Shakespeare by Monkeys

Yes I am a lazy fuck....

2006-02-09T14:04:00.000-05:00

And taking this long to post again proves it. But as I wasnt in a show for about six months I didnt have anything to post about. Yes I have no life.

Not in a show so what do I write about?

2005-05-22T01:00:00.000-05:00

I am not doing a show right now so what do I talk about. How about this?

I saw the new Star Wars this morning. While not as bad as the previous two this movie still is not very good.

There is no story, no building of tension and no conflict. Combat does not conflict make. Lucas confuses sword fights and special affect for people trying to achieve different objectives at each others expense.

Yes I know that building tension in a story where you know where it ends up is hard but hell Ron Howard did it in Apollo 13 so Lucas should have been able to do it. But he didn't. The dialogue is horrible, the acting the same and the story nonexistent.

And by the way whose stupid idea was it to put Hayden Christenson in the suit? Even with lifts and camera angles he is not tall enough to pull it off. They had no problem using James Earl Jones voice so why not use David Prowse in the suit?

Also when the best performance in the movie comes from Yoda you know something is wrong.

The wait is over.

2005-05-14T12:35:00.000-05:00

I just got the call from the director to tell me he went with the other actor. That's how it goes sometimes. The cool thing is I know that both myself and the other actor made his decision difficult with the quality of our auditions.

So...Lets see what time is that Nats game ?

Well guess I am waiting again

2005-05-14T07:29:00.000-05:00

I thought the deal was done. That the role had been cast and that it had gone to the other actor but last night I found out it wasn't and it hasn't.

I received a call last night from one of the actresses that auditioned. This is the actress that I use to date.She was called and told that she hadn't been cast and that while he, the director, had made up his mind about that role(he cast the actress who I thought was just amazing) he was still torn on who to cast in the male role. That he loved us both but just didn't know what to do yet.

She also gave me some other insider information, what my mother use to refer to as being "given to her by a little bird". This was that the director had told the other actor when they read together, and he also voiced this during his call to her, that he was a little stiff and formal and had to loosen up. Well I am anything but stiff and formal on stage so that's a plus on my side. Also when she had discussed this with the director of the show that is currently up and running at this theater company, whose cast includes the director of the show I auditioned for plus the actor I read against, that director voiced the opinion that if the they had cast this other actress then they better cast me as the other actor was stiff and formal at times, had a hard time getting rid of it and also would be "blown off the stage by this actresses if he were cast. That was nice to hear when I thought I was already done and had a fork stuck in my ass.

So it seems I am still in the running. Now the goal is to not dwell on it and just let what ever happens happen. That is a lot tougher then I seems. I haven't been this tied up in getting a role in a long time. I thought I was past this but apparently I am not. Well at least I recognize this demon in myself. I just need to make sure I don't make myself too friendly with him and have him visit on a regular basis. I really couldn't handle that everytime I audition.

So today I need to find something to occupy my time. I think doing 6 loasd of laundry and cleaning my apartment should do that just fine.

Well I have stopped waiting

2005-05-13T10:23:00.000-05:00

Unless this director is an idiot or sleeps until noon I guess I can take it that I am not cast.

So it likes this means two things.

1. I can drive down to see some friends next weekend in North Carolina.

2. I will be at RFK a lot watching Baseball.

Waiting....Waiting....Waiting.....

2005-05-13T06:25:00.000-05:00

Well the call backs went well, not so well that when I walked out of the theater they tackled me in the ally way and offered me the part but well enough. I do think I could have done a better job in my reading with one of the actresses then I did. I did a nice job with one and an ok read with the other. I think part it had to do with that one was just so much more on and going for it and I fed off it. While the other was more reserved and taking her time. Oh well live and learn.

Now what happens if I don't get the part?

I get to see the Nat's play a lot more this spring and summer then I thought. lol

Now on to Callbacks.

2005-05-09T10:20:00.000-05:00

I wasn't aware that there would be callbacks for the show I auditioned for on Saturday. I know the director had not planned on it but he has decided to have them. From what I know he has narrowed it down from four actors for each role to two for each role.The two actresses I read with are being called back along with myself and one other actor. We will also be reading a different scene then the one we read on Saturday, which isn't hard since the male character only has two scenes and a monologue.

So what's my plan? Well I am going to work my ass off tonight and tomorrow to get as much of the dialogue down as possible and go in as well prepared as possible. That way if I don't get the part there are no excuses on my part. I like to make a directors job of casting as hard as possible. So the plan is to go in prepared, focused, relaxed and ready. I also plan on trying to blow everyone out of their seats and the other actor going for my role, mine!! mine!!! mine!! lol, off the stage. Nothing personal but I always play to win. And if I lose and don't get the part I will shake his hand the next time I see him, congratulate him and make sure I see the show.

Here's to blood on the stage!!!

When an audition goes well.

2005-05-08T07:25:00.000-05:00

I love it when this happens. When you are lucky enough to have the script for a while beforehand and can prepare for the audition. When everyone around you has prepared also. Its also real nice when they are only reading a small number of people for each roll. In this case four men and four women to play one male and one female character.

I was lucky in that out of the four women auditioning I got to read with two of them. Both very fine actresses that I have worked with before, one was even an old girlfriend but that's a whole different story, and would like to work with again. But of the two one was just hands down better. She didn't have a single false moment. Her "reading" was better then a lot of performances I have seen. She made my job so much easier because all I had to was listen and react. It was just a joy to be on the stage with her. Not that the other one wasn't good she was but it just wasn't as good as the first one.

So now the waiting game begins. Will I get the part? If not me who? Who will get the female part? Want to know what? Who really fucking cares. If I get cast I get cast. If I don't I don't. I gave it my best shot, did a nice job and its out of my hands. A big difference from how I use to be. When I first started doing theater at the community theater level after an audition I would be agonizing over when would I hear something. Lucky that no longer happens. Thank god. lol

Backstory, character and making choices.

2005-05-05T20:32:00.000-05:00

I was reading other blogs tonight and saw where someone had asked why in other theater blogs beside their own people seem to only talk about the superficial part of acting and didn't get into character development in their blog posts. It made me realize that's I hadn't talked about our I develop a character.

Why? Because I don't. The writer develops the character. I just perform the role of the character. I don't mean that I don't know how he thinks and cant break down a scene by what he wants but what it does mean is I don't worry about things like backstory. If it isn't in the text it doesn't concern me. I basically ask the following questions and leave it at that.

1. Where am I before the scene?
2. Where am I in the scene?
3. What do I want?
4. What will I do to get it?
5. What will I do if I get it?.
6. What will I do if I don't get it?
7. What are my likes and dislikes?

All those questions must be answered in the text. In either what I say or do or in what other characters say about me. That's it.

I once sat in an rehearsal around a table with the cast , director, producer and stage manager where each actor was asked to describe their characters. As they went around the table each actor had these elaborate lives thought out for their characters. Some which came from the text but mostly came from their imaginations. One actor asked me if I thought his character and mine were good friend and went fishing together. I answered "I don't know the plays about me finding a body and reporting it to your character the sheriff." When It got to my turn I just told the director "this isn't the way I work. I don't make up a back story. I ask some very simple questions, which I told her, and that is it. She just smiled and said "ok". The rest of the cast looked at my as if I had just sprouted a large idiot sign on my forehead.

I've just never gotten their approach to acting. If it works for them fine but don't begrudge me because I don't adhere to it. It just seems like too much hard work for something that is as easy as acting. Its not physics or ditch digging. Its acting. Its playing. Its going out on stage and pretending your are someone else and having fun. That's all.

When I am on stage I am not thinking about my characters backstory. Who does that in real life? I just try to accomplish my characters goals while the other actors try to get what they want, no matter how they got to that point, and see what the final resolution of the conflict is as the writer intended. That's it.

Just go with the text where ever it leads you that's all. Nothing more.

or as David Mamet said it so much better:

"Invent nothing. Deny nothing."

What is time off?

2005-05-04T07:30:00.000-05:00

Tonight is the first Wednesday I don't have a show or a rehearsal for the first time in almost three months. So what am I going to do? Relax? Clean my apartment? Go to a movie? Nahhh none of that I am going to a friends house to work on lines for an audition on Saturday. So for everyone who knows who I am the next time I bitch about being beat and needing to take some time off just slap me, and L slap does not mean to hit me so hard my fillings fly out of my mouth.

But I did relax last night. A nice steak dinner with sauteed mushrooms and a couple of drinks. A couple as in when you are pulled over by a policemen and asked how many drinks you had and you respond "a couple" when you know damn well you lost count and are having a hard time seeing past you eye lashes. Plus I sat down and watched "The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy" on DVD. I just wanted to see it before I went to see the movie. I did this for two reasons. One is to be able to watch the movie and be able to argue afterwards with people with no lives who have watched the movie and are upset or outraged that something they remember from the TV version was left out. The other reason is so I can watch the movie and then afterwards be upset or outraged that something I remember from the TV version was left out. Either way I get to argue with people so that makes me happy.

There is one quote in the Hitchhikers that made me role on the floor I was laughing so hard. I wont put into to context but just present it. I can identify with this so much I wish I had said it. I am sure that people who know me well will say it sounds exactly like something I would say. Which while they would say that lovingly to me they would also mean it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox: If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now.

I can so agree with that. lol

All is well that doesn't go on forever.

2005-05-02T14:23:00.000-05:00

Well its done, over, finished, closed. A show that I wanted to do so badly that I was willing to get down on my knees and beg for a role no matter what it was, and instead I was handed one of the leads, is finished, and thank fucking god it is as it was going to be the death of me. There were people in the cast and crew who said they could do this show forever. What the hell were they smoking because I want some.

I have never been in a show that was this physically demanding on me. There was one scene at the end that was just an ass kicker. Put that on top of being on stage the whole time of a 2 1/2 hour show plus the vocal demands and I was done every night afterwards. By the end of the week my vocal cords sounded as if they had been sandblasted and my body felt as if I had wandered into a meeting of the KKK wearing a Pope John Paul II tee shirt.

But with all that said I am glad I did the show. I learned a lot from the demands of the show and I showed some people who doubted if I could perform the role, and there were legions who said I couldn't perform the role including people I consider close personal friends, that they were wrong. But I easily could have proved them right but it didn't go down that way.

So that whale of a show is dead and I escaped to tell this tale.

Now its onto getting into the head of another character and going into an audition on Saturday ready to blow people away.

Its offical I am a whore.

2005-04-26T22:16:00.000-05:00

I have been bitching and moaning about how I need a break and how I was going to take one after this show closed. Well someone dangled a role in front of my face and asked me if I wanted to audition. I said yes. I need to learn that "no" word I have heard about.

And Speaking of Talent and Beauty

2005-04-25T15:41:00.000-05:00

I saw a show this past weekend that a friend was in. I wont speak of what I thought of it because that's between she and I and this blog isn't here to review peoples shows.

But what I do want to mention was that there was a woman in the show who was just amazing. She did not have a false moment all night on stage. She is also extremely attractive. I don't mean cute or pretty I mean just drop dead gorgeous. Maybe what's happening is what I posted about below but being aware of this I would never ask her out.

There is something else about her that I think adds to her beauty that you usually wouldn't think would do so. She had a couple scars on her arms and an impact scar around one of her eyes. Now the ones on her arms are no big deal. Short sleeve shirts will cover those but its almost impossible to hide scars on your face. Especially around your eyes and even more so when it is a scar that was made when the skin has obviously just been shredded and the surgeon had to pull it all together the best they could. You would think that such a scar would detract form her beauty but in my mind it enhanced it. It seemed that a imperfection like that on an otherwise beautiful face made her beauty all that more apparent.

Is Talent an Aphrodisiac?

2005-04-25T15:31:00.000-05:00

I wonder sometimes if having talent or having people perceive you have to talent, makes people attracted to you. I know in my case that recently some women who, I believe, would never go out with me under normal circumstances are willing to do so after seeing me on stage. I don't get it. I'm no different then I would be if I didn't act. I have the same values, beliefs, failings and desires that I would have if I wasn't an actor so why should it make a difference if I can act or not? I don't get it.

I do know that I personally have seen women on stage who I thought did wonderful jobs and I found them very attractive. But I don't know if I had seen them in real life and not on stage if I would have done so.

Oh well I did it now..

2005-04-22T06:19:00.000-05:00

My voice went last night. Its not completely gone. I can still carry on a conversation but there is a big difference between having a voice that works for regular conversation and one that works for the stage. In the end of the Act I last night I felt a little tickle in the back of my throat. I noticed from the beginning of the Act II that I wasn't able to project as well and that I was losing some of my range. By the end of the show it was all I could do to just be able to project loud enough so the audience could hear me.

So today it is Throat Coat and laying off the cigarettes. Hopefully I will be able to make it through the weekend without ending up sounding like William Robert Laughlin.

I'm an ass, an ass, an ass!!

2005-04-19T21:31:00.000-05:00

Well I blew it. I mean really fucking blew it. I did the one thing you should never do at an audition. I showed up late. Not a little late like 5 minutes, which is still huge when your audition window is 15 minutes late, but 41 fucking minutes late. I mean so late that I almost shouldn't have gone but I figures "hell its 6:20, I'm just getting off the Dupont Metro stop, I was suppose to be here at 5:45 so I may as well go down there and see what happens. I can at least apologize and give them my headshot." Wells that I got to do. They were done and I got to show up just in time to say I am sorry, give them my head shot and show myself to be an ass.

The walk down from the Metro was filled with anxiety and adrenaline. The walk back was if life was passing me by. Everyone else had some place to go, something to do, a goal in mind. Mine was gone. I was just going home from something I had come into town to do but didn't get a chance to do. So I just slowly walked along Q Street from 15th to Dupont as if nothing had happened. Which is what happened. Nothing. The air seemed thick as I walked. The calm and stagnant air perfectly reflected my mood.

No reason to kick things throw a fit, be pissed off. Well at least not outwardly. Inside I was disappointed in myself and taking myself to task. Its what I do. I will always be harder on myself then anyone else will. But it doesn't mean I lose it. I am hard on myself because I have to be if I want to get the results I want but it doesn't mean I do it outwardly.

So I will drown my sorrows in rum, only a little, and know tomorrow night I will get to go stage, entertain people and channel this disappointment in myself into my performance. It should be a hell of a show. :-)

Drinking and the craft.

2005-04-10T11:36:00.000-05:00

Do you drink? I don't mean like have a beer with your dinner or a glass of wine but are you capable of really drinking. I mean like Richard Burton drinking but without all the falling down and throwing up on yourself. I can drink. I know it, my friends know it, my bartenders know it and I am sure my liver knows it. I fully expect one day for my liver to just jump out of my body scream "fuck you" and run down the street. Well I hang out with some serious drinking actors. We consider it part of the craft and look upon actors who don't with suspicion. I think its part of the romance of being an actor. You work hard and you play hard. If you didn't you wouldn't have anything to bitch about and trust me actors love to bitch.

But every now and then I see someone who has crossed the line when it comes to drinking. I , and most of my buddies, know when to stop and know when not to drive, but there is one who doesn't. He no longer has his license because of a DUI. He lost a job in a bar because he showed up for his second shift of the day too drunk to wait tables. He also almost didn't get cast in a show because he had let his drinking interfere with a previous show he was in. As it was he had to drop out because he had to take a different waiter job to replace the one he lost and didn't have time to do the show. The thing is he is a hell of a guy when he is sober, nice, charming, funny but when he is hammered he is incoherent, rude and has a habit of passing out in public places.

Which he did last night. He came to see the show I was in and afterwards I could tell he was drunk and that he must have been really drunk when he showed up as after 2 hours he was still pretty hammered. After the show a group of us went out to eat and drink. I almost didn't go because I didn't want to be around him when he was like that and I knew it was going to get worse , which it did. He was stumbling around the bar, he was spilling drinks and finally he passed out in his chair and had to be helped to a friends car and driven home. The friend came back and told me he had to physically carry him into his apartment.

Now that is just sad and the worse part is none of us will confront him about it. Either out of just not giving a rats ass enough to confront him or in that by confronting him we may have to admit to ourselves that we may have a drinking problem.

I know in my case I just don't like to be around sloppy drunks. Who does? I always thought it was because I prided myself that I could handle my booze. With my friend its handling him and I have to admit that my desire not to be around him may grow from that fear that it is handling me too.

Remembering to duck.

2005-04-09T10:02:00.000-05:00

Well I finally did it. I forgot to duck, or at least duck early enough. As I am being moved on the scaffold for the spinning sequence I need to duck or I may catch a light instrument in the head. I usually duck down as soon as the lights are out but last night I didn't and as I was being moved I thought "mmmm I need to duck down" right as I started to do so I caught a light in the top of my head. Not bad enough to cut me or really hurt me but just enough that the audience heard an "owwww" emitting from a dark stage. stage.

Actors can be such whiners

2005-04-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

Well the cast seems to be getting into the swing of things. We still have over three weeks to go and people are already bitching about the show. We've got people pissed off because they didn't get mentioned in a review. We've got people pissed off because other actors have changed what they do on stage. We have people pissed off because there are people who haven't changed what they do on stage. Its just such a fucking mess. All I will say is this 'SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DO YOUR FUCKING JOB!!! " Jesus is that too much to ask?

An opening to remember

2005-03-28T16:15:00.000-05:00

We had press night on Saturday night and the show went well considering it was only the third time we had ran the show. Its kind of a rush to know that the third time you have run a show there will be a 100 people watching and about 18 of them critics. But it went off okay. Only a couple tech screw ups, cues called too soon, and two line screw ups where an actor dropped a line or didn't come in right away. Nothing like having a stage full of actors on stage with a long stretch of silence as everyone thinks "fuck whose line it", but it all turned out well. There was a nice party afterwards and then I came home slept like the dead until 11:00 in the morning.

One strange thing during the show was when I was up on a spinning scaffold that is suppose to represent a whirl pool at sea. Now as someone who hates heights and really doesn't like scaffolds I am not too keen on this in the first place but when the scaffold spinning is out of control and I see light instruments coming very close to my head I am ever more frightened of doing this. But I am sure the guys spinning me we get it right. Either that or I am going to take a light instrument in the skull.

Well that was fucking fun.

2005-03-25T15:06:00.000-05:00

I had a first preview of a show I am currently in, and no I am not going to say what it is, and at one point I was on stage and had no idea what was next. Being only the first time we had run the whole show it was hard to keep track of exactly where you are in the play. Yes the first time we run the whole two hour show and it was in front of a paying audience. The director is a disorganized undisciplined passive aggressive control freak. Go figure. But back to the story. I am on stage and had no idea what was coming up next so I did the smart thing. I asked another actor what was next. He just smiled and whispered what was coming up and all was fine.

Oh by the way a little advice to stage managers: don't tell an actor at intermission what line he dropped in the first act. Okay? Especially when he still has another act to do. It kind of fucks with his confidence.

Hairless Chimps on stage.

2005-03-24T14:02:00.000-05:00

Isn't that what we are? A bunch oh Hairless chinps? So what if we can speak , walk upright and have opposable thumbs. For some reason people in theater think they are better then others, more intelligent and with more taste. I am here to tell you that is all bullshit. Just because someone can memorize lines, remember where to walk on stage and be able to pretend they are someone else doesn't make them more intelligent. All it makes them is an actor. And some of them are not even very good at that.