Mutually Beneficial

Last Monday, routed through my association with

Cirque Boom

, I performed at a benefit for the

NYFA

. They're wonderful people. They even sent me a thank-you card for the event. They paid me,

and

they formally thanked me. It's enough to make an actor feel sort of worthwhile. (Which we'll have to put a stop to immediately, of course. If we start feeling worthwhile, nobody will be able to enlist our services for little-to-no money, and before you know it it'll be work, work, work for actors everywhere!) And, in the week that followed, I developed a busking/greenshow routine to perform in the half hour before

The Women's Project

's show,

Corporate Carnival

, which I performed in all week down at The World Financial Center (see video

here

). So it's been a very busky, walkabout-performance sort of past week for yours truly. This is a form of performance that represents a lot of the income a specially skilled actor can pick up here and there. People are constantly interested in creating memorable events, or events with themes, or just an "event" in general, and performers seem a really creative way to do that. I applaud people who are interested in employing creative artists for their affairs.

It does not, however, mean that it's necessarily a good idea.

An actor has to be smarter about his or her craft than anyone who employs him or her when it comes to this kind of job. If you're cast in a regular play, with rehearsal time and a script and a director who's competent, there isn't necessarily a need to be the authority in the room. You may do your job best, in fact, by being a bit more of an empty vessel, ready to receive the influences of the process you're about to put your all into. But when you're asked to pitch your innovation into the ring for a semi-improvised solo performance, you'd better see in all directions at once and be ready for any and everything. Because -- and here is the rub -- the people asking you to do something generally have very little understanding of what exactly they're asking you to do. I believe the thought that goes into this sort of notion is something along the lines of, "Oo! Live performers! It'll be like

Moulin Rouge

!"

To be fair, the two gigs were very different (in spite of both having the word "carnival" in the title, a detail that made my inbox a very confusing place for a while there). The benefit was a costly evening affair in a restaurant in midtown, with wealthy arts patrons and alcohol, and the greenshow (so named because of the tradition of apprentices-to-the-theatre trying out their acts before the show on the "green" outside) was for all sorts of working types in a public space during the daytime. The purpose of the first was largely to entertain. The purpose of the second was also to entertain, but more important was to spread the word of the upcoming free show and thereby garner more audience for it. Still, there were common lessons to be learned by the performer in both.

• Be a performer, not a salesman. For some reason, the more your act promises to assault the audience, the more excited your producers are likely to be about it. Perhaps it's their imaginations vicariously enjoying the power play; I can't say. Whatever it is, you mustn't succumb to it. The secret to a great busking act is to make something that invites people to participate, rather than forcing them into it. There are many ways to do this. If you're a walk-about character, you can simply look eccentric enough to elicit comments, and that's your in. If it's a little more presentational, you could dress normally, and invite attention more with your actions. Either way, you're not going to get people to play by telling them they have to play.

• Suit the performance to the environment. This seems obvious, but often times predicting your environment can be tricky. Maybe you don't know exactly how it's going to be set up (see the NYFA event) or exactly how much expectation your audience has of finding a performance going on in a given space (see the Women's Project busking). Be prepared to adapt. The performance I prepared for the benefit turned out to be totally inappropriate for how the space was laid out and what people were there to do, which was pay attention to one another. I tried to adapt, but couldn't be flexible enough to put people at ease and still entertain. I had more luck later in the week, when I went from a very invasive hypnotist character to a very simple, friendly guy who occasionally does physically eccentric things.

• Speak. I love silent characters, and play them whenever I get a chance. When I busk on my stilts this is fine, because it serves to somewhat undercut the magnificence of a nine-foot man. Plus, you've already got their attention. I planned a mime-like character for the benefit, which seemed like a great idea at the time (he was a consumptive poet, who wrote on mirrors with paint marker) but ultimately did not play out to my . . . uh, benefit. It takes special circumstances to effectively play a silent character in a busy environment. When in doubt, use your gob and be heard.

• Love what you do. Busking is freaking tough. It takes a ton of energy, concentration and thinking-on-one's-toes and -- as if that weren't enough -- is rarely unequivocally appreciated. So it helps if whatever activity you're utilizing in your act, be it singing, dancing or self-aggrandizement, is something you genuinely enjoy. Because you'll be a doing a lot of it. And you'll often be the only one who cares.

I would be remiss, however, to offer tips to the performers of public acts of entertainment without nodding my sagacity toward the audiences as well. So, a few tips for the rest of you:

• It's okay. Everything's going to be okay. Remember when you were five or so, and you'd go out on the playground and someone you didn't know at all would just start playing with you? That's all this is. And it doesn't hurt, I promise. We are neither homeless nor crazy; just playful. And it's only humiliating when you fight it.

• Change is good. Have you ever been to a cocktail party, and run out of things to say? Awkward, no? You know what changes that? Good stories. Which come from good experiences. Which comes from saying "yes" to opportunities that come at you from outside your routine. Keep saying "yes." See where it takes you. It's hard to frown whilst saying "yes."

• Your status is safe. We aren't here to discredit you, or lay disparaging remarks at your doorstep. If anything, we're here to revel in our own shortcomings, such as they are. There really is no need for pithy responses and one-ups-man-ship. Don't you get enough of that in the daily struggles of normal life? Let it go and be amused, if by nothing else than at least by the fact that there are still people in the world more concerned with your enjoyment than their own dignity.

• We don't want your money. Okay, well, yeah, we do. Give it to us, if you feel that's an appropriate compensation for whatever we do. (It'll feel surprisingly good to do so; I promise.) But we'll take a receptive audience over a monetarily generous one any ol' day. You don't have to hang back, or hide your appreciation. As that guy on the subway often says, "If you can't give a penny, a smile gets me by, too."

I should conclude by confessing that I'm feeling a little old for busking. I don't mean to say it's beneath me, in any way. Busking can be one of the most rewarding examples of that mysterious alchemy between an audience and a performer, and I treasure several experiences of that I've had. It's just that I couldn't help but remember how joyful I used to be about getting out on a floor to do that, how simultaneously terrified, in my twenties. Now I found myself thinking, "Meh. Here I come, trying to give you something you didn't ask for." Which attitude, of course, might account for some of my angst in the doing of it. Either way -- chicken or egg -- I think I'll be taking a little break from busking. I think that will be best for both of us.

Stories about Story Games and their Story-Gamers

Weekend the last, I did it again. I ventured south and stopped in at

Camp Nerdly 2.0

, a role-playing and story-gaming conference that is held annually in NoVa, and which was co-founded by

Expatriate Younce

. You may recall that I attended teh Nerdly for the first time last year (and if'n you don't, see

5/8/07

), which was a somewhat grandiose personal return to gaming in general. I was a D&D geek back in my early teen years, but lost touch with that community as I got older and committed more time to theatre, and other distractions. My best and oldest friends, however, still game regularly. They're good at it. Camp Nerdly is my opportunity to take a little time off from acting to visit them in their world and, uh . . . act.

The breakdown of my time is very nearly a progression from discomfort to comfort. The games I feel most at-home with are, naturally, those more focused on characterization, improvisation and storytelling. The ones I feel like a nerd who's out of polygonal dice in are those in which the emphasis is on . . . well, polygonal dice. And other devices and systems of applied conflict resolution. (Most of the other Nerdlians thrive on these, because they're wicked smart; if a game involves math, I tend to feel as though I'm trying to figure out my taxes.) The first game I played was called

AGON

, and involved a bit of such conflict resolution. Fortunately,

Friend Davey

was there to see me through the 1d12s (if I was lucky) and the interconnectedness of the players' rolls. Thereafter I played

Valkyrie

, a game in "playtest" (in development) that was mainly a team strategy game involving cards and quantity relationships. After that was a brief sojourn into a board warfare-strategy game called

Memoir '44

(the success of which I very much owe to Davey again), and then another playtest, this one for an RPG based on

Hamlet

called, aptly enough,

Something Is Rotten

.

The Upgrade

was my first "jeepform" experience, which is essentially a role-playing game that takes after improvisational theatre, and the last game of the weekend was

Zendo

, a competitive deductive-reasoning game. So by-and-large, I progressed from incapability to comfort, insecurity to confidence. Rather like a rehearsal process.

I'm not sure I had the same profundity of insight this year as I had last, but I attribute that to there being less novelty this time around, less of a surprise in having had a good experience. I did spend some time meditating on the similarities between theatre and gaming, naturally, and found a few ideas that are helpful to both. One unexpected benefit, however, was to spend so much time playing with two old friends in such a way that we were often mentally working hard together. Think about it: When you see your friends, do you more often aim to relax and let go of strategy, or engage in complicated efforts at problem-solving. Both types of activity hold merit. I don't do nearly as much of the latter as I'd like, particularly with my buddies in NoVa.

AGON

is a game set in mythic Greece, in which the players work as a team to complete some kind of mythical mission (think Odysseus), but also to come out on top, as the hero who accumulated the most glory (think Jason ["and the Argonauts," not "Morningstar" {although, you know what--

think him, too

}]). This game was run by

Remi Treuer

, who did a great job creating an engaging story and rolling with unpredictable players, though the mythos got a little bent in the process. (In this world, Kore [Persephone] and her mother apparently had some kind of resentful relationship causing spring weather when she descended to the underworld, and Orpheus was double-timing Eurydice with her.) I was

way

out of my depth with the system (which is relatively simple, but...you know...) but suffered more from having a pretty weak sense of the character I had designed for myself. I had meant for him to be a spy sort, a cunning lurker, and he ended up serving the game best by singing (of all things) most of the time.

In Jason Morningstar's

Valkyrie

, one plays a German dissident during the latter eccentricities of World War II. One does so for as long as one can, I should say, since there is the distinct likelihood that one will be investigated by the SS and summarily executed during the game. In fact, only Friend Davey survived the experience in the same avatar throughout. Again, I was a slow monkey on this system, but I certainly picked it up better than I did

AGON

, and the teamwork appealed to me far more than the blend of teamwork/glory-hounding. Plus the game makes for Nazis killing Nazis. That's, like, the universal equation. In spite of the thrill of succeeding to assassinate Hitler and create an uprising against the Nazi party, the game did ultimately lack much of an involved character-play or storytelling element, at least the way we played it. Not that I necessarily consider that a fault, mind. It was hella fun, and you could do it with a campier crowd than we determined conspiracists.

Thereafter,

Clinton R. Nixon

(whose name I must admit I envy) invited me to play

Memoir '44

, and I had immediate post-traumatic stress over every lost game of

Risk

I ever played. But when Clinton R. Nixon invites you to play something, only fools dare refuse. Let me tell you something:

Risk

is for little jerks who can't figure out the concepts behind checkers. (That'd be me; fortunately, Friend Davey was there with his able strategisms once again.) The best part about

Memoir '44

is the way it weaves chance into strategy through its use of randomly drawn cards for available actions. I'm buying it. End o' story. (Though I may go for one of the less based-on-actual-human-tragedy varieties. So now: True end o' story.)

Kevin Allen Jr. is featured in ma' 'blogroll. If you've never yet been to

The Mountaintop Lair of Alex Trebek

, go immediately, and once there, shave your head in devotion. It. Is. A. DELIGHT. (If you're an utterly cynical geek [which I is].) I met him at Nerdly the First, and when I saw he was running a game that was a "hack" of

Hamlet

, I knew I had at least one time-slot permanently filled.

Something Is Rotten

was very much in playtest, so half of our time was spent in (fascinating) discussion of how to make it operate better as a game. There was actually some confusion on my part as to whether Kevin was aiming to actually make a game, or rather use gaming to gather ideas for a story he wanted to write. It hardly mattered. The playing was great fun for me, weaving in references to the play some times, and at others completely disregarding conventional concepts of the characters. For example, when I played the Hamlet-type, he was outwardly angry with the Claudius-type, something he could never do in the play. And at one point I jumped in as a yokel waiter in a diner, spreading the rumor that the circus (or, the players) were coming to town. I walked away renewed in my enthusiasm for the idea of blending improvisational theatre -- audience and all -- with gaming, which has been a topic of much musing 'twixt Youncey and me.

The Upgrade

continued the trend of the improvisational, though this with less of a story-telling aspect, and more of an emotional and status-combat interplay. Clinton and Jason (Jason had also been in on playing

Something Is Rotten

, which naturally ruled) ran this game, which is modeled after reality TV, specifically shows that involve couple-swapping. The game is considered a "

jeepform

" one, which is a Finnish style of game that has the most in common out of any game I've ever played with the sort of long-form improvisation that

Second City

is famous for. J and C were assisted in the running by a couple of more experienced "jeepformers" by the names of

Emily Boss

and

Epidiah Ravachol

, who played ancillary characters and offered great perspective on how the game went when all was said and done. I could go on and on about this game, but the most significant experience of it for me was how uninvolved I made myself. This was owing to being AMAZED at what I was witnessing. Over the course of a couple of hours, I watched a large group of non-actors progress at amazing speed through stages of development as improvisational actors. By the end, something amazing had happened. People were no longer chasing punchlines, but feeling involved in their characters' struggles. We had a group scene with six people in it and boisterous action throughout, and as if by magic, everyone managed to pass the focus without interrupting, overlapping or lagging the action of the scene. DO YOU HAVE ANY CONCEPT OF HOW DIFFICULT THIS IS? I'm still reviewing the events in my head. I'm sifting through cause-and-effect, and believe I'm heading toward the conclusion that a relatively non-competitive game environment, if nurtured and given its own time, promotes communication. Profoundly. More on this . . . well, for the rest of my life.

My Nerdly excursion ended with

Zendo

, and that was fine. A little anticlimactic, but challenging and fun. It was interesting: Davey and Mark and I were planning to sort of huddle to ourselves over this (or another) game. But people became interested. By the end, there were some eight-to-ten people playing or watching (mostly playing), who had been drawn in by the camaraderie. My initial impulse was to resist this, to stick with the monkeys the scent of whose poop I recognized. But we're not monkeys, and Nerdly is all about making those new connections through games and teamwork. It seemed to me this year, for whatever reason, that Nerdly was less well-attended than last. That's problematic for me, because it's an event that is fun, cheap, accepting, beneficial and, ultimately, important. You can develop and expose your game there, you can meet new friends, etc. But what's really unique and important about Camp Nerdly is the way it improves seemingly everyone who attends. Everyone grows, opens up a bit, and learns. Never mind that it happens through gaming. Or, rather, take note. Games are good for you. I want to make Camp Nerdly live, and next year, if I don't have a career obligation that irrevocably conflicts, I'm going to run a game there.

More about it down the line. My thoughts about gaming as it applies to theatre require their own entry.

Balancing Act{ing}

Rewind to 2001, before the towers fell; months before, in the spring. Shortly after my one-year anniversary of having moved to New York, I got two jobs that have fundamentally affected every bit of acting work I've had in the seven years since. The first was that I actually found enough bravery (or naivety) to attend an open call for a touring company that required singing. The result was a production of

Der Talisman --

a flippin' MUSICAL, of all things -- which happened to be directed by some dude named David Zarko. This dude wasn't even at my audition or callback. He was a freelance hire. David, of course, went on to become the producing artistic director of

The Northeast Theatre

, where I have gone on to do the lion's share of my professional theatre work to date.

The other formative gig was a show I've mentioned here before,

Significant Circus

, directed by

Kate Magram

. In the years since, Kate and I have shared other collaborative efforts and developed a pretty rad friendship to boot. Amidst all this work and play, it can be easy to lose track of who did and said what and when, and how we got to where we find ourselves at any given moment. (That's how it is when you are involved in a true collaboration to create a play, too. Someone will ask you, "Whose idea was it, the dancing donkey in Act Four?" and you'll reply, with great conviction, "I have absolutely no idea.") What amazes me, when I stop for a moment to consider it, is this one thing Kate contributed to my life. I can point to it, which is part of what makes it so remarkable. Look! Right there, it is!

In a word: acrobalance.

(In a compound word, I suppose I should say.)

Yeah. That stuff that has gotten me work, and that all the actors I've worked with in the past five years know me for? Kate's fault. All about Kate. Didn't know a thing about its existence prior to knowing Kate. Furthermore, because I learned it from Kate, I have loved it more than I otherwise would have, and it has had more influence over the rest of my life than it likely would had I learned it from someone else. Some of the most amazing things I've done on stage, some of the best, most interesting ideas I've come up with, never ever would have had a chance of existing in real life without Mz. Magram. It baffles me a little. She has changed me as an actor and person. Let me explain.

I have never been an athlete. In fact, and spent a good portion of my earlier years as a portly chap. When I was around 16, grandpa's genes kicked in with a vengeance and I lost 40 pounds in a few months. Suddenly I could move easier, and looked more the part for more central roles in plays. In college, I realized I did truly dig incorporating my whole body into parts as much as possible (and, still occasionally, more than is necessarily called for). I also realized that I didn't have any particular technique(s) for doing so. In college, and after graduation, I tried different things, and they were all good -- stage combat, Suzuki, Viewpoints -- but none of them thrilled me. I wanted something I didn't know. Ever feel that way?

I was lucky enough to find it. As I recall, part of what won me the part in

Significant Circus

was that I did a diving forward roll on a concrete floor in my audition. (A similar move cemented my audition for d'Artagnon in college; apparently a willingness to risk debilitating injury is like catnip to directors.) Then I got to my first rehearsal, and Kate asked me to balance myself against the feet of a beautiful woman while we lowered me down to kiss said beautiful woman.

"What?"

Acro-balance, partner balancing, however you want to term it, has some basics. These are what Kate taught me, and what I teach all over the place now as part of workshops for

Zuppa del Giorno,

and to sort of pay forward all the free training she gave me.

1. Shared responsibility. The name "partner balance" is in a way more apt, because the essence of all the postures and moves is to distribute weight between two or more people in a way that looks impressive and/or beautiful, and uses one another's weight and effort in tandem. It requires a great deal of communication between partners, verbal and physical, which can be tricky to learn. In fact, there's no way to take responsibility entirely on one's self for any aspect of it. More significantly, there's no occasion in which you can blame the other for anything. There is always something more you can be doing to help your partner(s). This is shared responsibility.
2.  

1. Half the ability lies in trust. Never mind all those trust games you played in high school, or at the team-building workshop you were subjected to on some three-day "weekend." In acrobalance, generally speaking, the base needs to be responsible for making the pose balanced, and the flier needs to be responsible for maintaining a strong shape (and both are responsible for communicating [see above]). Control freaks beware: Nothing wrecks a balance faster than a flier trying to change the balance, except maybe a base who refuses to adjust. And you'll be doing it again and again with this person, which as we know is long-term trust which, as we know, is as challenging as it is rewarding.
2.  

1. Drawing straight lines into the ground. There's no defying gravity. Maybe you can make it look like there is, but there ain't. There are moves that require enormous strength and control, but the most important basic skill one can learn is to create a benevolent relationship to gravity. Get that down, and any move is open to you with a little effort. So straight lines. Straight limbs can hold weight by grounding it into the ... uh ... ground, and angles that direct weight toward the ground are more stable and architecturally sound.
2.  

1. Always be spotting. We get tired, and we are used to having to fight for our own time to relax, so it's not surprising that people tend to let down their guard when they're not in the spotlight. Acrobalance, though, is high stakes. You're working as a group to achieve something, and trust is a twenty-four-hour necessity. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, be ready to catch someone else when they fall. Not if; when.
2.  

1. Down. Things go wrong. People are fallible. Physics is complex. When something is flirting with F.U.B.A.R. -- and more so when you're intentionally, repeatedly approaching that something -- you need to have an agreed-upon vocabulary. When the fit hits the shan, we say "Down!", and that's what we do. Safely. Together.

Pretty simple stuff, but as with any simple, broadly applicable ideas, they make for a good regular practice. I have been practicing these with some regularity for years now, and teaching them to others. These "others" probably promptly go out and try the same moves whilst blithely forgetting these five concepts behind them, but, I don't know; I've found that the harder I work on moves, the more I need to remember these guide points. I need reminding of them, but I'll never forget them, because Kate taught them to me so well. Especially the first one.

I think it's pretty obvious how these concepts apply to life in general, and acting in particular (keep them in mind; explore the possibilities; from Kate to me to you, gratis [you're welcome]) so I won't spin on much longer here. This is just to say thanks to Kate (and to her friend, Leah) for reminding me once again of important keys to finding balance.

Pleasure Reading

Despite my recent ire vented vis-a-vis the "staged reading" (see

2/27/08

) I have had a lot of good opportunities and experiences with staged readings lately. (It's just that man can not live by bread alone, you understand.) NYU's "First Look" acting company has been keeping me busy with involvement in their Steinberg Lab, and tomorrow I perform the second and final reading of

Riding a Rocket Ship Into the Sun

, by

Alex Davidson

(sorry Alex--couldn't find a better link) of their graduate play writing group. Last week I did a reading completely separate of NYU, too, for a person I regard as a promising playwright,

Josh Sohn

. Readings are interesting practice. They have a strange combination of elements from things like straight playing, improvisation, public speaking and occasionally musical chairs. They are short-lived, and the attention is invariably more on the text than on the acting. Which, in a way, makes them a kind of odd perversion of conventional theatre. Conventional theatre, in this context, defined as theatre that says, "Hey everybody; this is really happening and you want to feel it happening as much as possible so we'll all happen to pretend it's really happening okay? okay."

But anyway. All the irksome details aside (bound to a chair or stool, ultra-brief rehearsal time, no money in it), it's the gray areas of a staged reading that can make it really fun for an actor. For example, you don't get terribly specific notes from your director (if, indeed, there is a director; last Thursday's had none) which means one's compulsion toward perfectionism (see

2/29/08

) doesn't get tweaked too badly. A staged reading, assuming it adheres to certain standards, can be a wonderfully relaxing experience for an actor. It is what it is, as a former boss of mine is fond of saying. Also, a staged reading has the benefit of being very direct in its relationship to its audience. This is hard to describe; it's as though because no one's expecting to entirely believe in the verity of moments on stage, the actors have more permission to listen to the audience's responses and adjust accordingly. Within reason, of course.

The script I've been reading most in the Steinberg Lab is one in which I play a would-be private detective from upstate. It's great for exercising my deadpan and drawing in little nods to types like Bogart's Spade, and other fast-talking PIs. The writer (who shall remain nameless until she decides to present the work for public consumption) has a good sense of comedy that she's still learning about, which is pretty fascinating to explore in conjunction with her development of this play. The only downside of the whole thing is that -- cripes and jimminy -- it can be

freaking tough

to spit-fire dialogue one's reading for the first time. The class has suffered through more than a few incidents of stumbled pronunciation or cracked character on my part, which kills me, given the specificity of the style.

Riding a Rocket Ship into the Sun

has actually been surprisingly beneficial for me. It reunited me with the director I worked with on my very first project at First Look, Kathryn Long, and who frankly spoiled me for many of my experiences following that. It's also a piece in which I play a "heavy," which I haven't done for years and find challenging. It's generally not what people see when they look at me, so I'm not overly upset by the rarity of that type of role. I do enjoy playing those characters, however I often find it difficult to fill out such roles without a lot of posturing and BS.

RRSS

has let me explore ways of just

being

in that capacity and, it appears, with some success. The responses to my reading have been wonderfully positive. I would guess that this ability came about simply from age and experience, save that I felt the discovery in rehearsal. If I hadn't worked on this script, it might have been years before I had another opportunity to figure out how to convincingly play a bad dude.

Working with Josh was the definition of brief. I got an email two Tuesdays back, rehearsed at his apartment Sunday night and performed Thursday. It was part of a play-writing group of which he is a member, so the event was informal and full of comrades. There was no director, and Josh's notes were naturally playwright-erly in nature, so "informal" really sums it up pretty neatly. I participated in two out of three pieces. In one,

Errand

, I played a jilted husband confronted with his best friend/business partner's return (his BF being the one what run oft wid his wife). In the other, entitled

Dry Run

(see Josh's link--Josh: this play from a short story of yours?), I played an interesting younger character in an interesting relationship, dealing with his significant other, who was rather freshly returned from a mental hospital. Both pieces took fairly standard scenarios and did some interesting things with them.

Errand

left room between the lines to show the confusion of a character who was used to forcing his life around, and discovering finally that it doesn't ultimately work. But it was

Dry Run

that was really interesting to me, and a real challenge. In it, I found a real parallel to follow between a typical male/female conflict of philosophies, and a struggle with mental illness. It was, in other words, not wholly alien to me. Plus there was a great, strong inner conflict for my character. That invariably sparks my enthusiasm as an actor. Not a lot's changed for me in that regard since my college days.

So staged readings: Not all bad. Don't let my cynicism fool you. It's just frustration over not having a show-show at present. Actually, I have another staged reading potentially coming up, this one for the Steinberg play mentioned above. It should lend itself well to the medium.

I only hope they give us chairs with backs for this one.

Temporary

"So, tell me: What do you have to offer to our workplace?"

"Well, I'm a straight-shooter, for one. I don't waste a lot of time with people telling them what they want to hear. I get right down to business, skipping any unnecessary introduction, or exposition, and say what's on my mind. A lot of people call that "keepin' it real," but I have never felt comfortable using slang not of my particular demographic, you know? Still, it applies. No one has to ask me a question to know where I stand."

. . .

"So, um . . .. What do you have to offer our workplace?"

"Didn't I say already?"

"Just that you're a straight-shooter."

"Right."

"Okay. Well, what do you need from us? What are you looking for in a workplace?"

"Oh, man. What DON'T I need? Fo' reals. Okay: I need a place that really, really needs my skills, so that I can work for them whenever they can get me. That's because I'll leave all of a sudden. I'll get a job acting out of town, or maybe even

in

town, but all-the-time-ish, and when I go away for a month or more at a time, I need to be sure said job will still be there when I get back. Plus, it has to pay as obscenely well as possible. I mean, like, you should look at the books and go, 'He gets paid WHAT? For doing WHAT?' 'Cause when I leave town, or go away for months, I'm actually losing money. That's right. I'm leaking like a sieve. What can I say? That's love. In addition, I need a place that's ready for me not to come in every morning, even when I am in town and available. Auditions, you see, and callbacks, occur in the mornings, and you just never know when one will crop up or prove fruitful. Hell; callbacks can go most of the day under some circumstances, with absolutely no warning. And don't even get me started on film and television schedules. Ninja please!"

"Ninja? Wait, go back . . ."

"OH! And I need health insurance. Because the actor's union is practically phasing it out for all but the most successful actors. We'd go on strike about that like SOME unions I know of, but it would essentially be striking against ourselves. And no one would show up, most likely. Unless there was a catering table. Also, 'kay, I need where I work to be cool."

"Cool?"

"Yeah. Not, you know,

hella cool

, or even

wicked rad

, but just . . .

cool

. 'Cause I'm thirty now. And I just can't be intimidated into furious activity by the implied threat of the dire importance of what we're doing anymore, you know? When your boss gets you to stay late or move more frantically just by looking a little bit like he or she might cry or scream at any moment?"

"Yes, actually, I do sometimes--"

"There you go. Can't do it anymore. Need cooler than that."

"Huh. Okay. Well."

"Can I ask you a couple of questions? Just to mix it up?"

"I suppose . . . yes. Ah, sure."

"Great. How's the coffee here?"

"The coffee? In the kitchen?"

"Yeah. The last place I worked, no kidding, it was like sulfuric acid, only more bland. I swear I must have spent about $400 on morning cups alone last year, just to avoid the home-brew."

"It's nice, I think. I drink tea."

"Weird. Okay, now, is this kind of lighting in the rest of this place? Because this is nice, and I'm not spending any more of my life in a fluorescent-tube maze. School was that way, almost every job I've had since has been that way--no more. I want warmth. I want glow. And I want it now."

"I'm pretty sure the rest of our facility is roughly like this. Lamps."

"All right! I'll take it."

"Well, uh . . . don't call us, we'll call you."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"Well, Mr. Wills, you just spent your audition time pretending you were in a job interview. Which was pretty entertaining, mind, but it doesn't really inform me as to your ability to portray Peer Gynt.. So: Don't call us, we'll call you. And thank you."

"Thanks, uh, thank you. It was fun."

"Okay. Bye-bye now."

"Bye, yes. Bye. I'll, uh, I'll wait for your call?"

"You do that."

fine