The Work Begins

I am in the process of reading Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf again and again and again. It is through these reads that I begin to form a plan of attack for the text. This is generally how the reads progress:

First Read: I get a general impression of elements within the text- themes, character, relationship, setting, etc. I try to tune in to the story and remain open to see what, if anything strikes me.

Second Read: This is a slightly more "conscious"- though still general- reading of the text. Through this reading I begin to identify what elements ring little bells of truth within me. What do I relate to? What is completely foreign to me? What do I resist? What gets me excited about the text?

Third Read: This is when I begin to read the text as an actor (or as a director, should that be my role in any particular production- but that is an entirely different process). I take careful note of things that are said by and about my character. Words stand out as clues to physical actions, habits, and/or personality traits. For example, in Virginia Woolf, Martha is said to bray... this one word will provide a valuable starting point for my use of body and voice. I make a note of this word (and other words and phrases) which I will return to when I am ready to begin my physical explorations.

Fourth Read: This is where I attempt to read through the eyes of my own character. I will often read things out loud in order to play with the language and begin to identify the thoughts that propel the words in the text.

Fifth Read: This is where I begin to part from any set formula. Some characters I get and I feel I am ready to get on my feet and play. With others I feel the need to steep myself in the play and let myself stew a little longer. Then there are plays that require a more academic approach- it is with these plays that I "score" the text. I will do some element of scoring with Virginia Woolf , partially for the exercise of scoring and partially because some of Martha's thought processes still elude me. I will do an entire post on scoring, when the time comes.

There is no set way to approach a text and every actor is different. Some actors prefer to feel their way through a text while still others need to sit down and analyze each word, each rhythm and syllable. I do a mixture of both. For this, particular project, I will not have the benefit of multiple table reads with other actors. So my process will be a little different than a process I would employ during rehearsals with a full cast- mostly because I will need to be more disciplined than if I had an ensemble around to keep me honest! I will need to use this blog to keep me accountable for my explorations. I am hoping to find a way to film some of my explorations and share them on this blog so that I may analyze my own process...warts and all. I will do my best to keep my vanity in check and illustrate my dismal failures as well as my successes!

My next posting will cover, specifically, the information I have gleaned from my readings of the text. Wish me luck!

Drum Roll Please

Finally- I have a stolen second to talk about my little project...

I have decided to work on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The process of choosing a project to work on is as important as the process involved in creating the project itself. Here are my reasons for choosing this piece.

1. This text has survived over 15 years of bookshelf purges. It is time I figured out how and why it has survived.
2. This play has a 'kitchen sink' evolution that I favor in theater pieces. The setting is simple, the circumstances complex.
3. The circumstances are complex.
4. Martha is 20 years my senior as a character, which I could look at as a bad choice but I prefer to think of it as a challenge to my belief in the power of empathy for an actor. That, in and of itself, could prove or disprove some of my acting theories.
5. Martha is full of anger and resentment. In my experience I have found it beneficial to explore issues through character that I have difficulty expressing in my personal life. It may help me break through some personal barriers.
6. There is a great possibility that I could fail in my execution of this process. This will not be an easy text for me to tackle and I need to exercise my right to fail- knowing that it is the difficult task that is most worth the effort.
7. The characters spend the entire play in various stages of drunkenness. This provides me with an opportunity to do some sensory work.
8. Martha has a very confident sexuality, something I feel I've lost over the years.
9. The struggle for love in this play is weighted down in the circumstances. It is always a challenge to discover a relationship to joy in such a murky atmosphere, but that is what makes a compelling piece of theatre. It will be hard to keep my Martha from wallowing (something I find myself doing far too often) but her fight, and the feistiness of the other characters in the play, will be a sharp jab every time I venture into self-pity.
10. Its a good play.

So. There. I've made my decision. My next post will be an overview of themes and motivations in the play. I expect to be able to put that together sometime during or directly after the holiday.

Wish me... wish me something fun.

Having Fun...

All right. I've narrowed my decision down to two texts. I'm not ready for the big reveal yet... I'd like to finish re-reading them before I get started on the nitty-gritty. With the holidays and all, I don't have too much time to spare. In fact, I've been trying to get a couple of hours to myself for the last 4 days and have been wildly unsuccessful.

Rest assured. I will make good on my promise. After Turkey Day I will announce the text I will be working with and start with the good stuff.

Let's Have Some Fun

To quote one of my favorite Kids in the Hall sketches, "I'm in a rut deep enough to hang up posters."

I am. I knew this was coming the day I peed on the stick. I knew that the first year of favored son #2's life would be marked by two things that make me supremely miserable, 1) lack of personal time 2) a monotonous routine of much dreaded, mind-numbing tasks. So I have decided to keep up both my spirits and my chops by taking up a dense script and difficult character to study in my "spare time". I will use this blog to work out some of my thoughts on text and character step by step. It'll be fun!

Now, all that remains is for me to choose a text and a character. I could play with Macbeth- that's always a favorite of mine. It's dark, sexy and it challenges the actor to create humans from monsters. That's a favorite theme for me. I'd do Richard III, but Pacino already covered that and I don't think I could add much more. There's always Tennessee Williams. (God, I'm old enough to play Blanche! Yikes!) Or maybe I could get into some Lorca. I've been meaning to pick up Yerma for a while, perhaps now is as good a time as any? Then there's The House of Bernarda Alba, which would give me the rare opportunity to look at multiple female characters. Chekhov is always a good exercise in building given circumstances. Maybe I should look at Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Martha would be a big challenge for me.

I'm going to sit on it for a day and then commit myself to studying the play I choose and preparing some text for myself to work on its feet. I will detail my process step by step. I've never tried to document my process before. Perhaps I will find some gaping holes in my methodology. Maybe I will find a way to communicate the process in a personal and definitive way. One thing is certain... I will be making time to fit something very important into my crazy, boring days.

Holy bananas. I am really looking forward to this!

Dear Obama,

Last night was amazing. It has been a long time since I have felt so good, and you... you said all the right things. I think I got carried away in the moment. We both did. We said a lot of things to one another in the heat of the moment. I don't regret them. Not at all. However, now that the sobriety of daylight hours is upon us I feel shy and a bit distant.

What you need to understand about me (as cliche as it sounds) is that I am just coming out of a very difficult relationship. He was charming and had a manly swagger that made him seem so different from the rest. I threw caution to the wind and became embroiled in an 8 year nightmare. He lied to me and chipped away at my self-esteem by trying to tell me that shopping would make everything better. He dismissed all of my concerns and, in the end, I forgot that I had rights of my own. He had convinced me that I should abdicate my rights and my responsibilities because he was stronger and he would take care of me. But when I needed him, he wasn't there. I lost my home. I lost my job... I don't mean to go on and on about it. My only point is to tell you why I am so leery of a new relationship right now.

I will admit that it is hard not falling in love with you. You're intelligent, accomplished and so confident. I've been burned by confidence before. I'm taking this slow because I don't want to put all of my faith in you only to have you betray me. I can handle it if you make an honest mistake, but I don't think I can take it if you deliberately hurt me. My therapist says that I need to rebuild my faith in myself so if you mess up it need not be a reflection on me. I'm trying.

I guess what I am saying, what I need to say out loud as many times as it takes until I believe it, is that you cannot save me. Only I can save me. I need to assert my own, personal power and solve the problems I need to solve. You can support me but I cannot place all of my hopes and my burdens on you because the only one who can truly heal me is me. If you prove to be a good support, I will cherish our relationship. If you don't, well, Gloria Gaynor said it best. I will survive.


I have voted for you. You talk a great game. If you are truly good for me you won't ever let me forget that the true power rests with me. You are not my savior but my servant. That is the relationship I want. It is the relationship I deserve. I hope you really meant it when you said, "Yes we can" because I did.

Love,

The United States of America

W.

Meh.

It's an Oliver Stone film.

Before going to see it I had assumed that all the good press for this film was due to widespread surprise that Stone didn't string ol' Georgie up by his nut sack and piss on him. All the interviews I saw with Mr. Stone were marked by words like "even handed" and "fair" regarding the film's portrayal of our current President. Admittedly, if I hadn't expected such an "even handed", nay even sympathetic, picture- I might have been more pleasantly surprised by my matinee viewing.

But I wasn't.

Indeed, W. is a sympathetic portrait of a man in over his head. However, Stone's film carries all the hallmarks of a muck raker's restraint as he struggles to make a monster into a man. W. is rife with pity and cheap, armchair psychology. There is little insight in the script beyond a high schooler's interpretation of a Wikipedia page on Oedipal complex. We all know W. was the wayward Bush and it is not difficult to imagine how hard it must be to live in a powerful man's shadow. I didn't need 2 hours and 11 minutes to be told what I already understand.

Josh Brolin does give a fine performance and the supporting cast was quite good at what they were asked to do. Clearly, they were asked to walk and talk like the people we see on the news everyday. They did just that, but no more was asked of them. The cast, as a whole, was uncanny in their likeness to the real-life characters. Excellent speech and physical work was done by all- but there was no room in the script for them to be anything other than props to enliven the reality of the title character's experience. There was no examination of their motivations or relationships with one another or with W himself. With one notable exception. Ellen Burstyn was somewhat out of place in her few scenes because it seemed she was trying to squeeze a little bit more out of the script and character than her cohorts. In fact, her physicality was defiantly unBarbara Bush, but her emotional choices were quite clear.

I have to say, I was shocked to find myself uncomfortable with the scenes depicting George and Laura as a normal couple who occasionally find themselves having important discussions in their underwear. One particular scene features W chatting with Laura on the toilet. I think the intent was to humanize W even more, but as an issue of taste I feel it was gratuitous and somewhat disrespectful. I am no fan of this President or his administration but I have no desire to watch our President take a dump.

Bio-pics are always a bit dicey. When one decides to fictionalize a real person's life they are apt to play fast and loose with history to achieve dramatic ends. As one who values truth and history, I have to say that I see this as a dangerous practice. There is a scene where Richard Dreyfus's Cheney gives a speech about controlling oil so "...no one will fuck with us again...". This scene was placed there for expediency- to clue us in to the filmmaker's view of the administration and not necessarily the historical character's view. I fear all too few viewers will make that distinction and Stone's widely and easily consumed version of history will become fact. In my humble opinion, that is a disservice to history and truth.

But, it's an Oliver Stone film.

Meh.

The Struggles of Year Number 1

There is definitely a reason why I waited for nearly 7 years to have another kid.

I am an incredibly selfish person. I like having a few minutes to myself. I like being able to day dream- to be in my own little world staring into the reflecting pool of my soul and contemplating my place in the universe. I like to watch movies with swearing. I don't particularly care for mundane tasks. I do not romanticize motherhood- even though I adore my children and delight in their progress as human beings. But, I miss participating in my art. It makes me cranky and decidedly "unfun" to be torn away from my creative outlets.

When my eldest was a toddler, I had a conversation with another mother in the park who was complaining about her husband. He had come home from work and then made some snotty comment to the effect of "Gee, I wish I could spend all day in the park hanging out with my friends, drinking coffee and playing with my kids...". Her response? "Yeah, it's great. It's only sucking the soul right out of my body."

I'll let that comment stand.

It is the most bizarre and complicated ball of emotions. On one hand there is pride, love, joy, excitement and all the warm fuzzies a person could want. On the other, there is resentment, frustration, isolation, sadness, and guilt. A lot of guilt. These are the things I warn my girlfriends about as I watch them consider single parenthood as an option. (SAVE YOURSELVES! DON'T DO IT! Life with a partner to share the workload is hard enough!) Perhaps if I had taken more time to work on my career before I had kids, maybe then I would be able to afford some help so that I could go out and pursue my art. Maybe that is the cause of the negativity. Regardless, I am in the situation I am in and I just need to be more creative. I can do that, but the first year of life is so tiring and I also have to be realistic about my limitations.

It's not all bad. It really isn't. I just happen to get exhausted after having had to lug 14 pounds of human being everywhere for 24 hours straight (and I do mean everywhere!) and not having a minute to collect myself. On top of that physical drain is the emotional battle with a 7 year old who wishes he was a baby again. He weighs a lot more than 14 pounds! A person can only be loving and understanding for so long without reciprocity! After that, you just need to hide in the bathroom for 20 minutes.

Or vent on a blog.

God, that's embarrassing.

What is Tom Skerritt's Lifestyle?

I used to be obsessed with Tom Skerritt. It wasn't that I liked him or his movies or even that I hated him or his movies. I was just fascinated that an actor could work so much and still avoid the spotlight. Most people don't even know who the hell he is- until they see a picture and then they say "OOOOHH! THAT guy!"

The guy has been working for decades and yet he is never talked about. He's worked in every medium. He's won awards. He's worked with big stars in big movies and yet who among us can say we've heard a lot (or any) buzz about Tom Skerritt? Who is out there eagerly awaiting the next Tom Skerritt project? (Which happens to be Whiteout- due out next year...) Either he is intensely private and really, really good at guarding that privacy or he just doesn't do anything too crazy or no one really cares. I just can't wrap my mind around his career. How does an actor work that much without the benefit of press? It isn't that he is such a chameleon that you would never know it was him- he's had that mustache and suave haircut since time began. He is distinctively Tom Skerritt. He must be an absolute joy to work with... no one who isn't an A-List actor could pull off a career like that and be a total jackass.

I really can't stop thinking about it. What kind of house does he live in? What are his kids like? What is a day in the life of Tom Skerritt like? Who does he hang out with? Information about the highest paid actors and their lifestyles is easy to come by and we've all been waited on by actors on the lowest end of the scale, but what is it like to be Tom Skerritt?

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night.

Brando Experience

As a young actor immersed in study I loved Brando. Nearly every method trained actor does- excepting those with a chip on their shoulder and something to prove (we'll discuss THAT in a future post, I suppose) - because to look at Brando's fiery work in his younger days is to look upon some of the most complex acting creations in American performing history. Not to mention that Brando's young physique is one of the most beautiful specimens of manhood ever to walk the planet. I could watch Brando over and over again, from A Streetcar Named Desire to Last Tango in Parisand I never found him anything but bold and honest. That scene in Last Tango in Paris where he talks to his dead wife is so brutal, especially knowing what we know about Brando's personal life. It was impossible to understand, as a student, why such a brilliant actor would turn on his craft and call it all bullshit. It offended me to my core that someone with such talent would dismiss what he had worked so hard to become.

Of course, the older I get and the more immersed I become in day to day living the more I understand about Brando's disdain for the craft. When the first organic thoughts of "that's bullshit" entered my mind I almost keeled over from shock. The further my family life took me from the dirty rehearsal studios, cramped dressing rooms and masturbatory post-show drinking sessions the more I could see how deeply actors wade in their own self-important excrement. I began to despise the whole thing. I hated actors, I hated plays, writers irritated me, autuers made me want to pull out my hair in bloody clumps and set myself on fire. It all seemed so obnoxiously elitist and arrogant and I did not want to encourage that part of myself. Oh and it is a large part of me. It causes me great shame. I started to see what Brando had been getting at- I think...

When you are a young actor facing some daunting statistics regarding your future employment (or lack thereof) your mentors will mostly say things like, "We are lucky to get to do what we do. You have to be exceptionally strong to follow your passion against such odds". They paint a highly romantic picture about suffering for truth and art and how important it is. Everything loses perspective and suddenly everything in life is seen through an almost adolescent prism of art and that which is personal suddenly becomes public display. It is your duty to "use" yourself, your experience, for the cause of truth! What they neglect to mention is that it is just a job. It is a rewarding and fun job that requires great skill and commitment, but it is just a job.

One never hears lawyers, doctors, financial analysts or teachers discussing their work with such religious ferocity. Well, perhaps teachers, but teachers are passionate about teaching to lift up their pupils- not themselves. In acting the actor himself becomes the subject of his own religious fervor. He is his own deity. Frankly, that is a little difficult to live with. (My apologies to my husband!) Not only is it difficult for those who love the actor, but it becomes a burden to the actor him/herself. Look at what happened to Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. Without proper perspective regarding the place of entertainment within the scope of the Universe an actor can and will implode. We are not built to withstand such self-scrutiny!

I am not saying that we should avoid introspection or examination of our past experiences. I believe there is a level at which the craft is therapeutic. But I've met actors who, even when low on the fame totem pole, have fallen victim to the pressures the craft can exert on a person. There is something wrong about selling your life, your essence for the amusement of others. Which brings me back to that scene in Last Tango in Paris that is just so brutal. Knowing what we know about Brando's tragic family life, this scene begins to topple. It is by turns both beautifully honest and a horrible prostitution of pain. I can't look away. I feel something. It is naked and real, but a human's nakedness (both figurative and literal) can be a celebration or it can be a degradation. It is so difficult to figure out which is which and so often so many of us are degraded and what is worse is that we DO IT TO OURSELVES! Is it worth it? What we give- do we get back? Not just in little gold- plated statuettes, but in reception. Does the audience open up and understand? Do we achieve any kind of acceptance on any real level? Does the world change? Is it really worth the price we pay?

Then again, do we really have to pay that price? Can we act, be honest and personal but still maintain some privacy? Can we maintain the dignity of the form without plumping up our egos with the cheap currency of celebrity?

I'm not willing to give up on the form. I still love the process. I still love taking a great script, pulling it apart and putting it back together again. I love what I learn in rehearsals. I just need to figure out why it ever needs to be performed and how to do so without selling myself or my castmates too cheaply. Then I watch this scene and I feel so... human.

I like feeling human.

Satire School

Frankly, enough has been said about the political implications of this cover in the last 24 hours to last the rest of the campaign. I'm not interested in the political fallout here. (Well, I am- just not within the context of this blog.) However, this does give me the opportunity to talk about the joys and the dangers of satire.

It is not clear who or what this cartoon is attempting to skewer. Apparently, the artist was trying to communicate the ridiculousness of the rumors surrounding the Obamas. The editor has defended the cover saying that it was so over-the-top that no one could possibly see it as anything other than humor. Unfortunately, since people really DO believe these things about the Obamas the cover would not seem that far-fetched to 12% of the population- according to a poll conducted by The Pew Research Center. If this were not the case, The New Yorker would have no reason to even run the cartoon on the last page. Funnier still is that those are the people least likely to read The New Yorker so they could learn more about the cover story. But they will see the cover at the news stand.

Where the New Yorker went wrong, in my humble opinion, is not in the subject matter but in the designation of the subject. Since the artwork does not depict the type of person who believes such untruths the message is that the New Yorker and its readers endorse these beliefs- thereby legitimizing those rumors as fact. An easy way to solve the problem is to use the cliche thought bubble- attributing the beliefs to someone other than The New Yorker itself. Of course, the problem with that is how do you portray such a population without coming off as elitist and judgmental? How would that message be received if the cover had portrayed a slack jawed yokel (clinging to his gun and Bible, perhaps?) watching FOX News and imagining the Obamas as such? Then the focus would not be on the rumors about the Obamas (although they would be reinforced just by having that image out there) but on the unflattering image of rural America and the prejudice of elitist, urban liberals who work at the New Yorker.

Perhaps we SHOULD focus for a moment on the prejudices of elitist, urban liberals. You see, no matter what cartoon was chosen to be on the cover to convey that particular cultural disconnect the joke is, at its heart, an elitist one. It is a private and angry chuckle for the intellectuals who read the New Yorker which allows them to feel superior over the ignorant masses. Perhaps a more effective cartoon would be to have three thought bubbles. The first depicting a latte liberal imagining the slack jawed yokel imagining the Obamas. The best satire sheds light on whole and uncomfortable truths- not just selective ones. We all shoulder some responsibility for the divide in this country- even the "enlightened" and self-satisfied urban liberal. Over simplifying the fears of 12% of the population does nothing to dispel them. In fact- it adds to the further entrenchment of the belief.

That is the sin of The New Yorker. It does not step back far enough to see what this anxiety is truly about and therefor cannot possibly make a sharp or witty observation about it. It simply strokes itself for being smart enough to "get it". Unfortunately, it seems that only The New Yorker staff got the joke. The rest of us can only stand back and stammer at its stupidity.

Anyway, the biggest truth of all is that New Yorker cartoons have never really been that funny- but that was already addressed on an episode of Seinfeld.

Fly Over Paranoia

It is no secret that the vast majority of the United States harbors an ugly resentment against "the Coasts". Namely New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. When loose tongues are wagging you'll hear people say terrible things about the Jews in New York, the Gays in San Francisco and the money grubbing demons of immorality who run the entertainment industry in LA. To a certain extent, our fly over brethren are not necessarily wrong to be so bent out of shape- after all the majority of popular entertainment tends to narcissistically focus its energies on New York and LA for its characters and story lines and largely ignores what is going on in the rest of the country.

What fly over states may not know is that a lot of New Yorkers (in particular) are terrified of the rest of the country. New Yorkers are comfortable with their junkies, but the tweakers really scare them. New Yorkers can function (admittedly, it can be begrudgingly...) with Hasidim, Muslim, Catholic, Buddhist and Atheist populations living and working together- but the Evangelicals are enough to make the average New Yorker want to duck into a Satanist S & M parlor for safe harbor. We have religion here, but most New Yorkers would feel uncomfortable being confronted by a highway sign telling them to repent- regardless of their religious affiliation.

We fear.

That's the bottom line. Anything that is unfamiliar causes anxiety and anxiety can cause any human to jump to irrational and illogical conclusions.

Yesterday I was watching some interviews on YouTube with West Virginians about the recent primary. I'll admit that listening to these opinions made my heart race and I began to perspire. Just listening to these different perceptions caused my body to have a mild stress reaction. I wanted to scream and shake them. One woman insisted that Obama was Muslim and she didn't like that. When the interviewer corrected her and told her that he is NOT a Muslim she just closed her eyes, shook her head and said, "I don't agree with that" as if the facts were somehow able to rearrange themselves by the force of her opinion. I was angry and I wanted to reach into the screen and throttle her. Her resistance to the facts that have been available for years (the man has published two very personal books detailing his upbringing and influences for crying out loud!) made me angry and scared. I then commented to my husband that Obama probably made the right choice to concede West Virginia and not make a glut of personal appearances there because they might have shot him on the spot.

Of course- that was MY FEAR talking.

Not everyone who thinks a certain way is a gun toting radical with an itchy trigger finger. Upon closer inspection, I probably would have found this woman to be someone who was shaken by the horror of 9/11 (who wasn't?) and who has probably never met or even seen a Muslim in person before. I'm sure that the culture of racial division that is still common in some parts of the country- West Virginia reportedly being one of those places- made it difficult for this woman to see in Obama what some other people see in him. It is so much safer to take in only the information that conforms with your world view and act on that. I've done that with her. It conforms with my world view to think that she is an idiot redneck. Whereas, she may be a woman who has found herself faced with a myriad of economic and social challenges that are now foreign to her. In the last decade, the world has become a much scarier place. Can I blame her for trying to protect herself from perceived threats? Isn't that what we all do? Isn't that why I will not be considering West Virginia as a vacation spot anytime in the near future?

My point in discussing this is not to deal with the election, necessarily. Rather it is to bring up empathy. Empathy is a powerful thing - not just in personal relations or politics but in storytelling. Storytelling, as you may have noticed, is one of my chief concerns. Recently, I read a screenplay about domestic violence. (Sadly, I read a lot of scripts about domestic violence and more than a few of them fit this particular description...) I found it cliche and since it lacked any real insight into the characters' behavior I wondered why anyone would want to watch such a thing. The screenwriter had written the script based on memories of incidents that happened to his neighbors and his parents' friends as he was growing up. He had already formed an opinion of these people and he wrote the script to pass judgement on them. That was clear from the first scene. Since he lacked any empathy for the characters he was able to write this orgy of violence and insult that bordered on the pornographic. He had become so obsessed with the imagery of violence that he neglected to motivate it in any understandable way. It was kinky in its lack of compassion for the characters and their plight and worse yet- it tried to pass off its judgement of the characters as some sort of moral high ground. The voice of the writer was smug and superior. So I asked him- if you don't struggle to understand and feel for these people, then why should I? And if you don't want your audience to care for these people, what do you expect your audience to walk away with? What will they learn about the characters? What will they learn about themselves? If they walk away with a feeling of superiority over these characters haven't you just given your audience permission to ignore what you profess to shine a light on?

To his credit, this screenwriter heard me out and went back to re-writes. It takes a bold writer to do that. It takes a brave person to stretch themselves to try to understand the incomprehensible. That is what a writer needs to do. That is what an actor needs to do. Circumstance can conspire to make monsters of us all and if we want to fight that- if we really want to become better people we need stories that challenge us to empathize. I'm not pimping any kind of moral relativism here- as some have accused me in the past. There is a difference between understanding and condoning. But if you understand what you are up against you will understand how to put up a resistance. Especially if the monster that emerges surprises you by emerging from within.

Economy of Words- Dashiell Hammett

There is something so impressive to me about a writer who has the confidence to write economically. Currently I am combing through the pages of Dashiell Hammett's romantic mystery/ comedy The Thin Man. I am struck by his amazing ability to convey mood, character, subtext, plot and relationship in such short, fast chapters with so few words.

Hammett is direct without being clinical or dull. There are no words wasted for the sake of adornment or ego. It is easy to see why The Thin Man translated so well to film because Hammett's gift is for dialogue. Hammett lets the reader get to know the relationship of Nick and Nora Charles through quick exchanges that leave no question about their trust and love for one another:

We found a table. Nora said: "She's pretty."
"If you like them like that."
She grinned at me. "You got types?"
"Only you, darling- lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."
"And how about the red-head you wandered off with at the Quinns' last night?"
"That's silly," I said. "She just wanted to show me some French etchings."

Their dialogue is snappy, never sappy and always with a wink and a nod. It is a liberated relationship that exists in a masculine and drunken Utopia where feelings don't need to be discussed. Nick is a sardonic wit and Nora is his unquestioned equal. She fascinates me. For all her swagger, Nora is also distinctly feminine. I find it interesting that characters such as Nora are not more common in our post-feminist culture. In a modern writer's hands Nora would come off as loud, wild and perhaps somewhat flighty and naive. She'd be played by an underwear clad Cameron Diaz, flipping her hair and making angry squinty eyes at her drunken husband. However, in Hammett's hands Nora is sophisticated, intelligent, alluring, tough, and extraordinarily compassionate. It isn't that she is the patient, enabling wife of a drunkard who silently endures. She drinks as well as he does, but occasionally protests his constant need for liquor. She trusts him and, oddly enough, he is worthy of her trust. Nick and Nora Charles love each other- messily and admirably.

Nick tries to keep himself from becoming embroiled in the murder mystery that unfolds. He is a reluctant detective, although Nora pokes and prods him to get involved. However, her interest is not of the excitable Nancy Drew variety. Rather it is her kindness that feeds her curiosity. She genuinely cares about those involved even though she admits she may not even like the players in the drama.

The pace of each chapter is quick- but it never feels rushed. There is very little expository language and I marvel at the confidence Hammett has both in his writing style and in his audience's ability to catch the subtext. He does not feel the need to explain himself or his characters. Their actions speak for themselves. It is a novel written with immediacy in mind and does not indulge in nostalgia or in wistful pondering. It is stripped down, direct, sophisticated and, well, kind of sexy.

I'm learning a lot from Mr. Hammett. I don't think I could emulate his style, nor do I think that I necessarily should, but I am appreciative of the unapologetic directness and economy in his writing. There is something I would like to make my own.

The Seven Year Rule - Writer's Edition

Ah yes, more of the seven year rule. I can't seem to get enough of that rule these days.

All of my thinking about the seven year rule has become jumbled. I am very clear on the rule as an actor. As I've stated in previous posts, I have found the seven year rule to be useful when working on a role. Distance from a particular emotional trauma helps me to have control over my choices- it allows me physical freedom and emotional objectivity as I piece a character's life together. However, things get a little murky when I consider the seven year rule as it pertains to my writing.

Should the seven year rule apply to my writing as well? Granted, writing is a private activity and I can prune and edit for as long as I wish (usually not very long at all- I'm not the most patient writer.) and it is okay if I hit a sore spot and cry myself drier than the Mojave. I can always come back to it and no one would be any the wiser. Or would they?

One of my biggest concerns is self-indulgence. Self-indulgence can color an artist's ability to effectively communicate ideas. When a story becomes more about eliciting an emotional response than it is about challenging assumptions and asking hard questions then the story itself becomes a masturbatory exercise. Emotional responses do not make great stories. How many people have you ever seen choke up at the mention of Sophie's Choice only to admit that it was "just okay"? The manipulation of circumstances brings about an overwhelming amount of emotion, but if there are no insights, no questions, no challenges, we learn nothing from the experience beyond "wow, that made me sad". So, is it possible to challenge yourself as a writer to write something immediate to your experience without drowning in it? Or is that simply journaling for the public?

There is something quite valuable in journals. I just wonder if they should be for public consumption. Distance and time do allow for humor to develop, and within that humor comes palatable insight. By that, I mean that humor is one of the most effective ways to communicate difficult ideas. Humor disarms the reader/ viewer and difficult messages can often sneak in and burrow themselves into the audience member's subconscious- allowing them to take in something that may have been too offensive or too painful were it delivered in a more "serious" fashion. My favorite example of this is that Huckleberry Finn was written in Connecticut. Time and distance allow us to see what is universal and what is idiosyncratic about the characters, the time, and the place about which we are writing. This is the beginning of insight, meaning and purpose.

But what about immediacy? What about chronicling the experience in real time? Can there be insight in that? Or should the insight be allowed to deepen and mellow in complexity like a fine wine? How can we tell the difference? How do we know when is the right time to write what?

A friend of mine recently suggested that I write about pregnancy. He had complimented my "glow" and I brushed off the compliment with a cynical remark about how the "glow" was simply a by-product of my body's elevated blood levels and nothing to get too excited about as if it were a reflection of my good taste and fine upbringing. He laughed and told me that other people would find my thoughts on pregnancy entertaining. To be honest, I have been thinking about writing about pregnancy and motherhood for years. Although the perspective I would want to explore would be more about how my parents' influences, their generation, my mother's illness, and my life experiences have made me into the wife/mother/daughter that I am- or more specifically- think that I am. I have a lot of questions about the patterns I've avoided and the patterns I've continued in my life and I believe there is a fictional counterpart to me that could make a compelling character. But when will my writing about that be most effective? Now when I'm in the thick of the experience? Or later when I won't be so invested in taking myself so seriously? Or- would it just be a good exercise for me to write with the intent of keeping my eyes open to my own absurdity?

I have known writers who can do that, and do that quite effectively. Most notably, my good friend Joseph Scrimshaw has made a career of writing in the immediate. His work is riddled with questions about his current struggles in life and art. He just happens to be extraordinarily witty- so you might miss the deeper questions he asks of himself while your beer comes out your nose. (Oh, and there IS beer. There is ALWAYS beer...) That's okay. I think those questions then burrow into your brain like a horrible parasite and then resurface later. I'd be satisfied with that, but I don't quite trust myself to be able to pull that off.

While I am confident in my knowledge and understanding of the application of the seven year rule as an actor- I am not so sure about how to use it as a writer. The only way for me to really tell is to test it.

Over and over and over again.

Logic of the Dreamscape

There are types of dreams that we all have in common. Anxiety can sneak into our dreams in a number of ways- all of them fairly obvious. Who hasn't had the dream about finding yourself naked in a public place? Dreams of being in a driverless automobile are also fairly common. Slightly less common (or perhaps people just don't like to admit to it) are dreams of having to relieve certain pressing intestinal situations without having a private space to do so. Among actors the so called "Actor's Nightmare" where you find yourself onstage unrehearsed and unprepared is so common that Christopher Durang wrote a play about it. It is also normal for a pregnant woman to dream about giving birth to strange creatures (cats, monsters, giant talking pies...) thereby playing out the anxiety of waiting in her sleep. We all experience anxiety. What I find fascinating, however, is that the ways in which certain anxieties present themselves in sleep can be so similar in structure from person to person and yet still maintain the idiosyncrasies of the dreamer.

For example, a rather conservative friend of mine once confessed to me that in her public nudity dream she always finds herself in a formal setting amongst people she wishes to impress in her waking life. Others find themselves ready to give a speech back in their high school class. One woman I know who prides herself on her appearance and public presentation is mortified to find herself naked in a room with all the men she has ever met. As for me personally, the anxiety producing situation is less about where I find myself or in who's company but more about the fact that I am naked in public and no one seems to be paying any attention! Hello! I'm naked over here! Why aren't you looking at me?

Last night I had a curious combination of anxieties mingle into one dream. I was producing and directing a tribute to Carol Burnett in a packed Broadway house. At the last moment the two stars of my show ran out to get hamburgers at a restaurant with a notoriously slow wait staff. (As a side note, the two actors in the dream are friends of mine with whom I had brief producing partnerships before they succumbed to the lure of film and television in LA.) The curtain was about ready to go up and I did not have the two people that I was counting on to deliver the show. I found myself stepping onto the stage and winging it. I covered fairly well, trying to play two roles at once when I was faced with a major dilemma. I had sensed that the audience would love a good pratfall. If I timed it right the laugh would be enormous. However, I worried that I might harm my baby (Yes, I am even pregnant in my dreams). The action slowed down while I weighed my options and decided to go for it by signaling my brilliant stage manager in the wings who anticipated my needs and was ready with a crash box. I dove into the wings, the crash box went off and the crowd went crazy. I staggered back onstage to greedily accept my applause and went blank. I had nothing else. I should have graciously exited but I couldn't think of anything. So I sat down and meaningfully stared into the lights. The crowd turned on me. All the good will I had worked for was slowly ebbing away and all I could do was sit and hope that I would get a black out and fast. Well, it didn't happen. I was left hanging in the light and I could hear the crowd mumbling, "That's not funny", "What is she doing?", "That's stupid!", "Boo!". Finally the lights came down and Carol Burnett herself was kind enough to come onstage and start singing "I'm Shy" from Once Upon a Mattress. I took the opportunity to go to the burger joint to drag back my two actors for the second half. As I was leaving the theater I saw the audience breaking out tissues because they were laughing so hard they were sobbing. I immediately thought of a brilliant way to close the show and started composing in my mind a speech about the meaning of laughter. On the way I saw my sister and her husband peering into the window of a suburban kitchen to admire the bizarre turkey carving technique of a Jamaican woman. Rather than having the bird on a platter she had placed the turkey in a Baby Bjorn and was carving it toward herself. My sister and her husband were fascinated. With classic boldness my sister tapped on the window to request a demonstration. I wanted to warn them about the dangers of carving with a blade facing in the direction of your own neck but I was suddenly confused by the fact that I was standing on a warm beach and strange creatures were emerging from the sand after just being hatched. They mistook me for their mother and I had to lead them down to the ocean or they would die on the hot sands. When I finally reached the burger place, one of my actors had choked on his hamburger and the other refused to leave until her fries arrived.

That is when my alarm went off and I found myself wondering how it was all going to turn out. I hit the snooze, hoping to return to the dream and force it to some kind of resolution, but to no avail. I was unable to see if I could pull off the big closing tribute speech or if I could save my actor's life with the Hiemlich. Even so, I am pleased to say that even though the dream contained a startling number of pressing anxieties- it also gave me the opportunity to produce and direct (and act, I suppose) for a packed Broadway house! Normally my anxiety dreams place me in tiny black boxes where no one is paying much attention. At least this gave me a change of pace and a bigger sense of scale.

However, I don't recommend carving a turkey in a Baby Bjorn. That just seems dangerous.

The Seven Year Rule Revisted

The Seven Year Rule is complicated.

As I've stated in my previous post, there is some definite method to the madness. By violating the rule an actor risks losing control of her choices becoming a slave to her own emotions and disregarding the given circumstances of the text. We've all seen it happen in black boxes across the country. I once saw a perplexing production of Country Girl in which an actor completely disappeared into himself while staring at his own outstretched hand and slowly sinking to the floor while the action continued around him. It was terribly distracting for me as an audience member because I just could not comprehend the relevance of his choice to the play. His "moment" was so all consuming for him that he created a black hole on the stage and I missed a good 10 minutes of the play because of it. His company members were obliged to bring him back from the brink so that he could say his next line. They did it with great difficulty.

I have no idea what that actor was "using" in that moment and I can only speculate that he was violating the Rule. However, the nature of his distraction was not unfamiliar to me. Self-indulgence and self-fascination are telltale signs of an actor using something "hot" as an emotional propellant. Although one can never quite tell if it is the violation of the Rule or just a selfish actor.

The Rule, however, does not preclude us from using immediate emotional stimulus. On the contrary. One should never suppress what is bubbling up from your daily interactions. For example, during a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which I was playing Helena, I found myself laboring under intense, self-inflicted pressure. I believed that the director thought I was a moron. My mother was coming out to see the production and she had not seen me perform in almost 10 years. I felt woefully inadequate and unlovable. I spent most of my time backstage crying my eyes out but once I hit the stage I did my best to cover up my shame and perceived sense of immediate rejection. My cast mates were always waiting in the wings with quizzical looks on their faces. Why aren't you just letting it go? You are so Helena right now. Get on that stage and use Shakespeare to express your self-pity! It wasn't until the dreaded performance in front of my mother was over that I let myself experience onstage what I was experiencing behind the scenes. My work took off and Helena and I were finally one. I did not spend the performance weeping- the tears I had shed were merely a manifestation of blocked energy from a denial of key circumstances in the text. When I let myself feel what I was experiencing in the moment and gave myself over to it I found Helena's humanity- and my own.

The Immediate must never be ignored but your system's ability to handle past traumas should always be respected. This profession can be emotionally treacherous and one must be careful not to prostitute themselves through their art. Some things are private and should remain so in order for the actor to do his work safely.

The Seven Year Rule

In school there were certain teachers who would drill it into our heads never to "use" anything emotionally touchy from our lives that occurred LESS than seven years ago. The theory was that anything that happened during that time frame would be too emotionally "hot", and rather than using "it", "IT" would control you.

It takes seven years for every cell in your body to be replaced by new cells. The argument is that once seven years has passed and all the cells that had experience the event first hand have been replaced you will have enough physical and psychological distance to be able to use the event without falling apart.

I wonder if the Strasbergs ever told Marilyn Monroe about the seven year rule?

In school, I had just decided it was safer to follow the rule. I didn't buy into the rule 100%, but I wasn't about to dismiss the wisdom of an octagenarian who could see through my soul even when I thought she had been napping during my performance. (Seriously, that woman had some scary insights!) As I passed through my classes, however, I began to collect all kinds of fascinating information about how, why and where my body stores information. The seven year rule didn't seem to look so silly after a while.

Through repetition our bodies develop a memory of their own- something not involving the conscious mind. This is how we can train ourselves to perform marvelous physical feats without having to consciously plan every physical step. Let's say you are learning a dance routine. Each portion of the routine requires intense mental concentration. My foot goes back, my hand counters the weight over hear, my center of gravity shifts... but with repetition you can eventually perform a complex system of movements simply by allowing yourself to feel the rhythm of the chosen music. Your body has recorded this kinesthetic memory at the cellular level. The theory says that when an original cell dies the one that replaces it carries a copy of that memory so the body can call upon that particular routine later. The more repetition, the better the copy in subsequent cells. I don't know how correct that is from the standpoint of biology, but I DO know that I can still perform my pompom squad audition routine from 1988.

I began to experiment with my body's memory in my second year of school. It was after a particularly disturbing session of body work just before we had left for holiday break that I realized the power of my own body to protect my brain and my emotional state. I was in no way consciously aware of the amount of stress I had been under. I had felt pretty confident that I was holding things together even though there were all kinds of money issues, relationship issues, and particularly stressful family developments all happening at the same time. When our instructor suggested that we do body work as a pre-holiday treat I was ready to roll up my sleeves and physically manipulate a fellow classmate into the land of bliss and relaxation. We were an odd number that day and so the teacher opted to use me as his example body for the day. I could not have expected what happened next.

Once I was on the mat he began to demonstrate how to work the shoulders. Things were fine at first but once he found a tight knot and started to work it I was assaulted by all of these feelings that I had been sweeping under the rug for what must have been weeks. I tried not to cry, but the more he worked it, the more I felt the injustice of the situation I had been in and the more I couldn't stop replaying an incident in my head. It was as if the knot was a playback button on a recording device. My instructor could see that I was in a bit of trouble. He sent the rest of the class off to work and then whispered to me that he was going to work on me for the entire hour. He instructed me to let it get ugly. I'm nothing if not a good student so it got ugly. It got very ugly.

He found spots all over my body that triggered very emotional and immediate responses. There was a warehouse of emotional baggage stuck in my body. My boyfriend in my fingertips, my father in my shoulders, my dog in my lower back... on and on and on it went. I couldn't stop the rush of anxiety and sadness and I began to wail like an emergency siren. The sound flew out of my body without my will. I simply HAD to. The pressure building up inside was too great, I was unable to maintain any kind of composure. My teacher reassured me with great kindness that I needed to let it go and he prompted me to be sloppy every time I attempted to stop crying or drooling or stop my nose from running all over the place. He just brought me some kleenex and continued to work me until I couldn't make any more sound.

When class was over I was exhausted but feeling much better. My face was a snotty, puffy mess and I was a little ashamed to meet my classmates' eyes. However, as is the case with good ensembles, I was met without judgement or revulsion but with quiet hugs and non-verbal gestures of support. I went about the rest of my day trying to figure out what had happened to me.

After this incident I began to notice how my body stores stress, grief, happiness, and desire. I can recognize it before it builds to such a pitch and I have found ways to release it. I even attempted to access these parts of my body- the parts with this immediate store of emotion- in my work but I found it to be overwhelming. It overwhelmed my technique and destroyed my sense of textual circumstances. I was no longer crafting performance, but letting self-indulgent emotional display take over. This was not good for my work. It was not good for any kind of storytelling. It was therapy.

Art may have therapeutic properties, but GOOD art is NOT THERAPY. We should always avoid this kind of selfishness and emotional public masturbation. Above all, everything an actor does needs to be a choice.

That is where the seven year rule fits for an actor. It is about experiencing the freedom to make choices and not being walled in by one experience or another. If you need to fall apart, falling apart should be your choice. If you need to slip but still try to hold it together, your emotional life should be constructed to allow you to do so. You should not be ruled by the emotion or obligatory emotional reactions. Circumstances need to be crafted, rehearsed, repeated, memorized and then forgotten so that you may live in the circumstances and be in control of your choices.

Writer's Block

I used to brag that I never got writer's block.

The truth is, I have always kept myself busy with so many other types of projects that I was never forced to write when I didn't feel like it. For example, I would line up a writing project followed by a directing project coinciding with a building/ craft project. That way if the writing wasn't working I was always involved in something else and I would never notice the block. Now that I am trying to focus on one thing at a time I realize that writer's block is a deadly predator that needs to feast on my creative brain several times a day.

I've never freaked out about it before. As busy as I've been, I've never missed a deadline- self imposed or otherwise. However, this is the first time I am experiencing writer's block with down time. I'm like a shark. I need to keep moving or I drown. So sitting on the couch watching episode after episode of MythBusters doesn't feel all that productive. It feels like oxygen deprivation.

However, I am determined to go through this one. I am going to experience the stewing. It will pass. I don't believe for one second that I've exhausted all of my creative reserves. I'm just percolating. Consciously, slowly, painfully percolating without the benefits of caffeine, nicotine and/or psycho-sexual drama.

Basically, I'm just sitting on the couch watching CNN until a new episode of MythBusters is on and learning to be okay with it. Sometimes carpe diem means "sitting on your ass and liking it".

You Can USE That...

Young actors can say some pretty stupid things sometimes.

That is to be expected, of course, many of them just having drank the Kool-Aid of whatever methodology they've chosen to study. I can't knock it, really, it is part of the process and I firmly believe in the Kool-Aid myself. It is in the application of the methodology- the Kool-Aid, if you will- that can trip up the young and studious actor. I know, I was there myself.

When I was pregnant with my first child all my actor friends congratulated me by saying something along the lines of, "Wow! Just think how you'll be able to use that." I remember resenting that. For the first time in my life, something was actually more exciting to me than acting and I bristled at the suggestion that I would be called upon to bring this sacred part of my life into my work. I had no specific objections to "using" my experience as a new mother in my craft. I still don't. I must admit that being a mother has, indeed, shaped my approach as an actor and as a director, but I couldn't shake the feeling that a few of these actors were referring specifically to labor and delivery. One of them actually confirmed this suspicion by saying to me, "Just think what the pain of childbirth will do for you!".

Well. That's just stupid.

When will I be called upon to use that particular sensation? When I'm starring in some MOV or playing a bit part in ER where I will be asked to sweat through some phony birth hysterics? It doesn't relate to my birth experience. Maybe it's the pain- specifically- which I should be using. But that pain of birth is not torture, it is not death, it is not linked to anything but anticipation and a most wonderful and terrifying joy. Perhaps it would be useful in portraying some religious ecstasy? Well, I already have my substitution for that.

Here is where I must pause and talk about substitutions for a bit. I worry about "substitutions", as they are called, because I feel they are sometimes over-used, or rather, used too far into the process. In terms of getting to a place of personal understanding of the circumstances I think substitutions from your own life are quite valuable. A substitution should serve only to build a bridge between your own experience and that of the character. After that you must internalize that understanding and replace the substitution with the actual circumstances of the text. The substitution should then be replaced by something less intrusive. Let's call that something an "as if". If the substitution is the bridge, the bridge should span from you on one side with your chosen substitution and the character on the other accompanied by the "as if". You have to cross the bridge. You cannot stay stuck on your own side of the bridge playing your substitution or you will be self-indulgent and outside the circumstances of the text.

Which brings us back to the whole child birth scenario. Even if you haven't given birth you can play a scene in a labor and delivery ward without having given birth yourself. It is about being specific. Clinically specific. This would require some study, but it does NOT require you getting pregnant and giving birth in order to play. As with any text, a good actor will strip down the circumstances and craft each one without glossing over or making assumptions. Walk around in your body. Add each circumstance one by one and see how your body responds. You are 30 pounds heavier. Where do you feel it? What have you eaten? When did you eat it? Your stomach is higher up and the sphincters that normally keep your stomach acid contained are strained and they relax in response. Inside your uterus is 6-8 pounds of bone and muscle with a mind of its own. How does it feel? The same muscles that engage during a bowel movement (we all know where those are) are the ones that contract during labor. Allow yourself to feel the 3-dimensional space inside your abdomen. Get a picture of your pelvic floor and how it cradles your infant. See how those muscles respond to a contraction. Etc. Etc. Then you add the circumstances of your partner, the place of birth, is it early, is it late, etc. It is something anyone who is willing to challenge their assumptions about birth and use their imaginations can do and do well. It doesn't mean you HAVE to start screaming and threatening all men in the delivery room. That is just a cliche. And even if the script calls for you to do so- there are a million different ways to do it. You can look every man in the eye and tell them how much you hate them with cool clarity. You don't have to flail and be helpless about it. Of course, it all depends on the circumstances.

When I was in acting school we had a seminar with Harvey Keitel. The moment I remember the most clearly is when Mr. Keitel got into an exchange with a fellow student of mine. I don't remember the exact exchange, but I DO remember his response. After the student had asked her question, Mr. Keitel stood straight and tall and bellowed, "WHO TOLD YOU NOT TO USE YOUR IMAGINATION?!". This was amusing enough, but since it was, you know, Harvey Keitel, it was also kind of frightening. It seemed as if he was going to find out which one of our teachers had perpetrated this crime and he would "take care of it". Which in turn made it that much more funny. I think about that a lot as I construct circumstances as an actor and as a writer. Imaginary does not necessarily mean "untrue".

I know I've mentioned this before, but it illustrates my point nicely so I will bring it up again. While working on Lady MacBeth (the Sleepwalking scene, of course) I discovered that part of her torturous dream included murdering her own little boy. At the time, I had no son. I had not given birth. I had never committed infanticide. (Umm, for the record, I still have no experience with infanticide!) However, I could construct this beautiful, pudgy little blonde boy with creamy white cheeks, fat little fingers and the smell of graham crackers lingering on his breath. I could see how he walked- being only 16 months old he would awkwardly stomp his way toward me. I could feel his trusting little arms struggling to reach around my neck as I bent down and cradled his little head in my hands. I reached my hand around the back of his head around to his soft, smooth little chin. I yanked. I felt his neck snap and his body go limp. I felt the finality of my actions. I felt my heart split as I also felt my resolve. It was purely imaginary, but it brings tears to my eyes as I think about it now. A well of horror and self loathing bubbles in my heart. I feel shaky. None of this is real. I used no substitutions. I simply constructed the moment as fully as I could and allowed myself to be connected to them physically (this being the most important step, in my opinion) and Lady M's nightmare is suddenly a reality to me. It is suddenly my reality and I feel I am a bloody monster that needs to die.

Yeah. Who told you not to use your imagination? It comes in handy and can often be a lot more direct than using substitutions. Although, substitutions come in handy when you have to kiss someone you don't find attractive or you have to construct the character's logic when it doesn't seem like any kind of logic to you. That said, you can't leave it at finding the substitution. Substitutions should never be played. They need to be swallowed, digested and the unnecessary parts excreted so that you keep what is essential to the circumstances and stay within the text- never separate from it.

For Actors

I do not often make class announcements on this blog, however, it has come to my attention that Charles Goforth- actor/ director/ teacher and LAByrinth Theater Company Member- is going to be offering a 6 week, 10 session class this spring at Center Stage in NYC. I had the pleasure of working with Charles in LAB's Master Class this past spring and I can't resist the opportunity to encourage him in this endeavor.

Here is Charles in his own words:

"Inspiration for this class came first at auditions. For years I auditioned to "get the job," and often my concentration would sputter. As a director I've seen many actors audition, work hard and be mostly unexceptional. I felt the struggle from both sides of the table. But I saw the problem, at least for me: The reality of my audition was more compelling than the reality my character was trying to live through.

It was about the integrity of technique. So auditions became more of an internal test. They became less "did I get it?" and more "did I get down to choices that really - no, really - capture me?" I stopped "auditioning" and started doing my work while casting people happened to be watching.

I started to get hired. And as a teacher I was inspired to give other actors a chance to breathe and to focus on questions of ownership and joy: How do we begin for real? Can we sit down, and with text analysis that's personal and true, find our own "whys" in the words? Can we build actions that are fun, that pin our concentration and compel us into each arriving moment? Do we have a discipline that unleashes original acting? Can we depend on it, and can we use it to build a character different from us? In short, do we own the work?"

Classes begin March 29 and run to May 13 running 6 Saturdays and 4 Tuesday Evenings- culminating in an evening of scenes and monologues. If you are interested in more information about Charles and his classes you can email him at goforth.centerstage@gmail.com.

John Adams

It has been a long time since we've seen a historical mini-series on television. It has been even longer since a historical mini-series has had the mainstream push that HBO's miniseries event John Adams has had. The buzz before the show has caused even non-geek excitement about this decidedly unsexy historical figure.

Yes. I said unsexy. John Adams did not exactly cut the most dashing of colonial figures but David McCullough strives to give him, and his extraordinary wife, their due in this mini-series. So far.

I'll admit. I'm leery of bio-pics in general and even more concerned about drama that features such prominent historical figures. So often writers tend to weigh heavily on hyperbole, reverence and/or revulsion when it comes to such subjects. The person(s) in question are usually either overly praised or mercilessly "exposed" for their shortcomings as suits the writer's whim and rarely do I walk away with a sense of the real human. Rather, I tend to walk away with a better understanding of the writer's opinion of the person and the circumstances involved. Drama is not meant to "report", but rather to "retell" and there is a lot of wiggle room in retelling and that can lead to critical distortions of the truth.

Luckily, the first two episodes of this series seem to side-step these land mines. So far the text has yet to exalt or defile the man, but has sought to explore his dilemmas as if they were urgent- not foregone conclusions. We are allowed to empathize with Adams and that empathy is strikingly tempered by the input of his intelligent and insightful wife- Abigail.

Historically speaking, their relationship was an extraordinary partnership of intellectual equals and proves itself more than worthy of exploration by our modern culture awash with all kinds of gender role confusion and conflict. Here is where Giamatti and Linney have earned their salt. Not only have they deftly handled the circumstances of time and place, but they have shattered the expectations and preconceived notions of that time and place. In their hands, John and Abigail are loving and playful with one another in a way that brings the audience beyond the formality of colonial culture and language. Their rapport is deeply personal and the shadows of resentment that flicker through Abigail's eyes as she watches her ambitious beloved leave her to tend to the children and the farm again and again I can only describe as deeply resonant.

I do wonder, however, how much "speechifyin'" from the ornery and loquacious Adams the series can support. At the moment the speeches and the rants are fascinatingly juxtaposed with Adam's insecurity, but can that theme progress from here on out? I do hope that it can, but that is a piece of dramatic gymnastics considering the man's choices as he passes through his life. We will just have to wait and see.

The series is, on the whole, very well cast and well shot by Tak Fujimoto- with the exception of some tiresome hand-held footage during the Boston Massacre, but that can be forgiven. I understand that choice. However, I must make note of an actor who tickles my fancy somewhat these days and that is Tom Wilkinson as the cantankerous Benjamin Franklin. He blows onto the small screen with a wittily dismissive air and overshadows Adams with ease. I am eager to watch this historical relationship and all of its complexity unfold. The small taste I've had has been a delight.

If you haven't seen the first two episodes yet, find a way to catch up. You won't be sorry.

The Pleasure of Silence

There are certain films I turn to when I want to remember what drives my love for acting. Some of them I watch on purpose. Others I stumble across on TCM and swear I'll only watch this next scene but find I am unable to turn away. These films range in style and subject matter, but the thing that all of these films share is moments of silence.

Not overly dramatic silences. Sometimes the silence is shared between two characters who have just come to an understanding of the circumstances while others babble on about them. Sometimes the silence is merely a beat. Sometimes it is an entire film. That is the case with the 1928 silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc. With the camera focused on tight close ups of the character's faces throughout you can't help but be pulled in to the very real human drama of a young girl on trial for her life. This film is naked, raw, breathtaking and heartbreaking. Each dilation of the eye, twitch of the cheek and push of the brow cuts to the very center of human emotion. The saint falls away, and we are left with a young girl marked for a painful and tragic death. Haunting.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is an exciting and difficult film. But one does not need to be tortured to experience the pleasures of silence. Last night I watched one of my favorite films, The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. This film benefits greatly from one of my favorite directors, Billy Wilder, who understands the power of the unspoken. The script patiently doles out information to the characters and lets them realize what we, the audience, have known all along. Watching Mr. Baxter and Miss Kubilick make their discoveries about one another in the shot gun blasts of silence that riddle this picture is the very definition of sublime. A classic example of Wilder, this film is funny, dark, and touchingly human. When Miss Kubilick blithely hands her broken compact mirror to Mr. Baxter so he can take a look at himself in his new hat he recognizes it as the compact belonging to the woman who has been having an affair with his boss. An affair he had been helping to facilitate by letting his boss use his apartment. The heartbreak falls quickly from his eyebrows to his feet. "Your mirror's broken" he says. "I like it that way. It makes me look the way I feel. " She replies. There's a beat. Neither character fully understands the circumstances of their relationship, but he has just learned something new. In a split second we see his hopes for the future fall apart. She, however, does not realize his affection for her or understand that he has just learned something about her. In that moment you can't help but feel deeply for these two people.

In To Kill a Mockingbird you'll find my all time favorite moment of silence. At the end of the film when we finally see the mysterious and previously frightening Boo Radley behind the bedroom door we get to watch Scout grow years older in a brief moment. A flame of comprehension ignites in her eyes. The world is suddenly a very different place for her and all she says is, "Hey Boo." I get teary just thinking about it.

Casablanca is overflowing with great silent moments. No one does brooding silences like Bogey. Although I think some of my favorite Bogey silences are in a lesser known film with Bogart and Gloria Graham called In a Lonely Place. Bogart plays a charming writer who falls for a beautiful neighbor. Unfortunately, he is suspected of murder. Graham believes Bogey. How could she not? He's so charming and kind, but as professional circumstances and the pressures of the investigation begin to weigh on him, his notorious temper begins to plant the seeds of fear in her mind. In a glorious and horrible twist (which I will not reveal in hopes you will search out this wonderful film!) we find Bogey and Graham staring at one another from across the room and in this silence we know exactly what will happen next even though we never see it. I love that.

Silence can be done badly, however. I find that the silences in The Darjeeling Limited are heavy handed. The scene where the brothers sit in silence with their mother and stare intently at one another is a horrible flashback to acting classes. They are powerful in the context of the classroom, but not in the context of the story. To give Wes Anderson some credit, however, I have to say the suicide sequence in The Royal Tannenbaums is moving and delightful.

Of course, I can't quite end my cataloguing of silences without bringing up that tiny little moment in Harold and Maude when Harold spots the tattooed number on Maude's arm. Neither character ever says a word about it. No one goes into therapy over it. It is a new piece of information that simply becomes a part of the dance between lovers. Isn't that lovely?

It is. It IS lovely, because the fact of the matter is that life is lived so much less in words and expressions than it is in silence. We share moments of silences with loved ones, acquaintances and complete strangers every day. When we are open to them they can be just as liberating, powerful, touching and haunting as they are in the movies. More so. Because at the end of the day- those moments are ours.

Is the Theatre Really Dead?

Simon and Garfunkel sang that question a few decades ago. I remember the first time I heard that question in my mid-teens I was indignant. The theatre could never actually DIE. It is too much a part of the human soul!

Yeah. Little did I know that the theatre was dead, is dead and has been dead for a long time. What's worse is that I've done my fair share to kill it.

I don't go.

It's that simple. I just don't go.

That doesn't mean that I don't miss it or that I don't want to go. I have plenty of excuses. It is too expensive. I don't really care to see a musical rehashing of some film that I found mildly amusing sometime in the 1980's. Anything that is challenging seems almost too challenging. Let's face it. I'm tired. I don't go out much at all anymore. It is too exhausting and the idea that I would have to get tickets in advance, organize a babysitter and commit to NOT being in my pajamas at 8:00 PM just seems too much to bear. Although I've already said it, it bears repeating... it is just too expensive. At an average of a $50.00- $60.00 ticket for nosebleeds and $12-$15/ hour for a sitter it is just too cost prohibitive. And forget about going out for dinner beforehand. That would break the bank for a couple who is trying to live on a budget, save for "retirement" and pull themselves out of debt. As much as I love the theatre I've got bigger fish to fry.

Part of the reason I've produced theatre is so I could actually SEE some theatre. I do have opportunities to get cheap tickets to the odd show now and again, but for some reason I can't quite work up the emotional fortitude to go. Usually it works out that I would have to go see the show alone. Which is fine, except that I like to talk about the show afterward. There's nothing worse than having to scan the audience for another lone theatre goer and then trying to devise a way to get them to discuss the show with you without coming off like a freak. I usually save my commitment energy for seeing artists I know doing small shows. I like to lend my support when I can. Of course, this has its drawbacks. As a producer of "small shows" myself, I can tell you that "small shows" are often just that. Small. In which case going becomes an exercise for my directorial eye and not so much about the joy of seeing a show. I can't remember the last show I went to that I just sat down and watched. I miss doing that. Terribly.

I often sit and think about what would be a good enough deal to get me out the door to go see a show. What would it take? Well, it would take a good show, I suppose. But what does THAT mean? I've become so cynical that I find myself dismissing concepts because they seem too, well, conceptual. I'm a fan of the kitchen sink. I love simple drama done well. I suppose I would get off my ass to see a group of unknowns tackle something impossible like A Streetcar Named Desire. I don't care to see any celebrities do it. That's too much expectation- most of it bad. I don't want to go to the theatre just to cross my arms and wear a "prove it to me" scowl. That's no fun. And I don't want to go just because there's a really good light show or expensive costumes and sets. I want to see people. Real people. Not cardboard robots programmed to emote. The theatre I've seen in the past few years has just been too overwrought with self-indulgent emotional outbursts. What's even worse than that is watching someone with technical skill go to that hyper emotional place. When that hysteria reaches a peak and yet every word is clearly spoken and fully supported by breath and technically perfect... I want to vomit.

Either tone down the hysteria or tone down the technique. Together they read as rehearsed.

I know I ask for the impossible. Maybe that is so I will have the excuse to stay home. But I recognize that this also means that the audiences I want to reach are fighting to sit on their couches in their pajamas as well. Once I figure out how to reach ME I might be able to figure out how to reach THEM.

The Artist Battles with the Parent

Internally there is a constant battle.

You'd think that one could be both and artist and a parent without having the two clash. It seems that they would be loving, compatible pursuits. Yeah. Not so much.

In the past week my first grader went on a field trip with his class to see a play that takes place in France in 1942. Yes. You can see where this is going. The play is about two young girls who develop a friendship -one Catholic and one Jewish- under the threat of the Nazi regime. The play was based on a children's book and was produced by a company here in New York for which I have a lot of respect. I'll admit that I was worried about the subject matter and my son's developmental readiness. However, I have also seen this particular company's work both in the classroom and on the stage for the last 3 years and I have a lot of faith in their mission and their sensitivity. I white knuckled it, signed the permission slip, paid the admission price and let him go.

Now, let it be said that there were notices coming home about the subject matter of the book they would be studying through this artist residency. There was open time during an evening family workshop to ask questions and raise concerns about the upcoming performance. Then there was the permission slip and admission fee... my point being there were plenty of times that the parents were alerted to the sensitive nature of the material. If there were concerns or misgivings, the parents had ample time (in my opinion) to talk to teachers, the principal and/or the representatives from the program. However, the majority of the parents didn't say a peep until the "damage was done" and the children had already seen the performance.

Early this week the parents' Yahoo group was ablaze with controversy- railing about developmental appropriateness and pointing fingers at the principal for allowing such a thing to be in the lower grades at all. I was stymied. After all- I took issue with it as well but I recognize that I made a conscious decision to allow my child to participate and if there was any blame to be laid it must be laid on me- as the parent. The following was part of my post in that group:

"I do think the subject matter was pushing the envelope a little for these guys. I was not going to bring it up for several more years because my son just doesn't have the context for it. He doesn't understand war or that there are perceived differences between people and other cultures. Frankly, I barely understand it as an adult. It is hard for me to wrap my more experienced mind around it so I can't imagine how the pieces fit together for him. I chose to let him have this experience, however. I elected for him to have it by signing the permission slip and handing over my money. I can't really say that I regret it. It will be slowly dissected in our home for months to come at my son's speed. I would not have chosen this time to address it, but that is more because I don't like dealing with the fact that we live in an unpleasant world where people choose to do horrible things. We live in a world where genocide is not the distant past but our present and, sadly our future as well. I'd rather not have my 6 year old know about that because he's perfect the way he is and I admit that I am rather selfish about protecting that. But the realities of the world have a weird way of imposing themselves on our children no matter what we do and I
don't think he was destroyed by the knowledge he has received. What I know is that he will tuck it away and deal with it in small increments as he acquires new bits of knowledge about history and human behavior. What he experienced at that performance and through that book will become an important part of his identification with history as he grows up. Just as my childhood experiences tromping through Civil War battlegrounds and seeing my Dad's collection of Civil War paintings depicting the carnage of those same battles has shaped me as I began to develop my sense of compassion. It isn't pleasant. It isn't the timing I would have chosen. But I have no regrets. Our cruelest natures are revealed when we are most afraid. That is how war, genocide, and brutality happen- not because of strength, but because of fear. We cannot confront fear by ignoring it. So here we are, the O'Connor Family whistling in the dark."

Well. I was then pounced upon by other parents who insisted that their children did not "get it" and that now they are suffering because of widespread developmental insensitivity on the part of the school. On one hand, I understand their anger. After all, I once gave a friend of mine a lecture for taking his seven year old to Ground Zero and showing him pictures of people jumping out of the building. I guess I justify that rant because he just sprung it on his poor kid and did it to keep his kid from goofing off while he was there. I thought he was needlessly frightening his child to get more "appropriate" behavior and not providing context from which the child could learn. But who am I to talk? I willingly subjected MY child to the Holocaust- regardless of how sensitively it was portrayed. Aren't I a monster for doing that?

Other parents were angry because there was a character who was a Hitler Youth. The point was to show the Nazis as humans too and to show how easily one can fall prey to propaganda even when it is against our better nature. And, yes, it was a musical. Nazis got to sing and dance, but it was no "Springtime for Hitler". Not in my opinion. Other parents thought it was a glorification of anti-Semitism. There are some things you just aren't allowed to explore in any context. Maybe a show aimed at families is not the place for such complexities- but I really, really WANT it to be. The artist inside me really NEEDS it to be. However, the mother inside me desperately wants to protect her child. The difficulty is, if I really want what I say I want for my child I have to expose him to unpleasant things and I need to challenge his critical thinking in ways I might not get to control.

The artist in me is angry. The fact that I live in a place where "developmentally appropriate" is even a serious discussion makes me feel pampered and spoiled. Do parents around the world have that luxury? I'm sure there are some Sudanese parents who would love to have that discussion, but with family, neighbors and friends being slaughtered they just need to survive. Yes. I have some bleeding heart, liberal guilt that my child gets the "benefits" of this debate while others are subjected to atrocities and for the most arbitrary reason of all- simple geography. My son was born somewhere that doesn't have that problem.

So, shouldn't I, as a parent, take advantage of that stroke of luck? Shouldn't I protect him from inappropriate reading material? Shouldn't I shelter him from harsh realities until he is "old enough" to be able to "process" them? I probably should. But that means that I should shield him from fairy tales and fables, myths and even the Bible. I should keep him away from Harry Potter, pirates, and Star Wars. Darth Vadar destroys an entire planet, for Pete's sake! If I did that, then I would keep from myself my most valuable teaching tool- story.

In our house the story is king. Stories mean absolutely everything. We process our feelings through other characters. We broaden our outlook through tales of another's experience. When something is too difficult to work through directly- we break out a book or a movie and filter our own confusion through a character's lens. Stories help us to understand and to be more compassionate. A story about the Holocaust is just as real to my six year old as the story of Luke Skywalker. Villains exist in story because they exist in life. We have to deal with them somehow.

I sat down with my son to gauge how the performance and the book were affecting him. After all, I had overheard him and his friends playing "Nazi" on the playground. Of course this disturbed my liberal sensibilities, especially since my son volunteered to be the Nazi. Then I remembered that he always plays the bad guys- and he is about as evil as a newborn kitten. He is six so he processes things that frighten or confuse him through play. But it still warranted a discussion.

What I learned from our discussion was that he understood that the Nazis in the play were not "real" but actors. He had empathized with the girls in the play but he had focused not on the terror but on the uplifting ending- friendship endured and a life was saved. "Playing bad guys is fun, Mom. But I'm not a bad guy in real life. In real life, I'm a funny guy." When I told him that I had considered keeping him home from the performance that day I saw a fire in his eyes that nearly knocked me off my seat.

"I'm not too young, Mom. I can handle it and I'd be angry if you ever tried to keep me from something like that."

Funny, but I think I made the right decision- against my better judgement. I have a kid whose intellect that I can trust and deserves my respect. In my own family, at least, I need to allow for that complexity and that difficulty because the apple don't fall too far from the tree.

There's Nothing For Me to Watch!

In my present emotionally and hormonally vulnerable condition I have found that an afternoon at the movies is fraught with peril. There is very little that the multiplex can offer me that will not cause me to spend the remainder of the evening huddling in a corner trying to think of happy thoughts to erase the visions of terror and gore from my mind. The few options that are left are dreary in their mindlessness and their paint-by-numbers approach to entertainment.

I'd like to see Sweeney Todd or There Will Be Blood. I might even venture into the land of the Cohen brothers for No Country for Old Men, but I am all to familiar with the torturous hijinx and nihilistic coolness of which the Cohen brothers are capable. I've been warned away from these films by good friends who don't want to receive an angry and disgusted phone call from me after my viewing these pictures. Don't see it while you are vulnerable like this. It won't be pleasant. But it isn't just my pregnancy that keeps me from these films- although it does make me a bit more reactive than usual. I still haven't seen Boys Don't Cry, and that is because I can't. You see, I get it. I get it that causing others pain is bad. I understand that murder is morally reprehensible. I don't need to see gory war scenes, because I already get it. I wonder if there isn't any other subject matter under the sun? Or are we just reliving those lazy glory days in the stands at the Colliseum?

I want to see films that challenge me and even challenge my moral compass, but I want to be able to sit through them without vomiting. There are some who would argue that the gore helps to emphasize the immorality of certain actions and how far we have slipped as a culture. I say that is an over simplified justification for making blood and death somewhat sexy. How many times does the guy in the trunk have to come back to life only to be horribly beaten to death? Haven't we seen that gag already? And it is a gag. Don't kid yourself. We know the dilemma. There is a moment in which the character can redeem himself by choosing to face the consequences of his actions and perhaps try to save this person's life. But that is never an option, is it? We always know there's a tire iron. It is never a surprise when the victim takes way too long to die, but we'll have to sit through it to justify having just spent $11.75 for the honor of seeing this picture.

There are more creative and less sensational ways of depicting violence that actually highlight the moral dilemma as opposed to the blood and guts. How many times have I watched Fail Safe and been appropriately horrified? The action is that film is simply people talking, and I am riveted. If you think blood is necessary for suspense, how about All the President's Men? I even know what happens in that film step by step before I see it, but there is a looming sense of danger throughout. It can be done, but blood lust is ruling our entertainment at the moment.

I keep thinking about that Mike Judge movie Idiocracy where the number one film is a movie called Ass. That's all it is. For 90 minutes is an ass farting. It was up for several Oscars that year. That's the joke in the film. However, I don't think Mike Judge's assessment of the future is too far off from the now. My options for film viewing today are "Blood and Guts", "Fart Jokes", or "Tepid, Sentimental Chick Flick". God help me! Have we run out of things to discuss? Have we run out of things to care about?

Oh, I know. We've had some political thrillers and the occasional Grisham novel made celluloid, but even those films are dry and lacking in discourse. They are agendas on screen. All answers without any questions. No one cares to discover anymore. They just titillate and agitate. I am far from impressed.

The movies I mentioned above, might be good movies. But I'll never know, because my stomach and my nerves can't afford to sit through them. There's nothing for me to watch.

We Love You Miss Hannigan!

If there is anything you could blame for my involvement in the theater it would have to be "Annie". Every redheaded actress I know has her "Annie" story. Every one of us outgoing reds figured we WERE Annie. We were all spirited, charming and resourceful! Clearly it was a role made for only me (us!). The stories only take two tracks, either it was her crowning achievement or the role that got away. For me, it was the role that got away.

I was too old to play Annie when the opportunity finally came to my small midwestern town. I auditioned anyway and I did not get a part, but I was offered a chance to create fairy tales from improvised structures with other too-old-for-Annie theater geeks for the summer. That was clearly that. It was a way for me to write out loud and get immediate satisfaction as opposed to the hours I had previously spent plunking away on my mother's electric typewriter working on short stories that only my best friend would read.

I was never really the musical theater type. I can sing but I'm not showy. As a general rule, musicals aren't what floats my boat. With that being said, I can't help but find it fascinating that of the top three theatrical events that have most influenced me, two of them were musicals. The first being "Annie" and the second being a musical about the lynching of 4 black men in Duluth, MN called "The Last Minstrel Show". I've been raving about that show for over 15 years. It completely changed the way I looked at the theater.

"The Last Minstrel Show" was produced at Penumbra Theater in St. Paul, MN. I spent the entire performance with my jaw dragging on the floor beneath my seat. The black cast performed in black face for a white, liberal Minnesota crowd. They made you comfortable with racist humor, let you laugh at it and then pulled the rug out from underneath you and showed you what you just did. It was eye opening. It made me see that I did not understand as much about the world as I thought I did. This is a huge feat to pull off with a cocky teenager, but I left the theater with that heady feeling of having learned a little too much about myself and the world I lived in. Damn that was good.

Every once in a while I think about auditioning for a musical. For laughs, I guess. Of course, now that I am older I keep thinking that the only musical role for me would be Miss Hannigan. "Little Girls" is a song that I began to truly understand as I spent two years as a stay at home mother. Boy, little brats can just burrow under your skin! Every time I see Carol Burnett do it in the film version I can't help but get a little twitchy wishing I could have a crack at it. Of course, I've only seen auditions for that role twice in the last few years. Both times I've been visibly pregnant. Damn. That just won't do! It seems that "Annie" will be forever out of my reach and I have no hopes of ever being in "The Last Minstrel Show". That would just be wrong.

Of course, there is a musical in the works with Playful Substance- believe it or not. It won't be as fluffy as "Annie" and I doubt it will be as confrontational as "The Last Minstrel Show" and I probably won't be IN it. This is all just as well, I suppose. Every time I tell someone I will be working on a musical I laugh involuntarily. I just can't believe it. It doesn't seem to fit somehow- which, I suppose, is precisely the reason to do it.