Bachelor's Graveyard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Give Me What You Got

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Just Say the Damned Lines, Please.

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

Brad Greenquist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

The Guy in the Third Row.

I'm including a picture of Shirley Jones, above, in the blog today cause I still think it's really cool she came to see our preview a couple nights ago.  For my generation of TV watchers, she's a bit of an icon, you know.

Anyway.

So, opening night was a success.  Would like to have seen more press there but I'm told a lot of them will be attending next weekend.  Whatcha' gonna do.  However, NPR was in fact there last night and they seemed to have liked it very much.  When that review is out on radio I'll post the audio feed in this blog.  If I can figure out how to do that.

There are still some tech things happening that is driving me absolutely bonkers, but Victor reassured me last night that he was all over that.  And in fact, he already was.  While the rest of the cast was in the lobby eating and drinking last night, I found Victor in the theatre working away in the booth.

The comment I'm hearing most often is, "What an amazing cast."  Which pleases me tremendously.  A play is only as good as its weakest actor.  We don't have a weak actor.  As one might expect, I'm mostly too busy trying to save my own ass out there most of the time and consequently can't really comment in any informed way about another actor's work, but last night I did notice a couple of things.  Rob Arbogast as Roman was heartbreaking in our final "bar" scene.  Even I, the ever oblivious actor that I am, noticed how deep his work went in that scene.  It was in an area of honesty so true that I felt like a voyeur at one point.  Brad Blaisdell as Greg did the same in our last scene together.  It is set in a bowling alley and is written quite succinctly.  Brad was simplicity itself in that scene.  He's a funny actor.  Been at this a long time.  Even when he's struggling a bit with the next line he has learned to make that work for him rather than against him.  The character is seen struggling for the next line, not Brad himself.  It's a nifty piece of misdirection that only a real veteran can pull off.  Tara as Susan let the flood gates go in our last scene together.  It is exactly how the scene should be played and Tara rose to the challenge like a champ.  Terribly moving stuff.  And Bonnie and Melanie were spot on last night, particularly Melanie in her long "boss" monologue.

So, again, even though the lighting and sound stuff is still haphazard at times, the evening as a whole was pretty nice, I think.  As I finished up the play last night, standing stage center and reciting my parting lines, it was like cold and flu season out there.  So much sniffling I could hear it loud and clear on stage.  Rather amused me.

Of all the nice things said to me afterwards at the reception last night one in particular sticks with me.  A lady I didn't know came up to me and said, "I'm so sorry, but I just had to turn away at the end.  It was all just too painful to watch."  I'm not sure "painful" is what we're searching for there, but I'll take it.

So I told our friends with the cabin in Big Bear we wouldn't be needing it after all.  I can stay in L.A.

My buddies Chad Coe (played the lead in my play, From the East to the West) and Jim Barbour were there last night.  Both liked it a lot, I think.  Oddly, Chad, all six feet, five inches of him, was in the front row.  I think I actually stepped over his legs a couple of times while negotiating around the stage.  Jimmy tweeted during the show on Twitter.  He wrote, "I'm watching the greatest performance onstage I have seen in many, many years."  Nice.

Tonight my old friend and very fine actor, Brad Greenquist, is coming.  I haven't seen Brad in almost twenty years.  We started out together in NY and both studied with the brilliant Michael Moriarty for a few years.  Brad actually did one of my plays in NY called DAD/SONS.  He is, probably, the hardest working actor in L.A.  You can't swing a dead cat without seeing him on TV.

So now we settle in for a run of this thing.  There will be hurdles.  There will be on and off nights.  There will be frustrations and triumphs.  It's all good.  It's all unfolding exactly as it should.  There were a couple of 'Friends of Bill' there last night, too.  They, more than anyone else, get this play.  They, more than anyone else, are touched by the content.  And they, more than anyone else, are who I wrote it for.  If I can reach one person, one recovering soul, one ex-addict struggling with addiction, it will all be worth it.  That's what I set out to do.  I didn't write this thing for critics or directors or actors or savvy first-nighters or friends or armchair, Monday morning quarterbacks.  No, I wrote this for the guy in the third row, who heard about it through another friend, who thought he might like to see a play about drinking too much, who earlier that day considered taking a drink, maybe.  I wrote this play specifically for him.  He is royalty in my theatre when this play is running.  He is our audience.  The guy in the third row is the sole reason for creating this play.  The sole reason for beating myself over the head with a board for the past three months.  He makes everything not only worthwhile but infinitely noble.

And you know, I think he just might have been there last night.

See you tomorrow.

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.