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Dewds, oh my dewds. We did certainly open night the last, and to a packed house (the which, in MTS terms, is something like 45 people), which was intimidating, exciting, moving, fascinating, deeply affecting and a little gassy.

For those of you not in the know (And just what, pray tell, are you doing outside of the know? Don't you know the know is no place to be outside of? It's cold out there! At least put on a jacket!), I am referring to my current actorly occupation, A Lie of the Mind. For more details on my process of bringing my character limping on to the stage (literally) last night, see . . . well . . . just about every entry I've made in the past month. (Discounting those ill-advised forays into the details of my day job. Please.)

I would like to say the show went off without a hitch, but that would be kind of miraculous, given the circumstances. It was our very first run with an audience, which is like having a very overwhelming actor suddenly join your cast, saying, "Hi. I don't know anything about what we're supposed to be doing, so I'm just going to screw with the rhythms you've spent weeks getting used to and react loudly to things you do. Or not. Whichever I feel like in the moment." It's particularly like this at lovely ol' MTS, where their motto of necessity is, "If the audience isn't all up in your grill, you must be in somebody else's theatre." (At least this show is staged relatively "proscenium;" the two prior full-length shows I did there were staged "tennis court," with audience on either side: Gah! Really close audience! [turns other way] Gah! Really close audience!) It was wonderful to finally have the missing character, but also very much an adjustment. Some of the more interesting snafus:

• People transposing lines. I don't think it was obvious to the audience, but to our fellow actors it was like you could almost hear the erring actor thinking, "No...wait...oh sh*t!"


• Folks over-extending blocking. This is easy to do in such a small space, and when that audience adrenaline steps in, we get a little larger. The best example of this was a moment when Jake accidentally got too close to a room Beth was in, precipitating their moment of reunion. Apparently Ridley Parson, the actor playing Mike, was moments away from throwing Beth back in the room just to keep things on track.


• Props getting as excited as we are. I don't really believe in pathetic fallacy in everyday life (as good a novel as "Still-Life with Woodpecker" may be), but I swear to you that there are gremlins that live in stage props, and opening night is when they get most unruly. Last night Jake's cap kept taking a walking tour of our side of the stage as he was trying to manage his psychic breakdown, Baylor's socks missed landing on his knees (prompting the actress playing Meg to say "Jesus Christ!" in his face, which, believe it or not, is not in the script) and when Mike tromped into the house and deposited the deer carcass, one of its antler heads broke off and skittered across the stage.

We all had a good laugh over food and drink afterward, but in the moment, on stage, these things feel like the end of one's carefully crafted world. It will all become lore that lasts for the next month, with each of us coming up with our own antler references to slip into conversation with the others. The show got off to a good start last night. We were charged up, and we learned a lot. Now it's a matter of incorporating those lessons into our work in a fluid enough way that will allow us to adapt to different audiences. Because falling on your proverbial face as a result of anticipated audience reaction is a whole lot worse than antler shrapnel.

As for myself,

(lord God in heaven, must I move on to myself [no] well it is my 'blog [that's right--you make the rules] but who will respect me for creating a double-standard in which I critique everything but my own work [did you start this 'blog to garner respect?] ...can we talk about this later? [Hm? Oh. Yeah. Sure.])

I didn't feel too great about how my scenes went last night, particularly one scene between Frankie and Beth. I was very nervous, which affected my performance, but moreover Frankie just came out too whiny most of the time. God knows he's got plenty of excuse to whine: he's got to clean up his brother's mess, deal with his neurotic family, endure an untreated bullet wound for two-thirds of the play and resist the advances of a woman when he is, in fact, quite lonely. BUT. The audience isn't there to see someone whine, they're there to see people fight, to fight for what they want and need, and overcome expectation at least once.

Frankie is tricky in this regard, and reminds me specifically of playing Nick in Over the River and Through the Woods.... Both are these well-equipped, intelligent young men who spend the bulk of the action accomplishing next-to-nothing, wrestling with the frustration of having to work with other personalities that simply overpower their own. The temptation, the ease, is to play their frustration. I mean, that's what it's all about at first glance: They are frustrated by their inability to move on. It's comic. It's real. However, that frustration is actually an obstacle to what they want to achieve, so whether they recognize it or not in a given moment, these young men need to use more specific tactics to overcome what at first glance seems to be firing them up. That's tricky enough. Now, the difference between Nick and Frankie is that Frankie HAS A BULLET HOLE IN HIS LEG.

That's also an obstacle, but one an actor has to affect. I mean, I could give myself a Charley Horse before I enter (I do punch my leg, but only to try and create a little reminder of the specific area of the wound), but even that would fade within minutes, and doesn't have remotely the same effect a 30-30 bullet through the hamstring would. So now we've got two obstacles inherent in Frankie's journey, plus whatever is thrown at him from the other characters, plus an eventual fever and delirium, plus the simple simple fact that...for some rather unexplained reason...not one of the four family members has any interest in getting him out of their house.

My only point being that it's not an easy role. It often feels like Frankie's more a tool than a character, a device for achieving the brotherly denouement in the final scene. An actor, however, must never concern him/herself with that kind of consideration. It's antithetical to an actor's purpose of really being there, and believing in what he or she is doing. But dag gum it, I'm a thinker, and it's hard to turn that off. That's part of the appeal of acting for me--having good reason to work on letting go of that when it isn't serving me.

The blessing/curse of theatre is that you get chance after chance to redeem yourself. Tonight I will run lines for my scenes with Jake and Beth beforehand, warm-up with more focus on my voice (to avoid throat tightness, which can contribute to unintentional whining), and do something meditative and grounding, with the hope it will help to prepare myself to build a fight from the ground up. We'll see how it goes. The moment of truth will take place on the stage, where it belongs.

Opening Up to You...

If you haven't yet seen A Lie of the Mind, at Manhattan Theatre Source, go out immediately and buy an industrial strength, gas-powered power generator, jumper cables and two large sponges. Find a menacingly silent, mustachioed man to attach the cables to the generator, and the sponges to the other ends, activate the generator, and force you to remove your clothing and stand in running water. The menacingly silent, mustachioed man should know where to go from there. IT...IS...A DELIGHT!

{Shh, shh.... Don't be scared. I was channeling James Lipton via Will Ferrell, and referencing the infamous torture sequence from Lethal Weapon. Riggs', not Murtough's. I mean, the salt thing might actually have hurt more, but come on. Unless a torture sequence involves a malevolent Asian man, I'm just not sufficiently terrorized.}

In actuality, you can't yet have seen A Lie of the Mind in that particular milieu. Because it opens tonight.

Hold me.

Yesterday was a very good preparation overall. I was at the Source by 3:30 (thanks to the benevolent slackerdom of my day-job boss) to work over my second scene with Todd. It went very well--better than it did in the run later that night--and with the adjustments we made I finally feel as though my character gets the kick start he's been needing. Thereafter, Daryl was working on scenes I am not a part of, so I busied myself with adding more artful gore to the pants I wear after my character gets shot in the leg. I love those surreal moments occasioned by working in the theatre. Anyone who walked in the Source betwixt the hours of 4:30 and 5:00 yesterday probably saw a pair of pale blue jeans stuffed with discarded press releases hanging from the ceiling, dripping blood onto more paper layered on a table beneath them. We got to running the show by 7:00 or so, which is fairly close to the time we had planned to start, which is fairly remarkable.

Tonight we go up with an audience for the first time at 8:00. We're sold out for both tonight and tomorrow night, I hear tell, so chances are good that I'll know a whole hell of a lot more about what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong in the next 48 hours. In terms of last-minute revelations, however:

• I was right about Frankie thinking he was so much smarter than Jake, but wrong about him loving him too much to display it . . . particularly when it comes to discussing Beth's possible murder.


• My monologue can go south at any moment, and I must be vigilant 'bout that. Also, I tend to go up on lines that involve speaking at length without a period. Too many options. Need to run lines before show every night.


• That final moment that's been troubling me has everything to do with taking in as much of Beth and Jake's moment just before, and simply being relaxed enough to respond to that.

Opening night is frightening, particularly when you've had no preview audiences. I don't care who you are: Yikes. It's thrilling, though, the fear. It has charged my whole day, and only created one obstacle: that of wanting to leap from a window in order to not be at work. But I get by, because very soon I won't even be in New York. I'll be in Montana, with a bullet hole in my leg.

Wish me luck.

Repeatable Action

This was a very necessary skill for an actor, according to my dearest college acting teacher, Gary C. Hopper. He was the one who enthusiastically took on all the Freshman classes for their first year of training, like some kind of manic Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and took a very personal interest in each and every one of we chosen few (seventy-five to start, I believe) forgetting all we thought we knew and undertaking his approach to creating believable, effective moments on stage. It was always with a huge, toothy grin that he would offer scathing criticism of our naive little choices, and with said same grin he gave us his own pearls of wisdom regarding the oldest art. Acting axioms, if you will:

• "In general" is the enemy of good art. (This one is stolen, I believe.)


• Would you like some fries with that Big Mac? (Translation: There are no discernible stakes to what you're doing, so why are you even on stage, you douche bag?)


• Acting! Theatre is my life! (Translation: People must be able to see, at all times, that glint in your eye that tells them you derive your greatest joy from moments spent in rehearsal and on stage.)


• His intensely formal formula for explicitly stating one's intention in each scene: "Because I feel _______, due to having been _______, I want to _______ [NAME OF CHARACTER], so that s/he will feel _______, resulting in _______."

Apart from these axioms (I know that last one isn't an axiom, and I would ask you to kindly shut the hell up), he would also use these little phrases to recall to our minds earlier lessons. Case in point, his sing-song recitation of the words "Repeatable action!" whenever you failed to fulfill established blocking, or claimed you could juggle and proceed to drop a ball. It's common sense, especially for a theatre actor. That actor must be able not only to produce genuine moments on stage, but do so with consistency every performance.

I am magnificent at this. I won't lie to you (not even in my Mind). At this, I rule. One director, who worked with me on Proof and Over the River and Through the Woods... out at The Northeast Theatre, once wrote me that I was "the most consistent actor" she had worked with. But it is a double-edged betleH, this madness of skill. I mean, who delights in the knowledge that they are non-deviant when it comes to art? Reliability is a good thing in one's fellow actor, I agree, but we'd all rather have a moment on stage be alive than choreographically consistent. And supposing one's consistency is actually a regularity of badness or, worse yet, mediocrity?

My love of the repeatable action has deep roots in this kid's psyche. (By "this kid's," I am of course referring to myself in the third person, thereby cautioning you that a. I'm about to get all psychoanalytical on yo' ass, whilst simultaneously consoling you that b. I appreciate the dramatic irony of self-aggrandizement and how it relates to an actor talking [much less writing] about his or her person.) I was pretty much always a guy who appreciated a good plan. In school, I used to get tense about going into a class without knowing what we were supposed to be doing that day (see 3/8/07 for analysis of my absolute need to know everything about everything ever). One of the main appeals of theatre, in my earlier days of interest, was the presence of a script. When I would get into arguments with my friend Bridget (sorry to put you on the spot, B, but you were the only one I fought with when I was growing peach fuzz) I would actually kind of have to step out of them in order to gather my thoughts. I couldn't just get mad and say irrational things. That would have been, you know . . . irrational.

And the patterns continue into Jeff-the-Present (as opposed to Jeff-the-Past, not Jeff-the-Absent, nor Jeff-the-Only-A-Card). All this circus stuff I've gotten myself into, you think that's solely because I wish I were a vigilante superhero? Predominantly, sure, but solely? And the clowning I've been working on, I suppose I just like the idea of self-imposed humiliation? (Well okay: You have a point there.) No, it's choreography. As is my tendency to take jobs with theatres with which I have previously worked, rather than putting my proverbial testicles on the metaphorical line and playing Rizzo in some West Village cabaret. Not loyalty, oh no: Choreography.

And step-ball-change, step-ball-change!

There's something to be said for choreography. Get not me wrong. Only what good is it without that certain indefinable passion, that razor's edge that makes everyone sit up and feel something? For the past several years I have worked hard at letting go of the need to be choreographically precise in my acting, and allowing that spirit of madness (this is the word a control freak uses to describe spontaneity) into my work. A Lie of the Mind is a pretty classic example of this effort on my part, and I don't write this solely for the purpose of pimping my show on you. (Predominantly, sure.) My performance only lives (I'm talking basic life support, here) when I let go of our decisions in rehearsal and let it all happen for the first time, yet I resist this condition, I suppose because it feels hokey, or irresponsible, to me. Well, to my left brain, anyway. And let me tell you (I'm here to say [even for me, the parentheticals are getting out of hand in this one]), if I'm at one end of the control/chaos spectrum, Friend Todd is at the other. He's brilliant at letting go. In a way, this contrast between us makes for perfect casting of these roles. Still, I feel a need to rise to his level in that ratio of consistency and life. I have a lot to learn from Mr. d'Amour.

Because I feel limited, due to my inhibitions, I want to kick ass in this show, so that the show will feel sufficiently ass-kicked, resulting in my career rocketing to new artistic heights.

Repeatable action is a valuable skill in theatre and film, but talent trumps all. (As to defining talent, someone once said, "Talent is like pornography. You can't define it, but you know it when you see it.") In life, I think the talent is in determining when a repeatable action is really called for. It can be easy to get stuck in a rut, and scary as hell to come bounding out of said rut headfirst. Yet necessary, I believe. We were not made for ruts. I applaud people who stick to their principles, but I shout for them that break the rules in order to learn something new.

Allow Me to make the Technical Points Perfectly Clear

That was my trigger phrase for an Irish dialect when I was in college. The way I was taught, when working on a dialect it's best to establish a phrase that contains the trickier aspects of that dialect, and one which you practice so much you can hardly help but to say it in said dialect. That way, you can create a sort of shortcut to the "muscle memory" of speaking in that fashion. The above phrase is good for a sing-songy, northern Irish dialect. It practically starts out syncopated, with breathy vowels and mincing consonants. Plus, you get that great "points," which comes out more like "pints."

Now me brain is stuck composing this very entry in an Erin fashion....

My point (POYNT) in so quoting myself, however, is to address something 'blog-wise that seems to have thrown a few of you loyal readers (a large portion of all 6 of you) for a bit of a loop. In the spirit of tech week, then, allow me to make the technical points perfectly clear.

I felt compelled last week to implement Blogger's comment moderation feature. This was something I was hoping to avoid. I liked the idea of this 'blog being open to comment from anyone without the complication of wondering who was getting their chance to be heard, and who was not. Occasionally, sure, I got comments from strange women wanting me to check out their naked photos and buy Vicadin from them, but even these I enjoyed responding to in a fantastical sort of mindset. Last week, however, I struck a nerve with someone through my blogination, and their response allowed my imagination to roam into the possibilities for abusing the comments section of the 'blog.

Let me be clear: This commenter didn't abuse the 'blog. Far from it. He or she just allowed me to see how rapidly a comment string could, without supervision, descend into madness. So I enacted the moderation feature shortly thereafter. And it's a good thing, too, because shortly after that decision a dear friend of mine interpreted the comment as something of an attack on me and responded in kind. That comment I did not allow to post.

So let me state the rules for you, dear readers. I will let every comment through that I possibly can. In fact, I hope this en-action of moderation (such a politic word for censorship) encourages those of you who choose to comment to do so without reservation or inhibition. The only rule that should guide you is to avoid personal attacks on anyone associated with this 'blog, including anonymous commenters. That won't be allowed to be posted. Exceptions? Good-spirited-yet-heated discourse on a subject, as long as it remains predominantly on said subject, will be allowed to pass. Personal attacks on me or what I have had to say will also be allowed, believe it or not. Those comments will be judged based on a ratio of relevance/cruelty. If you tear me a new one, but raise what I deem to be a good point with it, it's getting published for all to see.

Sorry to write about technicalities, but I wanted to be clear and direct with my vasty audience. I am off now to tech for fourteen hours. ROCK N' ROLL!

Moved by a Clown

It has been a busy weekend. Rehearsal went late Friday night, and I was up early Saturday to help Friend Kate finalize her moving out of the loft that parented Kirkos for years. I inserted a break of a few hours to hold a rehearsal with Friend Anna on her clown piece, then it was back to the verities of moving out. The rest of the weekend was a lot of rehearsal as we come closer to the opening night for A Lie of the Mind. In fact, I just arrived in from our first run in the space. As these things so often go, everyone felt completely disconnected from their work, floating in the endless ether of a new, permanent space and sudden costuming. We'll get past it, and by Wednesday. We'd best, anyway. Opening week brings reviewers and an entire acting class one night. The time until then is to be spent in "tech," which, for the uninitiated, is the time just before opening a show when everyone recognizes all the stuff they were supposed to accomplish yet haven't, and rushes around trying to do that, simultaneously revving the metaphoric engine of the whole production up to eleven.

Does that count as a movie quote? I think not, as "eleven" as a gauge of anything has entered the public lexicon apart from any actual awareness of This is Spinal Tap.

The subject of this blogination, though, is that Saturday spent in the deconstruction the Kate's loft and Anna's clown piece. It was a revelatory day for me. Not in a noisy, declamatory way ("Hear ye! God is dead! Thanks for listening!"); rather as a day of much to do, no time to do it, and irregular but powerful moments of recognition. In fact, narrating the events of the day chronologically doesn't serve it best, methinks. First I uninstalled some shelves, then I complained about Kate's stereo already being moved, then we shredded documents.... No. Dumb. So where to begin?

Well (and good), the first thing to note is a few aspects the essential nature of Kate, at least insofar as I know her. Kate:

• Loves every thing and person that she loves so much that there is no undue haste when it comes to saying goodbye to said thing/person.
• Self-justifies with the best of them, including Clinton, with his eternal question of what "is" is.
• Has principles so beyond question that they occasionally create astonishingly time-consuming obstacles in situations in which the rest of us would probably figure, "Oh, so what if that public trash can is overflowing? I'll just precariously balance my disposable coffee cup atop the ruin of western society."

Which is all to say, Kate simply can't do anything of any significance simply. It's part of what's so lovable about her, and makes her an amazing director/leader. So the loft move became a months-long epic that, in spite of such time spent in prep of that ultimate departure, still had a lot to accomplish in its final stages. I didn't accomplish much in terms of sweeping, effective measures for getting the remainder of her things into boxes. I mainly focused on tasks which, as a result of a shoulder injury, Kate shouldn't attempt herself. Anything that involved reaching up, or lifting weight, basically.

And in the process of this total of about six hours, I said my last goodbyes to the loft. There's something about a space that has fostered your creativity and effort that makes that space a kind of home. It becomes as personal a space as where you lost your first tooth or your virginity, you know? It can, anyway. I've lost touch with that feeling somewhat. I used to have a ritual of saying goodbye to a theatre at the end of every show. Now I mainly only do it for spaces that have held multiple productions of mine, when I'm uncertain if I'll ever return to them. The ritual is simple (and not scary, involving very little mammalian blood). I just stand in the middle of the space, alone, and say a little. Maybe I speak a speech from the show I did there, or some Shakespeare (that just always sounds good), and usually I literally speak the word "Goodbye." And when I say it, I'm saying, "Thank you." Froo-froo, I know. But hey: It makes me feel real.

What was this for the loft? It was more little stolen moments. I sang (Bohemian Rhapsody and tunes from Rent, no less [Nat, calm down.]), took photographs when we broke for lunch, reminisced with Kate and, ultimately, practiced throwing knives at the wall I helped build when they moved in. YES. Knives. They were my pay for my help that day. In so doing, I covered a lot of the bases for what Kirkos was, and . . . in my mind, anyway . . . may someday be again. It was weird, unabashedly sincere, sentimental, beautiful and chaotic. And now, it's part of who I am, as performer and person.

For over two hours, in the middle of all this light-removal and reminiscence, Anna Zastrow and I convened to visit with her clown, Helda. It went well, I thought. Her goals were very much focused upon getting a sequence in better shape for her upcoming performances. I wanted that for her as well, but also had a priority to revisit her clown with no assumptions. In conversation with Anna lately, I have heard much that I identify with: a certain uncertainty, a disconnection from her creative id (that's id, not I.D.) and doubt. Plain ol' doubt. I don't know where these feelings in myself will lead me, but I'm confident Anna's clown is a valid, living character, and that she simply needs to revisit her and listen to her to regain (or rediscover) that validity.
(Uninitiated: I'm speaking here of red-nose, or occasionally Lecoq, clown. It's hard to synopsize that theory in a sentence, but essentially the idea is simple. Each person has his or her own clown, a single character as individual as the person and rather representative of that person's id, or free will, unbounded by society-as or other inhibitions. Along with this goes the idea that what people appreciate in a clown is his or her unabashed flaws and difficulties. [Anonymous--Don't freak out. Think of The Little Tramp.])

So Anna and I discussed much, then I put her through an exercise that my clown teacher, Grey Valenti, put me through when I was receiving my (somewhat limited) training. I asked Anna to enter a room in her clown character, and to imagine that she was there for an interview, though she wasn't allowed to speak. This created a situation in which she had to express herself, yet without parameters and in a context in which there were great consequences. Anna took to it with gusto, and before too long she was no longer making choices, but allowing her instincts to make choices for her. It was great, and frightening, to watch. I kept thinking, "Am I a total bastard to put her through this? Do I really know what I'm doing?" Yet she stuck with it for over ten minutes before I called an end, and ultimately found it helpful. As we moved on to reexamining her established routine, we both had in our minds a priority for allowing for her clown to speak for her, and listening when Helda had something to contribute.

That work was rushed, and of necessity technical, but valuable both to her piece and to our burgeoning working relationship (see 3/12/07 for a bit of history). We succeeded in creating a working space in which I felt I had something of value to contribute, and she felt the ownership and creative daring to challenge my opinions as well as simply try them out. It was great. I only wish I had more time before her upcoming show (April 14) to play like that.

As I moved on, of necessity, to the next effort after Kate's loft and Anna's clown (leaving the loft--for the last time--in slightly more orderly disarray, and Helda hopefully in more disarrayed order) I felt a wonderful gratitude for having work to do, and that work being the sort I care about. Soon (read: already) I'll be back to angst over difficulties in the birthing of A Lie of the Mind, but hopefully amidst that angst-ination I will recall that gratitude. It's a powerful blessing.