First off, cast member Lisa Howard-Welch interviewed with
Larry Coressel
on WDPR's Arts Focus for
the segment that aired this morning, and will again at 4:55 this afternoon.
At some point it will be available at the link in the previous sentence.
As for the podcast, Ms. Howard-Welch also interviewed with me last night
as I shot hers and Jared Mola's commentary segments. I shot no other
footage; I'm saving the rest of the b-roll work until the cast is further
into their costuming, though I may shoot a little bit at the rehearsal
tomorrow night: it depends on my caprice.
I also will close out the commentary shooting with Director Matt Smith's
segment, tomorrow night. I hope to edit the meat of the podcast on
Saturday, (the assembly of the commentary, which will be the base of the
movie). Then, on Wednesday, I'll drop the b-roll shots over that, much of
which has not been shot yet. Of course I have b-roll now, but I will wait
to place it in the DV movie until I have shot Sunday and Tuesday, thus
having all my choices available at the same time.
Lisa Howard-Welch (Helene Alving) during the
shooting of her commentary segment, last evening.
Sound set-up: my four-channel mini-mixer, running
through my
iMic
into
Garageband
on my
MacBook Pro;
with the
Canon ZR800
setting behind the laptop ‐‐ and my headphones in
front.
Jared Mola (Helene's son, Osvald) during his segment.
FILM CONNECTIONS, TONIGHT:
The big reason I am not shooting footage for the podcast tonight is that
I'm attending the special
Film Connections
session tonight (the reschedule of the December session). It features
Marisha Mukerjee, who
develops programming for cable television as the guest speaker and it seems
like I should not miss this. The film dayton facebook event says of tonight:
Marisha Mukerjee comes home for a holiday from her work in
development for Cineflix Studios where she helps shape the shows
you see on TV. A very different experience than film, Mukerjee
will delve into the writing style, pitches, stories and process of
moving an idea from concept to cable.
Got a call yesterday from PC-Goenner;
I'll be heading to the Sharonville office Wednesday to screentest for an
episode of lifetime's Army
Wives that shoots at the end of the month, in South Carolina. There
could be a potential conflict with my
Avenue Q
callback for the
The Human Race Theatre Company
production, were I to book the Army Wives gig.
But, perhaps I am getting a bit ahead of myself,
here. If this is like this time last year, I may do a few more
auditions for the series (I and lots of other local actors). The odds are
not fabulous, but I am, as last year, okay with putting my face on video
in front of the CDs (casting directors) multiple times. That can pay off
later.
ARTS FOCUS AND PODCASTING:
Director Matthew Smith during his commentary segment shoot,
last night.
I grabbed the commentary segment with Director Matt Smith last night. I'll
now spend the rest of today editing the main plate of the podcast DV movie.
My hope is to have nothing left to do after today but drop b-roll cut-aways
into the DV movie. I'll do that Wednesday, certainly before and maybe
after my Army Wives trip to the talent agency.
FILM CONNECTIONS, THURSDAY NIGHT:
Despite a gnawing, whiney voice in my head that was telling me I was too
tired to go into Dayton, that I needed to go home and sleep, I still did
attend
Film Connections
Thursday night at Think TV.
Guest speaker, and native Daytonian,
Marisha Mukerjee,
who now develops programming for
Cineflix, in L.A., was certainly
interesting to hear speak about the process of the spark of an idea for a
show through to the airing or cablecasting of the lucky few that make all
the cuts on the journey from A to Z.
Ms. Mukerjee was informative and disseminated much good information. There
really weren't any revelations save for one thing she said that goes to
counter to much of what I have understood. She said that Hollywood doesn't
care about age, only about the difference between stale and fresh ideas
and voices. She made the clarification while she was talking about
"young" writers, distinguishing those as not young in age but
inexperienced writers, regardless of age. I've always heard that Hollywood
was a young person's town. I like her take better.
On a related/unrelated note (which I may have stated before): I suck at
the networking and schmoozing stuff. There is built-in networking time at
the film connections meetings and every time I'm there that portion leaves
me feeling like the dork leaning on the wall watching the cool kids mix.
It's kind of silly and absolutely is a difficulty for me to overcome and
outgrow.
A NEW CAR FOR ALL PARTS OF MY LIFE:
As I wrote here last Monday, I was awaiting word on a loan for a new car.
What you see above and below is that car, a 2009 Kia Rio. Above, is a
photo I snapped at Yellow Springs Park on my way back from the Xenia Title
Office this morning, where I got a duplicate of my title for the 1989 Saab
9000s that is setting on the lot at CarMax in Miamisburg, waiting to be
salvaged by the dealer after I turn the title over to them ‐‐ which I had
lost. Below on the left, the Rio sets in my parking spot at my apartment
complex; on the right it sets on the side street by
The Guild, last
night.
Also, as I wrote, though clearly I have needed a car just in general, K.L.
the actor benefits greatly by having a reliable car that is good on gas,
one that keeps me from needing to rent quite as often for the occasional
long-trip auditions and gigs. Better gas mileage, alone, is major point.
It's just a fact ‐‐ even outside of L.A.: a reliable car is a good
thing for an actor to own.
Further, K.L. the board member, producer, sound designer and podcast
producer at The Guild needs a reliable car for the constant
forty-five-mile round trips to the theatre, for whatever role I play on
any given day.
Thus, though this entry is mostly, really, "On a Personal Note,"
it is also still very much relevant to "The Business of Acting."
On my way home from the Title Office this morning, I elected to take the
scenic route back to the apartment complex:
Just as the punk gremlin makes
an appearance in the next post, it could be a factor here, too. I came
across a communication from another local actor who's hooked up more
closely with theatrical puppetry that made me immediately go to
Yeah, my designs on the role(s) I want in
Avenue Q
are delusional.... Feeling a little bit defeatist right now.
Trying to tell myself that a possible edge I have is the ability to sing
the songs in key in the character voices; that such is a unique thing
remains to be seen.
Mind at Ease --
I haven't started the study on the sides
for the Army Wives
screentest this coming Wednesday, but there are only six lines, most
pretty short, so I should have no problem being off-script for the
audition. I'm sure with work starting tonight, it'll be pretty easy. I'll
be auditioning for a doctor in a military hospital, so after work tonight
I'm getting a haircut; my hair needs to be just a bit more trimmed than
it is right now, though it's not exactly unruly.
THE
AND ITS PRACTICAL JOKE:
Yesterday, Tech Sunday for
Ghosts, I shot seventy-one minutes of footage, covering the
cue-to-cue and the
tech run. Enter that pesky
Gremlin!
Since I need no audio of dialogue, and no thus no need to grab particular
sound bytes that will be more appealing in the podcast, I only stayed
until I had good coverage. I left at least an hour before the tech run was
wrapped, I'm sure. I got home about 3:00 in the afternoon, fixed some
dinner and then sat down with the
Canon ZR800
and
Final Cut Express
on my
MacBook Pro
to capture that seventy-one minutes of footage into the FPE project for
the podcast.
And it appeared to be an
situation. There were several diagonal lines, each with odd litte circles
peppered across them, all the circles uniform in look, but not in a
consistant pattern. I stopped the video playback, took out the DV cassette
and put it back in. The problem did not cease. Then I fast-forwarded for a
while then rewound. Nope. It looked like I had pretty much wasted several
hours. I tried one more thing. I had set the speed on low to get ninety
minutes of record time. I went in and changed the default speed back to
Standard Speed. The playback would still be at the slower speed, but it
seems that making this default change worked. Or it may have been
coincidental to something else that I did or that happened independently
of me, but, whatever, I was able to capture good footage, after all.
Hate to report this, but I did not get anywhere close to as far along with
the base, assembly edit of the DV movie as I had hoped. But, I did more
editing last night and I likely will get that base edit completed tonight
‐‐ *with the goal of multi-tasking with the Army Wives script
study.
IN THE RIGHT PLACE BUT UNHAPPY WITH THE RECENT LEG OF THE
JOURNEY:
Screen shot of the slate for Angela Timpone's commentary
segment, which I edited into the podcast DV movie
much earlier this morning.
I really must stop doing that: this intending to take a nap of about an
hour that ends up being a full night's sleep, and sometimes, then some.
Over the course of the last few weeks I've done it several times. I think
it started with my decision to stay up Christmas night in order to hit the
local grocery when it opened the next morning, since I had hardly any food
in my house and there was a threat of a blizzard that might make either
getting to the grocery virtually impossible or the store not being open,
or both. I threw my sleep clock off and have never quite adjusted it back.
of course, you five who regularly visit will know that I have reported
doing this overextended-nap trick in the past. So yesterday I left
work at 5:30, dropped in and got a "miltaryesque" (not quite
military, but close) haircut for tomorrow's
Army Wives
audition, got home, fixed dinner, then lay down for a 60-75-minute nap.
That was about 7:30ish. I woke up just about 3:00 this morning; I barely
recall the alarm going off to end the nap.
Since I'd like to get my internal clock adjusted back, I tried to get
back to sleep. It became abundantly clear that was not going to happen,
thus, my facebook post of about 3:30 this morning; thus, the work that
followed on the podcast, which was supposed to happen last night.
I must say, I did pretty much get done this morning what I would have
last night. I got all the commentary laid out and have started balancing
the audio between the dialogue of the commentators and the underscore
music. I do have to add the closing credits sequence, but that is going to
be very easy for this. I'm running one long shot rather than a large
series of shots as I usually do. So, I am at least mostly caught up to
where I'd have been anyway; at least there's that.
So, you may ask, why am I griping? I have a full day today and tomorrow,
and it would be just so much better if I were wide awake for it all. I'm
at the rent-payer for a
ten-hour shift today, like yesterday; then I drop into The Guild to shoot
the last of the b-roll; then I dump that and start adding the b-roll to
the podcast movie; meanwhile I have to memorize the script for tomorrow's
audition in Sharonville; granted it's, as I said before, not going to be
hard to memorize, but "awake" is still a key ingredient
in the process.
Tomorrow morning I will take my new car to the dealer to have an anti-theft
alarm installed. While I'm there I will, I hope, finish off the
edit of the podcast, getting it to final cut. The Army Wives
screentest is late afternoon, and I'd like to be awake and alert when I
get there, and not have drag-ass eyes, etc. If need be, I'll finish the
podcast after I get back from the audition, but I'd rather have at least
initiated the upload to the
Dayton Theatre Guild YouTube channel
before I leave for Sharonville.
The audition is at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon. Like I wrote above, still need
to memorize the lines, but fortunately there are few to commit to memory.
The haircut will work. Again, it's not "military," but it's close.
I'M NOT A DOCTOR, I JUST PLAY ONE AT U.D.:
Meanwhile, the first installment of the mock trial process, the interview
session, is a week from tomorrow; so study on that material soon becomes a
priority.
Army Wives ‐‐ The screentest went well
I suppose
I really try not to second-guess that stuff any
more; of course, I often do second-guess it all, but I try to not.
At least I didn't leave feeling like I'd blown it. So, now the
"whatever is next" is next.
Avenue Q ‐‐ Technically,
this would be
"whatever is next," at least in terms of auditions that I know
of. The appointment has been officially set; Company Manager Kryss
Northrup called today to set the time and give me the vitals. The exciting
news is that I am called back for the roles I desire, which makes me very
happy.
I'm also pumped that I am to "prepare one song of [my] choice from
the show or in the style of the show." I'm opting for "in the
style of the show," because it gives me a better opportunity to
feature the voices of both main characters of the three included in this
casting. And they are two really big roles from the show. I have a song in
mind that is in the style of the show that will meet my needs
quite well. I will reveal it on Saturday, January 26, the day after that
callback.
With hope, I will have another callback for Saturday afternoon. That's the
way this one is working. I do my song on Friday evening, and if Director
Joe Deer is
sufficiently impressed, he will ask me back for a Saturday audition,
where the songs have been predetermined along with most of the
sides.
Now the
push to perfect the voices and use them melodically is on!
Locking down the
songs, too....
BUT FIRST, SOME GUIDED IMPROV:
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, up first is work as an emergency room
specialist who is an expert in emergency cardiac medicine for the U.D.
Mock Trial tract.
Time to do the major refresh on this one. This is the one I did around
this time last year where I felt like I was in med school. It won't be
as taxing this year, since I'll be recalling rather than learning; still,
there's a lot of info, and had I not already been so swamped, I'd have
been into this already. First gig is next Wednesday afternoon, so this is
absolutely on the front burner.
The old, the Saab on the left; The new, the Kia on the
right. Goodbye, Saab; Let's go, Kia!
Yesterday was slated as a day off from
the rent-payer,
specifically to get the Ghosts podcast to final cut. Other pieces
of business crept in. Clearly, the Army Wives audition was one; the
other, was the final transition of the old to the new car. I popped into
the dealer to have the anti-theft alarm installed on the new car and also
to sell the old one to them. The old car is officially out of my life now.
I logged many thousand of theatre/acting miles in the Saab; here's hoping
I dwarf those numbers with what I wrack up in the Kia.
The initial witness interviews are this Wednesday afternoon and I have
been back into my material to bone up on Dr. Hill's pedigree and the
medical and the basis for his expert medical conclusions.
I haven't gotten through all of it, but I am finding what have I already
come upon has been pretty easy for me to bring back up from last year's
run at this mock trial exercise. I'm feeling pretty good that I will walk
in prepared on Wednesday, despite that there are a few other irons in the
fire.
I've been listening to the
Avenue Q original Broadway cast recording,
or, more specifically, those songs that employ the characters I am called
back for, Nicky/Trekkie Monster/Male Bad Idea Bear.
I've been studying the nature and quality of the voices and experimenting
with the best vocal placements and manipulations for them ‐‐ more so with
Nicky and Trekkie.
When I do this without the recording I feel better about it, I feel like
I'm accomplishing much. But, when I have the recording accompanying me I
feel less confident as I hear the voices
Rick Lyon provides on the cast
album; his mimicries are so exact to the Sesame Street characters
Nicky and Trekkie are based on, and though I seem to be getting the
overall feel, quality and tenor of the voices; when I speak or sing next
to Lyon's voice I feel like a faint imitation.
But I am getting a handle on the shifts in voice placement that is needed,
most especially for Nicky; sometimes the placement needs to shift for
the different syllables in one word; the manner of shaping vowels with
the lips is also usually quite vital to correctly mastering the
Nicky-Ernie quality.
Also, I am now waffling on the song for my Jan 25 callback. The one I had
originally decided upon proved, when I gave it a thorough ride along, to
not showcase either of the two main voices well. I have some other ideas,
that can employ all three voices, but I have not come to a conclusion as
of yet. Time's tight so the decision cannot wait long.
OPENING WEEKEND:
I house managed all three performances so I cannot give a good report on
how they went, but I do know that the audiences, the cast and the crew
were all pleased; thus, I would say it was a successful first weekend.
There were no sell-outs, but no near-empty houses, either. But, then, an
Ibsen play isn't going to get the draw that a Hairspray will.
In other unfortunate news, I was informed Opening Night that the
production info I was provided to include in the credit roll at the end of
the podcast contained errors. So I am likely to fix that sometime this week
and then upload the corrected version to the
Dayton Theatre Guild YouTube channel;
that unfortunately means that the current embeds and urls for the podcast
will be bad, so I'll have to get the word out to all who may have an embed
or a link.
NEXT OFFICIAL GUILD GIG:
This evening I meet with Robb Willoughby, the director of
Leaving Iowa, which auditions in
just six weeks, goes into rehearsal shortly after and is up April 5. This
is my second stint producing this season; I inherited this show after Greg
Smith's fall 2012 move to Tennessee was determined and he had to abdicate
the duty.
A priority tonight will be the audition specs, because it is close to time
to get those out there. Robb, I believe already has them ready, so we
should meet that emanate deadline.
Just today, I also sent an email to the playwrights,
Tim Clue and
Spike Manton, as
producer of the show (looking for bios and pictures of them for the
playbill) and as the podcast producer/director (seeking dialogue
clearance).
I'm enrolled in another acting class with
Kay Bosse
through HRTC. It's scheduled to start next Monday. I know of two others
who are enrolled and I'm hoping there are enough for it to be a go. I'm
trying to find out right now what the official body count is. But I am
sure there is still open space:
I have made a couple appointments with local opera soprano, actress, and
‐‐ in this case ‐‐ vocal instructor, Reneé Franck-Reed, to further
prepare for the callbacks next week. Of particular importance will be her
expertise to help me keep from mistreating my voice while singing as the
characters, especially the gravelly-voiced Trekkie Monster.
I am going to go ahead
a write of this as my needing to maintain vocal maintenance due to these
character voices until mid-June
As for the "song of [my] choice...in the style of the show," I
suppose I have more or less committed myself to one; at least there is one
that Reneé and I will work on. I could change my mind, perhaps,
but I'll at least give the choice a test drive first.
The
Avenue Q original Broadway cast recording
is still in my ears a lot, at least the songs that include one or more of
Nicky, Trekkie Monster and/or the Male Bad Idea Bear.
Mock Trial Process
The first leg of this gig is tomorrow afternoon. I am not quite prepared
at the moment, but I should be by the starting gate.
I have all evening tonight to finish off the reclamation; and as I
wrote before, I am finding my memory easily jogged every time I look at
the next piece of information.
OFF TO THE RACE:
The meeting last night with
Leaving Iowa Director
Robb Willoughby went well and we have a pretty good game-plan to move
forward upon.
Of big importance is that we have the straw-dog version of our production
team; now it's a question of confirming or moving on to a few other
choices that we have.
I As of yet I have not heard back about dialogue clearance, but it's early
still.
The Advanced Acting Class with
Kay Bosse
at HRTC has met its enrollment need and is on. There is, however, still
room in the class:
Advanced Acting Techniques
Mondays 5:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.
January 21, 28 & February 4, 11, 18, 25
Fee: $150.00
Instructor: Kay Bosse
Welcome returning and advanced acting students. Expand your
repertoire and improve your acting skills in a relaxed and
positive environment. Through scene study and cold readings,
you will be working on strengthening your performance
abilities. Scenes from the classics and contemporary works are
personally selected for you based on your interests. The class
concludes with an informal performance showcasing the strengths
of each student.
I don't always remember to do this, when I am aware of items that
can be mentioned, simply because it just often does not occur to me or I
am rushed and don't get to it. But sometimes a slew of activity from past
fellow-castmates explodes at the same time and I get motivated to give them
shout-outs and wish them broken legs and congrats. All of these are current
or recent gigish things from colleagues from my first pro-theatre show,
Caroline, or Change,
at The Human Race:
Tonya Thompson
is currently on tour as Mrs. Corry in
Mary Poppins,
which rolls through Dayton in mid-April. I have my ticket.
Ashanti J'aria
was today on the set of
The Good Wife.
This time around she's just background ‐‐ but that is, you can
be sure, only a most temporary thing.
Bruce Sabath is
on the set of a short film today; I know no other details.
Brittany Campbell
released a full-length album several months back,
Black Summer.
I may have already mentioned this one. I know I linked to the
video for the first single:
"Call Me Baby,"
said video, which happens to also feature Ms. J'aria.
It's likely this is not comprehensive ‐‐ no omissions are
on purpose!
There was a little setback last night. I left my study material at work and
had to drive back and retrieve it. So my evening of finishing off the
studying got a little delayed, but what-a-ya-gonna-do?
I also decided last night, as it was getting late, that I could use a
little more study time. I had planned to leave the
the rent-payer at noon
today. I have taken the whole day off, instead.
Meanwhile the gig has moved down from 2:30 to 3:00.
The first installment of the Medical Malpractice Mock Case is out of the
way. Last night my Dr. Hill interviewed with the three sets of defense
lawyers.
As always, it's a good exercise for me at improv (though within the
confines of the specific information for the case) and especially, as
weird as this may seem to some, for camera acting. There's no bigness to
the performance, just sitting in the room with law students, behaving as
a human being, even if some character attributes are modified; although,
usually I don't bother with any sort of character work.
Adding yesterday morning off to further study all that information was a
good idea. Of course, there were a lot of questions that the student
lawyers didn't ask, there are some angles and some information they would
be better off aware of, but, this is classwork, so, I guess they
have their lessons-learned moments coming.
On a related note, and much to my chagrin, between the extra time I took
yesterday and my need to not be at the
the rent-payer late tonight,
I have to burn a half-day's vacation leave, for this week. As we know, I
avoid that whenever I can. I pushed that ever-elusive 120 hours into May.
This, as well as just basic prep, is also more immediate prep for my first
vocal session with Reneé Franck-Reed, tonight. I looped the three
songs in iTunes and played them all night during my sleep time. I burned a
CD for the car and listened on the way in. I have the same song list on my
phone and have been cycling through them all day ‐‐ am right now, as
a matter of a fact.
Of course, there always has to be an Oh
Great! factor. I woke up with a bit of a soar throat this
morning. I gargled with salt in lemon juice, diluted by warm/hot water,
and have been trying to go really easy on my voice all day. I brought the
salt and lemon juice just in case. So my uber-redundant listens to all
the songs has been to get really familiar with them, intellectually;
besides, my tonal ear is attending to the melodies and harmonies for
which I am responsible.
The specs for the Feb 25 & 26 auditions are out.
After my U.D. gig wrapped I dropped by the Guild and hung around until
the cast showed for their table read, and I spoke to them briefly about
the process of the podcast production. Just want to be sure I don't take
them by surprise. The goal, as I've written before, is to get good footage,
but not get in the way of their rehearsal processes.
DV photography should begin next week, or maybe, the week after ‐‐ I
DO have a big-ass audition next week I could be focusing on.
So, it's been a very long time since there's been any sort of essay here
that wasn't directly connected to a response to something I was cast in or
otherwise a direct part of ‐‐ and those are not regular items, at all.
Something I observed in the theatre world recently, and that I was
not a direct part of, has given me an idea for an essay that
easily falls into a heading like "Craft Notes." That essay will
soon be started.
And you know, I always seize a chance to create
another subject icon.
The kid is
"subject-icon obsessed!" Yeah, okay, but
it did occur to me that the voice lessons with
Reneé are also "professional development,"
even if they are only short-term.
IF they
are only short-term.
Yep. As stated in my facebook post from this morning, my singing voice is
absolutely out of shape!
Of course, I had my first session with Reneé Franck-Reed last
evening and it was all about introducing me to some more sophisticated
vocal warm-ups and exercises than I was previously acquainted with. Some
I have actually heard Reneé, other actors she coaches, and
other singers, not connected with her, use, but I have never employed any
of them, myself.
The warm-up exercises pretty much was the session last night and as I
attempted the techniques, with varying levels of success, I became acutely
aware of how out of shape my vocal acuity is. For one thing, though I've
had a sense of this, through doing the legacy warm-ups I learned in high
school, simply as general warm-ups as a stage actor, I became startlingly
aware of how I have lost the ability to switch registers seamlessly. I once
could do it flawlessly ‐‐ I can't do it flawlessly right now!
There were a few that ultimately call for note distinctions at quicker
paces, such as sixteenth notes, or smaller notes, in trills* and I
frankly had to glide those portions rather than hit distinct notes. I'd
love to say that I was simply out of practice, but I don't think I've
ever had the control to do much of this particular exercise. Still,
however, I certainly have had more vocal control than I do now. But then,
there was a time in my life, a good fifteen years, (at least ten), that I
sang no less than an hour every day, often more.
Reneé and I went over all the exercises and thus far I have only
done them during the session; I have yet to do them since. My vocal
region still feels a bit of fatigue. Guess it's time to invoke that
journey of a thousand miles sort of philosophy.
As of yet, I have not nixed the present personal song choice for the Friday
Avenue Q
callback at The Race, but
I admit I am more so leaning toward doing so. Today I was given a
suggested replacement that may work much better. I will still give the
current choice a try up to and through the session with Reneé on
Tuesday. I may try out the suggested substitute as well; and, like
"You Never Give Me Your Money,"
which I did for my HRTC general audition last spring, this potential new
choice is a song I already know quite well, so there's no learning curve
to contend with; the only new variable would be the best way to spread the
character voices across the song.
*"TRILL" may not be the absolute correct word, but,
there were ascending/descending sequences with several notes in
the scale, all in a fast succession, I could not keep up with.
Monday was the first of six sessions of the HRTC advanced acting class,
taught by
Kay Bosse.
The course will end with a showcase, which will be a staged reading of
Act I of
Becky's New Car,
by Steven Dietz. We actually worked a few
scenes from this in the last class I did with Kay, last Fall. I'm sure
we're going to work some other things as well this time around, but
Becky's... is a focus.
We all did a monologue as introduction work, Monday. I, never having an
arsenal of monologues as I should have, fell back on the
"Cockroach" monologue from
Neil Simon's
Jake's Women,
mostly because I can make it though that with perhaps a little more
paraphrasing than should be, but, in a pinch I can give a decent one
minute.
The second vocal session with Reneé Franck-Reed was rescheduled
from Tuesday night to last night. I would call it a very productive hour,
though I was once again put in very acute touch with just how far out of
shape my singing muscles are. That aside, we went through all three songs,
that which I will do tomorrow night (the one of my choice), and the two
that I hope
I will be doing Saturday at the final callback (those specified by
Director Joe Deer).
Reneé was able to help me get better voice placement for all the
songs, and for both character voices, in a manner that both preserves the
needed qualities but not be so torturous on my voice and throat. The
switches between the character voices feel much better, too. Also, as
Nicky, I am hitting particular troublesome high notes with more ease.
There's some work to do, still, but overall I am feeling good about the
potential for tomorrow and ‐‐
I hope ‐‐
Saturday. Tonight I work on all three songs, tomorrow I may work some on
the Saturday songs, but my focus, before the audition tomorrow will be the
song of choice for that one.
Then, when Mr. Deer realizes he just must
have me back Saturday
,
I will go full-tilt-boogie onto the other two, probably starting
Friday evening.
Oh, yes, and puppet work, too. I will be getting hold of a double-rod
puppet today to practice on for that Saturday callback that Mr. Deer will
certainly request from me.
It's also more than a little likely that I'll be doing regular sessions
with Ms. Franck-Reed, perhaps at least once a month, perhaps more, as a
regular part of my professional development. It will be tax deductible,
at least, such has been.
Maybe Arthur Murray is next. Don't
laugh, I suck at dancing and it would be better if I at least sucked less.
I can't see me ever being a "TRIPPLE
THREAT," but I can at least place myself
in better position to be a little easier to consider casting; since the
suggestion is that the professional stage door for me is currently leading
to musicals, where dance plays a role to one extent or another.
It does not look like I'm going to be a part of the workshop of Michael
Slade's new play. I know at least two people who have been cast, and one
of them was cast almost a week ago. I'm thinking were I to have been cast
it would have happened by now. Oh well, it would have been interesting
and fun, and certainly an experience I was looking forward to.
This Just In: I WAS WRONG! --
Thursday afternoon addendum:
Well, I would just delete out and replace the text just above, but it's
good to have a reflection of the negative-jumpin'-to habits of actors such
as myself.
Several hours after I originally posted today's entry, HRTC Producing
Artistic Director
Kevin Moore
called me and offered me a place in the cast. The staged readings will be
March 9 & 10.
So......there ya go!
New U.D. Law Gig
--
I've been offered another U.D. criminal class gig that happens next
Wednesday afternoon. I have said, yes, but I have no details yet. I
actually don't have confirmation that it's a go, but I assume it is.
Principal photography for "DTG Podcast 1213-06 100 Saints You
Should Know" will begin next week.
This week I've been a bit preoccupied with all that muppet send-up stuff.
Last night, the
Avenue Q
callback for the
The Human Race Theatre Company
production went great in some respects, but not in terms of the ultimate
goal of securing the final callback, which would have been today. That,
of course, brings us to: And It's On To The
Next Audition.
It was still a good audition; I certainly didn't tank it.
Director Joe Deer
did express that he liked my audition, even said, and this is pretty close
to a direct quote: That was really fantastic ‐‐ he may have said
"fabulous" or "great," or something equivalent; I
often don't remember such details from my auditions; for instance, I
can't even tell you if Joe and I shook hands, though, I do remember the
gist of our small talk at the open, about my
rent-payer job on campus
at Wright State University, where
Joe teaches.
But let's now go back to the start of the day. I woke about 5:45 Friday
morning with a sore throat, not an incredibly bad sore throat, but most
certainly not one where my voice was in the kind of shape it needed to be
to sing a song at an audition. It's was very surely not in shape to sing
as Nicky, and even less shape to successfully sing as Trekkie. I was
unhappy. My resolve, as reflected in the brief post here yesterday, was
to handle it like a professional; canceling the callback was an absolute
last resort!
Since I've been battling a lesser sore throat all week, Reneé
Franck-Reed had already recommended a tea called
Throat Coat
of which I had already been employing the medicinal assistance. It works
quite well. Let me pass the recommendation on to you. Between drinking
this tea all day long, sucking cough drops all day, a few gargles of salt
in lemon concentrate, diluted with hot water, a nice, piping-hot chicken
stew for lunch, and using my voice as little as possible until it got
close to audition and was time to warm up and rehearse, I was able to nurse
my voice to a relatively good place. I was close to what resembles 100%
voice shape for me. I went into the audition room in acceptable vocal
shape and was able to sing the song I'd picked.
As I wrote earlier, the specs of the Friday callback were for me to sing
another song from Avenue Q, (other than one of the two slated for
the Saturday final callback), any other song from the show that I chose;
or, I could do any song I wanted that is in the style of the show. If you
know Avenue Q you know that there is a bit of a range of musical
styling, so it's not hard to go outside the show and find something that
could fit.
I was not interested in other songs from the show; I wanted a song that
would easily feature both Nicky and Trekkie, I wasn't really concerned
with Male Bad Idea Bear. The two songs slated for today were Nicky's
"If You Were Gay," and then "School for Monsters,"
which is Trekkie, and which splices into the reprise of "The Money
Song," a Nicky vocal. No other song from the show could possibly work
for either character without an ensemble in the room, much less for both
of them. So I knew I was going outside the show for the first callback.
Lennon & McCartney (well, in truth, McCartney) served me well
to get to the callback, with my use of "You Never Give Me Your
Money" for the season general audition, last spring, so I boxed
around a few other Beatle songs, and McCartney solo works, as
possibilities. First that came to mind was a true John-&-Paul
collaboration, "Yellow Submarine," but as I actually gave it a
try, it didn't suit me as working well for the Nicky/Trekkie duet. Next I
tried out the Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) composition, "Octopus's
Garden," with the same unsatisfactory result. I'd briefly considered
McCartney's solo effort, "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," but I
dismissed it before I took it for a ride.
I considered and test drove "Me and My Arrow," by Harry Nilsson,
but that didn't work. I looked at a list of other songs by Lennon &
McCartney, McCartney alone, Ringo alone, Nilsson, Carly Simon, even Kate
Bush. Then I began looking through my anemic collection of musicals. At
about the same time, a colleague, who also was auditioning for AQ
asked me for some ideas for her. I suggested she use some well-known
classic musical number for her character to sing. As an example, I threw
out the Sherman & Sherman "A Spoonful of Sugar" from Mary
Poppins.
That recommendation gave me an idea. Shortly after that communication with
her, I settled, for myself, on another well-know song from another most
popular show from the same era ‐‐ and featuring the same musical superstar
in the Broadway productions of both shows, who sings both songs on their
respective B'Way soundtracks:
Julie Andrews;
the song I chose for me is Lerner & Loewe's "Wouldn't It Be
Loverly" from My Fair Lady, and I tailored it for my Nicky and
Trekkie.
This is the song I was vacillating back-and-forth about doing. During the
first HRTC advanced acting
class, last Monday, Instructor
Kay Bosse
advised that I go with it, make it work, take the risk and be bold about
it, that Joe Deer would see and appreciate the risk and that it would
impress him. I took that advice and believe I made it work ‐‐ though I
would have been happier if I could have sang Nicky in a higher key,
perhaps one of C or D major, rather than F, that would have been optimum
for doing Nicky's voice. The original F major was a good key for
Trekkie, but I think had it been bumped up, that would have worked. There
was no time to get it transposed, though. Oh, don't get me wrong, it would
not have been me who transposed it, I ain't got the music theory
skill. Had I had the lead time, I could have found and paid someone,
though. But, F major worked well enough.
Whether the choice of song and the manner that it featured the voices is
the reason I did not get the callback, is a second-guessing game for which
I don't have an answer. I do know that both Mr. Deer as well as Producer
Kevin Moore,
also in the room, enjoyed the my audition. I don't think they're in the
business of saying otherwise. They may be polite when they don't like it
and not come forth with, Oh my god, that sucked! but I do not see
them overtly giving the message they liked it when they did not.
My understanding was that Joe would ask the actor back for the Saturday
callback at his or her Friday audition. Of course, he did not do
that with me, nor with at least one of my friends who I saw later. We
decided at one point that perhaps there would be a late phone call, but
I later abandoned that hope. As it's Saturday evening now, it's clear
there would be no late-Friday call. For a while, I thought I would head
home and work on the two Saturday songs as well as practice with the
double-rod puppet I had borrowed; I eventually came to desert that and
made other plans *(see below in the Ghosts section). At some
point it was time to come to the understanding that I was not going to
have another shot at Nicky and Trekkie, at least in this production
of Avenue Q. So, there ya go.
Can you tell what the one common thread is among this small
sampling of reasons? None of these are within your control. NONE....
I'm seriously thinking of making a PDF copy of this article and dropping
into my smart phone to read as soon as I hear or otherwise figure out that
I just got the "No."
I really believe that I did good yesterday; I am quite happy with that
audition and it felt good. Any of you five who frequent this silly blog
will know I am not easily impressed with my auditions, even if I am
getting better at assessing my own auditions. The reality, that I accept
right now, is that Mr. Deer liked my audition, but I am not what he is
looking for.
On to the next
audition....
Hey, I get at least one professional stage credit this year, the
forthcoming
Gingerbread Children
workshop. And, at least I know my schedule is open to rehearse my
theatre's production of
Martin McDonagh's
The Pillowman,
so there's certainly a good candidate for
"the next audition."
To be honest, I was a little bummed that it conflicts with AQ
because I had an acute interest in both projects. So, there's my next
bullseye!
Also on Friday, co-playwright of Leaving Iowa,
Tim Clue contacted the theatre to offer
a newer version of the script to us. I can't say for sure that we are
going with it, but I find it highly unlikely that we are not.
As producer, I contacted him about several other items of business and he
sent me the script, along with some production recommendations and a
document explaining the reasons for the changes; the doc says the
playwrights had seen or been made aware of some problems in previous
productions that they felt they should fix. The other producer business
was about biographical information and good pics of them for the program playbill.
I took the opportunity to again seek clearance to use dialogue in the
podcast. Tim granted the clearance and has requested the link so they can
place it at their
Leaving Iowa website.
After the AQ callback I dropped into the theatre to help out by
taking tickets when the house was open. The plan had been to then go home
and do all that act-as-if prepping for the Saturday AQ callback.
When I abandoned that idea, I elected to stay as an audience member.
Kudos to the cast and crew for another fine show at the high calibre that
is why I love my home theatre so much. In other words:
Business as
Usual at
The Dayton
Theatre Guild
The Added, One-Session Gig ‐‐ Tomorrow is the
one-off guided improv gig for U.D. where I play a new client "of
indeterminate age" to be interviewed by law students in the initial
visit. The guy works in a bar and got involved in something pretty stupid.
I've only begun to study the facts and the character profile; my evening
tonight is dedicated to this, rather than attend
film dayton's
Film Connections
tonight, which had been the plan. I'm also off a half day tomorrow, both
to accomodate the time of the gig, mid-afternoon, and to get last-ditch
study in.
Medical Malpractice Mock Trial Series ‐‐ Meanwhile I
have two weeks before I go back for deposition prep with the three sets of
law students, followed the next week with the actual deposition sessions
with opposing counsel. That last one, actually was rescheduled. It was to
be originally on Feb 27, but
Fran Pesch
asked me if I could move it up a week, because another actor had a
conflict. Since I'll be in rehearsal the week of Feb 25 *(see next), I was
fine with the change. It keeps brush-up work out of the way of my focus on
the Slade play, as mentioned below.
My Next Stage Work ‐‐ As the few will know, my next
theatre appearance will be in the HRTC Marsha Hanna New Play Workshop
staged reading of,
Gingerbread Children,
by Michael Slade, whose intense
Under a Red Moon
showed earlier this season at HRTC. I am happy to make it back onto the
Loft Stage and for Mr. Slade's second appearance of the season. I know who
some of my fellow cast members are, but not all. I'll post my castmates'
names when I have a complete list (and I am sure to do so is okay).
In the meantime, here's the info on the show and the performances:
From playwright Michael Slade comes a frank, dramatic story about
the hidden violations inflicted upon children by their most trusted
adults. No stranger to exposing the plight of children, Slade
confronts the painful reality of multi-generational child abuse,
weaving together four stories to explore the ways in which society,
through religion and folk tales, tacitly condones it.
For Mature Audiences Only
Presented as a Marsha Hanna New Play Workshop
in a staged reading at the Loft Theatre.
Saturday, March 9, 2013 at 2:00pm
Sunday, March 10, 2013 at 2:00pm
Good second class session. Kay paired us off and had us cold-read scenes.
Jeff Sams* and I did the opening scene from
True West
(Sam Shepard),
with Jeff as Lee and me as Austin. We will revisit the scene next week. I
don't know that we have to be off-book, but I hope to be more than half
off-book.
Two class enrollees who couldn't be at the first session were there and
Kay had them introduce themselves to the class with monologue work, as we
others had done last week. One of them was a bit greener than the other
but still showed a lot of good actor-potential. The other did a really
fine cold read of
Blanche's
monologue about the suicide of her closeted young husband from
Streetcar....
Work has not started on
Becky's New Car,
save for some mention of it last night and the entreaty to read Act
I before next class.
* Yes, THAT Jeff Sams, the
"celebrated" Jeff Sams!
Dialect Recordings ‐‐ The five regulars may remember
that in recent weeks I have been harvesting dialect instruction recordings
for my personal library. With the exception of the basic Chicago accent,
which I found on CD, I have been transforming analog tape recordings to
digital sound files. The five may also remember that there were a few I
could not grab because the cassette tapes had been damaged by being too
close to a magnetic field. There were seven dialects that I could not add
to my little iTunes collection due to the corrupted tapes.
Not all of the digital files I created are completely processed and
finished product in my iTunes library, yet, there are raw aif files
setting there waiting for me to edit them. That will not happen now as I
have access to the complete collection in audio CD format, and newer
editions of each. So I will be wiping the whole collection out and
starting over, probably today. I can multi-task that while back at my desk
at the rent-payer dealing
with duties there. Also, this time I will have access to all the associated
printed study guide work, though that material employs the
IPA
(International Phonetic Alphabet), which I haven't worked with since my
Linguistics classes in college, and that work done in the brevity of a few
academic quarters some twenty-some years ago; I'm a little less than
fluent in IPA, never really was, though it wouldn't hurt to so become.
Projects on the Horizon ‐‐ No details can be given,
but I have been approached about several future projects, some coming soon,
some further off, most with me as an actor. One is a short-subject narrative
movie that should shoot in the next couple months. There are three
different potential projects with people interested in having me cast in
specific roles on stage. There's also a project someone has in mind that
would call upon my sound skills.
After acting class last night I dropped into DTG to shoot the first
footage for the podcast. Director Ellen Finch was only working with the
two young members of the cast, Corinne Engber (Abby) and Maximillian
Santucci (Garrett). I only shot about ten minutes-worth of video.
On a separate but related note, Corinne and Max were already doing some
good work, and this, quite early in the rehearsal process. They are
clearly two talent young actors; but then, they have talented parents;
Corinne is the eldest daughter of Cassandra Engber, who I have seen do
some fabulous work on stage. Max's dad is Patrick Santucci, who I've only
seen once on stage, as Phillip, the shop owner in
Mauritius,
at The Guild in the spring, 2011, and he was great. So it must be in the
DNA for these two young people.
To be honest, a funny thing didn't happen "on the way to the gig";
it happened the night before. It wasn't especially funny at the time,
either. For two very different reasons I had a bit of a scare Tuesday
evening. I'd arranged to work a few hours over that day, and yesterday, in
order to take Wednesday afternoon off for this gig. When I left work
Tuesday I had yet to really do a whole lot of study on the facts of the
character and the case for the gig; that was the plan for Tuesday evening.
I got to my car in the parking lot on campus, pushed the remote to disarm
the anti-theft alarm, used my key to unlock the trunk and drop off my
computer case, etc, in there, then got in to start the car.
It did not start.
The ignition did not even engage, whatsoever. In addition, the hazard
lights flashed for about twenty to thirty seconds. My headlights, my
dash lights, the radio, all the electronic things were not showing weak
power, so it did not at all seem like the battery was low. I would have
suspected the starter more so as the problem if it wasn't for the
behavior of the hazard lights on that first and the subsequent attempts
to start the car; they flashed for that same period of time with each
attempt, with the hazard button not being on, as if they were acting as
an alarm. So I suspected it was related to the anti-theft system.
Regardless, the car was not starting and I was finding nothing in the
manual for the car or for the anti-theft alarm to tell me what was
happening or how to fix it. Knowing what my day was the next day, I started
to plan what I needed to do. I knew I had to study and get the facts for
the gig down that night. I looked at the possibility I would have to have
a mechanic look at the car ‐‐ I did not know for sure it was an
alarm thing. It was pushing 6:00 so I was not going to be able to make
arrangements then to have it towed to my mechanic, that would have to wait
until the morning. I was not going to tow it twice (home for the night
then to the shop). There was then the logistics of getting home that night
without the car then getting back in the morning to be there for the tow.
I seriously considered spending the night at a motel in walking distance
from campus; that way I would have no problem being there early for work
and to meet with the potential tow truck. Then there was the real
possibility I'd be renting a car: a total of more than a hundred bucks
before whatever repair that might be done was billed to me.
I went back into work and went on-line looking for possible solutions in
some on-line knowledge base or user group. I came across a site called
Just Answer, where I could pose
my dilemma to a described Kia mechanical expert for a fee. I tried it
out.
While I was waiting for a response from one of the four reported Kia
experts, I came across what look like a possible solution, buried in the
section about anti-theft alarms in the Kia manual. I gave that a try and
it worked. I Believe what happened was I somehow tripped an anti-theft
feature that stops the car from starting; I did something out of sequence
or too soon when I opened the trunk door, is what I suspect. But I was
able to get home, and even though I was two hours behind on study time, I
still got in all the study time.
More importantly to my life in general: my new
car was not already suffering some serious malady.
I'd arranged to work 8:00 till noon on Wednesday, but I stayed up a bit
later than planned Tuesday evening, working on memorizing my character and
the facts of the case, so I amended my Wednesday work day to 9:00 until
1:00.
As for the gig, it went smoothly enough. I had to make up a few details of
my character's arrest, as the law students asked for some details that
were not covered in the material I was working from. Also, the basic idea
for these exercises is to not feed them information they fail to go after.
A bit of information that would have been quite useful to the lawyers was
not pulled out of me. That's not uncommon at all for these gigs; it is
law "school," after all.
By-the-way: the character I played is either a liar or a dumbass, based
on the crimes he committed and his cockamamy explanation.
THE GINGERBREAD PEOPLE:
The full cast list is officially released, so here it is:
One more note on this: if you go to the link just above, you'll see that
Gingerbread Children is the premier play in the Marsha Hanna New
Play Workshops series. As I've stated before, I certainly didn't know
Marsha
all that well, but I was getting to know her and was coming to like and
respect her much so. It is quite an honor to be a part of the first play
in the workshop that bears her name.
I'm also excited to be working with this cast, many members of whom I have
wanted to work with for a while. And, it's going to be cool to be directed
by a nominee for the
*Antoinette Perry.
Of course, participating in the workshopping of a new work by an
established playwright is an excellent opportunity I am happy to have been
given.
MORE PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY FOR THE PODCAST:
Wednesday evening, post-U.D. gig, I shot more footage for the 100
Saints podcast. In rehearsal were Alex Carmichal (Matthew McNally),
Katrina Kittle (Theresa) and Barbara Jorgensen (Colleen).
Over the course of about the first hour of rehearsal I shot a little more
than thirty minutes of footage. With Monday's shoot, that's just shy of a
total of fifty-minutes of footage, all b-roll. As with the Ghost
podcast, I'm trimming down the total accumulation of footage from what I
have done for past podcast productions. The adage that it's better to have
too much footage than not enough still holds true; I'm just not going to
have such a monstrous amount of "too much footage."
Below are cropped frame shots from both shoots.
Stage Manager Doug Patton, Director Ellen Finch,
& honorary assistant director Finnegan
(AKA: Finn).
If you're not from my little neck of the midwest woods, I don't know what
your weather was like yesterday, but here in southwest Ohio the high
yesterday was about 14° fahrenheit, the low last night with windchill
factor was about -10°. Yeah, I know, if you're from Fargo or something
that's pretty much a spring day; when one lives an hour north of the
divide between "Yankee America" and "The South,"
-10° windchill is too damned cold.
There was a little bit of snow yesterday, but the powder covered some icy
roads so there were a few really bad road wrecks. The weather reports
claimed we might get up to four inches of snow. So, far that's not been so,
only the barest of very lite snow flurries. As I key this sentence it's
27° with a slight powder drifting down.
SMELLS LIKE TECH SPIRIT:
About the time I signed the loan agreement for my new car my head
started doing budget math and looking at monthly costs to cut or reduce.
One idea that I came to was to kill my cable subscription and replace it
with streaming services. I started doing some research and concluded it
was a good deal for me. Last night I subscribed to both
Netflix and
Hulu Plus.
Today I bought an
37" LG LCD TV
as well as an
Apple TV digital media receiver.
Of course, the new TV will receive the digital signals from broadcast TV,
which I didn't need to worry about before, because I was on cable when
analogue signal was decommissioned a few years back. So, I will still have
access to all Broadcast network programming offered by
ABC, CBS,
FOX, NBC,
PBS and
The WB, just through the TV receiver,
alone. Then, through Netflix and Hulu Plus, I will have access to virtually
everything from all the cable networks I already did, plus most of the
premiums I did not have access to, like
The Sundance Channel, as an
example, and you can bet I'll watch programing from that one. Plus lots
and lots of movies will be at my beckon call. In fact, all the streaming
movies and TV shows will be "on demand," with much of the TV
series back catalogue being available, either through streaming or DVD.
All of it will be for about $25 a month. And I have an app for both
services on my Android. Plus I can watch on my lap top, if I want. Beyond
that, through Apple TV I can put my laptop screen on my LCD TV if I want,
which will be very handy when I am movie editing.
NOW, ONTO SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO
"A DIARY OF ARTFUL THINGS":
Yesterday the packet came from HRTC
for the Gingerbread Children production: the contract, the photo
release form, the bio request and guidelines, other affiliated forms, and
most importantly, Mr. Slade's
script.
Gingerbread Children will be my evening read tonight: the start of
the study....
The Theatre Goddess Has A Sense Of Humor, Alright ‐‐
Wednesday the talent agency
called with a primo audition for a commercial that will pay rather well. I
set an audition appointment for this afternoon. then the sides and the
job specs came in the email. The commercial will shoot the first week of
March in Nashville; I am under contract to be in Gingerbread Children
play rehearsals in Dayton with 6:00 calls every day of that week, save for
Monday, which is equity day off.
Considering that Nashville is five hours from Dayton, and finding it
foolish to expect that the Nashville shoot would be on Monday, the fourth,
I had to, after seeing the production slated for "first week of
March," cancel today's appointment. I'm not wholly sure I meet the
specs for the character being cast any way:
Tough but approachable, a real mans man ‐‐ macho
candidate without being over the top, down to earth,
intelligent....Actors that come to mind: Tom Sellek, A serious
John Goodman, Jeff Bridges (without the hair).
I suppose I could justify a "serious John Goodman," and I
certainly could argue a match to the "without the hair" part of
Jeff Bridges ‐‐ not so sure about him, otherwise; Tom Sellek, on the
other hand, I don't know about that one.
Irrelevant, anyway, I can't commit to the shoot.
Dentist! ‐‐ Be it good, bad, or indifferent, I have
gone my entire adult life with no visits to the dentist. But the recent
annoying numb pains that late Wednesday night, for a period, elevated to
steely spikes of razored excruciation, and for which I have only staved
off since with gobs of orajel, and not wholly from hurting, just from
making me want to die on the spot, that changes it all. Guess where I'm
going later this morning?
This section is here, under the banner of "The Business Of
Acting" because dental medical attention, especially things like oral
surgery may obviously mean an acting gig must be cancelled, or at least
greatly interfered with since the actor just might be a little
incapacitated from novocaine or some other such local anesthetic.
I have a gig next Wednesday and the Wednesday after that; I go into
rehearsal for the new play workshop the week after that. Having that
novocaine impediment is not a popular idea with me.
The tooth pain, as I wrote above, has been, for weeks, perhaps months, only
a minor annoyance. Of course, I knew that the annoyance was going to
eventually get worse, though I was, I believe, basically ignoring the
inevitability. In the last week or so the eventuality has come to be. In
last several days I have an intermittent, yet brief bouts of some serious
pain. It calms down, but the pain in those episodes has more and more been
pain. Wednesday night, later, after I got home for the night, I
had that experience of steely spikes of razored excruciation that was bad
enough that I had to pace, a lot, and fast, and do some serious, most
sincere moaning, for a while, much longer than was any fun.
Yesterday morning, at work
that same spike started barreling into my jaw. I went down the road to get
some more benzocaine to at least do a little pain management. I did
have a few moments of that needing to pace around syndrome. I called a
dentist office in my neighborhood that at first wasn't going to see me
until March, because I am a new patient. But my intermittent horror pain
got me an appointment this morning.
Wednesday night, before my toothache dilemma, I attended the
"Can Night"* final dress of
Lombardi
at The Loft Theatre. Decent script and really good performances. I
especially liked Edward Furs'
work as Vince Lombardi. His casting is by the way, a prime example of
being the right actor for the role, in a focused manner. His physical
presence captures the essence of the famous coach; he looks enough like
him that with suspension of disbelief it takes about 45 seconds for the
audience to forget he's not. Of course, the caliber of acting has to back
that up, but all things being equal, the combination of skill and the
appearance would make him a shoe in.
Tonight I am slated to shoot some podcast footage, but it will depend on
what happens with my little appointment this morning.
Lot's going on in the last week-plus going on two weeks. I had a
bit of down-time because of the dental problem I was on my way to have
looked at when last I posted here for you five. Between all that came with
dealing with the tooth-dilemma and much busy-busy-BUSY stuff
I have simply not carved time for this blog thingy. I now give attempt,
start and stall, as it will be, to do some catch up.
Wisdom teeth, there's yer problem. All four of them but one in particular
that was infected. The dentist said that she wanted take all four out but
that we would start with the critical one, lower right, as well as the
upper right companion, which itself was split in two and was going to
become a problem soon.
I have no idea why you would find this
at all interesting, yet, I am including it anyway
Since I had the U.D. Law gig coming up the next Wednesday, I scheduled the
extraction surgery for the next day. Between the initial visit and the
surgery I did massive quantities of prescription-strength Tylenol and
Motrin, which was pretty damn effective at both pain suppression and, at
least to some minor degree, cognition retardation. We will deal with the
other two wisdom teeth in mid-march, after Gingerbread Children has
wrapped.
I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but there was to be a
showcase during the last class
session, which is this coming Monday, but that has been canceled, because
a student had to drop put and another has to miss a few sessions, and it
makes getting the program that was in the makings together. After
Kay Bosse
polled the class and found no one was all that interested doing it anyway,
she decided we would just use our last class as a standard work session.
This last class session, Jeff Sams and I did a scene from
Glengarry Glen Ross ,
with Jeff as Moss and me as Aaronow; later in that session Kay had me do
a Roma monologue from the same script. This was all cold read, though the
Roma was less so, as I did get a chance to at least look it over. Jeff and
did the scene ice-cold. Of course, cold reads are always good exercise.
Kay has invited me to bring something in that I might want to do. I'm
thinking about some of the monologues by characters in
Opus,
other than Carl, whom I played earlier this season at
The Guild. There are a few
that come to mind, especially from Alan.
SATURDAY LOST:
It's another tale from the chronicles of
"The
Best Laid Planes...."
Wednesday and Friday of last week I shot the interviews with the cast and
Director Ellen Finch. The plan was to edit those on Saturday. Sunday,
which was Tech Sunday for the
show, I would shoot a lot of b-roll
and perhaps even get at least some good principal footage that has good
audio for dialogue usage.
That was the plan, but not so much the outcome that unfolded for the
weekend.
When I tried to export the video I had shot on Friday into
Final Cut Express
I got an error message both from the DV camera and Final Cut that said
the source was not connecting to the destination. Saturday I bought a new
firewire cable. Problem NOT solved, so I went out again and bought
a new
firewire to thunderbolt adapter.
Problem still not solved. Half my interviews were stuck on the
mini-DV cassette tape and I had burned up several hours of my day in vain.
I will admit that the first thing that was to have happened with the
interview footage was to synch the higher quality audio I had recorded
with Garageband to
the comparable video footage, and as I did have the video from first three
interviews, shot Wednesday evening, already imported into Final Cut, I
could have synched those Saturday; I didn't; I looked in the manual for
the DV camera, and on-line, for trouble-shooting possibilites to explain
and fix the problem. I found none. I went to bed. I woke up Sunday with a
killer headache. I did not attend the show's tech Sunday. I took some of
that prescription-strength Tylenol and Motrin and lay in bed all day. It
was likely a stress headache.
Yesterday I went to the Mac lab on campus
and was not able to get a successful connection with either my old or my
new. I concluded that the problem must be the camera since my new firewire
cable could not get a connection. But then, after failure with several of
the other DV camera's at CTL, I
was stymied. Then I borrowed a firewire cable from a technology service
called
STAC: Student Technology Assistance Center.
I got the connection. It turns out my old cable had gone bad and my new
cable was bad when I bought it. The problem there is that at the moment I
can't find the damned receipt, though I friend tells me that since I paid
with a credit card, the store ‐‐ Best Buy ‐‐ can call up an electronic copy
of the receipt. So I may not have to eat the $30, or whatever it was I paid
for a bad cable.
So, I am a little behind, but at this point that is only in terms of
editing. The good people in STAC are allowing me to borrow that good cable
and I am up-to-date in terms of video exported off the DV cassette and
imported into FCE.
Last night I shot the principal photography of scenes from the tech/dress
rehearsal, all shot from the POV of
House Right
(stage left). As this is the
footage where I will use dialogue, I am only shooting Act I,
minus the last scene of the act, to avoid any spoilers. Tonight I shoot the
same action from the POV of House Left.
Last week it was the deposition prep work, where each of the three teams
of law students handling the defense spoke with our defendant (local actor
Amy Askins), myself as the emergency department expert witness and local
actor John Beck, who plays the coronary surgery expert witness. Tomorrow
I meet with each of the opposing counsel law students for the depositions.
Sometime between now and then, I cram facts and figures refresher session
into my schedule.
Finally got to reading the script. Interesting, I must say. As Kay Bosse,
also in the cast, said to me a couple weeks back, "Ooh, your such a
bastard."
I haven't gotten down to the nitty-gritty script analysis as of yet, but,
yes, I am ‐‐ more to the point ‐‐ the characters I play are
bastards.
Rehearsals begin in one week.
First order of business is a reminder that auditions are next Monday and
Tuesday. Also, I and Director Robb Willoughby have been in contact a bit and the
overall plan is starting to formulate.
I have been made aware of a capstone senior film project shooting at
Miami University in Oxford. The movie that I was in a few years back,
Leavings and Left Behinds, was some such capstone project, that
which I have never seen the final cut of, or heard about at all. There's
a screen test going on in a couple weeks and I am contemplating setting an
appointment.
The weekend before my oral surgery I saw the talented Ms. Cassandra Engber
in a staged reading of
A.R. Gurney's
Pulitzer-nominated Love Letters, performed at
X*ACT: Xenia Area Community Theater.
Not to my surprise, the lady did good! Her co-star, Al Yarcho, was no
slouch, himself ‐‐ the playbill says he has done this show more than a
dozen times.
The podcast is up, as you can see below. I suppose you can call timing of
the posting the epitome of "eleventh hour." The
upload to the DTG YouTube channel
was complete at about 4:00 this morning. The post to the DTG
facebook page
was about 9:00.
By the way, for those interested
,
the sales receipt I needed to get the refund for the bad 800 firewire
cord I'd bought last weekend was in the pocket of my pants the whole time.
So I did not eat the $42.59 spent.
As for the podcast DV movie, when you're doing cinematic editing of stage
play rehearsals that you shoot in documentary style, you just have to live
with the occasional continuity
problem when editing reversal shots
of a moment shot from two different rehearsals. What this means is this:
As you may have read, I shot the principal photography of footage, where I
was concerned with capturing dialogue, this past Monday and Tuesday at the
first two tech/dress rehearsals
of the week. Monday night I shot all of Act I,
save for the last scene, from House Right,
which is the right side of the theatre area from the audience perspective,
and in our theatre the area to the right of the thrust stage, from the
foot of the stage ‐‐ House Right is Stage Left,
(since Stage Left or Right is from the actors' perspective looking toward
the audience). At any rate, as I wrote in the last blog entry, the footage
Monday was from point of view (POV) of House Right; Tuesday, the POV was
House Left. Same scenes.
However, with a few exceptions, I shoot even the principal dialogue
footage of these podcasts more like a documentary than a movie. I shoot
stage play rehearsals where the actors are rehearsing for their stag
performances and I am, in essence, documenting those rehearsals with a
DV camera, With the exception of a few times that I have specifically
set up some sessions for the purpose, the actors are not acting for the
camera.
There is not a consciousness of body movement that is the standard when
shooting a movie. Thus, when shooting play rehearsals there is a built-in
continuity problem. I shot the same action both Monday and Tuesday, from
two different angles so I could get reversal shots and cross cut those.
Sometimes however, when an actor delivered a line on Monday, he or she may
have had his or her arms crossed; Tuesday, the arms were at his/her side.
When I do a cross cut edit using the two reversal shots, that lock of
continuity is a problem. The decision then becomes: do I live with it?
the decision I arrive at depends on the some mixture of the severity of the
continuity problem and the importance of showing that moment.
There a few few of these continuity problems in the podcast. Another
problem was that not all costuming was complete Monday, so some actors
are, in some cases, dressed a little differently in the reversals. Oh
well. what-cha-gonna-do?
Meanwhile, the cast is kicking ass! Gonna be a good run and a ticket worth
buying!
The deposition sessions are over. Wednesday, I went in feeling like I
might forget something. I didn't. I think I strive to be far more prepared
than the students usually task me to be. Better that way than the other
way, I suppose. Next up. mock trial April 6 & 7, then Dr. Hill is
retired, at least for this year.
Friday I received the finalized rehearsal schedule calls for the show.
I also note that the production is now being directed by
Margarett Perry rather than
Sheryl Kaller.
Ms. Perry has directed a few shows at The Race including
Under a Red Moon,
of course, also by
Michael Slade, as well as
Yasmina Reza's
God of Carnage;
I mention those because I saw those productions. Both seemed to be
directed quite well, by the way. She will also be directing next season's
Other Desert Cities by
Jon Robin Baitz.
Gingerbread rehearsals start tomorrow evening.
Opening night was a rousing success. The audience loved it and the cast
felt very good about the show. I did not see that performance for the
usual reason: I was in the lobby dealing with host duties. I do know there
were good vibes at intermission and after the closing curtain.
I was then back Sunday to DV record the show for our theatre archival
collection. That served as my viewing of the show as I will not be able to
get back due to the Gingerbread Children rehearsal and performance
schedule.
My totally bias assessment: the cast got some game, the script is
well constructed and Ellen Finch has shown herself as a fine director.
LAST SESSION OF THE
HRTC ADVANCED ACTING CLASS
WITH KAY BOSSE:
Last night was the finale night for the class. I brought in several
choices for a cold, or relatively cold reading for me. What Kay and I
decided upon was a monologue from Act III of
Martin McDonagh's
The Pillowman,
which is the last show of this season at
The Guild, and for which I
will audition. I did a monologue by the cop Ariel, one of two roles I am
interested in; the other being his partner, Tupolski.
I employed the concept Go Big, You Can Always Be Pulled Back. Kay
did pull me back and it made the monologue far more menacing. It is, I
believe, a read I would have eventually gotten to, but any shortcut to a
more effective approach is good
.
FIRST REHEARSAL FOR THE WORKSHOP/STAGED READING OF
GINGERBREAD CHILDREN
STARTS TONIGHT:
My second excursion onto a professional stage begins tonight with
rehearsal #1.
There are a lot of things to which I am looking forward. Participating in
the workshopping of a new play by an established playwright is most
appealing and an experience I am happy to play a part in. Doing a
professional level staged reading will be interesting, too. I've only done
it twice stage readings a few times before, once as a fund rasier for The
Guild, where we read excerpts from past shows, once again for The Guild
where we read from the upcoming season, and then
Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright
for
Springfield StageWorks,
which we did at
The Westcott House, in
Springfield, Ohio, a Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. I can't wait to
compare this new veture with these previous like-ventures, especially the
Work Song experience.
I'm also looking forward to working with this cast. It will be nice to
again work with Matt Smith. We first worked together in early 2004, in my
return to theatre,
The Cripple of Inishmaan,
again, Martin McDonagh. Of course, we finally worked together again earlier
this season in
Opus.
Kay bosse and I, if you remember, shared the stage as Grandpa and Grandma
Gellman in
Caroline, Or Change
my other HRTC show. Charity Farrell and I have not been on stage together
since
Nutcracker,
the Christmas extra at The Guild back in 2004, though I did direct her in
my short movie, The Chorus For Candice
about a year and a half later. I also look forward to finally working on
stage with Andrew Ian Adams who've I seen several times on stage over the
years and who was wardrobe crew on Caroline. It will be cool to
work with Scott Stoney, who obviously I've seen on stage, had for an
acting class at The Race, and who directed me in Caroline. I'm also
looking forward to working with the rest, some who I know at least a
little, other I do not know.
I am also very pumped to work with Mr. Slade. Not sure if he's here for the
whole process, but, you got to figure he's here for most of it.
FIRST REHEARSAL FOR THE WORKSHOP/STAGED READING OF
GINGERBREAD CHILDREN
LAST NIGHT:
trudge toward a fuller professional placement. We introduced ourselves
then did our read-through,
then did table work on the first
four pages, which includes the introduction of my character, Pastor Gerald.
These processes are certainly not new to me. The table read (read-through)
has been a part of pretty much every show I've done, and there have been
a few with the more extensive table work. But this was the first one at a
professional theatre level,
Caroline, or Change
was a sing-through, only sort of the same as a read-through. This was also
certainly the first one where the playwright was sitting at the table,
changing, cutting and adding lines as we did the table work, and explaining
the intent of certain things in the script.
THE SECOND & THIRD REHEARSALS FOR THE
WORKSHOP/STAGED READING OF
GINGERBREAD CHILDREN:
Feb 28, 2013 post
The table work we're doing
is appealing to me, greatly.
Director Margarett Perry is
not rushing through her guidance of the discovery process for each of us
nor for the group as a whole.
I like it best when each new production I am involved with, for stage or
camera, teaches me, moves me forward in the craft. Though I've barely
directed, and only for the camera, this production has, thus far,
been a good lesson in how to direct. Ms. Perry is good at what she does.
Wednesday night, when I had finished the first scene I did, I thought to
myself: Well THAT was "acting" ‐‐ meaning I was
"giving an actor's performance" rather than being the person the
character is, and that is not good work. When she finally stopped us to go
back and re-work what we'd thus far done, her general comment, and not just
about my work, was that she was not believing most of us, that she was
hearing actors' voices and not the people from the pages. But she wasn't
being derisive, it was just telling us what she needed to in order to push
us toward better work. That's a good example and reminder for the aspiring
director in me: be blunt, but respect the actors under your charge.
I've had good direction in the past filled to the brim with tremendous
respect for me and my fellow castmates. I've had other experiences even
from some directors I like and find otherwise effective. I can think of
several instances, off the top of my head, where I have witnessed or
experienced good directors doing their job badly and saying or behaving
in unnecessary and self-involved ways that did nothing but cause useless
tension and resentment. One time I had a director say something to me that
was so passive-aggressively disrespectful that I was tempted for a few
moments to leave rehearsal or get very belligerent in responding to the
crap I was getting. I didn't. I just took a mental pause, then went on.
But I really wanted to either leave or go off on the director for being
an asshole, or both. It is safe to say I don't think I will have such
urges toward Margarett Perry; she has a very assertive yet positive and
tactful style. It works for me, and I think it is most effective.
As an actor I am getting a lot of practice with cold reading; we all are.
The play is being workshopped, which means Playwright
Michael Slade is there,
listening to the reads and soliciting everyone's opinions on how it is
tracking. He's making revisions everyday, so we have some new pages at
every read. So the our cold-read muscles are getting workouts, which, at
least for me, is never a bad thing.
Yesterday I had to get a biometric profile done for
the rent-payer, and the
results were not fabulous. Where I did have a good resting pulse (66) and
a good glucose level (87), I am 29.6% over my ideal weight on the body mass
index, my bad cholesterols are both too high and my good cholesterol is too
low (the overall is too high at 268) and, the worst result, my blood
pressure read at 167 over 98. 120 over 80 is optimum.
I knew I had fallen out of my better healthy eating practices, but I had
not noticed how far out. My dinner last night was fruit. My lunch today
was a salad. My dinner tonight will be fruit.
Is it a surprise that once again it has been weeks, probably a few months,
since I was in the gym? I am back where I have been many times in the last
nine years, since I started acting again. Before that it was no less than
four days a week and most usually six days a week. I doubt it's going to
be six days a week very often, but I now have stark motivation to make
time for it to be once again a staple of my life routines.
The actor needs it, of course; but, you know, the man needs it, too. It
would be good to not be an active participant in increasing my odds for
heart attack and stroke.
ANNOUNCING THE CAST:
If you haven't heard yet, here is the cast of Leaving Iowa:
Well. Show is tomorrow. We have one pre-production rehearsal left, tonight.
I have very much enjoyed this rehearsal process and I am most grateful I
was wrong when I decided I was not cast in this ‐‐
OK, I guess I'm really always grateful when
I have been wrong about such (with at least one exception I'm going to
diplomatically not identify
)
Because Director Margarett Perry
broke the last Friday's rehearsal into sections that focused on certain
sections, and on certain groups of characters/actors, I was not needed
until 8:00 that evening. So, I hung out at
my theatre, which is a
few-minutes drive from The Human Race. I figured I would still get there
somewhat early, so about 7:25 I decided to head over.
However...
...Remember that 2009 Kia Rio I bought at the start of the year? Yeah,
Friday evening at 7:25 it wouldn't start. A Guild friend tried to jump the
battery. Nope. So he was kind enough to drive me over to my rehearsal. My
next dilemma was that I had a rehearsal the next day at noon. I was facing
a logistical problem. If I could manage to get the twenty-some miles home
to my rural apartment, how could I secure being back in downtown Dayton by
noon on Saturday? My best choice was to spend the night at The Guild then
walk over to the Metropolitan Arts Center, where the HRTC offices and the
Loft Theatre are. That is what I did.
I did get there on time Friday night, a little bit early, in fact. As it
turned out I wasn't called into rehearsal until about 8:30, so I got
about ninety minutes of rehearsal work in;
Michael Slade also did not
have any new pages that night; Margarett was doing character work with
each cast member.
Friday evening I felt a little sick, just slightly. As stated, I spent
Friday night in the DTG greenroom, then walked over to HRTC for the noon
rehearsal call. I was more than feeling slightly sick. I can't verify it
but I am quite sure I had at least a bit of a fever, I was most congested,
my throat was dreadfully sore, and I had a tiny but annoying headache. I
actually was concerned I might be contagious so I kept my distance from
the others as much as I could, especially Ms. Robin Post, who I was to
touch as her husband on a few occasions; I did not touch her on Saturday. I
did sneeze a lot, though. And as the rehearsal progressed, my energy waned
at something like an exponential rate. In fact, there was a social
gathering after rehearsal Saturday that I skipped to look for a ride back
to my apartment, which I found, through the generosity of fellow DTGer,
Deirdre Root, and her husband Grant, who went far, far out their way
to drop me off.
We had two days off and were back this last Tuesday, now working on our
feet in The Loft Theatre space. The local and national weather services
just happened to be threatening a severe snow storm. As it turned out, the
Dayton area didn't start getting snow until we were almost done with
rehearsal.
The Tuesday rehearsal was mostly about placement: which stand to go to,
when to animate any movement and how to represent that, etc. We only got
through Act I. Of course, there have been
beau coups of changes in placement, since, as Margarett hones the stage
picture.
As for that severe weather: as I left for home at a little past 11:00, the
roads were a little covered but it was not bad. By about the halfway mark,
around ten miles in, I and the rest of those on the highway were driving
cautiously at about 35 MPH. A usual 25-minute or so drive took almost an
hour. At least we didn't lose the rehearsal.
So, in light of my new stage placement, there's some minor
chance a couple of you, who perhaps may show up, may want
to heed the message in this facebook post from late last
night.
By last night we were fine-tuning our work and our characters. Ms. Perry
also did more of that moving us about. I now spend most of my time in the
far down-stage-left corner, on that vom line, facing stage-right, and only
on a few occasions up stage in the row of actors facing the audience,
directly.
I am essentially physically, and thematically a counterbalance for
Kay Bosse,
who is in the parallel down-stage-right corner. But though I do on a couple
occasions face the down-stage audience, Kay does so, much more than I.
As for my work, I guess I'm doing well with my two characters, though
Margarett did give me a note adjusting my main character from what I've
been doing, pretty much from the start. The vision for the script and the
presentation is clearly evolving so I must evolve with it.
Did a screentest Wednesday at the
PC-Goenner Sharonville office for
a Pittsburgh market commercial. That would shoot, in Pittsburgh a week
from today, with or without me. With me is my choice. It's not
major fabulous money, but, it wouldn't be bad at all.
By the way, for those interested, though my suspicion was that my car
trouble was a bad starter, it turned out it was a very bad battery, so
bad it wouldn't even jump. Also, my car has a specialized battery, so,
with diagnostics, and a few other minor maintenance I had my mechanic do,
the bill came to two-hundred bucks.
Add to that the sixty-plus dollars I spent for a rental car it turned out
I didn't really need and some recent cool-down on my VISA bill got blown
all to hell.
Rehearsals have started. I was at the read-through this past Sunday at
The Guild, there in which I stayed the night so I could be there Monday
morning for my car tow to the shop.
There've been a couple more rehearsals and I have not been to those, but
I'll start attending soon as both producer and podcast guy.
Director Robb Willoughby, Stage Manager Deirdre Root and I are all actively
trying to fill out the rest of the production crew. Some spots are filled,
some to go.
My second stage appearance at HRTC where I got to
workshop this wonderful new play by Michael Slade, whose
intense
Under a Red Moon
also showed at HRTC. I was happy to make it
back onto the Loft Stage and for Mr. Slade's new play. My
castmates were Andrew Ian Adams,
Kay Bosse,
Jamie Cordes,
Charity Farrell,
Caitlin Larsen, Jacob McGlaun, Robin Post, Matthew Smith and
Scott Stoney.
This most interesting, invigorating and exciting two-week project has come
to an end. The workshop of
Michael Slade's
Gingerbread Children
and the resulting two staged readings was great experience. I am grateful
I was afforded the opportunity.
This is the third staged reading I've performed in, the seventh new play
I've helped present, but the very first new play workshop in which I've
participated. It was as rewarding an experience as I had anticipated it
would be.
Not that it wasn't at times a bit discombobulating and frazzling. Mr.
Slade was doing re-writes, at least to some extent, every day, with only a
couple exceptions; that's just simply part and parcel to workshopping a
new play. That actually was not the difficult part. The difficult part was
climbing inside the character and giving the proper level of emoting and
display of attitude. I had thought, through most of the rehearsal period
that the Gerald I was putting out there was working. Toward the very end
of rehearsal it turned out I was wrong. There were, I believe, a couple
factors at play here: 1) the evolutions of the script and of varying
understandings of the story; 2) the limitation to nine half-day rehearsals,
which in a big sense allows for the theory a fellow castmate proposed that
there were other bigger fish to fry than my interpretation of Gerald, and
Ms. Perry fried those first, then, having room and time at the end, she
dealt with Gerald; that isn't a preposterous notion.
Based on a few responses Gerald gives in the script, to both his wife,
Elizabeth (Robin Post), and his daughter, Young Sarah (Charity Farrell), I
saw him as affable with some good presentation of humility (if false) and
being fairly emotionally available. I played him that way from the
read-through all the way through the Thursday, March 7 rehearsal. However,
in the notes for that Thursday's work (which were given either at the end
of the day that evening or the start of the Friday rehearsal ‐‐ I can't
remember), Margarett said she wasn't feeling the proper power and command
from Gerald, that he seemed too humble and too deferential to the women of
the house; she said she did not sense he was in control of his household
the way he should be.
Friday, at the last full-run rehearsal I gave the 180° readjustment a
whirl, but I would not suggest I was terribly successful. It didn't feel
that way to me, at least. I had a director once make an observation about
me that points out what I interpret as an annoying flaw in my acting. She
told me that when she gave me an adjustment of any substantial size or a
new direction, I seemed to need at least a day to process the note. She
said I was not giving her what she asked for immediately, but in the next
rehearsal I would be there. I'd like to change that, be a little quicker
on the uptake, like: in the now.
At the Saturday performance I was, I suppose, sufficient as Gerald. I will
point out that I did get notes Sunday before the performance about places
Margarett did not feel I had yet met the goal. Further, there were spots
she had some of us rehearse Sunday, pre-show, Gerald was in some of those.
It seems I finally hit the target in the Sunday reading. It felt to me
that I had, anyway. Gerald seemed to me to be pretty much humorless ‐‐
with a few moments that are necessary exceptions, he seemed more assertive
and less accommodating and was certainly hardly emotionally available. Ms.
Perry did write in an email to us all that "Everyone was at the TOP
of their GAME on Sunday and it really paid off." So, she must have
been happy with Sunday's Gerald.
I will have to admit, I would have rather been able to find a way to
soften Gerald and still have the appropriate sense of power and command.
My preferred version of him was there somewhere, in the script, I just
hadn't found him before we were done with it all. But, without introducing
spoilers, I think such an introduction at the beginning would create a far
more effective arch for both Gerald and the story as a whole.
On the other side, the choice I made for Lot sailed through all the
rehearsals and through to the wrap of the project. I made Lot a spastic,
nervous weenie, mostly to draw a big distinction between him and Gerald,
though the choice was certainly based on indicators in the script. If
Margarett eventually had reservations about Gerald, she was in love with
my Lot from the git-go.
As for the rest of the cast, as well as the playwright and our director,
what can I say: they all got game! First, Michael's script is inventive,
deceptively deep, quite thought-provoking, and evocative. It's a surreal
fantasia that posses some important propositions and delicately deals with
very ugly and intense situations. His re-writes during the workshop only
strengthened these attributes (that being the idea, of course). Margarett
is a frank director with a great drive to bring out a clear and true
performance of the script.
The cast was a privilege to work with. It was nice to work again with
Kay Bosse,
Charity Farrell, and Matthew
Smith. I was happy to finally work on stage with Andrew Ian Adams, Jacob
McGlaun and
Scott Stoney.
It was great to meet and work with
Jamie Cordes,
Caitlin Larsen and Robin Post.
Since the Pittsburgh-market commercial will be shot the day after
tomorrow, it seems more than a little obvious I am not cast.
The dates for
The Human Race Theatre Company's
2013/2014 Season General Auditions will be announced soon. Of course, I'll
audition, despite that I am not sure there's a role for me in the new
season.
Auditions for Martin McDonagh's
The Pillowman
at The Guild are less than
a month away. I am keenly interested in this one. I have not read the whole
play yet, but already I am most drawn to the role of Policeman Ariel.
Don't worry, I will
read the script completely, very shortly.
This one also wrapped Sunday, as did Gingerbread Children, and it
had quite a successful run. Because of Gingerbread... I was not at
the theatre any but two performance, early in the run, but I know through
reports that all the audiences responded well, and there were many
sellouts or houses close to such. The critical success was good too, as
illustrated by the two reviews linked below:
‐‐ I've made decent headway on the "getting back to eating much
healthier" part. The "back in the gym on a regular
basis" part: not so much. Okay! Not
at all! This IS something most relevant to my present acting
life as I'd like to at least add a little bit of tone and size to my arms
and chest for my next known stage audition *(see below), and
continue on if cast. At this point that's a tall order for the audition
without a trainer and hours a day with resistance workouts. The auditions
are early April.
‐‐ And that's a big ol'........
I'll do the "mea culpa" later.
‐‐ Gettin' ducks in a row to file my 2012 tax returns.
‐‐ Since
Gingerbread Children
wrapped I have felt much more on target as the producer for this,
especially in recent days. I am taking care of a few production needs and
between myself, our stage manager Deirdre Root, and Director Robb
Willoughby, we are likely to soon have the crew roster filled out. I talk
today with whom I hope is our lighting tech, and I have feelers out for
our sound tech.
We did have a brief but most useful production meeting before rehearsal
last night, a bit later in the game than I would prefer, but there were
schedule problems that made it difficult to pull together earlier at the
fuller complement of creative team members that we had last night.
I also am doing some work helping Robb get family photos together. That's
mostly just scanning pics and digitally blowing some up from wallet size
to 5x7 or 8x10. It also includes, in one case, a little bit of
Corel Painter
magic ‐‐ many of you would use the term "Photoshopping."
It's all about creating a college-age photo of Mom and Dad (Debra Kent and
Mark Reuter). The original photo is Debra on set in a college theatre
production, with a male actor. I took a few pics of Mark last night and
now the mission is to replace the face of the college dude with Mark's,
and to try to age his face down about twenty years or so.
Here's hoping.
***SORTA-KINDA***
‐‐ The sound design for this show is provided by the playwrights through
their publisher,
Dramatic Publishing, so
all I really am doing is engineering the set-up of the sound cues in
Show Cue Systems, then doing
a slight bit of programming.
There was, however, one little sound design glitch. Weeks and weeks ago I
imported the two-CD set that came with the script into
iTunes on my laptop, in order
to further migrate all the sound cues into SCS. With my involvement in
Gingerbread Children being imminent, I didn't listen to this sound
design material at all. I found earlier this week that many of the music
and sound effect files were corrupted. I got the disks back from Robb and
imported it all again, only to experience the same problem. I took two
measures when once again grabbing the recordings off the disks: 1) I
cleaned both disks thoroughly with CD/DVD cleaning solution; 2) I used my
desktop computer at work to import into iTunes on that one. I thought the
problem might be the
Apple USB SuperDrive
I need to use with my
MacBook Pro.
One of the two measures worked; I now have good sound files.
‐‐ During the rehearsal last Saturday I began principal photography for
the podcast. I continue tonight through Friday, shooting b-roll from
rehearsals and one cast interview. I've done a bit of set up for
post-production and will do more so that after I have shot the principal
dress rehearsal footage I have as little to do to edit to final cut as
possible at that time.
‐‐ Wearing the Dayton Theatre Guild House Management Chairman hat, I am
starting today to solicit house hosts for the nine performances.
If you think you
might want to volunteer for this
prestigious
position, get hold of that house management chair guy:
KL_Storer@yahoo.com
‐‐ Yesterday PC-Goenner sent
sides for a
screentest Friday afternoon.
I will audition for a day player role in an
indy to be shot late summer in
Cincinnati.
Despite present and demanding business with Leaving Iowa I hope to
have the sides memorized for this Friday's screentest.
‐‐ I'm starting to crack the pages of
The Pillowman
for the April 8 & 9 auditions at The Guild. This would be where I'd
like to add a bit of bulk and tone to my arms and chest. Again, it's a
pretty big task at this point, at least for the auditions, so, we'll see.
I've been trying for about a week to contact
Martin McDonagh or his
representation about dialogue clearance for the last DTG podcast of the
12/13 season. I did manage, through a tip from a theatre contact in New
York City, to determine the probable best contact person at his literary
agency. I emailed that person, in London, yesterday. So now we wait.
*Don't be terribly impressed by that "through a tip
from a theatre contact in New York City" business. I am not exactly
the most industry-hooked-up guy around. But I
know a few people.
By the way, feel free to contact me if you want to volunteer as a
host for this one, too: KL_Storer@yahoo.com
It's my hope that on April 22 I will need to be wrapped in time to get
over to The Guild and rehearsal there.
It looks like that should happen; the call sheet suggest my target wrap by
3:00 pm. ‐‐ We'll see.
No word back yet on that feature-length indy I screentested for on March
22, but word on a movie audition can take a long time for response,
either way. I didn't really feel all that good about the audition, but
that means nothing save for that I didn't really feel all that good about
the audition.
This past Tuesday, I auditioned for a Kroger commercial. That one I
do feel good about. But, again, all that means is that I feel good
about it. This one is a SAG/AFTRA
gig, so if I'm cast, it will be the first of my two
Taft-Hartley
gigs.
It's been far too busy of late for me to focus on this script whatsoever
for the forthcoming April 8 & 9 auditions.
I will get back to the script before then. It looks like it will be Sunday
afternoon and evening, April 7. Well, at least I won't walk in to
auditions wholly unfamiliar with the script and the characters.
As for that getting a little bit of tone and bulk-like thing: well,
nothing has been done, though there are few days I may be able to
get some weight resistance in. Nothing that will really cause a big change
from the pudding-based physic I have at the moment, however
THIS ONE
IS A "NOPE"BY ME.
July 1, 2018. That's the first day I can retire from my
the rent-payer job and be
eligible for the retirement pension, however, measly and beat up it will
be by then.
Why do I mention this? I was offered a rather well-paying pro gig that I
knew I had to turn down. I just would not be able to be prepared in time
to do the gig correctly. It falls on a day that follows several packed
days and I would have shown up ill-prepared for the work.
In my mind this is because of that forty hours a week dedicated to
the rent-payer. If I could get that damn thing off the schedule, I'd have
much more time to focus on the soul-valuable things in my life ‐‐ the
art stuff, the talent and craft stuff.
Thing is, there's a more imminent, reasonable, practical solution than
"July 1, 2018," beyond the 25-million-to-one chance of winning
a big lottery prize; I just need to figure out what the heck it is.
As we move toward Tech Week the
chaos seems to be imploding down, with increasing calmness into a
functioning machine, which is what you want to see, and is the typical
situation. We have the full complement of crew and 95+% of our props. I
think we have all the costumes, with the multi-character actors, Peter
Wallace and Ellen Ballerene, needing lots and lots. Much of the back stage
crew work will somehow focus on the multiple-character moments, including
quick costume changes.
I will wrap up the commentary section for the podcast, tonight. Mostly
what is left is the principal footage of rehearsal, that A-role where the
dialogue from the play will be part of the final cut.
There's been one little production glitch., so far The DV cassette tape
malfunctioned during portions of one actor's commentary interview as I was
capturing the footage into
Final Cut Express.
Since I have been recording the audio separately, I did not loose the
actor's comments on audio, just portions of the video. The work-around for
this will be that I just leave the bad video sections of the commentary as
audio-only, and those will be places where I used B-role cut-away footage.
I always do a lot of cut-aways, anyway, so this is not tragic; though I
am not particularly happy about it. I could have re-shot it, but time is
at a premium, so I have elected to not do so.
The up-shot is that I had re-used some tape for the interviews and, I
believe there was a mechanical problem with the inter-workings of the
cassette.
New rule: all principal footage, including commentary, is shot with a
brand-new cassette ‐‐ until I've moved on to a camera that records to
an internal hard drive.
I'm again wearing the Dayton Theatre Guild House Management Chairman hat
as I continue to solicit house hosts for the performances of this show.
And again I'll
remind you, if you think you might want to volunteer for this
prestigious
position, get hold of that house management chair guy:
KL_Storer@yahoo.com
AND ITS PRACTICAL JOKE:
situation. There were several diagonal lines, each with odd litte circles
peppered across them, all the circles uniform in look, but not in a
consistant pattern. I stopped the video playback, took out the DV cassette
and put it back in. The problem did not cease. Then I fast-forwarded for a
while then rewound. Nope. It looked like I had pretty much wasted several
hours. I tried one more thing. I had set the speed on low to get ninety
minutes of record time. I went in and changed the default speed back to
Standard Speed. The playback would still be at the slower speed, but it
seems that making this default change worked. Or it may have been
coincidental to something else that I did or that happened independently
of me, but, whatever, I was able to capture good footage, after all.
Dentist! ‐‐ Be it good, bad, or indifferent, I have
gone my entire adult life with no visits to the dentist. But the recent
annoying numb pains that late Wednesday night, for a period, elevated to
steely spikes of razored excruciation, and for which I have only staved
off since with gobs of orajel, and not wholly from hurting, just from
making me want to die on the spot, that changes it all. Guess where I'm
going later this morning?
,
the sales receipt I needed to get the refund for the bad 800 firewire
cord I'd bought last weekend was in the pocket of my pants the whole time.
So I did not eat the $42.59 spent.
)
