Sense Nativity

Since returning to New York from building and performing

Prohibitive Standards

, the only theatre I've participated in has been--in one regard or another--through

NYU's First Look program

. First Look is the name of the acting company (of about 200 actors) NYU's graduate playwriting class has compiled through recommendation to work with on staged readings and in-class development. I was recommended to the program about three years ago by

Faith Catlin

, auditioned, and have been enjoying the experience ever since. Shortly before I left Pennsylvania I agreed to participate in

Friend Avi

's in-class reading, which reminded a director I had worked with previously (

Janice Goldberg

) of me. She asked me to audition for a staged reading, which I did and thereupon joined, and during that rehearsal process she asked me to audition for a performance of the ten-minute play of another student. All this week I have rehearsals for that play, which goes up with others for four nights next week. First Look can be a little bit like a microcosm of that strange, informal system of networking that goes on in the theatre world of New York. When you're everywhere, you're everywhere; when you're not . . . best of luck, pal.

Last week, once I had successfully cooked the turkey for my visiting family (What's that thumping between my shoulder blades? Oh, it seems to be my own palm.), I relaxed into my sister's papasan and promptly dropped into

The Dreaming

. Since then I've been having regular anxiety (see

11/2/07

for shock and awe) about identity and emotional sensitivity. Most of the time I find it interesting that I have so much trouble remembering my dreams upon waking. I find it frustrating as hell when something

clearly very important

occurred to me in a dream, and there's little hope outside of hypnosis for my recalling it. So this is the general state in which I began rehearsals in earnest for my latest First Look endeavor.

My fellow actors are named Matt and Foss (forgive me, guys, for the lack of last names--this will be over so quickly I guess contact sheets are not a priority), and both are very professional, sensitive actors. (Incidentally, also a great looking couple, which is great for the piece.) I'm having a good time working with them. Matt hails from UNC-CH, and is doing a sort of study-abroad thing in New York. He's a highly energetic, physical, receptive actor, who gets comedy seemingly naturally. He understands how staged jokes work almost to a fault, to the extent that in rehearsal he can miss some moments of truth or listening for the sake of timing and the beauty of a well-executed gag. This last not-necessarily-a-fault may be something of a projection. To be brief, he reminds me of me.

When I was his age.

I suppose knowing oneself at the present moment of one's life, really understanding yourself as an individual in the here and now, is a challenging prospect for anyone. Consider it. I would bet you find it a lot easier to explain yourself in retrospect--even over a matter of a few days--than you would at this very moment. Perhaps this is a more significant question for an actor than someone who doesn't spend time trying to occupy others' skins. Perhaps not. I do know that it's a lot more comfortable not to ask this sort of question of oneself, but I consider that dangerous. Balance in all things, of course--over-analyzation is as detrimental to mental health as anything--but questions are good, and assumptions about oneself are particularly powerful. So I'm wondering a lot lately: Just who in the hell do I think I am? And how is he different from the am I actually . . . am?

Last week, amidst tech rehearsals for the last First Look staged reading I performed in, I ran into Friend Brie (

Briana Sefarian, nee Trautman-Maier

), whom I had not seen in almost a year. It had been an eventful year. One 0f the things Brie did in that time was switch her focus from acting to producing. Thankfully she's still acting when called to it, because she's a joy on stage. We discussed life changes at some length, and she helped me clarify some of the feelings I have been having lately concerning a need to take greater control over my work. Is it that she could particularly help me because we were coming from different places after so long, or different times? They may be the same thing. All I know is that, be it coincidence or my own need, she seemed to understand my present better than I do. (My "currency," if you will [And, frankly, even if you won't.].)

So I continue to enjoy rehearsals, and search for the next opportunity to discover something with the most open mind possible. It's funny (ha ha), but I started the Aviary with a lot of personal objectives aside from the declared

mission statement

. In the general nature of this here entry, and, I suppose, the general nature of yours truly, I was more aware at the time of writing of some of these goals than others. One that occurred to me very clearly, however, a few days after I started my frumious 'blogination, was that the Aviary would stand as a good account of at least a year's worth of the part of my life spent pursuing acting as both career and art form. As I close on the year's anniversary of launching this 'blog, I find myself facing a lot of the same questions I had a year ago, but a lot more information recorded for consideration. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

But more on that later. There's no question I love the pursuit on some level, the effort at understanding. I'm like the Little Engine over here. I think I am; I think I am; I think I am . . .

Notions (Part 3 of ? [SPECIAL BIF!SOCK!POW! EDITION])

My earliest experiences with superheroes(TM) were plenty early. I can't pinpoint it, actually. I just know it was early enough that I started dressing as Superman(r) for Halloween when I was something like two. (No doubt this had something to do with the movie coming out when I was quite young.) Since then, I've had gradually increasing experience with that world. Oddly enough, I came to the origins of all that--comicbooks themselves--rather late in my youth. It wasn't until I was about 11 that I started noticing comicbooks. (Not quite true--I came upon a Conan-the-Barbarian comic when I was something like 8. It scared me.) It wasn't until late high school (and Friend Younce's collection of the Sandman comics) that I started collecting graphic novels for myself. Since then, it's been a pleasure that enjoy with very few side effects. In fact, it can contribute to weight loss. To my wallet.

So my appreciation for comicbooks as a genre is rooted in hero worship, tempered with an education in theatre and eventually realized in my early twenties, when I took my first crack at writing a comicbook script:

  • Freaky Chicks. I wrote approximately the first issue--a self-contained origin story of sorts--which introduced us to the two main heroes. The ideas were many in this little adventure, and I was trying to avoid writing a straight-forward comicbook, but ultimately the "superhero"(TM) conceit was that these girls were put together by fate, had very different personalities and abilities, but abilities that complemented each other perfectly. To wit, one was an abrasive young woman who could survive any external injury, but couldn't heal from any; the other a quiet sort who had the ability to heal, presumably through religious gift. The script was about the abrasive one discovering her ability and the two discovering one another.

This script has a long, sad history. I started it in hopeful, long-distance collaboration with an artist friend, and we never really got going with it. I shopped it around a little thereafter, but didn't really have the contacts with the kind of artist I was looking for. Now, most sadly, the only version of the actual script exists on a defunct hard drive I lug from apartment to apartment. For some reason, all my notes and correspondence on the thing transferred to my latest laptop, but not the script itself. Balls. It may be for the best, because I have to imagine at this point that it could use some reworking.

I have had another idea I could see myself sitting down to flesh out some time, though:

  • Aspirant: Two guys this time, best friends from age five. One is maniacally crazy about building himself into a vigilante a la Batman. The other is incredibly regular about his life, wants very basic things, but also feels compelled to prevent the first guy from killing himself in his foray into vigilantism. What the first guy doesn't know, is that his friend Joe Normal has superpowers. He's a rather-more-vulnerable-Superman sort. Joe just doesn't have any of the drive Guy One does to defend justice. Again, very set in a real-world environment; no capes all over the place, or anything like that. I got pretty upset when I saw this sort of relationship being outlined between Peter and his bro in Heroes, but they have thankfully taken it in a different direction.

This last would actually make a pretty great movie in my mind as well, on the indie level. An independently produced superhero(TM) movie would just be old-school bad-ass in my imagination. In practice, well . . . here again is where my lack of experience in film making makes for a dodgy proposition.

It's interesting posting my ideas on the Aviary here. For a long time I felt it took the steam out of my creativity to share my ideas with people, so I avoided this kind of entry. Now, however, I suppose I have become a more collaborative creature (as frustrating as collaboration can sometimes be), because sharing my ideas here has me more excited about them and thereby more ready to work one or two out for awhile. In the immortal words of Stephen Colbert (character): Thanks, Nation.

Dare You to put Your Tongue against the Subway Track...

Breach of etiquette: I triple-dog dare you.

That's also the subject of today's movie-quote quiz. I paraphrase, of course, but if you know it there should be no problem winning today's finsky.

Polar Bear swim at

The Pond

! Last one in is a higher order of human being who doesn't succumb to the pack mentality when it could mean his or her ultimate peril!

Seriously: I want to cuddle with anything with a pulse, in front of a real fireplace, whilst drinking mulled wine and humming

sea shanties

. Instead, I am diligently returned to my day job and, like an early evolution of tiny mammal, merely overjoyed to be within a contained structure that has heated air being pumped through it. On my way up from the F train today I saw a homeless person laying out in the middle of the concourse floor, covered by a ratty comforter. Show me the police officer who would kick out such a person in such weather, and I will beat that officer mercilessly. Because violence solves problems. ( <--IRONY ) Today I had the opportunity to come into closer contact with Mona's clients than I normally do. In point of fact, I had not so much contact with her client, as with her client's soon-to-be-ex-spouse. (I think as long as I don't name names I can't be fired for this disclosure.) Yes, today I actually had to venture back out into the f'ing cold to serve a summons for divorce on someone. This is the third time, in four years of working for the same attorney, that I have been blessed with the honor of this particular sort of task. It was definitely the most pleasant of the three. The individual seemed very nice and was certainly cooperative. You don't get that a lot in the business of matrimonial law. It may seem cold to perform this task under any circumstances, but I like to think that when it falls to me to perform it I have the opportunity to at least make it as painless as possible, whereas when a service service (yeah--that's accurate) is made incumbent to the same thing it is of necessity professionally cruel. That's how I comfort myself. I have no real comfort to offer the people I meet in this role. Thanks to

Neil Gaiman

for suggesting (via his characterization of

Death

) that such a service is necessary and not necessarily vile. Just tough to accept.

An artist's life is invariably an interwoven mess of his or her personal, creative and professional lives (possibly best visualized by a

Pollack painting

). I'm not going to label myself an artist (leave that to the teeming masses) but I believe this metaphor extends to all those pursuing

The Third Life

(all rights reserved pending the apocalypse), and I sometimes wonder about the interrelationship between the elements of my particular pursuit. Today's task being a case in point, as is the fact that all my adult relationships to this point have been of necessity--to one extreme or another--long-distance ones. It doesn't exactly lend one an overwhelming confidence in one's ability to commit to and make work an ongoing relationship with someone, and I mean this both in the context of romantic entanglements as well as platonic ones.

Friend Patrick has made it something of his mission to remind me:

  1. Stability is not necessarily contrary to The Third Life; and
  2. Struggling ________s shouldn't fret over spending time/energy on things that simply make them happy.

For which I am eternally grateful. However, this encouragement has yet to make much of a dint in my wonderment over why the ol' personal life hasn't gone quite according to Hoyle. Not that I'm eager to attribute it to forces outside of my control or anything, but occasionally I have to wonder how best to make it work. And that's on good days. On bad days, I wonder if I've lost every chance for a long-term, meaningful relationship with someone by merit of prioritizing the career to the extent that I've had too many relationships fail not to have become jaded and absurd.

I try hard not to whine about it, but I am frustrated. The simple answer is, "Let go of the acting." You want a family, choose that and let the rest go. No dice, Cochise. I get about as far with that as I do on solving a

Rubik's cube

. It's not an option, and when I try to force that square peg into the round hole (minds: kindly remove yourselves from that gutter) it all goes to De Moines in a hand basket. Of course, there are varying degrees of compromise on this topic, and I've tried to explore them. Again: Rubik's cube. (I'm going to invent a "rubrics cube"; it can only be solved by speaking parenthetical advice at it until it suffers a system error from trying to process it all and catches fire, burning red until it's turned to slag...anyway...) Somehow I'm not yet ready to get a "real job" and practice community theatre, nor to apply to grad school and channel my creative energies into directing the senior class' production of

Angels in America

. Nor any of the other possibilities that spring to mind.

Yesterday I celebrated Friend Kira's thirtieth birthday with her. This March, the girl I moved to New York to be with is finally having her dream wedding. When I got out of college and was touring with children's theatre to save up enough money to move to this big city, I set my thirtieth year as the absolute, no-holds-barred decision date for hitting it, or quitting it, as regards pursuing a conventional family life. My thirtieth is impending, occurring in early June, at which time I will hopefully be in Italy, performing a clown piece in

Piazza Navona

. (Hear me, big G? For

reals

, yo.) So much has changed for me in the past seven years, I'm no longer assured that deadline was a good call. Nevertheless, it weighs on me occasionally. Okay: more than occasionally. RATHER FREQUENTLY. Yeah. That much.

I would like to go back and delete the last two paragraphs there. If you know me, it probably sounds like whining. If you don't know me, it probably sounds like relentless self-justification. Wait: Maybe it's the reverse. If you

don't

know . . . aw, to hell with it. It makes me vulnerable to admit that stuff, but come on. All you have to do is observe me for a short while for all of the above to be self-apparent. I'm not fooling anyone. Well, maybe Santa. Because I have yet to get just coal. Though I often wonder if generic electronics might not be today's equivalent.

What might be really hard to deal with is the fact that, of all my fantasies about how my life could go, which is my fantasy for this milestone of three decades?

In Bocca al Lupo

. Acting for spare change in a city in which I don't speak the native language. Not the fireplace. Not the Willsian progeny. Hat tricks and laughter in a piazza in Rome, which is really just a kind of New York with about two more millennia of history.

So there's no simple answer. Except, perhaps, to say that life is full of surprises. I figure if I can avoid choosing to apply my tongue to sub-zero-temperature alloys, then I'm still making reasonably intelligent decisions. So: I'll see you guys at 5:00 AM tomorrow morning at The Pond!