Whine with your Cheese?

One of the ways in which I'm assured I belong in my quest to create theatre full-time is that, after a certain period of no long-term work ("long-term" in an acting context being about the span of a month) I begin to exhibit symptoms of depression and desperation. I crave the stage, or at least a studio, a script, or at least a scenario and a scene partner, or at least a director. To put a finer point on it, I suffer from withdrawal. (This of course is also how I know that I'm meant to drink and smoke. My logic is an impenetrable fortress. Or will be, until I die of heart, lung and/or kidney disease.) And guess what, my fine, feathered friends? Today I have the shakes.

Of course, I always have "the shakes" to some degree or another. As those of you who know me (I mean,

really know me

) are aware, I have a mysterious condition that causes my hands to tremor at times. It ain't

Parkinson's

, it ain't

MS

. Frankly, the doctors are stumped, and in being thusly stump'ed (that's with an accent on the "ed" for best scansion) they have theorized that I suffer from

Essential Tremors

, or E.T. The humor of

this acronym

doesn't fail to escape me. Neither does the humor of our medical science's tendency to name a condition when they can recognize it, yet have little idea about what causes it.

What I am referring to, however, has naught to do with my ability to hold a glass of water in a relaxed manner. No, rather, I refer to that incomparable feeling I get when it's been a while since I've tread the boards. It's glorious. Appetite, insecurity and aggressive temper all rolled into one glorious experience. I love it almost as much as I love my day job.

Almost

.

Perhaps I've seemed busy. I have been, but with all manner of things ancillary to playing a role on stage or film. I've been teaching workshops. I've been traveling. I've been teaching high-schoolers. I've been helping people get

divorced

. I've been designing brochures. I've been networking with other actors and the occasional producer. I've been participating in readings, discussions and revisions, website consultations and typing in this here 'blog. None of it really feeds the urge. It just stems it a very little bit.

Notice I did not say, "I've been auditioning." Dagger, thy pointe is for me. No. I haven't. I tried last Friday (for

The Irish Repertory Theatre

) but one thing led to another and I had to choose a little in-flow of money over it. And, I'm terrible at cold auditions. It's a sad fact. Those supposed E.T.s are linked to nervous energy, and nothing makes me more nervous than standard audition procedure, so the two compound one another. (I'm nervous about auditioning, my hands shake, I'm nervous about my hands shaking, etc.) I don't have stage fright, but I have audition fright.

Jeez, Louise.

But really, what could they have done to make a cold audition more terrifying? Anything at all, short of hanging eviscerated cadavers from the ceiling and jumping from a corner shouting "Boo!" when you walk in? You get up at Stupid O'clock in the morning in order to stand in a line of your fellow aspirant actors for at least an hour in order to get the audition slot you need to fit the thing into your day. Then you're either called to wait in line again (This time: sitting!) or go away and come back in time for your slot. As you wait, you get to watch

carbon copies of yourself

, only with better (Choose three [3]: hair / bone structure / physique / voice / height / experience / charisma) prepare and go through The Room. You shuffle your stuff from seat to seat as you move down the line, calculating where you'll put it all while you're in there, and trying to make sure you don't go up on at least the first line of your monologue. Finally it's down to you, and two minutes stretches into a lifetime....

Then the door to The Room opens. You pause to calculate that indeterminate amount of time they need to breathe between applicants, hoping you didn't rush them but aren't wasting their time, either. In you go, and The Room is always 1) small, 2) stuffy, 3) lit with fluorescents, 4) white. (Ever had a friend run you through that verbal "psychological" test that always ends with you providing three words about how you would feel in a windowless, doorless white room with a giant white armadillo in the center? That's The Room.) There are 1 to 10 people waiting for you inside (yes, 10--it's happened to me) at the far end, seated behind a table. You introduce yourself, your piece, and go. You have at most a minute-and-a-half to blow them away.

Then it's over. You're outside The Room again, a flush of heat rising to your face as you relax from all the adrenaline. At some point, there was a "thank you" that ushered you from The Room, but that doesn't matter now. What matters is that you've just realized that the person behind the desk was about 20 years old. Which means s/he was a casting assistant. Which means they have no authority or respect. Which means you didn't actually audition for the theatre, but helped fulfill their "audition process" required by

Actors' Equity Association

. So you go to work, and for two days try to convince yourself that you're not hoping to hear from them again.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I also know there are plenty of people who don't feel this way, and who weather these things regularly just fine. Have I only myself to blame for my lack of work recently? Possibly. All right: Probably. The two regional theatres I work for regularly (

The Northeast Theatre

and

Signal & Noise Productions

), for different sorts of compounded reasons, haven't hired me this season. My crutches fell. My suppliers ran dry. The corner bodega is out of

Newcastle

and

American Spirits

. So I must rally, and walk a few harrowing blocks to the bodega that doesn't know me by name. So be it!

But does somebody want to hold my trembling hand?

Laughing in the Face of [BLANK]

So I have this theory. Well, I can't actually claim the theory for myself. Neither can I cite it specifically. I think I either read it in college or heard somebody espouse it on The Actor's Studio. Or I made it up, but I doubt that. So I

subscribe

to this theory, and "this theory" is thus:

Laughter--and its shy cousin, smiling--comes from a sublimated fear reaction. In the process of our intellectual development, an aspect of our fight-or-flight instinct evolved into an instrument that responds not only to immediate environmental threats, but to words and ideas, and in which we have learned to take pleasure.

The theory kind of hinges on the idea that most, if not all, of what we regard as "emotions" evolved from survival instincts. Ergo, the theory relies on you, dear reader, not being an adamant Creationist. So all adamant Creationists, please leave the room now. Go ahead; go. It's okay. We're not excluding you, we're just being considerate of your feelings and your God(s). We'll call you in again when we're back to discussing Kinko's and comic book characters.

...Are they gone? Thank God. Now we can start throwing feces at each other again.

I believe there's something to evolution. You got me there. I recognize it still as being a theory, yes, but it's a sound one in my opinion, and getting sounder all the time (like Radiohead). Me, I think if God is responsible for Creation, s/he/it is a pretty smart cookie and wanted to watch some changes over time. Like Sea Monkeys. And anyway, that's the beauty of a "theory" by the scientific definition. It's useful until it's contradicted by something better.

So: Laughter. Most studies into it, behaviorally speaking, find a strong connection between the response and being in a "play" environment. That goes for man and ape. For apes, "laughter" is more like a kind of involuntary heavy, rapid breathing. Tracing laughter through other animals is more speculative, because, well...they're other animals. Rats, for example, exhibit a behavior that might be laughter: a kind of high-pitched, rapid squeaking. But it might be that all rats share a predilection for singing Prince { O(+> } songs at karaoke. Hard to say. Hyenas are well-documented as laughers, but it doesn't accompany their play. Rather, it accompanies the threat of a food source being taken away from them, so many argue that this isn't laughter per se.

Au contraire, say I, in my snootiest French accent. I consider the definition of laughter, as science would have it, as being a bit too narrow. (That's the way it is with science--one day your friend, the next your nemesis.) Combine it with the feature of the smile (which seems a pretty acceptable association to me) and you've got more to consider as to its origins and relationship to our environment. Specifically, when else do we bare our teeth? When we are threatened.

Apes do this as well. Just about any animal that is willing to bite its way out of a problem will bare its teeth in a social interaction in which violence is imminent. In just such situations, the pulse quickens and the breathing becomes quicker and deeper. Tension mounts, and in an instant is released in one of two directions: fight, or flight. Moreover, there is one overriding fear that dictates this response. It comes with an awareness of the possibility of death.

We have to laugh in the face of death. It is the ultimate ungovernable aspect of our lives, and what else can we do with it? Religion provides answers to our minds, and hopefully our hearts, yet our bodies are still somehow aware of death's finality. And we don't get to face death in absolute scenarios anymore. Even our soldiers tend to be fighting amidst chaos and invisible forces of annihilation, such as falling bombs and super-sonic bullets. Without the possibility of high-stake, fight-or-flight scenarios, a peculiar catharsis is missing from our lives. It's provided for by comedy.

I'm losing some of you, I realize. Sure, there's plenty that we laugh at that has nothing to do with the threat of death. Puns, for example. (Though some are truly deadly.) Also, funny faces, or cartoons.

There will I ask you to hold the phone. Please: hold this phone. Thank you.

Perhaps you can understand the connection between a fear of death and watching a Buster Keaton pratfall. We vicariously experience the possibility of finality when Keaton falls two stories.Maybe it’s only subconsciously.Maybe the pratfall is just a trip.The point is that it introduces a moment of uncertainty into our assumptions, and the mother of all uncertainties, or unknowns, is The Great Beyond.Cartoons continue in this tradition, making the stakes two-dimensional (in most cases) but the threat astronomical.But what of someone making a funny face?Still the unknown, I argue.The more unidentifiable or unexpected the face is, the better the laugh.Because for a moment, we don’t understand.There’s that taste of death, the “little death” of French fame.

I have no explanation for puns.

We don’t laugh only because of fear, but I’m certain it plays a larger role than is immediately apparent.Certainly accessing this fear is the most direct way to make people laugh. The laughter that arises from tickling, or from just enjoying being with someone, that might have other explanations.Then again, tickling takes control of our body away from us; a singularly unnerving experience, that requires one to acknowledge that he or she isn’t absolute.And good friends?Avoiding shock humor, or pratfalls, and still yucking it up?It’s play.It’s why we play games, intentionally and unintentionally.Games simulate the need to make decisions.The tiny or grand oscillations we make toward and away from people, even with people we have no conscious desire to ever be apart from, are tests of our connection: to others, to ourselves, to the world at large.The stakes are there.We are playing with death.

There you have it.Jeff explains it all.No applause, please; just throw money.And hey, disagree with me!I’d love to argue this out.Though I should warn you:

I may just laugh it off.

I Am a Banana!

Dewds: Oh my dewds: What a day have had I.

Today was the suspect

KCACTF

workshop, and I must say I am SO glad I didn't bail (for fear of not being on their program:

12/15/07

). Patrick and I drove up bright and early, and spent some hours strolling the seemingly desolate

campus

, pinning up fliers for

In Bocca al Lupo

. Scavenging push-pins was fun . . . especially when we were done, landed in the check-in area just in time to hear one of the student volunteers walk in a demand to know why she couldn't find any unused push-pins on any bulletin boards. I worried (I'm a worrier) that there would be no students, for we saw so few on our lengthy back-and-forth over the campus. So many attempts at promotion have ended in disappointment for the theatre in the past, I've learned to brace myself for the worst possible outcome.

I needn't have worried.

We had nearly 50 students for the class.

I thank God:

  1. They gave us a plenty-big room.
  2. Patrick was there.
  3. No one fell on his or her head.

Seriously: It was a liability nightmare. I suppose I should have kicked some people out, but I was just so surprised that I went straight into problem-solving mode. Five minutes before we were supposed to begin, Patrick and I quickly conferred amidst all the quasi-nervous college actors and agreed the best way to proceed would be to have them break into groups of three, see if there was enough space, then proceed in the hope that the spotters (those assigned to catch anyone who might fall) took to their jobs with grim determination.

We had them make a circle, shoulder-to-shoulder, and they essentially filled the 40x50 dance studio. To warm up, I had them count of one-two-one-two, and the twos step forward. Now we had two concentric circles, and we warmed up for about a half an hour. They were very responsive to my (cheesy, gratuitous) humor, and it wasn't too long before we were all warm in body and buzzing on the joy of being together and active. Great energy. And we did it all. In two hours, we learned the acrobalance poses of

Angel

(Superman) and

Front Thigh Stand

, worked on the dollar-bill exercise (teaching threes, separate and specific beats, listening) twice, and even covered some ground regarding building

commedia characters

from their appetites. And it ended with them almost unanimously hungry for more, which was great for

In Bocca al Lupo

. Hopefully students for that will come from this, but honestly, right now I'm just thrilled with how well it went.

That's about it, folks. I close the day, safely returned to my Brooklyn apartment now, gratefully exhausted from travel and

real

work. It was the kind of day to remember, when your work proved valuable and you feel useful and eager for more. There's a wonderful series of cartoons called "

Rejected

," by Don Hertzfeldt, that springs to my mind whenever I get in a situation that's potentially awkward or disappointing. It's a way of lightening my own mood and getting my mind off of worry. ("

My SPOON is too BIG

.") Some days, those same sheltering chants become

victory shouts

.

A Year (or Three) in Review

Returning from my holiday journeys just in time for New Years, I find the city the same as it ever was. I suppose it's only natural to feel inclined to review one's year in the face of a new one. I have to admit that 2006 was not a year that I will be dreadfully sorry to see go. It was comprised of amazing highs and lows, both; my hope for the new year is for it to be a little more moderate in its exchanges. I feel a bit guilty expressing that desire, what with professing a renewed conviction in

The Third Life

(tm), but who's to say TTL(tm) can't at times have a nice, steady rhythm to it, rather than a course akin to a

wooden roller-coaster

at every turn?

While I was visiting NoVa, a dear friend of mine who has lived in San Diego for years now was home, too, and threw a modest reunion for certain circle of us from high school. I saw her and several other people I had often wondered about since graduating. It wasn't the typical reunion. Everyone there was really interested in one another and speaking intelligently about their lives--none of that dreadful one-ups-man-ship that seems to be the major export of the Uniting Reunions of America. In spite of how lovely it all was, what I'm carrying away with me, and keep revisiting in my mind, is an unanswered observation an old friend of mine had to say. In response to my description of my life since college, all the touring, traveling, month-long shows, etc., she said, "That sounds like it would be so lonely."

Believe it or not, I had never looked at it that way before. And I

love

to look at things darkly. I mean, I am

dark

. (Do you read the last page of a new book first, just in case you die before you finish reading it?

Because I do.

) Somehow, however, this obsidian nugget of darkness had eluded me. I mean, no wonder I've been the great serial monogamist all these years, and no wonder the pursuit of an acting career can be so soul-evaporating.

It is fucking lonely.

Now I cast back to a Christmas party my friends Todd and Kate had before we all scattered to our respective homelands for Christmahannukwanzica. At this party, nothing was said to shatter my earth. My earth remained intact as I bid adieu, but it was certainly rocked. Three of the guests at the party were a family--young parents and an unbelievably verbal sub-toddler. And get this: The parents were in theatre.

I KNOW! The wife/mother performed in musical theatre, touring occasionally with her son along. The husband had switched to directing after being an actor for several years and was having what seems to have been a very good time of it. Now, it's not that I don't know that such people exist. They must, else we'd never have these celebrities with stories about how they learned everything from their quaint, performed-on-Broadway-for-forty-years parents. Right? Right. Somehow, however, coming face-to-face with such folks was a very difficult experience for me that night. There was a lot of envy going on there, and I don't generally get too envious over career stuff. You landed a movie? Congratulations. Your agent says he's going to get you on every CSI they make? Fantastic.

You maintain a career that supports you and have the security and emotional wherewithal to start a healthy family? Come here. A little closer. I NEED TO GO ALL

TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

ON YOUR LIFE!

The thing is, it's not as though I haven't had opportunities to be in a family way. In point of fact, I keep choosing the ol' career over marriage, family, etc. This year has been, in its way, a huge exemplification of that choice. Now, I could argue that the problem has always been that (for one reason or another) somehow the choice always comes up. It's never a matter of someone wanting to be married to

me

, but to the

me I'll be when I get over this acting phase

. I could make that argument.

But I don't, because the question is far more interesting if I don't have that somewhat convenient circumstance to fall back on. So why do I keep making the choice, knowing that it will keep leading me back to questions about my path and insecurities about the ticking clock?

This year I ran around like mad. I moved back to Brooklyn from Queens. I had absolutely

horrible

health (the short list includes something in the area of two bad sprains, teeth problems, four feverish throat infections, and what I thought was a hernia but turned out to be a

chemical epididymitis

instead) but also wrapped the year with enough Equity weeks worked to qualify for six months of free health insurance, starting today. I was in and out of Pennsylvania, and traveled and worked in New Hampshire/Vermont, Virginia, Maryland and Italy. I performed in a satire, a tragedy, two comedies, one work-in-progress and one original debut. I developed a solo clown piece. I danced and sang, fought and kissed, and even got a little writing done.

What is this worth? Where is this getting me, I often ask myself. I view my career in a fashion similar to my spiritual beliefs, which is to say: If I don't question them (or myself) regularly, then I'm not really living them. Questions are not dangerous, unless they go unasked. In fact, I'd say that the darkest times in my life were when I was too certain of an answer to keep asking the questions. So. What is it worth?

The difficult answer (and for God's sake, question even this) is that it's worth itself. And that's all. I have to be satisfied with myself insofar as I need to be to be happy and think clearly. TTL isn't better than the more conventional life, but it certainly isn't worse. Some feel a need to insulate themselves from its danger by observing it and judging. "Doesn't the constant running from show to show seem like an addiction?" "You're not making enough money to make car payments?" Even the classic: "How do you memorize all those lines?" (Folken: What we really hear you saying is, "What on God's green earth possessed you to commit yourself to something so archaic and bizarre?") It is similar to every other priority we might claim without risking such judgment. Doesn't the constant pursuit of more money seem like a compulsion? You mean you just stay at home, all day, in the same home? And how do you forget all those childhood dreams?

We can neither of us judge the other, and I sally forth [insert comic strip pun/allusion here] into the new year eager to continue the wrestling match that is I. Me. I? Anyway. We're all here trying to make sense of ourselves. It's good to be accepting of our different paths; or if that's too much, than at least of our own path. I'm reminded of a conversation I had at the start of college, with my dear friend who organized the reunion and another incoming freshman. That Other asked us why we did theatre,

really

. I said some pretentious, theoretical crap (which I really believed and probably still do) and the guy said something along similar lines, but dear Sarah said,

"I just enjoy it. It's one of the few things in my life that I can point to and definitely [sic] say 'That makes me happy.'"

Well said, my friend. Happy new year, everyone.

Times of Giving


Short post today, folks. Lots to do. LOTS TO DO. MUST GET DOING DONE. MUST ARRANGE LOTS INTO LOTS.

Christmas (or the choose-your-own-holiday period) generally stresses me out in a very unique way. I mean, Anxiety and I know each other pretty well (there was even this night in Paris, but Anxiety and I agreed never to speak of it again), yet this particular time of year really cranks it up a few notches for me. Socially speaking, I am not High Functioning Jeff(tm). I have about the conversational skills of a Tickle-Me Elmo. But, correspondingly, my wherewithal for and interest in doing crafts is enhanced exponentially.

I can not help but wonder if the two might be related.

Anyway, Christmas comes early this year (OH MY GOD OH MY GOD) for me and mine. Jenny has to work at the hospital on the 25th, so my parents are coming into town in a matter of hours to celebrate here, now. That's the kind of parents they are. They rule. Plus, they already set a precedent for coming to see my shows in the most remote ends of the earth, so not working around Jenny's work schedule for the holidays would have sunk them in deep, deep tinsel.

I'll be traveling again, after the wrapping paper has flown and the Moliere has been seen. First down to Hagerstown, MD with my parents, then off to northern Virginia (NoVa) to see friends. There's a fairly big reunion of people I knew (and actually liked) in high school planned, and I surprise myself by my desire to attend. It's not that I am surprised to want to see old friends, exactly. It's just that reunions are another thing that fill me with anxiety.

What is this thing that makes me so wary of good possibilities? I put it to the universe. Universe, call me sometime. We never talk anymore.

I've got to run. Much wrapping and riddle-writing and packing to do yet. Avanti!