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Dewds, oh my dewds. We did certainly open night the last, and to a packed house (the which, in

MTS

terms, is something like 45 people), which was intimidating, exciting, moving, fascinating, deeply affecting and a little gassy.

For those of you not in the know (And just

what

, pray tell, are you doing outside of the know? Don't you know the know is no place to be outside of? It's cold out there! At least put on a

jacket

!), I am referring to my current actorly occupation,

A Lie of the Mind

. For more details on my process of bringing my character limping on to the stage (literally) last night, see . . . well . . .

just about every entry I've made in the past month

. (Discounting those ill-advised forays into the details of my day job. Please.)

I would like to say the show went off without a hitch, but that would be kind of miraculous, given the circumstances. It was our very first run with an audience, which is like having a very overwhelming actor suddenly join your cast, saying, "Hi. I don't know anything about what we're supposed to be doing, so I'm just going to screw with the rhythms you've spent weeks getting used to and react loudly to things you do. Or not. Whichever I feel like in the moment." It's particularly like this at lovely ol' MTS, where their motto of necessity is, "If the audience isn't all up in your grill, you must be in somebody else's theatre." (At least this show is staged relatively "proscenium;" the two prior full-length shows I did there were staged "tennis court," with audience on either side: Gah! Really close audience! [turns other way] Gah! Really close audience!) It was wonderful to finally have the missing character, but also very much an adjustment. Some of the more interesting snafus:

• People transposing lines. I don't think it was obvious to the audience, but to our fellow actors it was like you could almost hear the erring actor thinking, "No...wait...oh sh*t!"

• Folks over-extending blocking. This is easy to do in such a small space, and when that audience adrenaline steps in, we get a little larger. The best example of this was a moment when Jake accidentally got too close to a room Beth was in, precipitating their moment of reunion. Apparently Ridley Parson, the actor playing Mike, was moments away from throwing Beth back in the room just to keep things on track.

• Props getting as excited as we are. I don't really believe in pathetic fallacy in everyday life (as good a novel as "Still-Life with Woodpecker" may be), but I swear to you that there are gremlins that live in stage props, and opening night is when they get most unruly. Last night Jake's cap kept taking a walking tour of our side of the stage as he was trying to manage his psychic breakdown, Baylor's socks missed landing on his knees (prompting the actress playing Meg to say "Jesus Christ!" in his face, which, believe it or not, is not in the script) and when Mike tromped into the house and deposited the deer carcass, one of its antler heads broke off and skittered across the stage.

We all had a good laugh over food and drink afterward, but in the moment, on stage, these things feel like the end of one's carefully crafted world. It will all become lore that lasts for the next month, with each of us coming up with our own antler references to slip into conversation with the others. The show got off to a good start last night. We were charged up, and we learned a lot. Now it's a matter of incorporating those lessons into our work in a fluid enough way that will allow us to adapt to different audiences. Because falling on your proverbial face as a result of anticipated audience reaction is a whole lot worse than antler shrapnel.

As for myself,

(lord God in heaven, must I move on to myself [no] well it is my 'blog [that's right--you make the rules] but who will respect me for creating a double-standard in which I critique everything but my own work [did you start this 'blog to garner respect?] ...can we talk about this later? [Hm? Oh. Yeah. Sure.])

I didn't feel too great about how my scenes went last night, particularly one scene between Frankie and Beth. I was very nervous, which affected my performance, but moreover Frankie just came out too whiny most of the time. God knows he's got plenty of excuse to whine: he's got to clean up his brother's mess, deal with his neurotic family, endure an untreated bullet wound for two-thirds of the play and resist the advances of a woman when he is, in fact, quite lonely. BUT. The audience isn't there to see someone whine, they're there to see people fight, to fight for what they want and need, and overcome expectation at least once.

Frankie is tricky in this regard, and reminds me specifically of playing Nick in Over the River and Through the Woods.... Both are these well-equipped, intelligent young men who spend the bulk of the action accomplishing next-to-nothing, wrestling with the frustration of having to work with other personalities that simply overpower their own. The temptation, the ease, is to play their frustration. I mean, that's what it's all about at first glance: They are frustrated by their inability to move on. It's comic. It's real. However, that frustration is actually an obstacle to what they want to achieve, so whether they recognize it or not in a given moment, these young men need to use more specific tactics to overcome what at first glance seems to be firing them up. That's tricky enough. Now, the difference between Nick and Frankie is that Frankie HAS A BULLET HOLE IN HIS LEG.

That's also an obstacle, but one an actor has to affect. I mean, I could give myself a Charley Horse before I enter (I do punch my leg, but only to try and create a little reminder of the specific area of the wound), but even that would fade within minutes, and doesn't have remotely the same effect a 30-30 bullet through the hamstring would. So now we've got two obstacles inherent in Frankie's journey, plus whatever is thrown at him from the other characters, plus an eventual fever and delirium, plus the simple simple fact that...for some rather unexplained reason...not one of the four family members has any interest in getting him out of their house.

My only point being that it's not an easy role. It often feels like Frankie's more a tool than a character, a device for achieving the brotherly denouement in the final scene. An actor, however, must never concern him/herself with that kind of consideration. It's antithetical to an actor's purpose of really being there, and believing in what he or she is doing. But dag gum it, I'm a thinker, and it's hard to turn that off. That's part of the appeal of acting for me--having good reason to work on letting go of that when it isn't serving me.

The blessing/curse of theatre is that you get chance after chance to redeem yourself. Tonight I will run lines for my scenes with Jake and Beth beforehand, warm-up with more focus on my voice (to avoid throat tightness, which can contribute to unintentional whining), and do something meditative and grounding, with the hope it will help to prepare myself to build a fight from the ground up. We'll see how it goes. The moment of truth will take place on the stage, where it belongs.

Allow Me to make the Technical Points Perfectly Clear

That was my trigger phrase for an Irish dialect when I was in college. The way I was taught, when working on a dialect it's best to establish a phrase that contains the trickier aspects of that dialect, and one which you practice so much you can hardly help but to say it in said dialect. That way, you can create a sort of shortcut to the "muscle memory" of speaking in that fashion. The above phrase is good for a sing-songy, northern Irish dialect. It practically starts out syncopated, with breathy vowels and mincing consonants. Plus, you get that great "points," which comes out more like "pints."

Now me brain is stuck composing this very entry in an Erin fashion....

My point (POYNT) in so quoting myself, however, is to address something 'blog-wise that seems to have thrown a few of you loyal readers (a large portion of all 6 of you) for a bit of a loop. In the spirit of tech week, then, allow me to make the technical points perfectly clear.

I felt compelled last week to implement Blogger's comment moderation feature. This was something I was hoping to avoid. I liked the idea of this 'blog being open to comment from anyone without the complication of wondering who was getting their chance to be heard, and who was not. Occasionally, sure, I got comments from strange women wanting me to check out their naked photos and buy Vicadin from them, but even these I enjoyed responding to in a fantastical sort of mindset. Last week, however, I struck a nerve with someone through my blogination, and their response allowed my imagination to roam into the possibilities for abusing the comments section of the 'blog.

Let me be clear: This commenter didn't abuse the 'blog. Far from it. He or she just allowed me to see how rapidly a comment string could, without supervision, descend into madness. So I enacted the moderation feature shortly thereafter. And it's a good thing, too, because shortly after that decision a dear friend of mine interpreted the comment as something of an attack on me and responded in kind. That comment I did not allow to post.

So let me state the rules for you, dear readers. I will let every comment through that I possibly can. In fact, I hope this en-action of moderation (such a politic word for censorship) encourages those of you who choose to comment to do so without reservation or inhibition. The only rule that should guide you is to avoid personal attacks on anyone associated with this 'blog, including anonymous commenters. That won't be allowed to be posted. Exceptions? Good-spirited-yet-heated discourse on a subject, as long as it remains predominantly on said subject, will be allowed to pass. Personal attacks on me or what I have had to say will also be allowed, believe it or not. Those comments will be judged based on a ratio of relevance/cruelty. If you tear me a new one, but raise what I deem to be a good point with it, it's getting published for all to see.

Sorry to write about technicalities, but I wanted to be clear and direct with my vasty audience. I am off now to tech for fourteen hours. ROCK N' ROLL!

"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?

Kinesis

Last Saturday evening I attended a dance concert:

Right Before You Fell

. I just fit it in, thanks to the repeated calls from my friends who made it a priority to check in with me and make sure I didn't forget about it in the miasma of my current schedule. I went directly from rehearsal to dinner at a friend's restaurant, to this concert, and then even made it to a late party. The party was to bid adieu to the loft that was home to

Kirkos

for years. The concert, that was a culmination of a friend(and fellow Kirkos member)'s very hard, very disciplined, and as it turned out, very

fun

work.

Kinesis Project Dance Theatre

, headed up by dancer/choreographer Melissa Riker, had its full evening of performance last Saturday. My ties to Mel are multiple. I met her, as I did many good friends, performing in a show called

Significant Circus

,

in 2001. She,

Kate Magram

,

Patrick Lacey

and I formed a sort of creative support group not too long after that--The Exploding Yurts (

please

don't ask)--and Kirkos came into being shortly after that. In the six years that I've known her, I've had the pleasure of watching Mel work and grow through that work. Saturday evening was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. I should have expected it, but I was surprised to experience just how much hope and excitement I was giving off during the concert. I was seeing my friend's work fully realized. I know how difficult that is to achieve, and something about just how much that means to her.

Me and modern dance, we don't hang out much . . . in spite of having had long-term relationships with two professional dancers in my time. I have a great appreciation for what the dancers can do, how expressive and dynamic their bodies and movements are. I envy that, in truth. I also respect it. So much so, in fact, that I refuse to be categorized as a dancer. This occasionally brings much frustration to the likes of Friends Melissa and Patrick, who are hell-bent on convincing me that I am worthy of at least the adjective, "dancer," if not the title. I resist. It's related to how I feel about Joe Nobody doing

Guys & Dolls

in his community theatre and then going around calling himself an actor. I mean, sure, he is. (Mad props to ma' boy Joe.) But he hasn't received any training, he hasn't gotten up at dawn to stand in a line for an open call, he hasn't haggled over a summer stock contract or sold worldly belongings in order to take said contract.

But I transtate a bit.

So we don't hang, me and the modern. I have just enough experience and appreciation to say about a concert, "I liked it because of THIS. THIS seemed a little weak, but that may have been in support of achieving THAT." I've been to concerts with dancers before, and often we appreciate the opposite aspects. When a number leans toward narrative a bit, I get excited. When it is seemingly solely about the beauty of the movement, I begin to tune out. Don't get me wrong: It's beautiful. Wow. Pretty. But so is a photograph of a sunset, and somebody needs to tell me why I should care. That's me. I'm an actor. Because of this bias (and I've done what I can think of to separate my appreciation for theatre from my appreciation for dance), some dance concerts I've seen have made me want to claw out my eyes and throw them underfoot.

And it's not the ones that are all about the beauty. No. If I can figure that out from an early moment--that priority--I can sit back and relax, let them dance me where they may. Rather, it's the ones that have something to say,

but don't seem to give a damn if you understand it.

Or that say something

whether you like it or not, sucka!

These really get to me, because the people involved--though I'm sure they went in with the best intentions...in some cases--inevitably chalk my lack of understanding up to me, not their efforts or ability to communicate with me. I suppose you could say that I value communication in my art. Intentional communication, be it about ideas, emotions or something else entirely.

To this end,

Right Before You Fell

was sort of the perfect show for yours truly. I must confess that, right up front. This critic is biased. The concert utilized set pieces, spoken dialogue, live music, character, scenario . . . it was very theatrical. People were constantly doing things, not just fulfilling choreography, and acknowledging and responding to one another. Imagine that.

Read about the inspiration for the show

here, March 15

. Some would have hated it. If I had gone looking for pin-point-perfect technique, or classical movement, or really anything conventional at all, I would have been disappointed. Instead I was uplifted by vignettes about trying to get along with and without people. Between dances, open doorways and closed doors were moved about on rollers by dancers dressed like nuevo gypsies, as they held a kind of movement dialogue with one another. Each had what seemed to be their own character, informing their choices and scenarios. Melissa's acrobalance experience shone through at certain points, particularly to a number choreographed to Tom Waits' "

The Piano Has Been Drinking

," a piece I was lucky enough to get a preview of at the

Kinesis

benefit in December (see

12/25/06

for a photo). That section, too, is a good example of one of the best aspects of

Right Before You Fell

: its sense of humor. I've known Melissa for a while now, so her brand of humor is about as familiar to me as anyone's.

RBYF

was a great manifestation of unbounded joy for living, and unabashed moments of the surreal.

I could critique some aspects of the show, of course. It irritated me not to have a schedule and titles of the different dances in the program, and I felt as though the end of the evening needed a more significant punctuation, or perhaps clearer imagery of having come full circle (or home, if the notion of taking a walk is to be followed through). But these things may become clear to me after our inevitable Yurtian debriefing. Kate, Patrick, Melissa and I will all gather and surmise, and I'll get the inside skinny on what her specific intentions were. Even without this knowledge, I walked away from the concert feeling fulfilled, and even a little happier about the little unhappinesses in my life at present.

Melissa has extended me an informal invitation to join

Kinesis

in some performances this summer. (She couches it in the term "movement actor" in deference to my sensitivity about artistic categories.) I hesitate, uncertain about what I can contribute and what I hope to get out of it, but seeing her concert shows me more possibilities for an exciting, empathetic collaboration. It might even be funny.

Hey! We could do excerpts from

Guys and Dolls

!

"Oops."

It's funny. Chris Kipiniak's Spider-Man debut? It's funny. I can't tell if it's funnier because I know Chris, and can hear his voice in it, but that only matters to those of you who don't know him, so I don't really care. Does this dissuade you from picking up a copy? Oh shoot. My blatant nepotistic promotion has backfired. Well, suppose I told you there was an interesting error in the publishing of this comicbook? It may never come to anything that would make the book valuable, I suppose. Unless Chris' career takes off, that is.

In the final moments of the final confrontation between Spidey and the Circus of Death, embedded in one of the funniest captioned frames ("Meanwhile, up above.... Remember? The guy on the trapeze?") are two frames in which the dialogue and the character's expressions are switched. When the evil acrobat's face is contorted with concentration, he says, "Oops." When it's pale with fear, he says, "Almost...got..."

Last night I had another rehearsal of

A Lie of the Mind

, still reeling a bit from head cold and the necessary medication. It was a mess for me. I would shift between congested retardation and loopy impulse-control difficulties. It got to be very frustrating to me, trying to push past this wall of mucus to make good work. Every choice I made rang false to me, range falser and flat, and I could never be sure if it was because I was making such poor choices, or if I just couldn't feel the right reverberations.

Working out of order as we are, to accommodate everyone's schedules, one of the last scenes of the evening we worked on was the first in which my character, Frankie, is introduced to the family of his sister-in-law. In said scene, he's just been shot through the thigh, and he has very little dialogue to express a variety of things: pain, anger, shock, fear, confusion. More difficult still, his intention in the scene is bizarrely structured. It's rather achieved within the first moments he arrives in the room, and thereafter he merely fights for his own freedom . . . poorly. It was going to be tricky, and I knew it. The only thing an actor can do, past any preparation, in this circumstance is to jump in. I did.

And started making mistakes left and right.

Which worked great. It turns out, having a head cold is pretty excellent base material for emulating the symptoms of shock, which is rather the key to the strangeness of the scene. The character is slipping out of reality, but fighting it all along, struggling against himself to achieve what he's already achieved. He's getting no feedback, or at least none that he can understand and interpret.

It's tricky for me to embrace ignorance, or to relish "not knowing." It was one of the biggest lessons I came away from Italy with last June. And yes, it's one of those lessons I keep learning over, and over, and over again. I'll probably never get it naturally. So for those of you who know me: be patient. Someday I'll be able to admit just how little I know. Think of how much I'll be able to learn then.