that come to mind. When Peter O'Toole, one of my favorite actors, did Pygmalion in London and New York in the eighties, Frank Rich said, "Watching Mr. O'Toole in this role is like watching a very dangerous secretary bird on stage." Always liked that. When John Gielgud did a play in the seventies on the London stage, he had a death scene apparently. I think it was a Pintor play, but I don't recall exactly. The anonymous critic wrote, "When Sir John lets out his last breath he makes a curious sound as though a small bird had been released from his throat." Liked that one, too. Richard Burton was the recipient of a great line by Walter Kerr upon doing Equus in the seventies. Burton, of course, at one time had been the heir apparent to Olivier's throne but had, in the minds of many, squandered his talent on second rate movie projects. Kerr wrote, after having seen opening night in New York, "Mr. Burton may be the most promising middle-aged actor on the planet." Talk about your back-handed compliments. And then there is the venerable, afore-mentioned critic Pauline Kael when she famously wrote about Last Tango in Paris (my blog references this, of course) and Marlon Brando. "Brando has changed the face of an art form." Wow.

Dorothy Parker has had a few memorable quips during her short stint as a critic for The New Yorker. The most famous being her comment on Katherine Hepburn in a dreary little piece of writing in the thirties, "Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." Any actor worth his salt can quote that one. But my personal Parker favorite is her review of a play called I Am a Camera. It is also noteworthy as the shortest review ever printed in that magazine. It said simply, "No Leica." Still makes me smile.

So what is the purpose of the critic? To let the reader know whether the play is worth paying money to go see? Or to help the process by commenting on the nuts and bolts of the production itself? Ostensibly so the company can go back and make changes? I don't know.

The notice that has made the largest impact on me as a writer/director/actor, however, is one written in the nineteenth century. The great actor David Garrick had toured with Shakespeare's Richard III for many, many years. He was, arguably, the last great English stage actor before Olivier inherited the mantle. While doing Richard in London an anonymous critic wrote this remarkable sentence: "Watching David Garrick play Richard is like reading Shakespeare by lightning flash."

Now, THAT is how it should be. My imagination soars thinking of what that performance must have been like. What an amazing thing to say about someone's work.

Come see From the East to the West at NoHo in February. Cause that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna make the audience feel as though their watching a play by lightning flash. That's a promise.

See you tomorrow.

The Ghost of Plays Past...

I've been fortunate enough to have had about 15 or so of my plays done over the years. The first was a play called Closin' Time way back in 1983 in Springfield, MO. Like most young playwrights, I set it in a dive bar. For some reason novice playwrights tend to think profound and enlightening things happen in bars. One of my early mentors, Dr. Robert Bradley, gave me some very practical advice about writing for the stage. He said, "What makes this night different from other nights? If there's nothing cataclysmic about this day or this night you're writing about, why write it?" He was right. Nonetheless, I set it in a bar. I discovered there is a different thrill to writing than there is to acting. As an actor one's choices and talent are on display. As a writer one's very intellect itself is on trial.

That play is so amusing as I think back on it. As I recall, it was about a young bartender trying to make a choice about either leaving for college or staying and working in the bar for the rest of his life. Some of the dialogue made no sense whatsoever. I was tremendously influenced at that time in my life by Tennessee Williams. I suspect I'm not alone there. So now and then one of the three characters in the play would gallop off on a flight of pseudo-poetry about jasmine and sweating and black birds and Oedipus complexes and what have you. For no reason at all.

The first play I had produced in NYC was called Changing It to Brando, a piece about two young guys that have just moved to NYC to become actors but in the final analysis are actually too scared to leave their apartment. So they live this fantasy life, making up stories and events and living their entire existence in the small, cramped apartment they share. It is notable for a couple of things...one, my friend John Bader directed it (quite competently, I might add) and two, I learned a lesson about casting friends in my plays. I cast a guy I worked with, another waiter, in one of the roles (I took the other one). Even though this guy was a delight to be around, a fun guy, really smart, he was a terrible actor. Froze instantly like a rabbit in headlights. "Tharn," I believe is what Richard Adams calls it. Bader begged me to fire him. But I didn't because I couldn't stand the idea of hurting his feelings. The play suffered and I learned to never do that again.

The following year two of my plays were done in NY - both surprisingly successful. Golden Eggs, a one-person show directed by a fine, sensitive director named Jeff Wood and DAD/SONS, also directed by Jeff and co-starring my good buddy and forever-working actor, Brad Greenquist. The latter of the two was essentially a long one-act and was up with another one-act by the writer, Jim Uhls, who went on to write Fight Club featuring another Springfield native, Brad Pitt.

A few more plays in NY, some good, some not-so-good, and skip ahead to Rochester, NY. I was seeing a volcanic actress, Korean-American, and decided to write a play for her. It was called Barking at Lighted Windows. She was very good in it. And even now, as I look back on it, it was not a bad piece. We, however, were not so good together...oil and water. The explosive personal relationship we shared spilled over onto the stage. It produced some good theatre but bad karma.

A short time after that I made a decision to leave the theatre behind and do something "important" with my life...so I went back to school and eventually became a drug and alcohol counselor in Chicago. But of course like any great truth in a life, I couldn't leave the theatre behind and eventually wrote another play called Praying Small. The play, not surprisingly, is about recovery from addiction.

It has had a remarkable life thus far, in fact we're doing it at NoHo in April (See poster at right). Submitted for the Pulitzer, lots of other things, and I'm happy with it. For whatever reason, it tends to touch people where they live. I'm proud of it. And in the upcoming production I've been persuaded to take the lead role myself. Intimidating and exhilarating all at once.

But before that one, this one - From the East to the West. I'm also acting in that one with a bunch of gun-slinging, hungry, young actors here in LA. They are a talented bunch and already, early in rehearsal, I am beginning to realize I can't get away with any "tricks." These guys are too honest for that. I'll look like a bad soap actor next to them if I try it. I'm pleased about that. I like an acting challenge now and then. At some point I'll blog about these extraordinary bunch of performers. But right now I'm just trying to keep up with them. Being young and full of talent is, sadly, far different from being older and full of talent. These guys are so good they're still surprising themselves.

Rehearsal tonight. Tons of lines. Remembering the blocking. Toning down the performance. Trying to multi-task on stage.

When I act in a piece I've written it is important to keep in mind why I wrote it in the first place. That is to say, I harken back to those wonderful words of advice from Bob Bradley - "Why is this night different from other nights?" Great and simple words, those. Reminds me of a very basic truth about theatre. It concerns and it thrives upon the extraordinary, the awesome, the unexpected beauty of life. There is no room for the mundane in the theatre. There may be moments of it on the journey to the spectacular, but they are fleeting. Those moments are skipped over on the path to what makes this night different from all others. So I look forward to tonight, this different night, when I'm surrounded by artists that still surprise themselves.

See you tomorrow.

On Michael Moriarty...

When I was long about 17, I decided I would be a professional actor. I grew up in a small town in Missouri and to aspire to something so odd was, well, odd. But I was very lucky because I had this really genuine drama teacher in High School by the name of Doug Allbritton. He wasn't your typical High School drama teacher. He had actually been a professional actor in NY for a time and had made a cognizant decision to give it up for a teaching position and a family life. That decision informed the trajectory of my life. So there I was in small town Missouri playing roles like Ben in The Little Foxes and Charley in Where's Charley, all under a very sure and experienced hand. He and his late wife, Nancy, fed me books and films and music that otherwise I simply would not have had contact. Very fortunate for me, indeed.

So there I was at 17 keeping a journal about acting. One night around this time Doug and Nancy had me over to watch a film called Bang the Drum Slowly. A movie with Robert DeNiro (which is why I wanted to see it) and a guy named Michael Moriarty (whom I had never heard of). I still have that very pretentious journal written in scribbly, self-important handwriting from 1978. The entry for that night reads, "Saw Bang the Drum Slow (sic) tonight. DeNiro is very good. But there's another actor, Michael Moriarty, that I can't take my eyes off. He's amazing. Hopefully we'll work together someday." As God is my witness, that's exactly what I wrote.

Skip ahead to 1985. I had been in NYC for a few months and couldn't get arrested. Couldn't even get my foot in the door anywhere. I was bartending at a restaurant in the basement of the Empire State Building. Working the day shift and its really slow and so I'm sitting there one day skimming through Backstage (that's the actor's trade paper for NY) and tucked away on a back page in the paper is this little square in the corner that says simply, "Michael Moriarty Teaches Acting" with a number to call attached.

Could this be THE Michael Moriarty, I was thinking? I called the number. Some girl said, yeah, be there at seven on Wednesday night at blankety-blank address. So I wrote it down. Now, mind you, up to this time I had taken classes all over NY trying to find someone I really connected with as an actor. HB Studios, Uta Hagen, Stella Adler, Circle Rep, many others. None of it was enlightening for me, all just a bunch of yapping, an unfortunate extension of the worst of academia. Nobody was actually teaching ACTING.

So Wednesday rolls around and I go to the address. Turns out its IN Michael's actual apartment. So for whatever reason, I thought the time for the class was six instead of seven. I arrived an hour early. The doorman gave me a quizzical glance, but buzzed me up anyway. The door was ajar and I heard piano music wafting out of the apartment. I later found out Michael is a world-class jazz pianist. I knocked lightly on the door and when no on answered, simply walked in (I was from Missouri, what did I know?). Down the long hallway and into the huge living room. There sat Michael Moriarty playing some Duke Ellington, swaying slightly, eyes shut. I cleared my throat and he looked up. Of course, he was the very picture of kindness, even though I was way early. Invited me to sit and brought me some cookies and hot tea. I was simply stunned. He asked about my career (of which I had no answer cause I didn't HAVE a career). We chatted, I told him I was a big fan and had enjoyed his work since I was 17. I remember asking him what it was like to work with Robert DeNiro, a question I'm sure he'd fielded before. He said, "I have no idea. I didn't ever get to know him. He never came on set as himself, he never broke character." I thought that was neat.

Anyway, actors began to drift in...Charlie Sheen, Jo Anderson, Brad Greenquist, working actors all. To say I was intimidated would be the understatement of the century. We gathered in another huge room in Michael's apartment and everyone started working on monologues and scenes and poetry and screenplays and one person even sang a song. I sat in the back transfixed. Finally, after about three hours, Michael looked at me and said, "Chris (I didn't have the courage to correct him), got anything for us?"

It is important to understand that I had already learned more about acting in one night than I had in the previous five years of classes. Here I was, working for an actor, one of the best in the world, that already had two Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards, two NY Film Critic Awards, Three SAG Awards, several Golden Globes and a ton of others too numerous to mention. Here I was, about to show my stuff to a guy that Frank Rich had called, upon seeing his Richard III at Lincoln Center, "the most riveting actor on the NY stage since Brando."

So I got up and did a monologue. And there was silence. After a few moments, Michael said, "Uh, ya got anything else?" So I did another one. More silence. He said, "Got something comedic?" I did another one. Silence. "Got a Shakespeare?" I did one. More resounding silence. "Got any character pieces?" I did another. Silence. "You got one with an accent?" I did it. I think I ended up, remarkably, doing eight monologues for Michael, back to back, without a single comment on any of them. When I finally finished the last one, he said simply, "See me after class, Chris." I was devastated. I had done my best, it wasn't good enough, and he was going to refer me elsewhere. Perhaps to some Special Olympics class.

Around eleven o'clock everyone started filtering out. I shuffled around until it was just us again. Michael said, "Thanks for sticking around. Listen, you don't need to be in this class." My stomach flipped. "I teach a very small master class on Thursday. This class is gravy for you, you're way beyond what I do here. I'll see you on Thursday." My feet didn't touch the sidewalk as I skipped to the N train. One of the top ten or twelve actors in the WORLD had just told me I was too good for a normal class, that I needed to be in his "Master" class. I don't remember exactly, but I think I actually wept a bit. Maybe I COULD do this after all.

That night was one of three or four hallmark moments in my life. Paradigm shifts. Everything changed. I embarked on Frost's "road less travelled." And it was about to make all the difference.

Michael Moriarty taught me more about the craft of acting over the next five years than I had thought possible. He teaches the actor how to ACT not how to PREPARE to act. He is one of a handful of bonafide geniuses I have ever met. In addition, for whatever reason, he chose me to be one of his proteges. He took a personal interest in my career. And eventually, he even learned my first name.

You wanna see some brilliant work? Go to your local Blockbuster, or look through your Netflix and pick up a mini-series from the late seventies called HOLOCAUST. It stars Michael Moriarty, Meryl Streep, James Woods, Rosemary Harris and Fritz Weaver. Watch Michael in it. Because it really doesn't get any better than that. He is the finest actor I have ever seen or personally met, even now, twenty four years later.

See you tomorrow.