Thanks

This year has had, for me, a lot to do with gratitude. That's not try to say that my life is oh-so great. There's plenty more that I would achieve, but I am awful happy with what I have, and I feel like it's all owed to something greater than me, whether that be God or simply a community of friends and family that love and support me. (Or both...?) Whatever the reason, I have a tremendous sense of gratitude that it's a little difficult to express properly. There are too many people to thank. There doesn't seem to be a personal enough way to accomplish that ample thanks.

"I'd like to start by thanking, well,

the academy

..."

{ thirty-seven minutes later... }

"...and you like me! You really, really,

REALLY

like me!!!"

It is very easy to mock someone for having a sense of gratitude, and I suppose it is a fine line between sincere gratitude and ingratiating praise, or an inflated sense of inner goodness. Truth be told, though, I think we're rather inclined to mock gratitude because it's an immensely vulnerable emotion, both for the one expressing it and the one it is being expressed to. The mockery (or sarcasm, a family favorite of mine) is a defensive action. I don't know if we're more afraid of having our egos inflated, or of being shot down by another's refusal of a heartfelt emotion, but either way thanks are often hard to give and to receive.

With all the feelings of gratitude I've had of late, I've felt a bit like a hippy. I was kind of raised by hippies. Not my parents (the professor and reverend Wills missed most of what we now think of as the 60s), but my church was a pretty peace-and-lovey place. We went on "retreats" out to the woods, and people brought acoustic guitars, and we'll leave it at that for now. (Perhaps my parents saw this as making up for lost time?) I don't believe all Unitarian Universalist congregations had quite the same flavor of far-out-itude as mine. Our first minister carried a walking staff during the children's services (he was pretty old, though [he is still my mental image of Gandalf {the

Grey

}]). UUs really are some of the most loving people in the world, but some of us take it to a degree of tenderness that makes me want to smack them around, just a little bit. Just to alert them to the possibility that not everything in the world today is beautiful and purposeful. Yet lately, I have been one such hippy. I worry that perhaps I'm coming across as someone newly in love, who can't help but be a bit obnoxious about it.

On the up-side, this has all reminded me of my religious feeling. Don't go -- I'm not about to proselytize! By "religious feeling," I mean something that goes by many names, none of which I generally use: the Holy Spirit, zen, transcendent awareness, etc. It's a feeling of connectedness to the world, a feeling of receptiveness, and holy crap but it is a difficult feeling to maintain in New York City. This feeling would come to me in nature a lot when I was young, occasionally in church, and almost always during holidays with my family. I feel as though I have lost contact with this feeling for a good portion of the past six years, actually, and maybe more, and that's a frightening thought. I'm glad I rediscovered it.

So that's one more thing to make me all hippy-dippy grateful in general. Dang it!

This begs the question, "Where did it go?" Or, perhaps more to the point, "Why?" I mean literally

begs

the question, because I'm a little desperate to understand it so that it doesn't happen again, or at least for so long. This feeling is vital to my ethics, whatever role you may believe God does or doesn't play in it all. When I operate from a feeling of gratitude, I make better choices, I do more good, I feel better and more possibilities open up to me. I am a better actor, simply as a result of being a more receptive and comprehensive listener. So. With all this goodness, all this pay-off, why would such an outlook ever be dismantled, or lost?

I've been seeing an acupuncturist lately for my various difficulties related to

my injury of about two years past

. This has been an interesting experience for me. One of the challenges of this particular therapy is that it is, after all, meant to relax a fellow, to improve flow and movement in body and energy. Second to shouting "RELAX!" at me, embedding my muscles with dozens of needles is a uniquely counter-intuitive process for getting me to relax. I have no great fear of needles, mind; what I have is a natural tendency to resist pain through tension and sheer, torqued will. I also have a bit of a thing about being immobile, and immobility is a key component to the beneficial acupuncture experience, as I have recently (painfully) learned. So: challenges. When my acupuncturist embeds a needle in a particularly lively point, I must not tense, I must not tremble, I must not resist. I must accept the pain, I must release the resistance, I must, in other words, allow the pain to pass through me. It's the only way to move forward into healing.

I was going to write that pain is what makes maintaining a sense of gratitude so difficult, but it isn't; not really. It's our responses to pain that can make gratitude difficult. I have to acknowledge now that my years of disconnect from being "in the spirit" were largely a result of my reaction to being hurt. I closed some important parts off. It's not a reasonable response to pain, no matter how vital an act of self-preservation it may seem. It arrests life, and it causes such a narrow perspective that great opportunities can be lost, terribly harmful choices made. That's neither an excuse nor an apology -- I'm not sure I could have done things any differently had I known to. It is, however, an acknowledgement that I can improve. I have to improve. I will. Feeling grateful is stronger than a feeling of hurt, if we give it a chance.

I never would have realized any of this, never even have rediscovered my sense of gratitude, without everyone who's crossed my path since I lost it. From my parents right across the board to whatever as-yet anonymous readers here there may be. So: Thank you.

Yes, you. I mean it. Thank you.

Meet you out in the woods this weekend. Bring a guitar.

Circular Experiences

I had the pleasure of two different performances this weekend past, one for each day of it, and they were both returns for me -- not just in the sense of returning to the stage after a bit of an absence, but in returning to specific work that I have missed. And this weekend coming up, I have another sudden performance in a similar vein of return. They call me: Mr. Boomerang.

They don't, actually. Thank heavens.

Sunday was the opening night of a second staged reading for

Tom Rowan

's play,

Burning Leaves

(the closing night is this Wednesday; a very economical schedule).

Burning Leaves

, though studded with excellent humor, is largely a drama, and I was reading a lead role. I first read this role back in the summer, and really took to it. He's a guy who's on the outside of a new community, gradually well-loved at first, and then ostracized; an actor who leaves New York in the hopes of turning his life around. I find it very accessible, and am grateful to have the opportunity to be involved with it, not to mention to be brought back for its second incarnation. At the end of it all, the reading turned out rather well. We had some people there -- a rather substantial house for that festival, from what I understand -- and I turned in a decent performance. There were moments I didn't feel I really delivered on, but I don't think it was so as any audience would notice, and at least I get a second chance.

The readings are taking place at the

Ensemble Studio Theatre

, which is a very interesting theatre to me. One is greeted, upon entering the second-floor lobby, with what look to be rather typical production photographs from the 70s and 80s. Then you take a closer look, and see people like Sarah Jessica Parker, Elias Koteas and Bill Murray in those photos, all looking very fresh in posed black-and-white. The theatre occupies several floors of a rather run-down building on way-west 52nd Street. You wouldn't find yourself there unless you knew about it, and needed to be there for some reason. It looks like the definition of "not much." Another not-for-profit in a building most commercial enterprises would studiously avoid, or demolish. Yet the theatre has fostered an incredible amount of now-famous and award-winning talent over the years. I like this juxtaposition. It gives me hope, and makes me feel at home, all at the same time. The final interesting thing for me, however, is that the theatre was founded by one Mister Curt Dempster. Not a lot of people outside the American theatre world know

who Dempster was

, and far too few in it know of him, either. I never got to meet him. I know him by coincidence.

The first time I saw Curt Dempster, I didn't know it. He had a role in

The Manhattan Project

, a favorite movie of mine as a child and one of the few we owned on video cassette way back before they got more affordable. I didn't really recognize Dempster until a random encounter in college, and it wasn't with him -- it was with a play he had written:

Mimosa Pudica

(I mentioned this play here way back in

11/1/07

). In 1998 I was in a public library in Richmond, Virginia, looking for a satisfying short play or excerpt to spend an entire semester working on in my directing class. In a compilation of one-acts from the seventies, I found Dempster's play, and it really sucked me in. I was just beginning to own the idea of my moving to New York, and New York is where the play is set. Eventually, I would use one of my many trips there that year to take location-specific photographs for research and use in the play itself. More significantly perhaps, the play spoke to me about my social anxiety and need for love. It was a profound experience of development for me to explore it, and I've never forgotten it. And I'm working in the theatre in which it made its debut.

The night before, I performed with

Bond Street Theatre

as part of a benefit for the

NACL

. It took place in

LAVA

's studio space, in Brooklyn, and featured an incredible line-up of the bohemian and avant-garde circus & variety set. There was everything vaudevillian and circus-themed you can imagine, just shy of fire-skills performance, all in an intimate space off a neighborhood of Brooklyn I've come to know fairly well (well enough to know of

a great coffee shop

nearby). I was pretty anxious most of the time I was there, I have to admit. Some of it was performance anxiety, but a lot of it had to do with knowing very few people there and it being more than a little crowded with folks who either knew one another already, or had an eye out for people they should know. I was, to put it succinctly, feeling a little outside. Not because of any exclusion (far from it -- everyone was extremely friendly) but because I had such an intense desire to belong. I miss my days of regular circus activity, and hanging out with that crowd was a bit awkward for me. To be utterly shameless, I must admit that I kept wanting to jump up and shout, "I can do that! Can I do that? I can do that!"

Our contribution to the evening's festivities was well-received, I thought; it took the audience awhile to warm up to what we were doing, but they got there and brought their laughter with them. Our performance was not a physical one; it was, in fact, intensely verbal. Still, it was highly comic, and I managed to get a little standing back-bend in there, which is a favorite "straight-theatre" move of mine that can be snuck into otherwise wordy exchanges. It seemed harmless in rehearsal, but it's just possible that doing the move whilst all adrenalized (is SO a word) aggravated

my pre-existing condition

, because since then I have had unpleasantness to contend with. This would inform a sane person to relax about all this circus nonsense. A believer such as myself might even take it as some kind of sign or omen added atop a pile of others that perhaps, just perhaps, it's time to let that physical stuff go.

This weekend I am all-of-the-sudden performing as my silent film clown (details soon @

Loki's Apiary

). I don't know exactly what I'm doing yet, but I know I want it to be physical, full of dangerous pratfall, to the point of flagrant masochism.

Comedy & Tragedy & Everything In Between

Because why be specific? Specificity isn't all that important, is it?

I'm involved in two very brief, very different rehearsal processes this week, both of which had their first rehearsals yesterday. Some people spend their Sundays unwinding, doing a crossword or sipping coffee and loading up on carbohydrates. Me, I have two rehearsals. I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel great. In spite of

how busy I've been

with acting gigs this fall -- in counter-spite of my supposed priority to remain decidedly non-busy leading up to

The Big Show

-- I have missed being in rehearsal. It's good to get back to it, albeit on a Sunday and doing double duty. In fact, this entry title was very nearly appended with "& Commercial Work," but at the last minute

ADM Productions

decided they didn't need me after all. I'm choosing to perceive that as "maintaining my theatrical integrity" this week, rather than "losing paying work."

My first rehearsal Sunday was for a follow-up staged reading of

Tom Rowan

's play,

Burning Leaves

. You may remember my writing about

Burning Leaves

back in July

, when

the initial staged reading

was performed. This reading around, the script has been trimmed and we're under the guidance of director

Gaye Taylor Upchurch

. It's being performed on two separate days under the auspices of The Ensemble Studio Theatre's

Octoberfest

, despite protestations from naysayers that October is, in fact, past. I find this personally fitting; I missed out on doing any performances in the actual October.

This rehearsal started out strangely for yours truly. I was a little late, in part because I was hefting a surprisingly heavy Mac CPU for later deposit at the technology recycling fair down at Union Square that day. Why then? Why lug this to rehearsal? Well, it's been sitting,

2001

-like, in a corner literally for months as recycling events, er, cycled past. Plus, it didn't seem that heavy at first. So it was with aching arms and a strong desire not to have to explain myself that I arrived to discover that I was the only member of the previous cast who would be in attendance. This has happened to me before. It's an interesting position in which to be. It means that either A) you were the only one who nailed it last time, or B) you were the only one who was desperate enough for work to perform in another unpaid reading. Or some combination thereof. Either way, I was surprised. I really enjoyed the last group that I read with, and it probably held me back in rehearsal having certain expectations for character interpretations. The director, "GT," seems to have a great approach though, and I'll shake off my stale expectations much better at the next rehearsal. She reminded us at the end of rehearsal that the text was very detailed and expressive of emotion, and so that it made sense to act

on

the lines and not take too much time with unspoken beats. A very smart initial critique.

I got the Mac to Union, where they collected my zip code and asked if I'd like to be interviewed for Comedy Central. But I was going to be late for the next rehearsal, and shuddered to think what Comedy Central might have been filming for. Alas: I'm sure I missed a golden opportunity for my career...

Bond Street Theatre

rehearses out of the loft apartment of its managing and artistic directors, Michael McGuigan and Joanna Sherman. It's on Bond Street, aptly enough, which is not too far south of Union Square, and I paused on my way there just long enough to purchase a sandwich and coffee. I'll be performing with them both on Saturday for a

benefit in Brooklyn

, and this pleases me greatly. I had to turn down an offer to work with Bond Street at the start of summer (conflicts with Italy, a desperate need to hang on to my day job, etc.), and such a situation can often lead to a write-off of the actor. Fortunately for me, Joanna and Michael share a lot of the same interests I do, and my skills are valuable to the kind of theatre they generally produce. Plus they're just neat-o in general. So after a really great thirty-minutes-or-so of conversation about ensemble theatres and collaboration, we got down to work on our short presentation for the benefit: an adaptation of Monty Python's famous

Argument

sketch

. Bond Street works in Afghanistan and with artists from there, and as you might imagine has been experiencing a lot of frustration in obtaining cultural visas for their collaborators to visit and perform in the US. They've channeled this frustration into the adaptation, tweaking this hilarious send-up of bureaucracy ever-so-slightly.

It's difficult to perform the sketch without lapsing into UK dialects, but it's also a good struggle that reminds me to own the language in my way, rather than merely copying

Michael Palin's famous performance

. Michael (McGuigan) has also added a bit of

Abbott and Costello

into the mix, as though the verbal specificity weren't heightened enough. It was slow-going at first, but that's just as well when it comes to that kind of vaudeville-esque wordplay. Little, mundane decisions take up time at the start, but if you don't resolve them first you end up with much bigger questions about solving issues with pacing and the like later on. So we warmed up slowly to the text, and after a couple of hours had begun to find some rhythm and make discoveries about how to adapt the humor to the stage. It's a pity in a way, because this kind of sketch really deserves hours of continuous rehearsal to get it crackling, but we all at least have enough shared vocabulary in our work to make a few more leaps in the process than others might. I'm looking forward to the performance of it even now, and wonder what our second and final rehearsal will produce to add to it.

I staggered home happy, but incapable of making basic decisions, such as what to make for dinner. It was a fairly long run of rehearsal and improperly handled H2O/sugar intake, and gave me pause about being an actor full-time. It was a very brief pause, however. I should be so lucky to be so exhausted at the end of every day.

dell'Arte

Contrary to popular (American) opinion. the "dell'arte" in "Commedia dell'Arte" does not in fact refer to art. At least, not in the sense the word has come to be used in most of the rest of the western world. The term actually describes the professional aspect of this form. It was one of the first recorded theatrical forms to transcend from rite, ritual or plain event into commerce, into a salable product. The "dell'Arte" also makes a tie between the theatre and the community by in effect introducing a guild mentality to theatre troupes. As the efforts became more regular and more commercial, actors formed troupes--or guilds, if you will--thereby joining the ranks of other professions in 16th century Italy. This is an apt parallel to my activities this week. Under the auspices of the newly-rebranded and resident-company-enriched

Electric Theatre Company

, I'm leading, along with Friends Heather Stuart and Dave Gochfeld, an intensive workshop in commedia dell'arte for the theatre students of

Marywood University

.

We did something similar last year--and have many of the same students back--as a part of ETC's "Portal Project" in collaboration with Marywood. However, last year's workshops simply emphasized the creation of original characters and improvisations for public performance; this year we're armed with our experiences with Angelo Crotti and a big pile of reference books, and the emphasis is on providing a very pragmatic, concise overview of the commedia dell'arte as a living tradition. This week will culminate in a few public, staged yet semi-improvised, performances of a Scala scenario for the visiting public of Scranton's annual

Festa Italiana

on Sunday and Monday (an event I must sadly miss, as obligations necessitate my leaving town Friday night). So in a week, we give them all they need in terms of history and techniques, learn and rehearse a show, and open and close the whole endeavor. And if you think that's hard for us, keep in mind that for the students it's their first week back at school after the summer break.

It's been a great week. Any incipient panic of the seeming impossibility of our task has been balanced out by the excitement of learning more and more about what we're teaching as we go along, and by the students' complete and selfless dedication to the work. They really are an incredible group to be working with. We have about 25 of them, and of those, a full 21 are electing to perform in the final product. That's a lot of roles to cast in a classic commedia dell'arte scenario (only one in our book lays claim to that many specific characters), so we're looking at possibilities for incorporating porters, musicians and police into various lazzi. In fact, at this point we've got a lot to decide about setting, logistics of the space and timing in general, things that don't even have a thing to do with the work we're doing in class . . . apart from how critical they are to informing the students' expectations as performers, of course. But what's that, really, in the grand scheme?

Yesterday afternoon, while I was trying to determine the best format for a 'blog devoted to details of catching my performances and workshops (coming soon to a link list near this entry), I got a call from the talent management agency I freelance with,

Dream Weavers Management

. They wanted to know if I could make an audition at 5:20 that evening in New York. My agent on this particular possibility was talking a blue streak about details, and before I could find a breath-space within which to insert the information that I was in another state on paying work, I heard that in was for a commercial filming in Canada, and looking to pay a non-union actor $10,000. Gulp. This is small potatoes compared to the residuals an actor ought to get for years from (what I assume must have been) a nationally syndicated commercial. But let's not kid ourselves--that would be the biggest paycheck yours truly ever garnered for plying his humble craft. I was, in a sense, saved by the beep. My agent had a call come in on the other line and promised to call me back. In the pause, a handful of minutes, I quickly reviewed my options. I could conceivably make it back to New York in time for the audition. My agent called me back, and before she could get going again, I informed her I was out of state and that I was afraid I couldn't make it. She said she understood, hoped for next time, and quickly hung up to get on with calling the rest of her mid-thirties white males.

I'm a professional actor. And that was the right choice.

Ta-Da

It hath been a most manic week.

This week promises to be still more so.

Last Monday and Tuesday,

Friend Heather

came into town from luxurious Scranton and for two evenings we attempted to cobble together a show to take to festivals in Italy. Just the two of us. (Yet without using that song, in spite of it being stuck in my head for weeks now.)

Wednesday and Thursday evenings were my only times to pack for my move this week.

Friday I worked for

NYU's school of film

, acting in short scenes for their student directors as a part of a "blocking exercise." That was the first part of the day, and then I travelled to Queens to secure storage space, and then I and

Fiancee Megan

were off to Virginia for what turned out to be a seven-hour bus ride.

Virginia was a welcome break from running about arranging moving logistics and rehearsal times, but not so much a "break" entirely. (Though I

did see Friend Davey and his lovely SigOth

, which was rad.) There was much to prepare for The Big Show. I'm taking to calling the wedding "The Big Show." I rationalized to Fiancee Megan that calling it such would justify my writing off travel and such as business expenses, and she gave me one of those wry looks that says, "You're so funny I can just restrain myself from kicking you shin-wardly."

Monday's bus ride was thankfully much briefer; largely I was thankful because Friend Heather was making yet another trip into the city that evening to develop our Italian show (working title:

The Really-Awfully-Good-Show Show

[

The "RAGS" Show

]). We met up in Central Park, unable to find rehearsal space in time, and headed directly to Sheep Meadow to make public foolery in the name of Art. Whilst crossing the meadow, someone called my name and we connected with Friends Austin and Sara from

Corporate Carnival

, enjoying their holiday as well any red-blooded American should. We could not dally, however, and rehearsed acro and clown bits 'til the sun went down. While we were doing so, a gentleman by the name of

Oz Sultan

filmed us, interjecting direction, quite without our invitation. Ah, New York! (To his great credit, he did give me his card so I could get a copy.)

Heather's also in town because this week we're performing our clown duet,

Death + A Maiden

, as a part of

Emerging Artists Theatre

's comedy festival,

Laugh Out Loud

. That's Wednesday. Tuesday I'm performing in the same festival, solo, with a stage adaptation of my party piece featuring my silent-film-esque character, Lloyd Schlemiel (last featured at

Friend Melissa

's

benefit for her company

,

Kinesis Project Dance Theatre

). I've had not a moment to work on this piece, and am terrified for tonight.

Then Thursday is my only evening to move, after work. Friday brings more rehearsal.

It's crazy to love this.