What's good? What's not?

Above...Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye.

I am a presidential history junky.  I have the oddest facts about presidents and their administrations at my fingertips.  And I read a lot about this sort of thing whenever I can.  I was thinking about, of all things, FDR's wonderful first inaugural address in 1933 yesterday.  A line that goes right up there with Kennedy's 'Ask not what your country can do for you...'  Roosevelt was trying to calm the nerves of a very nervous nation when he said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  What a brilliant line.  I don't know who's responsible for the line.  But it was the exact right thing to say at that moment in history.

I was thinking about that line because it is relevant to so many things in my life today.  Angie's current situation, my situation.  Fear itself.  It is a massive hurdle in our lives and often times turns out to be only a pebble in our way.  Fear.  In AA they have two definitions for it:  Fuck Everything And Run or Face Everything And Recover.  The latter of the two being preferable, of course.  Fear itself.  What a massive amount of time we seem to spend mulling that over.  Fearing fear itself.

There are so many things invading our lives today.  The oil spill in the gulf seems to be threatening our very planet itself.  There is no end, apparently, in sight.  Just trying to grasp that fact should scare the bejesus out of any thinking person on earth.  Another 'no end in sight' scenario seems to be Afghanistan.  And then there's the massive divide in this country today with regards to the partisan trains of thought on how to govern a country.  Hatred and fear (see Arizona) everywhere.  Tea Party renegades spewing anger and fear at every opportunity.  Liberals striking back blindly.  Financial recovery still just a mirage, it seems, in this country.

Angie and I know three people that lost their jobs this past Friday.  Seemingly inconsequential in the large scheme of things but devastating on a personal level.  Money scarce, employment scarcer.  And all of this, large and small, pointing directly toward a country immobile, seemingly, with fear.

It concerns me.  It frightens me.  And it makes me feel impotent.

Still waiting for the LA Times review of Praying Small.  I guess it will come out tomorrow in the weekly 'entertainment' section of The Times.  I hope so, anyway.  There is simply no reason to continue to strive for good work if no one recognizes it.

There's an amazing Brando performance out there in a film called Reflections in a Golden Eye.  It is a 1967 film, directed by John Huston and starring Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, back when she could still act.  The film itself is rather middling.  Over dramatic and directed, out of character, by a John Huston briefly infected with the whacky and odd, late sixties influence of a dearth of talentless new wavers.  But in the middle of this sepia-toned, groovy film, is a performance by Brando that is extraordinary.  These days students of film and great acting look at this piece of work in reverence.  But at the time, the critics nailed him to the cross.  It is one of the reasons Brando stopped giving a shit about his own work.  He never came right out and said it, but the general consensus seems to be today that Brando stopped striving for great work after that film because it seemed no one could tell the difference anymore between great work and bad work anyway.

I sort of feel that way these days.  I honestly believe we have something important and transcendent on our hands with Praying Small.  Despite the many obstacles we overcame to get it there, the words survived the mediocrity with which they were treated.  And yet, outside of a few wandering souls on any given weekend in North Hollywood, no one seems to care.  Or perhaps this is only my perception.  I hope so.

When Brando did the Huston movie way back in '67, he gave it his best shot.  He actually, for the first time in about ten years, tried to do good work.  And no one noticed.  We do now, of course; history is that way sometimes, but at the time it was treated as just another introspective Brando performance.  The nuances and concentration were lost to a bevy of critics used to broad brush strokes.

Again, this is how I feel with PS.  I wouldn't exactly go so far as to say pearls before swine because I don't think that's true.  Nightly, it seems, we have a few that actually 'get it.'  The same sort of thing had my ire up when I did a short, benefit run of my play, From the East to the West, a few months ago.  A friend of mine, a Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright, in fact, told me, "this is the best script I've read in years.  It's brilliant."  And yet, on THAT VERY SAME DAY, I was told, "it would be a great disservice to you to let an audience see this."  What is one to do?  Which words mean something?  Both?  Neither?  It's sort of like the old advice from Moriarty about critics, "If you believe the good ones, you gotta believe the bad ones, too."  So who does one believe?

Trying to get people in to see Praying Small is like trying to get cats to walk in a parade, it seems.  Why is this so difficult?  It wasn't in Chicago.  It wasn't in NY.  Maybe it's just the general theatre mentality in Los Angeles.  I don't know.  I honestly don't.  Angie, a former casting associate and theatre-going veteran out here, seems to think people are both gun-shy and beaten down.  They've seen such a plethora of really bad live theatre work out here they are virtually blind to good work when it unexpectedly arrives.  Again, I don't know.

In Chicago, word leaks out.  Things get around.  Discoveries are made.  Critics champion good work when they find it, regardless of the size of the house.  I don't see that happening here.  There are two completely different mindsets when it comes to watching theatre in Chicago and watching theatre in LA.  Maybe it comes down to something so simple as mounting a searing drama in the heat of the summer.  But that doesn't quite make sense because it seems in LA there is ALWAYS the heat of the summer.  The weather isn't a factor out here.

I worry about this.  Ideally, of course, I'd like to write and act in television and film here in this city.  But my background, rather extensive if I don't say so myself, is in the theatre.  I know good work.  Not only that, I know how to make it happen.  And yet I still see good work and bad work lined up side by side all the time and no differentiation is made between the two.  I remember a couple of months ago when I was involved with a night of one-acts at our theatre and one of the actors, an older lady, said, "This is going to be a huge success.  People are going to LOVE this."  I looked at her as if she were mad.  She actually thought, and I say this without rancor, she was involved with something wonderful.  Even then, before we opened, I knew it was dismal.  And yet, and yet, I seemed to be the only one.  It's an LA thing, to be sure.

Or maybe I'm just too sensitive about such matters.  Maybe I'm just too demanding.  Too much of a perfectionist when it comes to my work.  Maybe there IS no discernible difference between Love Shack and Handel's Messiah.  Maybe I'm the one that is off-kilter about all of this.

In any event, a scatter-shot blog today.  I awoke this morning with a host of fears on my mind.  Usually I snap out of this defeatist attitude after an hour or so with the ever-optimistic Angela.  But she's still asleep so I'm stewing in my own negativity for awhile as the fog burns off LA on this soon-to-be-crisp and clear and flawless day.

We shall see what we shall see.

See you tomorrow.

Franny and Zooey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFiDisSOzv4

My friend, Jim Barbour, actor/singer extraordinaire, put this little montage together.  See link above.  Kinda cool, huh?

I've been so engrossed with Praying Small as of late I've sort of let my teaching slip a bit.  So these days I'm trying to drag in new students.  That's been my focus for the past couple of days.

Franny and Zooey are our dogs.  Franny is six months old and Angie and I saved him from a shelter in Bakersfield, CA, of all places.  Angie found a picture of him online and sent it to me with the text, "this is your son."  Loved that.  A couple of days later we drove the two hours or so up to Bakersfield and took him off death row.  He seemed to know immediately that we were a family now.  He curled up instantly in the back seat and slept.  He had been found, they told us at the shelter, wandering the bad part of Bakersfield (as opposed to the 'good' part, I suppose) at approximately six weeks old.  Someone had obviously just put him out and said, 'good luck.'  He is a ragamuffin of a puppy.  Constantly getting dirty, constantly in mischief of some sort, constantly bothering Zooey trying to get her to wrestle with him, constantly happy.  He is one of the great things in our life today together, Angie and I.  

He curls up and sleeps every night right by my head on the pillow.  When he awakes every day he is wildly enthusiastic about the start of the day.  It is nigh on impossible to not be happy along with him.

Angie has had Zooey since she herself was a puppy.  She's about eleven or so now.  A soulful dog with intelligent eyes.  She loves company.  The moment someone comes through the door she is on their lap and making friends.  The addition of Franny to our little family has taken years off her.  She completely ignored him the first couple of weeks and then finally resigned herself to him.  It was as though one day she just said to herself, 'okay, looks like you're staying.  Let me teach you the ropes.'  And that was that.  Now they are inseparable.  

The really weird thing is this:  long before Angie and I got together I had often told friends I wanted two dogs and I wanted to name them Franny and Zooey, a tip of the hat to one of my favorite books of all time by J.D. Salinger.  When I arrived in L.A. and Angie and I began seeing each other I was amused to find she had a dog named Zooey already.  The next step was obvious.  Thus, Franny and Zooey.

They are the light of my life somedays.  Actually nearly every day.

When I sit down to write everyday, I always take breaks to play with them.  When I return to the keyboard I am refreshed, happy and content.  That is what they do for me.  They are wonderful companions.  And Angie and I love them unconditionally.  And they return the favor.

A lot of writing today on my new piece, Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century.  Not ready to show it to anyone quite yet.  Very close but not quite.  It is the best thing I've ever written.

See you tomorrow.

They Come. They always Come When I Need Them.

A quiet house yesterday.  Not a bad house, just a quiet one.  One rather got the impression they were taking notes as if in a classroom.  Had a couple of 'program people' down front that were clearly getting all of the inside stuff about recovery.  In fact, one of them leapt to her feet in a solo standing ovation at the end.  When I came out for my curtain call she was standing all alone and clapping furiously and weeping.  The program people get this thing, sometimes in a really emotional way.  That has always been the case with this play.

As I mentioned before, the L.A. Times guy was there the night before.  He led the standing ovation for the house, in fact.  I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that was a good sign.  A half hour before the show ended he, apparently, was leaning forward and intently staring at the stage.  Funny how the reviewer is watched so closely for signs of reaction.  I've never been a critic (actually I did review one play way, way back in college for the university paper - typically, I gave the show a middling review and had people mad at me for weeks), but they must be used to that.

We've also got an NPR review out there somewhere.  No one thought to ask her which public radio station she worked for, so we're not quite sure what or when she said something.

Up early today because I fell asleep on the couch accidentally and woke all akimbo, neck and back screaming in pain.  Oh, well.  I haven't fallen asleep watching TV in years.

Interesting performance yesterday because of the relative silence of the audience.  Everyone moved things along quite vigorously.  I actually like it when that happens.  Reminds me to stop acting and get on with things.  Being an actor and consequently having a performance ego roughly the size of the BP oil spill, I sometimes forget that people are there to see and hear a STORY, not to watch me act up a storm.

Today I'm back at the clinic to get a retinal scan.  See what kind of damage the diabetes (the silent killer) has done to my eyes.  Clearly there has been damage, we just don't know the extent yet.  We'll find all of that out today plus pick up some more medication.  I hate this stuff but I have to do it.  Yesterday, during the show, I could actually feel my blood sugar plummet at one point.  Fortunately, there's a spot in the show (I never leave the stage for over two hours) where I can actually EAT.  So as it happens, it worked out okay.  Right after I started feeling a bit weak and sweaty and dizzy, the scene where Brad and I share a lunch happened.  So my blood sugar went back up.

One of my great fears with Praying Small are the transitions from scene to scene.  It is, thru the years, the most glaring mistake a director can make while directing this show.  And sure enough, this version has some, too.  But our PSM and booth guy, Ali, shares the same frustrations as I do about these holes in the show, so together we're plugging them up and moving the show along.  Yesterday we found a couple of spots where we can just get on with it.  I'm sure no one is paying good, solid cash to watch me stand alone on stage and do absolutely nothing at various moments during this show.

We also, Ali and I, fixed a sound cue that was driving me completely bonkers.

I can't wait to see what happens this week with The Times.  If the notice is a rave, we may get a rush of ticket sales.  We need them.  We need them badly.  The recovery community has to get word of this.  If they know about it, they will come.  But they don't know about it at this point.  We have tried to get the word out but it's incredibly difficult because we can't advertise to that community.  It's ethically a very fine line.  One we simply cannot cross.

My buddy, Jim Barbour, and I are racking our brains trying to figure out a strategy to keep the show going after its July 18 closing date.  There are several options that may present themselves.  Options I'm not at liberty to go into at this point.

The show is running fairly smoothly now.  There are only a couple of spots where I find myself thinking of extraneous things onstage.  I never would have thought it possible a couple of months ago to have all of these lines down.  And not only to have them down, but to be waiting for my entrance each night without panic about them.  They come.  They always come when I need them.  They're getting in my muscle memory now.  A very good thing, indeed.

See you tomorrow.

 

L.A. Times in da House...

Well, the LA Times critic was in the audience last night.  The big Kahuna.  Also another paper but I'm not sure who they were.  But, obviously, it is the Times that matters.  A really hot notice from the Times could turn everything around for us.  And last night was a very good show.  Everyone was 'on' and the audience did the standing O thing and everything seemed to fall into place.  We even had a particularly pesky sound cue finally work that never has before.  When I got back to the dressing room after the show, I announced to the cast that the Times had just seen the play.  Some of the actors had asked that they not be informed before hand if a big paper was out there, so Teal respected their wishes and only told me.  I told the cast we did the best we could and it was pretty damn good and if the Times gave us some bad press it won't be because they didn't like how we interpreted things it will be because they don't like what we do.  And there's nothing anyone on God's Green Earth can do about that.  We did our part.  And that's all we can truly do.

Naturally, several people were watching the Times critic out of the corner of their eye to see how he reacted.  I'm told he laughed and cried and took copious notes.  So now we wait.  In the old days in New York, one could finish the show, go to Sardi's, have some drinks and food till around four in the morning and then catch the morning edition of the paper and see the review.  Those were the good, old days, though.  Now we have to wait several days.  And they will be long days, I'm sure, as we all wait to see what our fate is.

I had some old friends in the audience last night.  Bridget Baker, whom I've known since college, was there with her husband, Rob.  And Bud Craig whom I did Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July with many years ago was there with his wife.  They both loved the piece and were full of nice things to say about it.

NoHo's marketing guy, Raul Espinoza was there with his boyfriend, Norman Dixon, who, incidentally, is one of my favorite people with the company.  Just an incredibly nice and sweet-natured man, Norman is.  His one-person show, Becoming Norman, is going up at NoHo following our run of Praying Small.  It's a really interesting journey, I'm told.  Norman comes from a rather rigid Mormon background and his journey to musical theatre and open homosexuality has been a bumpy one.  I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing his story.

The show last night was not a particularly emotional one for me.  They can't all be.  In fact, I've only had one that was so far and that was a dress rehearsal.  And that's perfectly fine.  As I've said before, no one cares what the actor is feeling, much to the surprise of many.  It only matters what the audience feels.  And judging from the standing O and sniffles and sobs I heard coming from the audience at the end of the show, I think it safe to say they were involved with our story.

I'm still struggling now and then for the words in a tough monologue during what I call 'the proposal scene.'  Oy.  Drives me crazy.  STILL can't get those damn words to stick.

Another show today at three.  Nearly a full house, I'm told.  We shall, as ever, do our best.

Anticipating our notice from the Times.  Waiting sucks.

See you tomorrow.

A Glimpse Into My Recurring Fantasy...

Back on the boards tonight.  I'm told its a good house.  Nearly sold out now and probably completely sold out by the time it starts tonight.  I'll spend most of the day getting the lines back in my head.  Not sure what kind of press we'll have there tonight or this weekend.  Hopefully the Times or the Weekly will be there.

We'll all meet a tad early and do a quick line thru.  If it were up to me we'd do this before every performance.  But then again, not everyone else is carrying so many lines in this thing so that wouldn't be fair.

For this kind of show we're very dependent on the 'word of mouth' response.  We can't market directly to the substance abuse community because it's, well, frowned upon.  But what we can do is get the right people in to see it, hope they like it, and let them drum up support on their own.  As our publicist, David Elser, told me a few weeks ago, if one were going simply by the title it would seem to be a Christian play.  And a Christian play is the hardest sell of all because, generally speaking, theatre goers tend to be a liberal lot and most have the same low opinion of Christianity as I do.  So why would they want to see a play about it?  They wouldn't.

Having said that, however, I will write my Christian play someday.  I have no idea what or when it will be but be sure it will be a full-frontal attack on the hypocrisy therein.  Probably a play about The Salvation Army and their evil exploits, but we'll see.  Having worked for that nefarious organization for a few years I am sure there's a play in it.  And someone definitely needs to tell that story.  It falls under the category of 'truth is stranger than fiction.'  I think its fairly safe to say America in general has no idea what this group of greedy and faithless people do every single day and the inestimable harm they cause.

As I pointed out in a marketing meeting a while back at NoHo, theatre is like a restaurant.  If somebody goes and has a good meal, they'll tell maybe three or four people.  But if they go and have a terrible meal with terrible service all the while being overpriced, they'll tell at least a dozen people, probably more.  That's why when we do things like Sanity 2, the feckless production of one-acts we recently closed, it is devastating to our plight as a professional theatre.  The bottom line is this: theatre cannot, in this day and age of economic uncertainty, afford to EVER produce anything that is not extraordinary.  Every single time at bat we have to hit a home run.  There is simply no margin for error these days.

Let me tell you my recurring fantasy over the years.  Let's assume I somehow stumbled across about fifty million dollars.  With me so far?  Most people have that fantasy.  The 'what would I do with a ton of money' fantasy.  Well, my fantasy, unlike others I suppose, is carefully planned out, to the last detail.  I've even taken the time to write it all out, a business plan as it were, detailing the first five years or so.

In 1989 I was hired to do a little play at a theatre on Sanibel Island called, ahem, Pirate Playhouse.  Possibly the worst name for a professional theatre ever conjured up.  But the plant itself, the theatre, the physical house itself, is a dream.  It's a beautiful, state-of-the-art, 200 seat theatre in the heart of Sanibel Island (a paradise if you've never been there) which is on the gulf coast of Florida, off Ft. Myers.  Over the years I did some 14 or 15 plays with this company.  Good plays, too, like Wait Until Dark, Two by Two, The Rainmaker, Boys Next Door, Born Yesterday, Lend Me a Tenor, Run For Your Wife, The Foreigner, Prelude to a Kiss and so on.  The theatre is set far back from the main drag on Sanibel called Periwinkle Way.  There is a bunch of land all around it.  From the road, the theatre looks sort of like a mini-Tara from Gone With The Wind.  Inside it has a beautiful lobby, a great three quarter theatre and dressing rooms.

I've found a picture of the theatre online and included it above.  I think you'll agree that it's an amazing house.

So my fantasy would be to purchase that theatre and the land around it, build studio housing for the actors and designers and technicians brought in for the season from LA, NYC and Chicago.  Build a rehearsal hall, a costume shop, administration offices, a tech shop, maybe even a small, second stage.  There is plenty of parking space there, too.

The audience for that theatre is built in.  Sanibel is swarming with tourists from September to June every year. And Sanibel ain't cheap.  So there are plenty of entertainment dollars floating around.  When I worked there, regardless of the play we were doing, the place sold out nightly. I used to go there, not for the credit or prestige, but because it was a beautiful 'busman's holiday' for me every year.  A chance to get out of NYC during January, February and March.

So Angie and I would purchase that theatre and do some real work there.  Introduce the island to some Shakespeare, perhaps.  Some great and immediate drama.  Introduce them to Mamet and Kushner and McNally.  Do Sondheim.  They'd come because it's professional theatre on Sanibel Island.  The only one, in fact.  It's a monopoly.  Angie has her masters in theatre management, so she'd be general manager.  I would be the producing artistic director.  We'd bring in talented friends that are wonderful actors and directors.  We'd establish a core company of incredible artists.  And we'd have this amazing space in which to do all of this.

That's my fantasy.  I have even gone so far as to map out our first five years of plays, who would direct them and star in them.  Such shows as Sweeney Todd with James Barbour, Angels in America with Brad Greenquist and John Bader, Death of a Salesman with me as Willy and Jeff Wood directing, Inherit the Wind with Michael Moriarty and John Goodman.  Hamlet with an all male cast.  Oh, yes, it's all planned out.  It's quite a fantasy.

Unbelievably, the place has been dreadfully mismanaged over the years.  When I was working there and the name was still the silly Pirate Playhouse, there was a raging tyrant named Bob Cacioppo in charge.  After some years, however, the board of directors simply got fed up with Bob's outsized ego and canned him.  Since then the place has deteriorated into a showcase for glittery musical reviews with a piano and a snare drum and a bunch of rejects from the Lawrence Welk Show.  The kind of fare that gives live theatre a bad and smelly name.

Naturally, Angie and I would change all that and make it a highly sought-after place to work.  Maybe even a prestigious New Works Festival every year.  I even have the new name picked out - "Sanibel Stage."  Sounds much better than Pirate Playhouse, don't you think?  I wouldn't be embarrassed to put "Sanibel Stage" on my resume.

Okay.

Back to reality.  Lost myself there for a bit.  I love that fantasy.  When I'm really stressed sometimes I return to it.  Or late at night when I'm plagued with insomnia.  Or sitting in my backyard sipping iced tea.  It's a great place to go in my head.  Never disappoints.

Now, as I see it, all I have to do is figure out the fifty million dollars part.

See you tomorrow.

Help me and Thank you. That's enough.

http://tolucantimes.info/section/theatre_review/i-was-hopping-on-the-weekend/

Well, the first review of many came in yesterday. The link is above.  A local paper called The Tolucan Times.  A small one, to be sure, but one I'm told is widely read by the patrons and potential audience for our show.  It is circulated in the general area of our theatre, NoHo Arts Center.  And to paraphrase Tip O'Neill, all theatre is local.

The notice was especially gratifying to me.  Now, I know, I know, if you believe the good ones, you gotta believe the bad ones.  I know this and understand it.  But, let's face it, this play is a hard sell.  It's a serious drama about substance abuse.  Certainly, if I had not have written it, I'd think twice about giving up my Friday night for such subject matter.  I completely understand why someone would be reluctant to spend their hard-earned entertainment dollar on this kind of stuff.  So if we're gonna ask someone to spend time and money in our theatre and watch this kind of fare, we'd better damn well give them a show that will knock them senseless.  And I really think we have.  And that's why the review is gratifying.  It's good to know someone else thinks so, too.

I have a confession to make.  I have, as you've no doubt gleaned from my blog, been holding on to a powerful resentment regarding the rehearsal process of the play.  I've let it go.  Mistakes were made.  Egos were bruised.  Choices were wrong.  Okay.  Ultimately, it all worked out fine.  What's the old adage?  Isn't it amazing what can get done if nobody cares who gets the credit?  People make mistakes.  It happens.  So what?  Who the hell am I to constantly remind someone of them?  Awfully arrogant of me.  Time to let all this useless and pointless negative energy go and just do the damn play.  I don't know why it takes me so long to come around to sane thinking sometimes.  I just love to bitch, I guess.

So.  Onward and upward.  We've all got work to do.  Best if we do it together.

Our director, Victor Warren has directed the fuck out this piece.  I am eternally grateful.  It is stunning work.  Simply stunning.  Bravo, Victor, bravo.

I've joined this online thing called Actors Access.  I send my resume and pictures out to a dozen or so different projects everyday.  It cost $68 to join.  It's kind of like the 2010 version of Backstage, except instead of sending out my pic and res thru snail mail like I did back in the day in NYC, I do it online.  It's the new thing.  I'm told no one actually asks for hard copies of pictures and resumes anymore.  It's all done online.  This is only one example of how monumentally out of touch I am with the competitive world of film, TV and theatre these days.  So I've been sending my picture and resume out continually over the past few days.  Sometimes they ask for a "reel."  I have no "reel."  A reel is a short compilation of an actor's film and television work.  My career has been almost entirely devoted to the theatre.  So I'm at a bit of a disadvantage out here.  I'm an East Coast and Chicago actor.  No one knows or cares who I am out here.  I was chatting with my buddy, the veteran film actor, Brad Greenquist, following a show the other night and when I told him I didn't have a "reel" he sort of just looked at me like a clubbed baby seal.  How sad for you, his eyes said.  Needless to say I felt a tad inadequate at that moment.

So I have to get me one of those reel thingees.  I'll start by shooting a short film this summer with Chad Coe and his brother, a gifted filmmaker, I'm told.  I haven't seen the script yet but Chad assures me there's a great role for me as an evil pedophile in it.  Okay.  Let's start with that.

Apparently, a couple of people I'd very much like to see this play are coming either this weekend or next.  One is Joel Zwick, whom I've met a couple of times out here.  Joel has done a ton of TV and film work throughout his long career and has expressed an interest in directing Praying Small if it goes to a larger venue. His name attached would be a great boon to the piece.  The other is Gil Cates, the Artistic Director of the highly regarded Geffen Theatre.  I'd very much like to pursue that connection.  Both are friends with my best buddy, Jimmy Barbour, who has become a one-man cheerleading section for my play.  He is obsessed with getting my writing in front of "important" people out here.  And god knows, Jimmy knows a lot of "important" people.  Jim is, as the Gentle Reader of this blog knows, my best man in my upcoming wedding.  We've known each other for twenty two years.  He was nuts about my benefit performance of From the East to the West and now is obsessed again with Praying Small.  Talking to him everyday inevitably lifts my spirits.  He is convinced my writing is far and away superior to anything currently being done in L.A. theatre.  And he was as shocked as I was when From the East to the West was summarily dismissed after its three day run at NoHo.  Took me awhile to let that resentment go, too.  But I have and it's all worked out for the best.  Chicago will now get the world premiere of that play.

All of this has really been a microcosm of the professional hills and valleys I have before me in this town.  Not everyone will think my writing is the bees knees.  I just have to accept that.  As Sam says in Praying Small, "It's like being color blind.  They'll never quite see what you see."

I found out yesterday a man named Robin died in Chicago after a long battle with Cancer.  Robin was a full-blooded American Indian and somewhat of an icon in the recovery community there.  He was instrumental in my own battle with substance abuse some time back.  I think of him today.  I think of him almost everyday, in fact.  He was the one that taught me to pray.  Robin died with some 36 years of sobriety under his belt.  He held two meetings a week in his home, in his living room.  They were always so crowded you could sometimes not even get in.  Robin didn't have speakers or topic meetings or open or closed meetings.  He just spoke on whatever happened to be on his mind that day for a half hour and then let other people speak afterwards.  Early in my sobriety I told him one night I didn't know how to pray and even if I did, I didn't believe anyone was listening anyway.  Here's what he said to me.  It changed my life.  He said, "Oh, for Pete's Sake it's easy.  Just say 'Help me' when you get up everyday and 'Thank you' when you go to sleep.  That's enough."  I've been doing exactly that for a long, long time now.  It works for me and has saved my ass on many occasions. Rest in Peace, Robin.  You were a good man.  You saved lives.

See you tomorrow.

Bachelor's Graveyard.

My play, Bachelor's Graveyard, is in rehearsal these days under the direction of Karesa McElheney, pictured above.  Of all the plays I've written over the years, this one is my personal favorite.  That is not to say it is my best play; it is not.  But it is my favorite.

Karesa is one of the three co-artistic directors of NoHo Arts Center Ensemble along with Victor Warren and Janet Fontaine.  In addition to her fine work as a director, she's a gifted actress as well, with a number of Ovation nominations and L.A. Drama Awards, etc., to her credit.  A couple of years ago she undertook direction of the massive Angels in America with NoHo.  I would like to have seen that.  I believe it to be some of the best writing for the stage in the American theatre of the past thirty years or so.  It is Kushner's magnum opus, to be sure.

Anyway, a couple of months ago I decided I wanted to have Bachelor's Graveyard seen as a staged reading. Sort of send it up as a test balloon and see what there was to see.  So I called my go-to guys in the company, Chad Coe, Rob Arbogast and J.R. Mangels and also asked Jonathan Zenz and Ryan Keiffner to take part.  About that time Karesa was directing a new play called Sister Calling, or something like that, as a staged reading.  Angie and I went to see it.  The play itself was just awful, but Karesa's direction was really good - clear, concise and no-nonsense.  I liked that.  She didn't try to make the evening about her directing but rather served the play and made everything clear and understandable.  As Mike Nichols once said in a seminar I took with him a thousand years ago; you know when the director has done his job when you don't notice that a play has been directed.  When it is seamless.  I have held that piece of advice close to me since then.  A lot of the time a director thinks he must make the evening about his directing rather than the words.  Always a huge mistake and nearly always one a young and inexperienced director makes.

In any event, once all of the actors had signed on, I asked Karesa if she would be interested in helming it.  She read it and said yes.  Which is sort of funny because the play is a huge piece of testosterone-driven  writing.  Karesa, I thought, would bring a nice bit of estrogen to the process.

One last thing about this seamless directing business.  My favorite collaborator over the years has been Jeff Wood, who helmed a number of my plays in NYC.  You could never see Jeff's directing.  He completely served the play.  I remember doing a piece of mine with him called DAD/SONS.  Acted it with Brad Greenquist.  Jeff was at the peak of his power then as a director and I don't think I've ever had a play of mine directed so seamlessly.  Upon seeing it several people actually asked if we even HAD a director for it.

So the guys and Karesa got together and started working on this thing.  And what started out as a staged reading quickly turned into rehearsal for a full production.  That was not my intention but I'm delighted it turned out that way.  The guys all fell in love with the piece and decided amongst themselves to just mount the damn thing.

I have been so absorbed with Praying Small that I haven't really had much of a chance to see how things are going with the play, but I did stop in a couple of times.  And both times I found myself just sitting there and grinning.  It is such an intentionally sophomoric piece of writing.  I suppose that's why it's my favorite.  It is the red-headed stepchild of my canon.

The play is about the last hurrah five eighteen-year-old boys have in Fulton, Missouri before they all head off into the big, hungry, angry world.  There is a lot of talk of sex and fear.  It is written in Aristotle's Unity of Time, my favorite way to write and some might say, the hardest way to write.  There are no scenes, no transitions, no segues.  The time that elapses for the audience is the exact time that elapses for the actors.

They all meet in an abandoned graveyard outside of a small town named Bachelor, Missouri.  A real town that actually exists.  As does the graveyard.

I can't wait to see what they eventually do with the play.  I believe at this point it's slated for an August opening.  It's somehow comforting to know all I have to do is show up and watch it.

Today I pick up the script for Praying Small and get the words back in my head.  There are so many.  It would be easy to neglect it and find myself adrift on Friday night.  I don't intend to let that happen.

I think I underestimated just how exhausted I was over the past couple of days.  I have been nearly comatose with fatigue.  For the bulk of the strained and tension-filled rehearsal process I was not in the best of health to begin with.  I was squarely in the midst of dealing with my newly-diagnosed diabetes ("the silent killer") during rehearsals and at the same time trying to protect my play from a variety of whimsical ideas to mount it.  It took a lot out of me.  So the past couple of days have been a sorely needed respite from all of that.

But I'm feeling better today despite some very annoying insomnia.

Angie's work situation seems to have reached a plateau of sorts.  We're not really sure what's going on in that arena of our lives.  But whatever it is, it doesn't appear anymore to be immediately threatening.  She is facing it all like a champ everyday.  She has a far greater ability than I do when it comes to that.  Remaining calm when the world is going to hell in a hand basket around her.  One of the many reasons I'm so nuts about her.

The puppies are being fed their breakfast.  The morning is cool and crisp.  The future bright.  The love of my life is busy getting ready for work.  And the possibilities are endless.  All in all, even though it is my nature to whine and bitch about something, anything, in fact, all is unfolding exactly as it should.  It seems I have spent a lifetime cultivating this moment.  And now, much to my delighted surprise, I am sitting dead center in it.  I recommend my life highly.

See you tomorrow.

Give Me What You Got

"What Next?"  That's the phrase Jeb Bartlett uses on The West Wing to great effect.  Sorkin him gave him that line and it's been a favorite of mine for a long time.  What next?  And those are the words on my mind when I woke up today.  What is next?

The last three months of my life have been completely absorbed by Praying Small.  Well, now it's open.  Now we settle in for a run of it.  Now we see if it's got any legs.  Although working with the extraordinary talent involved has been wonderful, the actual process, for reasons I can't go into right now, has not been pleasant.  I've lost a lot of sleep over the birthing of this play.  Constantly in a running battle defending the integrity of the piece.  Only in the last two weeks of the process was I able to concentrate on acting it.  Mostly I was relegated to wearing the armor of the playwright and suiting up daily to keep the demons at bay.  If that sounds a bit cryptic, well, I can't really say more, unfortunately.  I kinda feel like the guy building a house.  I've built the house before.  I know how the house should be built.  I explained in great detail how to pour the foundation, cut the lumber, measure the doors and windows.  Yet I was constantly being told the house would be better if it were built with jello and we didn't need doors and windows and pouring a foundation was a waste of time.  I knew the truth about building a house but for the life of me couldn't get anyone to believe me.  And now, after months of defending my house-building plans, sitting back patiently while we tried using jello and mismatched doors and windows, seeing they didn't work and then hastily going back to my original plans, we have a house.  The foundation is a little shaky and the doors and windows are loose because we have had to build them so quick, but the house stands.

My buddy Jim Barbour and I are starting on plans today for a workshop in September.  We don't really have anything concrete yet, but we're finally both free to start planning.  Jim has been incredibly busy with Nightmare Alley over at The Geffen as well as doing a concert date here and there and, obviously, I've been consumed with Praying Small.  But PS is up and Nightmare Alley is closed so now we can finally sit down and make some plans  Ideally, I'll be teaching scene study and audition technique and Jim will be teaching musical theatre.  We'll both teach Shakespeare.

Other than that we're not quite sure what else.  But it will be fun and informative, I'm willing to bet.  Jim is at the peak of his considerable prowess as a world-class musical theatre performer with a dozen or so Broadway credits under his belt.  And I am ready to teach again here in Los Angeles.  My approach, as I've often recounted here in this blog, is a tad unconventional, but successful.  And nothing succeeds like success.

So, today, Jim and I will meet about all of that.  Looking forward to it.

I have offered my services to helm a new play festival with NoHo Arts...I don't know if that will get off the ground.  A pity if it doesn't.  I rarely offer my services unless I plan on throwing myself completely into a project so if it doesn't it will be a loss, I'm afraid.

I'm enjoying not fretting about the state of the play every day.  Yesterday I sort of physically broke down, not in a bad way, just greatly relieved.  Spent a lot of time in our massive, four-poster bed, flat on my back, staring at the ceiling fan, the puppies gathered around me.  A day of no anxiety.  A day free from defending my words.  A good day.

Angie is going through some massive stuff with her job.  Very stressful for her.  Can't really go into it.  But part of my job these days is to reassure her that life is exactly where it's supposed to be and the only bad stuff in the world is stuff we LET be bad.  Sometimes we have to deal with people that don't fit into our way of seeing life.  The only thing we can change, however, is our reaction to these people.  We can't change people.  It's a tough lesson to learn and I'm not sure any of us ever learn it comprehensively.  The best we can hope for sometimes, is living a good life, loving each other and not allowing our passions to be compromised.

Sometimes it's hard to do just one of those things much less all three.

So unto the breach.  Bring on the day.  Give me what you got.  And if anyone thinks they can stop good things from happening to good people, bring it on.  Nothing succeeds like success.  The epic battle to mount Praying Small is mostly over and whatever happens with Angela's current situation is precisely what is supposed to.  Fearing fear itself is no longer an option in our lives.  We've got better things to do.  We're both far too busy to concern ourselves with failure these days.

See you tomorrow.

Just Say the Damned Lines, Please.

Not a bad show yesterday.  I decided to take my own advice and move things along.  Stop doing so much damn acting when it is not called for.  In other words, just say the damned lines.  Well, what'd'ya know.  It worked.  The play skipped along skippingly and I found some new stuff and I didn't feel like a I was in the middle of a bad episode of Young and the Restless.  I'm talking specifically about me, now.  Given enough encouragement and I can suddenly turn into Jack Lemmon on stage, stammering through nearly every sentence.  It's a bad habit of mine.  So I decided to eliminate that stuff yesterday and lo and behold it worked.  I knew there was a reason I tell my students to do that.

Once I stopped doing so much damned acting, I actually found some moments throughout that were borderline honest.  It's amazing what happens to a play once the actors stops acting it...that is to say, let's the playwright do the acting for him.  The lines in the piece act themselves for the most part.  They certainly don't need any help from me.

The other actors were having a good day yesterday, too, especially Tara.  She was even more moving than usual in our last scene together.

Our friend, Donna Dieken, was in the audience yesterday, too.  Donna was for many years a top-of-the-line musical theatre girl.  Tons of shows.  Beautiful voice.  She rather liked it, I think.  Like many people, Donna has alcoholism in her immediate family and I think the show touched a nerve with her.  Afterwards she joined Angie and I for a cook-out in our backyard before the Tony's last night.  Rob Arbogast, who plays Roman in the show, also joined us.  Great company, smart and funny people, chicken apple sausages.  Good night.

There were a couple of tech flubs, but not bad ones.  There's still a song in the second act that allegedly plays under a scene Rob and I do together.  I say allegedly because I've never really heard it.  I hear snatches of it here and there.  I've heard rumors it is there.  When I do hear it it's more like a waft of a song coming from someone's kitchen in an apartment across the street.  I've been told it's a 'difficult cue.'  Well, yeah, I can imagine.  Playing a song underneath a scene sounds like a dilly of a cue to me.

Anyway.

The Tony Awards were on last night.  It was an embarrassment to our industry.  Movie stars slumming it.  Catherine Zeta-Jones did a rendition of Send in the Clowns last night like the cops were after her and she only had a few seconds to sing the song before making a getaway.  She kept snapping her head around like a felon caught in an alley.  Pitiful.  Following this odd and uncomfortable moment, they gave her a Tony.  Good Lord.

Denzel Washington couldn't even remember the name of the people giving him his Tony.

While I'm sure both of these stars are fairly good actors when the opportunity occurs, everyone in this business knows that stage work is the real litmus test for actors.  I'll probably get some nasty comments here, but the truth is, film acting is easy.  For the really good actors, the trained ones, the ones with some game, it's kind of like asking Picasso to draw a circle.  It's easy for him.  The canvas, the full piece, that's the tough stuff.  Film acting requires very little, generally speaking.  The layman doesn't understand this and consequently the nation ends up worshipping the DeCaprios and the Lohans and the Nicholsons of the business.  Actors that have never set foot on stage.  Ah, well.  No one ever said life was fair.

I was pleased to hear Reverend James Mellon mentioned in one of the acceptance speeches last night.  James is the Executive Director of NoHo Arts Center Ensemble, which is producing Praying Small.  He's on leave of absence right now because he's battling some very serious health issues.  It was nice to hear his name spoken.  Very cool.

I also realized as I was watching last night how out of touch I am with the NY theatre community these days.  There was a time I would probably know personally about half of all the nominees.  I didn't know a single soul last night.  I saw Nathan Lane in the audience.  Nathan is an old buddy.  But that was about it.  I knew no one.  Sigh.

A beautiful four days off from the show this week.  For the first time in months I feel relaxed today.  There is no stress or anxiety about having to defend my words in a rehearsal.  I've done all I can to make my play as good as it can be.  Some battles I won and some I lost.  The ones I lost are the moments in the play people are unhappy with.  Again, life isn't always fair.  Sigh.

So today, I have every intention of playing Diablo on the computer.  Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to most, but I love playing Diablo on my computer.  I have a warrior-class fighter that I've neglected for awhile and today I'm sending him out to kill some monsters.  And that's just the way I roll.

See you tomorrow.

Brad Greenquist.

My old, old buddy, Brad Greenquist, popped over to see the play last night.  Pictured above.  I honestly think Brad works more than any other actor in L.A.  He is constantly in motion as an actor.  Even though last night following the show he was telling me about the dismal state of affairs it is for actors currently in this town.

Brad's a funny guy.  Very courtly.  Very old school.  He stands ramrod straight, with perfect grammar and diction, hands behind his back as though lecturing, barking laughs at the most surprising moments.  Everything I remember about him from those many years ago in NYC when we were both flailing about as young actors. He is also, and perhaps most importantly, a very kind man.  I have never, in all the years I've known Brad, heard him say something negative about another human being.  It's not something one notices at first.  But as time goes by one realizes there is something different about him.  At least this is how it worked for me.  And then one day I realized he doesn't speak out of school.  Ever.  It's an enormously attractive trait.  And incredibly rare.

We met when I started studying with Michael Moriarty in 1986.  Brad's career was, it goes without saying, moving much faster than mine.  He had just finished two large roles in two major films: Bedroom Window and Pet Semetary.  It was clear he was Michael's favorite pupil.

One night, after several months of studying together, I asked him if he wanted to grab a beer after class.  We did.  And thus started a friendship that has lasted twenty four years now.  Some time later, I was doing a few segments of my play DAD/SONS in class and Michael asked me if it was finished, if the play was ready to go.  I said yes.  He said, well, let's produce it.  It was a two-person play about two estranged brothers, one steeped in the lifestyle and colloquialisms of Southern Missouri, the other an intellectual of sorts who had moved away to make his mark in New York.  It was a young play from a young writer.  My friend and longtime director, Jeff Wood, was helming it.  So Brad and I rehearsed it and performed it for a bit at Theatre 22 with Michael Moriarty producing.  It was, if I don't say so myself, a good, little piece of young writing.

Brad hit a dry patch in his career for a bit in the late eighties.  I was working as a waiter at a place up on 56th street.  Brad told me he needed a job.  So I got him hired on to wait tables there.  It must have been hard for him because at least once during every shift one of his tables recognized him.

In any event, Brad moved to L.A. about the same time my stage career began to boom.  He wanted to work on film.  I never had any interest in that.  So while I began a good run of work that lasted about ten years on the East Coast, Brad began booking tons of gigs on TV and film on the West Coast.  He found a niche of sorts out here and began working nearly non-stop.  It seemed for awhile there, I couldn't turn on the TV without seeing him in episodic television.  Always the best thing in it, too.

He had some really wonderful things to say about the play last night.  If the play moves to a larger venue, I kind of had it in my mind for Brad to take over the lead role of Sam.  Frankly, I just didn't want to keep doing it.  There is talk and some early negotiations for Praying Small to move to a very well known theatre out here. I told Brad about my idea.  He said, "I'm flattered but sorry.  No one can play that role now that you've done it.  It is yours.  You owe it to the play to act it yourself from here on out."  My thoughts were to slip Brad into the role and then direct it myself.

But he loved Praying Small.  He said it was like watching open heart surgery.  Hm.

We have known each other a long time, as I said, and we both approach our work in a very similar fashion having both studied with Moriarty.  So his criticisms, albeit minor, were taken very seriously.  I suppose I'm not surprised but essentially he has the same criticisms I do about the piece.  And none of those involve the artistic work by the actors.

The play was all over the place last night.  Lines dropping in here and taken out there.  I think four or five scenes with the other actors were all rather scattershot.  Although, oddly, I don't think we actually DROPPED any lines.  We just didn't say them in the right order.

The tech stuff continues to plague the play.  I have reached an impasse of sorts with the director.  He appears to be happy with the way things stand.  I am not.  That's the long and short of it.

Today a thee o'clock matinee.  No idea what the house is.  I'll call Teal in a bit and ask.  Angela and I have a few friends today in the audience and no doubt we'll meet up with them afterwards and have something to eat.  And then a four-day, much-desired rest.

This is, at this particular time anyway, not really the forum to go into the myriad of things bothering me about the technical aspects of the show, but suffice to say, it is reaching a boiling point where something either must be done or we simply accept the fact that it will forever be sub-standard.  I do not think it possible for me to ever accept sub-standard work.  In the theatre I have always believed there are only two speeds:  Brilliant and then everything else.  If it's not brilliant there's no point in doing it.  Nightly I am appalled when I think of the $25 tickets being purchased and then giving them less than what we are capable of.  I feel like we're giving the $25 ticket holders a $15 show.

In any event, not sure how I can handle all of this, but I'll call some close friends and advisors today and get a read on it all.  Talked to my buddy and closest friend, Jimmy Barbour yesterday about it for hours.  As always, he had some great insight into my frustrations.

The play is working.  The play is at times a soaring piece of work.  I'm happy with the words I've written and I'm terribly pleased with the fine, fine interpretive work from the other actors.  We will all do our best again today.  And the next day.  And the next.  That's what we do.

See you tomorrow.