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RETHINKING, AND REBRANDING

7/6/2016

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A few months ago, a good friend and I were discussing my different jobs, all of the myriad ways that I make a living. Most of the time I’m an actor. Often I’m a teacher. On some days I’m a writer, an audition coach, an editor, a public speaker, or a continuing legal education instructor. I was telling my friend that I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed by wearing so many hats, juggling my many different websites, defining myself in too many different ways. It’s gotten to the point that when I’m talking with my father, he’ll often laugh, telling me that I have more careers than anyone he knows. So my friend gave me a challenge: “Figure out your brand,” she said. “Define the central idea that ties all of your endeavors together. That will tell you who you are, and what you have to offer to others.”

Her challenge struck a chord with me, and I began struggling with it. I went back through my old blog posts, my lesson plans, my various talks and interviews. I looked for threads that might appear and reappear in every context in which I work. As I did this I realized that I was doing what I challenge my acting students to do: Figure out their mission and what’s important to them, aside from becoming an actor. What do they have to say, what do they want to stand for in the world? I tell them that’s the road to a kind of career satisfaction that can withstand the vagaries of show business, that can sustain them in both the good times and the lean.

This type of self-examination is more and more important in our changing socio-economic landscape. Gone are the days when you could think about having one job with one company that would provide you with security, or even when you could think in terms of having one career. You now have to look not at what your particular job might be, but rather at what your skills and abilities are. Perhaps the most important qualities that you can foster are adaptability and flexibility. Since employers will come and go, showing neither longevity nor loyalty to their employees, your ability to define yourself as a business with an ethos and skill set all your own will set you up to thrive. Don’t think of yourself as an employee. You are a business entity unto yourself, and you conduct business with others.

As I engaged in this exercise of self-reflection one thing kept jumping out at me: the idea of “Story.” In one way or another, all of my study and work has revolved around Story, far more than any other concept. As an English major, I studied literary criticism. As a law student and then as a lawyer, I worked with fact patterns and learned how to pull the salient details out of them to fit one legal theory or another. As an actor and author, I tell stories, and as a literary editor and a teacher of actors and lawyers, I help others find voice for their own, or their client’s.

This realization, that Story has been central to my life, has led to an understanding of myself and my work that is both more succinct and more inclusive. Three women have helped me on this journey, and they have my gratitude: Meghan Pinson, of My Two Cents Editing, posed the initial question; Joanne DeNaut, casting director at South Coast Repertory, helped me find an artistic home after my move to the West Coast; Karen Hensel has fostered my teaching career and honored me by turning her beloved Acting Intensive Program over to my grateful hands.

The results of this questioning have been profound for me. Internally, I now know that all my various enterprises are actually connected, and this helps me to present myself with more confidence and authority. Externally, this exploration has led me to a rebranding, together with a new website that allows me to be more accessible to others in the way that I am now more accessible to myself. Take a look at it if you have the chance. I’d love to know what you think.

Thanks to Dan Reichert of Daniel Reichert Photography for the new headshots and help with the website. If you need new pictures, Daniel is invaluable in helping you capture an image your truest self.

And if you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my newsletter.

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PLANTING SEEDS

5/22/2016

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I’m racing towards the climax of a suspense novel. The hero is an incredibly wealthy real estate developer (no, it’s not Donald Trump). Nefarious forces have kidnapped his wife in order to dissuade him from following his political aspirations (still not Trump – remember, I said hero). He has his final confrontation with the supervillain at a construction site, soon to be the tallest in the world, the crowning jewel in his empire. He lands his final crushing blow, and stands victorious. But wait! With a dying breath his nemesis tells him that his wife is forty stories above them, with no way down. The place is wired to blow. Quick as a wink, our hero runs outside to the world’s largest construction crane, jumps into the operator’s cab, and deftly manipulates the controls. With seconds to spare, he maneuvers a cargo net up to the fortieth floor and … wait … what the … ? All of a sudden he knows how to operate a crane? Up to this point all I’ve heard about is high finance, boardroom battles, galas with tuxedos. How does he know how to operate a crane? Okay, you lost me. Not reading this author again.

When reading a book, or listening to a story, a reader needs to know that he is in good hands. He must be able to float down the river of narrative on the raft of his imagination in a dream state, secure in the knowledge that the author has all of the threads of the tale firmly in her grasp.  There should be no hidden rocks jarring him along the way, unless they are purposefully placed there by the author for a particular effect. Because of this, it’s important that the reader have all of the information necessary at any one point in the story to make sense of the immediate events, and the example above shows what can happen when he doesn’t.

Readers want to feel that they are in the hands of a writer they can trust, who is in command of her narrative and who isn’t trying to plug holes in her story as she goes along. To avoid this, it’s a simple matter of inserting the necessary detail earlier in the story – planting the seed. For example, in the story line above, an early interview with our hero by an intrepid reporter could reveal that, although he may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, something frequently harped upon by his political opponents, his tycoon father wanted him to have a workingman’s values, and had therefore insisted that he learn the business literally from the ground up. He had therefore spent the summers he had off from his Ivy League education working construction sites, where he learned how to operate heavy machinery and walk the dangerous high steel. Not only would this interview set up the ability he needs to have at the end of the story, but it would also give us deeper insight into his character and better flesh out world of the novel. The reader won’t feel like they’re listening to a little kid trying to explain the plot of a movie, but instead feel safe in the hands of a master storyteller.

For one-on-one help with your own novel, contact My Two Cents Editing and request a comprehensive manuscript critique or a mentoring session with me.  

www.mytwocentsediting.com
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WHY DO YOU SAY THAT?

4/21/2016

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Handling exposition with dialogue.

Figuring out how to write good exposition for your novel is a bit like trying to convince a picky eater to finish a square meal. If you don’t pull it off, your novel won’t thrive. But how can you serve it up in such a way that your readers won’t spit it out?

There are a number of ways to work exposition into a story without writing long paragraphs of back story or explaining what’s going on in the moment. The most direct ways are through action, description, and dialogue. Dialogue might be the most tempting method, but it can also be the trickiest.  
Great dialogue delivers information the readers need without making them feel like they’re being lectured. It simultaneously develops characters and moves the story along. But when it’s used to dole out exposition, the effect can be deadening.
 
We’re all familiar with bad dialogue. My favorite example is what I call the CSI effect, where skilled professional colleagues (on CSI, they’re crime scene investigators) are inexplicably compelled to explain to each other everything they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It makes me want to scream at the TV: “Don’t you people do this together every day? Why on earth are you talking about it?”
 
A simple solution for the CSI scenario would be to have a reporter or visitor or trainee tag along, asking questions. That would give the pros a reason to explain what they’re doing.

When you’re writing dialogue, it’s important to remember that your characters aren’t talking to each other to meet your needs as the author—they’re talking to meet their own needs.

The brilliant acting teacher Uta Hagen once said that “Words are the messengers of our intentions.” I use this as my guide when I’m writing and critiquing fiction. If we keep in mind that every word we put into our characters’ mouths must be justified by their motivations, objectives, and desires, we’ll have a better shot at creating believable characters that our readers can’t get enough of.

For further reading on dialogue and exposition, check out James Scott Bell’s book How to Write Dazzling Dialogue: The Fastest Way to Improve Any Manuscript. And for one-on-one help with your own novel’s dialogue and exposition, contact My Two Cents Editing and request a comprehensive manuscript critique or a mentoring session with me.

www.mytwocentsediting.com
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LETTING GO OF YOUR BABY

3/31/2016

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You’ve finished the first draft of your novel, and it’s time to put it out there for some feedback. You give it to your best friend and your mother, perhaps a former teacher who encouraged you along the way, and maybe the two people you most respect in your writers’ group. But there’s a small voice coming from your head telling you that you need an unbiased opinion, and every time you hear it, another voice in your head screams “Nooooo!” Sort of like the voice many people hear the first time they leave their child with a babysitter who isn’t a close friend or relative. And the comparison is an apt one. That manuscript is your child. You gave birth to it, nursed it, and coddled it. It is terrifying to put it out there into the world, where it can be ignored, insulted, or criticized, where people won’t realize that the things they don’t like or get about it are really, really cute, or better yet, signs of genius yet undiscovered. They just won’t understand it the way you do.

Guess what? You’re right. They won’t. They will play with your child only if they feel like it. They may leave your child on the bench … I mean, bookshelf … to be picked up only after all the other books have been chosen. They’ll ignore your child if they feel like it, drop it from the team of books on their bedside table, and they will most certainly talk about your child behind its back after it’s gone. That’s why it is imperative that you take that next step, that you send your manuscript, your baby, out into the world, to learn how to play with others without you keeping watch, holding its hand, making sure that it doesn’t fall down and skin its knee. You have to trust that it can face a bully and not run away crying, relying on you to protect it. It has to learn how to stand on its own.

At My Two Cents Editing, where I work on manuscript critiques as an associate editor, we get it. We’re writers ourselves. We know how hard it is to turn your child over to the hands of someone else. But having been through the process so many times ourselves, we know how crucial it is to approach the work with a caring but dispassionate eye.  Your child is going to have to leave the safe home you have given it, the gentle, understanding audience of friends and family, and face a tougher, less sympathetic public. We love nothing more than helping you make sure that it is ready to take those next steps, so that it can thrive on its own.
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For more information on My Two Cents Editing, and our services, visit mytwocentsediting.com.
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TO BE IN THE MOMENT . . .

3/9/2015

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“Being in the moment.” It is as central to acting as keeping your eye on the ball is to sports. Actors praise their peers by saying that they were “really in the moment.” Acting teachers, myself included, continually exhort students to “be in the moment.” Yet it is a concept that is hard to grasp. After all, you have read the scene many times, and rehearsed it over and over. You know what is coming next. So how can you be in the moment? How can you be truly surprised when the nerdy shy guy suddenly declares his love for you or your wife tells you, out of the blue, that she is leaving? How can you not be thinking about your next line, getting ready for your quick change coming up in the wings, worrying about the blood capsule you have to bite when you suddenly get punched at the end of the shot?

When I was a young actor, I struggled mightily with this problem. I worked very hard in class. I rehearsed diligently. I wrote page after page in my journal on my assigned character’s objectives, back story, environment, and inner life. I did copious research on the world in which he lived, and engaged in a minute analysis of the text.  I was as thorough as possible in my preparation, only to be disappointed at how my work was received in class. Time and time again, I was praised by my teacher for my understanding of the text and the character, for the intelligence of the choices I made and the ideas I illustrated. But she would conclude her critique by saying that she could tell that I knew what was coming next, that the scene wasn’t alive, that I wasn’t in the moment.

My frustration grew and grew until finally I decided to rebel. Disheartened by my teacher’s continued criticism, I decided that I would show her. I would put the scene up, and I wouldn’t do anything. I would throw out everything that I had worked on in this scene I had rehearsed so completely with my partner. I would make my entrance, sit down on the couch, say my lines, listen to my partner, and do nothing else.
When we presented in class, as the scene began I was angry and nervous, and I can hardly remember what happened. I became confused as the scene progressed, and was sure that I was shaking like a leaf. But then something started to happen. Because I was listening to my partner, I started to respond, to do things I had not planned. I’m not talking about changing the blocking, or messing up the lines, or any type of action or behavior radically out of place in the scene. The feeling I had was more akin to one I remembered from being in a ski race, when I would be going too fast to think about the upcoming gate, but was instead forced to respond by instinct,  bypassing my thinking brain, trusting my body and  … something else.
When the scene was over, I waited for the onslaught. There were a few moments of silence, and then my teacher asked, as she always did, what I had to say about the scene. I told her it was awful.

“Why?

“Because it was completely out of control.” (Remember, there was no shouting, no crazy blocking, nothing out of the ordinary for the simple scene we were working on.

She nodded. “And it was the best work you’ve ever done.”

“But it was so uncomfortable,” I said.

At this, Uta’s face broke into a joyful smile. “Oh, my dear boy, who ever told you that you were supposed to be comfortable?” And that was that. My breakthrough. The moment where I finally learned my own balance as an actor, and the training wheels could start to come off.

BUT HOW DO YOU DO IT? HOW DO YOU STAY IN THE MOMENT WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT IS COMING?

I hear the urgency of those questions all the time, because this is not something that can be explained technically. Teachers have to cajole, push, almost trick their students into it, much the same way a parent has to tell a child that he is not going to let go of the bicycle. Then one day, the child looks back, and realizes that she is free. But certainly there are steps you can take to pursue this goal.
One thing you can do is find a class to which you can commit, and a teacher you can trust.  The process of learning this takes time, more for some than for others. Find someone whose work you admire, who will be able to tell you when you are on target and when you are missing the mark. Who can take away your training wheels. Who knows your personality, habits and tricks well enough to call you out when you are relying on them. A teacher who can identify for you the moments where you responded truthfully, as opposed to the moments where you were stuck to your plan, where you were weighed down by your own idea of what you were going to play, of how you were going to respond. Over time, just as when you were learning to ride a bicycle, you will start to feel when you have your balance, in your heart and in your body, more than in your intellect.

Next, you have to exercise discipline, and do the hard work of preparation. The pursuit of being in the moment is not an excuse to simply walk into a scene without doing all of the analysis and research that the scene deserves. Being in the moment does not mean you rely only on your own feelings and impulses, unguided by all of the influences of a script. Story, circumstances, style, history, and atmosphere are part and parcel of the text, and must be rigorously explored. But once we have done all of that work, we have to let it go, and let the scene happen. We have to know everything we can possibly know about our character — his time, life, history, desires, goals — right up to the moment when the scene begins, and then walk out on stage or before the camera and let that knowledge be the sea into which we dive as we allow ourselves to experience a particular incarnation of that performance, that take.

Finally, you have to allow yourself to return to an innocent belief in possibility. Do you remember the sense of play, the freedom of imagination, that you had as a child as you played with dolls or action figures, as you made up scenarios with your friends on the block or in the back yard? For most of us, the ability to imaginatively immerse ourselves in that type of play died as we grew up. Fantasy play ceased to feel real. Yet there is one environment where it still lives for most of us, and that is in the watching of films, plays, and television shows. It stays alive even when we have seen the piece before. Think of when you watch Casablanca for the umpteenth time. Don’t you really think as you are watching it that this time, maybe this time, Ilsa will stay with Rick? That hope comes to life subliminally, and you allow yourself to be in the moment as you watch the film. Of course, if someone were to pause the picture and ask you, you would say, “Of course she goes with Laszlo, you idiot. Put the movie back on.” But sitting there in the dark, you allow yourself to believe. The same is true with Romeo and Juliet — maybe tonight the messenger will get there in time — or  Rocky — maybe this time he’ll be able to knock out Apollo Creed.
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When you allow yourself to have this trust and sense of play, the story will be told. You don’t have to chart each moment and carve it in stone. If you are sitting in a place of openness and receptivity, you are incapable of not responding. If you have done the work to attune yourself to the character and you are holding yourself in that space, your honest responses will necessarily be in character. Willy Loman will always drive off the road, Tom Wingfield will always leave home, Matt Freidman and Sally Tally will always kiss. How much more compelling can the evening be if the possibility of a different ending is kept open until the last moment, if both actor and audience truly believe that this time, something else might happen.
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COPING CONVERSATIONS

4/17/2014

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Listen to my conversation with Dr. Bob Phillips, discussing my new novel, In the Country of the Blind, and the cathartic process of writing.

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COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS 2013 TO THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DRAMATIC ARTS

5/28/2013

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I was honored to be invited to speak to the graduating class of 2013 on Sunday, May 19th at the beautiful Alex Theater in Glendale, California. The following were my remarks.

Thank you, Karen [Hensel], for those very kind remarks. The credits were accurate, but I wish that even a tenth of the nice things that you said about me were true. If your teaching is only a mere shadow of the acting ability you just displayed, then these students have indeed been in good hands. I also have to say that I am truly honored to be here to speak to you all today, current students, the distinguished faculty and staff of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and the gathered families and friends who have come to help us all celebrate you, the graduates, on this wonderful day. I am thrilled as well, because in 1932 my grandparents met and fell in love at the New York City campus of this institution. But as I stand here, I’m only left wondering, as I so often am when I’m on stage, who backed out? Who wasn’t available? But let’s move on to more important things.

We all know the saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Good advice, particularly for those of us in the dramatic arts. In a 2012 Wall Street Journal ranking of unemployment rates by occupation, actors were listed as number two, sandwiched in between “textile bleaching and dyeing machine operators and tenders” in the number one slot, and “boilermakers” in third place. The journal somehow has the employment rate for actors listed at 35.2 percent. I don’t know who they’re talking to. Using that statistic, we’d have to say that 64.8% of actors are working and having some measure of success. If we look at the Actors Equity Association statistic, which is, I think, a far more accurate number, we have a 90% unemployment rate. So that means that only 10% of actors are having any measure of success. “Wow,” you must be thinking, “this is a gloomy way to start off a commencement address. I thought it was going to be a little more inspirational than this.” Not what you expected at all, huh? Well, I’m here to tell you that I am undaunted by these numbers, and I think you should be as well. I think your chances of success in your chosen field are infinitely higher than 10%. I think they are infinitely higher than 64.8%. I think they are close to one hundred percent, and I’ll tell you why, but first, a little background.

As some of you may know, some of you may not, I grew up in a fairly successful theatrical family. My earliest memory of going to visit my dad at work is hanging out backstage at Broadway’s Booth Theater while he was performing in the hit comedy Luv, by Murray Schisgal. I remember after the show, being allowed to jump off the set of the Brooklyn Bridge into the waiting mattresses, just like my dad did in the show. Really cool. Decided right there and then that I wanted to become an actor. The rest of my childhood was spent on movie sets, and that’s where I learned what an actor’s life is really like. Sure, I learned a lot about craft, about story, about how the rhythms of the day go when you’re making a movie. But I also learned that being an actor is a financially secure career, where big job follows big job follows big job, and there is always enough to take care of your family, to send your kids to private school, to buy the new car that you want.

Then, when my older brother graduated high school just before I entered it, he came out to Los Angeles to pursue his own career, and again, I learned some valuable lessons. I learned that when you get to LA, you immediately start getting guest starring roles on shows like Barney Miller, Happy Days and Hawaii Five-O, and that within a couple of years, you land the lead in a television series. Yet for some reason, all of these incredible lessons about how easy it is to succeed in show business were lost on me. I ignored them all, went to college, went to law school, practiced law for five years, and was miserable. Then I finally gave in, accepted reality. I threw away my wild fantasy of making a living as a lawyer and decided to settle for the safety and security of an acting career. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

Actually, I can’t complain about the trajectory of my career. I’ve been truly blessed, starting out with showcases in New York City, moving up to smaller regional theaters, then to Off-Broadway, then Broadway, all the while slowly but steadily collecting film and television credits along the way. But what was happening inside my head was another story entirely. I knew, although I would never admit it, that if I wasn’t as successful as my older brother, then I had failed. The notion of actually attaining the heights of my father’s career, well, that didn’t even enter my mind, so I was in some sense guaranteed not to succeed. Finally, through enough therapy and self-examination, something I hope you’re taking part in as well, I started to grapple with the idea that I was perhaps holding myself up to a standard too high. Sure, I would tell people that I was satisfied in many ways with my career, which was the envy of many of my friends. I would tell folks that if my dad was a plumber or an accountant, I would already consider myself very successful. So why should I hold myself against the difficult standard of my father’s or my brother’s “success.” I would say all that, but it didn’t really penetrate.

One evening, in 2000, I was having dinner with my older brother, Adam. At the time he was in a very successful television series called Chicago Hope, and he had flown in to see me in the original production of Dinner With Friends. During dinner I mentioned, in one of those rare moments of candor that siblings sometimes have, that I struggled with jealousy over the success he was having. He looked at me and said, “I struggle with jealousy over the success that you’re having.” I couldn’t believe it. I was having the time of my life, mind you. Dinner With Friends was the toast of New York, and I had gotten a Drama Desk nomination, but I was making probably a fortieth of what he was making, and people in the restaurant were recognizing him, not me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’re in a play that just won the Pulitzer Prize. You’re working with one of the best playwrights and one of the best directors in America. I go to work each week and get handed a script, and I’ve got to do it, like it or not. Sometimes it’s a script that, if I wasn’t on the show, if they just offered it to me as a stand alone episode or film, I’d turn it down.” Hearing him say that was a shock to me, and it was the beginning of an ongoing journey to redefine for myself the meaning of “success.”

I knew a young woman who I had recommended for Austin Pendleton’s advanced scene study class at HB Studio in New York. When she was assigned her second scene, she worked with her partner several times, but always delayed putting the scene up. I finally pressed her on the point and asked her what the problem was. She told me her scene partner was terrible, wasn’t doing the scene the right way, and so she didn’t want to put it up, because Austin wouldn’t be able to see her best work, wouldn’t be able to evaluate her properly. I told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was making a big mistake. She was laboring under the illusion that when she got a Broadway show, or a role on a television series, that she was going to be working with brilliant actors. But that’s not always the case. The quality of your coworkers is never guaranteed. You might be working with some of the greats. But these days you’re also just as likely to be working with Snookie.

You see, one of the problems that we are facing in the arts, in our society, at this point in time, is the cult of celebrity. Being rich and famous has become a goal in and of itself, and reality television and the like only reinforce this. Do you want to be on Broadway? The sad truth is that you’d have better odds of getting there by being on a reality show than by studying your craft. But at what price to your own self-respect? We have to guard against that trend, keep fighting the good fight, so that future generations of artists have examples, something to aspire to.

So given this somewhat sorry state of affairs, what do we do with the phrase, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Well, in one sense, as actors, we have to live by it. We have to keep auditioning, keep looking for work, constantly. That will never change. But the challenge that I would like to put to you today is to balance the “try, try again,” with something else: “If at first you don’t succeed, then examine your definition of success.”

What is “success?” One way of evaluating it is by external factors. Other factors are internal. On the external side, it’s clear that so many of us, from time to time, are going to have to find alternative ways of bringing in income. I would encourage you to do so in ways that fill your creative soul, even if they are not what you would be your first choice as an acting gig. I have a friend who is, I think, a brilliant actor. But the world has not yet recognized his talent with the kinds of roles he thinks he should be playing. He has looked on with a mixture of both curiosity and disdain at many of the jobs that I have taken, while he kept donning his waiter’s apron, waiting for something that was fitting for a man of his talents. He is still catering. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking that there is only one way that your creative hunger can be sated. Don’t say, “It’s acting, or nothing.” Creative endeavor will breed creative endeavor, and keeping those juices flowing keeps you better prepared for each opportunity that comes along. Act, teach acting, write a one woman or one man show and tell the stories of your life, direct. Above all, create! It is too easy to fall into the actor’s trap of waiting for someone else to give us a job so that we can be fulfilled. I beg you, don’t give anyone else that power over you.

Many of us are initially attracted to acting because of the charge we get from performing, the pleasure we feel at moving the emotions of others, the thrill of hearing the applause, the attention. For some, it’s a way to find a new kind of home, family, social group. Take the example of my son,  He’s a different kind of kid, as I’m sure so many of you are. He doesn’t fit in to any one group. He’s on the Varsity Wrestling Team, but he’s also a writer and an artist. He’s a reader, and a cross-country runner. He’s into fantasy role-playing card games, and into girls, two things that I have tried to explain to him don’t really go together. Then suddenly, because of the insight of one teacher, he was pulled into the high school musical, and now at 15 has just had his first real theatrical experience playing The Man in the Chair in his high school’s production of The Drowsy Chaperone. This was a chance for him to really find himself in a new way, and now the fire has been ignited. I suspect that many of you found your way into the dramatic arts in a similar way. And all of that is great. It’s wonderful to finally find a place where you feel that you belong. But I would like to suggest something to you. The charge you get from performing, the thrill of the applause, even the deep relief and comfort you may feel at finally finding your place in the world … all of that is great. But in my experience, eventually it won’t be enough. All of those ways of evaluating success are centered on what working in our field will do for you. I want you to think about something else. I want you to think about what it can do for others.

Another way to look at “Success” is to break it down into three categories: There is Work, there’s Recognition, and there’s Livelihood. And for each of these, there is a dark side and a light side. Let’s look at work.

There is steady work, and there is work that feeds your soul. Steady work, the kind that you get from a hit television series, can bring incredible financial security. But be careful of this. Remember my conversation with my older brother, where he expressed disappointment at the quality of the scripts he was so often handed. Or my conversation with another friend, who had played the same character for ten years on a police procedural. For most of that time she was bored out of her mind, and now she confesses to me that she thinks she has forgotten how to act, and is terrified of auditioning.

The other kind of career, which may not bring in mountains of money but which pays off in other ways, comes from developing relationships with your peers who are up and coming, as you are. You can experience the wonder of working on new plays, independent films. It may not be for much money, but you can be working with the newest, the best, the brightest, out there on the cutting edge, without the worry of getting fired by the network or the studio if some bean-counter’s bottom line is not met.

Let’s look at recognition. There is fame, and there is the respect of your peers. As to fame, what the heck does that mean, other than getting a table at the hottest new restaurant without having to go on a waiting list? But the respect of your peers? Talk about a thrill. You might not be the one who is getting hounded for autographs, but when Helen Mirren or Anthony Hopkins wants to talk to you after they see you in a show because they were impressed with your work — that’s something that you will carry with you for the rest of your days.

Finally, there is livelihood. There are riches, and there is enough to get by. Again, that big house starts to feel pretty cold and empty if your heart is not filled by the work you do. Nothing beats going to bed at night tired and satisfied, knowing that what you did during the day fed your soul, and lightened the load that someone else was carrying.

Remember above all that we are tellers of stories, and that the stories we tell have the ability to profoundly affect the lives of others. I, for one, know all that I need to know about how things don’t work out. I think the rest of the world is suffering from the same malady. In my work, what I want to do is talk about other things. I think often of the list that William Faulkner enumerated in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, a list of the only subjects worthy of artistic endeavor: They are love and honor and pity and pride and courage and hope and compassion and sacrifice. As actors, we have the chance to to live in, and share with others, an imagined universe, an alternate universe, a universe where these are the qualities towards which we strive. My challenge to you today is to worry not about whether you are successful in a material way, but whether you are successful in your attempt to make that imagined, alternate universe a reality.

Break a leg on this quest, and congratulations.
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NAVIGATING THE WHALE: PART VI

2/24/2013

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Being a record of my journey as I undertake a new role that, unlike many others I have played, fills me with a sense of immense challenge and a promise of growth, both as an actor and a seeker.

Facebook status, February 11th, 2013: What an amazing first day of rehearsal for The Whale, at South Coast Rep. A wonderful director, incredible cast, great creative team, and an incredibly moving and ultimately inspiring play. So thrilled to be a part of this production.

The first day of rehearsal at South Coast Rep is always so exciting. It starts with a meet-and-greet in the Argyros Theater, where we will be performing. The artistic and managing directors welcome and introduce the playwright, cast, and creative team to the assembled staff at the theater, all of the many people in the different departments that make a huge organization like the Rep run. The director says a few words, and the designers, costume, set, and lighting, present their models and sketches, describing the concept for the show. Next, the cast retires to the rehearsal hall to elect an Equity deputy, sign contracts, and take care of other administrative business. Then a big crowd, all the folks from marketing, wardrobe, props, and other departments, gather to hear the first reading of the script. This reading is somewhat more a performance than part of the rehearsal process proper, to give those assembled a feel for the tone and energy of the play. After that read-through, there are many congratulations and declarations of what a great show this is going to be. Finally, all depart, except for the director, playwright, stage management team, and the actors, and we are left with the small group that will spend the next three weeks in this windowless basement space, getting to know this piece, and each other, intimately. We read the play again, without the pressure of an audience, stopping, discussing, beginning the process of dissection. At the end of the day, we join the rest of the theater staff again to relax at a social gathering on the patio in front of the theater, snacking, drinking soda, beer, or wine. The next day we return to begin our work in earnest.
Picture
With cast members Blake Lindsley, Wyatt Fenner, Helen Sadler and Jennifer Christopher.
Facebook Status, February 13, 2013: Ah, those wonderful first days of blocking a show, when you realize that you have completely forgotten how to act, and you know in your heart it will never come together. Thank God I’ve been through this enough to know that this is only a phase, a necessary part of the process, when we dismantle the whole thing so that we can put it back together, whole, complete, alive. What a great team we have on this journey.

The first week of rehearsal I am struggling through a big learning curve. I’m trying to track the downward spiral of my (Charlie’s) health, working on wheezing and shortness of breath, trying to figure out how to keep that going without hyperventilating or damaging my voice. How do I realistically represent someone who can’t get any breath, and still make sure that I am heard in a 336 seat two-tiered house? I’m trying to understand the symptoms of congestive heart failure, so that I can make my physical symptoms and limitations as specific as possible, rather than projecting a general portrait of someone who just feels lousy all the time. Where does it hurt? How much? When? The theater connects me to two doctors who give me some insights, but this presents an additional wrinkle. Some of what might be authentic has to be expanded or modified for dramatic purposes. What is realistic doesn’t always tell the story in the best way.

Facebook Status, February 14, 2013: This is exactly how I feel, every time the stage manager says, “Okay, let’s take ten.” (This post is linked to a video, illustrating the feeling.)

I am working in the prosthetic suit, which I refer to as my body, for half the rehearsal day period each day. That’s about 3 hours, or just about as long as the ice packs last in the cooling vest. Getting into the suit is an ordeal, but it’s getting a bit easier each day as we practice. The suit itself is such an amazing, intricate piece of design, it deserves another post all to itself, but that will have to wait until after the show opens, so that we don’t spoil the “reveal.” For now, suffice it to say that wearing the suit in rehearsal is exhausting, but necessary. The prosthetic becomes the obstacle through which I am struggling, instead of my having to pretend that there’s an obstacle. The first time I sit down on, and then try to get up from, the couch on the set, everyone watches. “Wow, that was fantastic,” they say. “It looked so realistic, like you were really struggling.”

“Really?” I reply.  “Because I was just trying to get off the couch.” I love it when props and costumes do the work. I’m fundamentally lazy, and then I don’t actually have to “act.”

At the end of the first week, the cast comes over to the home of my friend Mitch Cohen, where I’m crashing during this production. We throw some steaks on the grill and have our first chance to relax and bond outside of rehearsal. Mitch is a former student of mine from the South Coast Rep conservatory. After he took my class, I coached him for an audition for a role that he really, really wanted to land. I’m happy to say he’s in rehearsal himself right now for a production of Brooklyn Boy at Newport Theater Arts Center. When I got The Whale, he told me I should stay with him to save myself the commute back and forth from LA, and also so we could spend time helping each other learn our lines. It’s good thing he made the offer, because this play is the most rigorous I have ever done. Staying with him gives me the luxury of focusing on a single-minded daily schedule, as follows:
  1. Get up, shower, drink a large glass of water, then coffee and an egg white omelette. Take care of necessary emails and assignments for my acting class. Record and send any voiceover auditions that came in the day before.
  2. Drive to Starbuck’s near the theater. Another cup of coffee. Study lines and work on the script. Sitting alone with script, after the first time of putting each scene on it’s feet is always a great time to pull it apart even more, to break things down in the actual story, to get the timeline and present circumstances of each relationship and scene fixed in my mind. We always rush, rush, rush, when we’re first running through scenes, especially if it is stuff that your character is doing alone on stage. It’s important to go over things in slow motion in your mind, to figure out the moment-to-moment beats.
  3. Stop at Trader Joe’s next to Starbuck’s and pick up a salad to have during rehearsal break, and something healthy-ish to have for dinner. Then get to the theater early, and check in at the costume department about any changes to my body, and then get into my body when rehearsal starts.
  4. Rehearse for three hours.
  5. Get out of my body and rehearse for another 3 hours.
  6. Go back to Mitch’s house. Have some dinner, maybe a scotch or a glass of wine. Watch some mindless TV, go to bed.
  7. Rinse and repeat.
Facebook status, February 23, 2013: First stumble-through of The Whale today, at South Coast Rep. This amazing cast has pulled together so quickly, and now we are in great shape to start putting in the fine details. This is turning out to be an incredible ride, and I am so happy to be sharing it with these terrific, generous artists, with the Martin Benson at the helm.

The last day of our second week of rehearsal. I have been struggling to be off book enough to make it through this without holding my script for any of the scenes. The only one I am sure about is Thursday Afternoon, but that’s only because, although I am on stage, I’m asleep through the whole scene. Which is a good thing. It gives me a breather before the race to the end, which feels like kicking it out in a sprint at the end of a marathon.

Before the stumble-through, I talk to Martin about the plan for the next week. I am hoping to have the chance to do each scene a few times without the struggling for breath. I have been focusing on that so much that I feel that I haven’t fully explored some of the relationships and events enough. The cardiac and breathing problems are happening to Charlie, not something that he is himself trying to make happen. It is the other things in the scene that he is struggling to achieve, things that he wants from the other characters, and I feel that I have been losing track of those because my attention has been split. Martin agrees that we should to do that, but I also realize his wisdom in having me try to tackle the breathing from the beginning, before we take it out to work on the other elements. We need to feel confident that it’s going to work when we put it back in, and the other cast members have needed to see it, because my condition has such a strong impact on their own emotional life.

Acting always involves multitasking, but Charlie requires much more of me than usual. I feels like someone is saying, “Pat your head. Now rub your belly. Okay, now lift your left foot up and balance a plate on it. Now hop up and down on your right foot. Now sing “Una Furtiva Lagrima. Oooops, you’re not patting your head … okay good, but now you dropped the plate.” But we still have two weeks till the first performance. Plenty of time. I’ll get it.

We start the stumble-through, and it goes better than any of us thought it would, I suspect. That is until about twenty minutes before the end, when my hands start to tingle, then go numb, and I am totally lost, with no idea where I was in the story. This is not the normal “What’s my line” or “What happens next?” moment. I am completely disoriented. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I think I was experiencing something similar to what athletes call the “bonk.” We stop for a few minutes, I eat an orange, drink some water. The feeling returns to my fingers, my hands stop shaking so much, and I’m able to refocus and get through to the end.

The first stumble-through, as daunting as it is, is always such a rewarding experience. After pulling the text apart, it is so good to put the pieces back together, as rough as it might be, so that again we can get a sense of the arc of the whole show. For me, in this show, it has helped me to see how I have to pace myself, and also showed me that a lot of the progression of the physical symptoms, and the heightening of the emotional circumstances, will be easier to do when the scenes are stitched together and each element is occurring in context. It also helped us to figure out that there’s got to be plenty of Gatorade around, so that the audience doesn’t have to come back to the theater on another day, to catch the rest of the show.

For more information about this production of The Whale, visit the the South Coast Rep website, and please be sure to sign up for my newsletter.
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NAVIGATING THE WHALE: PART V

2/10/2013

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Being a record of my journey as I undertake a new role that, unlike many others I have played, fills me with a sense of immense challenge and a promise of growth, both as an actor and a seeker.

I sit in a chair in the costume shop, and I suddenly find it a little hard to breath. I am almost overwhelmed with sadness, a feeling of isolation, and a distant sense of a deeply buried rage. I’ve come down to South Coast Rep for a fitting with Amy Hutto and Laurie Donati, who are designing and building what I am calling “my body.” I am calling it my body because, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t want to call it by the more common industry name. I will inhabit it this body to become Charlie in The Whale. To call it by its common name would be to separate myself from myself. I want to be as integrated with this new body as I can possibly be for the next two months.

Laurie and Amy have done the preliminary work on the innermost layer of my body, which is made from Powernet, a spandex fabric which resembles a very thick, strong stocking material. It needs to have a snug fit so that it can anchor the rest of my body. Amy and Laurie are making sure it fits properly before they begin the extensive work of attaching the huge amount of necessary foam and padding. First I don a cotton onesie that covers me from just below the knees to just past my elbows. This can be washed between each performance, which will make life more pleasant, especially for anyone having to spend time near me. This body can only be washed once a week, since it will take two days to dry. On top of the onesie goes a specially designed vest worn by performers playing characters at theme parks in hot weather. It has four large pockets running top to bottom, two on the front and two on the back. The pockets hold large packs of a special gel. The packs are kept in the freezer between shows, and will go into the vest to keep me from overheating during performances. On top of the onesie and the vest goes the innermost layer of my body. Once I have it on, Laurie measures and pins. When that’s done, she and Amy ask if I want to try on a prosthetic suit that they made for another actor in a different play. It’s about a quarter of the size that my body will become, but they say it should give me a preliminary idea of what it will feel like. They help me into it, and I stand for a few moments, getting a sense of this new bulk and shape. Then the feelings begin to flood in. I sit, and hold back the tears.


There’s has been a flurry of other activity this past two weeks as we gear up to start rehearsal. There’s an audition session where I read with the actors called back for the roles of my daughter, my best friend, and my ex-wife. I am not part of the casting decision process, but the next day I speak with Joanne DeNaut, SCR casting director, to find out the results. The actors cast in each of the three roles were the ones that I would have chosen, so I’m feeling very confident about the team being assembled. In addition I have to keep up with my reading list, which is growing instead of getting smaller. Song of Myself has been added. I’m still working my way through Moby Dickalong with the rest of the material, and on some wild tangent I found myself reading The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Don’t ask me why. I also I found time to read the play again, start to finish, in one sitting, since that is how it is supposed to be experienced, all of a piece.
PictureKevin Haney and his team.
Another fascinating and crucial aspect of my transformation is being handled by Kevin Haney, the man responsible for turning Martin Short into Jiminy Glick, as well as many other projects. I met him at his lab last week, and his team spent two hours taking a life-cast of my head, neck, and shoulders for use in building my neck and facial prosthetics. We’re not going to reveal anything of the full transformation prior to the opening of the production, but without giving anything away I can include some photos here of that first day in the lab, and the resulting life-cast.
PictureCompletely covered.
At the lab, they clothe me in a large garbage bag, shave my chest, shoulders and back, (yeah, middle-age is so attractive), put a bald cap on me, and slather all exposed skin with cholesterol, which will stop the casting material from sticking to me. Then they begin to trowel liquid goo over me from the top down, covering everything but my nostrils. Before beginning the process there was much concern that I might be claustrophobic, and they tell me that they’ll be checking in with me, that I have to give them a thumbs up or thumbs down. Apparently some people freak out when they’re encased in the quickly hardening goop. I assure them that I’m actually the opposite of claustrophobic. In fact, at one point in the operation, I cause some consternation to the team because I stop responding to their queries. The problem: I have fallen asleep.
PictureNap time.
When the team is done with the layers of goop, they cover it in quick-setting plaster bandages, the kind used to make a cast for a broken limb. It will act as a casement to hold the flimsy-floppy rubber mold when they use it to make the bust, or positive, that they will use to build the prosthetics. That’s when things get interesting. I thought plaster dries. But it doesn’t. It hardens as a result of a chemical reaction. And as everyone knows, chemical reactions generate heat. No one has told me this, and towards the end of the session it starts to heat up, very quickly, inside my cozy little head case. I start to wonder just how much and how quickly the heat will increase. But I trust Kevin and his cohorts, and before my brain is baked, they pull off the plaster cast, and cut off the rest of the mold. The whole thing takes two hours, with only about forty-five minutes in the dark.
PictureMe and my head.
The next day I return to the lab, and get to pose with my bust. It’s strange feeling, to look at this replica of me. At first I’m a little disoriented, thinking there’s something off with the image. Then I realize that I’m most used to seeing my reflection in the mirror. Now it’s reversed. Or not, depending on how you look at it. I’m back at the lab again a few days later to watch as Kevin sculpts layers and folds onto my life-cast, transforming it into an image of what my neck and face would look like with an additional 475 pounds on my frame. It is shocking to see, but also fascinating, and I return to the lab often over the next several days to watch as the process continues, and as his assistants work on other elements of the piece, experimenting with different materials under Kevin’s direction. Making a piece this realistic for a stage production is a challenge. We won’t be able to call “cut,” and have a team there for touchups, and so Kevin is experimenting with some new materials, to give the prosthetics the durability they will need for the run, while still having the enough flexibility for necessary movement and facial expression.
PictureThe finished bust.
And now, after awaiting the day with much anticipation, rehearsals will start tomorrow. Never before have I had a role that required this degree of preparation even before rehearsals start. It has been in large part solitary work, and I am looking forward to the camaraderie of the rehearsal hall. My next report will be from the front, after we’ve started rehearsal, or as Uta Hagen liked to call it, die probe, from the German word for rehearsal, with its roots in probe, or attempt. That’s where we will push, poke and prod the text, playing with each other in order to discover the hidden meanings and undercurrents of the events and relationships. Like medical students dissecting a body in anatomy class, we will pull the play apart, so that we can learn its intricacies. But unlike medical students, when we are done with our work, we will put everything back together, breath new life into the text, and The Whale will come alive.
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NAVIGATING THE WHALE: PART IV

1/23/2013

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Being a record of my journey as I undertake a new role that, unlike many others I have played, fills me with a sense of immense challenge and a promise of growth, both as an actor and a seeker.

My friend Ramsey Moore sits across the table from me with tears streaming down his face. I have just given him a detailed plot summary of The Whale, and clearly it has hit home.

“That’s the trajectory,” he says. “That’s how it happens.” He’s talking about the long-term, self-induced, life-threatening weight gain of my character, the 600 pound Charlie, and he is speaking from experience. When I met Ramsey 7 months ago, he was tipping the the scale at 475 pounds, down from 575. Now at 390, he is well on his way to a more complete recovery from the obesity that threatened his life.

As soon as I took on the role of Charlie, I wanted to contact Ramsey to ask if he would spend time with me. Would he speak frankly about the physical and emotional challenges posed by the weight, and what the journey was like getting there? I also wanted time to just observe what it was like for him to move through the world, which feels so different to him, and poses such different challenges for him than for the rest of us. It took me a couple of weeks to work up the courage to make the call. I was worried that the request would be offensive, too personal. But Ramsey is an accomplished actor and stand up. In our social time together in the past I have come to see that he is dedicated to the craft of acting, and so I thought he would take my request in the spirit with which it was intended: I wanted insight, so that I could portray Charlie with honesty and understanding, honoring the challenges he faces. Ramsey, it turns out, was thrilled to be asked, and we quickly set up an appointment to meet.

At lunch, after telling him more about the plot of the play, I got out my black and white marbled composition book. It has “The Whale” written on the cover, and it has been my constant companion for the past few weeks, and will remain so throughout these weeks of preparation, as well as rehearsal and performance. I have a few questions to start us off, beginning with one that arose in the explorations of the movement of obese people with my children, when we watched videos together: Why is the gait somewhat stiff-legged? I hazarded a guess, and Ramsey confirmed it, but then he went on to an incredible description of the emotional realities that accompany the physical. Then the floodgates were opened, and Ramsey spoke on and on, and I was given a sharply focused lens into this world that I had never bothered to take a look at.

I am not going to talk right now about the details of the many things that I learned in my discussion with Ramsey. I will save that for a wrap-up article after our production closes. This is in order to preserve the power of what he shared for use in the show. One of the things that I have learned, and it has been a long, slow lesson for me, is that as you build the internal life of your character, (which simply starts to feel like your own if you are working correctly), it is crucial to keep that internal life private. More experienced actors that I respect told me this many times in the earlier days of developing my craft, but it took me a long time to believe it, and a longer time to start practicing it. The problem is that speaking of the private, unspoken fears and desires of your character diffuses the power of the internal cues, triggers and currents that you discover. It limits their impact upon you as you work. So it is best not to speak of the gems that you uncover in your digging until you don’t need them anymore. This is hard to do in the midst of what is sometimes lonely work, harder to do amidst the camaraderie of rehearsal, when you so often want to shout “Eureka.” Actors in general love to talk about themselves, and their process, as they are working. Train yourself to avoid this.

My time with Ramsey is a welcome relief from the slow, solitary work that I have been doing the past week, continuing to read Moby Dick, Under The Banner of Heaven, and other articles that I have been finding. I was also pointed in an interesting direction by my younger brother, Jed. I was describing to him a moment in the play when I reveal my true appearance to someone with whom I have only had a relationship on-line. He told me about the series Catfish, which runs on MTV, and mentioned an episode where a couple fall in love on-line, concealing their identities from each other, and the subsequent revelations as the deceptions are pierced. I watched it in my office, otherwise known as Starbucks, and I had my own turn to cry in public. You can watch it here: Catfish, Episode 6. Again, inspiration from an unlikely place.

After our long lunch and discussion, Ramsey and I are feeling pretty somber. Tracing the downward emotional and physical spiral that Ramsey went through, and how it is reflected in the story of Charlie, has taken an emotional toll on both of us. We decide to lift our spirits with some mindless entertainment. We catch a showing of an action movie, ‘cause nothing lightens the mood like a comic book of a film with two-dimensional characters, some car chases and explosions. But I’m grateful that I have a friend in Ramsey, and that he is so willing to share his story, his experience, and his heart. He will be a crucial part of bringing Charlie to life.

You can get more information about Ramsey, as well as watch video of his work and stand-up on his website, at ramseymoore.com. For more information about this production of The Whale, visit the the South Coast Rep website, and please be sure to sign up for the my newsletter.
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