What's Next...

Interesting evening.  It was our "Special Invited Audience Only Complete with Talkback and Reception" Night.  A mouth full, that one.  Nary a line was called for.  I just said the first and last line of the play and then sat down and opened the floor for questions.

Actually, it wasn't a bad night, overall.  I think the second act lagged but that's just my opinion.  I got a little too comfortable out there and began doing the monologues kind of like that old Wonderful World of Disney Voice Over Guy...you know the one..."Well, long about this time Ol' Mama Bear started in to lookin' around for her cubs..."  So just to liven things up a bit I started shouting during the tender moments.

Okay.  I didn't do that.  But I did feel like things got a little casual in the second act for my taste.

Here's a cool thing:  Marty Ingalls and Shirley Jones were in attendance.  Yes, Shirley Jones of Partridge Family fame.  Although that's not what impresses me about Shirley Jones.  What impresses me about Shirley Jones is that she did a movie called Bedtime Story with Marlon Brando.  So after the talk-back (a talk-back, for the uninitiated, is when the director, playwright and actors sit onstage and answer questions about the play from the audience following the performance) I chatted with Shirley and Marty (who, incidentally, is a very funny man).  They loved the play, which is a nice thing.  Shirley's opinion of Brando was the same as everyone else that ever worked with him.  She said he could've been our greatest actor, but he just didn't give a shit.

I have to take a serious look at two of the monologues today.  The very same ones that continue to elude me. At this point my theory is if I just say them over and over and over, ad nauseum, maybe something will stick.  I simply cannot memorize them as I would any other piece of writing.  After weeks of trying, it doesn't work.  So now I'm taking the rote method.

I didn't get the "icing on the cake" last night, which is to say, I never really "felt" anything.  It wasn't by any means a cathartic performance for me.  Purely technical with a ton of thinking going on all the time.  What's next, how do I make this point clearer, pick up the pace, stop emoting, pull back, try this here, try that there.  It was that kind of night.

My buddy Jim Petersmith was there.  He was crying when he met me afterwards.  A very rare thing.  So I'm guessing he liked it.

The beautiful and supportive Angie was there and taking care of every need I had before I even asked.  She is the smartest, sexiest, most beautiful girl and partner and fiancee in the world.  I don't deserve her.

A critic from one of the smaller papers, I can't remember which, was there and very complimentary following the show, so I'm guessing we'll get some good press there.  But critics are notoriously unpredictable.  One never knows.

Opening night tonight.  Full house.  A few close friends will be there.  Jimmy Barbour, a couple of others.  Jim and I are raring to go on his one-person show, 3 UPPER, which I'm writing for him.  I think we'll be starting that very soon.  He's finally ready to tell his horrific story.  And I'm ready to write it.

I have some words to look at now.

See you tomorrow.

"I have a ranch in Montana and a wife who loves me."

We had a few invited guests last night during our, ahem, run-thru.  They were all terribly complimentary following the show.  For me, however, the night was as long and arduous as the entire length of WWII.  So, so many problems in the second act.  For one thing, and perhaps the thing that bothered me the most, was the fact that I called for line five times.  The sad fact is this: there are certain sections of the play that my brain absolutely refuses to commit to memory.  It freezes like a block of ice.  The words simply will not come.  I am completely exasperated by it.

Even though there are technical problems, and no doubt tonight will be the same, I can overlook that, I can navigate my way around the stage in total darkness if need be.  It's not the end of the world.  I'm slightly annoyed by the tech things (mind you, this is after four straight days of tech) but I can adapt to them when push comes to shove.  What I cannot adapt to is my own inability to learn the god damned lines.

I was deeply ashamed of myself last night.  I have about, from this moment, seven uninterrupted hours to work the trouble spots before I show myself on stage again.  I frankly don't know if I can do it.

My first instinct, of course, is to blame someone else.  I'm just that kinda guy.  But it's a self-defense instinct.  In the final analysis, regardless of the disagreements I may have with all of the cues and tech things happening, the real problem lies within me.  I don't know the damn lines.

I really don't have any clue as to what tonight will bring.  I suspect there's a good chance I may have to hide out in Canada for awhile.  I'm beginning to think a little like Floyd Patterson, the former heavyweight champion of the world, after he fought and was knocked out by, Sonny Liston.  Patterson donned make-up and fake wigs and mustaches for weeks after the fight because he was so ashamed of being recognized.  I think I may have to do the same.  I'm thinking I'll have Angie waiting at the stage door with the car warmed up and ready to whisk me away.  I'll just leap into the backseat and cover myself with a blanket and get out of L.A. as quickly as possible.  We have a friend with a cabin up at Big Bear.  Maybe I could hide out there for awhile until the furor of my truncated and abysmal performance subsides.  Angie could bring me food and leave it on the doorstep and I could wait until it got dark to open the door and quickly drag it in.  I could take the puppies with me for company.  They won't judge me.

Okay.  Maybe it's not all that bad, but it certainly feels like it.

As you may have already guessed, Gentle Reader, I am an amateur boxing historian.  I pour over old boxing stories and books.  I collect old fight films.  I memorize dates and stats with relish.  It's an odd part of who I am, but there you have it.

When Jess Willard was defeated by the great Jack Dempsey for the heavyweight championship back in the 1920s, he took a mighty beating.  Really life threatening.  Dempsey broke four of his ribs, his nose, his jaw, dislocated his eye socket, gave him a concussion, internal bleeding, just an awful thrashing.  After the slaughter, as Willard lay on his rubbing table in his dressing room, beaten and broken, bloody and nearly comatose, he kept saying, over and over, "I have a ranch in Montana and a wife who loves me."  This image has always stayed with me.  It's a tragic one.  I think maybe the same may happen to me tonight.  After I thoroughly embarrass myself onstage, I'll be in my dressing room saying over and over, dazed and beaten, "I have a cottage in Glendale and a fiance' who loves me."

I'd love to write more but I have to memorize some lines.

See you tomorrow.

Paraphrasing a Pause.

A surprising and frustrating run thru last night.  Surprising because I decided at one point to pull everything back and see what happens.  Frustrating because I never knew what barnyard animal was going to introduce itself into one of my monologues.  It was a variation of the "no obligation" rehearsal for me.  This is something my friend, the very fine actor John Bader, passed onto me.  It means "no obligation to the audience."  I have done it before but I'd never heard it called that.  By "no obligation" he is talking about not caring whether the audience can hear you or not.  It is, obviously, purely for rehearsal.  However, having said that, it can be tremendously beneficial to the actor.  Personally, it allows me to discover things in my work that I normally wouldn't give any thought to.  It gives me the freedom to take some big, clumsy, awkward pauses that normally I would never do.  But since my obligation is solely to the other actor onstage, I don't feel bad about taking them.  I took a few of them last night and fortunately I'm working with some crackerjack actors that stayed right with me.

I abhor pauses for the most part.  I've done a complete 180 in my thinking about this from when I was younger.  Early in my career I was the pause king.  I think it's simply a young actor thing.  For some reason we're convinced people like to see us think.  They don't.  At least they don't like to see us think if there's nothing else going on.  This is another bi-product of growing up in the age of TV and movies.  In the movies we watch actors think all the time.  And it's not a bad thing at all.  But mostly it's because there's a close-up on the actor and his big, fat head is filling the screen so we have no choice but to watch him think.  The theatre, and this may come as a shock to a lot of young actors, does not have close-ups.  No one is following us around onstage watching our every nuance.  Often times we THINK they are because A) that's what we grew up with - TV and movies.  And B) we all have egos roughly the size of the BP oil spill and we think audiences are just itching to watch us think and discover.  Here's one of the most valuable pieces of basic acting anyone can ever learn:  think while the other actor is talking.  Do your introspection when something else is happening.  That way when your cue comes around you've gotten it all out of your system and you're ready to say the line.  Quickly and without dead air.

There's a book out there called Tricks in My Pocket about Paul Newman directing Joanne Woodward and John Malkovich in the landmark remake of the film of Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie.  If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it.  Malkovich is heartbreaking in it.  In any event, the book is mostly just a transcript of the exact conversations that took place during the three week rehearsal process.  In it, Newman constantly uses the phrase, "Earn your pauses."  At one point he is directing James Naughton, playing The Gentleman Caller, and he stops him and says, "That pause was not earned, Jim.  Do it again."    It's a wonderful piece of advice from a wonderful actor/director.  On the other hand, there is a moment when Malkovich takes a big, fat pause and Newman says, "Normally I'd say cut the pause, John.  But your pauses are so filled I can't seem to make myself say that."  And he's right.  Malkovich does more with a pause than most actors do with a career.

Nearly across the board I've found that veteran actors steer clear of unearned pauses.  And every bit as true - most young actors gravitate toward them as though they were salvation itself.  Usually when I'm directing a piece, about a week before we open I'll have what is knows as a "speed thru."  Saying the lines as fast as one can and nearly sprinting about the stage from one action to the next.  When it is done I will tell the cast that that is only slightly faster than it actually should be done in front of an audience.  Usually they are aghast.  Directors, too, fall into this trap sometimes.  The elusive search for "moments."  Here's a truism:  no one pays $25 to go to the theatre to see "moments."  Although a nice, effective, dramatic moment is certainly something to be appreciated, it is not what the evening is about.  It's sort of like paying to see a movie and only caring about the car chases.  Nice topping on the cake, but not what the cake's about.

So last night I threw a lot of that decades-long stage saavy out the door and decided to just let some of the "moments" happen.  Especially in the second act where there are lots of opportunities for me to do this.  I learned what I could learn from it and tonight will go back to moving things along.  Shakespeare, as always, has the last word on this: the play's the thing.  It's about the story.  It's a story-telling medium.  It's all about telling a story.  To lose sight of that is a terrible thing.  It's easy to do sometimes.  We become bored with the story because we've heard it so often.  Consequently we begin to embrace "second choices" in order to liven things up for ourselves.  This is dangerous.  It tampers with the all-important "illusion of the first time."  It's a tricky time for director and actor alike.  This is when stupid acting and directing choices are made.  At the time they seem like wonderful, unexpected choices.  But a few days later when the audience arrives, what had seemed funny or exciting or unpredictable in rehearsal, simply becomes incomprehensible to the paying audience that is watching the story for the first time.

Not to say this is happening in Praying Small.  I honestly don't think it is.  Except perhaps on my part.  No one else is making stupid choices right now.  I sort of am.  But it's not because I'm bored, it's mostly because I still haven't found what I want in my own performance so I'm kind of just throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.

There seems to be a joke at rehearsals these days.  Whenever someone senses that maybe I'm displeased with something I hear, "Uh, oh.  That's going in the blog."  Nothing could be further from the truth.  If I wrote about everything I was displeased about I'd never have any time in my life to do anything but blog.  Besides, ninety nine percent of the time I don't have to verbalize what displeases me.  It fixes itself on its own.

I think all the barnyard animals were cut last night.  This pleases me greatly.  What with all the chickens clucking and bears roaring and ducks quacking and dogs barking and horses neighing one was beginning to get the idea the play was about preserving wildlife.

Today is all about going back to the script.  The playwright has written some arresting sentences here and there and I'd kind of like to say them correctly.  Years ago I did an independent film with the veteran actor Wilford Brimley.  Wilford is a great guy, funny and wise and simple.  We were doing a scene together one day and I was waiting for my cue.  It never came.  In fact, nothing even remotely like it came.  The director yelled cut.  I turned to Wilford and said, "I'm sorry, Wil, but I just didn't know when to come in."  He said, "Ah, don't worry about it.  I paraphrased the whole damn thing.  Hell, Clif, I could paraphrase a pause."

Tonight another dress with a few invited guests from the company.  Tomorrow our bigwig preview.  Friday we open to a sold-out house.

See you tomorrow.

More Acting, Less Chickens...

A relatively successful run-thru last night.  A few troublesome spots for me.  Some sound cues that clearly do not fit what we're trying to do.  But aside from that, not horribly discouraging.

Angie's parents, Rex and Rosemary, are in the L.A. area and dropped in last night to see the dress rehearsal. Hard to say if they liked it or not.  I think they did.  But I think they were a tad put off by some of the tough language.  The play doesn't pull any punches in that area.  I remember a long time ago when the play was initially read out loud in a staged reading at Florida Repertory Theatre.  The Artistic Director of that company, the despotic Robert Cacioppo, said the play needed to be edited.  I wasn't there but was sent an audio tape of the audience feedback.  Cacioppo was very flippant and callous regarding the play.  He clearly didn't like it.  He became very prudish about some of the language.  This amused me because I know him personally and in private he swears like a drunken sailor.  But he doesn't like people cursing on his stage.  Incomprehensible. Yet another director type that has never actually acted himself.  These are dangerous folks in the professional theatre, in my opinion.

Anyway, they didn't say much about the language but I could tell they weren't used to all those 'fucks' and 'shits' and 'god damns' and such.  But nonetheless I think they liked the play.

I have been having a pitched battle with the director over the sound effects for some time.  My concerns, I think, were validated last night.  The play is not about chickens clucking or airplanes flying low overhead or polar bears roaring or any other quick and confusing sounds like that.  The scattered audience members were, to the last one, perplexed by them and taken out of the story because of it.  I can only hope they will go away before we open.

In any event, there were two spots I simply had to pick up my script briefly last night.  Today I will eliminate both of those trouble spots.  The entire day is devoted to learning them.

But the best news of the evening was that there were huge sections I felt absolutely comfortable with.  I wasn't, for the most part, struggling with the lines and I wasn't thinking about what came next.  This was a huge accomplishment for me.

Kyle Puccia has written, as I've mentioned before here, some beautiful and gut-wrenching music for the piece.  It was under utilized last night.  It is one of the most powerful aspects of the play and needs to be featured rather than taken for granted, I think.  I hope, that too, was made clear by last night's run thru.

Some wonderful acting from everyone last night.  Exquisite scene work.  I was pleased.

Still sort of stumbling around trying to find a light now and then, but that will sort itself out, I think.  The lighting is stark and dramatic.  I like it.  I just need to make sure I'm in it.

Victor Warren and Teal Sherer have really done some astonishing work with the piece.  Teal as the producer and Victor, of course, as the director.  Their commitment to the play has been unflagging.  I am eternally grateful to them both.  What a massive chunk out of their lives they've both taken in order to make this thing fly.  There are moments in the play Victor has directed sublimely.  Just terrific stuff.  And Teal has been literally working day and night for weeks, months, in fact, to pull it all off.  Ali and Coby, our booth guy and our lighting guy, are doing top flight work.  Really a wonderful team, all in all, that's been assembled.  I'm proud to be associated with them all.

Another night of dress and tech tonight.   Boning up on the lines all day.

I've reached the point where I can only really wear one hat now with this play; the actor's hat.  The rest will just have to take care of itself.  I can't protect the play as the writer anymore.  Just too many other things to worry about.  I have every faith they will straighten themselves out.

See you tomorrow.

Whistling Past the Graveyard.

A night of fitful sleep.  Tossing and turning with the play on constant fast forward and rewind in my head.  Finally just said to hell with it and got up and started the coffee.

Still so much to be done with this thing.  The ever-patient Angela ran lines with me for the entire evening.  There are still three monologues giving me fits.  I'll tackle them again this morning before going in and finishing up the tech.  I honestly don't remember the last time I've had such a hard time with a show.

Acting, and I mean real acting, is not something one can simply stop doing for a few years and then pick up as though nothing happened.  I am always appalled when, say, an athlete reaches the end of his career and decides to become an actor.  That's sort of how I feel these days.  I've taken a lot of time off, years in fact, and am now picking up as though I'd never quit.  I've spent the past few years simply teaching in Chicago, not actually doing. Consequently, layers of rust and corrosion have developed.  I find myself second-guessing myself, which I never would have done a few years ago.  I have often told students that ninety percent of the game is sometimes simple confidence.

I feel a bit like Ali when he was forced to take three and half years off because of his refusal to step forward for the draft.  To come back and fight on the level he was fighting was unheard of.  Yet he did it.  And then to not only come back after that forced lay-off, but to fight the most ferocious fighter around, Joe Frazier, was, in the opinion of most, sheer lunacy.  I feel like playing Sam Dean in Praying Small is my personal Joe Frazier.

I remember a quote of his after that fight in 1971 in Madison Square Garden, dubbed 'The Fight of the Century.'  Ali, of course, always supremely confident, gave a rare glimpse into his private world, his unseen personal courage.  He said a few weeks after that fight, which was brutal and long and which Ali ended up losing in a very close decision over 15 rounds, "After the first round I began to fight from memory.  And I knew it wouldn't be enough that night."  He knew he wasn't ready after the long lay-off.  But he gathered his considerable personal resources and fought anyway.  And reluctantly, ever so reluctantly, he unwrapped perhaps his greatest gift for all to see that night: his ability to take a punch.  No one had any idea Ali could take a punch.  Why should they?  He'd never had to take one, really.  He was too fast to hit up to that point.

I feel like that today.  Slower than I'd been a few years ago.  Looking around for something other than my usual array of tricks I've depended on for many years as an actor.  Knowing full well that this role will not be satisfied with them.

Sorry.  Insomnia makes me a bit over dramatic.

On a positive note, I got my new glasses yesterday.  Cool ones, if I don't say so myself.  So for the first time in long time, certainly since this evil 'silent killer' was diagnosed, I can actually see.  That's a very good thing.  I'd sort of forgotten what things looked like in focus.

After finishing the blog, it's back at the script.  There are three spots now where I get hung up.  It's my own damn fault, really.  As a playwright, I've written three monster monologues.  Hard as hell to memorize, much less act.  And now the rooster has come home to roost.

I have never bought into the idea that plays simply 'come together.'  That's always seemed terribly high school to me.  Personally, I've always preferred to see work ready to go a week or so before opening.  The last few days should be spent fine-tuning, not desperately grasping for coherence.  I have a new-found respect for all of the Sam Deans that have come before me.

In Olivier's book, On Acting, he talks about a tremendous onset of self-doubt that suddenly and unexpectedly plagued him when he turned fifty.  Not only was he beset with an inexplicable case of stage fright, he actually questioned his ability to act on the stage anymore.  This was about the time he was doing the landmark role of Archie in The Entertainer, one of his more glorious interpretations for the stage.  He even went so far as to ask the other actors on stage with him to not look him in the eye because it shattered his already shaky self-confidence.

In the twentieth century there were two actors on the stage that vied for immortality as the greatest actor of that century: Olivier and Brando.  Most considered Brando the more talented of the two.  But Brando, as time proved, was the lesser of the pair because he was lazy.  He didn't have the stamina and work ethic that Olivier did.  Even Olivier himself admitted Brando was far and away more talented than he was.  Upon seeing him in Streetcar in New York, Olivier wrote to his friend, the great director, Tyrone Guthrie, "...this young pup is the real thing.  He is electric."  But, as we all know now, Brando drifted from the stage and never did the great roles he was destined for.  The world never saw Brando's Hamlet or his Willy Loman or his James Tyrone or his King Lear.  We saw snatches of what might have been from his film work, yes, but we never saw him pit himself and his gargantuan talent against the real thing.  Olivier, on the other hand, tackled them all eventually.  In fact, after doing Julius Caesar with Brando, Sir John Geilgud, Olivier's greatest stage rival, begged him to do Hamlet on the London stage.  Brando allegedly replied, "I'm just not that serious about it, John."  And there you have it in a nutshell.  He really wasn't that serious about it.

Another time the great John Houseman recounts a story of running into Brando in the late seventies in New York.  Quite accidentally crossed paths with him while walking up Fifth Avenue.  He said that after a bit of small talk he suddenly blurted out, "Marlon, please consider doing King Lear on stage.  I'll direct it.  It will be the greatest stage comeback in history."  He said Brando fell silent for a bit and stared off into the distance.  After a few seconds his eyes focused again and he looked at Houseman and said, "I just did the whole thing in my head.  It was magnificent.  But that's the closest I'll ever come to acting on the stage again."

My mentor, Michael Moriarty, played, for a while anyway, the role of T. Lawrence Shannon, the fallen priest, in Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iguana.  It's a massive role, full of angst and drama.  In fact, my close friend, Brad Greenquist, was in that production.  It was playing out of town and about to make its way to Broadway when Michael dropped out of the show.  Years later I asked him why.  He said that he realized that he was of an age where it was no longer important to him to drag himself through an
emotional Armageddon every night.  He said that kind of deep and troubling self-examination was a game for the young.

All of these stories and more come to mind as I gear up for the final few rehearsals of Praying Small.  Self-doubt seeping in.  Confidence shaken on a daily basis.  Struggling for the next word in a monologue.  Trying to find the exact pitch and timbre of a scene.  Knowing the line is exact and unforgiving and that I can't cross it.  My calculations as an actor have to be impossibly precise.  Daunting and frightening.

I am always amused and critical of actors that think once they've memorized a role and have the blocking securely in their heads and the broad brush strokes of a character flailing about on stage,  they think that's enough.  Enough?  Good Lord, that's precisely when the real work begins.  It is not enough to simply say the lines and be charming.  Any actor can do that, and most do.  No, that is but the beginning.  That is when the choices have to be made.  That is when the unknown variables are introduced to the equation.  That is when the good actor veers off from the serviceable one.

We have an audience on Wednesday night.  Invited, to be sure, and most probably sympathetic, but still hot butts in the seats.  Thursday, the same.  And on Friday we face the full house and the critics.

I'm about to go up and over the trenches and charge directly into the Maginot Line.  There's nothing left but to do it.  Nearly a decade of teaching acting, and now it's time to practice what I preach.  This early morning I'm whistling as loud as I can as I stroll unconvincingly confident past this foggy graveyard called Praying Small.

See you tomorrow.

Blow Wind, Crack Your Cheeks!

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Talk about your cues....oy.  Still nine pages from finishing the cue to cue.  This after about ten hours of cue to cue yesterday and the day before.  We'll finish up the process on Monday morning.

There is a moment in the play, a monologue, a rather long one in fact, that I've been avoiding.  The play is non-linear, that is to say it pops around in time quite a bit, especially in the first act, so as to comprehensively tell Sam's story.  At one point the play goes back to the night Sam proposes to his wife, Susan, played by the terrific Tara Lynn Orr.  It is a terribly emotional piece of writing.  After singing, solo, the old country-western, Eddy Arnold song, Welcome to My World, Sam tells Susan all the things he will be to her.  Actually, I've had the speech memorized for several weeks now but have been intentionally avoiding doing it full out in rehearsal.  The truth is, I'm just downright scared to do it full out.  The emotion involved is just too overwhelming and it's the part of acting I've never been fond of.  I can do it, have done it before, but as I get older I become more reluctant to expose myself so completely on stage.  I feel somehow violated when I go that far.  When Brando finished filming Last Tango in Paris, he said something similar.  He said he would never again take a role that made him so vulnerable.  And he didn't.  He steadfastly refused to let us see that extraordinary access he had to his emotions ever again.  As is my pattern, I've carefully plotted out the physicality of the scene, knowing exactly what I'm going to do on what line.  It's a peculiar working style, but that's how I like to do it.  I plot the roadmap and then go back later and color in the emotion and honesty, etc.

I'll have to do it full out tomorrow night.  No more getting around it.  I simply don't like taking myself that deep.  It hurts to go there and it's difficult to pull myself back once there.  And it's a piece of writing that demands it, no cheating on this one.  It has been weighing heavily on me.

There is another section, the end of Act I in fact, that I've been 'marking' as well.  It is a scene in which Sam is screaming into his cell phone, blind drunk, begging Susan to let him into their apartment.  It's another scene I don't like to do full out very often.  I call it the "King Lear" scene in reference to the "Blow winds, Crack your cheeks!" speech in that play.

It's a scene that brings to mind a note the great Sir John Geilgud gave to Richard Burton when the latter was doing Hamlet on Broadway in the early sixties.  There's a book out there, out of print now, but I think it's still available in some libraries, called Geilgud Directs Burton.  The author was allowed to sit in on the one-on-one sessions they had together.  God, to be a fly on the wall for that.  Anyway, at one point, Burton is apparently working the "O, What a Rogue and Peasant Slave" speech and Geilgud stops him halfway through and drops this little tidbit of astonishing wisdom into his lap.  He says, and this is a direct quote, "Richard, you have a trumpet for a voice.  It is a marvelous stage weapon.  I envy you your voice.  I, myself, have an oboe.  Not terribly effective as a stage weapon.  But remember this, Richard, when you use your voice in that way, as a weapon, I mean, it is your LAST weapon."

It is an incredible piece of advice for the actor.  Any actor.  Essentially, he is saying once the actor begins to shout, to reveal the verbal pyrotechnics, there is no where else for him to go.  It is the last line of defense for the actor.  So keeping that in mind, I have to be very selective about that scene.  I have to time the moment when I actually let fly the volume and intensity inherent in the speech very carefully.  Once I reach those heights, there is no where else for me to go, nothing else I can do can top it.  It is my last weapon.

So, I'll be working on those two speeches today, privately, in my home.  I'll test the waters.  I'll see how far I can go emotionally with the proposal speech.  I'll find the exact moment to turn up the volume in the King Lear speech.

I remember another Brando quote in his book, Songs My Mother Taught Me.  It's a disappointing book overall, because Brando sort of tells little stories throughout it and rarely actually speaks on the subject of acting.  But he does here and there.  In one f those sections he talks about the shouting and emotion thing.  He says, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Never show them everything you have.  Never give them more than eighty percent.  It's like an opera tenor with a high C.  Never sing it in public.  Just show them the B.  The audience will somehow know you've go more to give and that's what makes it exciting."  Another wonderful piece of advice from the man who was, arguably, the best actor of the twentieth century.

So it's back to the script, locked away, working privately.  This is the part of acting that is really lonely.  Just the actor and his untapped reserve of emotion.  It is, at the same time, the most difficult part of being an actor and also the most exhilarating.

I am so grateful right now for Victor Warren and his seemingly endless patience with me.  Victor is an actor himself and understands how punishing some of this stuff is.  He gives me a lot of space.  We work entirely differently as artists, but that's okay.  He sometimes laughs at the way I work.  In a good natured way, I mean.  He doesn't do things like I do, and he finds it amusing.  I told him a few weeks ago that I'm never worried about whether something will be 'honest' or 'truthful' on stage.  I can do that.  It comes easily.  So I tend to literally skip over that aspect of the craft and move straight to the physical stuff.  I know I can go back and pick that other stuff up when I want.  For the non-actor reading this, it's odd in the fact that it is almost exactly opposite of the way most American actors have been taught.  Actors in this country are taught to find the honesty first, find the truth in the scene.  Until that is found the actor cannot go further.  This approach, of course, is a bi-product of Stanislavksi's bastardized Method as filtered through Strasberg, Adler, Lewis, Meisner and a few others.  I don't buy into it.  There's more than one way to skin a cat.

I think I can say unreservedly the play will be wonderful.  A great night of immediate and urgent theatre.  I will do my best.  I am surrounded by exceptional talent:  Tara, Rob Arbogast (an actor seemingly incapable of doing something dishonest onstage), Brad Blaisdell (a scene-stealer from the old-school style of scene-stealing), Melanie Ewbank and Bonnie Cahoon.  With that kind of depth in the bullpen, how can we fail?

See you tomorrow.

Cue to Cue to Cue to Cue to Cue....

Finally, a little time to blog.  Oy.  Been a tad on the busy side, obviously.  Praying Small is in cue to cue now.  Last night we got about a a quarter of the way through Act I in three hours.  Although, like all cue to cues, it is incredibly tedious, I don't mind it.  Not in theory, anyway.  I am, however, sympathetic to our PSM, who has, well, about five gillion sound and light cues to run.  I knew there were going to be a lot, that's how Victor wants it.  And clearly, it's going to be quite effective.  There are cues within cues.  It's exactly how I envisioned it seven years ago when I wrote the thing.  "Light and sound should be used liberally to shepherd the audience from one scene to the next."  Well, that's exactly what's happening.  And in great and elaborate detail.  I can already see how extraordinary it will be when done precisely.  On the other hand, our chances to screw up have soared.

Clearly, this is an aspect of directing that Victor not only relishes but excels.  He is very much in his element with all of this.  I can't have a stand-in for my part because I have to learn it as precisely as the booth guy.  I suspect once we finish today and begin the first run-thru there will be a lot of exasperation on my part.

Opening week is beginning to fill up quickly.  Wednesday is an invited dress.  Thursday an invited preview and opening night, nearly sold out, is Friday.  We have a whole gaggle of various administrators coming from recovery homes and sober houses in the Los Angeles area.  This is part of the plan.  Get the bigwigs in to see it for free and then they'll bring their people.

We have, on paper anyway, four chances to run the show before people see it.  Not enough, not nearly enough.  But it's what we have and we'll have to make due.  I spent hours yesterday working the last of the monologues, committing them to memory.  The sheer volume of lines is daunting.  I've said this before, so that's nothing new.  But now, as the rubber meets the road and we're beginning to grasp the concept that this IS going to happen, well, golly.  I'm nervous.

Hopefully we'll have the big three there opening weekend:  The L.A. Times, L.A. Weekly and Backstage West.  Although it will be nice to get some good notices from these three, it is not our intended audience.  Our audience will be, without doubt, the recovery community.  The play is, after all, about the horrors of addiction.

Today is our ten out of twelve.  That, to the layman, simply means ten hours out of twelve hours.  A long day.

Sipping coffee now and gearing up mentally for this endless day.  At times like this it is important to have a pleasant demeanor and infinite patience.  Whatever happens now is out of my hands.  I have to leave it to other people.  I have to trust.  Never my forte.

See you tomorrow.

The Jigsaw Puzzle Comes Together.

Good rehearsal yesterday.  Went back and picked up a few scenes that had been neglected for a bit.  Not a bad thing, just necessary.

I was, however, reminded of something.  I have to find ways to conserved my energy in this play.  The role is simply too big to play full out for two hours plus.  Not so much physically as emotionally.  This is where my training in naked face work is paying off.  This is where the theory of letting the audience shoulder some of the burden really helps.  There are spots where I can let them drive the bus, as it were, for a little while.  I don't have to do it all myself.

Over the years I've done a few, not many, but a few roles of this size.  It's been awhile, of course, but I have done it before and I know the roadmap.  So this keeps me from panicking.  One thought that surfaces is the simple idea of staying in the moment.  Once I start thinking about what comes next, what the next big moment is, I start to gear up for it.  Best to just play what I'm doing and not worry about it.  Strasbergians would no doubt find this idea appalling.  But most Strasbergians aren't trained to work onstage anyway.  By the very nature of what they're taught, they only know how to rehearse.  They're blind when it comes to actually performing a role.  Suffice to say, most method actors never even consider the fact that there's an audience in the room watching them.  They consider the audience not as the final character in the play, as I do, but as a necessary evil.

I could write a lot about that, but not now.  So we went back and looked at a couple of the Roman/Sam scenes yesterday and did a little fine tuning.  I've said it before but what a pleasure it is to work with Rob Arbogast in these scenes.  He 'gets it' so very quickly.  Completely open to anything new that will make the scene better.  Ego, for all intents and purposes, left at the doorstep.  A genuine pleasure to work off of.

Victor (our director) has a mountain to climb with the lights and sound on this piece.  Good Lord, just a thousand cues to work on.  We've hired a new lighting designer, a very capable and talented young man (Coby is his name) that is really throwing himself into it.  Our original lighting designer, the award-winning Luke Moyer, simply had too many other shows to light and couldn't give us the time needed.  Good for him, bad for us.  But he recommended young Coby and in the long run, probably this is for the best.

The marketing people are in high gear.  Ticket reservations are coming in very quickly now.  It's all good.

The next three days are gonna be twelve to sixteen hour days.  Oy.  Long, hard, time-consuming work, but absolutely necessary.

An interesting side note:  I've been contacted by a guy in Romania, of all places, about translating the play into Romanian and producing there; I'm assuming in Belgrade.  This tickles me.  I've given the go-ahead on this and look forward to seeing what happens with it.

Opening night looms.  Tension is building in the theatre.  We're on the precipice of something really cool, I think.  Now it's just a matter of putting this huge jigsaw puzzle together.  We have all the pieces.  A lot of pieces.  None of us know quite what the finished picture will be.

See you tomorrow.

Back to Rehearsal...

It has been a week or so since I've blogged.  Several reasons for that, mostly health issues.  The lesser gods of sabotage have invaded lately and are, for whatever reason, doing their best to keep this play from proceeding normally.  Judging from some of the extended moments we've had in rehearsal, I honestly believe we're onto something rather extraordinary here.

A few days back we had what is known in the theatre as a "designer run through."  This is when the designers of the show are brought in to see the product for the first time: the sound guy, the lights guy, the costumer, the set designer, the publicist, the marketing guy, etc.  Ours was, like most designer run throughs, both rough and exciting all at once.  There were moments of extreme train wreckage and others of unexpected quality.  But mostly the run through is for the people doing the off stage work.

It was about this time that my precarious health issues started to emerge.  The 'silent killer' was having its way with me again.  The blood sugar was going nuts, fluctuating like a dot com stock in the eighties.  My stomach was doing a number on me as well.  The result of all this was a complete physical breakdown on Saturday.

I'm better today, but still far from a hundred percent.  I have often remarked to Angela how surprising all of this stuff is.  My entire life I've been healthier than anyone could possibly hope to be.  Aside from a few bumps in the road, I've had the constitution of a Missouri mule.  Which is fortunate considering I used to drink like there was no tomorrow.  When all else failed in my life, my health always held out.  So now all of this fragility is completely unexpected.  And not only that but I'm ill-equipped to deal with it.  I've had no practice.

Anyway, enough whining.  After canceling both rehearsal for PS and the one-acts on Saturday, I'm reasonably strong enough to get back on the horse.  The canceling of the rehearsal was hard.  Missing the final night of the one-acts was not.  I learned a valuable lesson from that ordeal (and I can only think of it as an 'ordeal').  That lesson is that I have the right to say No.  All artists have that right.  Never again (unless there's a lot of money involved) will I allow myself to participate in sub-standard work.  I won't dwell on this, but suffice to say that as actors sometimes all we have is our work, what we do, how we do it, what we choose to lend our talents to.  To let ourselves be seen in anything but the most flattering of lights is sheer lunacy.  I am long past the point of doing something on stage just to do it.  Life is way, way too short to do bad work.  And that's all I have to say about that.

So today I'm back in the saddle for a short rehearsal.  The PR/Marketing machine has leapt into high gear and the reservation lines, I'm told, are burning up.  Good.  If I'm gonna crash and burn I want to crash and burn in a spectacular way.  I want to do it in front of a packed house.  I want to explode in a glory of noble effort rather than muddle through and be seen as just one more inept pawn in a night of inept pawns.

There are moments in Praying Small that have caught me off guard.  One was a sentence in the latter portion of the second act during the run through.  I have a line about my character's inability to believe in God.  The other night while saying it, a burst of emotion welled up in me.  I'm not sure, even now, why.  But suddenly I had trouble getting the words out.  I have been here before.  I know these dark tunnels and murky hallways.  I have navigated them in plays past.  They no longer frighten me.

Another was a scene in which my character, on the road to recovery, encounters his former best friend and drinking buddy, Roman, in a dusty, dim, dank, dive bar.  How's that for alliteration?  Roman, quite unexpectedly, breaks down and begins to weep in the middle of a sentence.  Rob Arbogast, a true and honest actor of the highest calibre, has chosen this moment...it is not in the script.  Even though I had seen Rob play this beat before I was surprised by it.  The sadness was palpable.  The waste and destruction of the disease of addiction was laid open for a brief second for all to see.  As a substance abuse counselor for many years in Chicago I have seen this moment in real life many times.  I remember a young man speaking to a room full of recovering addicts one night.  He was telling of his new life, of his new hope and aspirations since he had managed to stop doing drugs; he was reveling in his belief in the future.  Suddenly, without warning, he bent at the waist and dropped to his knees.  Tears cascaded down his face.  He said, almost inaudibly, "I have no one who cares that I'm getting better."  I, who had seen this disease cripple and maim and savage its way through countless lives, couldn't catch my breath.  I sat paralyzed in my seat and watched helplessly.  It is a moment that has stayed with me for many years.  I say that to say this: the exact same thing happened when Rob began to silently cry onstage the other night.  I was immobile with empathy.

There are a number of moments like this one in Praying Small, moments of such honesty that even I, the playwright, find myself struck dumb by them.  I have never, as a professional actor of decades, been terribly concerned with how I felt onstage at any given moment.  I believe that whatever catharsis takes place for the actor is "gravy," as my old mentor and friend, Michael Moriarty, used to say.  If we end up having a night of exceptional depth of feeling, well, that's just jiffy.  Very nice.  But it's not what this is about.  Never has been, never will be.  Frankly, no one gives a shit how we feel about something at any particular time.  And by 'we,' I mean we as actors.  All that matters is what the anonymous lady sitting in the third row feels that paid twenty five bucks to be told a story.  Incidentally, this is what the book, Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger, is partially about.  Art is not for the artist.  Art is for the masses.  Art for the artist is masturbation.

However, having said that, it's really nice to have moments like that.  It can make a whole career suddenly worthwhile.  It tangibly lends credence to what we do and why we do it.  Robert Duvall once said that if an actor had half a dozen truly honest moments in his entire career, he was above the curve.  Couldn't agree more.

So we've been given a 'sneak preview' into what this play can be at its finest.  We were allowed fleeting glimpses into a evening of possibilities.  And I, for one, was awed.

I've never done this role before.  I know, in my head, how I WANTED it done.  But I've never seen it.  I'm in a position now that amuses me: the position of putting up or shutting up.  I'll be perfectly honest...I'm not sure I'm a good enough actor anymore for the role.  I used to be, I know that.  But there is a decade of rust on me.  Years of built up corrosion around my talent.  I have, in some ways, become that which I despise most: a commentator on the work of others.  I am the eunuch at the orgy.  It's a place where old actors go for refuge. I don't want to be there.  It's a dead place.

So, Gentle Reader, once more unto the breach today.  Even stooped and wounded with this fucked up diabetes I relish the battle.  Hemingway, in one of a hundred ways he predicted his suicide through his writing, once wrote he would far rather die as a lion in the wild, pierced with a hundred arrows, than live to a ripe, old age in a zoo in Spokane.  Although a tad overdramatized, I feel the same way about this play.  I'd rather strive for sublimity through this piece than drizzle into obscurity with another.  I may fail at this role, the play itself may fail, but not from lack of ambition.  At least, as Teddy Roosevelt so magnificently wrote a century ago, we're in the arena.  At least we're out there trying.  The only failure that will come from this production, as I see it, is not trying in the first place.

And finally, as often happens in our business, there will be an aspect of 'pearls before swine' to our efforts.  I re-learned that particular soul-crushing lesson the first time From the East to the West was viewed in rehearsal by someone who's opinion I valued.  We can't simply assume everyone will see the importance of what we're doing.  Some will simply see a play about a guy that used to drink.  Others will see a play about a guy who spends time in the very pits of Hell itself and miraculously and against all odds, finds a road less traveled and stumbles blindly out.  Some will simply see a play about an amoral guy that whines too much.  Others will see a play about a guy finding solace in the least expected place in the world - inside himself.  Some will simply see a play with lots of gnashing of teeth.  Others will see a play about redemption itself.

See you tomorrow.

Teal Sherer.

     Teal Sherer and Brad Blaisdell in PROOF at NoHo Arts Center Ensemble

Since moving to Los Angeles in November of last year I've made a lot of friends.  Mostly fellow artists and actors with NoHo Arts Center Ensemble, where I'm currently the playwright-in-residence.  Perhaps the most remarkable amidst a whole slew of remarkable people I've befriended is Teal Sherer, my producer for Praying Small.

As any Gentle Reader of this blog has probably deduced by now, I have a dark and sometimes quirky sense of humor.  One of the many reasons Angie, my fiancee, are so compatible is because she is a very optimistic, light-hearted, positive force that fits and completes my tendencies toward pessimism and dark sensibilities.  And yet she also 'gets' my sense of humor.  One of the most underestimated traits for long-term relationships is an appreciation of humor, I suspect.

Teal Sherer is exactly the same.  She's an eternal optimist and yet at the same time appreciates my rather foreboding sense of humor.

I first met Teal when she was playing the gargantuan lead role in PROOF, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about, well, about a lot of things.  The piece was being done in the second stage at NoHo.  Frankly, I'd seen several productions of the play as well as the film version and wasn't too terribly keen on seeing it again.  But in the spirit of solidarity I toddled over to NoHo and saw this one.  I could not have been more pleased.  Teal was wonderful in it playing the daughter of a deceased mathematical genius (played by another wonderful actor, Brad Blaisdell) who may or may not have inherited not only his genius as a math guy but also, quite possibly, his genetic make-up as a nut case.  She balanced the fine line beautifully throughout the play keeping us guessing as to her own mental state.  I could write a great deal about her performance but suffice to say it really was quite incredible.

In fact, I liked it so much that I immediately began making revisions in a play of mine called Heavyweights of the Twentieth Century so as to include her.

Teal is wheelchair-bound due to a car accident some years back.  Upon meeting her and becoming friends, the wheelchair, astonishingly, has become invisible.  I don't think I can put that more succinctly.

She is the producer of Praying Small and I can't imagine doing this play without her.  She has become the backbone of the production, handling all of the details and doing an amazing job of keeping the small, worrisome aspects of producing a play off of my plate.  And for that alone I can't possibly thank her enough.

We rehearsed PS yesterday all day.  By the end of rehearsal I was really wrung out.  Nothing left.  Emotionally spent.  A quick bite to eat, a short nap and I was back at the theatre getting ready for the one-act plays I'm doing there.  A long day.

Today, another round of the one-acts.  After that, a marathon session of learning lines with the ever-patient Angela.

Life is good.  I wish I could eat pizza and ice cream everyday, but aside from that, I couldn't possibly be happier.  I'll settle for salads and fruit.

See you tomorrow.