My Life in the Theater (Part V)

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

- probably not Leonardo da Vinci

George Bernard Shaw
born July 26, 1856
(112 years before me, to the day)

A theatrical production has a strict time limit. From the beginning, you know when it will end; there are set performance dates, so when you are cast as an actor, when you have been assigned a role, you have a set period of time in which to prepare.

David Mamet says you don’t need to prepare anything, just read the words on the page, in the right order, all the rest is self-aggrandizement. In this, as in so many other things, Mamet is just wrong. Silly and wrong. It is true, the audience can’t see your backstory, will never know or even care how many books you read – in a very, very short time – to learn about the time period, the setting, the particular brand of tea your character might drink.

But as a twenty year-old in 1989, playing a twenty(ish) year-old in 1904, there are things that are seen and heard by the audience that are very important. After all, this isn’t a movie. The set helps, the costumes help, but the performer is the primary focus and it is the details, the immersion into character that either transports the audience or it doesn’t.

True, there are actors who are so compelling in and of themselves that they do not need to do any kind of deep research. The rest of us try harder.

My third year at school was the most challenging, and revelatory. I won’t get into the details, but following a near nervous breakdown in the fall, I was (for the first time) reborn with a renewed sense of purpose, and expanded my major from acting to a general theater degree. It was as the man said, “Look to your left, look to your right, only one of you will complete a degree in acting.” I was not the one.

Winter 1989, I had no acting practicum. I had not been cast in either mainstage show, I had no lab work, I focused on my studies, worked to control my diet, grew my hair, tried to be what today they call mindful.

That spring, however, I had three shows to split my focus; a role on the main stage, I had written a one-act for the playwrights’ festival, and I was assigned a role in a lab production of George Bernard Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband.

Third year undergrads were paired with graduate level directors to create an evening of one-acts. It was a class, so rehearsals were during the day. Our director was, or he seemed to me at the time, a rather intense man, charming in his way, and we spent weeks on the text with him. Weeks.

We were a three-person cast, I was He, the ingénue. It was the only time I have ever played a fresh-faced young man. She was my then ex-girlfriend Jules, and Her Husband was played by my best friend, Rich. The four of us sat in chairs around a small, square table on the stage of the Little Theatre, like we were about to play Bridge, only we had scripts instead of cards, and George, our director, led us through the piece, word by word.

We would read a word, or a short phrase, and we would stop and he would talk, and ask us questions, while throughout he would handroll a cigarette. This was part of the process. Every mechanical part of rolling a cigarette would take a significant amount of time, each rehearsal. I don’t mean to say he moved in slow motion, just that, as one of us read a phrase, he would get out his papers, and stop and we would talk, his hand holding the envelope of papers, for however long the discussion lasted, maybe five minutes, before moving on, now the envelope was gone, but the paper was between his fingers, and so on, forty-five minutes into rehearsal there might be tobacco resting in the the fold of the paper, I would be fixated on one strand of tobacco leaf hanging from the edge as he held it there, as we discussed the text, it may finally be a complete cigarette after an hour or so. It was a mystery to me and we never commented on it.

I imagine this ritual prevented him from smoking throughout the rehearsal, in this way he limited himself to one. But I found it fascinating. Time expanded as we ruminated upon the manners of the very early 20th century, for a piece for which every word is carefully chosen.

As a writer, I do appreciate that one thing above all other considerations, is that actors say the words, all the words, and in the order that they are set down upon the page. But you will never have so much time to read, understand, consider, and digest them, as you will at school.

I know this is not entirely the case, there are those theaters that make it a practice to spend months on a production. But they are the exception. A LORT production will have a very short turnaround, where are actors are often expected to arrive on day one with lines memorized, because of the cost. Time is, as they say, money.

Twenty Twenty-Six

Happy 200th Birthday, America.

For many years I would include a post this time of year in which I would look forward to the year to come. This started in late 2012, because I was excited about all the new work I was developing at that time. I had three workshops or productions scheduled for calendar 2013, and that was the first time that had happened.

Often, I have new work scheduled but am not yet at liberty to announce them yet, so this post has to be a coy “wait and see” message, and this one is going to be like that. Last year, I didn’t even bother to write a “Twenty Twenty-Five” post because post-election, things were all so bleak, I didn’t feel that I had much to look forward to. It was also unknown as to whether I would have anything new to share, though it turned out to be a production year, regardless.

The world remains bleak. Next year is the American Semiquincentennial. Fucking yay. We thought things were bad in 1976. Elderly Gen Xers can remember celebrating our nation’s birth by learning how to make soap and dip candles, and by painting our fire hydrants to resemble colonial patriots. I’m no prognosticator, but I believe celebrations on July 4, 2026 will feature tear gas.

Closer to home, I have several projects in the works, and yes, I am not at liberty to announce them yet. But at least the work continues. Received a commission for a non-fiction piece, and workshop productions that will provide new and expanded audiences to some recent plays that have so far had limited exposure. And as usual, that doesn’t include all the business that is currently in their proposal stages.

So, resuming this tradition of looking ahead; it’s not so much about promoting upcoming projects, that will come soon enough. It's about reminding myself of something that is in short supply these days: hope.

My Life in the Theater (Part IV)

"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare
Guerrilla Theater Company, 1994

"Let's talk."
- Romeo and Juliet, III.v

The last time I yelled at an actor was in 1994.

We were close to opening Romeo and Juliet at the Actors’ Gym (current site of the Bourbon Street Barrel Room) for Guerrilla Theater Company. It was one of those moments when the entire company crosses the stage, a pantomime, as music and recorded narration plays.

I was seated in the house. I could hear chatter throughout the space, especially out in the lobby, and it was those folks who needed to center first, setting off the action. I was pretty sure they weren’t paying attention, and I called the cue anyway.

The music started, and … nothing. No one entered, as I had assumed. I hollered for the music to stop, and from my seat I cried for everyone to stop fucking around and pay attention – to act like professionals.

There were murmurs of assent and understanding from the far corners of the space and we continued without further incident.

I was twenty-six. I have lived well more than another lifetime since then, and I cannot recall shouting in anger in a theatrical setting ever since. Not at Night Kitchen, not at Bad Epitaph, not in my current position. I have taught myself not to lose control; yelling is never helpful, and it may very well be harmful. Better not to.

"You Can't Take It With You" by Kaufman & Hart
Bay High School, 1982

Our drama teacher in high school yelled at me exactly once (well, twice – the other time was in a class, that is story for another time) and it was for the exact same reason. I was a freshman, it was tech week for the recently mentioned production of You Can’t Take It With You, and I was goofing off in the house when I heard my cue.

Panicked, I bolted through the auditorium and leapt onto the stage, ducking around the curtain in a desperate attempt to make my entrance late when our director held the action and dressed my down good. It was probably that moment I had in mind when I scolded the Guerrilla company. Perhaps that’s why I did it.

Are there those who enjoy anger? Who luxuriates in it? That anger is the way they get things done and that is a necessary avenue to success? Because I don’t see it. I have never been so alienated from a cast as I was from the Romeo and Juliet company, for a variety of reasons. It was quite the education. But shouting in anger is the end of open communication. Let’s figure things out together. Let’s talk.

To be continued.

My Life in the Theater (Part III)

A couple weeks ago, we attended a dance concert, the Cleveland Dance Festival in the Westfield Insurance Studio Theatre in the Idea Center. Looking about, I saw a couple hundred people I had never seen before, which was fascinating. I always recognize at least a few folks in any theater audience.

But those would be theater people. These were dance people. A completely different population. It was fascinating.

Dance is weird. Non-verbal performance – abstract, movement based performance – it can be alien, and that by itself is disquieting to me. We use words to describe our world with specificity. But dance is an entirely new language, a visual, physical language.

Freshman year, one of the very first exercises we were asked to prepare for Acting 101 (I don’t think it was called Acting 101 but you get me) was to lip-synch a song from a musical. I chose "Heaven on Their Minds" from Jesus Christ Superstar. Our instructor, a grad student, then picked apart our choices.

Why that song? Why hide your eyes with sunglasses? Why spend so much time standing still in a pose, wagging just one finger?

That last one stuck with me. We can be myopic about our bodies, we think we are making a “Grand Gesture” when we point with our finger. We feel our entire self projecting through what is, in visual reality, a very tiny part of your body, the tip of your index finger.

Use the whole self! Do not neglect one single part of yourself! Be aware of your entire person, and use your entire person! Know how you appear to others.

At the same time, I was also taking a modern dance class. It’s the only time I have taken a course in dance, and as with so many other courses, I was exposed to a whole history of artists of whom I had been entirely ignorant; in this case, it was those who had broken with classical, traditional, acceptable forms of movement for something entirely new and different, to discover another way to communicate, to express through movement.

And I was learning it all for the first time, and it was awkward. Lanky, six foot teenager, flailing about, sometimes literally flailing, attempting grace. Not aspiring to it, merely attempting.

You can’t fake it. I would soon become aware of just how many of my achievements to date had been accomplished by faking it, by not doing the work, instead relying upon my experiences to simulate knowledge, wisdom, or understanding.

Acting is pretending, but you can imitate what you don’t know. And you can’t pretend to dance.

To be continued.

My Life in the Theater (Part II)

Preparing for "Death Knocks"
Bay High School, 1984

The first time I ever stepped onto a stage was my freshman year in high school (You Can't Take It With You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart). My character appeared at the very end of the first scene. I remember the moment. We’d rehearsed, I had my lines cold, very prepared, familiar with the entire ensemble – making a mistake was not a concern, I hadn’t even thought of saying or doing anything wrong, that’s how well-rehearsed we were.

And yet, just before I moved from backstage, unseen, hidden behind a fake door, to onstage, into the action, under the light, entirely visible to the audience, I was struck with one thought, shockingly vivid to me, even to this day:

“Who said you had the right to do this?”

Who said that? What voice was it? Was that my mother’s voice, she who I had embarrassed so many times with my pranks and shenanigans? Why do you have to attract attention to yourself in this way?

Maurice Adams, Brian Pedaci
"The Vampyres"
Dobama's Night Kitchen, 1997

Two years later, when I directed a short scene for an evening of one acts (Death Knocks by Woody Allen) I heard the same voice, right before I entered through an open window that was part of the set, only the voice in my head was a little louder. Because this time I was not merely a participant, I choice this piece. I was responsible for it happening.

When I drew a somewhat controversial comic strip for the university newspaper (if you believe being inscrutable as controversial) my college roommate asked the same question, suggesting as my mother would have; you could just draw these things and put them on the wall of our dorm, why do you have to put them out into the world?

Once more, when I was twenty-eight, this time sitting in the audience, as the lights came down and the music came up on opening night of my first full-length play (The Vampyres). I’d been working on the script for over two years, all my friends were involved in the production; directing, acting, designing the set, the mural, the costume, the lights, the sound – Oh! The sound!

We had a full house, everyone was very excited, and in the darkness, before the protagonist spoke his first word, I heard a voice say, “Who said you had the right to do this?”

"I Hate This (a play without the baby)"
Staged Reading
Dobama Theatre, 2002

Well, obviously, I did. I told myself that.

My wife thinks it is strange that I would even think this; after all, who has the "right" to do anything? And what entity provides that right? God? Society? My mother?

I do not always feel this way. Call it Imposter Syndrome if you like. But usually I rise above it. What is the difference, though? Confidence, I imagine. In myself, in the work. When I performed my first monodrama (I Hate This) I didn’t think, “Who said I had the right to do this?” No, I thought, I have a story to tell, and these folks came here to hear me tell it.

And it’s that last part, that people came here to see this, and that they are counting on me, and on you, baby, to do our best. 

To be continued.

My Life in the Theater (Part I)

I applied to two schools. One accepted me. And so I matriculated into the Ohio University School of Theatre. I had no idea the school was in flux at that time. A sudden transition of leadership. I wasn’t even asked to audition.

Why did I want to study theater? Why wasn’t I an English major? Because acting was play and writing was work. There was an instant gratification in doing a play, and none for writing – I did not see how writing could get me attention, at least not positive attention (that is a story for another day) and attention had always been what I craved.

I am a 57 year-old man who keeps a blog. Of course I crave attention.

Erin Cameron, Steven Pack
"Living Together" by Alan Ayckbourn
Bay High School, 1986

I tried my hand at directing a two-act play (Living Together by Alan Ayckbourn) my senior year in high school. I had no idea what I was doing. Tell a bunch of my friends to move about on stage and there would be a play. No thought about costumes, or a set – I knew there were odd furniture pieces stored backstage, we’d use those – and light? To me, light was the invisible art. Surely, you just turn them on at the beginning and fade them out at the end.

I wasn’t just inexperienced with design, I was ignorant of design. I had never noticed it. It did not exist.

And that was who I was and how I started my undergraduate theater experience. I knew nothing. I would soon be trying everything.

To be continued.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (revisited)

My brother tells a story; fifty years ago, on November 9 (also a Sunday) it was unseasonably warm, so warm that he recalls that mother took me to the beach. I was seven, this was an unremarkable occasion for me, but he was fourteen and would remember how the temperature plummeted the next day, and how soon he and the nation would be rapt by the haunting mystery of the disappearance of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.

Last night, we invited a small ensemble of friends to have an informal, private reading of the play Ten November by Steven Dietz, with song lyrics by Eric Peltoniemi. Commissioned by the Actors Theatre of St. Paul, the play premiered at Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Chicago in 1987. It is a fast-paced, harrowing tale of the disaster and its aftermath, and also an examination of how, as Blue Öyster Cult put it, “History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.”

My desire was to invite a number of friends to gather around a fire in the backyard, to spin this yarn on a cool, fall evening, but the weather turned, as weather will, and we seventeen crammed into our beloved, tiny house. An unrehearsed ensemble, reading for ourselves, to mark this historic occasion. Five of us were alive when the Fitzgerald went down. It was an education for most. Folks familiar with the Lightfoot song – and this is a common refrain, which I have heard many times before – often don’t even know it’s a true story, or even that it happened during the twentieth century – let alone the late twentieth century.

Fifty years is a long time for a human. It’s not a long time for history.

Sarah Blubaugh and Scott Hanna interpreted the lyrics, which really elevated the experience, the assembled rewarded them with snaps after each melody as I pressed forward with the stage directions. Everyone who attended was provided a speaking role, it was a marvelous and varied chorus of voices.

It is a script that weaves together a variety of tales to provide context to the mystery. The fact that it was written before we had even visited the ship at the bottom of Lake Superior, before the bell was recovered in 1995, the site designated a grave site, not to be disturbed, actually serves the work. It illustrates the confusion and the frustrating search for solutions in the aftermath of tragedy which are often not to be found.

My grandfather was a merchant marine, and before he settled down to raise children, he piloted freighters like the Fitzgerald, though none as large. One of my recent discoveries in the effects I kept from my parent’s home was the old man’s personal logbook. An illustration he drew of the Steamship Robert Fulton was on display during the reading. Twenty-nine men died in a sudden storm on the Great Lakes on an evening fifty years ago, any man of them like my grandfather.

As the assembled departed last evening, the rain had turned to snow. Not exactly the blizzard we were promised. Sometimes, nature is kind, or so we perceive her to be.

See also: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (song)