Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

*) Okay, okay; "codine fog" is, admittedly, a bit of an exaggeration. Still, the Tylenol #3 has not exactly sharpened my mental acuity.

First, I have changed my mind, or rather, settled it, about recording my lines as part of the line memorization and study process. Yesterday, I made a recording to listen to. As always, I will still use the flashcards because that is a tried and true method for me, but listening to the scenes whilst involved with other things has never hurt and I know is effective. I've also had an offer from someone to help me run lines, that which I may accept. I am still way behind where I want to be in terms of having my lines memorized. I feel like I have barely started. In between other things vying for my attention and the codine fog that I have been in much of the last two weeks* I have done little toward getting off-book (my lines committed to memory).

Since last I blogged, I have been to several rehearsals and things are coming along. We are still in the early stages. It is nice to finally work with Heather Martin, whom I've known since the beginning of my return to acting. It's nice to actually share some scenes with Jennifer Lockwood, who not only have I known since my return, I met at the very first audition of my adult "career." She was at the Jan 19 & 20, 2004 auditions for The Cripple of Inishmaan at The Guild. Jennifer was the director of the show that was currently up, Talley's Folly, and as is oft the practice of directors, she was sitting in on the Cripple, scooping out audition performances, and filing away her observations (I'm guessing about her motives, but I'll bet I'm right). Moreover, Jennifer was the one who had submitted Cripple to the DTG play reading committee, so she certainly had a more personal investment in the auditions. I actually can remember the first, or one of the first conversations we had. I believe it was the second night. It was at the end of the audition and I was making some lame, mea culpa to Director Greg Smith about my audition performance and she gave me the friendly advice that I should never apologize to the director for my audition, advice I didn't fully appreciate the wisdom of, then, as I do now.

Back to today, it seems I am miles away from finding Jason Harrington and his voice ‐‐ I'm probably closer than I think. I've played a little bit with him at rehearsal. Wednesday night I tried a new take on him in his first scene, where he and the protagonist are in a more social setting, I played down his military demeanor; I guess you could say I "major-generaled him down" a bit. Mr. Director asked me to major-general him back up. Waiting for Jason to fully arrive: that's where I am right now. The attacking line study, as I am about to do full-on, is the biggest means to this particular end.

On a FF13 related note, Friday evening I recorded some voice work by some of the actors in St. Paulie's Delight. Director Kathy Mola used space at The Guild to rehearse the show, so we are recorded it there before they started for the evening. It was my usual set-up: a mic running into my small mixer then through iMic into my MacBook Pro and on into GarageBand.

These are all voicemail messages so I will process the EQ, pulling out most of the lows and boosting the mid-range. It also makes it less necessary to have a more sound-proof master recording, as if you can really get such anywhere at The Guild.

Rick Flynn

Kelli Locker

Art Fabian

MORE ADR FOR GREG NICHOLS' NEW SHORT FILM, MEDICINE ‐‐ (But the "Good" kind of ADR, not the "Bad" kind):

As the short movie, Medicine ‐‐ previously titled, Serve Me ‐‐ moves closer to final cut, Writer/Director Greg Nichols as been attacking the edit with ferocious ferver. He's cut several minutes that include what was the opening scene as well as all of the scene we shot in the moving car. His decision was that all this footage was slowing down the story line and offering no unique information.

Thursday night, the 20th, Greg audio recorded Alex Carmichal and I doing some new lines via ADR. Without detailing it, this is a new set-up for the story that replaces the nixed material. The good news, or the "'Good' kind of ADR" thing, is that, since these new lines are off screen, there was no concern about lip synchronization. There's another session of "good" ADR coming, probably on July 13, later in the afternoon after I finish playing producer at The Guild at a production meeting for 45 Seconds from Broadway.

Greg also is pumped about the score music. He says it takes the movie "to a whole new level ‐‐ insanity Level. [He] can't wait to unleash this monster on the unsuspecting townsfolk."

PREPRODUCTION, ALL OVER AGAIN:

First Show ‐‐ Of course, the work for the Simon play is much farther along, with auditions hitting in just slightly more than two weeks, and the first production meeting only a couple days before them.

I am still in the process of shoring up the production team. I have a line on another costumer ‐‐ the first few I approached could not accept. We also still need a lighting technician. Lighting and sound design are both covered; we have our stage manager and we have the sound tech.

Not to make myself look like a bad producer or anything, but I have as yet to give the script a good read. I have skimmed it a bit, but really have not read it well. Probably ought to do that, huh? The producer ought to know the show he's producing.

The actor needs to read it, too, if he is indeed going to audition....

Next Show ‐‐ With the posting of the audition specs *(see below [UNTIL AUG 28]) on the DTG facebook page on this past Wednesday, pre-production for this one has officially gotten underway, as well. I have not worked on putting any crew together, yet, though it's likely that I will design sound. Director Debra Kent also has secured a lighting designer, who is new to The Guild, for the show, and Ms. Deirdre Root is our SM/AD.

This script, too, I have not given any kind of in-depth read. I did read it for an acting class with Kay Bosse at The Human Race Theatre Company, I believe last year, and we did a pivotal scene from the play in class. I have some good idea about the gist and intent of the play, but I am not as familiar as I should be with it, as the producer should be.

Again, the actor needs to read it, too, if he is going to audition; and I may audition. I'd love to be up for both male roles, but probably only have a shot at one of the two. I am not wholly on board with auditioning for this one, any way.

And as Podcast Producer ‐‐ Just like I didn't for Lost in Yonkers a couple season's back, I am also not going to bother to seek clearance to use dialogue from this Neil Simon play. I have no confidence that permission would be granted for 45 Seconds, and if it was, the clearance fee would very likely be most prohibitive to our meager creative budget. So this will be another podcast movie with commentary content only over rehearsal footage that can't be heard. That works well enough, though hearing words from the play is better.

As for Time Stands Still, I contacted the playwright, Donald Margulies, about clearance and am pleased to report that he granted it. I admit I was skeptical about getting it here, but not as much as with any Neil Simon play. But then I must remember that I was skeptical about getting Lee Blessing's permission for Going to St. Ives and was pleasantly surprised by his prompt and gracious, "yes."

Later today I'm at the PC-Goenner Sharonville office to do a screentest for a A HREF="filmmaking_terms.html#SAGAFTRA">SAG/AFTRA low-budget feature. The gig isn't at SAG/AFTRA scale², and it would be a Taft/Hartley situation. It's a featured role that is likely to make me more than a day player if cast. It also pays travel and accommodations, and food is provided. I was given vague information on the production dates, only that it is at the end of the year. Clearly I would be going out of town, and depending on the size of the role, it might be days or a couple weeks. Indys seem to shoot fast though so I would not imagine it'd be all of the quoted "Oct-Dec." That, I believe is the window. The screenwriter is Chicago based, so this movie may be shooting there. I'm gambling that I will have enough vacation time accrued to cover the gig, should I be cast.


This has been a reality for a while and I have held off mentioning it, but I will appear on stage in our last DTG show of the 13/14 season, The Dead Guy, by Eric Coble. I will be in the role of television videographer, Dougie. There will be live video feed going on during the performances with a screen that shows in real-time what I am (Dougie is) shooting on the stage. There is a lot of technical consideration to be worked out. We know, for instance, that we need for Doug to be using a camera with a wireless feed ‐‐ trying to wrangle cables during the live performances would just not be practical, whatsoever.

I also may be somehow involved in some minor collaborative manner in the blocking of the show in order to assure better screen composition. It may simply be that a demand for a more precise movement by the actors/characters who are the subject of the live video is needed, with perhaps slightly slower more laborious process of blocking taking place. If I collaborate, my guess is it will be on the spot during the rehearsals where I make suggestions and adjustments.

Since the play is about a reality show, there are those participators' commentaries that we will be shooting to run pre-recorded during the performances, after the show has been cast.

There are also commercials to be shown on the screen. We may or may not have them produced. These are available on a pre-packaged DVD, which is certainly an attractive option.

We had a production meeting and a preliminary reading of the script last night. Too soon? you ask: not with the technical needs the show commands. Much better to be well ahead of the game.

On-line résumé presence up-to-date, including my Now Casting résumé. The icon to the left goes to my own on-line version. When I went yesterday to my account at Now Casting, I realized I was quite a few gigs behind there. It's up-to-date, now.

My representation also recently asked for an updated résumé, as well as new headshots (actor's photos). Mine have been a few years old, though at my age, unless my weight, build or "hairline" changes, my appearance will not be hardly different over the course of a couple years, not like a child or even a twenty-something or a thirty-something.

That being said (written), I have been meaning to get a new series of headshots for a while, a long while. Sometimes the delay has been due to cash ($150 or more for the set); more often, and as the on-going problem, is that I want to drop some weight first. I'd love to drop ten, maybe even twenty pounds, as well as push my muscle tone back to at least where it was when I came back to acting. Better would be ideal.

So, healthier, less weight-inducing dietary habits need my attention, and finding/making time to be a gym regular is, as it has been the whole nine-plus years I've been a thespian again, a mostly unfulfilled necessity. I like to think that my occasional mention of this here, in front of all of you, (you five regulars, at least) would be a naging incentive to me. Thus far that has not seemed to work.

To appease the agency and because I otherwise have known new pics were needed, I did a few DIY headshots in the interim before I get the professional-photographer versions, which will likely be done at Nicholas Studios. They have been my staple for this and I have always like the product they've given me.

My DIY shots are.....adequate....but I really need to get pro work done soon. The photo to the right is one of a few that is anywhere close to actually good ‐‐ perhaps without rising exactly to good.

I have as of yet to upload any of these shots to Now Casting, though I may.

again!

Remember the oral surgery a couple week's back to extract both my upper and lower left wisdom teeth? The next week I went back for the post-op exam, and it was discovered that a small fragment of the upper was still there. It had hidden itself in the angle of the post-surgery x-ray on the day of the extractions.

So, what was to be about a ten-minute check-up became an hour-plus, more surgery, and the whole day off work rather than just coming in late.

And this is why there has been more "codine fog."

This morning is the second attempt at a ten-minute post-op exam.



Some Caroline, or Change alumni have gigs up or just closing.

Yvette Williams was on the set of the HBO series Girls, starring Lena Dunham, last week and she has booked work on the set of The Other Woman, directed by Nick Cassavetes and starring, to begin, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Cameron Diaz, and Leslie Mann.

Bruce Sabath opened Friday night at the The Depot Theatre in Westport, New York, in Route 66: a new musical; Book by Jerold Goldstein & William Squier; Music by Fred Stark, Lyrics by William Squier (click for the team's bios).

Taprena Augustine yesterday wrapped her work in The World Goes Round at the Florida Studio Theatre.

And, of course, Brittany Campbell is music giggin' herself all over NYC on a regular basis, and is on occasion cranking out new recorded music, priming herself for that FIRST ride at the top of the charts that is eventually going to happen ~~ my prediction. . . . I'm tellin' ya!

Lastly, leave us not forget that three alumni also this weekend closed a most successful run of Avenue Q at The Human Race Theatre Company: Shawn Storms as Gary Coleman, Andrew Ian Adams as Third Hand and Bad Idea Bear 1, and Sean Michael Flowers as the musical director. I'm sorry I didn't get back for a second viewing of this great production.

DTG Ex-aficionado Greg Smith, now living in Jackson, Tennessee, will open July 11 as Edna in Hairspray at the Jackson Theatre Guild.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

LINES & BEING & A MAN IN HIS OWN RIGHT:

One view of my environment for working on lines at the Huffman Reservoir before the Monday rehearsal.

Monday we rehearsed Act I, Tuesday, Act II.

Will it be any surprise to you five regulars or anyone else who knows me in the thespian/(art) world that I am still impatiently awaiting Jason's full arrival on the set? I am still "acting" Jason, not wholly "being" Jason. Remember my axiom:

I am at the place where my performance with the character is still "a performance of the character," in other words, in the present. it's more acting; less being, and along with engraving his words into my mind, my other next move is to fully realize Jason and absorb him into me and give him his own voice, built upon my voice, by not my voice, and more importantly, not the blatantly put-on voice he has right now.

Harold Guskin writes in How to Stop Acting:

The only part of that I take any exception to with is "every moment must be us...what we are personally thinking, seeing, feeling, and saying...." I would not say that mine is a disagreement exactly but more of a codicil. I have also heard the opinion, the philosophy that it's ultimately what you sell the audience matters. The best of both worlds is when I have the emotional involvement with my character in that moment on stage (or in front of the camera) and I feel the sadness, the joy, the grief, the bliss he is feeling in that moment, in the script, and I successfully convey it to the audience. I must remember that the only importance is that the audience sees my character experience that emotion, and audience hears my character say the words. It is just as successful if I am not feeling it but I have still sold it to the audience. And I know fir a fact that is possible, because I have had nights on stage when I just did not feel any of it, but the feedback from the audience told me it was a successful performance; the audience saw and felt the character living the life the script laid out for him. I have had nights when I was feeling it all over the place but was to internal, not conveying it; the audience did n't believe me; they saw an actor on stage.

That is not to say that I at think we should not get to the place with the character where every moment is us and what we are personally thinking, seeing, feeling, and saying. I believe firmly that we absolutely should get there. That is my goal and when I say I want Jason to fully arrive on the set, that is what I mean. I'm impatient to be viscerally merged with him. My codicil is this: I have to make being Jason enough of a habit that when I don't feel it, I still have enough, let's call it muscle-memory, that I can still effectively behave as him in the moment and successfully sell it.

It's the same principle as how all the moments in the script that are spontaneous in the world of the characters are truly not spontaneous for the actors on the set. We can be poetic and metaphorical and say the actors must keep the moments spontaneous, but the practical reality is that is not really what they are doing. After weeks of rehearsal and multiple performances any real spontaneity is gone. The concept of the actor keeping it spontaneous is simply a way to say he or she breaks down their performance to moment by moment so they can create the illusion of spontaneity when it arrives in the story they are helping to tell on stage on screen.

The truth is, if the actor is worth his or her salt, they know the script and their part in it forward and backward, and every nuance of the script, the story, their actions and the actions of the other characters in scene with them. When Mother Superior Mary (played by Sue) unexpectedly smacks Sister Jane (played by Debby), in Act I:Scene 4 of our hypothetical play, it's Mary who impulsively reacted to Jane and smacked her. It was Jane who was shocked by the assault. That's true to the story being told. The actor, Sue, on the other hand knew on the bus to the theatre that she was smacking the actor, Debby, that evening, like she had during the last several dozen rehearsals and on into the performances already given. On her drive in from her country home, Debby knew, too. And every night, Sue made sure to cup her hand correctly to maximize the sound of the smack and to be sure to strategically strike that blow on the correct upstage spot on Debby's face to save her fellow actor any actual pain. There's not a whole lot spontaneous about that. But if Sue and Debby are good at their work, the audience will see a spontaneous moment between two nuns and the moment may even elicit a gasp or two from said audience.

That's the craftwork. The art of the actor got to the visceral truth of the character and made that their own; the craftwork keeps that alive. The craftwork allows the actor to embed the behavior of the character from first to last entrance within themselves so that what the audience sees is the character from the collaborative imaginations of the author, the actor and the audience members themselves, and not an actor on stage pretending to be the character. The most successful scenario is "every moment [being] us ‐‐ really us, what we are personally thinking, seeing, feeling, and saying" and behaving as the character so we sell it to the audience. The nights we only behave as the character and still sell his or her thought, vision and feeling to the audience is just as successful. The nights "we are personally thinking, seeing, feeling, and saying" but are poorly selling it: we've failed.

I don't know how this turned into an essay. Perhaps it was the inclusion of the Guskin quote.

I guess I should get back on point. I haven't fully discovered who Major General Jason Harrington is,and I haven't yet merged him with myself to breath life into him. Knowing all the words that come out of his mouth is a first major step in that direction, and one of the artistic focuses of this holiday weekend. I'd discuss how I'm going to be sure to differentiate Jason from the last Michael Feely character I played, Colonel Gregory Stratton, in Night and Fog in FF2009, but I want to move on, close this entry and get on with my day. So, Jason vs Greg is a topic for later. Right now, my Jason is pretty much a stereotype, and military archetype, so he's the same place where gregory started out for me. So one of my tasks is to keep the mutual archetype, as it is valid and appropriate, even demanded, but be sure Jason is his own man.


The screentest Monday at the PC-Goenner Sharonville office went well enough. The movie will shoot in Michigan, what is likely a five to six hour drive from my humble abode. I'm still not at all sure how substantial this featured role is nor how long I would be on set: day player, several days, or more. I doubt it demands enough time on set to require me to join SAG/AFTRA. It could be more than one 600-mile round trip to set. However, depending on the call sheets, will it be one day on set, or will it be more than a day and thus a need to stay overnight?.


This long weekend is also a good place to kick out a lot of the work needed for the sound for the two FF13 shows I agreed to design for.

This really shouldn't be a major burdon nor take up a lot of my extended weekend. The sound needs of these shows are pretty straight forward and simple.

I have the raw recordings of Rick Flynn, Kelli Locker, and Art Fabian for Jacob Cox's St. Paulie's Delight, director by Kathy Mola.

Both that show and A Position of Relative Importance, by Hal Borden, (directed by Debra Kent) don't call for any exotic sound effects, nothing that would take advanced mixing or creation. I likely have all the sound files in my library (which is about to get significantly bigger). What I don't have will be very easy to get ahold of.

SUMMER HRTC ADVANCED ACTING CLASS NEEDS STUDENTS TO PROCEED:

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Like the screenshot of a facebook from yesterday says, I still at that "[stumbling] and lack of verbatimism" stage "that needs to be smoothed out and eradicated," but still, I have the lines, save for refinement. At rehearsal tonight and tomorrow night I will still have the script in my hand, more for the blocking than anything else.

That's not to say that I would not be calling for lines were there not a script in my hand. Actually, I am likely to call for line if needed as I want to only have the script in hand to remind me of blocking.

The flash cards.

The park.

The patio.

THE CLASS IS A GO:

:

I can get it done in time, but not in as much of a stress-free zone than it would have been.

So-oh-well!


First off, remember that open auditions for 45 Seconds from Broadway are one week from tonight and tomorrow night at The Guild.

I'm still not shored up on my production team for this one. I have an "almost" on the costumer, but that person has not yet committed. The sound tech had to drop out due to A conflict he had forgotten about. I do have a tech who has just come on board and she will fill whichever slot is open, sound board or light board. So, right now, I am on the prowl for the other tech and am launching a campaign to persuade the costumer into a firm Yes.

I am also still more likely than not to audition for this one, myself. I always feel a little weird about auditioning for shows for which I am the producer, and frankly, usually don't get cast. I did make it into A Case of Libel. I also produced Blackbird, but that was precast with myself and Ms. Atkinson in the roles from before we knew if we were doing the show at The Guild.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

On a less self-critical note, my character work on MG Jason Harrington is inching along. I think I'm starting to get him to a fully dimensional human being from the cardboard version he's been. Okay, "cardboard" is probably a bit harsh, but he wasn't feeling as flesh-and-blood as he should be and now he's getting there; he now has some warm breath in him.

Wednesday night, Director Saul Caplan worked with just Shawn Hooks (Col. Corcoran) and myself and our big scene together. We got a lot of progress achieved on that scene, too. For one thing, I was able to fill out the veracity of Jason as a living entity and not a character being played by an actor. I am not fully there, yet, but Wednesday and last night prove I am heading that direction.

Last night we ran the whole show and where my character work on Jason still progressed, I still fell far short of being verbatim on the lines. A few times I just pushed my way through, knowing I was paraphrasing; a couple times I had to call for line. I'm always set on saying the words as they were written. With a new play festival where the text is the game, it's even more of an imperative than it usually is ‐‐ and I believe it is usually a pretty major imperative.

Meanwhile, I got a note about bad movement on stage ‐‐ one of my big, self-critical bugaboos. I apparently was subconsciously shuffling around, a habit I have witnessed, with great chagrin, on video of myself on stage. I think, in this case, it was idiosyncratic due to trying to recall the lines. Whatever the reason, it's action that must die.

ADVANCED ACTING CLASS WITH KAY BOSSE AT THE HUMAN RACE THEATRE COMPANY:

In this series Kay want's us all to work on roles we want to do but know we would not get cast in for a production because we are no longer young enough or are otherwise not typed for. Kay has urged me to tackle Jamie from Long Day's Journey into Night. I'd also set my sights on a very challenging and intense character I am aware of from an unpublished play; I requested use of the manuscript for the class from the playwright, but he declined due to the play's unpublished status; he just doesn't want a copy out in the wild ‐‐ a position that I certainly understand. So, I don't have my second piece of work at the moment.


PC-Goenner just contacted me about a possible modeling gig ‐‐ if you can believe that ‐‐ a week from today.

Unless the client is looking for particular character types, I cannot imagine me getting the booking. I mean, really. As I may have said here before: I may not be a troll under the bridge, but I'm not exactly People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive," either.

But, the agency inquired about my availability, and it would be a few hundred bucks for a few hours, so, no sense counting myself out if the clients will count me in.

?

At the absolute least I hope to get a substantial amount of the work done for both Jacob Cox's St. Paulie's Delight and Hal Borden's A Position of Relative Importance this weekend. Actually the goal is to get them finished and off my plate.

Today I will track down a few songs that have been especially requested by the particular directors, and I have some miscellaneous sound effects to pull from in my library.

Our first production meeting for 45 Seconds from Broadway is tomorrow afternoon. As always, my goal is no more than thirty minutes, though this one might run longer. I am adamant that one hour is the max, and really would like it to come in much under that. the big goal of the meeting is to make sure that everybody's on the same page and no one has something in mind that will come as a troublesome surprise to any one else, and to see what all everyone knows they need.

Again, for any local actors who might happen across this post, for some odd, bizarre reason, before it's too late, here's a reminder that the open auditions for the show are this coming Monday and Tuesday at the Guild ‐‐ *see details listed below (until July 17).

We still don't have the costumer, though I have a solicitation out there to a new referral. Our tech, who just came on board, may run both sound and lights, though really, if I can get a second tech, I will.

We also have a good start on the production team for Time Stands Still. Again, I have one of the two booth techs for this, one of the two that the director, Debra Kent, requested. The other has schedule conflicts.

There may be a production meeting before summer ends on this one, too.

1. WINGS OVER AMERICA TOUR - May 27, 1976, CINCINNATI, OH (RIVERFRONT COLISEUM)

2. The Paul McCartney World Tour - Feb 12, 1990, Cincinnati, Oh (Riverfront Coliseum)

3. THE NEW WORLD TOUR - MAY 5, 1993, CINCINNATI, OH (RIVERFRONT STADIUM)

4. Driving USA Tour - Apr 29, 2002, Cleveland, Oh (Gund Arena)

5. BACK IN THE US TOUR - OCT 10, 2002, COLUMBUS, OH (JEROME SCHOTTENSTEIN CENTER)

6. US Tour - Oct 22, 2005, Columbus, Oh (Jerome Schottenstein Center)

7. ON THE RUN TOUR - AUG 4, 2011, CINCINNATI, OH (GREAT AMERICAN BALL PARK)

8. OUT THERE!

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

?

Though having the sound work for St. Paulie's Delight and A Position of Relative Importance finished did not happen this weekend, the goal was close to met; I no longer feel anxious about these tasks.


The senior production staff for 45 Seconds from Broadway had a good production meeting yesterday; and it was magically under thirty minutes, which is always my goal for these. Now, if we can only get the board meetings down to such a length.

As is usually the case, when he directs a show, Fred Blumenthal also is designing the set. He's going for verisimilitude and we are in the midst of looking for some restaurant accouterment: props and set pieces, like an appropriate toothpick dispenser and a bill spike.

I FTP this blog post over; I run my On the Road to Kingdom Come lines; then, I spend the rest of my day ‐‐ before heading west to McCartney in Indy ‐‐ looking at the Simon script: as producer, sound designer, and auditioning actor.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

The Song List From Last Night's Show       Banker's Life Fieldhouse       Indianapolis, Indiana Eight Days A Week Junior's Farm All My Loving Listen To What The Man Said Let Me Roll It Paperback Writer My Valentine Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five The Long And Winding Road Maybe I'm Amazed I've Just Seen A Face We Can Work It Out Another Day And I Love Her Blackbird Here Today Your Mother Should Know Lady Madonna All Together Now Lovely Rita Mrs Vandebilt Eleanor Rigby Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! Something Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da Band on the Run Back in the U.S.S.R. Let It Be Live And Let Die Hey Jude Encore: Day Tripper Hi, Hi, Hi I Saw Her Standing There Second Encore: Yesterday Helter Skelter Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End

I'll be back with comments, later. But, I will tell you, The Macca did not disappoint.

Yes: pics are coming!

     

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Sound boy stuff:

The sound work for both St. Paulie's Delight and A Position of Relative Importance was finished before the weekend; well, it was, save that I left a sound cue off the disk for one of the shows.

I dropped off her CD to St. Paulie's Delight Director Kathy Mola on Wednesday and I dropped the Relative Importance disk off to Director Debra Kent on Thursday. There was more sound editing and mixing to do for St. Paulie's which is why I dealt with it first. With the festival opening this coming Friday, adjusting sound design is a little tricky at this late date.

Kathy did need to email me Thursday to inform me that the curtain music was not on the CD. So I had to burn another copy and I dropped that off Saturday when I headed to DPH for the Kingdom Come tech rehearsal.

As stated above in the entry for Kingdom Come, last night I had to split myself between this show and that one, as we had the first rehearsal for this and the last rehearsal for the other. The only thing to report about the read through was that my British dialect work was spotty, at best. I need to polish it up, more than a little. Andrew was also a bit superficial and stereotyped last night ‐‐ but, it was read through.

ADVANCE ACTING CLASS AT THE HUMAN RACE THEATRE COMPANY:

The class with Kay Bosse is going well. I wrote before that Kay is having us tackle characters that we are not probable to or absolutely have no chance to ever take the stage in. She asked to pick our dream roles; I really wasn't able to settle on one, so Kay suggested Jamie Tyrone from Long Day's Journey into Night. I'm doing Jamie's bug scene from Act IV, the drunken confession scene. To be honest, even though Kay is not requiring us to be off-book for the scene work, it'd be nice if I had less on plate otherwise in order to give this the time and energy it needs out of class. It will be a great exercise, no matter what, but I am skeptical I'll get anywhere as deep into this scene and this character as I would like.

I am on vacation next week, but I have personal business to attend to, plus I am on 45 Seconds as producer and I have Andrew to contend with. Andrew, of course, is not the deep work that Jamie is, but Andrew's going on stage, so triage says he takes precedence. I need to get on that dialect, for one thing. And, as you'll see below, I am out of town mid-week, for something cool.


Sunday we did what is claimed to be the absolute wrap of my work on Greg Nichols' horror short, Medicine. We did some ADR, which according to Greg should be the last work he needs from me for the project. Well, technically what we recorded Sunday was not "dialogue" but rather other sorts of vocalization.


As for my own "work" as a "director," I received the boilerplate response from the 2013 Eichelberger FilmDayton Festival concerning the submission of Be Or Not that I anticipated: "Many difficult decisions had to be made...." yadda, yadda, yadda. To be honest, I was skeptical of the movie's acceptance due entirely to issues of less than fabulous production values. Certainly it would not be rejected based on the performances by Natasha Randall and Craig Roberts; their work was wonderful ‐‐ as so was all the unsung work buried in the background by various other talented folk who helped me create the radio programming that rests low as an underscore to the scene.

On a related note, I am still battling with IMDb over Craig's listing for my movie. For reasons I don't want to re-elaborate, IMDb created a new profile for Craig for my movie, treating him as a separate actor from the Craig Roberts in The Wonderland Express, which means he does not have one listing with both his movies contained. I tried to rectify that shortly after Be Or Not was listed at the site, but the result was that rather than getting to same profile linked to my movie as the other, any listing for Craig Roberts was deleted. I have just once again added the same Craig Roberts profile as goes with the other movie, so sonn his page should have both his IMDb movie credits on it.

THE McCARTNEY SHOW

My eighth attendance at a McCartney show was just as rewarding as any others have been. There's just no way around it, Paul is an immaculate showman. After the opening musical volley of "Eight Days A Week" and "Junior's Farm," he chatted for a moment with the stadium crowd, saying how the energy in the place was great and he was going to "drink it in." He walked to the edge of the stage, struck a pose like he was in an Old Spice commercial, and the audience went nuts. He knows how to play that superstar card. I thought to myself: "If I had tried that, the audience would have reacted with, 'Get on with it! Who you trying to impress?'"

It was the magic that it always is. A few other Dayton-area folk attended: Jamie McQuinn and his lovely new bride Christina Tomazinis as well as Jared Mola and his twin sister Rachel (who is a college student in Indianapolis). All are theatre folk to one extent or another. We had dinner beforehand. None of them had seen him live before and they were all quite pleased with their evening.

Christina Tomazinis, Jamie McQuinn (launching their delayed honeymoon), myself, Rachel Mola & Jared Mola, just after our pre-show dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Indy, just a five minute walk from the arena. Photo: Jamie McQuinn

At seventy-one, there can be no good argument, Paul's voice is not at the peak of his vocal career, yet, still, he was as formidable a presence on the stage as he's been every time I have seen him; and he was that formidable presence FOR JUST ABOUT THREE HOURS! The lady sitting next to me, knew I had the playlist on my phone. At 10:59 ‐‐ some two hours and forty or fifty minutes after he'd walked on stage ‐‐ as the band left after "I Saw Her Standing There," from Encore number one, she turned to me and asked, "Is he coming back out," her voice betraying incredulousness.

When I smiled, nodded my head and said, "Oh yeah," she returned, "I didn't think he'd play this long!"

"We've got another ten to fifteen minutes of music to go," I said.

She shook her head, amazed, then said, "That's a vegetarian for you, I guess."

The other thing that I noticed was he did not seem to take even one drink of water or any liquid the entire time he was on stage. I'm not sure what that means, but there it is.

In the memorabilia line before the concert I overheard the same conversation I've heard at every show since 1990:

"Glad we got to the show, 'cause I don't know if we'll get the chance to him again in concert."

"Yeah, he's gettin' up there."

"Yep."

"Yep."

Yeah, Paul's touring until a doctor tells him he can't or he drops down dead heading toward the tour bus.

NEXT WEEK

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

OPENING TODAY

And so it begins.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

SHOWING TODAY

The Cast of On the Road to Kingdom Come CHARACTER            ACTOR Col. Thomas "Tommy" Corcoran            Shawn Hooks Cpt. Rachel Weiss            Jennifer Lockwood MG. Jason Harrington            K.L.Storer Robin Corcoran            Heather Martin The General            John Bukowski

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

CLOSING TODAY

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

What-a-ya-gonna-do?


Was at rehearsal Monday and will be back tomorrow night.

Director Fred Blumenthal is actually going to block the other scene I am in tonight. I will get that blocking tomorrow night. If my other scene is any indication, there won't be much to my movements, so I am probably not going to be too far behind the curve by missing tonight.

COMING SOON

It's going to take a little while to carve out enough time to sit down and recount the FutureFest weekend properly.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Here's to all the designers and performers who took home awards this weekend for the 2012/2013 Dayton theatre season from both the Annual DayTony Awards (for the whole Dayton theatre community) and from the Annual Murphy Awards (for my home theatre, the Dayton Theatre Guild).

And here is a special shout out to the many designers and performers who did not take home awards, or awards that adequately reflected their excellent work and for which the oversights or under-recognitions are an absolutely indefensible crime. And make no mistake, every year, truly exceptional work is either underrated or ignored in Dayton just like everywhere else.

I could write another several thousand words on this, with no effort, but I believe this is enough.

Sometime soon ‐‐ (SOMETIME) soon ‐‐ I'll give accounts of the Futurefest weekend, my visit to steppenwolf to see Slowgirl, and I'll catch up with the on-going progress of 45 Seconds from Broadway. There's other stuff to report on, too.

It's all coming.... Stay Tuned

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

It's all coming.... Stay Tuned

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

OPENING TODAY

Click here to see the podcast.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

More later (my current mantra) but I will at least say now that we had a good opening weekend.

Meanwhile, remember that auditions for this one begin tonight.

*see below if you view this before 08/28/2013.

The catch-up post is still on its way....

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Auditions continue and end tonight.

*see below if you view this before 08/28/2013.

And, well, you know about the delayed stuff and how it will be here eventually...........

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

AND NOW HERE WE ARE. SOME OF THIS HAS BEEN IN SOME PROCESS OF COMPOSITION FOR WEEKS. MOST, REALLY. NOT THAT THERE WAS A LOT OF BLOOD SWEAT & TEARS, JUST A LOT OF DISTRACTIONS....... BUT NOW.....

So Sunday the 11th I was working late in the light booth at The Guild, doing some editing work on the sound design for 45 Seconds from Broadway. At some point my cursor on my laptop stopped cooperating. It either would not move or would move erratically. My first thought was that I had over-taxed the memory cache and I needed to reboot the computer to clean it out. That however, turned out to be wrong, as the reboot did not help.

‐‐ Then I notice it: some drops of water right in the bottom crevice opening of my track pad. I pushed on the bottom and a little more seeped out from underneath.

This was a major factor situation!

As the screenshot above of my facebook post suggests, my best guess is that the cup of softdrink I had was sweating condensation and I dripped some onto the laptop while taking a drink.

The work-around for the evening was to borrow the mouse from the desk top in the booth. At home, later, I used that from my own old Mac Power PC tower. The cursor eventually stopped cooperating with me even when the mouse was plugged in. It was often moving on its own. The next day, it all was fine. I guess after the liquid evaporated the sensor for the track pad stopped getting false reading. The involuntary movements may actually have been the track pad recalibrating itself, for all I know.

The good news, well, semi-good news, is my track pad came back to functionality and so far I have not needed to spend money on a bluetooth mouse. In order to be fully productive on my computer, that would have been necessary had the track pad not bounced back. The semi-bad news is that once after it bounced back it relapsed; thus far, only once. So, we'll see.....

Seriously: the lesson here is not keep water away from the computer. THAT I already know. This one is:
"KEEP YOUR DAMN GUARD UP!"

Of course, it's relative to this blog because so much of what I do in my art universe depends on my laptop as a major tool.

The rack inside the street door for our "Polish Tea Room," stocked with the goodies from Mr. Filichia.

At this point the opening weekend is well over; in fact, our sophomore weekend starts this evening. Last weekend we did okay and certainly got good feedback from the audiences. One lady actually told me it was the best show she's seen at The Guild in the fifteen years she's been coming.

I hate to seem like an ungrateful jackass but it's hard for me to see this particular show as the best we've done in the last fifteen years. It's not even the best Neil Simon we've done in the almost ten years that I've been involved. In fact, though I don't think it's a lousy show at all, it's nowhere close to the top of my list; it's not even halfway up my list, not even.

That's not to say that 45 Seconds from Broadway sucks. It's a nice script and it certainly has loads of great opportunities for actors to play around with fun characters. Andrew is fun.

Finishing up the budget stuff ‐‐ yeah, we're over budget.

Gotta tell my little name-drop story now. Friday, the 16th, Director Fred Blumenthal came to me and said that he wanted some real NYC tourist brochures for a rack on the set. Did I know anyone in New York? Well, certainly, being little Mr. Barely Semi-professional Actor Guy I don't know a major host of New York folk, but I know a few New York theater people ‐‐ mostly Carolyn, or Change people, but a few other Dayton theater peeps who moved there. The other category are some of the steadfast FutureFest adjudicators. Some of those in this conglomeration are facebook friends, so I sent a group message to them all on the spot, telling them what we needed and why.

Enter Peter Filichia, NYC theatre author and critic, who, though he hasn't been for the past couple years, has often been a Futurefest adjudicator. Less than a minute after I posted the message he responded with "Of course! Easy as pie! Tell me PRECISELY the type of brochures you mean." I did so and less than an hour later all the brochures we needed were on their way via FedEx. Pretty cool!

I
So I had this great idea for the sound design. It had to do with ambient city street noise in the background throughout the show. After all, our "Polish Tea Room" is on 46th Street in New York City. My idea was to stick a speaker behind the upright back set door, which leads into the coffeeshop from 46th Street, and run an ongoing sound file that lasts through a whole act: one for each act, obviously.

I mixed together two 70 minute sound files. Then I transfered (recorded) each on a MiniDisk cartridge to play back with the MD player in the booth. I brought in both my little guitar practice amp and my bass guitar practice amp to which to run the sound, back there behind that up-right door: 46th Street.

However, I kept getting a ground hum that I could not eliminate. It happened through either practice amp. So I nixed those and ran the MD player through our smaller extra mixing board, into the second amp and back. No hum, but there's a lot of dust inside that mixer so the sound kept cutting out. It was incessant.

As the result I killed the back stage sound source idea. Fortunately, because I apparently could smell that little gremlin bastard somewhere in the vicinity, I had created mp3 files of each to stick in the folder for the Show Cue Systems software. It's fortunate because, I had to program the street noise to come out of the house speakers. I placed them in the house left/stage right speakers, and a bit low. They don't exactly sound like they are coming from behind the street door, but there is an outside of the building, from the street illusion, or sense. It works well enough, even if not as well as my original idea would have, given good equipement to execute it.

II
This one is a sound problem, too. Actually there were other problems, as well, and the gremlin really gets little blame for any of it, but I'm giving him some credit, anyway.

Sound problem first. If you have already seen the podcast, which was a week late, you know the interview was a group interview, with the cast in an oblong circle. I used three mics to record auxiliary audio. The mics are not the best type to use in such a set up so some people in some positions were not recorded crisply; there is that quality of distance to the ember of their voices.

I shot the group interview multi-camera: three stationary and one mobile camera ‐‐ Fred Boomer on the mobile. My standard practice with the auxiliary audio recording is to synch it with the on-board camera audio, then drop the on-board audio out for the edited video. In this case what I did was synch the auxiliary with the on-board from the mobile camera, but I kept both alive to blend them together. I then dropped them into the video for all four videos from all four cameras ‐‐ this is the audio track for every clip I edited from and thus for all of the edited interview in the final cut.

The synch sounded great
          at first.
     What I did not realize was that there is clearly a small speed variance between the auxiliary audio and the video (and its on-board audio). So, as the footage progresses the synch gets off and there is a slightly growing echo. There is a fix, but I was already far, far behind schedule and I needed to put the project to bed.

Beyond that, I grossly underestimated how long it would take to edit to final cut, otherwise. I'd arranged to take off one whole day from work but then flex my work hours to work over two hours the other four days, thus burning no vacation leave. It turned out I had to be off three days in a row and burn twenty-four hours of vacation last week, and still wasn't done on time. I reached final cut this Tuesday, while I was home sick with either a twenty-four hour bug or mild food poisoning.

Well, it's done now, though greatly flawed, due to the crappy audio. Here's a big hats off to Heather Cretcher and Peter Wine who provided all the still photography, Fred Boomer who, as I wrote above, was the videographer on the mobile camera, and to Ralph Dennler, who facilitated the group interview.

You can find the podcast elsewhere on this page or at youtu.be/8kcm3BD7XZ4.

Some of the choices for the practical phones for the set ‐‐ "practical" meaning they actually work, rather than being dead and any rings during the show being playback of recordings	The kitchen phone, placed backstage. The actors use it in view of the audience, in the kitchen doorway, but the phone itself did not need to be wall-mounted as it is not in view.	The placement of the amplified speaker that was the original output for the city street sounds ambience.
The speaker was back stage in this corner.	Another on stage view of the speaker placement	Sound design work in the booth. Probably volume level checking, but maybe something else.
More sound design work....	The main tools for sound design at DTG	As I have done a few times for past productions, I spent the night the Saturday before Tech Sunday, working late on wrapping the sound design. The several previous pics are from that evening.
The set for the group interview for the podcast	The podcast set from another perspective.	Final Cut Express open and the lo-o-o-o-ong process of editing this podcast underway
A set picture showing where the Filichia tourist brochures are on stage; see down-left corner of the pic ‐‐ though technically the rack is Up Right on stage.	Line study	This time for the flash cue cards I typed both my cues and my lines, then taped them onto their respective sides of each card, rather than hand writing each.

Two weeks back I auditioned for an upcoming Ohio Lottery spot. Does not appear that I landed the booking or I'd have been called already. It's a Halloween spot that I am sure starts shooting soon.

Earlier this week I went for a role in Time Stands Still at The Guild. The cast list above, posted Aug 28, illustrates the results.

The floor layout of the upstairs theatre at steppenwolf. We were in the highlighted seats, B3 & B4, which look farther from the stage than they are. We were about six to eight feet from that corner.

This section may not have a precise thesis, but I guess my main critical response to the play itself is: Slowgirl should be a longer one act or even a two-act play.

I thought the performances by both William Petersen and Rae Gray, the staging by Director Randall Arney, the set, designed by Takeshi Kata, (being a sound designer) the sound ‐‐ Richard Woodbury, and the light design (Daniel Ionazzi) were all top notch. However, I found the script good but somewhat lacking, or, to my dramatic preferences, incomplete. There was so much to dig into with both characters and though we got into both, I did not feel it was enough.*

Still, the 600-some mile round trip to Chicago and was not at all wasted. First off, being in the upstairs theatre at steppenwolf was a fine experience. Its "traverse" stage made the experience much like being in the audience right at home at DTG and our "thrust" stage, save that the rows of seats there are a bit deeper ‐‐ *(see image).

Secondly, the two actors gave superb performances. Of course, I would love it if I were ever able to meet William Petersen to personally express my admiration and appreciation of his work in general and for something specific, such as the character Sterling, here, or Hamm in Endgame, or Ray in Blackbird ‐‐ (or that "Bug Man" character on that TV show). That opportunity has not presented itself, though I do have the snail-mail to send him something at William Morris so perhaps I will drop an old-fashioned fan letter on him; who knows if it would ever actually end up in his hands.

However, after the show was over, Ms. Gray came out to a reception lounge, I believe to meet with some friends and/or family. We didn't impose but I did walk over, give her a thumbs up and tell her, "Great work." I managed to find an avenue to send her a message later and I simply told her again that I found her work very fine. I also said that as an actor myself, I try to get to that place where my performance is not "acting" but "being," and I asserted that she had achieved that. I also pointed out that her co-star is a master at making being the character look effortless, because he is; it is what draws me to Petersen as an actor. Further I told her that her co-star was well matched by his co-star.

Being from a home theatre with a thrust stage I also much appreciated Director Randall Arney's staging of the play. The traverse stage set-up in the steppenwolf upstairs theatre calls for virtually the same sort of concern for staging that our DTG thrust stage commands. On both these types of stages there are many times when some part of the audience is at a visual disadvantage, a little less on the travers stage, but not significantly less. When staging shows on such stages (and others like this, such as arena stages, i.e.: theatre in the round), the director has to be conscious of the actors playing to all audience members during the progression of the play, keeping any sections from being ignored for any long period of time.

You also want to be sure when some character or characters have their backs to some portion of the audience that others do not. The idea is to minimize any disadvantage for any audience members in witnessing action and drama. Key moments ought to be staged and played so no one misses the full effect. And all of that ought be done so as to hide the deliberate staging to meet those needs; the movement and the placement of the characters on stage needs to be natural and logical for the characters. It's usually not easy to do. Here it was done expertly, by the director and our two actors who did their part to make the movement real to the characters and the story. Every audience member got more time with a good view of the action than not.

AND A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL!

* Jan 30, 2015 addendum: I have since purchased the script and read it several times and have revised my opinion in some great measure. I still think the play could be longer, a two-act play, but I have reconsidered my opinion about Mr. Pierce not adequately digging into each character. I am now satisfied that the script shows us plenty about both. It does leave some things to be guessed, but that's not a bad thing.

---

The Oak 112 Hostel

Slightly different view of the hostel

The Oak 112 Hostel downstairs lobby and common room

Wall map, in the common area, of the Chicago Gold Coast and Lincoln Park neighborhoods

Three unused beds in my hostel room during my stay. I slept in the one in the lower right of the pic.

Meanwhile, about Chicago: Have I said lately how much I like that city? This time, I stayed in the Gold Coast neighborhood, not far from the lake and right next to Lincoln Park, where steppenwolf is, and where I have done some carousing in the past. I'd made plans to check out the Art Institute of Chicago on this trip; that goal is in fact why I got there early. However, that visit was not realized. I made the mistake of trying to drive there. I got turned around and a bit lost trying find the museum, then when I did find it, it was obvious that parking was going to be a real bitch because a new exhibit opened that day. I went back to the hostel.

The hostel: You five may remember that I stayed at a hostel this time around, by virtue of an error in choosing a cheaper hotel room while on Priceline.com. As I wrote earlier, I picked the best price I found reasonably close to steppenwolf, only to find later that I missed the fact that the Oak112 is not a regular hotel, but a hostel. Again, my first reaction was the thought to cancel the reservation and find an actual hotel in the same vicinity, but then I thought, Eh, what the hell. It'll be a new experience. The idea of rooming for a couple nights with foreign travelers, which was a probability, was intriguing to me. However, I had the room all to myself even though there were two sets of bunk beds in the room.

I didn't really interact a whole great deal with the other guests, but I do know that none that I met were Americans; they were all either foreign students or foreign tourists: one young lady from Rumania, two English men, an African woman (don't know which country), a couple Swedish ladies. I might add none of them were over thirty.

Beyond all that, both nights I was there I walked into the section of downtown close to where I was in the Gold Coast. For those who've never been to Chicago, some good majority of the restaurants in the downtown area have outside patios, most right by the sidewalk. Perhaps some of you reading this may know that I'm not all that much of an urban kind of a guy. I live a seven-minute bike ride and a thirty-second drive from farm land, and I am not at all unhappy about that.

Yet, Chicago is an urban setting I could get used to quickly, I think. Every time I visit there, the small, quiet little voice that says, "This would be a great place to live," get's a little stronger. Mind you, it's still a diminutive presence in my head ‐‐ or soul, or wherever it's emanating from ‐‐ but its existence cannot be denied. Just like every other time I have been in the city, I have felt a certain comfortableness and instant affinity. I hate driving in urban traffic, and you can imagine that anywhere in the metro-Dayton Ohio environment there is no heavy traffic that compares with medium traffic in Chicago; yet, I don't mind much driving in Chicago.

It might be imprudent to guarantee that my zip code may eventually be a 600XX, but no one should be shocked if that is an eventuality; it's not inevitable, but it sure ain't unreasonable to anticipate the change to at least a small extent.

The caveat here, of course, and for which I am aware, is that it's one thing to visit a place and quite another to live there. I realize I don't have a residence perspective of the city. Also, I've been there once in the dead of winter, New Years Eve 1990, and for a winter-wuss like myself, it was more than a bad experience. Perhaps a trip northwest in December for a few days, that might be what breaks the deal. Still, it is a guarantee I have not been inside the Chicago city limits for the last time.

More of my hostel room		Is it not a shock that I would be on my laptop during my stay?
Well, isn't it?	And now, a few pics of the Gold Coast
From where I was staying it was a pretty easy walk to Lake Shore Drive, but I didn't get across it to Lake Michigan.	I saw lots of people on foot with beach gear so it was clearly possible, but I didn't follow them.	A gazebo in the little park ‐‐ of which I didn't catch the name ‐‐ through which I reached Lake Shore Drive.
The view from the sidewalk patio of Lou Malnati's Pizzaria.	One of many brave interlopers at Lou Malnati's	Point Zero

The main agenda item for the trip, as seen on the window near the entrance to steppenwolf's Garage theatre.

Point Zero

Where we had dinner before the show, Trattoria Gianni, across the street from steppenwolf.

The "El" zipping by, as seen from the steppenwolf parking garage.

Under the El, leaving Chicago for home.

I was so fortunate to have been able to have a sit down with William Petersen ‐‐ ("Billy" to his friends) -- and Rae Gray to talk about the show and the craft in general and them have them pose for this picture. Okay, there's a chance this is all a lie and the photo is actually an official publicity photo from steppenwolf.

So, you wanna know who the other part of the "We" is. She is a theatre friend, a most talented theatre friend, a gifted young woman who left the Dayton area for Chicago a little more than a year ago. Her name is Lauren Deaton and she was my guest. Some of you five may even know her. I had an extra ticket and I offered it to her or whomever else she knew in the Chicago theatre world she thought might want it.

The cast & crew at the adjudication of Kingdom Come Photo by Kelli Locker

Playwright Michael (M.J.) Feely addresses the audience during the adjudication; the adjudicators to the left & Dayton Playhouse Board Chairman Brian Sharp next to Michael. Photo by Kelli Locker

Well, now that the festival is on the verge of a distant memory perhaps I can see it with a clearer perspective. But what's more likely is that I will not remember some elements of the experience. And since as I write this paragraph I am in tech week as actor, producer, ad nauseam, in 45 Seconds from Broadway, and am now gearing up as, at the very least, producer for Time Stand Still, I have not given much mental energy toward formulating what goes into this recount of On the Road to Kingdom Come or the overall festival. Maybe as I soldier on a lot of things will return to me ‐‐ and at this moment I have no clue what timespan this "soldiering on" will spread over.

I'd say overall our performance of Mr. Feely's play went rather well. There were a few line problems, but hey: live theatre and all.

As for my Major General Jason Harrington, I was not unpleased with him. Michael was happy with my representation of the Jason he wrote, so that's something. The big challenge, as the five of you who read this blog may know, was to keep Jason from being the exact man that Col. Gregory Stratton was in Feely's 2009 FF winner, Night and Fog. I've already made the joke several times that Jason, in Washington, D.C. in the mid-seventies, is the younger third cousin of Greg, from Occupied Berlin in the mid-forties. That, of course, speaks to the fact that they are both pretty much the same archetype. Still, two different men, even if cut from the same cloth, are two different men. And there were differences between the two men inherent in the perspective scripts each appear in.

Any conundrum I had was more that created by the actor who didn't want to give an identical performance for two different characters on the same stage within four years of each other. My belief is that between the written difference of the two men and my efforts to keep them separate, I put a different military career officer on the stage this July than I did in July of 2009. At least I hope I did.

So this was one of the better years for FutureFest. It would have been great to have been in any of the six shows, well, five of them, as Tom Coash's Veils is a two-hander for young women. I've said and written this before, but it bears repeating: Futurefest is one of my favorite theatrical experiences of the year, especially as an actor, but also simply in general.

The FutureFest 2013 opening reception
FF13 reception	FF13 reception	Helen Sneed & Jim Lockwood
Faye Sholiton & David Finkle	FF13 reception	J. Joseph Cox & Robert Koon
Brian Sharp at the opening of the festival	Cast of A Position of Relative Importance	Brian Sharp & Hal Borden
Adjudication for Veils	Tom Coash & J. Joseph Cox with Sam Havens & Jim Lockwood	The Director & cast of The One with Olives
Brian Sharp & Sam Havens	Adjudicators	Director & cast of St. Paulie's Delight
J. Joseph Cox address the audience with Kathy Mola to his left	Adjudicators	Adjudicators
Adjudicators	Adjudicators	Sunday morning
Sunday morning	Sunday morning, with Eleanore Speert (in red) front & center	Sunday morning with Steven Young standing guard
Richard Brock & Sam Havens at the annual post-FF ice cream social and post mortem at the home of Saul and Tay Caplan	M.J. (Michael) Feely & Wendi Michael, again at the Caplan event, with Saul in the background	Partying at The Little York Tavern ‐‐ myself far right in the pic; Steven Young next to me; Helen Sneed next to him; then Eleanore Speert, Hal Borden & Richard Brock Photo by Kelli Locker
Little York Tavern again, left to right: Chuck Larkowski, Tom Coash, Fran Pesch, Brian Sharp, M.J. Feely (back), Annie Pesch, Richard Brock, Hal Borden, Eleanore Speert, Helen Sneed, Steven Young, & K.L.Storer Photo by Kelli Locker	The adjudicators, Brian & Fran at the awards ceremony	The playwrights at the awards ceremony
The awards ceremony	Fran & Brian at the awards ceremony	The awards ceremony
Hal Borden and Tom Coash at the awards ceremony	The awards ceremony with Steven Young & others	The awards ceremony with Futurefest cofounders John Riley & Dodie Lockwood in frame
The awards ceremony	The awards ceremony with Dayton Daily News writer Meredith Moss speaking with Eleanore Speert	The awards ceremony
The awards ceremony	The awards ceremony with Josh Katawick	The awards ceremony
The awards ceremony	My office environment for the processing (sweetening) of all these FF2013 pics	The working conditions were rough I tell you!

AND IN MACCAMANIA NEWS:

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

TWO WEEKENDS DOWN:

As for the compromise of the city street ambient noise coming from the house left speakers at a low volume level. It is working, I must say. Of course, it's a bit more effective when the AC in the house has kicked off. The blowers are a bit louder than they ought to be, in general, and much of the nuance of the street noise is lost when the AC is on in the house; only the occasional louder honks, and the rare sirens are heard. Still, it is working as a sound design element in the scheme of things.

MORE ACTING CRAFT STUDY:

• One Day Improv Workshop ‐‐ Margaret Knapp, Becky in the HRTC season opener, Becky's New Car, is facilitating a one day workshop on Saturday, Sep. 21: "Improv: Unleash Your Creative Potential." It's two hours in the afternoon; that leads me to believe the class will be small, which is actually good. I think for many reason it will be worth the $40. I even paid the extra $20 for a discounted ticket to Becky's... ‐‐ though I plan to attend "Can Night" on Wednesday, the 11th.
• Advanced Acting Class with Kay Bosse ‐‐ I and some of my past Bosse classmates have another group of advanced acting class sessions coming up in January and February, 2014. I believe this will be my seventh group of acting classes under Ms. Bosse's tutelage, since the Sep/Oct 2011 sessions that immediately preceded our work as Grandpa and Grandma Gellman in Caroline, or Change, at The Race. I could probably legitimately get away with calling her my acting coach  .

VERY PRE-PRODUCTION:

There are scripted commercials to run during the performance, TV commercials for The Dead Guy television show in the play. It is quite fortunate that there are pre-produced versions of these, as well as the opening sequence for the TV show, that could be licensed. We did. It's simple, the cost to license them was much, much less than what it would have cost us to produce them ourselves. Then you factor in the time and energy to produce them: casting, location scouting and clearance, all the properties and product procurance, principal photography, editing. It was a no-brainer; pay the license fee.

I have looked at the resource. The only thing that I have a problem with is the aspect ratio. The clips are all in 4:3, what is known as "full screen." It's the screen dimension for old TV, closer to perfectly square. We want this to be a 21st century program, so we need the newer wide screen aspect ration ‐‐ what all new TVs and TV shows have ‐‐ that which is 16:9. It's the ratio I shoot the podcasts in. I'm pretty sure I am going to be able to force the videos into a 16:9 aspect ration with very little trouble.

It's also time to start really researching the wireless camera equipment and related accouterment.

MS. AUGUSTINE ON B'WAY, AGAIN:

As always, my disclaimer is that with all the immensely talented people I have the great honor to know, I'm sure many of them are doing great gigs right now. This is the one I am aware of, (not excluding the ones I've heard about but have forgotten)

To again reference Caroline, or Change, one of our alumni, Taprena Augustine, is in rehearsal now for the B'Way production of A Night With Janis Joplin. Taprena appears as one of The Joplinaires. See the Playbill.com article, "Kacee Clanton Will Play Title Role in A Night with Janis Joplin Twice a Week," an article about the alternate lead. Previews of A Night With Janis Joplin start Sep. 20.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

I subsequently heard some of her recordings and was very impressed. This woman has serious talent and skill!

I further subsequently bought some of her work. I started with the album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, but now have several of her titles, not all, but most. I just bought her new one, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, that which I am listening to right now as I key these words.

I am one of the 174 thousand-plus who have liked her facebook page. Weeks ago, maybe even a few months back, when she announced the current U.S. tour, I noted she'd be in Columbus, Ohio on October 19, at the Newport Music Hall. Of course, I thought there would be a chance I'd not be able to attend that show because I'd have to be on stage in a show ‐‐ but, as we know, I was wrong about that. Yesterday, I went on-line to see what kind of seats might be left for the Columbus show. The Newport Music Hall show is general admission, and though that means I could get a good seat, I just don't feel like playing the young man's game to secure such. Seeing that there is a show three days later in Cincinnati, with reserved seats, I went for that venue, even though the tickets cost a little more. I don't have absolutely great seats, but they aren't bad. About eighteen rows back in the center orchestra section. I have a feeling we will be standing for most of the show.

I'm not such a hardcore fan that I am intimately familiar with all her songs, but I admire her playing and art enough that I am excited about the show.


• I am attending "Pay What You Can Night" for the final dress next Wednesday of Becky's New Car at The Human Race Theatre Company. Plus, I get another ticket for the run through the forthcoming improv workshop I'm enrolled in; that, facilitated by Margaret Knapp, who has the role of Becky in Becky's New Car.

• I hope to get to Hairspray at the Dayton Playhouse next weekend.

• There's also Hair at Beavercreek Community Theatre opening in a few weeks.

• Not sure what else in the immediate future. I am not looking to take any serious road trips ‐‐ I kind of blew my wad on the Chicago trip. I suppose a play in Cincy isn't out of the question.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Earlier in the day yesterday, before the call about the lottery, the agency called about another gig next week in Indianapolis, one with no lines. I have no more information than that, though there is some sort of health network that I have auditioned for before, out of Indy, that has actors take action without dialogue, to illustrate what's being said in voiceover. There's a chance that is what this is about. By the way, I don't even know if this one has an audition or if I would just get booked; that can happen when one has previously auditioned for another project by the same client.

Who knows, I could possibly have to take a couple days off from work next week, perhaps even spend at least one night in a motel room somewhere. But, you know, unhatched chickens and all.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Closing weekend starts tonight

The commercial does shoot in Cleveland on the 12th, but there is a wardrobe fitting in Cleveland the day before. So, if I'm booked, that motel room is now a 100% given.

As for the gig next week in Indianapolis, I was correct that it's for a local health network, the same I've auditioned for before.

Counting chickens before they hatch be damned: wouldn't it be great for me to be doing about 800-plus miles of traveling next week?

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

CLOSING TODAY

The Cast of 45 Seconds From Broadway CHARACTER            ACTOR Mickey Fox            Saul Caplan *(the following, in order of appearance): Andrew Duncan            K.L.Storer Solomon Mantutu            Marcus L. Simmons II Bernie            Dave Nickel Megan Woods            Mary Mykytka Arleen            Debra A. Kent Cindy            Debra Strauss Rayleen            Patty Bell Charles            John Spitler Zelda            Terry Larson Bessie            Gail Andrews Turner Harry Fox            Steve Kantor

I'll post about this weekend and whatever else occurs to me about the show, perhaps tomorrow.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE SHOOT:

The CTL business hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30 am till 5:00 pm. It was about 6:00, Friday evening, not long after I'd arrived at The Guild for that evening's performance of 45 Seconds... that I realized I had failed to check anything out for the shoot.

Early yesterday afternoon I bought two Canon Vixia HF R40 HD Camcorders. I've needed to again own DV cameras for a long while. The jump to HD has been too long in the waiting, as well. I actually wanted to buy three but my finances would not allow that. I'm not terribly sure two was a great idea, at that.

This model is not a high-end one and it would be ridiculous to think for a moment that it is close to what is accepted as a professional camera. But it is a step forward from the standard def footage, a good step forward. Having a topnotch DSLR camera or two still needs to be eventually realized; and that time is coming. But for now, at least I've moved forward a bit.

And so, starting with Time Stands Still, the DTG podcasts will be in HD.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

MORE ON MY NEW TOY(S):

We know I bought two Canon Vixia HF R40 HD Camcorders, over the weekend. I barely played with them, as my weekend was a little full. I guess to be more precise, I barely played with one, the other has not come out of the box, yet.

One problem that I don't yet have a solution for, but that is troublesome to me, as I am sure it is to anyone who seriously approaches DV movie making, is that I have thus far noticed a high significance of what is known as jitter whenever the shot is a pan or a totem. Pan is left to right, or vise versa; totem is up/down. Jitter means that the picture shakes or bounces: it's not a smooth movement. That is a problem in general with digital and can be worse with HD. What I am getting has thus far been what I consider an annoyingly high measurement of jitter. I am hoping there is a solution, because I do not want to have to avoid shots where my camera does not pan of totem. Those are just such fundamental things to do. The search for the solution is on.

Another problem, which has been solved was one of file format. The Vixia HF R40 high-end HD is saved in what is known as HVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition). The HF R40 model creates the newer AVCHD that is known as AVCHD Progressive, with a frame rate of 60ps (60 frames per second). Here was the dilemma for me: Though Final Cut Express 4 will import AVCHD files, the newer progressive version crashed it every time I attempted. FCE is too old for the newer format version. AVCHD Progressive, by-the-way, is considered a professional class level, whereas the original version is not ‐‐ though AVCHD Progressive is on the lower spectrum of pro-class.

There is also, of course, some chance, some big chance that my copy of Final Cut Pro X will successfully import the progressive version. At least one of you five regulars may remember that about a minute after I bought that crap I discovered that I really hate working in it ‐‐ the interface sucks canal water; it's a bad hybrid of FCP and iMovie, with too much DNA from iMovie in its genetic makeup. So, until I graduate to Adobe Premiere or Avid ‐‐ or until Apple's FCP developers get their act together and perhaps make FCP 11 the valuable editor that v.1-7 were ‐‐ I will be editing with FCE 4 and need to have files from my new camera that I can work with.

Enter the $107.24 solution: Toast 11, Titanium, AV software from Roxio. Toast 11 has a fabulous feature that will convert the AVCHD Progressive files into any of a myriad of file types that I can edit in FCE, the most important to me being QuickTime ProRes HD at 1920 x 1080 resolution.

I've done a couple test conversion but have not yet put anything in a Final Cut project. In theory, the short test clips I shot were correctly converted; QuickTime plays them, so it seems FCE should have no problem with them. I'll get back to you on that.

Besides having a robust ability to convert movie file types, Toast 11 also does a lot of other things, some that pique my interest. Among those other features, the ones that grab my attention are: it will capture video "from anywhere"; will copy CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs, purporting to copy duel-layer DVDs onto single-layer DVD discs. It is also CD, DVD and Blu-ray burning software, which is what I had first heard of it as a good software for which to use. It's been touted as better than iDVD, that being what I have been using. I will have to give Toast a test run at burning disc as well as some of those other things (and other tasks I didn't mention here) ‐‐ after all, a hundred bucks just for file conversion is a bit steep.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

45 SECONDS OF CLOSING COMMENTS:

I don't know if there's a lot left to say, but I will say that it was a good run. I'm happy with my work as Andrew, even if it again wasn't the most challenging work I've done. I may have written this before but I see this play as not the most brilliant in Neil Simon's canon; it does offer a lot of opportunities for actors to climb into some fun roles, not deep great roles that one chews at the bit to play, but fun characters to do.

Neil Simon won one Pulitzer prize and was nominated another time. Rest assured, neither the win nor the nomination was for 45 Seconds from Broadway. Our audiences certainly loved the show, however. As I related earlier, one lady claims it as the best thing she's seen at the Guild in her fifteen years of patronage. I'm afraid I don't agree with that assessment. It's not a bad show, but it certainly is not the best DTG has done in a decade and a half. Yet, it was a lot fun for the cast and the audience.

As far as Andrew Duncan is concerned, again I was happy with the work. I made Andrew what he is supposed to be: a nice, gentlemanly, gregarious man, genuinely enthused about the prospect of working with Mickey Fox, of whom he is a big fan. Further, I may not have done A+ British dialect work, but I did pretty well, certainly better than a B grade.

Director Fred Blumenthal	Saul Caplan as Mickey Fox	Myself as Andrew Duncan, with Saul
Marcus L. Simmons II as Soloman Mantutu & Mary Mykytka as Megan Woods	Debra A. Kent as Arleen & Debra Strauss as Cindy	Patty Bell as Rayleen & John Spitler as Charles
Terry Larson as Zelda & Dave Nickel as Bernie	Gail Andrews Turner as Bessie, with Saul	Steve Kantor as Harry Fox, with Saul
*all nine photos in this array by Craig Roberts
Fred Blumenthal for your sixty years at The Dayton Theatre Guild!

Mid morning today I'll be at the agency's Sharonville office to screentest for a Scott's Miracle-Gro commercial. It's a local, non-union job, but I not yet being union.....

Once again it does appear that I have not made it into an Ohio Lottery commercial. Since principal photography is imminent and all, since the wardrobe fitting is this afternoon in Cleveland, it seems pretty clear I will not be on the set tomorrow.

That Indianapolis gig is clearly not happening with me on its set, either. It also shoots this week.

Oh-so-oh-well!

A RELUCTANT, BEGRUDGED CHANGE OF HEART:

Okay, so in the last post I wrote the following:

It seems I may have written that prematurely. I have been playing with the HD file formats. I converted the AVCHD Progressive files from my Canon Vixia HF R40 HD Camcorders into workable QuickTime HD ProRes files, as well as HDV files, using the feature in Toast 11 then dropping those into Final Cut Express 4, to compare workability. In both cases the video looks good. The QT HD takes much longer to render in the timeline than the HDV does. But, they both have one major problem: audio sync; this is a common problem with HD and other digital video media.

So, I opened my FCPX and first tried importing the AVCHDp files into the FCP project directly from the camera. As I suspected, it worked. Not only did it import them successfully, but it linked the separate files for each "take" into one file. The camera saves each take (the point from hitting the record button to hitting the stop button) in files that are no longer than twenty minutes. If your take is longer, it gets broken into twenty-minute segment files. If you shoot a forty-five minute take it will be three files: 20:00, 20:00 & 5:00. When I converted the files with Toast 11, I had one each of these individual segments. FCPX imported the segment as one conglomerate file, the entire length of the take (the sum of all parts). That's, I have to admit, pretty convenient.

FCPX also has a couple other features that have great merit and value: color analysis and correction and audio analysis and synchronization. The second one seems to have come in handy for me. It corrected the sync problem I was previously experiencing. That's very valuable. I have not utilized the color correction yet, but I do believe it's possible to use one particular clip as the template and have all other clips color corrected to match it. That, too, quite valuable. It may make it possible for me to get that eventual final cut of Vignettes in Bellcreeek to be in color rather than black and white ‐‐ which is the current plan due to horrible color variances between the shots from different cameras during the multi-camera shoots that were the production standard for the whole project.

And so....it seems....that I am going to start editing in Final Cut Pro X. Even bought a pdf manual, Final Cut Pro X: How It Works, by Edgar Rothermich. Sort of an "FCPX for dummies" concept going on there, I believe.

Now for the more money part of the situation, several hundred dollars more money. My hard drive for my MacBook Pro is actually a solid state flash derive with a .75 terabyte capacity. I have more than 400 gigs free on it at any given time, specifically due to DV movie editing; I want to be sure I have the free space for the processing. I went to bed while FCPX was analyzing one of the two large movie files I was using for my test. This morning I discovered that the provess did not complete because of the "Your startup disk is almost full" message. I checked, there was more than 200 gigs free at that point, but video software sometimes needs a lot of space for processing. I think I could probably go in an adjust some maximum memory allowances but that might be risky to over all operating system performance. I have elected instead to edit DV movies on a Western Digital Thunderbolt Dual 4TB External Hard Drive. Ordered it yesterday: $504.00.

My credit card is running out of space, too.


• Becky's New Car at The Human Race Theatre Company ‐‐ I actually will see this one twice. I got a ticket as part of the package for the improv workshop I'm doing with the show's lead actress Margaret Knapp on the 21st, the other will be at Can Night, this evening.

• Hairspray at the Dayton Playhouse ‐‐ This weekend I see what is being reported as a great production. Not sure which day, yet.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

I was given some time to get it back, but it just didn't come back. Time was moving on and I needed to get back to Dayton. While another audition was underway I told the assistant that I needed to leave. I was headed to the rent-payer but on the drive up I-75 North I changed my mind about going to work. I felt a need to go home and do nothing for a few hours. I did. I slept. Then, I decided to skip the Can Night for Becky's New Car, which I'd planned to attend; I do have another ticket.

On the road home yesterday morning I made a decision. I have pulled myself from availability for the agency. Though there are other reasons, yesterday was the deciding factor. I've been coming to a place where I feel a need to change up some of this, this, whatever the fuck it is I'm doing. I'm on some kind of a road and I have some notion of what road ‐‐ some. I need to somehow change up the travel plan. I think maybe I've done a bit of that here recently. It may not readily seem like it, but the impulse this past weekend to go HD I think factors in somehow. This I am sure about: yesterday means something. Eventually, we'll see what, I suppose.

At the moment I don't want to reveal what, but I did have an opportunity present itself yesterday afternoon that might be a part of this reconfiguration, or whatever it is. We'll see about that, too.

Here are two links that have relevance, in their own ways, to where I am at right now:

• "The Prophecy of Your Birthday," a short story of mine that was published ten years ago in the Rockford Review, Vol.XXII:no.3 (Autumn, 2003).

• "Why You Need To Decide That You're 'Good Enough'," an article by Anthony Meindl posted on Backstage on-line earlier this week.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

MOVING THROTTLE-OPEN TOWARD HI-DEF DV MOVIES AND PODCASTS:

It seems I have solved another nagging problem that was threatening to be a major inhibitor to interesting shots. It seems I have found how to avoid the pan and totem jitter that I got with the original footage I shot with the new camera. I used the Dynamic Stabilization setting on the camera and shot what appears to be very smooth pans, pedestals, tilts, dollies, and zooms, this morning. The playback on the camera suggests it, anyway. I'm pretty sure when I transfer the footage to FCPX and view it, it'll be as stable.

Looks like I am on track to start producing HD podcasts for DTG as well as for whatever my next movie project is as a director ‐‐ and whenever.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

THE HI-DEF DV MOVIE THROTTLE STAYS OPEN:

The FCPX interface screen

The new Thunderbolt 4TB External Hard Drive is also living up to expectations. I was able to use the drive for editing the jitter test footage from Friday. Though continuing to learn the FCPX software proves frustrating, the speed of which the software responds with the application sitting on my Macintosh hard drive while all the files and all the work is being done on the external drive, is swift. And that, my friends, is good.

Yesterday afternoon I went to John Bryan State Park to do more test shooting. It was intended to be more jitter tests, but what was more beneficial was assessing the camera's ability to shoot in environments with acute lighting contrasts, such as in the forestry canopy areas.

What I discovered is that my camera doesn't really do amazing work with stark light contrast. I think very few digital cameras do. Many do better than mine, but it's the only the really high end ones that handle the contrasts extraordinarily well, the Red and other cameras that run in the tens of thousands of dollars, or more.

At this point, with this camera, it is clear I will need to be very careful about camera movement when shooting in environments where there may be stark lighting contrasts. When the camera is given a chance to adjust, or more accurately, when the processor is given time, the lighting contrasts have a chance to adjust and stabilize. But even stationary shots, in some circumstances, will not work at acceptably, certainly not as acceptable as what would I want. Some shots with acute lighting contrast problems will just need to be avoided, unless I would happen to want that imagery for some poetic/artistic effect.

Fortunately, the problem areas were not as hot when I viewed the footage in FCPX on the computer. It's still not ideal, but it is not as bad as it looks when I view it on the camera's monitor screen. And that, my friends, is good.

Myself, yesterday, playing wanna-be gorilla movie director at John Bryan State Park, taking my HD camcorder on another test run.

Meanwhile, I'm still playing with Final Cut Pro X. I need some functioning measure of editor's proficiency here soon as I will have a podcast to edit in a few weeks. I have been finding some helpful tutelage from teenage boys who post How To movies to youtube. They are all very far ahead of me in the game, I might add.

Hey, I'm not proud! If a fourteen-year-old can teach me the fasted, most efficient way to make a key frame in FCPX ‐‐ which is not at as easy as it was in earlier versions ‐‐ then I am all ears (well: ears and eyes).

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

The delusional members of the sub-committee of my mind, that sub-committee being known as "Ego," are convinced I am an accomplished improvisationalist; these members have a right to express their opinion; they are, however, mistaken about my improvisational prowess. Mind you, I'm not horrible at improv, yet Robin Williams or any troupe member of Second City or Upright Citizens Brigade have nothing to fear from me.

Add, that I do it so rarely that I'm always a bit rusty when I do stand up to work some improv. So, if I'm ahead of anyone on Saturday, I won't be demonstrably so. Plus, another workshop on the discipline will not hurt me, whatsoever.

I also have a voucher for a performance of Becky's..., which I may shoot for using that evening or the next day. You may remember I was also going to catch the final dress rehearsal ‐‐ aka: "Pay What You Can Night" ‐‐ but was out of sorts that day, so did not.


There's really not much to report on here, but I haven't dropped much in on this show, so thought it should at least make an appearance. As producer I am badgering the last of those who owe me biographical text for the playbill (one-hundred words or fewer, thank you).

Thursday, after I have wrapped the U.D. Law gig I'll shoot the rehearsal for this as the start of principal photography for the podcast ‐‐ and, of course, as the very first podcast footage to be shot in HD.

I have not really started the sound design for this, but will be doing so soon. I imagine I and Director Debra Kent will discuss it Thursday. The show does not have a whole lot of sound cues. I do know that it needs rain at one point, and perhaps street ambience, just as I put both into 45 Seconds.... The street sound I worked up may be able to be used as is. I may have to reshape the rain, however.


This development doesn't look all that encouraging: I've started researching and reaching out for the technicals of the real-time live TV feed that the script calls for, and though it's not strictly necessary, I believe we do want to satisfy that effect if we can. The preliminary look into a wireless camera for my character, Dougie, (the videographer for the TV show in the play) is not hopeful. We don't have final numbers yet, but it seems probable that rental will run a total of around $2000, if not more. Make no mistake, that will take it off the table as an option. As was said by Shaunn Baker, from World Stage Media, whom was one of those I consulted yesterday, we may be casting a cable wrangler for the show. That is not the optimal scenario but may be the realistic one.

Wireless would be better since Dougie follows the other characters around on the stage, shooting the live images that are sent to the monitors the audience in the theatre can see ‐‐ in the universe of the play, it's the "broadcast" of the TV show. Wireless makes maneuverability a whole lot easier; cables, even with a cable wrangler, make blocking far more challenging.


Heading, Friday night, to see Hairspray at the Dayton Playhouse. It's directed by Tina McPhearson, who is the programming manager for City Folk. The production is getting great buzz all over the local theatre community. Ms. Kelli Locker, who is also now in rehearsal for Time Stands Still at DTG, is in the cast.

Of course, I have that voucher for a performance of Becky's New Car.


A big YAY! to local actors Saul Caplan and Jeff Sams for taking up residence in Anatevka some 108 years ago in The Human Race Theatre Company production of Fiddler in the Roof. A possible YAY! to any other local actor or actors whom I know but have yet to discover will also be in that little Imperial Russian shtetl.

Saul is cast as Lazar Wolf, a role that I had when I was, I believe, seventeen, at Wilbur Wright High School in East Dayton, Ohio. Saul's a bit more age appropriate and lot less gentile-inappropriate for the role.

Lazar was about the only role in the show I thought I had any chance of in this forthcoming production, and, honestly, that's relatively speaking; which is to say I didn't think I had much chance, especially after I tanked my general in such an ea-gads! manner. Even before that train wreck, however, it was the slimmest of chances. But it's a great role for Saul and I am not at all surprised he landed it. Jeff is the Constable: also a good role for him.

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

In another prime example of how I don't always know how to assess the situation, Tuesday afternoon Kevin Moore, who's directing Fiddler on the Roof at The Human Race Theatre Company, called and offered me a role in the show. Of course, I accepted.

So now I join Mr. Caplan and Mr. Sams, in that little Jewish shtetl, Anatevka, in the Imperial Russia of a century ago. I am cast as Rabbi (the village rabbi). It's not a major role, whatsoever, but that is okay. First, I'm back on a professional stage; second; by the end of November I will have earned another eight points as an EMC (Equity Membership Candidate) ‐‐ i.e.: points toward membership in the America stage actors and stage managers union, Actors Equity Association. I will have thirty-six points left to earn at the end of the Fiddler run; taking out those remaining thirty-six is still gonna take some time. I have no immediate worries that I am a union actor who can't appear on my own theatre's stage ‐‐ which will be the case when I make the points then if I assess my life at that point and decide it's an advantage to being in the union. That's a fork in the road down the path.

Back to my present life: yesterday I learned that we are joined in Anatevka by Charity Farrell, who is cast as Hodel. Charity, by the way, has just had a feature film, in which she stars, released, Forever's End. Some of you (one of you five, at least) may remember her from my short, The Chorus for Candice, shot in late summer 2006, when she was just thirteen or fourteen, somewhere in that age range.

The Fiddler schedule means that I have to break my date with Neko Case on Oct 22, which makes me a little sad, but I'll get over it. Further, we start rehearsals on Friday, October 4, the opening night for Time Stands Still at The Guild. So I'll also pretty much be AWOL as TSS producer at that point; I won't be covering any Guild house management duties for that one either. Shooting the podcast for the next one, The Gifts of the Magi will not be imposible, but will be a challenge, as well. I did manage to do a reasonable production of the podcast for Blue Moon...Dancing at The Guild during the Caroline, or Change rehearsal and performance period. Essentially I showed up on Mondays ‐‐ the Equity day off ‐‐ to shoot Blue Moon rehearsal footage. The rehearsals for the workshop of Gingerbread Children were compact so it wasn't an issue toward the podcast for Leaving Iowa.

In the meantime, I have that gig this afternoon for the U.D. Law class taught by Judge Mary Huffman. I've been studiously creating and studying my flashcards with all the vital information about my character and the case.

It doesn't appear this is one of those two-part classes, where we come in one week as the new client then come back the next week for the student (the lawyer) to advise and counsel us about the next step, if there is one.

This seems to be a class for newer students where the point is to learn about the initial interviewing process. One of my instructions, which is not an uncommon one for the U.D. Law gigs, is "force the students to ask questions." That basically means, give short answers and volunteer nothing.

AND ON ANOTHER NOTE:

Blog Index

Home

Latest Post

THE LATEST ON THE NEXT:

The total work schedule, rehearsals through the close of the show, is eight and a half weeks. Logic told me this "8 ½" means eight and a half points (weeks) toward my Equity Membership Candidacy, but I was not absolutely sure that is the case. It might've been eight points; it might've been nine. I contacted Actor's Equity Association to find out for sure. The response was: "If the start date through the end date equal 8.5 weeks, that would be rounded up to 9 weeks": a little better than what I'd figured.

So, on Dec 1, I will have earned a total of fifteen points and will be thirty-five away from the option to join AEA, followed promptly by the need to leave this area if I do join, as options as an actor will become very, very limited. I would not be able to act on The Guild stage, nor on the DPH stage for FutureFest or any other non-professional theatre stage, unless they did special contracts which is just not going to be in the mix of possibilities.

Back to today, however, I have grabbed a score and a libretto of the show to at least attempt to be a little ahead of the game next Friday.

ren Lastly, though there was a small chance I might have gotten the night off from rehearsal to get to the Oct 22 Neko Case show, I made a decision to nix it. I really started to dislike the idea of missing a rehearsal so close to the start of tech. Granted I did miss a late rehearsal last summer for the FutureFest production of M.J. Feely's On the Road to Kingdom Come, and I did have a more significant bit of work in that, but I just started to not like the idea of missing a rehearsal in the second half of the rehearsal phase of an Equity show. I gave the tickets to my niece and her husband, those who treated me to tickets to the Paul McCartney 2011 concert in Cincinnati. Turn about.

ONE DAY IMPROV WORKSHOP:

The two hours was essentially Ms. Knapp introducing improv games to the group. That's not to say that it was too rudimental for me. I do full-out improvisational work so seldom that there was enough rust to scrape off to make it a worthwhile afternoon for me.

It's always a case that I have sluggish movement into the right mindframe to improvise fearlessly, that relaxed place where I find I need to be to stop myself from needing to be brilliant, to stop censoring myself. I had a bit of both those problems, at least to some extent, for most of the first hour of the workshop.

I had a couple good moments when I let loose and was able to freely go wherever I went. So, that's good.


As for the more structured improv work that is the U.D. Law School acting gigs, the one last week went well. Eight law students interviewed me as the upscale bakery shoppe owner who has a breach of contract complaint against a business associate. The goal was to not volunteer any information, to make the students get the information out of me through their interview questions. I'd say I got perhaps a solid B for my work; I think I let info slip a few times, but overall, I was not too terribly forthcoming.

JUST SOME SHORT RESPONSE NOTES ‐‐ NO REVIEWS, HERE:

Becky's New Car at The Human Race Theatre Company ‐‐ The next night I saw an entertaining production of Becky's New Car at HRTC. More very fine work, and kudos to all there.


I've dropped in now to a few rehearsals and the show seems to be coming along, with the actors finding their strides.

The set is starting to look really very cool, too. Speaking ‐‐ writing ‐‐ of the set, a set piece need, really, a prop need, has come up that will force me into the No TV Zone at home. We need a working flatscreen TV on set for Act II. This need came up just a few days ago, so I have agreed to loan my relatively new flatscreen for the production. I was planning on buying a smaller second flatscreen for the bedroom, anyway, and decided this would be a good time to do that: bring in the big one for the set and go get that smaller one, and use it during the run of the show.

After making the commitment, I had an unexpected expense that has furloughed the purchase of the new, smaller TV. It will be a few weeks. As of Saturday I will have no TV for at home for three weeks, though that is not much of a bad thing, at all. My bigger concern is the safety of my bigger model, as it will be sitting precariously close to the audience, and there is a dangerous time period (when they are returning to their seats for Act II), when it will be especially vulnerable. At the end of the show, as they are leaving, too.

Well, the theatre does have insurance. My TV get's damaged, a claim will be filed.

Much, really most, of the sound design is rolling toward completed. I have some music choices to decide upon then edit for opening and closing the acts, and for scene changes. The plan is take it all out and have the sound plot programmed in SCS by mid-day tomorrow; early evening at the latest.

As can often be the case, a little production gremlin giggled creepily in the rafters. Here's what happened:

The Guild's own doctoral electrical engineer technical guru type guy, Bob Mills added an eight channel sound card to the computer in the tech booth. That way we can spilt sound to any of the four house speakers, or in any combination. And in fact can add up to four more speakers. We wanted to again put the street ambience on New York City in an off-stage location, this time, behind the windows overlooking the street from the loft apartment of the main characters. *You may remember that for 45 Seconds from Broadway I wanted that sound coming from a speaker behind the door that was leading to 46th St., but had equipment problems that prevented doing so.

DTG's new Gateway SX2110-UB25

The gremlin shenanigans?: the pc in the booth could not handle the new sound card nor the software installed to control the new card. The first line of defense was that Bob was going to max the RAM in the machine, but that was going to cost almost $200, more than the worth of the computer, and was only going to get us two gigs of RAM. So, instead we just went out and bought a new pc with four gigs ‐‐ the Gateway SX2110-UB25 desktop model. The new system, with all the needed software installed, is set up and just waiting for me to program the show in ‐‐ now, with the ability to have NYC coming from the other side of the loft's windows, overlooking the street. Now, with the ability to isolate any sound in a particular house speaker, or any combination of two or more, that I want. In fact, if we had eight speakers, we could have eight different sound files running, one from each speaker, at the same time.

Podcast commentary audio recording setup -- same as it ever was

Principal photography for the podcast has been underway for more than a week. It's all been what will likely be silent B-roll, but I have noted that the condensor mics on board the Vixia R40s pick up pretty well. Even when the AC blowers are on the dialogue can be heard reasonably acceptably.

Of course, the HD video files are much larger than the old SD DV movie files from the older Canon ZR800s I previously have used. Though there are a few experimental projects, with HD file formats, most of what is on the new Thunderbolt 4TB External Hard Drive are the several days of footage for this podcast project; I have already claimed several hundred gigs of space. Who wants to bet that I don't have an eight terabyte external hard drive before 2013 come to an end ‐‐ maybe more than one?

The commentaries are almost finished, that part of production should wrap tonight. This is one where I am not shooting the interviews for the commentary on DV, I'm just doing audio, as voiceover. Once, again, the little gremlin in charge of hot broadcast radio signals decided to play his annoying game. I hear low levels of radio broadcast in the audio recording of the commentaries; last night they were a little hotter than previously in the week. They probably will be drowned by the podcast's underscore music, but it's still bothersome that I haven't managed to block them, yet. I actually haven't listened to the recorded sound files to see how prominent or obscure the radio signals are in those.

The big "we'll see" about getting this one to final cut will be my ability to maneuver through Final Cut Pro X, a software I am mostly unfamiliar with, that has an interface that I don't know well and don't find enticing, whatsoever. My journey of learning the editor has barely begun, and I'd love to know it way better than I do before I sit down to try to edit this DV movie in the compact time frame I have to get it to a final cut on the web. I don't have that luxury, however.

Those screams of "AAAAARG!" you hear next week coming from the north-east region of Greater-Dayton, Ohio, will not be a wayward pirate; it will be me, in my apartment, melting down because I can't execute another editing command that ought to be too simple to worry about.

Also, we have added this warning to all publicity for the show:

Be Advised That This Play Contains Adult Language And Themes