Read Me?

Before you ask: My butt feels okay today, inasmuch as a butt can that is apparently seriously damaged.

Some have expressed confusion at my schedule, of late and upcoming. I can't begin to imagine why. I suppose it could have something to do with the way in which I myself never actually know what I'll be doing much in advance of a week beforehand. Such is the life of the unrepresented, slightly-whorish-about-work actor. (Come on. Everyone's a little whorish about the stuff they love.) So I thought I would give an update on what I think is happening for me this summer. What I

think

is happening, mind you. You don't get to hold me to this, because I don't get to hold anybody to anything they promise me regarding work and travel. Them's the breaks.

Some of the more niggling questions of late:

By-Stander of Innocence:

Hey Jeff, how come you aren't in Italy right now?

VERY good question, helpful By-Stander. I myself am often amazed by life's little surprises. It turned out that we did not achieve our enrollment quota for

In Bocca al Lupo

, and thus it seemed we weren't able to go. Then David Zarko, artistic director of

The Northeast Theatre

, asked us if we could apply for grants and pay part of our airfare as actors. To the first we said yes, the second, no. We did not get the grants, and most of we lot are pretty shallow-of-pocket. Suddenly David pipes in again, saying, "Well, what the hell! I want to go with youse guys, and--being that I am gradually becoming the real estate baron of Upper Left-Hand Scranton--if we make it a two-week trip I can afford to take you." So we were on again, for the last two weeks in May. But then one of us had show conflicts with that time, and David thought we could get better prices later, so now we are positively, definitively going to be there the last two weeks of June. Maybe.

B-SoI:

Soooooo . . . how comes you hain't been writing about teaching with Wingspan Arts all month, then?

Well, when I left off teaching with

Wingspan

at the start of May, it was with the idea that I had two weeks to find a new apartment before going to Italy, and very little money to accomplish this. Now I have a little more money and Italy is put off, but I am still, technically, apartmentless. So it's best for both me and the youth of America that I NOT be compelled to invoke any disciplinary action upon them.

BSoI:

Enough said. Do you miss it?

Badly. I miss the kids, and Alex. Hopefully the timing will work out that I can see their final presentation before really, truly (maybe) leaving for Italy.

BSI:

And what of

The Torture Project

and

Joint Stock Theatre Alliance

? Are they still going strong? Are you still strongly going along with them, or have you been left at the side of Collaboration Road with nothing but a few creative notions wrapped in a handkerchief tied to the end of a stick?

Er . . . . That's very poetic, By-Stander. Are YOU by any chance involved with a collaborative theatre project?

BSI:

Who isn't?

Indeed. Well, refer to a previous entry of mine (

5/3/07

) and you will see that the above project has miraculously transformed itself unto a show entitled

As Far As We Know

, created by a theatre company now monikered as

UnCommon Cause

. Same bat-people, same bat-project, different bat-names. And yes, as far as I know, I'll still appear on stage. (Speaking of which: Todd. I need those work-out tips NOW.) In fact,

As Far As We Know

shall grace one of the stages of the

NYC Fringe

in August. So we're gearing up to hustle and bustle to create the most fully realized version of the show to date. With a script, and everything. Hopefully we'll maintain some of the homey effects, like string lights. String lights make everything pretty. Currently, along with several writer meetings prior, we're planning to escape to

New Hampshire

once again at the end of July to get some focused development done.

BI:

Wait, wait. At the end of July? Won't that conflict with projects you've mentioned previously?

The Exiled

, and something with Friend Melissa's company,

Kinesis Project Dance Theatre

?

Yes and no, happily and sadly.

The Exiled

(which I keep thinking of as

Teh Exiled

; consider it, Nat...?) was not accepted into the Fringe, obviously because the Fringe only accepts fluffy, unresearched and underdeveloped material. Wait. No. Um . . . I guess . . . LOOK! A SEAGULL! {sound of hurried footsteps, fading into the distance} But never fear: Friend Nat fully intends to mount the show all the same (fan as he is of mounting things), possibly at the end of August, when all of this Fringe-related madness has blown over.

Kinesis

, however, I had to bow out of, owing to conflicts at both ends of the project's development. This makes me very sad, as it is hardly the first time I've had to abandon both Friends

Melissa

and

Patrick

--creatively speaking--and their faith in me probably can't take much more. That's not to their discredit AT ALL. Quite the contrary. I just basically owe them a percentage of all the cash I make from other shows I end up doing during the time we had planned to work together. Guys, your checks for 72 cents are in the mail.

B:

Okay. I'm starting to get the picture here. So you'll be around more than usual this summer?

Yes (if by "more than usual" you mean, "at all"), and I have aspirations of many open acrobalance sessions in Central Park as a result. I will, of course, keep my hungry public updated on the progress of that as it develops.

B:

Great! So the rest of the summer, you'll be busy, but around--

Ah, not quite. There is also a week at the start of July--from the 2nd to the 6th, to be precise--when I will be in Pennsylvania teaching children ages six to sixteen about the glories of physical theatre and acrobalance.

b:

I see. BUT, apart from that, your summer will be spent in and around the Big Apple, and of course in the fall there's so much going on here you'll need to stay local--

Er. Um.

b:

. . . What?

I, uh. Starting August 27th I'll be out of town for over two months collaborating on the newest

Zuppa del Giorno

show,

Prohibitive Standards

.

: . . .

Sorry. Sorry. It's like this: See, I work really hard at my craft. The only thing that limits me in this is the opportunity to do so in any context that supports the rest of my life, which opportunity is unpredictable in occasion and duration. So when I get to do it,

and

in a context in which I really, personally care about the work itself . . . well, it's not to be missed, no matter how much it may rattle the equilibrium of my life at large. Hence the mad schedule, and feeling all warm and fuzzy inside the more theatrical obligations I have to run around to. It doesn't make sense. It does, however, make me happy.

By-Stander of Now Somewhat Less Innocence:

But how's your butt feeling?

Quiet, you.

One Hun Dread

This is my 100th post, which means I'm averaging about 20 per month, which would probably make Odin's Aviary the most successful journal I've ever kept ever, even if I stopped right now, never to write another word here again.

But I won't.

Special thanks, too, to my fellow nerds of Camp Nerdly for their interest in my first Nerdly post (see

5/7/07

), for they did--in one day--double my readership. That's right! I had almost

twenty-five

new readers that day! What what!

StatCounter.org

almost 'asploded!

Owing to this momentous occasion, it seems fitting either to:

  • Look back on the Aviary's droppings from the past, a la Three's Company's annual episode comprised entirely of weakly incorporated clips from previous seasons;

or,

Accordingly, I shall do neither. Instead, I shall write a bit more on this concept of The Third Life(patent pending). (Thanks to Jason Morningstar for unintentionally motivating me to revisit this theme. I owe you the user manual to The Turtle Amulet.) When I began this 'blog, way back in the halcyon days of my youth--December 2006--I began it without purpose, and my first entry simply declaimed that fact in an effort to change it. Shortly thereafter, I found a subject both general enough and compelling enough to make daily writings addressing it a realistic possibility. Not satisfied with having purpose, however, I felt compelled to give it a name that I culled from myriad personal cultural references, thereby assuring that no one would have any concept of just what in the hell I was referring to when I used said name. I dubbed this subject The Third Life.

The Third Life refers to the examined life, the one intentional, with something significant in addition to working and family/friends. I tend to see the third option as something artistic in spirit, but that is a personal bias and anything can be done artfully, so I would modify that condition to exclude only "hobbies." If it's a "hobby," it ain't your "Third." Conversely, simply aiming to make something creative in nature into one's career does not qualify. Take my goal of becoming full-time in my professional acting, for example. If I achieve this aim, it does not necessarily mean that I am living The Third Life. It's not about material success. It's more about working in the spirit of truth.

Kinda dippy sounding, I know. Nevertheless, I mean it. In acting it can be pretty easy to accidentally fly through a show on automatic pilot, or act for audience response more than the truth of the moment on stage, and I see this in life as well. Have you ever felt like you were suddenly woken from a kind of zombie-like routine you were barely aware of? Have you ever driven yourself (and those patiently tolerating you) crazy with trying to please everyone, or in other cases only yourself? These are things I feel happen to me when I slip in life, when I wander off this incredibly difficult path I've chosen for myself. Some people do just fine living a "normal" life artfully, or not worrying the art to living. Me, I need to have a pursuit, an exploration, akin to religion. Not that I'm looking for answers, necessarily. Maybe meaning. Maybe something else entirely that will surprise me.

There may come a day when I stop acting. Well, maybe not "stop acting." I don't think I could ever do that completely at this point; it will live through whatever I do from here on out. But there could come a day when I cease the struggle to be an actor in the no-holds-barred sense of the role. Indeed, in the progress of building this here weblog I have more than once wondered, "Have I started this thing only to have it record the cessation of the career I began it to support?" (Yes, I use this kind of vocabulary and syntax when I'm thinking to myself. That should clear a lot up for you vis-a-vis my writing style and considerable pauses in conversation.) I frequently try to imagine myself as a teacher, or even a writer (a career that vies for that esteemed category of "Most Impossible to Make a Living At"), and fantasize that life would be so much simpler down those paths. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but at times it's hard to imagine anything being more difficult than what I'm doing now.

Inevitably, I stop for a moment in these thoughts, and look around me, and realize that there's nothing I'd rather be doing. Teaching might offer me more security in life. Writing may encourage an all-around more peaceful existence. Being a paralegal . . . well, that would still just all-around suck. The point is, I am still doing what makes me happy, no matter how miserable it may sometimes be. Maybe someday what makes me happy will change. If it does, I hope I'm up to the challenge of recognizing that.

A couple of nights ago I had dinner with a friend, a fellow actor who had just returned from a week-long gig out of town that involved some friends and a teacher he hadn't worked with in a long time. He came back energized to take his craft by the bootstraps and heave it back onto its feet, and it was inspiring. I thought about how some of the best people I have ever known, people who just impress the hell out of me in one way or another, lead these kinds of "unconventional" lives. They pursue family (blood or otherwise), career . . . and something else. However I can find it, that's the life for me.

And now I've got sea shanties stuck in my head.

Strum and Dang

Is this a hangnail bugging me, and

if that's the case

in which case will the frumious

blundersnatch hide his self?

This is not my beautiful house. How did I get here?

Am I writing poetry?

And if so,

IF, SO,

what's the equation I would balance?

Is all I have questions?

My intonation can't always escalate,

Can it? You'd read this and know my mind.

I'll write it with time out of mind

and knowledge will be a whisper never breathed.

"I grow old, I grow old,

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

Nonsense and broken quotations flock about my brain,

a parliament of rooks,

an unkindness of ravens,

a murder of crows,

flapping and cawing for my leavened attention.

I'm walking silent halls with a noisy mind

and all I can find on the two endless walls

are the stenciled words of others.

Is

this the way the world ends? Not with a harangue,

But a simper?

"I beg of you, have patience with all that remains unresolved in your heart..."

Prose, now, too? Enough! Enow! E'en now!

Some days a little nonsense is all that can be said about one's life. To paraphrase

Fight Club

: We're a generation of children raised on Dr. Seuss. I'm beginning to wonder if another poet is really the answer.

Critical Mass

"I have of late, though wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. Foregone all custom of exercises, and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave, o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire . . . why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours!"

Any errors in quotation are my fault, done from memory.

I wonder what kind of reviews

Hamlet

got in the days of its first revival. "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark, and mostly it has to do with the direction by Forsythe B. Fmythe . . .."

A Lie of the Mind

closes this week, and we got several reviews, but none by major players as far as I know. In fact, we had two from theatre websites, and three from weblogs. None from printed publications, as far as I've heard. And, of course, countless reviews from friends and enemies alike. On the whole, very positive reviews. The best of us got some excellent praise, and most of the harsher critique came of Shepard's script or staging and budget issues difficult to change.

However. How. Ever. I have never counted myself amongst "the best of us" in this show, and in fact had some trepidation early on that I may have been the weakest link--goodbye! The entire group is among the most supportive I have ever had the pleasure of working with, so I got by with my uncertainty and frustrations. Then came my reviews. "...vibrant, but relatively unadventurous..." "difficult time tapping into the vulnerability" "overdone frustration" "seems as though this cast often does all it can to ignore these cues and idle until a scene change frees them from their stasis" And of course a good deal of my friends had nothing but good things to say, and I thank them profoundly. I should thank the ones who have had more critical things to say, too . . . and I do. But these critical reviews have culminated for me, and I am left with questions I need answers to. At first I simply hated myself, and it showed in my performances, I'm ashamed to admit. So questions are welcome, even if doubt inspires them more than curiosity.

If I had to sum up the critical response to my work in this show, I suppose it would have something to do with being too mannered (a common blight of practicing so much physical theatre) yet at once a bit mild, or incapable of accessing that spark of passion so essential to Shepard. To put it bluntly, unbelievable and dull.

Owitch.

Okay, so . . . I'm going to assume from the get-go that I'm not the world's worst actor. That's a good place to start, as it circumvents the otherwise requisite removal of my own eyes with this letter opener,

Oedipus-like

. So: not the worst. I mean, I've been at this for some time now. Someone would have told me . . . and even if they wouldn't, I know I've worked with worse than me. That having been established, I have to tackle some cause-and-effect. This is tricky territory, as it is essentially excuse hunting. I need to be sure to slay all that what might delude me, and capture that reason most true.

Maybe I just don't relate to the play/Shepard in any kind of helpful way.

Tempting, but no. That excuses having to work extra hard to do a good job, not doing an actual bad one.

Maybe I'm sabotaged by my physical theatre practice.

Less tempting; and maybe I'm just kidding myself here, but it seems to me they should feed one another nicely, and it's not like I'm never in naturalistic plays. In the past year I've done two contemporary plays, dramatic and comic.

Maybe getting older is draining some of my capacity for creativity.

Some people are going to be up in arms over this one, I know already. Nevertheless, I find validity in it. It goes at different rates for different people, but wonder is generally a more precious commodity in older ages, and it takes wonder to be creative. Then again, I invented a whole routine out of getting out the backseat of Heather's car last weekend, so perhaps not.

Maybe being an actor is not what I need right now.

Huh. Could be something to that. At the risk of sounding fairly self-defeating, perhaps the reason I lack luster is that my needs are not being altogether met. I don't mean that in a blame-shifting sort of way; rather, I mean to take responsibility for diagnosing and then fulfilling my own needs. It is not something for which I am historically famous, this actor-heal-thyself behavior. All the more reason to take the idea seriously.

Of course, there is also the possibility that my work in

A Lie of the Mind

has been very good indeed, and simply lacked good, expressed opinion. It's possible. It's probable that I should just work to please myself--not to the deficit of the audience, but to a high personal standard of constant improvement. I try to do this. It's hard to adhere to, particularly in such a spectator/commentator sport, and especially when you've seen so many examples of actors who seem so blissfully ignorant of just how terrible their work is. The temptation there is to believe your negative feedback to be absolute in its truth, to accept the verdict that you are one of the failed and undeserving. Yet I continue to try to do good work. Why? The show must go on.

Also: The readiness is all.