Comedy in Truth

I was walking home from a dinner with Friend Alison the other night when she started recounting stories of various klutzy moments in her life. In particular, she mentioned a time that she was walking down the street and walked directly into a wall so hard and unexpectedly that she 1) fell right on her butt with 2) legs splayed and 3) skirt up over her head. I, of course, thought this was classically hilarious, and suggested we should get her a camera crew and a YouTube channel, just in case it happens again. She balked at this notion, and we moved on to stories of when we have tripped and fallen UP stairs . . . but I think I can bring her around.

Alison (and I) fall, unexpectedy and dramatically. I own a cat who humps himself to sleep at night. Wife Megan's occasional, inadvertent experiments with grammar. The Internet. These are all funny things--comedy--and all happen without any prompting or effort. In life, comedy is easy and plentiful. In acting, we can make it very difficult for ourselves.

It's a kind of magic trick, a well-executed comic bit, requiring a certain sense of dramatic flare and sleight-of-hand (or foot, or butt, etc.). Except in this trick, the performer is fooled almost as much as the audience. When I teach pratfalls, I regurgitate a good bit of advice that is so timeless, I can't begin to remember who first told me of it. The best way to execute a convincing trip, is to actually trip. You simply trail your back foot over your front heel as it's taking a step forward, so you then have to catch yourself on the other side of that step. That's not the trick, however: anybody can do that. No, the trick is in believing that there is no possible way you will trip, even as you set yourself up for it. That's what makes it spontaneous, and that's what allows everyone to believe the real payoff: your reaction to just having tripped.

Way back in the day, now (we're talking 2001, people), I played a broadly comic character in a little original production called

The Center of Gravity.

Moe Franko was the owner of a gas station, a sort of arrogantly naive fellow who was pretty crass 'cuz he just didn't learn any better. (I grew a mustache for the role; me + mustache = comedy.) At any rate, my hands-down best laugh of the show was one in which a strikingly attractive young woman visits the gas station and is introduced to my character. It's already been established that I'm freshly returned from using the facilities, and when we shake hands, she makes a face, to which I reply, "Oh don't worry, it's just water. It's not urine or anything." Their handshake disengaged, Moe turns away, and his face registers every little realization of how awful the thing he's just said is and, by extension, how awful he probably is. It got a laugh, every single time.

Which can totally and utterly ruin a joke. Anticipation is one of the worst sabotage factors of a good gag, and it applies both to the performer and the audience member. I have botched a perfectly good gag innumerable times through this very error. So why didn't it ever take down the water/urine gag? Well, I was quite young and the woman playing the interloper

was

exotically attractive, and I had a mustache (no, you don't get a photo). So that covered a lot of the sincerity bases in terms of the given circumstances -- I really did feel a little excited, and awful, and embarrassed. Perhaps more importantly, the line felt like something I might say, minus the Texan twang, of course.

I'm thinking about this because I just signed on to act in

an original comedy performing in June

. The role is probably going to require me to stretch my comic imagination, by the prospect of which I'm both excited, and slightly intimidated. It's good to remember that, ultimately, being real is what makes things really funny. I like this about comedy, that it is served best by truth and belief. Sure: It's all very rehearsed, and calculated, like any bit of good theatre. But all of that is for naught if we can't believe in it in the moment. The impact isn't what's funny; it's the way we deal with it afterward. Not the action, but the reaction, and the best reactions come from that very moment, and no other place.

Gary C. Hopper

"

Acting!

"

"

Theatre

is my

life!

"

I received most of my formal acting training in the undergraduate program at

Virginia Commonwealth University

. Lots of factors contributed to my decision to attend college there. For example, I didn't make it into William & Mary; had I, I would have definitely gone, and my parents would definitely be much poorer, even to this day. When I enrolled, I wasn't even committed to being an actor -- I was just in the habit of approaching colleges

as

an actor, or theatre student, because that was the mode in which they were most likely to have already heard of me, through the conferences I attended in high school. I still had an abiding love of all things literature (except Dickens [even to this day]) and hoped to double-major.

VCU was an interesting program, one whose curriculum was in a state of near-constant flux during my four years there. Teachers and administrators came and went. In fact, the gentleman I auditioned for was no longer there by the time my first day arrived. This general situation caused me a good deal of angst during my time, fretting over the state of my and and my fellows' education. (To be fair, causing me angst in those days was not by any stretch a challenging maneuver.) Not to put too fine a point on it, I was often pretty pissed. At the most difficult times of that struggle, I think the only thing that kept me enrolled was returning to the foundation we actors received from the guy who insisted he teach each and every incoming freshman actor: Gary Hopper.

Mr. Hopper was, and delighted in embodying, an amiable terror to the freshmen. He made it clear, with a blistering smile all the while, that we were there to

work

and, furthermore, to work with enthusiasm. I can still hear his voice in my head as he jogged around the room with us in our daily warm-ups, quasi-facetiously pepping up our teenage slack-i-tude with interjections of, "

Acting!

" and "

Theatre

is my

life!

" There's a philosophy of teaching, I believe, that makes good use of the teacher as a character, as someone intriguing and idiosyncratic, who fascinates and keeps one on one's toes. This approach makes the students a little bit like gladiators, wily and ready to adapt: engaged --

if

it works on them. It certainly worked on me, but it's an approach that is full of risk and takes a lot of commitment and energy. Sort of like, you know, good acting.

Now, I don't know if Mr. Hopper intends to be as eccentric as he can be, nor whether it's to this end. My guess is he does, but I also believe most of his idiosyncrasies are ones he comes about quite honestly. He really is a man who sees the purpose in life to be inextricable from living with energy and intention. He really would like to yank the cigarette out of every smoker's mouth, then have them thank him for saving minutes of their lives. And yes, theatre is his life. In my time he directed one main-stage show per year, and often a second-stage or regional show to boot, and these were always,

always

something to experience. Every show wasn't for every audience member, but that goes with his territory. That's risk-taking, and that's art. I could tally off every show of his from the Fall of 1995 to the Spring of 1999, and would enjoy the hell out of it, but just take my word: Must Sees.

Of course, I was involved in a few of those. As a sophomore I ASM'd his

Little Shop of Horrors

, which involved various misadventures with a turntable (oh, that f&#$%ng turntable),

Intellabeams

and an honest-to-goodness motorcycle. And, as a junior, I did what I'm afraid was an astonishingly mediocre job in his adaptation of the play

Stand-Up Tragedy

, which, Gentle Reader, involved risky stunts and fights, a life-size, bleeding Christ sculpture and -- most terrifying -- me, rapping. Finally, in my senior year, I had the excellent good fortune to work with Gary on a farce:

Hotel Paradiso

. Holy crap: THAT was FUN. I'm not sure any show I'd done before has influenced my adult career so specifically and completely. I knew before

Hotel

that I had a unique (being kind here) sense of humor and an appreciation of pratfall, but it was this show that taught me how important these were to me.

In fact, I probably owe the man royalties (nothing substantial, I regret to admit). Firstly because I believe to this day -- in spite of years of experience prior to college -- that I didn't learn how to act until I studied with Gary. It can be hard, more than a decade on, to trace the sources of one's techniques back to their origins. In spite of this, I very definitely carry on in a specific G.C.H. tradition, both in my acting and in my teaching. "Actors must be athletes," is an axiom that gets included in every single commedia dell'arte or acrobalance workshop I lead, and a great many of my exercises and challenges are taken directly from the Hopper repertoire. I still score my scripts, feeling somehow delinquent if I haven't done so by opening night, and I continue to subject my poor, poor actors, when I direct, to the STOP method of line memorization.

STOP is a good way to illustrate the infuriating and exacting way Gary has of demanding not just better, but the specific best from his actors. In this exercise, everyone gathers in a tight, standing circle, and we run lines, with the stage manager (

never the director; I learned how important this is the hard way

) on book. Whenever someone misses, transposes or paraphrases a single word, the SM says, "Stop." And only: "Stop." It's then up to the actor to repeat the line and, by the timing of "stops" figure out his or her mistake, and correct it. Believe me: It is not for the weak (nor the humorless).

Of course, college is about a hell of a lot more than the classes one takes, or even the productions a theatre student may be a part of. Gary had his small, yet profound, influences on me there as well. None of it is of general interest, all of it proved very important to the person I've become. College for me was personally tumultuous, and very probably that was a result of my own doing, and growing. I suspect that is not uncommon, yet when you're in the thick of it the experience is a rather difficult one of which to take a long view. Gary's spirit, his approach to challenges and belief in rooting all that ecstatic expression in solid groundwork, provided me with an example of how to be both exuberant and responsible in life. Plus, without ever tearing me down (more than I needed it) he constantly reminded me not to take myself too seriously. To say I'm grateful to him doesn't quite cover it.

Sometimes when I'm in the midst of a warm-up on a tougher day, I'll start (quite unconsciously) whispering to myself "

Acting!

" and "

Theatre

is my

life!

" And I smile, and I can't help it. Gary's spirit is unsentimental and infectious, and it would appear I remain infected to this day. Happy birthday, Gary, and thanks for all you've done for us.

Holding the Mirror Up

As you may have been alerted on The Facebooks, The Twitters and/or ma' brother 'blog, Loki's Apiary, I am performing this week in a short play called Princess. Jason Schafer is the writer of this play, Kay Long directs and Stacey Linnartz performs with me (or really: I with her), to drop a few names for The Googles. This is a tough one to write about midstream, as it were, because to reveal anything specific about the plot sort of jiggles the ride a bit too much. Suffice it to say that I play a young husband and father having a rather important conversation with my wife, about our son.

As you may also know from The Everythings, Wife Megan and I recently invited a new addition to our little family. Anton is not quite the same as having a son, but I have to admit that he has been full of more lessons and surprises -- not to mention, less sleep -- than I had imagined. A series of his more worrisome idiosyncrasies:

• He's named Anton . . . and I didn't name him. That was his name when we adopted him, and as a theatre enthusiast I am required to honor it, and yet everyone we tell responds, "Anton...?" in, you know, that way.
• Anton's got these stiff back legs, so not much of a jumper. He's not too old, but something's up there. Makes me wonder if he was a dog in a past life.
• He doesn't like being held, and won't sit in laps. Very affectionate otherwise, though, so maybe it's got something to do with the legs.
• When we go to bed, anywhere from ten minutes to an hour later he will meow from the other room . . . with question marks at the end. I AM NOT KIDDING. There is no other interpretation. Anton has somehow lost us between the two rooms of our apartment.
• He's a bit of a biter (not hard), fairly neurotic (see above) and . . . a humper. He humps. Blankets and jackets, mostly. He's neutered, but there you have it. He is humpy.

The son of my character does not have any of these problems (insofar as the script has detailed) but the emotions remind me of our recent feline complications. You worry, at odd times, and you spend a lot of time blindly interpreting, too. Does the love of a cat compare to the love for a child? Certainly not, yet I am surprised by how affectionate I have become of Anton in such a short time, and it reminds me of that old idiom about fathers not really being fathers until they actually get to meet their child.

Worry not, Dear Reader: I am not sense-memory-ing my way through Princess using my cat as an analogue for a son. (I might've in college, though, I have to confess.) I'm just sort of fascinated by the ways in which what I'm making happen and what is happening to me tend to become harmonious when I'm working in the theatre. Neither am I suggesting anything mystical in this -- I tend to view these things from a humanist perspective, at most -- yet it may just say something about how intention and deliberate action can influence one's sense of unity in life. And why the theatre in particular? Well, that may particularly have to do with me, and how much I love it, but it may also have to do with how much more evident observations can become when one is living out loud (much less in front of an audience).

It was actually in college that I really started to notice it, though somehow I aspired to "noticing" it even in high school. It's this "Oh...huh...yes..." kind of moment that occurs in rehearsal, and also starts to occur a bit in life, assuming you're feeling a strong connection to the work. In rehearsal you spend all this concentrated energy saying, for example, the same five words over and over again, in different ways, until at some point you nail it: oh...huh...yes.... It's great. Doesn't happen nearly enough, in my opinion. The act of searching -- not being in a generic search mode, but actively searching -- heightens awarenesses both internal and external. It can feel like a kind of magic, and you want to share it with everyone, but of course not everyone is interested. So, if you're like me, you end up humming quietly to yourself and every so often accidentally effusing all over some hapless and innocent Internet troller such as yourself.

Egad, I <3 the Internet.

Even if you accept my half-formed theories about how this synchronicity comes about, there remain some chicken-and-egg-type questions. Do you perceive a connection because you want to, or because it's pointedly poking you in the deep recesses of your brain? Did your searching begin with rehearsal, or did it start with looking for a job? Are the connections a result of the searching, or vice versa? Am I a proud cat owner because I'm thinking more about parenthood, or am I thinking more about parenthood because I have this weirdo cat, or is it all because of Megan?

Oh; huh: yes. Well, that last one is pretty clear-cut. But the rest are still unanswerable!

A Phone, Yes. But Smart...?

Those of you who follow me like hawks on Twitter (the many, many people who are all up in my

@AcroRaven

junk) know that I found a convenient excuse to make the plunge into so-called smart-phone territory. I coyly tweeted from the purchase, "no, not THAT smartphone," thereby piquing the curiosity of the entire nation. Well, Nation (I will someday be Colbert's body double), peek at

this

. That's what I done and got myself. And so far, I'm pretty happy about it.

Ironically enough, it's actually a much better phone-phone than

the last I had

. The sound quality's better, the overall ergonomics: entirely better. So I feel non-silly about that. And I have to admit that the purchase has me on some much better habits of communication so far. Something about being alerted to incoming emails keeps me vigilant about sending them back out, and that leads to better communication and more things getting done. It also lends itself to more things being on my plate at a time, of course, but that's rather what I was asking for when I joined this technological demographic, idn't it? That and, naturally, endless Sudoku puzzles.

Friend Sarah and I have occasionally exchanged emails about a collaborative theatre project that addresses information and communication technologies and what effects they've had on our behavior. The irony of this is that Sarah lives in San Diego, and frankly the only reason we can begin to contemplate such a collaboration is because of the devices that have developed in the past five years for exactly this type of communication. I have a rather love/hate relationship with the new forms, particularly with regard to how they've influenced theatre, but there's no escaping their relevance. We can outright deny them, sure, and there's value in that approach, but frankly I'm enamored of them all. The prospects of

Google Wave

are exciting to me, I must confess. Would I rather sit in the same room as people, read their faces and experience their energy (or be aware of a lack of it) first hand? Yes, a thousand times. Yet I also get a charge out of being connected to friends and collaborators in Pennsylvania, California and the United Kingdom.

Now I am a giant leap closer to being entirely plugged in to the "ambient awareness" of which so many write. I can let anyone who may be listening know where I am and what I'm doing in great detail at the very moment of my existence. I've done a bit of this, but frankly, I can;t keep up the way others do. If I tweeted and Facebooked-it as much as others, I'm not sure I'd actually be accomplishing anything else. Yet many do, and I suppose I envy them a bit. perhaps I'll get better at this whole thing with time, but I'm not certain that I

want

to get better at it. I rather like having this many choices about how I communicate with folks, but the choice itself is defeated if it gets to the point at which I'm serving the mode, rather than the mode serving me. So in spite of my recent acquisition, people will still be hearing from me in person quite a bit. In fact, I rather miss the days when it was a little more socially acceptable to show up at a friend's door. Now such a surprise would be considered rather creepy by all sorts of otherwise friendly and open people.

I know someone who had this advice for his child upon her moving to New York: YCNYDLNYCY. That translates into, "You change New York; don't let New York change you." (I wonder if he ever sent this advice via text?) It's a fairly inspiring bit of caring wisdom, and can easily be applied to all sorts of information-technology applications. (I'm tempted to type YCHTMLDLHTMLCY [and so I have] but I don't really know what I'd be saying with it.) It's impossible to deny, however, that the relationships in any case are utterly reciprocal, if not nigh symbiotic. We can't change anything without it changing us right back, and we're not adrift in a world that is rapidly dehumanizing us, nor one that is creating splendid multi-cultural interconnectedness, either. As thinking, feeling, viscerally connected creatures, we are engaged in this dialogue and responsible for every aspect of it. I embrace that, to my modest capability, and with a little luck it will help me to create with a little more truth, a little more connection.

K thx bai.

In Defense of the Small Theatre

A popular phrase in the theatre addresses the generally accepted philosophy of a regularly working actor:

There are no small parts; merely small actors.

I confess to you now -- I have not even a small idea what this is supposed to mean. It has been quoted at me my entire life, and I have gone from bafflement to frustration and back again pondering the ambiguity of the saying. (Most theatre traditions seem intentionally ambiguous; the Freemasons have nothing on us.) Does it mean the actor that worries over the size of his or her part is a small-minded individual? Does it mean a part comes across as small only when the actor lacks sufficient panache with which to fulfill it? Does it in fact mean, "Listen kid: Ya' gotta start somewheres..."? (My theatre-authority inner-voice always sounds like a cigar-chomping box-office manager from the '40s Bronx.) I smile, and accept, and usually think,

Well, at least so-and-so's using theatre terms, so the form can't quite be on its dying gasp...

This weekend past I had the opportunity to see two shows, which inevitably invites comparison. One was rather modest in scale, the other a hugely financed Broadway play, transplanted from London. Now, these are not forces I consider to be in any sort of opposition to one another. Are Broadway shows a threat to regional theatre? God, no. Does regional theatre stand for some kind of principle against big-budget shows? Nope. So why am I writing about them together? What on earth could the Electric Theatre Company's production of

The Dining Room

have to do with Donmar Warehouse's of

Hamlet

?

Apart from both plays dealing with the passing of a way of life in some larger sense, very little. My comparison comes from a feeling of renewed appreciation for more intimate theatrical settings. It's very convenient, of course, for me to favor smaller theatres. ETC is where I do most of my work, after all, with its 99ish seats and relatively low-ceilinged performance space. Amor fati, as they say. Yet my appreciation of the venue in general goes beyond that, to much more objective criteria. I have to admit that the budgets are paper thin, the productions can be rocky and unrewarding as often as they are surprisingly professional and transportive -- this is the smaller theatre. Nothing is tried and true, not even the occasional Neil Simon imperative. I even love circus, and would like nothing more than to rig up ETC with trapezes and silks and slides, and it ain't gonna happen any time soon. Broadway can do that. I've seen it. Broadway can spend thousands of dollars on textured paint alone.

My biggest complaint about the production of

Hamlet

is one I would normally quickly let go of: to wit, the set. Who cares, right? Hardly the focus of any serious lover of Shakespeare. Yet it especially bothered me for its grandiose melancholy. The set was essentially very minimal: Virtually no furniture, except for moments when modest thrones were brought out on a small platform, and all was on stage level, except when a few panels were removed to accommodate the grave-digging scene. Huge, granite-looking castle walls ascend on all three sides of the playing area, with a similarly grandiose door at the back. The trouble with all this, as I saw it, was that it felt to me like the play was being dwarfed by gloomy nothingness. They achieved some very nice visual moments with snowfall outside the door, and shafts of light or the odd curtain, but for the most part the minimalism and darkness served not to aid the story but to point up how out of place such a human drama felt as it took place in a giant theatre. I would have loved to see the exact same show...only closer.

In

The Dining Room

, A.R. Gurney winds his exceedingly clever, heartfelt and economical way through various stages of dining room culture in America. The play is a standard, really, of theatre departments and regional theatres -- very accessible and good for a small cast. I performed in a shortened version myself in high school, one of the first shows I did there. The ETC production was very good, honoring all the humor notes and serious moments with equitable specificity without losing touch with the audience, nor playing it too out. What struck me the most about the show, however, was how inviting it felt.

Hamlet

worked rather hard at making us feel that we were involved in the action -- starting off with an image of a mourning Hamlet alone (or with us) in the middle of that huge stage, keeping him close to the proscenium throughout and even going so far as to put us on Polonius' side of the curtain for his eventual murder.

Hamlet

wanted us involved, but had to fight for it.

Dining Room

had us involved simply because we felt we were in the same room.

I am not saying that a theatre being small in scale or structure is a virtue unto itself. The theatre created there still needs to be and do good for its community, and certainly Broadway has to power to influence a far greater (in size, that is) community than any regional outfit. However, comparing these close experiences have allowed me to formulate a theory of which I'm fond. It's widely proposed that live theatre is dead or dying, and I can see many an example to support this belief. I don't believe it, personally, because I believe live theatre will always exist for humanity in some form or other as a part of what defines it. (That, and because I remain unmoved by the argument that "fiscally nonviable" equates to death.) However, there's little use in denying that theatre is rather unappreciated by the majority, at least as compared to its former glories. It is sad, for those of us who love and respect it, to see that our love is rare, but rare it is. We'll always be engaged in some degree of uphill battle to let theatre live. I acknowledge that struggle, the Sisyphean CPR, if you will.

Here is my theory: In this state of affairs -- and I doubt very much this is the first time theatre has had to widely fight for its right to party -- what matters most, what makes the most difference and does the best things for people, is so-called small theatre. There is where you'll feel your life changed. There is where a show fulfills its full potential, and where the dialogue really matters to all involved. Yes, there's every possibility that you'll be bored out of your mind or not believe in a moment of it, and that horrible risk is not levied at all by spectacular effects or the relative proximity of movie stars. But if you remember what it feels like to be opened up by a story, if you weigh the risk against the possibility, small theatre is the best bet. The possibilities in a space of a hundred or so are thousands of times greater than in a space of thousands. There is no small act of theatre, only small responses to it. In short (har har), small theatre is really, really damn important.

I'm thrilled to realize that.