Frighted with False Fire?

There's been a change at the Aviary. Can you tell what it is? Go ahead. Have a look.

Seriously. It's cool. Look.

Give up? You didn't even try, did you? Come on. You know I'm way too stupid about web jib to do anything fancy; it's not like I could make the background pattern into an optical illusion or anything. (Man, but I wish I could make the background pattern into an optical illusion. [

Sailboat!

]) Try. Go ahead already.

That's right: my "Aspects" (the topics list down left) is now sorted by frequency, rather than alphabetically. I MUST REQUEST THAT YOU RETAIN YOUR COMPOSURE. Just breathe. Relax. We're gonna get through this. I can hear, through this magical series of tubes, your angst-ridden pleas for explanation. Allow me to address that: I don't know. Or, rather: Just 'cause. I've been thinking for some time now that once I had a good number of entries, it would be good to see what I'm writing about most and least often, and there you have it. Generally, that is. I think that, as a weblogger, I am a little topic-happy. There are generally 49 topics for each entry. What can I say? I like that feature. So every so often, if you use it, you'll get an entry that has only one sentence about the topic you were searching for. Sorry 'bout that.

I confess, too, that a little bit of pride goes into the resorting. People that I don't know, at all, are reading my 'blog with a certain nonchalant regularity, and now anyone who visits--assuming they're geek enough to scan the topic list--can see if what I concern myself with interests them or not. Theatre-philes will be pleased. People researching pigeons will probably pass me by. Interestingly enough (note I do not say "suprisingly enough"), as of the date of this entry, number 5 under "Aspects" is . . .

Anxiety

.

Now, this is interesting to me for a variety of reasons:

1. I kind of thought "anxiety" or "fear" would make the top three. In this sense, it's kind of an accomplishment.

1. Just last night I had a conversation with Friend Kate that addressed the topic of anxiety, both in general and as it pertains to yours truly, and it was revealed to me that the anxiety with which I approach many things can be a bit upsetting and tiresome. Why this never occurred to me before, I have no idea, but she's right.

1. Anxiety was an energy that a lot of my acting used to be fueled by, and just lately I've been finding that unhelpful, both in terms of the relative staying power of that energy and the influence it has on my acting choices.

So. Buttons. Where to begin?

Well (to begin,), allow me to say that I believe I have gotten a little better about this whole "anxiety thing." Folks what knew me back in the day (which was a Wednesday; I don't know if you knew that) can tell you, I used to freak out about and be afraid on some level of just about everything. Even things that really had little-to-nothing to do with me personally. Somehow, I found value in taking responsibility for every little thing I could, and I think it had something to do with the idea that I needed to earn love, or something similarly packed with pathos (the bad kind). I'm not saying I've worked that out entirely, but I'm much better now at identifying what is truly my problem, what's my sympathy, and I don't freak out about telephone calls or public places. As often. >wink!<

The issue for me now-a-days has more to do with functioning without anxiety; that is, dropping some anxiety without becoming a total ne'er-do-well. I am addressing this challenge both in terms of life and in terms of acting. I mean, damn, but the way I used to get things done in rehearsal was to rev up the old engine and let it fly, see where it took me. Now, however, things have changed. The acting engine doesn't seem to want to run now unless it's getting proper fuel and recipricol kinetic energy. (Distended metaphor engine: apparently 100%.) That is to say, whereas before my anxious energy translated easily into big, sometimes bad but always boisterous, acting choices, now nothing dramatic happens unless I'm making the right choices and doing so with a scene partner who is right there with me.

In some senses, this makes me a "better" actor. In fact, I would wager that most laymen would analyze this as an obvious improvement, based on the standard that fewer right answers are always better than a multitude of wrong ones. That's not exactly an actor's job, though. In fact, as I have come to understand it, using too much discernment in the moment actually impedes an actor's process, turns him or her into a simultaneous experimentor and critic who constantly self-nullifies. What most people need from an actor is for him or her to come into a rehearsal room and screw up big time, left, right and center, to find the occasional just-right gem of a choice.

It really is a question of fuel. Once, it was sufficient to face the stage (and life) with a heaping helping of anxiety to fuel my ride. It got things done, and it seemed endless in supply. Well, I suppose anything that seems unlikely to change is a thing that will surprise you. That's part of the pleasure of acting, I must admit. It's fascinating work because not only does it never sit still, but one's instruments never do, either. It's like trying to perform surgery on a patient who is engaged in aerobics, and with anthropomorphic tools animated by Disney. (Distended metaphor engine: definitely 100%.) That is to say, the craft of acting sometimes seems to boil down to staying flexible enough to keep up with changes. After all, the only constant in life is change.

And change makes me anxious. >

wink

!<

Across the Universe

I swear,

Davey

, I'm not completely ripping off your format.

I caught

this film

last night and I must say: It was Taymor-tastic. Julie Taymor directed this much-anticipated movie, which uses songs from The Beatles' repertoire to narrate the emotional upheaval of a few fictional characters living through the 1960s in New York City (and a little of Ohio, New Jersey and Liverpool). I say much-anticipated, and I speak solely for myself. This movie has been on my radar for some time, filmed as it was predominantly in New York, and I'm a hugemongous fan of Taymor and The Beatles.

Most people know Taymor from her movie adaptation of

Titus

Andronicus

, or her work developing the popular Broadway adaptation of

The Lion King

(or, her upcoming collaboration with U2 and Sony to produce a

Spider-Man musical

, about which I am [mostly] speechless [it's going to either be the coolest thing ever or forever ruin my impression of her artistry]). Those who still love shows that only live for a few weeks at a time, however, know her from farther back as a director who merges to magnificent effect all kinds of cultural expressions, particularly puppetry.

Across the Universe

is likely the most mainstream, Hollywood-happy film Taymor has yet made, though it's hard for me to say because I have still not seen her

Frida

. Yet she still manages to incorporate more-theatrical elements at times, such as huge puppets, mask work and "penny arcade" sequences (as she refers to the animated montages in the

Titus

commentary).

I have to agree with the

The Washington Post review

that laments the unspectacular story and theatrical unity of the whole thing. I expected more from Taymor. However, I believe this review neglects the intentions of the piece as well, which is the poison pill of any critic that swiftly renders his or her critical virility utterly inert. As I understand it, Taymor aspired to create a story based solely on The Beatles's music and lyrics and the cultural goings-on of the period in which they were created--preferably a story with resonance to a contemporary audience. In this aim, I believe she succeeded, whether or not I appreciated the end of the film. (I didn't. There needs to be a separate 'blog entry for my feelings about double conclusions in films of late.) And ultimately I don't believe the film should be judged on its merit as an outstanding or well-constructed musical, because I don't believe it was aiming for that specific genre. Nor should it be judged on how profound a statement it made. The Beatles, after all is said and done, were pop musicians. On that basis, I find the movie a success because I enjoyed it.

Puppets and pop music are figuring into my creative life a lot lately. Or, rather I should say, figuring into my

fantasy

creative life lately, because it's all in my head, nothing done got creatited yet. Heather and I continue to express mutual enthusiasm for creating a

Punch & Judy

act betwixt us (a plan put somewhat on hold during performances of

Prohibitive Standards

on account of my breaking her toe with a chair), and I just keep thinking more and more about the kind of theatre I want to make for myself, which invariably incorporates popular music. Part of the satisfaction for me of the "homework assignments" during the development of

As Far As We Know

was the awareness that it meant I got to use one of the many pop (or indie) songs that had been scratching my itch of late.

So how does one begin to find one's creative voice, one's unique expression, in all of this? How do you encompass all the vast and profound experiences of thirty years into a moiety of melodrama? I've no idea. But I do believe I'm gathering material for my nest as we speak. The female creative influences of my life share some qualities in common that I seek to emulate, or at least steal with great admiration. A certain approach to creation as perception, a sort of found-object art, only with people and behavior rather than only objects. A release in the surreal, in the way interpretation of something common can make us notice it anew. Compassion, garnished with perspective. And meanwhile the many men of my motley career continue to offer their common, yet still sustaining, examples to follow: the value of discipline and having something to prove, the energy inherent in competition, the unique forge of approaching some things on one's own.

And why now? Why am I becoming, slowly, so hell-bent on directing something, or at least creating something to call my own? Is it the same urge that drove me into play writing after working showcases for a year here in New York, a frustration with things not going my way, or is it a realization that I can't get by on the same skills I used in my twenties, or is it something deeper? It's a curious, and somewhat unrelenting, urge.

I needs me some puppets!

As They Say In This Biz, That's All There Is...

So

Prohibitive Standards

has had its last call. Yesterday we ran the scenario for the last time, and received our last applause. I have, of course, work coming up to comfort myself with. This weekend is

the

The Office

convention

at which a large group of

TNT

actors (including this guy) are performing, and then there's the chance of participating in First Look again, the acting company of NYU's graduate playwriting class. That latter comfort is doubly so, as the playwright providing the material in this case is an old friend and comrade of the boards,

Avi Glickstein

. Thereafter, no work is waiting, and my intention (the which we hope will finally be fulfilled in part owing to publicly confessing it here) is to enroll in an audition class to brush up the old chrome. All good things. Still, one goes through a feeling of some grief whenever a show comes to a close, especially when it's one you've made yourself.

Some retrospective analysis is owed, too. I realized, just before we opened, that I was playing three-and-a-half characters (I'll explain in a minute) and that each of them had something to tell me about where I stood with myself right about now. When a "creactor" works on a show with his or her fellow "creactors" and "crewriters" and "credirectors" (Nat: my readership may never forgive you

that term

) some of that creactor's personality and personal life inevitably end up in the show. Get closer to the particular contribution of the given contributor, and you get closer to his or her story. In the case of the creactor, this is his or her character creations. So: My characters . . .

My primary character (that is to say, the one with the most involvement with the story) was Joe "The Barber" Barbara. This was an actual gangster of the time, about whom you can read more at

the

Prohibitive Standards

research 'blog

. I made great efforts to steadfastly ignore and refute any historical accuracy in my portrayal of the goon. I think it's probably very unlikely that he was even in Scranton in December of 1933. So my Joe ended up being a rum-runner on the run with his girlfriend (

Heather Stuart

reprising her most popular role of

Miss Dimple

) making a last shipment to the Jermyn on their way to settle down in Kansas. He was a control freak, accustomed to using the threat of violence to turn negotiation to his advantage. He also suffered from a strange phobia, whereby he passed out whenever anyone touched him. His arc was to bluster about trying to beat everyone at everything, gradually realizing throughout that control isn't terribly satisfying, and that to be truly safe he has to allow himself to be a little vulnerable.

My secondary character was Buddy "Bud" McPherson, a Scranton cop who had a working relationship with the owner of the Jermyn's supper club. Bud was an orphan with strict morals who grew up under the tutelage of the church and savored stage performance all his life, from vaudeville to musical theatre. He also was a teetotaler, and prided himself on his ability to stay on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, he was also a total coward. Bud feared just about anything that moved, and only succeeded as a cop in how amenable he was to compromise (a suitable tactic in the permissive nature of Prohibition-Era Scranton). His arc was thinly penciled into this show, as he was more of a device than a fully formed character. Most of his transformational experiences took place offstage, in the form of finally resorting to drink to try and overcome his cowardice. Every time he entered, he was a little more intoxicated, until finally he makes his last entrance to confess his failing. In so doing, he comes to realize that nothing was quite as bad or threatening to his person as he had made it out to be in his imagination.

Finally, my tertiary (and a half) character was an anonymous hobo. Anonymous, that is, until the end, wherein it is revealed that he is in fact John J. John, long-lost husband of Rosie O'Grady, the supper club's owner. That revelation ends a series of revelations in which it is revealed that Joe and Bud are also their long-lost sons. (The men of the family all fell overboard off the Titanic, feared to be lost for all time.) But before all that, the hobo is just a hunched, obscured, mumbling and shuffle-footed vagrant who wanders in off the street. No one can understand a word he says, but he's on a mission to find John J. John (having no idea that he is him) in the hopes that he can return the man's bond certificates to him and acquire from him some information as to his own identity. For twenty-one years, J.J.J. has had amnesia and scoured England and the east coast of America for hints as to his true identity, but he makes no real headway until he drinks the scant remains of Rosie's bathtub gin (brewed from a batch of perfume called "Total Recall") the which instantly returns his memory of himself as a sophisticated, articulate and successful businessman.

Above all, the hobo was my favorite role to play. There's something about a (virtually) silent character that I find very appealing. I think, to me, it's a bit like classical music, the way it invites the audience to have their own experience, rather than spend effort trying to interpret a lot of verbal specifics. Plus, it's just beautiful. People gathered in a room, in silence. It was a welcome contrast to much of the rest of the show. My second favorite character, Joe, also ended up in an unspoken scene with a character we included who represents a young (and uncharacteristically slender) Orson Welles. The thing that was great about Joe was that he was literally all talk. Threaten as much as he liked, he could never actually touch anyone; until, that is, he let go of the need to get his own way. Bad was fun at times, those times mostly having to do with when I was working against his cowardice. J.J.J.-realized had a mere cameo, but he did allow me to say, in my own take on

David Niven

, "Where the devil am I?!"

What does it all mean? Well, I think I'll leave it largely up to interpretation. Them what know me probably read along and thought, "Yeah, that sounds a lot like Jeff." I find it interesting that I ended up creating and playing characters who all--one way or another--didn't know who they were. I also find it interesting that I played twin brothers, one sensitive and cowardly and the other a menacing blowhard, and never the twain shall meet. Beyond that, I think my creations and interpretations were largely very similar to my efforts in recent years to move past the doe-eyed, milquetoast type in comedies. Last Zuppa show it was a lazy drunkard git cum tarnished opera diva, and now Heather and I are aiming to make a show based on the Punch & Judy tradition. I may never leave behind the Harold Lloyd/Pedrolino type. I guess I wouldn't want to, not wholly. It's just good to try to explore all the angles of one's self, especially in a medium so conducive to that exploration.

Prohibition is over, the noble experiment concluded. Who needs a drink?

ZdG Busking Workshop Day Five: Nature Abhors a Doormat

Okay. I'm reading my own title, and I'm struck by how insane this idea was. Let's get a group of mixed-experience, barely formed personalities together and take just six short days to equip them with the skills necessary to perform improvised scenarios at a public event. Then let's just plunge them into said event, a trial by fire, if you will. Six days should be a enough, right? To train them from the ground up, have them create wholly original characters and develop them all into a scenario, right? Oh, and hey, since that's so simple, LET'S DO IT IN THE FIRST WEEK OF THEIR RETURN TO/ENTRANCE INTO UNIVERSITY.

I may have reached my own panic stage of this process. Hence the somewhat difficult title of this post, and my own use of logic in analyzing the details of this workshop. Silly Jeff: Logic has no place in the theatre.

You're probably thinking of "doormat" in terms of the standard allegory or personification--a person who allows themselves to be walked all over. Indeed, nature probably does abhor such people. (Can't be sure [Nature and I haven't been on speaking terms ever since she made me 5' 8 3/4"], but I'm pretty sure Darwin will back me up on this [Darwin! Represent! What what!].) However, I actually mean it in the sense of a metaphor taught to me early in my own college experience. I believe it was my freshman-year acting teacher, Mr. Hopper . . . though as someone awfully prone to axioms he gets most simple lessons ascribed to him . . . who advised us, "When you come to rehearsal, wipe your feet at the door." He wasn't simply advising fastidious tidiness, but a different respect of the space. You're there to work, and whatever emotional turmoil your day may have consisted of, it shouldn't interfere.

However. That's a lesson in professionalism, and theatre has the interesting distinction of basing its business upon rather un-"business-like" behavior. Theatre is a study of nature, specifically human nature. I don't believe a true distinction can be drawn between how we feel in our lives and how we feel in our work. We can compartmentalize all we like--we can be

damn good

at it--but the truth of the matter is that we are who we are, as ever-changing and inconvenient as that may be. An artist learns to use it, to appreciate it for what it is, and maybe even engage it rather than try to shut it away.

Last night one of our actors surprised us. We were walking about the room in our burgeoning characters for La Festa Italiana, in a sort of guided exercise in which Dave talks the actors through exploring specific physical and emotional qualities in their characters. It came to a stage in which the characters were to begin interacting with one another, and we tried to emphasize the need for an intention, a want that can only be fulfilled by other people (this is key to successful walk-about characters in a busking performance). One actor was adamant about refusing contact--it had clearly become their intention to avoid. In the discussion afterward we spent some time discussing helpful and difficult aspects of character, and in so doing we came to the isolated actor. I was about to explain how it is less helpful to make a character who has no reason to be out in public for this venue, when they explained that a relative had just been diagnosed with cancer and painfully disintegrated into weeping.

Whoops.

So there we are, standing in a circle, as this poor student weeps. The actors on either side reach around them for the supportive, non-suffocating hug, and I sort of lose my sense of reality for a moment. I've had students lose control in class before, but never one so mature and with such a personal reason. At some point, seemingly hours later, I approach the actor and get eye contact to say that if they want to step out for a minute that's okay. They do, and we say a few words to wrap up that phase of the session before giving everyone a break. As is to be expected, several people are affected--and some very deeply--by the emotion, and it takes us a while to get back to the workshop. But we do. And we get back on the plan, after a quick, spontaneous game of

catch to lead back in. The upset actor even eventually rejoins to observe and re-involves themselves at the end.

We have a day off now, during which time we've given them plenty to think about. At the end of class we divided them into their respective families, and asked them to come back on Sunday with a costume, a prop and a piece of music that expressed their characters. Our workshop Sunday will be the day before the performance, and we'll have five hours with them all to get them ready. We have a lot to get done yet. But they'll come with everything they have, and that will get us through.

ZdG Busking Workshop Day Four: Character Hunting

The only complaint I have about last night's workshop was that we were relegated to the old gymnasium, owing to some dance team or other vying for our space. The old gymnasium (for those of you planning a trip out to olde Marywood U. in the near future) is a place most resolutely to be avoided. In the spirit of old gyms everywhere, it is hot, stuffy, and cavernous. The floor feels like hardwood laid on concrete, and no amount of fans or open doors solves a damn thing. We had to be sure to offer plenty of breaks for water and rest to our dozen students last night.

That's right: a dozen. We have our players for La Festa Italiana, and I am very happy both with the numbers and the spirit in the rehearsal room. The players are eager, and receptive, and last night we started them on building their characters. In spite of the heat--and perhaps, in some ways, because of that shared adversity--we really came together in the fashion of a familiar ensemble and began to work in earnest. After getting them started on building characters through all three walk-about exercises (leading centers, animals and appetites), we briefly outlined our vision of their scenario as we discussed it that morning. That is, a pair of feuding families--the Rossalinis and the Verdelonis--who own restaurants in town and are vying for the support of the public.

It's an exciting phase. They are well on their way to creating something detailed, tangible and fun that will stay with them well beyond the use in La Festa, and possibly

Prohibitive Standards

. There were a few surprises last night. I had forgotten just how emotionally available I had been at their ages, and some of the players took the character building to a very dark place and serious emotions. I was concerned for a time that we may have led one or two down a primrose path to self-doubt and difficult pain. We discussed it extensively, however, and found that those who went to dark places were better equipped to accept that as part of the work and move on. I tried to emphasize that all their discoveries, even those that feel like no fun, are valid in contributing to the creation of a character. I also made sure they knew, however, that they must love their character, no matter how flawed he or she may be, in order to play it for some time.

Tonight we get down to some real nitty-gritty stuff, developing specific relationships and encouraging the students to discover solo performances they can use in a public context. It's so exciting. It's so rewarding to see the tools I've been using for years--not really from any one place or specific training, but from experience and improvisation--working for other people. Not to mention learning all-new approaches from Geoff and Dave. It's great work, and I'm grateful to have it.