Repetition is the Soul of Art...

                                                           Rob Arbogast as Roman

A really good, albeit somewhat abbreviated, rehearsal last night.  A run thru of act I.  Or at least as much of act I as we could get to.  I worked on the lines all day for the act.  By the time we starting rehearsing most of my panic had subsided and I actually felt comfortable with huge chunks of the play.  I still don't know what the hell comes next most of the time, but that will sort itself out eventually I trust.

I remember once in the Chicago production a young actor named Joshua Venditti was doing the role of Sam Dean.  The way the theatre is set up the bathrooms are around by the side of the stage.  I was using it and came out at the exact moment that Josh had stepped off stage for a second.  Just the two of us standing there.  I was a little confused because I knew that Sam never left the stage.  Josh looked at me for a beat and said, "Any idea what I'm supposed to do next?"  I said, "I think it's the cop scene."  He nodded and casually stepped back on stage and began the cop scene.  It was funny and surreal at the same time.

On Thursday, June 10, the day before the official opening, the theatre is doing a big, invited-audience-only kind of thing.  Just close friends of the playwright (me) and the actors and a bunch of financial heavy-hitters that support the theatre.  That is exactly three weeks from today.  Oh, boy.  Every time I think of that a little panic creeps into my gut.  I'm bringing in my few close friends in Los Angeles - Jim Barbour and his beautiful wife Dana, John Schuck, John Bader, Joe Hulser, Jim Petersmith.  And a couple of young actors that are now in L.A. that did the play in Chicago - Jason Daniels and Theo Stephenson.  It should be a fun night.

Last night I was once again reminded of the quantum leap a play takes once the books are gone.  We actually started to play a bit last night even though it was a stop and start rehearsal.

We also blocked the opening montage, the short dialogue-free pieces of business that set up the start of the play.  I like it a lot.  It's all done to a song Kyle Puccia wrote specifically for the play called "Falling Apart Again."

The wonderful actor, Rob Arbogast, who is playing Roman in the play came over and worked lines with me yesterday.  What a giving, secure, relaxed actor Rob is.  He's doing the lead in another play of mine called Bachelor's Graveyard that will run in tandem with Praying Small.  Both plays are lucky to have him.  Rob played the title role in the huge hit, Dracula, last season at NoHo Arts.  Sold out six month run.  I didn't see it, obviously, but I'm told it was a beautiful, haunting piece of theatre.  In this play, Rob plays a very tragic figure: Sam's best friend Roman who doesn't escape the ravages of addiction like Sam does.  It's so much fun to work with Rob onstage.  He's always looking for a new way to do something.  Making it connect emotionally and intellectually at the same time. He's got a piercing stare onstage that can be a tad disconcerting sometimes.  Quite an intense actor.  In addition to all of this, he's a tremendously sharing kind of actor, always asking, "Is this okay with you?"  A real pleasure to share the stage.

Today, act II.  The big emotional moments for my character.  Oy.

I didn't think it possible that I could be so excited for the show at this point in the process.  A couple of weeks ago I was almost certain it would fail.  Fail for me, I mean.  Because I just didn't see how I could learn the lines in time.  Now, of course, all that fear and pessimism is gone.  The words are starting, miraculously, to actually stick in my addled brain.  It truly does make all the difference in the world.

So another day of pacing and learning lines.  Repetition is the soul of art.  So says the late Sir Ralph Richardson, one of my favorite actors of all time.  Indeed.

See you tomorrow.

Keep this...discard that...make something new.

A full run of Act I today.  It's easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of text I have to memorize in this play.  I've been chopping it down to segments so as not to panic.  Today, Rob Arbogast, who plays Roman in the piece, is coming over to work lines most of the morning and afternoon.

Victor Warren, the endlessly inventive director of the play, and I have leapt over our disagreements about the overall tone of the piece.  It's been an odd rehearsal process at times.  Not because of any lack of talent involved in the process, God knows there's a ton of that, but mostly because of conflicting ways of seeing the play itself.  I believe all of that is behind us.  Truth is, the two visions, mine and Victor's, have made the play stronger probably.

Victor is very much an actor's director.  Like myself, he likes to aim toward a tech-heavy finished product.  He can't help it.  The play isn't complete in his mind until the other minor characters of sound and music and lighting are included.  I understand completely where he's coming from.  Every now and again in rehearsal, he'll skip up to the booth and give us a sneak preview of the sound we'll be using.  The play comes even more alive when he does this.

He's working very closely with my friend, Kyle Puccia, who's designing the sound scape for the piece.  Between the two of them, they've come up with some wonderful ambient sound and music for the play.  The general source of our discussions have come from our diverse thoughts on how "realistic" the play should be.  Victor has always been inclined to believe we can make some rather liberal choices concerning this.   I've been leaning toward a purer approach to the text.  There is no right or wrong regarding this, only opinions.  We're meeting somewhere in the middle and I really think the play is better because of it.  Victor's concept has, from day one, been that the leading character of Sam Dean, the character I'm playing, is telling this story as he sees it 'in his head.'  I very much like that idea, but it's difficult to 'play' as an actor.  It's kind of like being asked to play 'Catholic.'  It's not a tangible thing I can do.  So I think, understandably, this is where my concerns come from.

Something he's doing, which sets my mind at ease considerably, is moving the play along.  Like me, he has a strong aversion to 'dead space' on stage.  That is to say, he won't allow any massive 'pauses' to take place.  It is the single most damaging culprit to this piece in productions past.  Because it is episodic, many directors have resorted to the dreaded 'black outs' between scenes.  This is death to the play.  Completely destroys any thru-line we've worked for.  Victor hates them.  So do I.  As I mentioned before, the New York production was just full of them.  Big, gaping holes in the play as the actors ambled to their places between scenes.  Scenery being shifted about in the darkness making loud, rumbling, leviathan sounds as the audience waits for something next to happen.  Just awful.  Victor will have none of that, thank goodness.  Instead, he does something really great.  He ties the scenes together using sound, sometimes even overlapping the sound of one scene into the next in an almost cinematic fashion.  It works perfectly.  In the stage directions in the script itself I write, "Light and sound are to be used liberally and with great imagination to shepherd the audience from one scene to another."  This is precisely what Victor is doing and quite ingeniously I might add.

I'm very lucky to have him helming this delicate piece.  Being a very fine actor himself, he understands completely how to talk to actors.  He conjures up images to illustrate his suggestions.  And that's what he gives when directing, too...suggestions.  Even though we all understand that he's not "suggesting" at all, he has the wonderful ability as a director to make them SEEM like suggestions.  I once read an interesting thing about Elia Kazan.  Apparently, Kazan always approached actors in the midst of rehearsal privately when giving notes.  That is to say, he would pull the actor aside and sort of whisper his ideas and then sit back down and watch.  No one ever knew what he was saying to the other actors, bringing a mystery to the playing of it.

I have a handful of favorite directors I've worked with over the years.  My friend and long-time collaborator Jeff Wood is probably my favorite.  Jeff brought, in addition to being a really good director, a blazing intellect to the job.  I always got the idea that Jeff was two or three steps ahead of me as a director.  He gave the impression of seeing the big picture as opposed to the small picture which the actor need only concern himself with.  And, like Victor, Jeff always used the phrase, "let's try this."  The one thing Jeff and I developed over time was an intangible trust in what the other was doing.  I was completely secure in the knowledge that he had a vision of what the final product would look like and Jeff, after our first few outings together, never questioned whether I could act something or not.  He always assumed I was carefully weeding my performance, picking things up, looking at them, keeping some, discarding others.  I only remember one instance when I had trouble doing something Jeff asked me to do.  We were doing a play called Golden Eggs and I had to back up slowly, bump into a chair, and sort of fling it off in a specific direction with only one foot.  Jeff had something in mind and I just couldn't do what he wanted.  I don't think I ever quite nailed what he was after in that play.  The difference between Jeff and Victor in this regard, comes from the fact that Victor is an actor himself.  Consequently he sees, in his mind's eye, how HE would do something.  This can, most of the time, be a great boon to the direction, because he can easier explain his idea.  Jeff, on the other hand, is the one exception to my hard and fast rule of "people who don't act should not direct."  One of my lifelong pet peeves is taking direction from someone who hasn't been onstage himself.  Although I believe early in his career Jeff did some acting, apparently he was quite bad at it.  Our mutual friend, John Bader, tells me Jeff may have been the worst actor he ever saw.  I'm actually glad about that.  Because the acting world's loss was the directing world's gain.  Jeff may or may not have been the worst actor, but he was an amazing director.  I only wish he weren't in Colorado these days so we could collaborate again.

I have no doubt whatsoever Victor Warren will receive some well-deserved accolades for directing Praying Small.  He's taken on a monumental task.  And he's doing it extraordinarily well.  He's turning out to be the perfect choice to mount this very personal piece of writing for me.  And finally, perhaps Victor's strongest asset (among many strong assets) is a deep, deep kindness and gentleness in his approach to directing.  His rehearsals are a joy to work.  Always a great sense of humor and an almost zen-like sense of patience.  This is no small thing.  In the final analysis, I really couldn't be happier about all this.  He's taking a bunch of sentences and thoughts and elliptical phrases and ideas and paragraphs and turning it all into a fascinating story to be told.  He's making something that has never existed before.  The mark of a very fine director.  The mark of a real artist.

See you tomorrow.

Brad Blaisdell in Praying Small.

In the first incarnation of Praying Small way back in 2004, I stepped into the role of Greg, the AA sponsor in the play.  It's a fun role.  Lots of juicy lines to say.  Since then a whole slew of actors have tackled it.  The latest to do so is the subtle but very crisp actor Brad Blaisdell, pictured above.  An absolute joy to work with, Brad is.

I first saw Brad as the dead father in PROOF, the beautiful revival produced by and starring the talented Teal Sherer in NoHo Ace's second space several months ago.  I hadn't really met Brad yet.  Well, we'd met but I didn't know who he was or anything about his work.  Like a lot of people I had seen several productions of PROOF and was not expecting anything too terribly different from this particular remounting of it.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Teal herself was playing the lead role and turned in a haunting performance.  Everyone else involved was top-notch, too.  And in the role of the dead father, the role Sir Anthony Hopkins played in the film, was Brad.  Two things come to mind from that night aside from the fact that he was really, really good in the role.  One was that if I shut my eyes and just listened to the play, Brad has a rhythm and timbre to his voice that is uncannily reminiscent of Jeff Bridges.  The other is that I turned to Angie during the performance and whispered, "He'd be perfect for Greg."  Now here it is six months later and Brad is playing Greg in Praying Small.  I'm delighted.

It's a funny story how I came to play Greg in that Chicago production.  I had been out of town doing another gig while they were rehearsing the play there.  When I returned the play was up and running.  I came to see the production - a simple, pared down, uber economical production that I liked very much, adhering to the original concept of simplicity - and was struck by the actor playing Greg's inability to stop, well, tapping his feet.  Although he was not bad as an actor, he had a nervous twitch which manifested itself in foot-tapping.  Every time he was onstage it sounded like a Fred Astaire musical.  It wasn't just a few toe taps now and then, it was an onslaught of toe tapping.  I spoke to the director afterwards and was told that no matter what was said, what note was given, he was apparently incapable of not doing it.  I said, "Well, um, it can't go on.  It's incredibly intrusive.  Why don't I do the role for a bit until we can find a Greg that doesn't do that?"  So we did.  The actor was dismissed and I came in the next day and learned the role in about twelve hours.  The following week many of the critics came but the theatre hadn't gotten around to changing the program.  The accolades I received in print were blushingly nice and consequently the reviews all came out mentioning what a wonderful performance this other actor was giving.  Truth is I really didn't mind.  Sort of amused me, even though the theatre fired off a bunch of corrections saying there was a mistake and that I was playing the role.

It's a great role.  One of those characters that gets to dispense lots of wisdom and bon mots throughout the play.  And now Brad is doing it and doing it beautifully.  We have a tremendous amount of fun together while rehearsing our scenes.  The director of the play, Victor Warren, and Brad go back a ways and have a relaxed rapport with each other which always helps any rehearsal process.

Another thing I like about working with Brad is his complete lack of ego.  Like myself, he fully realizes that no matter how he gets to the end result, the role will be completely his and his alone.  He has been in this business way too long and with way too much success to worry about how he gets there.  Consequently, he has no compunctions about asking me how I did it way back when.  If he likes something I did, he just takes it.  That's the way it should be.  I've never understood actors who are afraid to steal.  And he's never threatened by the idea that it may not be his.  He completely understands that at the end of the day the program will say, "Greg is being played by Brad Blaisdell," not "Greg is being played by Brad Blaisdell with helpful suggestions by Clif Morts, John Doe, Sally Smith and Congnolia Breckenridge."  As an old buddy of mine used to say, "Good actors steal, bad ones borrow."

I always steal when I work.  I have no problem whatsoever looking at a film or whatever of someone else doing the role I'm doing.  If I like something and steal it, whatever that is will be filtered through me anyway, so it will come out as something completely different.  Another thing I always do when preparing for something that has been done before is go back and read the reviews.  Not that I particularly care if they're good or not.  No, I do that because every now and then I can glean something from the review that will help me find the character.  Case in point:  some years back I was doing the role of Roat, the sociopathic killer in the play Wait Until Dark.  As is my habit, I started finding old reviews of previous productions, trying to find something I could steal.  I was reading through the old clippings of the original Broadway production starring Robert Duvall as the killer when I noticed something interesting.  The New Yorker had written a review of the piece and there was mention of how eerie it was when Duvall had casually put on a plastic butcher's smock before commencing his attack upon the helpless blind girl in the latter half of the play.  This is not in the play.  It was something Duvall, the actor, came up with.  Needless to say, I immediately stole it.

Sometimes it's something much smaller than that.  Sometimes it is simply a stance, a particular way of carrying oneself onstage.  Or perhaps a slightly eccentric way of walking.  For instance, the last time I did Arthur in Camelot, a surprisingly well written piece for the three lead actors in it, I imagined Peter O'Toole as Arthur in my mind.  How might he have done it?  So I incorporated O'Toole's trademark pigeon-toed walk into the character among other things.  Something like that can catch fire in an actor's mind and color the entire performance.

Stealing from other actors.  I'm astonished when actors are afraid to do it.  As though someone will notice.  As though someone in the audience will say to themselves, "Why, I remember seeing Joe Blow do that in an entirely different play in an entirely different state in an entirely different context nearly twenty years ago."  Steal away, I say.  Steal to your heart's delight.

I can't even begin to count the number of things I've stolen from Brando.  And I'm not talking about the trademark mumbling or slouching or scratching.  That's bush league stealing.  No, I'm talking about stealing his remarkable ability to physicalize a role.  The astounding choices he would make in the way the character moves or turns or watches.  Watch him in Julius Caesar or Mutiny on the Bounty.  This is no slouching, mumbling Brando.  This is an actor in complete control of every inch of his body and voice.  Slouching and mumbling indeed.  Try and imagine DeNiro or Pacino or someone of that ilk playing either of those roles.  The wonderful thing about Brando that most actors don't get is that he became famous by playing Stanley Kowalski and Terry Mallow in Streetcar and Waterfront, but they were just the tip of the iceberg.  Over his career he demonstrated that he was perhaps the most versatile film actor of the twentieth century with the possible exception of Meryl Streep.

Anyway, I digress.

Brad Blaisdell as Greg in Praying Small.  A performance I promise you will be a powerhouse.  A performance I'm finding a great deal of joy in already.  The bottom line is that it's just downright fun watching him find this character in rehearsal every day.  And that's what rehearsal should be:  fun.  After all, they're called "plays."

See you tomorrow.

Odd as it sounds, the actor caught 'acting' is not a good thing...

The picture above is of Michael Moriarty, the single finest actor I have ever had the great pleasure with which to work.  He is an extraordinary artist, breathtaking at times.  His grasp of the craft of acting has, at times, over the years simply left me shaking my head in awe.  He has Tony awards for Find Your Way Home and Richard III.  He has four Emmy Awards  (Holocaust, The Glass Menagerie, The James Dean Story and a guest shot on The Equalizer) and five consecutive nominations for Law and Order in the 1990s.  A host of critic awards through the years, far too numerous to list.  Frank Rich, the former New York Times critic, called him upon seeing him in Richard III, "the most electrifying actor to grace the New York stage since Brando."  He is one of those actors that OTHER actors mention when asked who they like to watch.  Pacino, in a recent book called Conversations with Pacino, called him his
"favorite actor."  These days Michael is retired and living a quiet life in Vancouver.  He is also a world-class jazz pianist and still books the occasional gig around that area.  He is a long-time political essayist and writes compellingly for many conservative publications nationwide. He even comes out of retirement now and again to do a role if he finds it interesting.

I studied with Michael, which I've written at length about in this blog, from 1987 to 1990.  Twice a week and intensely.  The were the formative years of my training as an actor.

When I began teaching myself, I unabashedly stole Michael's unique and exceptionally difficult approach to the work.  I call it "The Naked Face," which is a term Michael often used in class.  HE didn't call it that, I did.  He didn't call it anything, actually.  I have also written quite a bit about that technique in earlier blogs.

Without going into the detail I have earlier (you can go back and look at those blogs if you want, Gentle Reader), it is essentially the concept of letting the playwright and audience do the bulk of the heavy lifting when it comes to acting.  In the final analysis one has only to say the words with clarity and honesty and conviction and let the audience "plug in" what they want.  The face is void of histrionics.  The body is taut but relaxed.  The breath is even and controlled, starting at the top of a phrase and expelling through the length of the sentence (the breath control is essential when working Shakespeare).  It sounds easy, and in fact when using this approach over a short duration, it IS seemingly easy.  But to employ it over the arc of an evening, an entire play, an entire thru-line, it is exceptionally difficult but ultimately compelling and engaging.

I have been a "Naked Face" actor for over twenty years.  I believe in the power of this approach without reservation.  I am using it unreservedly in Praying Small.

I write all of this to make a point.

We had our first stumble thru yesterday for the play.  It was incredibly helpful to me.  Gave me a sense of where I'm supposed to be at any given moment and what came before and after a moment.  Up to this point, we'd been rehearsing the play piece meal.  A scene here, a scene there, a monologue maybe, then a quick transition.  Very disjointed.  But necessary.  It really was the only way to do it.

After the run-thru yesterday, which had some elements of the occasional train wreck, but overall went surprisingly smooth, I received a note along the lines of, "I can see you acting now and then but sometimes your face goes blank and I know you've checked out."  The note concerned me because it was exactly backwards.  The times I was seen acting are the moments I want to discard.  The times my face "went blank" are the moments I want to keep.  I don't want ANY "acting" in this piece.  The playwright (in this case, me) has supplied all the drama and emotional depth the piece needs.  I certainly don't need to add my two cents as an actor.  In other words, I don't need to act what's already been acted.  All I need to do is say the words.

I'm already amazed by what some actors consider good acting and others do not.  I'm usually just appalled when I see an actor "acting."  In my mind it simply means they've had some bad training.  And at the very least don't understand what is compelling to an audience and what is not.  Most of the time, dare I say ALL of time, these are actors that have been tutored through the writings of Sanford Meisner or Uta Hagen.  These are the actors in the constant and inexplicable search for the "lowest common denominator."  Here's a clumsy but penetrating example:  If the line on the page reads, "My mother just died!" there is no reason for the actor to flail and wail and pound his breast and gnash his teeth.  The playwright has already done that, figuratively speaking.  The actor need only find a way to say the line with a semblance of depth and feeling, to lend a graceful amount of gravitas to the phrase, to let the AUDIENCE feel what they want to feel.  The great misfortune of the advent of "the method" in this country, as outlined by a number of teachers from the 1930s, teachers that travelled to Russia and studied, VERY briefly, with Stanislavski himself, is the constant search for the "lowest common denominator."  In other words, a way to express EXACTLY what the words on the page are already expressing.  It is utter foolishness.  But that's not the biggest sin.  No, the worst part of all this is that it's boring.  And being boring is the one unforgivable sin onstage.

I thought about that note I received a lot last night.  How can I make my director understand that when I do absolutely nothing it is a conscience choice rather than inattentiveness?  I made a joke last night to a friend of mine...how can an actor work with somebody that thinks Bonnie Franklin is doing the right thing when she acts?  How can I explain that being caught "acting" is a bad thing?  It's sort of like being a musician and being asked to do it like Milli Vanilli because that's what is good.  Oh?  How about I do it like Mozart?  Think that might work?

As you can see I'm in the midst of a tad bit of exasperation at the moment.

I'm sure everything will work itself out.  A meeting of the minds will inevitably occur.  A revelation will present itself and everyone will move on, secure in their own concept of what is "good."  And really, I suppose it doesn't surprise me.  Theatre, like all art, is objective.  One person's trash is another's treasure.  You like Jackson Pollack, I like Monet.  It's all about perception.  It's just that I'm confounded sometimes when other actors and directors don't have the same vision of what's exciting as I do.  As Sam Dean says in my play, "They'll never quite see what you see."

In the end, I just carry my portion of the casket.  There are other guys responsible for holding up their end.  But I confess, there are times I feel like a Christian Missionary trying to spread the gospel in the forgotten, unexplored jungles of the Belgian Congo.  I don't even know where to start.

See you tomorrow.

Blindsided...

First full run-thru of Praying Small today.  This is mostly so I can figure out where in the world I'm supposed to be at any given time throughout the play.  The most oft heard phrase in rehearsal these days is "what happens next" or "what just happened."  The play is episodic and non-linear so sometimes I feel like I'm rehearsing a scene in a void.  No one's fault, it's just written that way.  So today, hopefully, I can get an idea of the continuity of the piece.  How A connects with B and so on.

Yesterday we worked a bit on the last scene in the play.  Victor Warren, the director of the play, sat in the booth and added our incidental music (from the astonishingly gifted Kyle Puccia) to let us know what kind of background music we'd have so as to time it all out.  When we finished I looked up and noticed Teal Sherer, our boundlessly energetic producer, weeping.  It was at that exact moment I realized we had a play on our hands.

Victor has decided to go in a slightly different direction than I had in my mind.  At first I wasn't too sure about his choice.  But the more we work and the more I listen to him explain his vision, the more I like it.  Music is used very sparingly in the piece.  In its place is ambient sound.  Consequently when we do use it, it is very powerful.  The incidental music in the last scene is an adaptation of Leonard Cohen's beautiful song, Hallelujah.  When timed correctly a small snippet of vocals come in at precisely the right emotional moment.   It was a tad haunting yesterday and I was pleased.  Tara Orr, the extraordinary actress playing Susan, the love interest in the play, was having a tough time simply saying the lines because of the emotion that unexpectedly welled up in her.  It was just one of those moments when everyone in the room suddenly realized we had a winner.  I admit to being a bit overwhelmed myself.

I remember some years back, the first time I did my all-time favorite musical, Sunday in the Park with George, when the entire cast nearly fell apart singing the final song in the play - "Sunday."  The song is just beautiful, incredibly moving.  The emotion jumped, without warning, from one actor to the next.  A minute into the song and the whole cast was a mess, just  a mess, crying and sniffling our way through this majestic piece of music.  None of us saw it coming.  It was just one of those moments when everyone realized in an instant why we were professional actors.  Because sometimes, not often but sometimes, the sheer joy of doing something absolutely brilliantly written on stage made our lives have some profound meaning.

That was how it was at rehearsal yesterday.  It's not something that can be recreated.  It simply happens on its own accord.  Another time like that was when I was doing The Boys Next Door down in Florida.  I was doing, for the third time, Arnold, the mentally challenged ring-leader of the boys.  It is the scene when the care-giver, Jack, goes to find Arnold, who has run away from the group home, and discovers him sitting in a bus station waiting patiently for the bus to "Russia."  One night while doing that scene I was completely blind-sided by the emotion inherent in it.  Projectile tears flying from me.  The actor playing Jack was utterly surprised by my sudden and new interpretation of the scene.  I couldn't help it, though.  It was one of those unplanned, rare occasions on stage when everything simply comes together in a rush and even the actor is surprised.  Moments like that make all the struggle, all the work, all the rejections and self-doubt worthwhile.  They are fleeting.

I think it is good for an actor to be caught off guard like that every now and then.  For me anyway, it is a subtle reminder that the material itself is in charge.  Dustin Hoffman said he had just a terrible time getting through the scene in Death of a Salesman when Willy realizes Biff loves him.  It's toward the end of the play, set in the kitchen, and Hoffman said he just couldn't get through it.  He said it got to the point that finally Malkovich, playing Biff, said, "Um, Dustin, you DO realize, don't you, that no one can understand a word you're saying when you cry like a girl there."  I can hear John saying something like that and it makes me smile.  He directed a friend of mine in a play once.  At the end of the act my friend did something to make the audience collective say, "Ahhhhh."  He said Malkovich rushed backstage and playfully slapped him on the back of the head and said, "Never do that again!  That reaction is reserved for puppies and babies ONLY!  Not in any play I direct!"  Again, I can hear John saying that.  He once told me how hard he worked to avoid that reaction when he played Lenny in Of Mice and Men onstage.  He told me, "the last thing I wanted was to play a lovable retard."

During the run of Praying Small in Chicago I used to sneak in the back and watch the audience from time to time.  Gauging their reaction.  I was always terribly pleased when I saw them all start reaching for their hankies in the last couple of scenes.  I could hear the sniffling all over the theatre.

So full run-thru today.  I'm ready for it.  I'm off book now for chunks of the play.  This time next week I hope to be completely off book.  It's starting to come together in little moments here and there.  I know today is likely to be a big train wreck most of the day, but I also know we'll probably find little instances when we breathe some life into it.  When, quite unexpectedly, there is beauty in what we do.  And redemption.  And reassurance that we have chosen the right road in our decisions to be actors, the road less travelled, the road that has made all the difference, the road to this very moment in time.

See you tomorrow.

On instincts and self-preservation...

I have been doing a lot of rewrites and revisions on my new play, Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century, lately.  Not a single soul has read it yet, but I plan on letting Angie take a look at it this weekend sometime.  It's massive.  A much larger canvas than I had originally envisioned; three acts, three hours, sixteen characters.  It deals with four subjects I've dabbled with off and on for twenty years - AIDS, the Holocaust, alcoholism and heavyweight boxing.

I think one of the reasons I'm back at it after putting it away for a few months is because one of the major characters is a thirteen year old Jewish boy that is sent to a concentration camp and I've found a wonderful thirteen year old actor to play it.  He's doing one of the one-acts I'm involved in right now in SANITY 2.  Like a lot of kids that age that start acting, he's completely natural on stage.  Acting teachers and academia haven't had a chance yet to completely screw up his head and his work.

It's another 'bare stage' piece, like Praying Small.  Just some tables and chairs or benches needed to shepherd the audience from one scene to the next.  Copious lighting and sound are needed, too.

Speaking of Praying Small, the entire show, with the exception of one scene, is now completely blocked.  I'm working with some real crackerjack actors - Brad Blaisdell, Rob Arbogast, Tara Orr, Melanie Ewbank and Bonnie Cahoon.  As my old acting teacher, Michael Moriarty, used to say, "a play is only as good as the weakest actor in it."  If that is true, and I believe it is, we may have a very, very powerful piece on our hands because there are NO weak actors here.

My concerns now are the marketing and publicity for the play.  I'm being told over and over not to sweat that part, just to concentrate on acting it, but I can't help it.  I've seen too many productions drop the ball in those areas.  So I'm a little nervous about it.  I'm terrified we'll end up acting this play in the shower, so to speak, with no one in the audience except a few nice, blue-haired old ladies that got the early bird special deal of a play and unlimited salad bar for $3.99.

Angie's parents are in town.  Had dinner with them last night.  Really nice and kind people.  We had a wonderful meal at MOE'S down the street in Burbank and then came back here and sat around a bit with her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend.  Nice, relaxed evening.

Today it's an all-day rehearsal of the show and then the one-acts tonight.  An entire day of thea-tah.  Can't complain, I guess.  Although I want to.  It's my nature to complain.  As Leo says in "The West Wing," people like us don't think like other people, we always want 'more.'  More of everything.

I'm tempted to call up some actors that have played this gargantuan role in other productions and ask them how they memorized it.  It's just massive.  So many words.  I'm reading a wonderful biography on Sir Anthony Hopkins right now and have learned he was always ultra prepared for stage performances, constantly carrying his script around and making tiny notations in the margins.  That made me feel bad.  Perhaps I'm not doing enough?  Maybe I don't have the discipline anymore to do a role of this size?

My theory of working has always been that once a scene is blocked it's useless to re-visit it until the actors put the book down.  Otherwise we're just doing what we've already done.  I'm desperately trying to live up to that, but it's incredibly difficult.  In addition, I'm being pushed sometimes to not trust my instincts when, after a hundred or so plays, I know through trial and error to ALWAYS trust my instincts.  So I end up questioning myself which is no good at all.  I'm being pushed into a corner and consequently being forced to dig in my heels and simply say, "no, that way will not work, I'm going to do it this way."  Gives the impression that I'm being a diva when in fact the exact opposite is true.  I'm being true to myself.  Of course, it's impossible to explain this without coming across as a major egoist, but it simply is what it is.  I know what I can do on stage as an actor and I know what I can't.  It's one of the things one learns as an actor after thirty years on the professional stage.  One's instincts are not to be taken lightly.

I'm reminded of the story of Lee J. Cobb in rehearsal for the original production of Death of a Salesman on stage before it opened on Broadway.  I guess Cobb was just not cutting the mustard as Willy Loman.  He was mumbling and small and introspective and unexciting.  A week before they opened, according to Arthur Miller in his book Timelines, Cobb suddenly announced he would be acting the part that night during the run-thru.  No one quite knew what to expect.  Cobb, after weeks and weeks of circling the role, walked on stage that night carrying his ever-present sample case, and became Willy Loman.  Electric.  I think Cobb knew he couldn't possibly expend the energy in rehearsal to act that towering role, it would simply be too much for him.  I know where he's coming from.  This role is so large, so all-encompassing, that to run full-speed-ahead in every rehearsal would kill it.  Not to mention me.  Instead, I like to nail the scene once, full out, and thereby know I can do it and then sort of leave mental and emotional breadcrumbs so I can find my way back.  To keep drilling so deep day after day is just too overwhelming for this role.  Do it once, find the levels, pace myself, give enough to know it's there, and then mark it the next time through.  It's not so much selfish as it is an act of self-preservation.  All of this comes across as a bit nebulous and eclectic for the non-actor, but anyone who's ever done a role of this size probably knows what I'm talking about.

So today we attack some scenes we've already blocked and I'm doing it all off book.  I'll find the pace and rhythm, the peaks and valleys in each scene, do it once without the brakes on and then move on.  Best I can do.  Olivier once said an interesting thing about playing Lear.  He said by the time an actor reaches the age to play it, he no longer has the energy for it. He has the wisdom and life-experience to do it, just not the physical ability.  That's how I feel about playing Sam Dean in Praying Small.  So it's all about economy for me.  It's a long night for this character.  Over two hours on the stage without leaving.  I have the wisdom and life-experience to play it now, but I'm not sure I have the physical stamina anymore.

And now, back to the text.  My first copy of the play is in tatters.  I've thumbed through it so often it's almost unreadable now.  Have to get another one and transfer my notes.  Only once before have I had to do that: Harry Truman in Give 'Em Hell, Harry.

And so the day begins.

See you tomorrow.

A Testament to Courage, Humor and Acceptance...

I did not know Guy Adkins personally.  He was an extraordinary actor in Chicago and later New York for many years.  I saw his work in such diverse pieces as Hamlet to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  He was always the best thing in any piece in which I saw him.  We had a lot of mutual friends.

He died yesterday of Cancer.

Anything I write would be trite and meaningless today regarding that.

But Guy kept his own blog.  I'm including the link here.  I spent most of the evening reading it last night.  It is a testament to courage, humor and acceptance.  In essence, he documented his own death.  It is, quite simply, some of the most moving writing I have ever read.  This is it.

http://web.me.com/seankrill/www.SeanAllanKrill.com/Candyman/Entries/2010/4/27_Candyman._Happy..html#

See you tomorrow.

"Would you go to lunch?"

A busy day at the Ponderosa planned.  Three hours of monologue work with Victor Warren, the director for Praying Small, a quick lunch, and then a few hours with Tara Orr, who's playing Susan.  The monologue work is a bit daunting.  I'm not quite off book for them but yet I know them fairly well.  I'm in that nebulous, fuzzy time when I can't quite put the book down and yet I don't really need to hold it, either.  I hate that time in the rehearsal process.  Can't really act the play yet because I'm searching not for the line, but the structure of the line.  In other words, I don't want to memorize the paraphrase.

This is the time when I become very frustrated.  But only with myself.  There have been times in my career when others have mistaken this frustration for anger towards someone else.  Not that at all.  I'm upset with myself.  But I tend to yell a bit and mutter a lot of obscenities under my breath. Particularly for this play one is likely to hear, "who wrote this shit?" mumbled now and then.

There's something nearly perfect when the actors know their lines yet don't have the pressure of performance.  That time when everyone is still in the rehearsal room and the props, costumes and scenery don't impede the work.  John Geilgud thought this, too, and presented his famous Hamlet with Burton in exactly that way.  It's known now as the "rehearsal Hamlet" because Geilgud thought the best performance given by the actors was that time right before they actually take the stage.  So in that famous production, 1963 I think it was, the actors all carried things found around the rehearsal room for props.  An old overcoat was used as a cape, an umbrella for a sword, a big jar for a goblet, a fishing cap for a crown, etc.  It didn't quite work but it was a fascinating idea.

Shakespeare, especially, takes on a life of its own once the books are down.   I remember doing Julius Caesar in New York some years back.  The books were down, we all knew our lines inside and out, we knew our blocking and were in the dead center of the moment.  The words began to take flight.  And suddenly that beautiful language began to really emerge.  It's a terribly exciting time for the actor.

I don't like thinking a lot while I'm working.  Sounds a bit odd, but there you have it.  I don't like it when the proverbial third eye of the actor starts roving.  The best work always comes when the words become the thing.  And if there is a trust of the other actor onstage, it really gets good.  There are a few actors I've worked with through the years that I've felt that way about.  I suspect that will be the case with Brad Blaisdell and Rob Arbogast in this production.  Both very fine actors that will be there for me.

With Rob, who plays the role of Roman in this play, we have two really tough scenes to memorize.  Some are tougher than others because of the way its written.  The two with Rob don't have an easily followed thru-line.  That is to say, often the words don't build on each other.  There are a lot of ellipses in the text.  This is why a lot of actors find Mamet so difficult.  Because of his tendency to write partial sentences.  And his love of repetition.  Look at Glengarry Glenross.  The movie is pretty much exactly the text of the play so you can see it in that.  There is a moment when Kevin Spacey is talking to Jack Lemmon.  His character's line is "Would you go to lunch?"  I can't remember exactly but I think he says it seven times in seven different ways.  Try to imagine saying "would you go to lunch" seven different ways for seven different meanings.  Spacey, of course, does it brilliantly.

So from today we have thirty-two days to put this thing on its feet.  Oy.  I'm already getting the heebie-jeebies.

See you tomorrow.

A few well-tempered words on playing comedy...

One-acts are a strange beast.  I mean in general.  When I first started writing for the stage many years ago (my first produced piece was a one-act at Missouri State called "Closin' Time" about...well, no one's quite sure what it was about, including me), I wrote in the one-act format all the time because I didn't have the patience or the fortitude to write full-lengths.  So I churned out one-acts.  And strangely, most got produced.  I say "strangely" because they were just awful.  Mostly high-falutin', pretentious little pieces about things I was too young to write about in the first place.

In my entire life I've only run across one that I liked.  It was called "This is the Rill Speaking," by Lanford Wilson.  The grad students at school were doing a bunch of them and this one stuck in my mind.  It was about growing up in southern Missouri.  A very well-written piece, as I recall.  Brought to mind "Spoon River Anthology."

Since then I've come to like one-acts even less.  And to add salt to the wound some years back the whole notion of the "ten-minute play" began.  I just don't get it.  What can possibly be said with any gravitas in ten minutes on the stage?  Part of the craft of writing plays, a huge part in fact, is developing character.  That is to say, introducing and fleshing out a person for the audience.  In the one-act formula there is simply no time to do this.  I suspect the same problem exists for prose writers and short stories although there are a lot of short stories I like out there.

I like to write in what is called "Aristotle's Unity of Time."  That is to say, without teaching a course here, the time elapsed onstage is the exact time elapsed for the audience.  It's the most difficult type of writing for the playwright because he and he alone is responsible for the peaks and valleys in the play.  No blackouts, no scene changes, no clumsy segues.

Having said that, Praying Small, oddly, is not written that way.  It is a non-linear piece completely full of episodic writing.  It was the only way to tell the story.

So here I am in a night full of one-acts.  I try and make the best of it.  My theory is to say the lines so fast the audience won't have time to think.  Probably not the best approach but it keeps me sane.  Fortunately one of them (I'm doing two) is flat-out comedy so it seems to work.  Dying is easy, doing comedy in a one-act is hard.

I have changed my mind about playing comedy over the years.  I used to think it could be taught.  I don't think that anymore.  Either you "hear" the comic beats and rhythm in your head or you don't.  No one, no matter how good a teacher or director, can give you that.  The comedic piece I'm doing now is a prime illustration of that.

There is an old, old line used in the theatre, meant as a joke.  "Faster, louder, funnier."  Well, I'm not so sure it's a joke.  Most of the time that's exactly the direction an actor should be given.  It's not that complicated.  So often I've wanted to say to an actor I was directing, "faster, louder, funnier."

American actors, especially, find it hard to grasp this concept.  They've been taught, usually beginning with academia, to question everything.  To ask WHY they're being told to say the lines faster, louder and funnier.  And once that happens, whatever the piece is, ceases to be funny.

There's an old Oliver story about when he was working with Noel Coward in Private Lives in the 1930s.   He apparently had a funny line that he could never get a laugh on.  It had something to do with asking for a cup of tea.  Finally, after weeks of not getting the laugh, he pulled Coward aside and asked him what he thought.  Coward said, "Well you can start by asking for the tea instead of the laugh."  Laymen may not quite get that piece of advice but actors will.  It's a fine line.  If we try to be funny it's usually not funny.  Acting is not stand-up.  Always ask for the tea.  The laugh will follow.

I've always contended there are a thousand ways to say a dramatic line but only two or three ways to say a comedic one.  Just watch or read Neil Simon.  The timing and the cadence of the laugh are IN the line itself.  Simon is a genius at that stuff.  He's damn near actor-proof.

Look at one of his famous lines from The Odd Couple.  Felix leaves Oscar a note.  It says, "Dinner is in the fridge.  F. U."  Later, Oscar says to Felix, "It took me an hour to realize F. U. meant Felix Unger!"  Think about it for a second.  How do you get the laugh on that line?  It's inherent in the line itself.  The stress and structure of the laugh are there.  You just have to read the line right.  It's almost impossible to fuck up.  And yet, there are actors that inevitably will.  The only variable for the actor to play is the volume of the line.  Pretty simple.

Sometimes the laugh is in the space between the lines.  The pause or the hesitation before or after a word.  This is also something the actor either hears or he doesn't.  Some actors can't hear it.  I've always likened it to hearing a drummer and his trap set in your head.  Some actors here that beat and rhythm and pace and some don't.  And I honestly don't believe it can be taught.

And then there are the instinctively funny actors that throw the whole theory out of whack.  These guys play outside the rules.  Gene Wilder comes to mind.  I've always thought he introduced an entirely new way to be funny.  He falls into the catagory of "some actors say things funny and some actors say funny things."  The former is far more rare.  Gene Wilder said things funny.  Watch the film version of The Producers.  It's all there.

I've always thought it interesting that dramatic actors rarely do comedy well but comedic actors can easily slip into drama.  There are very few exceptions to this rule.  Meryl Streep comes to mind.  She can do either with equal ease.  But then again, she's Meryl Streep.

Brando was never successful at comedy.  DeNiro only slightly successful.  Mostly because he's quirky.  But certainly not inherently funny.  Pacino can be funny, but only INSIDE a dramatic structure.  Ed Norton seems to grasp both concepts.  Most watchable dramatic actors CAN be funny, but again, mostly inside a dramatic premise.  To be flat-out funny without the given premise and most dramatic actors flounder.  Comedic actors (Robin Williams, Jackie Gleason, Zero Mostel, etc.) simply adjust their timing a bit and easily slip into the right cadence and delivery.

And another thing.  Actors that are funny OFF stage mostly aren't funny ON stage.  It's kind of like taking the high school class clown and sticking him in a farce.  He's not funny.  Hundreds of thousands of directors through the course of history have made this deadly casting mistake.

Well, there you have it.  A quick and free dissertation on the nature of comedy.  I get a hundred bucks an hour usually for this type of information.

Mark Twain said, "Humor is based on exposition.  Comedy is based on surprise.  I'm a humorist."  That's a pretty nice bow to put on things.

See you tomorrow.

It Begins...

The marketing for Praying Small kicks into gear today, for which I'm thankful.  Of course, I'd rather it have started four weeks ago, but what do I know.

Meeting with our new publicist, David Elsner, and the new marketing guy, Raul Espinoza, at ten today at the theatre.  Both come with a great background.

Rehearsals following with the ever-so-talented Tara Orr, who's playing the role of Susan in the production.  And following that, back on the boards for the one-acts.

A short one today by necessity.

Tomorrow I will have been in the city of Los Angeles for six months to the day.  "Quite a party, Woodrow, quite a party."

See you tomorrow.