"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."

The Buddha said that. I'm fairly confident he didn't speak English, however, so there may be room for interpretation. In fact, he may have said something more along the lines of, "Your work is silly, and stop it, so you can discover that I ordered

large

french fries. You bastards."

Mm. Hot, tasty french fries.

This quote (the real one, not the fast-food version) encapsulates nicely the craft of acting, as well as the art of living. We begin with an openness to discovery, be it in developing a story or approaching a script for the first time, and throughout the process we strive to give ourselves over to it entirely. Both aspects are challenging, at least for those of us not born with some supernatural talent for finding and believing. (Equating belief with abandoning oneself to life and/or a play is probably an entirely other 'blog entry.) There's the need we feel to be perceived as experienced and knowledgeable, which blocks most possibilities for discovery. There's just plain assumption and bias, and the little "truths" we live with from day to day as people that help us get by, but may have nothing to do with the world of the play. There's just being plain acute enough to perceive discoveries, and open enough to accept them from others. You get through all that, and then there's the part of your heart.

Damn it. This stupid

play

has me making inappropriate, obvious rhymes.

It's not a stupid play, however. It's a very intelligent

and

visceral play. Ideas and feelings clash with one another in fascinating ways, and on the whole it is posing some of the more fascinating "unanswerable" questions of human existence and behavior. Why can't we shake the yoke of needing to please our parents? Why, when we love, can it be so difficult and insane? How do we live with a love that consumes us? Why can't we all just get along? What is wrong between women and men? Why is America the way it is, violent and obsessed and often delusional? What is true? I love questions, particularly ones that we can never quite answer to our own satisfaction. They give me hope, in an unsettled sort of way. They help me believe that there are great discoveries yet to be made.

But this business of the heart . . . it's difficult. I'll be very frank (or Frankie [oh God I kill me][somebody has to]) and admit that I'm having trouble at this stage of rehearsal with giving myself to it with all my heart. Why? Well, it's probably a terribly involved question I ask on your behalf, but foregoing the venting of intense personal details (and collective sigh...and GO: "Aaahh...") let's us just trace the journey of Frankie for a moment. Who knows? Maybe we'll make a discovery or two. Come along with me!!!

He's one of Shepard's sensitive, intelligent brother characters (already I enter in judgment, eschewing discovery). The play opens with Frankie on the phone with his brother, Jake, trying to sort of talk him off a ledge, emotionally speaking, and get his brother to tell him where he is and what's happened to put him in this state. He keeps trying to calm him down. Eventually, it comes out that Jake has killed his wife. Then he hangs up, leaving Frankie to shout into a dead line after him.

The next we see Frankie, he's joined his brother in a hotel room somewhere and is trying to get to the bottom of what happened. He tries to comfort his brother, but also doesn't buy Jake's explanation of the events and criticizes his brother for always shifting blame for his own actions. At the height of this confrontation, Jake passes out suddenly. He comes to as Frankie is trying to understand what happened and help him, then explains that he feels as if he's going to die without his wife. Frankie offers to go to her family to find out if she's dead, or alive, or what, and Jake forbids it, then pleads with Frankie to stay with him, which Frankie agrees to.

Frankie's next scene occurs three days later, when his mother and sister arrive at the hotel at his behest. Jake's been deteriorating, talking to himself and shaking uncontrollably, for the entire time. Their mother comes in and tries to take over immediately, protesting that Jake is just "play-acting" over Frankie's objections. Jake wakes and imagines his sister is his wife, growing aggressive with her before passing out again. In the end, Frankie convinces his mother (it isn't hard) to take Jake whilst he goes off to find out what happened to Jake's wife, Beth. This drives their sister out of the house; she doesn't feel safe with Jake around. So it's off to Montana for Frankie.

When he reappears, it's about two days later at the home of Beth's family. We know from dialogue that he tried to convince Beth's brother to let him see her, and he refused. He doesn't appear on stage, however, until Beth's father, Baylor, comes dragging him in. Baylor's accidentally shot Frankie in the leg, having mistook him for a deer. Much follows in the rest of the scene, but for Frankie it's mostly about dealing with pain, shock, discovering Beth is indeed alive, trying to figure out what's wrong with her and beginning to perceive a resistance to his leaving, even if it's only to get him to a hospital.

It's unclear how much later we revisit Frankie on the family couch, but he and Beth are alone and she has taken off her shirt to wrap around his wound. He seems to be focused, past the shock, and claiming the bleeding has stopped. (How that's possible, what with nobody properly bandaging the wound, is a question for Mr. Shepard.) The scene that follows is an involved one, mostly between Frankie and Beth. He begins just trying to get her to put her shirt back on, and what follows is a kind of "getting to know you" scene, in which he's trying to get to understand the extent of her injuries and if his brother's story is true, and she's trying--well--to fall in love with him, basically. (This is also a scene in which something positively surreal happens; the characters have a discussion about acting, and playing a character.) Their interaction mounts until Beth is seducing Frankie by way of an assumed character, and he rejects her. By the end of their time alone, he is struggling to either make a phone call or leave of his own volition. The rest of her family...except her dad...huh...enters separately, none of them willing or able to help Frankie escape. Beth goes to bed (it's daytime), her brother goes out to hunt more deer (he's brought in one carcass already) and her mother comments on the snow and leaves Frankie alone on the couch.

In the second-to-last scene he has, Frankie is mostly asleep. He is finally woken by Baylor, who does so because he can't bend over to pick up his socks. Frankie is beginning to be feverish, and speaks at length about the craziness of everyone in the house and his frustration over not being allowed to leave. Beth comes downstairs and declares she's going to marry Frankie. He says no, her Mom says yes, her Dad says no. Beth's brother, Mike, enters and proclaims that he's got Jake tied up in submission outside, and that he's going to get him to apologize to them all. He leaves and Baylor goes upstairs as Frankie is left on the couch again, this time with Beth and her mother on either side of him, planning the wedding.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS OFF THE PORT BOW!

So in the last scene of the play, Frankie mostly lies on the couch and shakes with fever. He doesn't come around until Jake walks in the door, free now, at which point Frankie seems to believe Jake's there to bring him back home with him. But no. Jake is there to say goodbye to Beth, to tell her to be with Frankie instead, to which Frankie only responds once Jake is walking away, shouting after him that he was true to him. Beth goes to Frankie and the play ends with her holding him in her arms.

Okay. So. Discoveries?

Some of my more radical notions include:

  • Frankie is in love with Jake.
  • Frankie is actually gay, but hasn't admitted it to himself.
  • Frankie always wanted Beth.

And one from the director:

  • Frankie dies at the end, either after Jake leaves, or possibly before, and the scene between them and Beth is a kind of hallucination of what everyone wanted the chance to say, but never got to.

That's all well and fine. Great, even. 'Cept Shepard's plays don't exactly run on hydrogenated concepts; more on crude Texas gut emotion. When it all comes down to it, it works best when one puts all of their heart into it and takes it on faith. I suppose some understanding may help with that, but it's an issue more of identification-with than understanding-of. It doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense that Beth would love Jake intensely inspite of him almost beating her to death; what matters is that she just does, on stage and in front of us all. And whether or not Frankie would do more for himself in the course of the play, he doesn't. He's there for Jake, fighting for Jake, putting all his heart into Jake. And in the end, his heart gets broken.

Couldn't I just give you some french fries, instead?

Rainer Shines

Tonight's rehearsal was hard for me. We were working (amongst other things) on the final scene, during which my character spends about 5/6ths of the scene unconscious and shivering on a couch. On the last two pages, however, he has to suddenly experience all the pain and want of his journey . . . possibly also whilst hallucinating. Specifically, Frankie learns he is losing the person he loves most in the world, in spite of doing everything he could to help that person and make things right. Sounds hard enough, but I seem also to have a block about that particular set of emotions, or with the journey it takes to get to them. Or both. So there was much frustrated conference between the director and my person, and finally I got something of what it should be, and then on the final run I failed to access it again. This is the process.

Today, too, I decided to search for a nice quote for a card I have to write. I turned to Rilke, my favorite poet, and specifically to a book of his prose and poetry entitled "Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties," translated and evaluated by John J.L. Mood.

The book has an interesting story. Well, my copy does. Well . . . it's at least interesting to me.

It was published in 1975. The book is unique in form: unique font (Linotype Caledonia), unique dedication and "epilogue" pages and a surprising sampling of words from throughout Rilke's life of dedication to poetry. It's an orange paperback, with one of those designs on the cover that makes one say to oneself, "Ah. Late-sixties, early-seventies." It apparently cost $3.95 in its day.

But I'm not interested, Jeff!

Well, I didn't buy this book, nor was it bought for me. In 1999, the year I graduated from college, my parents began the move from my hometown in Northern Virginia to where my mother's church is, in Hagerstown, Maryland. Immediately prior to graduation, I helped (with Friend Mark) move my entire childhood home into storage. After I returned from my summerstock gig in Ohio, I shacked up with my dad in his temporary apartment in NoVa. See, my parent's new home was being constructed, and there were problems. In the meantime, my dad continued to work in NoVa and my mom had her apartment in Maryland. So, for a time, none of the Willses were living together (my sister was in her second year at college in Blacksburg).

It was a strange time. I wanted to get to New York, but didn't have any money. I was beginning my career as a professional actor, but was waiting to hear about work. (Eventually, I would be hired by The National Children's Theatre in Minneapolis--a whole other story.) I didn't really want the work, though. Mostly I was motivated to it because my home was gone, and I sort of wanted to be in New York, where my girlfriend at the time was. If I had settled in my childhood home--if my parents hadn't moved, and I wasn't forced to stay on a cot in my father's apartment--I might not have felt sufficient motivation to move the hell on.

My father's apartment was small, and the laundry facilities were shared in a room off of the lobby. I can't remember if it was when I arrived there, or after I had been there for some time, but this is where the book came from. The laundry room. My father found it, and my dad is wonderful, but not commonly noted for his attention to personal detail; yet somehow he saw this book and remembered Rilke as someone I cared about. So he ganked it for me. It meant a lot to me. It still does.

But I'm still not interested, Jeff!

Well. The final facet of this particular book is that it was a gift at one time, from a certain "Brad" to a certain "Jennifer." (No; not

those

. Definitely predated

them

.) In the front of the book is a hand-written dedication in black ballpoint pen:

"Jennifer, with whom
I am learning the difficulty
of love.
-Brad"

The dedication was written for Valentine's Day, 1977, which happens to be the year of my birth. I have no fondness for Valentine's day (see

2/14/07

), but knowing this was a gift between two people in an intimate relationship means something to me.

But it's funny, too. Jennifer (I presume) has gone on to mark up the book. And not just with dog ear-ing, but in blue ballpoint pen. She underlines, she writes occasional notes in the margin. And, in a climax of irony, she inscribes a large-written "Bradley!" next to this particular section:

"In his uncertainty each becomes more and more unjust toward the other; they who wanted to do each other good are now handling one another in an imperious and intolerant manner, and in the struggle somehow to get out of their untenable and unbearable state of confusion, they commit the greatest fault that can happen to human relationships: they become impatient."
Emphasis added (by "Jennifer").

In this section, Rilke is writing specifically about the errors made by the young in love. He argues that love can not be won and deserved until those involved are mature enough to appreciate that it is work, it is ultimately difficult, and that such is the true value of it. I think Rilke might have suffered from similar psychic afflictions as I do, which is to say, "Rainer, get over it. Not everything must be a struggle." But he also has a solid point.

The purpose of this 'blog is not to write about love, but life and art. None of these can really be separated, however. I love this book, and the journey it's had, its glories and its blaring imperfections. And I love the way life is a story of the same kind of strange and often untraceable--but always extant--connections between people and times.

I am Surrounded by Babies

And they are adorable. Though they do, at present, remind me of a

Dane Cook routine

regarding unpleasant sounds and child abuse. So hopefully nobody will squeak a marker against the paper or rub two pieces of packing styrofoam together in my proximity any time soon, because the likelihood of my being around or about a baby is

high

. In fact, when visiting with the Younces (see

3/11/07a

) I was offered the newborn to hold, and I replied nay. Twice. Was it because I feared harming the baby? Perhaps, but I also feel there was a part of me saying in response to such an offer: No thank you; I'd rather not sample exactly what I'm missing just now.

Fatherhood, I expect, is one of those things that one can--at best--imagine they're ready for. And such dreamers are invariably wrong on some level. So, in essence, it's a leap-and-the-net-will-be-there sort of endeavor. I'm accustomed to that manner of feat, and in concept it holds less fear for me than it once did. No man ever feels ready to be a father, yet we do it anyway. The miraculous thing to me about becoming a parent is the choice. There aren't too many significant things we can do in this life that we have so much choice about. Career success, as with many other forms of success, depends on degrees of fortune that are impossible to calculate. Love happens

to

you, if the mystics are to be believed, and usually when we change someone else's life in any way it's an accident. And yes, a couple can decide to have a family and fail for one reason or another, and children can be accidentally gestated . . . but that

choice

. . . that readiness--performed in whatever degree of ignorance it may--is miraculous.

I finally came to feel I was making some interesting, valuable choices in rehearsal for

A Lie of the Mind

last night. Naturally, these came faster and better when I felt I could let go of the need to make

really effective choices

. So there you are. Nevertheless, I don't feel it was solely my overall relaxation in the role that allowed the progression. In my opinion, it had just as much to do with the development of the group vibe between

Daryl

,

Todd

and

I

(I was only there for my first three scenes), and the deepened understanding about the family relationship between Jake and Frankie; and, indeed, family relationships in general.

Between runs of the first and third scenes of the play, in which it's just our characters on stage, the three of us got into several discussions about family that included personal anecdotes (a necessity to Todd's process, if I'm not mistaken). This is the sort of thing that usually makes me impatient, and feels like a waste of time. My philosophy is normally to get a play on its feet. That's where the truth is hiding. I'm not wrong about that (you bastards), but last night's discussions were as revelatory as our runs were, and I'm grateful for whatever allowed me to really be involved in them and not chomping at the blocking bit. I found understanding for why Frankie would continue to fight for Jake when he's clearly such a f*$@-up, who only makes Frankie's life more difficult. We got some specifics down about ages, and overall relationship shifts over time. Most importantly, I recognized both that I was the only one in the room who hadn't had the experience of having a brother, and that there were parallels between Frankie and Jake's relationship and that of mine and my sister's.

I should have had a brother. It's even possible that I should have had two, and that I would be the second-oldest of four, instead of the older of two. There has been, throughout my life, a weird sort of longing for those lost brothers, the result of which is seeking that relationship out in certain friends and trying to be the best freaking brother in the whole freaking world to my sister. I have only had moments of achieving that kind of celebrity in relation to Jenny, but I'm lucky enough to have a sister who recognizes those moments and remembers them. We've got what I would describe as a good relationship. It's gotten necessarily more complex as we've grown up, but the essential affection is still there and strong. I'd still jump in front of a train for her without thinking. She'd still tell me if she thought I were doing something dumb. Does, in fact. Every chance she gets.

This is the kind of borderline personal information that people are railing against the blogosphere over, claiming it's horrid narcissism and self immolation all in one. Yet I can't avoid it in this case, because my life is just that tied up in my work. I suspect everyone's is, really; it's just that actors make a point of exhibiting it on stage or screen, in agonizing detail. And, more to the point, exploring it without judgment. An actor is a scientist of his or her self, objectively observing his or her own reactions and paradigms of behavior, and using them to the benefit of a story. Even when we do things we'd never do in life, something within us responds to it. Otherwise, the effort is aborted before it ever has a chance to experience the empathy of an audience. Either it's true on stage and we identify with it on some level, or we don't identify, and the moment is instantly false.

The choice to create is a bold one. To make something out of one's self and set it out for the world at large is sort of everyone's dream, on some level or another. It's always a kind of miracle to do so, an encapsulation of the spirit that is responsible for our being here at all. Create and nurture art. Create and nurture a child. Create. Nurture.

Blessings

On my way home from rehearsal Friday night, I was stopped at the corner of 48th and 6th (in Manhattan) by two tall gentlemen (All right: tall to

me

. You bastards.) who asked me a question. I could not hear these men, as I was listening to one of my transcendentally brilliant mixes through my

Sony MDR-J10 earbuds

, so I removed said earbuds from my ears, only to discover that I still could not understand these men. They had fairly heavy French dialects, and were asking me something about channel four. "You mean NBC?" I innocently asked, pointing to the glowing studio sign down the block. (In my hometown, NBC broadcasts on channel four.) Non, Non. The bar: Channel 4. Sorry fellas. No notion.

They moved on, and as I reinserted my Sony MDR-J10 earbuds I wondered what kind of bar they were headed for. Would I be allowed in, if I tailed them? Sadly, I was distracted by the common flaw of my Sony MDR-J10 earbuds. If you yank them too hard, invariably one will get a wire loose and only send you smatterings of aural delight, which is not delightful. The opposite, in fact. Cursing my good-natured ribaldry with the French, I switched to Dane Cook (spoken word, IOW) for the long ride home.

Frankie, my character in this incarnation of

A Lie of the Mind

, is a tricky guy to play. The only background you're given on him is his relationships with his siblings and mother, and a brief reference to his having won a baseball scholarship in his youth. Oh, and he was played by

Aidan Quinn

on Broadway. (Who ranks amongst my list of least favorite actors, though

Benny & Joon

is an undeniable classic. You bastards.) He has nothing--as far as I have discovered within a week of rehearsal--of his own to fight for in the play, apart from his survival after receiving a gunshot wound. Most of his time is spent trying to help his brother out. Tricky tricky tricky. This morning, getting ready to leave for our first full stumble-through, I was busying my mind with questions about this problem. Questions like, "Why are you such a foil, Frankie?" and "Who made you such a tool, Frankie?"

Then we had our stumble-through, and stumble we did, with great conviction. My favorite moment was when one actress expressed frustration with not having learned a note about remaining positive about everything that happened on stage, and another replied, "Yeah Cindy, I mean, you

have

been working on it for a whole eight days now." (I refuse to indicate "irony" with an emoticon in this space.) I relished the run-through, dreading it as I had been, because something about its continuity allowed me to cease freaking out about how incapable of the work I felt and thereby

actually listen

. Imagine my profound sense of revelation upon actually hearing my scene partners. Ah, victory. Or, at least, a step beyond.

After rehearsal I called

Friend Younce

, who was in town with family for yet another niece's blessing. I had forgotten that this was the prophesied weekend of said visit. Fortunately (and, might I add, miraculously), I had nothing else doing tonight. Unfortunately, the crew was assembled IN

BAY RIDGE

. For those of you less familiar with the boroughs of my nuevo Zion, Bay Ridge is to Manhattan as Richmond is to DC . . . at least by

subway

. It is not so far from my home in Brooklyn, however. If the Younce clan had been gathered in the Bronx or Queens, yours truly wouldn't have had the evening he eventually did.

After near-on two hours of travel, I was amongst them. Friend Dave, his wife Michelle, their children Hildegard and Enoch, his sister Carrie and her husband Ed and their children Hazel and . . . uh . . . Ginger? No. Dang it. I'll get it later. Also Dave and Carrie's parents, whom I hadn't seen in years. It was great, albeit rather different from my usual hang time with Dave, which is usually more reminiscent of our olden days of comicbooks and discussions of girls and mythology. I love the Younces. They remind me of how sane, yet individualistic family members can be. And Dave is one of those friends of olde that I just fall back in with. So it was unconventional and welcoming.

There was pizza, and playing kids' games, and a movie (

Stranger than Fiction

, which I had already seen and--not joking here--I believe would have made a better book) and some of the olde discussion.

When I stepped out to head home on the R train, it was raining but warm. It was midnight, but really 1:00 AM, given the imminent spring in time. That amazing smell of newly wet asphalt was rising all around. It was uplifting; one of those moments that makes one wake up a bit, just enough to remember to recognize and appreciate the world around him. After a few moments of enjoying the sound of the rain on the street and the stone's-throw East River, I happily inserted my new

Sony MDR-J20 earbuds

into my ears for the not-so-long journey home.