Losing Work

Ownership is a funny thing in the theatre world. Since plays are a collaborative art form, it can sometimes be difficult to point to one person who merits the "ownership" of any given one. The very idea of owning a play is a little preposterous, but relevant nonetheless in our community. Playwrights can own scripts. Actors can own their own faces or voices (though sadly, in many cases, don't). Producers can own a theatre or a title. But a play? A play is an experience. You could even argue that it's owned as much by the audience as by the people who created it. The audience, after all and at the very least, hopefully paid more money for it.

Yesterday I got an email from the producing team on

As Far As We Know

. It was not a joy-infusing email. Simply put, it informed the longest-standing members of development ensemble that--for the reading for the artistic director of

The Public

--they would be recasting the show.

Ouchy. One does try to behave like a professional in these circumstances; still and all: ouchy.

I'll not waste a lot of time here on the why and wherefore. Suffice it to say, the show is moving in a new direction, and Uncommon Cause wants it to have a life of its own, and the best way to accomplish both seems to them to involve different people. I don't know if they're looking for notoriety, or just new faces, or even if the rewritten show includes the same characters as that we performed in the

2007 NYC Fringe

. I know very little, in short, but hope to speak with Laurie or Kelly soon to get more information on this change. And hey, those of you who may be quick to react in my defense: it's okay. These things happen, and what I'm expressing are feelings, which also happen. No harm. No foul.

Letting go, for just a moment, of all the typical actorly responses of self-doubt and insecurity, what I'm left with are feelings akin to grief. There's sorrow, there's regret, there's anger that feels righteous, but that I know isn't; there's even a little relief. So "grief" sums it up nicely. I'm forced to say a goodbye that I want to resist on a fairly visceral level. It's unexpected, and it's personal. It's even likely that it's forever.

To many people, taking something like this personally is only barely comprehensible. After all, acting work by its nature is usually a process of gaining one job at the closing of another, and that's if you're terribly lucky-slash-diligent. I concede that I wish I were able to immediately respond to this development with more poise and perspective, but not that my feelings are an over-reaction. The truth is, those of us who've spent time building a show through extensive process understand it to be a part of our family of work. Hell; in some cases we feel it as a part of our person. That, as you might imagine, can be very, very difficult to let go of. Even setting aside the potential job as an actor, and all the promise that holds when the job is connected with an well-established theatre of good repute . . . well, actually, that's a big part of it. I'm not discounting that. CRAP!

But my original point is that work one creates for oneself is very dear. It's difficult enough to see another person in a role you've played but

didn't

write or originally conceive, much more so when you did. And you know what else? I'm going to be okay, as far as I know (har har), when it comes to compensation and acknowledgment rights should

As Far As We Know

become enormously successful. All of the core members who helped develop it signed contracts assuring us of that in relation to the approximate hours we spent developing the show. So, with a little faith, I needn't even have angst over the respect being paid to my efforts to date. In a sense, I own stock in this show. Even from a business perspective, much less my belief in the importance of its message, I should want the show to succeed at whatever cost, with or without me.

These are the thoughts I'm counseling myself with when I get emotional over this. The fact is,

As Far As We Know

still has the potential to change lives for the better, including mine. I only wish I could be on stage at the moment it does.

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

Happy Anniversary


My parents have a song for anniversaries; sort of like the "Happy Birthday" song. I have no idea if this gag originates with them or not, but I've never heard it anywhere else. The tune consists of them signing "happy anniversary" over and over again to the tune of the William Tell Overture. This may sound dumb, and it is, but it can also be highly entertaining when you hear someone try to articulate the quicker changes in the song, especially when you have to abandon the word "anniversary" for a couple of measures:

"Happy happy happy happy happy anniversary,
happy happy happy happy happy anniversary!"

Not just classy, but classic. I sing this song unto you, Aviary, on this, your day of inception.

In a year's time, Odin's Aviary has accomplished its modest part. I'm afraid I learned the ways of tracking visitor-ship somewhat late into its life, so can't be certain how those initial stages of growth fared in the world. Bearing this in mind, that the first few months don't even enter into it--some statistics (and mad gratitude to the gang over at statcounter.org):
  • For roughly the year 2007, we've had 6,909 unique visitors, 4,476 of those being "first-timers," and the remainder returning visitors (variable results, determined by a cookie).

  • April through June was the period of greatest popularity, but May has August as a neck-and-neck competitor for most page loads (most likely because I left town [and day-job desk] for Prohibitive Standards in August, vanishing from the 'blogosphere for a bit, and everyone went, "oh crap did he die?").

  • We've had 9,810 page loads as of 10:41 AM today, since loading the Aviary onto Statcounter. This means we've probably technically already surpassed 10,000 loads, but come on people now! Smile on each other! Just keep refreshing the page 200 times before the 31st!

  • Some of the more distant and exotic places that have dipped in to this here 'blog:
    4.80%
    Canada
    3.28%
    Hungary (friend of mine, I'm sure)
    3.06%
    United Kingdom
    1.09%
    Australia (circus folk?)
    0.66%
    India
    0.66%
    Finland (no earthly clue)
    0.66%
    United Arab Emirates
    0.44%
    Netherlands
    0.44%
    Philippines
    0.44%
    New Zealand (more circus riff-raf?)
    0.44%
    Nigeria
    0.22%
    Germany
    0.22%
    Norway
    0.22%
    Greece
    0.22%
    Uruguay
    0.22%
    Japan
    0.22%
    Ireland (friends of Patrick, I'm sure)
    0.22%
    Denmark
    0.22%
    Azerbaijan
    0.22%
    Slovenia
    0.22%
    Slovakia (0.22 must be the smallest figure Statcounter gets to)

  • I'm bigger in Ontario than I am in Virginia. NoVa boys, what up? 703- represent!

  • By a landslide (of tracking cookies, of course), the most popular entries were May 22, 2007, and July 10, 2007. However, judging simply by comments, the most popular (or controversial) entry, with a whopping 23 comments, was August 14, 2007, the famed Batman v. Wolverine entry. And they say art is dead . . .

  • Some things people searched for on the interwebz that landed them (to their great dismay, I'm sure) in the Aviary:
    "When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire..." (holy crap: so many search variations on these words--guess I wasn't the only one who was curious about their source)
    "When you can snatch the pebble from my hand..."
    busking workshops
    who the hell is brian dennehy
    travel italy gypsies
    improv soup uncommon theatre
    rilke on love and other difficulties
    'swonderful 'swonderful chips chips
    hits of the 90s

  • The vast majority of visitors stay for under 5 seconds. Wow. I feel so violated.

It's been quite a year for yours (truly), and hardly a tenth of it has made it onto the log of this 'blog, I'm sure. Odin's Aviary is aligned to a purpose, or two, so I make a point of not getting into too much personal information on it. You can probably count the references to my family on one hand, and I knew, probably before I even knew what the 'blog would be about, that my love life would never ever enter into it. No, my mission statement, to journal the exploits of just one dude living what I termed The Third Life(TM), didn't justify that kind of public disclosure, and though the purposes have evolved through the year, I still would rather write about theatre, acting, comedy, anxiety and improvisation (apparently in that order). Maybe this journal isn't so much focused on The Third Life per se these days, but it can't help but be involved in it, as I am, every day. So even when I'm writing about Batman clearly being victorious over Wolverine in a fight, something of that has to do with the unique nature of a life lived for challenge and artistic expression.

Of course, too, one can't help but share a lot personally over a 'blog. Particularly when one's profession is as intricately personal as acting usually is. I've learned a lot about the pratfalls of sharing just a wee bit too much (pratfalls which are funny only in retrospect) in this format, as well as about how cumulative angst can overwhelm a reader when received all at once. Some people have been hurt that they weren't mentioned here. Others quite upset that they were, or just that I used their real names. It's been worth all the slip-ups, to me, at least. I feel like I've learned a lot through working in this medium. It's a little like therapy, or meditation, and like those venues, it can be overdone.

A few weeks ago I contemplated the decision to close the Aviary. This decision is tied in to the possible decision of switching my focus from trying to be a really, really, extraordinarily successful actor, to some other satisfying pursuit. That's not such a profound or unique thing as it may at first sound; like religion, I feel my career is only true to me if I choose it every day. Questioning keeps me in touch, keeps me fresh to the thing I'm questioning. It's a bitch most of the time, actually, but always worth it. In acting, there's a curious little habit of "bad" acting that I'm reminded of. Sometimes an actor will stop asking the questions in his or her lines. Whether it comes of memorizing the script by rote, or the monotony of rehearsal's repetitions, or simply knowing what the other character's answer will be, actors occasionally have to be reminded: Really ask the question. Well, I'm getting some different answers these days to the acting question, when I ask it, and mean it. It could be that change is on the horizon. It usually is.

But the change will not happen today. Or, perhaps it's happening already, but for today Odin's Aviary will live 10,000 visits more, and I will keep treading boards, slapping sticks and donning masks. Thank you, sincerely, for checking in on the progress from time to time. I love a friend-filled audience.

Notions (Part 3 of ? [SPECIAL BIF!SOCK!POW! EDITION])

My earliest experiences with superheroes(TM) were plenty early. I can't pinpoint it, actually. I just know it was early enough that I started dressing as Superman(r) for Halloween when I was something like two. (No doubt this had something to do with the movie coming out when I was quite young.) Since then, I've had gradually increasing experience with that world. Oddly enough, I came to the origins of all that--comicbooks themselves--rather late in my youth. It wasn't until I was about 11 that I started noticing comicbooks. (Not quite true--I came upon a Conan-the-Barbarian comic when I was something like 8. It scared me.) It wasn't until late high school (and Friend Younce's collection of the Sandman comics) that I started collecting graphic novels for myself. Since then, it's been a pleasure that enjoy with very few side effects. In fact, it can contribute to weight loss. To my wallet.

So my appreciation for comicbooks as a genre is rooted in hero worship, tempered with an education in theatre and eventually realized in my early twenties, when I took my first crack at writing a comicbook script:

  • Freaky Chicks. I wrote approximately the first issue--a self-contained origin story of sorts--which introduced us to the two main heroes. The ideas were many in this little adventure, and I was trying to avoid writing a straight-forward comicbook, but ultimately the "superhero"(TM) conceit was that these girls were put together by fate, had very different personalities and abilities, but abilities that complemented each other perfectly. To wit, one was an abrasive young woman who could survive any external injury, but couldn't heal from any; the other a quiet sort who had the ability to heal, presumably through religious gift. The script was about the abrasive one discovering her ability and the two discovering one another.

This script has a long, sad history. I started it in hopeful, long-distance collaboration with an artist friend, and we never really got going with it. I shopped it around a little thereafter, but didn't really have the contacts with the kind of artist I was looking for. Now, most sadly, the only version of the actual script exists on a defunct hard drive I lug from apartment to apartment. For some reason, all my notes and correspondence on the thing transferred to my latest laptop, but not the script itself. Balls. It may be for the best, because I have to imagine at this point that it could use some reworking.

I have had another idea I could see myself sitting down to flesh out some time, though:

  • Aspirant: Two guys this time, best friends from age five. One is maniacally crazy about building himself into a vigilante a la Batman. The other is incredibly regular about his life, wants very basic things, but also feels compelled to prevent the first guy from killing himself in his foray into vigilantism. What the first guy doesn't know, is that his friend Joe Normal has superpowers. He's a rather-more-vulnerable-Superman sort. Joe just doesn't have any of the drive Guy One does to defend justice. Again, very set in a real-world environment; no capes all over the place, or anything like that. I got pretty upset when I saw this sort of relationship being outlined between Peter and his bro in Heroes, but they have thankfully taken it in a different direction.

This last would actually make a pretty great movie in my mind as well, on the indie level. An independently produced superhero(TM) movie would just be old-school bad-ass in my imagination. In practice, well . . . here again is where my lack of experience in film making makes for a dodgy proposition.

It's interesting posting my ideas on the Aviary here. For a long time I felt it took the steam out of my creativity to share my ideas with people, so I avoided this kind of entry. Now, however, I suppose I have become a more collaborative creature (as frustrating as collaboration can sometimes be), because sharing my ideas here has me more excited about them and thereby more ready to work one or two out for awhile. In the immortal words of Stephen Colbert (character): Thanks, Nation.