Why Study Theatre (follow up narrative on "The Younce Meme" [from the Facebook])

It's entirely possible to pursue acting "on the side," and you don't have to be James freakin' Franco to make it work, either. In fact, when it comes to acting, plenty of people will tell you that classes - much less higher education - are bunk. Personally, I have mixed emotions about my college education. I'll never regret it, but in hindsight I believe I could have made more honest (and thereby daring) choices.

But what made me do it? That inspired idiocy of our teenage years that makes our choices just a little more instinctual than is conventionally wise, I think.

I was not, to put it mildly, a good student in high school. I was largely distracted by the usual things, and maybe one or two more-unique ones. So my freshman and sophomore years were a relative wash, academically speaking. I played in band and did one play -

Midsummer's

- finally, in my sophomore year, and I loved it and was utterly terrified and pretty much spent the entire time I wasn't on stage reading gay-themed sword-and-sorcery novels crouched in a corner next to the door of the dressing room. And then I quit band, and then Kara Schiffner cast me in her play, and then I fell ridonkulously head-over-heels for her, and I suddenly lost 40 pounds, and . . . well, life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you might suddenly find yourself being asked to choose a college.

At least my work went way up in quality for those last two years of high school, and I discovered for the first time just how much I enjoyed being hopelessly busy, so long as it was with projects to which I could make a unique contribution. When I started visiting schools, I figured the most memorable and significant aspects I could market (already I was concerned with advertising myself) were things I had done at the theatre conferences we attended. So I called myself an actor, and visited the theatre departments. At the same time, I was geeking out like nobody's business over writing of all sorts, and kept an eye on a double major. It is totally possible that I never gave a practical thought to my future. Money? Psh. Security? What is that, exactly?

My driving principle was that I didn't want to live with any major regrets. I didn't want to take the easy way, follow a set path. I had to at least try to make a life out of the things I loved to do. If I failed, I should at least be able to look back and say I failed honestly and had my answers.

So VCU it was for a BFA with nominal minor in creative writing (nominal because the theatre department at the time wouldn't recognize a minor in anything). It was urban, relatively speaking, which would prepare me for my culturally adventurous future. It had an English department (Shenandoah did not) and it didn't intimidate me the way Virginia Tech did with its vast Jeffersonian persona. (I didn't get into William & Mary, presumably because of my wastrel years.) And, yes, okay - there was a certain person I was seeing at the time on her way to the same school. Instinct over convention.

I was a person who needed that experience, so I'll always treasure it. Some actors can excel without technique or training, but I'm way too analytical for that and I quickly discovered in college that I had never known how to act, to be an actor. Personally, I don't think I would have figured that out if I had simply tried out for plays while pursuing a major in business, or skipped college altogether to live in Chicago. Maybe - who knows - but I doubt it. So it became a mission, to learn as much as I could about my "chosen" major, and my obsessiveness had a good excuse to flourish.

I've always been a little tunnel-visioned. It's interesting to realize that my dearest friends have all at one time or another had to decide to just trust and/or forgive me for that, and the way it makes me socially awkward or altogether absent. Even

the woman who ended up marrying my silly ass

was someone I knew in high school who was still interested in knowing me after I essentially vanished into my first professional theatre jobs for a year. The mixed emotions about my college education stem from looking back - free from tunnel-vision - and realizing I should have left after two years. I had learned everything I was going to by then. Maybe it was just an allegiance to the path I had set, but I stayed, and got a degree in the fine arts (as they say).

Going to school for those wacky liberal arts was the right choice for me; staying may not have been the best. But one more thing: There is value in committing oneself whole-heartedly to just about anything for a time. It can be a period of great discovery, as mine was, and we don't always have that luxury as we grow older and more encumbered with (in many cases welcome) duties. Does one have to pay tuition to do that? I think that all depends on one's personality in terms of a need for structure. I need structure, but in part as something to be a contrarian against. Let's not even try to analyze what

freakin' Franko needs

...

Villainy

Today I had myself a callback for a truly despicable character.  That is to say, despicable in terms of his behavior in the story (and, sadly,

in history

).  Yes, folks, I can now count on TWO hands the number of times I have been considered for the role of a murderous fiend.  It's just not an archetype many seem quick to apply to me, which is a shame, because I think I'm pretty durn good at it.  And I know I enjoy it, when I can do it right.  But I understand, Rest Of The Casting World -- I am not huge, nor oddly shaped or scarred, I have a relatively bright natural speaking voice and when you meet me, I definitely give off a more Horatio vibe than, say, a Richard III.  This may change as I age.  My nose may grow ever crookederer, my face more deeply lined, and coming soon to a theatre near you:

Gryndl!

I won't write too much about the project itself, as: ew, tacky, and also: don't have the job (yet?).  It's a short film about a famous atheist activist, and I came to it through working on

Laid Plans

 last month (in an utterly round-about fashion).  The audition was an on-camera read with the lead actress, and today they asked me to be off-book for the one big scene that will ultimately by interspersed into the rest of the narrative.  I got to work with the actress again, and take some adjustment from the director as well, and all-in-all I walked out feeling good.  I can't be sure I summoned the menace that they were looking for, but it was fun and the people very easy to work with.  Sometimes that's the best you can ask for.

As a result of my preparation, I have for the past twenty-four hours been contemplating villainy.  Not villainous acts (though I did eat a lot of chocolate yesterday...) but the motivations and mindset of a villain.  The conventional wisdom states that an actor must never play a character as someone who knows he or she is "bad," because everyone is the hero of their own story, and judgments are dangerous trade for an actor.  I understand this advice, but wonder if it always applies.  David Waters, for example, seemed to understand whilst kidnapping, murdering and dismembering O'Hair that what he was doing wasn't strictly moral.  It was a means to an end, but also one with seeming emotional complications.  I don't know.  Maybe he didn't even think about it too much.  The point is, this acting advice doesn't help anyone find the villainous (or, in the judgment-free zone: alternate morality) mind-space.

I also heard

an interesting interview

with a criminal profiler recently on Fresh Air that had me thinking about the emotional dynamic of some murders.  One of the behaviors he mentions is that murderers who kill for emotional reasons actually tend to feel elated after the deed, as though they had accomplished something intensely satisfying.  Now, I have to imagine that such emotions then become increasingly complex, generally speaking, but  it's fascinating to me that someone would feel that kind of emotion even as their hands are still red.  Maybe one does feel utterly justified in the moment of killing.  He goes on to say that one way to ensnare criminals in interrogation is by making them relive the sense of anger that drove them to kill.  Suppose that's the only way to inspire remorse, too -- to make the killer experience that emotion anew.

So there I am at the kitchen table at 6:00 this morning, contemplating my lines and what sort of truth they're trying to pull out of me.  Anton (the Cat) lolls drunkenly on the floor beside me, stuffed for the time being with a fresh wad or two of pulverized meat, and I'm frustratedly whispering my way through threats and incriminations for fear of waking the wife.  It's hard not to just edit myself to death with doubts -- no way you can pull off this kind of dialogue, look at you you're a puppy dog, just give up on memorizing and try to find a threatening sub-vocal noise to use -- but I really want to make myself into a murderer.  What's the hook?  Maybe I can bring a hook...?

As the callback time approaches, I find myself remembering great film villains.  Walken's crazy rhythm, utilized in its insane best in the Bond film

A View to a Kill

.  Heck: several Bond villain actors.  Ledger's Joker.  Javier Bardem  in

No Country for Old Men

.  Nicholson in

The Shining

.  The closest I could think of to my guy today was DeNiro in

Cape Fear

.  (Sadly, I had not a few months to pack on the muscle and get really comfortable with having my fingers sucked.)  Can I channel one or more of these?  Is there a key to this little puzzle?  Will the people I'm auditioning for at least let me prowl around a little, get in my body?

The answer to all these questions was of course: No.  No, once in the room, once faced with delivering the lines to another human being, it became all-too clear that the only way to do it was to do it.  To be Jeff as he might be if he would do something so terrible as the man he's playing did.  And, when you look at it that way, it takes a lot of the pressure off and allows us to just, you know: act.  Let them figure out if I'm believable.  I'll be too busy believing to care.

(But dang: DeNiro in

Cape Fear

 was incredimazing.)

Purpose & Identity

Maybe some of you read here for honest, emotional exploration, for that strangely isolated intimacy and voyeurism you can experience from reading 'blogs. Maybe some others of you read here more for those posts in which I do something unconventional and, for some people, humorous, like, say, have

a conversation with mine own testicles

. I'm sure there are as many motivations to read as there are readers (AN DOZEN), but today the two groups I've named are in especial luck for, today, I'll be dividing the entry into two formats. Those seeking warm, cozy emotional voyeurism (and no balls), read

(A)

. Those seeking a more humorous eschewment (is SO a word) of convention, read

(B)

(no promises about my balls [ever]). And, far be it from me to tell you what to do, it's your life, be your own person, but maybe,

JUST MAYBE

, you

could

mix it up. You know, if you're into that kind of thing. Now I'll begin as I often do, with a mini-narrative that may not immediately seem to apply to the title of the entry, yet will most likely contain the thematic twisty-tie that lets me sum up our little walk together. And so:

A1 - As we were growing up, my sister and I occasionally got into "why" conversations with my parents (Why is the sky blue? Why don't we go to church? Why is that man wearing a dress?) and, to their great credit, my parents always tried to carry through the conversation with something more than a "Because." Probably because of this, my sister and I knew from a very early age onward that a lot of my parents' decisions before and after we came along were based on a priority for having children and being good parents. This was their direction, their purpose in life -- all roads were charted to that course, from their choice of careers to the little every-day decisions. "Having children," was the answer to a lot of our Whys.

B1 - You know that feeling you had when you were barely sitting there in the movie theatre, full of enthusiasm, as the first half hour or so of

The Matrix Reloaded

rolled on by? OF COURSE YOU DO. It was just so exciting, so rife with possibilities. One thing was certain about this movie -- it was going to in some way be gratifyingly unconventional. I mean, the first one gave us a messianic hero-story action movie with philosophy in-jokes and a permeable sense of reality. What

couldn't

the second be amazing about? I clung to this as I sat there, picking it apart with a growing sense of dread, and just as the movie approached its most orgiastic CGI-enhanced puffery in the so-called "burly brawl," I thought I spotted a hopeful light of philosophical promise. Smith begins to discuss purpose. Ah ha! Here is an interesting point of contention! I wonder how the movie will play this out?

A2 - I envy my parents their dedication, their seemingly unquestioned priority. I'm sure they questioned it along the way, and perhaps especially after the fact, but they seem pretty happy with it and I have to say that -- some bias understood here -- they made a good choice and did an amazing job of it. Perhaps because of this lesson, I can't help but define myself by my sense of purpose. This probably isn't the only way to having a sense of identity. You could, I suppose, base it upon heritage, or beliefs, or simply a decision. Yet I can best perceive and understand myself as someone who has a specific goal. That's what makes me productive and decisive and true. (And neurotic and insecure and overwrought, but that's for another time.)

B2 - Of course, we now know how

The Matrix Reloaded

worked out for us (for an illustration of this workout, please view

Speed Racer

) and even what sweat

The Matrix Revolutions

drew from us. That wonderfully promising set-up for exploring a sense of identity and purpose fizzled into a lot of Thomas Anderson waffling about (no doubt drawing quite a bit on

his Winnipeg experiences

there) until getting whipped into shape by his oracle. I guess I have a habit of rather

retcon-ing disappointing movies

, and whenever TNT offers up that first scene between Smith and Neo I wonder a little over the direction the next 3+ hours of Hollywood magic might've taken. Imagine, for example, that the movies drove these questions through every character so that by the end the struggle is not about war, but the existential side of things. Such a movie would never bust blocks, but it would be unique and unpredictable if, for example, Neo and Smith fight themselves to exhaustion with no clear winner and then echo their lines from the first film, "You're empty." "So are you." Their sense of purpose lost. Now

that

would scare an audience.

A3 - Purpose is a terribly abstract notion, but one with tremendous influence on action, and I suppose I like to define myself by my actions (and, it must be confessed, my imagination). Purpose and identity are for me inextricable from one another. As I've been writing a bit about of late (see

5/5/10

) I'm at something of a point of contention regarding my purposes, which means I don't have the most solid sense of identity. Some might think this is pretty normal for an actor, and it is, but I've always valued the ability to distinguish between myself and a character and that requires a strong personal baseline. So I'm

bothered

. What it comes down to, really, is letting go of the definition of myself as an actor. Not refuting that I'm an actor, but learning to define myself by other means, since I want more things now. Including: having (a) kid(s) and being a good parent.

B3 - If wishes were horses, they couldn't let me into movie theatres (because of all the horses). I may as well have hoped for Keanu to suddenly transform into a vulnerable, emotive actor when he was pulled from the matrix. (Wow - how many minds would have been blown by that? [A: At least one.]) Hope, though, is an important part of a sense of purpose. And an important part of Hollywood movies. They come from a tradition of fomenting hope in their audiences, and pure, blockbuster escapism is founded on the promise that all that is good will vanquish all that is evil. I just wish the

Matrix

films had pursued a different identity, and had challenged the programmed, automatic hope that is engendered by the tropes of movies. C'est la vie -- that wasn't their purpose, after all.

A4 - Maybe the solution to the current dilemma lies in

not

defining my identity by my purpose. That is as much as to say, by becoming a little more assured in myself as myself, whatever that may mean from moment to moment, I'll have a more rooted sense of identity. Clown, husband, writer, compulsive organizer, athlete (ha-ha) and maybe someday a father. I'm a big one for questioning everything, so the quest for securing a thing or two, being content with an answer, even for a little while, is a strange one for me. Not unwelcome, however. The world doesn't get any simpler or worth any less by way of decision. Maybe the only answer to all our questions is "because," but that doesn't mean I have to limit myself to being my cause.

B4 - Before I get myself into another unintentional writing assignment, I'll just say that I'm not holding my breath for Hollywood to change its sense of purpose. It's just that neither will I soon let go of that sense of hope when it comes to big, spangly action movies, any more than I will for my own perilously un-Hollywood journeys. Hope is a pretty great lifeline when all other directions and definitions lose their meaning and, moreover, every so often, the hope pays out. And sometimes, it even does so with freaking bad-ass kung fu sequences.

A Walk to Memorize

The other day I took a walk through my general area of Queens, seeking out nice light and places I hadn't seen. The peppered photos are from this little journey (as inspired by some of Friend Patrick's recent posts). I didn't start on my walk with the specific purpose of taking photos -- just thought of it as I was headed out the door. Rather, I wanted to grab a little leg stretching while there was still light out on a beautiful day that I had otherwise spent largely indoors and seated.

I don't know why I don't take walks more often, but I'm going to try from now on. I was recently reminded while listening to the Totally Laime podcast that it used to be a habit of mine. I would take walks with my mom or friends or love interests along the twisting asphalt paths that twined through the forests of my hometown neighborhoods, and these walks invariably made for interesting conversation and at least a little bit of relaxation. They were nice, so of course I took them for granted. Maybe when I moved to the city I convinced myself that there was nothing to see like the flora and fauna of Burke, or maybe I was too concerned with my safety initially, or found my days too full or time returning home too late to contemplate walking as recreation. Heck-n-shoot: We walk everywhere in New York. Maybe I've missed the distinction between that kind of walking and the leisure activity.

Whatever the reason for the pause, I'm returning to it. This walk through Queens was tremendous and refreshing (refreshendous?) and really set me in a state of mind I could definitely do with more of. Somehow the decision to "go for a walk" freed me up to sort of declare that I was going to have an experience and not aim to get anything done for a little while. I was active, and continuously so, but also receptive and generally contemplative. Instead of going somewhere or being somewhere, I was neither.

The next day I saw a talk that resonated with me. Linda Stone was stating observations that I have been making for years now, and putting them into a context I could understand and appreciate. She was turning information into knowledge, perhaps. Whatever it was, it reminded me of the state of being I returned to on my little walk. Some steps from her walk:

• Noise becomes data when it has a cognitive pattern.
• Data becomes information when assembled into a coherent whole which can be related to other information.
• Information becomes knowledge when integrated with other information in a form useful for making decisions and determining actions.
• Knowledge becomes understanding when related to other knowledge in a manner useful in anticipating, judging and acting.
• Understanding becomes wisdom when informed by purpose, ethics, principles, memory and projection.

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!