If a performance fell in the theatre, and no one heard it, did it happen?

Sad as it is to say, I have decided not to go to any more live theatre. Or at least, I am cutting it down to a bare minimum. There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is I simply can't hear much of the dialogue anymore. It's a combination of my increasing deafness, and the utter lack of skill in most stage actors to make themselves heard.

To be honest, I believe most of the problem lies with the latter, rather than the former. I believe this because I will often hear one or two actors perfectly clearly through the whole show, and their castmates, not so much. And I find I hear older actors better than younger ones, although this is by no means an absolute. It's turning me into a cranky old guy, and it's making my evenings in the theatre frustrating and pointless.

Let's face it, David Mamet is right, at least on this point. He said if you stand on a stage in a large theatre and you can't make yourself heard in the last row, get off the stage, because your training isn't over. Actors have gotten by for thousands of years without amplification...why do we subsidize this amateurish lack of attention to craft? I remember in my early days on the Schiller Park stage, the company had one body mic, but most of us didn't want it. Because to use it was to acknowledge you weren't skilled enough to make yourself heard across that large expanse of grass. Plus, a body mic taped to the face, or peeking out of the hair, is an eyesore.

I mean, it's a baseline skill--it's like not being able to draw and yet calling yourself a painter. I know lots of people who who paint abstracts, not because that's where their artistic sensibilities, after years of exploration, have led them, but because that's all they can do. I consider that invalid. Picasso could draw you as you stood there, photographically. He chose not to. He grew beyond it. If you are an actor, and can't or won't bother to learn to project, do TV or film or webcasts.

Of course, when I complain about this, I get the pained look, as if they are saying, "silly man...don't you know stage projection is old fashioned and out of date?" And you know who thinks this? People who CAN'T project.

I can't remember a single play I have seen in the last few years in which I heard everyone clearly. Unacceptable. Especially at today's ticket prices. Some theatres have headphones that they issue to help the hard of hearing, and Dani got a pair for me at the last show we saw at CATCO, but after a while, I took them off. Why should I go to the actors? It's their job to come to me. It's their job to bring their voices to my lone ear. If they can't or won't, then why should I help them in their amateurish ways?

I've tried to support my pals in the theatre, and attend their plays, but I just can't any more, sad to say. It makes me too angry. To any of my buds reading this post: you are not required to see me when I perform--let's just call it a wash.

Russell Brand

I have tried to like Russell Brand, but I have failed. I will say, however, he has managed to parlay a minimal talent and a single facial expression into a pretty healthy career, so there's that. In fact, his uni-expressionaism, as we'll call it, brought to mind another face from the massive flea market that is my brain...maybe he could play John Torrington, a sailor from a doomed polar expedition in the mid-1880s, who was unearthed from his permafrost grave a hundred years later...

Pepper

Tonight we took our 17 year old terrier Pepper to the vet, and had her put down. It's the bitter bargain we make-- there for them at the beginning, there at the end. Over the past summer, she became a very old dog, seemingly all at once--blinded by cataracts, deafer than me, crooked in her back from arthritis. She lost her house-training, and even seemed to lose her personality, which had always been formidable. She trembled much of the time, and often seemed not to recognize us. I have been feeling like Bob Cratchit this evening, looking at the empty place by the fire.

 The following is something I wrote about her a few years ago, entitled Our Wedding Dog:

Tonight, I have been sitting in my chair with my little dog curled under my arm, and we have spent a long time looking in each other's eyes, as we have been wont to do for many years. Pepper is 14 years old, a Yorkie/Schnauzer mix, and her formerly brown face is white now, and she spends most of her days drowsing on chairs and couches, or on any convenient lap. She is a stubborn old gal, and if she wants to jump up into my chair, and wriggle and push till she claims half the seat for herself, well, who am I to argue? Such a venerable old lady deserves all that she wants, and mostly what she wants is to be allowed to nap and feel the old clock inside her wind its way down.

We got her the weekend we were engaged. Dani and I were living in an attic apartment on the Hilltop, and the guy in the downstairs apartment raised and trained little terriers, and when Dani and I came home from a weekend's touring performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream (where we had announced our engagement to the stunned cast), he was outside with his kids playing with some little dogs, and when he saw us he asked if we wanted a dog. It seems he had given his mother one of his little puppies 2 years earlier, and when she moved to an apartment complex that didn't allow pets, she had to return Pepper to her son.

I think he was asking out of reflex, just something you say as a conversation starter, especially if you are a dog trainer. But I looked at her, and though it sounds lame, something passed between us. Maybe I was open because I had just gotten engaged to a woman I was deeply in love with, and had just finished a wildly successful weekend's worth of performances, and here was an offer to begin something like a little family. It felt right. I looked at Dani and she laughed--she later said she could tell right away this was going to happen. So we took her upstairs.

I spent a week holding her like a baby, protecting her from my cat Sugar, who was deeply offended that a dog had been brought into the mix. Sugar never warmed to her, and never missed a chance to swat her and send her yelping into another room. That whole week we looked into each other's eyes, bonding the way I imagine parents do with new-born babies. When the weekend came, we had to leave to do another set of shows out of town, and I asked the fellow downstairs to watch her for us. All weekend I worried she wouldn't remember us, that the week-long bonding hadn't been enough, but when we came home, it was like a scene from a movie: Pepper was in the yard playing with one of the neighbor's kids, and when she saw me, she ran top speed and launched into my arms and licked my face all over. That's when I knew she was ours for keeps.

Right away she established herself as my chair companion, and later she became part of our sleeping arrangement as well. Dani on my left, Pepper on my right, under my arm. I became quite used to this--in fact, once when I was in the hospital for a surgery, Dani was concerned I wouldn't sleep without a little creature nestled under my right arm, so she bought a little stuffed dog to tuck in with me during my week long stay.

Pepper has endured many moves, and many comings and goings of other pets, and not always happily. In fact, never happily. I don't think she has quite understood what we thought we were doing bringing all those other critters into the house. Especially Sonny, out Golden, who spends a generous part of his day, every day, for the last 6 years, finding ways to annoy her.

It has always been Mark, Dani and Pepper to our families. When my mother calls, her sign off is "give my love to Dani and Pepper." Family members have actually had her for sleepovers--she used to go with my sisters on their camping trips. Actors I worked with years ago, after getting back in touch, will ask after her health--she had a brief career on the stage herself, playing Toto in WoO, Sandy in Annie, and the family dog in Cheaper By The Dozen. But she's retired now. She lies on her warm blankets and dreams of her former stage glory.

Someday soon, the unbearable will happen. She has a bad heart murmur, and the vet assures us this will be the thing that takes her out. The day I got that diagnosis, two years ago, I drove her home from the vet, after first stopping at the store for some treats. I held her for a while, and we looked into each other's eyes, as we often do. Her bristly intelligent gaze was a bright as the day we got her ( and still is). I felt better that the knowledge of mortality is not a gift given to a dog. They live entirely and utterly in the moment. This makes it easier. We are entrusted with that knowledge for them.

So, these days, I let her have her way. She eats when she feels like it, goes outside whenever she asks, and sleeps when and wherever she chooses. She has given great value, our little wedding dog. She deserves our respect, and our love. Some of us who are childless need an outlet for our parenting instincts, I believe, and Pepper is in many ways my first child.

People Will Come

One of my favorite things in the world: baseball.

One of my least favorite things: any literature about baseball seeking--in rhapsodic, poetic prose--to contextualize or encircle the mystery of it all. Mostly written by men who never played the game,  is my guess. One exception: James Earl Jones' speech in Field of Dreams, but I think fully half of the appeal of that scene is a visceral response to the bassoons in Jones' voice.

and to that end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ1dZhh0_RQ&feature=related

REM disbands

Now that REM has officially called it quits (as opposed to artistically, which happened years ago), Michael Stipe has time to devote himself to his main passion--stalking unsuspecting mortals and drinking their blood...

Workers of the World, Unite!

Apparently I am hated on two continents. My brother Barry, who lives in Seoul, Korea and is a spy and free-lance assassin for the CIA, tells me his military and ex- military friends over there read my liberal broadsides on Facebook, and despise me to my very core.

This has become a source of pride with me. If only I could be hated in Europe and South America and Australia too! Then I'd be in rare company, with Hitler, Nixon, and Walt Disney.

One guy, an old-school crusty, red-faced, fat-fingered ex master sgt. finds me particularly appalling. Barry reports that he'll see the guy in a bar, and if the guy is staring at Barry for longer than 2 seconds, then that means he's gonna come over and start a conversation with " Did you what your goddamn brother wrote today?" Barry doesn't report whether he defends me or not--I suspect not. But then I wouldn't defend me either.

Barry was home this week, and told me about this, and we plotted out a little scheme--I asked Barry to tell me the one issue that chapped this man's wrinkled old ass more than any other, and he said it was illegal immigrants. So I went on the web, looking for the worst case of illegal immigrant criminality I could find, and after several promising leads (one was a case in which an illegal immigrant shot and killed a man in cold blood, and I thought this might be a winner, but later in the article it's revealed the victim was a pedophile who had messed with the immigrant's under-aged sister--not good enough for my nefarious plans)--I finally found the motherload-- I located a case where an illegal immigrant murdered three people in New Jersey, in premeditated fashion.

So I posted this article to Barry's FB page, along with as many boneheaded liberal comments as I could think of, and my nephew Nathan, who is more liberal than I, chimed in with a few of his own (I had emailed Nathan to tell him about this old master sgt., who hates Nathan too, and it turns out Nathan already knew of him, and calls him Sgt. Non Sequitur)...we are currently awaiting news of the old campaigner's massive stroke.

Barry is in the air, back to Korea, and his clandestine mission to topple Kim Jong il. I expect him to be met at the airport by his CIA handler, a ravishing Korean beauty with some anatomically-based James Bondian name, and one pissed off old master sergeant, trying to articulate his outrage through the profound aphasia his stroke has left him with.

Below is the FB posting--(as you can see, we ensnared one of Barry's friends in our net):

Film work

A number of my pals are doing lots of film work these days, which I find healthy, though I don't do much of it myself. It is the present and the future of acting, I believe. Stage is the past, but I feel most comfortable there. Sometimes I feel like Chuck Yeager in the film The Right Stuff--all his contemporaries, the generation behind him, actually, began to move to NASA and the space program, while he stayed with the original test pilot program.

I am not sure why I am so ambivalent about film. I have done one feature and one short, and I had a good time doing them, but I'd be quite happy if I never do another one. I know actors in town who do tons of them, and prefer them to stage (which I don't get AT ALL). Maybe it's the narcissism of seeing your image on screen. There are only a few who are immune to that, I suppose, and that notion must be part of it, I guess. It certainly isn't the money--which is always paltry on the local level, if there is anything at all. And it can't be the quality of the roles, either.

I have turned down so many film offers that word has evidently gotten round, because no one offers me film roles much anymore. I find the scripts to be generally awful, derivative, and bigger than the director's stomachs most of the time. They are written by non-writers, mostly. Very young non-writers, mostly. They are just images on paper, mostly. And so they are easy to turn down. Plus, these young writers tend to write roles for young actors, and have little insight for characters over 25.

I would consider them for more than a few seconds if the roles I have been offered were any good, but they aren't. Usually there is a need for a one-dimensional dad, or boss, and I can't be bothered. I am that way for stage roles too. As I have gotten older, and aged past the first and second rank roles (juvenile, hero/romantic lead), I find that most of the parts (film and stage) for actors my age are what I call the "dad" roles. As the producers of new theatre companies and film companies get younger and younger, they skew their choices toward actors their age. Still, these shows need someone to play the "dad" roles. And, my friends, that ain't me.

It's not ego, at least not entirely. I am pretty level-headed about what roles I am right for, type-wise. And I would be happy to plays dads, if the roles are strong. But the scripts are always about the younger protagonist, and these characters need dads and bosses to feed them cues. And that, as I said before, ain't me.

The way I see it, life is too short to be a supporter of other people's dreams, and I have no interest whatsoever in helping others achieve their goals by giving them whatever meager talents and industry I possess. I have had several offers from filmmakers for a featured role of one scene, and I know they are looking for the best possible actor to play this meaningless bullshit--but that's their dream, not mine. If you want me in your picture or play, it better be a strong role. And I mean a strong role before I see the pages. None of that "we'll work it out as we go along" crap.

Money is one of several motivating factors for me, but it isn't the only one. For me it's mostly been about the roles. Acting takes up a lot of time from your life, and it takes its toll in several, less tangible ways as well, and if I am going to commit to a part, it better have enough juice for me. Lots of people better see it too. Not interested in a doing a film role so your pals can watch it with you on your computer. Not interested in helping a film student with his project. Not even remotely interested in doing low-brow gory horror stories, think pieces where mostly 21 year olds sit in coffee shops and discuss their faux Tarantino-esque takes on life and relationships, half-assed detective stories, hit man stories (and ever since Quentin, it seems all hit men are required to discuss pop culture while wearing black suits and ties)...and...and...and...

So. This post ended at lot more sour than I intended. I suppose the takeaway from this post is that I hear "time's winged chariot hurrying near", and I simply don't have enough life left for anything that isn't pivotal.

Dark of the Moon

We open Dark of the Moon at Dublin Coffman High School in two days...as usual, the past few days have been fraught with last minute set painting, costume adjustments, prop gathering, etc etc etc...but the kids are ready, more than ready, to get this bad boy up in front of paying customers...this is my "From The Director", my thoughts on the play...

From the Director

Dark of the Moon is a supernatural fantasy tale that is made up of equal parts of Romeo and Juliet, The Crucible, Harry Potter, and old campfire tales that travel down the years, growing in embellishment with each telling. At its core is the old Celtic song Barbara Allen, though the playwrights rewrote the story of the song to suit the action of the play. It has a dark heart—one critic said its characters were the characters of the musical Oklahoma, if their true natures were really shown. I consider it a sort of satire of the old morality plays, in which the best people in the community are the worst people in the community—rather like The Beggars Opera, in which thieves and murderers are the cream of society.

The students and I had a number of conversations early on about the human world of Buck Creek, and the supernatural world that lurks on top of Mt. Baldy. We proceeded from the position that this is a “heightened” existence, meaning that it is a fantasy, and makes certain assumptions for the sake of the story that bear little relation to the “real” world—the Christianity depicted in this play is not the Christianity that is practiced in our churches. The wants and needs of the citizens are skewed and are not always logical (witness their dialogue which echoes the repeats and refrains of old songs)—even the mythology of the witchcraft practiced in this play is unlike any other “witchy” stories. This led us to discussions of “given circumstances”, and what constitutes “ truth” on the stage—and our conclusion is simply that, for the purposes of performance, “truth” on stage always trumps “truth” in real life. This is why characters in musicals break out into song at regular intervals, or Shakespearean characters speak in iambic pentameter as a matter of course. It’s why a magical school exists to teach young Britons how to hone their witchcraft, even why three bears keep a traditional house which is ransacked by a blonde child.

The play has survived, since it was written in the 1940s, because, simply, there isn’t another play quite like it. It has been the source of controversy over the years, since a young Paul Newman first played the Witch-boy on Broadway. Back in the 1970s, high school productions of Dark of the Moon were picketed or even shut down. By the 1980s, it became a staple in high school repertories-- Dublin Coffman last performed it in 1989, roughly five years before most of tonight’s cast was born.

At its core is a love story, between Barbara Allen, whose reputation for “easy virtue” has reached beyond her town to the dark beings who live up on old Baldy, and John the Witch-Boy, who, riding his eagle one night, looked down among the human world and was instantly smitten by her. Their story is one of an attempt at redemption, a kind of reset of their lives, a belief that true love can cure all evils. But as we see, it isn’t the moonlight that illumines and defines their tale, but rather the dark shadow from its other side.

You're Gonna Dieeeeeeee!

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has announced that non-Christians are not his brothers or sisters. So much for that Governor of All The People thing...actually, that sentiment is more in line with his previous job, as the villain in Poltergeist II...

My Year In Review--Theatre-wise anyway Part II

So. I had a month between the closing of The Miracle Worker, and the start of Born Yesterday, at Otterbein University, where I'd been engaged as a guest artist for their fall production. I spent it watching my half-assed garden wither and die due to neglect, since I was out of town most of the summer. I read the script and wondered what the hell to do with Harry Brock. He wasn't a bucket list role at all, and at first pass, I found the play to be a little dated--though the themes of government bought and paid for are certainly current. But there was a certain Pollyanna-ish streak that ran through it that gave me pause, until I started reading it again. It was, on the 2nd time through, a lot more frank than the film version, or indeed many plays of the same period. The language was pretty salty for its day, and beneath Pollyanna's skirts lurked a certain snide cynicism that has always appealed to me. I started to enjoy the rhythm of the language, that sort of "say, what's the big idea" snappy type of rapid fire dialogue from the old Warner Brothers films.

But what to do with Brock? Like many actors, I suspect, once I have a role it seeps into my every waking thought. This can be annoying, because I miss a lot of conversation in the real world--I am busy enough with conversations in my head to pay attention to ones directed at me by my loved ones. Or they co-join, like two radio stations crowding each other in the same spot on the dial:

SHE: " Honey, would you like me fix some grilled cheese sandwiches?"
ME: "Hmm? Oh, well...maybe, I guess...does Harry Brock know how to tie a necktie on his own, do you think?"
SHE:" I am going to take that as a yes."

Harry began to walk around with me, nudging me in quiet moments. I am not one of those actors who gets totally immersed in a role--not for me the Daniel Day-Lewis model of staying in character all the time and all that. It works for him, I guess, but it wouldn't work for me. It would be too exhausting, and I suspect he does it more for show and effect. I doubt he takes a dump in character, or reads a book in character. He stays in character in public, so people can say "He stays in character ALL THE TIME." It's legend-building. So much silliness goes into the craft of acting, so much humbug and flummery. My immersion is less obvious to people, except to Dani, who always knows when my brain is otherwise engaged.

Let's take a paragraph or two to talk about process. On second thought, let's not. Listening to actors talk about process is as boring as listening to someone talk about their golf game. I will confine myself merely to observing that, having never majored in theatre in college, I never learned how to do the "Such and Such" Technique, or the " This and That" Method. I suppose they have value, at least as points of departure, but I have always trusted my intuition and insight, which I like to think is fairly highly developed. I can "get" people most of the time. Years of practice have endowed me with technical prowess on stage, and once I learned to access whatever inner resources I have, I was able to begin to divine the inner workings of my characters. This came late to me, relatively speaking, but just in time, if you know what I mean. Every play is different, every role is unique, and I don't believe you can apply a one size fits all approach to developing a character. It isn't as if all you have to do is type entries into an Excel spreadsheet and out pops a solution to a character.


So I began with Harry's insecurity. I think everything he does pivots around that pole. I decided he was probably a clean freak, one of those low rent guys who, once he hits it big, spends a lot of time on the surface of things, because he isn't very equipped to focus on the inner things. I read once that Sinatra took three or four showers a day, and changed suits just as often. Harry spent his life as a junk man, and once he made his first million, he tried to get the stink of the yard out of his nostrils, and out from under his nails. I asked for a handkerchief, once we started rehearsals, and worked out ways to always wipe his hands after every handshake or handling of some object. I gradually, over time, whittled that down to just a few times during the performances.

As far as his clothes were concerned, I figured he liked George Raft and that kind of guy, and took his cue to dress from the movies, and probably even hired someone to coach him on how to dress. I loved working with the costume designer of the show, who asked me for my ideas about what to do to emphasize character. That's the way it should be. I hate working with costumers who have a "my way or the highway" approach. Costume is character, in some sense--how a character looks is how he chooses to present himself to the world, and that should never be solely left to the costume designer. We added doodads like cufflinks, and watches and stickpins and all that, and all my suits in the show were first rate. It was important that when Harry looks in the mirror, he tries hard not to see the hard-scrabble man beneath the tailored outerwear.

Working at Otterbein--this was my second stint as guest artist there--is a treat. The young actors always add an extra dash of enthusiasm, and remind me why I fell in love with the whole thing in the first place. In past gigs working with young actors, I could see (sometimes very starkly) the difference between talent and skill. All of them are talented--that's why they got into their theatre departments in the first place--but most of them weren't very skilled yet, and didn't know how best to bring their talents to bear. That comes, I suppose, more from experience than something you're born with.

But the cast of Born Yesterday blew the curve on that particular test. There were some young actors who brought a level of skill to the party that surprised and delighted me. Especially my co-star, Stanzi Davis, who is a 40 year old in a 20 year old's body. She has great poise, on and off stage, an old soul, and has, as they say on American Idol, mad skills when it comes to acting.

So anyway, Born Yesterday opened in late October and ran for a few weekends. We played on a beautiful set, to enthusiastic crowds, and I was grateful for the gig, the money, and the chance to work with such good young people. And I thought that would be it for my year. In fact, I bragged, that once I finished directing the school staff show at Dublin Coffman, I had a nice long Christmas holiday full of nothing but reading and eating ahead of me. But...

Whore that I am, I accepted an offer to perform in A Sanders Family Christmas. This was a production mounted by David Caldwell, a frequent guest director at Otterbein and many other theatres around the country. I had never met him, but knew of him through my friend Don, who went to college with him. He called Don to ask if I sang or played the guitar, and Don told him more of the latter than the former, which is dead true. I got a call from Elizabeth Saltgiver, who works at Otterbein, and who was acting as a managing director for Caldwell's production company. They asked me to send a few picking/singing clips so David could get an idea of my range. She emphasized this wasn't an audition--I was already in the play, but this was they could best determine the role for me. So I sent off a few clips, and was given the role of the Sanders family patriarch, Burl, whose playing and singing chores were much less demanding than the other male role of my type, which was just fine with me.

We only rehearsed 10 days, and played in a chapel in Worthington, which was perfect since the play is set in a Baptist church on the eve of WWII. I had a ball, and got to check off a bucket list item, namely playing guitar in a band, on stage, before an audience. Caldwell, who in addition to directing the piece, also played the pastor, was funny as hell, and two completely different people in those roles. As director, he was all business, slightly aloof, and dead certain of where and how to play certain moments (he's done more than a few versions of the Sanders family plays, of which there are 3). As the Rev. Oglethorpe, he was hysterical, silly, touching and never seemed to fail to land his jokes and more serious moments. His funny moments were so funny, I am ashamed to say I corpsed nearly every time. I couldn't help it. I laughed right along with the audience, but I figured since Burl considers him a man who is bit of a figure of fun, I could justify laughing in character.

While the Sanders Family Christmas was rehearsing, I was also rehearsing the staff show at Dublin Coffman. About 7 years ago, the teachers and principals at Coffman were looking for some way for the Coffman staff to get to know each other on a more personal basis, and hit upon the idea to put on a musical. The first two years they did You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Tom Sawyer, and then I came on board, and they asked me to direct the staff show--they had been directing themselves before that. So, in the last couple of years I have directed Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Honk!, and then, this year, Snoopy the Musical.

It's always a fun, if stressful time, and the payoff is always worth it. You get to see people for whom acting is a mysterious and alien concept suddenly finding it, and making things work quite beyond what they thought they were capable of doing. The shows always sell out, and the money goes to fund classroom projects (field trips, special equipment, etc). The students love working on the show--they crew it, and I always have a ton of backstage and booth help for it. We all found the play to be a lesser one than YAGMCB, so I started augmenting it with moments from the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, and from various Peanuts comic strips. I actually think our final product was better than the original play, though I am sure the authors wouldn't agree. But the little kids in the audience howled with laughter, the older kids loved watching their teachers and principals do something completely foreign to their experience with them, and the actors amazed themselves at how they were able to get it over. Directing them is always challenging, because, when you think about it, all teachers are alphas in their classrooms, and all principals are the alpha alphas, and every now and again I had to remind them that when they come to rehearsal, I am the alpha. Dani came to a rehearsal once and said I was Charlie Brown trying to direct the Christmas play--I turn my back, and the partying starts. But it all works in the end, and the staff always ends things with a great party at the principals house, and the camaraderie is priceless...

So that was my year--a year I began by announcing in a New Year's resolution that I was going to do less theatre... final tally: 7 shows, 3 directing, 4 acting.