You Can't Go Home Again...unless you're a different person.

Backstage West in the house last night.  This is the industry paper for actors, directors, writers, etc. in Los Angeles.  Tonight another of the big three, The L.A. Weekly, a weekly (obviously) paper here devoted to arts, culture and music.  Both should be out next Thursday.

I'm told by the ever-vigilant, critic-watchers that the Backstage reviewer was "stoic" although he seemed to enjoy it and concentrated silently throughout.

A vocal house last night.  One lone, jubilant standing ovation participant at the end.  No doubt a program person.

This morning I've got a class to teach and then an audition for a "documentary pilot" at noon.  Not sure what that entails but it's good money and they contacted me about coming in to read today.  It's in Beverly Hills.  So I'll trek over that way after finishing my teaching and see what happens with that.

Thomas Wolfe famously wrote the all-encompassing line, "You can't go home again."  I think it was in Look Homeward, Angel.  He was talking about a lot of things with that line, not of course, simply going home.  He was talking about our human tendency to try and recapture a moment, a place, a time in our life that has past, that we cannot revisit no matter how hard we try.  Maybe rekindling a love affair, or trying to pick up a feeling, a specific moment, that has disappeared.  It is one of the saddest lines in all of literature.

Since beginning this journey with Praying Small and the press its received I've had a few emails from the past. Got one last night, in fact.  People I haven't seen or heard from for thirty years or more.

Got an email from an old high school teacher last night that left me a bit perplexed.  Said he wanted to "pick up where we left off."  Personally, I didn't know there was anything to "pick up" to begin with.  He said, "I think this writing thing is something good for you, good for your future."  Hm.  Having been writing plays successfully for nearly twenty years, I wasn't quite sure what to think of that.

But I was, in fact, transported back to a time in my life, my late teens, growing up in central Missouri, miserable without actually knowing that I was miserable.  Not even knowing why.  Now, of course, I know why.  I was living with a raging, abusive, out-of-control alcoholic family.  But I didn't know that then.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I honestly believed, because I didn't have anything to compare it to, that EVERY family drank to paralyzing excess every night of their lives.

But this is not going to be a therapy session today.  I was simply intrigued because I actually use that line of Wolfe's in the play.  You can't go home again.  And God knows I have tried so many times in my life.  So many times I've tried to recapture something that was fleeting, both good and bad.

But then I began to think further on the line and I came to the conclusion that it DID actually work once in my life...when I moved to Los Angeles and began seeing Angela.  We had been seeing each other many years ago in college and when I moved here and "picked up" where we had left off, lo and behold, it worked.  It absolutely worked.  Never before or since.  Naturally, there were lots of changes, lots of things that were different, one being our age.  But hard compromises were made and now we're engaged to be married in November.

We are two completely different people than we were then, both of us with quite literally a lifetime between seeing each other, or in my case, several lifetimes.  But it was perfect timing for us.  Perfect kismet.  And now, against the laws of nature itself, we are both incredibly happy with the outcome.

I don't usually dwell on the extreme personal in this blog, some references, an occasional nod in that direction...mostly I save that kind of writing for the stage which, oddly, is far safer.  Behind the veil of drama and characterization it seems somehow less intrusive to speak openly of a complicated past.  And of course, in my case, the specter of addiction was always a hard and true factor in nearly every relationship I've had, be it with a lover or with a teacher or, for that matter, the local mailman.  Everything was colored by that truth in my life.  And acceptance being the answer to all our problems, I've accepted it.  And moved on.  Not wanting to change the past, but hopefully learning from it and not spending an eternity 'doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.'

A nebulous blog today, but that's okay.  I just wanted to touch on that.  That hopeless moment we've all experienced it seems at some point in our life when we've made the vain attempt to 'go home again.'

Last night after the show I had a flurry of texts back and forth with my dear friend, Jimmy Barbour, who is in NYC recording his newest CD.  We have both reached a time in our lives where changes have to be made.  He's having a tough go of it in NY right now.  He doesn't care for that city, the metropolis where, in the past, he has had so many professional victories.  These days, for Jim anyway, NY holds some tough memories.  And I completely and unashamedly understand.  I, too, have felt the same way.  It is one of the reasons I shall never, under any circumstances, set foot in Chicago again.  There's just too much blood under the bridge.

Jim and I are joining forces this September to teach a workshop here in Los Angeles.  He'll be teaching the interpretation of musical theatre and I'll be doing my naked face scene work.  And both of us will be teaching a new way to look at performing Shakespeare.  We have a slew of folks already verbally signed on for the workshop and I'm sure we'll have many more.  I look forward to it.

Jim is another strange case in my life where I was, to a certain extent, able to 'go home again.'  We never tried to pick up and relive our halcyon days of working together in regional theatre all those years ago.  But we have revived a friendship based on trust and unconditional support.  Regardless of our trials and tribulations over the past two decades, we have always been friends.  We have been since the moment we met in a parking lot in Kentucky, of all places, back in May of 1988.

The same is true of my buddy, John Bader, who is currently in Iowa carefully monitoring his mother's delicate health.  When John moved to LA many years ago, I was still in NYC plugging away at a career in tatters because of excessive behavior.  But John and I remained friends regardless of my own irresponsible choices over the years.  He has never been less than encouraging.  And now we speak daily as he anxiously awaits a moment of sadness with his family in the midwest.  He is incredibly supportive of everything I do here on the West Coast.  Always giving advice and being gentle and honest with me.  His companionship since moving to this new and strange land has been unswerving and completely uncompromising.  Not sure I could have done it without him.

Thomas Wolfe had so, so many things on his mind when he wrote that sentence, you can't go home again.  But I've discovered that sometimes you CAN actually go home again.  You just can't go back to the same neighborhood.  You can't ride the same bike.  You can't stand in the same yard.  You can't sneak in the same backdoor.  You can't lay awake at night and listen to the same grown-up, far-away, drunken, senseless chatter.  You can't dwell on the same doors being slammed.  And you can't be the same person.

See you tomorrow.  

LA Times Review...

OF LOVE AND RECOVERY

"Sobriety doesn't make life easier, it makes livin' it easier."  Such candid truisms punctuate the self-circumscribed humor and grit of "Praying Small" with admirable determination.  Clifford Morts' much-acclaimed 2003 study of one man's journey to recovery receives a respectable West Coast Premiere at NoHo Arts center.

A stylized prologue segues into Alcoholics Anonymous-birthday remarks by protagonist Sam Dean (author Morts, essaying the role for the first time).  What follows is a boomeranging, nonlinear look at Sam's trek, from successful Manhattan yuppie status to rock bottom and back, repeatedly revisiting the key moment of regret when wife Susan (Tara Lynn Orr) finally had enough.

Director Victor Warren keeps his committed cast atop the zigzags around set designer Lacy Alzec's  minimalist porticos and Coby Chasman-Beck's intense lighting plot.  Morts' unfussy Everyman quality, pitched directly between the young Ed Asner and middle-period Bob Hoskins, counters a fleeting sense of authorial restraint.  Orr is imposing as Susan, her emotional acumen most impressive the given fragmented structure.

Their colleagues do yeoman work in multiple roles, wwith Brad Blaisdell in particular a standout as Sam's quietly tough-loving sponsor.  Rob Arbogast finds raw humanity in downwardly spiraling fellow drunk Roman, while Melanie Ewbank's authority figures and Bonnie Cahoon's functionaries keep up with Morts' singular schematics.

It's an honest, laudably non-polemic piece for a niche play, at some levels beyond conventional criticism.  Certainly, anyone who has struggled with its core issues, and/or those love them, should consider "Praying Small" de rigeur.

David C. Nichols

Making God Laugh.

No Times review, either online or in the paper.  I have no idea what's going on.  My buddy in Colorado, Michael Catlin, a fine, former LA actor, seems to think they might save it for the Sunday edition because it's a special notice.  I don't know.  All I know is we need the review right now.  We need the word out there about this play.  We need outside confirmation that what we have done is worth seeing.

It was a bit of a surprise that the Times even showed up in the first place.  We didn't expect them.  In fact, our producer, the astonishing Teal Sherer, received the call the very afternoon they attended.

I almost stepped away from the theatre back in 1989.  I was in NY and couldn't get arrested.  Try as I might I couldn't get in the door.  Couldn't get an agent.  Couldn't get my plays mounted.  Couldn't get hired to do anything in a decent house.  I was just one more of a thousand twenty-something actors wandering around New York City.  Some with talent, some not.  Either way, it didn't seem to make much of a difference.

As I've mentioned before in this blog, I started studying with the brilliant actor Michael Moriarty in 1987.  I learned more from Michael in one night about acting than I had, it seemed, in the previous eight years.  Michael was never interested in teaching the actor how to rehearse, like most acting teachers, but only in teaching one how to perform.  Teaching one how to get a job.

He's a tremendously positive teacher.  Always starting criticism with positive comments.  Saying first, "you do such and such very well here..." and then moving gently into the real criticism.  As a world-class actor himself he was always more than aware of the young actor's fragile ego.

So at the time I was working at a restaurant on Fifth Avenue in the city.  I was climbing the ladder of in-house, restaurant politics quickly.  If I had wanted I could have moved quickly up that ladder and been making some very good money in the restaurant business.  But it was wearing me down.  The servility alone was making me a bit crazy.

One day in class, I did a few monologues from a new one-person show I was doing at the time called Our Generation.  As was Michael's custom, he started out by asking how I was doing.  I told him I was thinking of getting out of the business.  That I had been in NYC for almost four years now and hadn't had a real break come my way.  He nodded and asked me to show him what I had that night.  Following the monologues he didn't offer any criticism, he just asked me to see him following class that evening.

When class ended I stuck around.  After the last student had wandered out he asked me to take a seat.  He said, very simply, "You are one of the best I've ever seen at this.  You are in the one percent of one percent.  You mustn't quit.  See you next week."  It meant more to me than I can ever say, even today.  So I kept plugging away.  And eventually, if not becoming a "star," I got to the point that I didn't have to do anything but act to make a living.

Some years back I read an interview with Joe Pesci in Rolling Stone.  He was talking about his early years as an actor.  He, too, had a similar story to mine.  He was working as a restaurant manager in NYC.  Gigs were occasional.  Some years better than others.  He decided to quit.  Just make a living in the restaurant business. And then he got a call from Martin Scorcese's people about a call back for a new film called Raging Bull.  He decided to give it one last shot.  And, as we all know now, it changed his life.

Eventually, I did end up bowing out of the theatre business for a few years.  I had an epiphany of sorts and decided to go back to school and get my C.A.D.C. (Certificate of Alcohol and Drug Counseling).  I chucked my stage aspirations for a few years and decided to get my hands dirty doing "real" work for a change.  I became a counselor on the north side of Chicago, working with newly sober and low-bottom alcoholics.  It was demanding and heart-breaking work.  In fact, it was during this period that I wrote Praying Small.

After a few years in the mud I came back to the theatre.  I realized my noble epiphany was misguided.  That the work I could do in the theatre was every bit as noble and life-changing as my one-on-one work as a counselor.  I don't regret it.  Not for one instant.  Being poor and an artist is infinitely preferable to being rich and a counselor.  Besides, my sorjourn into the counseling world was a useless period of running into brick walls, anyway.  The relapse rate, I discovered, was nigh on %100.  Addiction is not something one can be talked out of, I discovered reluctantly.

Now, in Los Angeles, I feel a bit like I did all those years ago in NY when Michael offered me those kind and  well-timed words of encouragement.  I keep sending my resume out and hearing absolutely nothing in return.  I don't have an agent or a "reel" yet.  I am spinning my wheels, it would seem.  I can't get anyone in the industry to come see my play.  I watch others around me land audition after audition and I sit idly by waiting for my cell to ring.  And considering Angie's and my financial concerns, it would appear I'll soon have to do something else to make a living for awhile.  Something I haven't had to do for a good many years.

We shall see what we shall see.  My old buddy, Father Joe Sampson, of a parish in Brooklyn, at one point my best friend in the world and someone I credit with saving my life, once said to me, "Do you know how to make God laugh?  Tell Him your plans."

Having said that, we shall, indeed, see what we shall see.

See you tomorrow.

Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century

Above, the terrifying sign hanging above the entrance to Auschwitz.

We should get a review today from The Los Angeles Times.  I'll post it in a separate blog if it comes out later.

As is my habit, I'm up inordinately early, having my coffee and eating a banana.  Around seven I'll wander up the street and pick up The Times at out local bodega.  They probably don't call them 'bodegas' here in LA but that's what they're called in NY so I still do.

In the first few years of my living in NYC I had a place for awhile up in Washington Park, way uptown on the west side of Manhattan.  A little ratty apartment on 172nd street.  It was above Harlem and below the Bronx in an isolated little area full of old Jews and European transplants from the fifties.  One morning, shortly after moving there, I walked to the little bodega on the corner to get bagels and coffee.  As I waited behind an older woman to pay for my stuff, I noticed, as she paid for her stuff, the tattoo on her wrist.  It was a concentration camp tattoo.  Numbers in ink etched into her wrist.  I was stunned for a second.  Never seen one in person before or since.  I was so shocked, in fact, that I must have been staring because when she turned around she noticed me.  She looked briefly at her wrist and then back to me and smiled thinly.  I couldn't say anything.  Just stood and stared.  She nodded quickly to acknowledge that what I was seeing was real and walked out.  I still think now and again about that moment twenty four years later.

Shortly thereafter I began reading everything I could get my hands on regarding the holocaust.  Not with any goal in mind, just to get my mind around it.  I still don't think I have fully.

Later, I wrote a one-person play called If This Is A Man based on a book by Primo Levi about his time in a concentration camp as an Italian Jew.  Did it with a theatre, now defunct, called The Kraine Theatre on the lower east side in NY.

Over the years, film and television have tried to capture the images and mindset of the holocaust.  They inevitably fail.  Even our imagination can't conjure up the horrors that took place.  Dante' himself would have been rendered speechless.

When I visited Europe a long time ago I took a tour of Auschwitz.  I shall forever remember the sign above the entrance in German...Arbeit Macht Frei..."Work Sets You Free."  Today I find it incredible that The Salvation Army uses the same catch phrase for their terrible and secret Adult Rehabilitation Centers all across America.  They are not a particularly bright lot, these guys, these "ministers," so I"m sure the irony completely escapes them.

I saw the ovens, the barracks, the "hospital" where the nefarious "experiments" took place.  I have never, and I mean never, been so emotionally overwhelmed.  By the end of the day I was far, far past tears or wailing or anger.  I was simply stunned.

To this day, when things or situations in my own life tend to become unmanageable, I think of that tour.  I try and place myself in that situation, as far as my mind will let me, anyway.  And almost immediately I realize all over again how lucky I am.  How fortunate to have been born too late for it.

My new play, Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century, deals with three separate couples in three different eras.  One of the couples are a young boy and his mother.  The play starts with them waiting to be assembled by the NAZI's for a train to Auschwitz.  The boy is worried about his dog.  Who will take care of it?

Three hours and three acts later, he is experimented on himself in that very room I witnessed in that camp all those years ago.  I have the perfect young actor in mind to play the role if I can get it produced sometime in the next year.  Young Matthew Shane, who was quite possibly the only bright spot in the night of one-acts we recently mounted at NoHo ACE.

The play is a blank stage play, sixteen characters for sixteen actors, a huge canvas, obviously.  I'd like to get it done somewhere decent with good actors, committed and passionate.  We'll see.

Our next door neighbor's rooster (yes, I live in an area of LA full of barnyard animals, it seems)  is starting to crow.  Bits of light may be seen in the sky.  It's already warm and fresh outside.  Another day in a beautiful city blessed with beautiful weather.  What the hell kept me in Chicago, that terrible, dirty, corrupt city in the bible belt for so long?  I don't know.  I didn't know any better, I guess.  But now, ah, now, I do.

See you tomorrow.

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.