On Chris Hardwick, Nerds in General & Collaboration

I can't quite remember how it started.  I got awfully into podcasts several months ago, and I think I heard that Chris Hardwick (at the time, to me: that guy who sometimes reviews gadgets on Attack of the Show) had one, and so I gave it a try.  I liked it, and subscribed to his 'blog, The Nerdist.  Not too long ago, Signor Hardwick started casting about for 'blog contributors and, having something of an idea at the time, I submitted a proposal.  It was not accepted (but not NOT accepted [but we actors understand what that means]) and I thought, oh well: Can't fault a guy for trying.  (I've since had a much better idea for a pitch.  Still mulling it over, though. [Spicily.][I'm kind of hoping you actually didn't see what I did there....])

So this cult of Chris: I'm in it.  There's a lot that appeals about the dude; he's funny (helpful quality in a  comedian), intelligent and kind.  He's self-professed nerd, which means my likes match his likes pretty durn good.  The thing that really grabbed me about him, though, is what he chooses to talk about and how he talks about it in his interviews with various celebrities on the podcast.  Hardwick has a lot of fun, makes (occasionally crass) jokes, is well-supported by fellow podcasters Jonah Ray and Matt Mira, but the key for me is that he seems to love most of all to talk about people's ideas.  Not just their work, mind you, but the work they'd love to do.  To my mind, there's nothing more telling about a person in the moment than that, and frankly nothing more interesting to me.

About a week ago, I acquired an invitation to join the alpha stage of a new little project by Chris and collaborators Rachel Masters and Athena von Oech (of Red Magnet Media) called "The Node."  The Node is an idea that Hardwick had been hinting at on his podcasts for some little while, realized.  Essentially it's an online social network specifically for nerds (or whatever description you'll apply).  Now, I flinch immediately at the idea of another social network.  Thank you Friendster for reminding me of birthdays, MySpace for making me feel I could manipulate my own web presence, LiveJournal for...uh...being there when I just didn't get it at all, and Facebook for at least initially making me feel safe to come out and play again.  Thank you, and done.  Great.  No more.

EXCEPT:  The Node has a proclaimed purpose.  It's an exciting idea.  Something Chris calls "nerdsourcing," referencing the term crowd-sourcing, or utilizing a group of folks of varying (including no) acquaintance to accomplish something concrete.  The purpose of The Node is to facilitate this kind of collaboration between nerds or, as Hardwick puts it, people who are unabashedly obsessive and creative.  In other words, we're hoping here to create a little online community of folks who will make cool stuff and happenings together, not just post pictures of their pets (yes, I posted a picture of my cat). Will it happen?  I hope so, but we'll have to see.  And I use the word "we" because I think I'm in, dogs.

When I look back over the work I've done over the past several years, the strongest and most consistent component has been creative collaboration.  Now, I always pretty much chalked this up to my being deeply entrenched in theatre projects, and theatre being sort of the ultimate collaborative art form.  On considering it lately, however, I've realized it all has more to do with collaboration being a huge personal priority.  Not necessarily for any logical or pragmatic reason, I value collaboration a great deal.  It's like having a built-in audience at every stage of creation, and means that whatever you made is something greater than yourself just by the nature of its making.

There's a lot going on for me right now that shares this theme, from directing the next Zuppa del Giorno show, to revamping The Action Collective with Friend Andrew, to an untold-of project or two.  So far, The Node seems to be facilitating mostly a lot of excited nerdly chatter, and one or two ideas for real-world nerdsourced projects.  I'm trying to dream one good one up myself, though my first contribution to the pitch pile might simply be from a necessity that arises out of my current work instead of some nifty new thing.  I can't, in other words, give as much time to The Node as I might otherwise (though I'm stealing time left, right n' center).  If it sounds like something in which you might be interested: Hit me up, dawgs.  I can invite you in.  Such is the power of an alpha nerd.  *barks quietly, pushes glasses back up snout*

This Is Just to Say

I have enjoyed

the actors

that came in

to callbacks

and who

were probably tense

over

its oddness.

Forgive me

I cannot cast you all

so brave

and so totally awesome.

Short post here just to touch on the callbacks for

our next Zuppa del Giorno show

, the which I'll be directing. They have taken place this week, and after a little more coordinating and ruminating we should have our third performer. This was effectively my first time on the other side of the table in an audition process, and I learned a lot from it (possibly at the expense of the actors involved?), both as someone conducting an audition process and as an actor in said audition. More anon on that. (I'm really racking up the promised 'blog topics here.)

This post is really just to say that everyone who came in was awesome. It was an extremely unconventional callback process, due to the developmental and improvisational nature of the show, and each actor handled it with style. See if this doesn't terrify you: We set out a table of assorted random objects, and had people in two-at-a-time. The game they played was to tell a story between them, with one person verbally telling the story and the other telling it physically. They could use any of the "props," and at any time they could switch positions, yielding their vocal or physical storytelling to the other, or swooping into the other role. And they just kept going until I said, "Scene."

Tough, no? Awful, really, for people psyched to have an opportunity. If I could have come up with any other way to find out what we needed to know, I would have done that. But I wish you could have been there, Dear Reader, because what everyone did was unique and effective and inspiring. So, thanks, Auditioners. I would like to take you all out for milk and cookies.

The Southampton Writers Conference

I had no idea this thing existed until I was invited by

The Ensemble Studio Theatre

(thanks entirely to

Tom Rowan

) to participate as an actor this year. But that's what a lot of my acting career is like, so it's tough for me to judge whether or not I

should

have heard of it.

Imagine you're at a party where you don't really know anybody. You're supposed to be there, and yet no one would miss you for a moment if you slipped out the door. People are buzzing about, trying to connect with very specific intentions, and tremendous drama and change is unfolding all around you. You, meanwhile, are just sort of holding your arms out, hoping someone will pick up on your invitation to a hug. That, my friends, is an apt metaphor for my experience as a career actor, my general attitude toward parties, and frankly the beginning of my experience here at

The Southampton Writers Conference

.

It was cool, I don't mind telling you. I am a huge writing nerd, and love excuses to hear writers talk about their work and processes. I've been to another writers' conference twice before, the

CVWC

in upstate, both times as something of a tourist. I was just a shade closer to being an actual participant this time, working there as an actor for their playwrights, which means I get to attend readings and rub elbows with Emily Mann and - yes - spend a little time cloistered away in my room working on my own playwriting. Pretty sweet, and those strange party feelings always fade eventually (but must they always appear in the first place, galdurnitall?). More on that in a future post, I think.

To sum it all up (because Blogger ate a good three paragraphs that it told me it had saved yesterday [Blogger, you jerk][just kidding love you mean it never change]): social difficulties were surmounted, the quality of work was astounding, and the level of talent of my fellow actors was simply inspiring. I'm not just blowing positive-attitude smoke here. Without dropping names, the actors I got to work with were - across the board - professional, talented and fun. Most all of them were working, many you'd probably recognize, and just about all of them (with the exception of me and I think two others) had some previous association with EST. So in some small way, I checked off a personal goal in getting to work with that theatre (see

11/17/08

). I hope, of course, to work with them again someday.

The work itself involved reading two plays twice - Tom's

Burning

Leaves

and

Ben Rosenthal

's

Neptune Kelly

- in a cycle in which the first reading gave the playwrights material with which to revise, and the second came after two days' revisions and a brief rehearsal period, and was presented to whomever from the conference wished to attend. It was a good structure, and left us with time to sit in and do readings for Emily Mann's playwriting workshops, and on Saturday night her attendees presented some of their work to the rest of the conference in the form of our performing readings of about five minutes of each playwright's in-class creations. Any time I had spare from this schedule was generally spent in my room mulling over and revising my own much-neglected play-in-progress

Hereafter

.

(PS and also: Dear Reader, I'm certain that if the occasion arises in which I announce I'm going to once again write a bunch of interconnected scenes and see if after-the-fact they can be melded into a cohesive whole, you will of course come to my apartment, knock on my door and, when I open it, shout "NOT AGAIN," and punch me square in the nose. Hard. Because you love me. Anyway: I'd appreciate it if you could.)

It was interesting to be working on

Burning Leaves

again, particularly because I felt it was already a rather finished product the last time I performed it in

November of 2008

. Tom, fortunately, is a much smarter playwright than I, and had already made some significant cuts to the play before I read it again for the conference. In particular, he cut a monologue for my character in which he explains what traumatic series of events led to his fleeing New York. He had gotten feedback suggesting that this was one of the more irresponsible and less admirable things the guy does, sharing the burden of such personal history with his student. I missed it of course - it was a heart-breaking story to tell - but a great edit. In the course of the week Tom did more to streamline the play and adjust the balance of ethics and plot logic between characters, and I felt good about the final reading. I always want to do better, but I felt good. Again: my fellow actors were

amazing

; just committed and specific and true as all git-out.

Neptune Kelly

is a cracker of a script. I had zero experience with this one before they sent it to me, and I have to admit that on first read I flinched a bit from it. It has a combination of earmarks of the kind of material I'm usually not too keen on: highly stylized, allegorical, verbose. Normally this makes for the sort of trying-too-hard off-off-Broadway showcase that's out there to MAKE a STATEMENT. As soon as we got in the room, though, I knew I had let prejudice in on my initial judgment, because the play

rocks

. It's not as allegorical as it first may seem - for one, it doesn't wrap anything up neatly - and the beauty of its verbose style is that it stems from committed, crisis-filled characters. It's funny, bold and poetic in the least pretentious way, and we had a ball with it. I had only one scene in

Neptune Kelly

(once again playing a teacher, somehow) but it sort of made up for my lost monologue in

Burning Leaves

, being an explanatory story for why my character committed and extreme and self-destructive act. I got to make this vaulting little journey from resolution to profound regret over a couple of pages, and in so doing propel another character into direct action, and that's just the kind of smarts and specificity that Ben's working with which allows him to create such a weird-but-true world.

Finally, the presentation of Ms. Mann's students' work was great fun, and surprisingly fulfilling. I've always been a fan of short-form presentations of theatrical work and the way its informality can invite more audience involvement and great spontaneity in the actors' performances, but you often have to take a certain lackluster quality into account for such undertakings. Timing may be off, words may be stumbled over, etc. Such was the quality of the writing and the acting of this little presentation that it lacked no luster. I laughed, I cried, it was better than lots and lots of the fully produced shows I've seen in my life. I was lucky to be a part of it (particularly, extremely lucky, actually, because my scene partner is an amazingly good actor). We had fully-formed, five-minute segments of passion, manipulation, Alzheimer's, shuddering regret and even loving cannibalism. Egad I love theatre.

Perhaps the most uplifting thing to come out of the whole experience for me is that I was asked to return this Friday, to participate in a staged reading of one of the attendee's plays,

Wild Animals You Should Know

. Thomas Higgins penned the script, and I'm a big fan of it. (Very odd: Thom had

a script in The SFOOBSPF

, in which

I just participated

.) It has a lot to do with the Boy Scouts of America, so that's a like a little visit into my childhood, and it is working with some of the same themes as

Burning Leaves

does. And, somehow, the reading is being directed by

Joe Mantello

.

So, you know, um: WOW.

The Missing Cast Member

We've had two performances of

Love Me

thus far, with four remaining over the course of a couple of weeks, which may seem strange but is pretty par-for-the-course when it comes to theatre festivals

such as this

. Of the two in the bag, the first was certainly my best, but the second wasn't particularly bad. It felt not dissimilar from most second-night performances, rather off-kilter and maybe a bit flat, which I was hoping to avoid by having a day of rest between opening and our second show. I suppose it wasn't meant to be. The sophomore slump can not be avoided by mere paltry circumstance.

In any show, one rehearses without an essential member of the cast: the audience. We never know how things are going to play out, what energy and emotions the room will contain or need pumped into it until those seats have a few willing participants. This is particularly true when you are faced with a lot of direct-address material, as I am in

Love Me

. I knew I wouldn't know what I was doing--not really--until I had that scene member who somehow

refused

to show up for rehearsals, and I don't mind telling you I was pretty nervous about that. I've been avoiding clown work in large part because of the vulnerability of that relationship, and this show hinges in part on the conceit of my character being embraced from the word "go." He opens the show, and if the audience doesn't like him, or doesn't get it, well . . . shit.

Most fortunately for me, on our opening night we had a very supportive audience who "got it." It was thrilling, actually, to succeed with the first couple of jokes, and I felt that we were all on the same page and synchronous. My very first line was an addition by the director,

Daryl

, and is about as simple as you can get: "Hi." I'm grateful as get-out that he added it, though. In its simplicity, it transforms traditional soliloquy into a more accustomed, casual relationship. It adds ease to the whole thing, and lets the audience know that my character isn't there to narrate -- he wants to be friends. This carries through the play in very important ways, but also lets the jokey exposition that follows be not just comprehensible, but intentional:

"My name is Charlie. This is my story. His story. Our story. Or at least how I remember it. I've changed the names for fear of retaliation. If you think this is about you, it might be. That's me too. [Indicating CHARLIE.] That's actually the real me. I'm just what's going on in his head. My head. Our head."

From there, my dialogue consists of one-liners and very brief inter-scene monologues. The rest of the time all my contributions to scenes are physical work, representing at various times: 1) how Charlie feels, 2) what Charlie wants to do, but doesn't, and/or 3) guidance/criticism of his words and actions. At first I worried over the inconsistency of these representations; I thought they might be difficult for the audience to track and find cohesive. I'm finding, however, that so long as the audience accepts me as a character in my introduction, they go on to be thrilled with any complication or interruption I can add to a scene. There still exists the very easy possibility of over doing it, but I'm comforted to know that yes, the Inner Monologue (I.M.) is a scene partner they're willing to play with.

Interestingly enough, my experience with the audience has reinforced the arc that Daryl and I essentially had to create for my character. In the end, I.M.

SPOILER ALERT

is given the shove-off by Charlie, who has found a certain sense of self-worth that doesn't rely on his little helper

SPOILER ENDETH

. When we began rehearsals, I had the idea that I.M. was actually an sheer antagonist, whom we don't discover is working against Charlie until the final scenes. Daryl, however, kept working with the idea that he is a kind of bipolar guardian angel who loses his influence toward the end. As a result, when Charlie and I have our last scene, I played it as a defeat, but Daryl kept pushing for it being a kind of agreement. I went with my director, and the audience has supported this idea. They really enjoy I.M., and in this way I'm able to give them a more comprehensive character arc as well. The ending has a feeling of inevitability without being obvious, but there's no way we could be sure of that until we played it with the missing cast member.

A Little More Inside

Because I know you diligently read every single item I post with great fervor and admiration, Dear Reader, you'll no doubt immediately reference from this title my post of May 13, 2010. Just in case you need refreshing:

An link

. Just in case you fear linkage: I'm in rehearsals for an original comedy called

Love Me

(

an link

[you see what I did there]) in which I play the central character's inner monologue embodied bodily on-stage. Wacky? Oui. Fun? Often. Challenging? No question about it.

Over the course of two weeks, things have progressed rather nicely. Because of various conflicts I have and the general nature of my role, I haven't been to about half of the rehearsals so far. Now things are gearing up and scenes are stringing together, so I'm called all the time and finding myself grateful for that. It helps me create connections with these fellow actors with whom I share stage time, but not necessarily any real scene work. The big exception to that is of course

Aaron

-- the real "me." Even he isn't allowed to look at me whilst on stage together, but I'm finding the tennis game of playing the same role from different perspectives growing more and more simpatico with him. There's a nice give-and-take, and we continue to find new techniques to make it work.

It's kind of funny, actually, how little I can solve these challenges by any kind of logical approach; it is far more productive to proceed instinctively. It seemed like such an artificial trope, this inner monologue (I.M.) incarnation, that I was inclined to set some ground rules as a first step. Address audience in this case, address Charlie in that, don't manipulate objects, etc. As with regular ol' acting, however, my instincts prove much smarter than my rational brain. The most important thing is to keep a flow of ideas (no matter how ragingly inappropriate) coming so more can catch in the sieve. This is an old acting lesson--and one I just have to keep on relearning, it seems--but particularly important when one is playing someone else's id or super-ego.

Of course, some conventional acting wisdom is less helpful, if not downright disruptive. For example, staying in eye contact with your scene partner as much as possible. Also, in many cases, we want to see an actor fighting his emotions in order to achieve some goal; this is the idea behind crying on stage, the point not being the tears, but to keep working through that crying. However, when you have an alter ego playing out your practical or scenic obligations, the best thing you can do to tell the story is flat-out show his hidden or outwardly controlled emotions. I jump around and shout a lot in this play, and I just have to keep reminding myself that such no-nos are exactly and precisely what I'm there to do.

There are a few scenes in the play when we get to blur these rules in entertaining ways. For example, Aaron and I come a lot closer together in a scene in which he's hammered drunk, to the extent that we are literally back-to-back, holding one another up for our elaborate drunken swaying. At this stage of rehearsal, the ensemble is getting comfortable enough for more physical choices and choreography in general, and this is of course a favorite stage of things for yours truly. From the start we are now establishing that not only do I have physical control over Aaron, but sometimes he over me as well (when he's particularly using his imagination, for example). There are also three or four moments in which I get to initiate some of his subconscious gestures by directly operating him like a puppet. There's great fun to be had in these moments when they're more adversarial. At such times, Aaron has to justify in the "real" world why he tripped or bit his nails at a particular moment, and heck: that's just fun stuff.

In terms of my off-stage work, I really should be jogging and stretching more. I'm not in the worst shape, but my exercise for a while now has been predominantly silks work with the amazing

Cody Schreger

, and there's not a whole lot of shimmying involved in

Love Me

(pity, really). What there is a lot of is running around and contorting and falling. The trouble is that this all happens in rehearsal until 10:30 or so, and so, when I wake up at 6:00...no running for me. Must get on it now, because June 10th is just over that hill...