It’s amazing what the body can put up with, given an appropriate amount of time to acclimate. To whit: I’m now fairly comfortable going on 5 hours of sleep a night. I’m not saying I want to make it a habit, but since this crazy schedule is going to persist for the next two or three weeks, I’m at least pleasantly surprised that I’m not considering suicide right about now. In fact, I even feel a bit energized.
Last night I had my first meeting with the cast of the third play I’ll be rehearsing in the coming weeks. This play was written by Matt Morillo, a writer/director with whom I’ve collaborated on other projects, and will open on January 19th#–a perfect time to invite television people right before pilot season. If you’ve been reading recent posts, you know that I’m focussed on making a good impression before TV casting in the spring, and this falls right in line with my prospects. The show is entitled Angry Young Women in Low Rise Jeans With High Class Issues and, yes, it is a comedy. I’ll be playing the character of Ronnie, a smarmy wise-ass who’s girlfriend gets on his case about a sex-fantasy he tells her about (thinking she will, of course, be really into it). In the same vein as Sex in the City, the play should be a good match for the bar-going crowd and the same audience who enjoys HBO and Showtime Original series. The fact that the show will go up on 4th street, next to a lot of bars (and near enough to NYU to break windows with thrown debris), bodes well for our potential audience numbers. While the content is a little raw, I’m excited about the show as it’s contemporary, and something that I can play well. It’s not something I would encourage my grandparents to see (were the inclined to see theatre at all), but it’s something that my older sister and my twenty-one year old brother would laugh at.
Rehearsals for A Christmas Carol are continuing smashingly#–with the basic work of improvising an outline finished, we’re now faced with setting a script and matching blocking to what we’ve imagined. This isn’t terribly difficult, but feels a bit redundant as we’re essentially just figuring out what we did before (in another rehearsal) that worked so well, and restaging it in a way that is clear and fun for the audience. It’s not so much fun for the actor#–not quite a run of the scene (and now suddenly with a foreign script in hand), these rehearsals are something to get through so that we can move on to the real meat-and-potatoes of rehearsing scenes.
Rehearsals for A Long Christmas Dinner are coming along as well#–and at this particular moment are a little more fun than Carol (no offense to the director, it’s just because of the place we’re in). We’ve finished the basic blocking of the scenes#–broad, generic strokes of the “blocking-brush” that simply set our entrances, exits, and areas during each scene#–and are moving into the act of characterization. This is my favorite time during the rehearsal process#–the time when you can try wildly differing versions of scenes, exploring the differences in a glance, a gesture, the touch of a hand upon an arm. Everything is up for discussion, and anything is possible#–what is discovered here is what sets a performance apart as either mediocre or grand. I’ve been very pleased with the other actors involved with the show, and I’m hoping that it will turn out to be something for which I’ll be proud to send out invitations (this isn’t always the case with showcase productions). The director, Glenn, is very considerate to our input as actors, and I’m happy so far with the way we’ve escaped from the generic ordinary-ness indicated in the text. The note in the front of the playbook warns that past productions have been staged in a “weird, lugubrious manner”, so we’ve held ourselves accountable not to lugubriate.
In other news, I’m supposed to be going in to One Life to Live again on Wednesday to read (all day, as it turns out)#–I haven’t heard from the casting director after confirming on Friday, so hopefully I haven’t somehow missed the opportunity. I’m hoping that they’ll keep thinking of me for work, and so far I haven’t been disappointed.
With all this activity (and a forty hour work week, plus overtime) you’d think I would take the weekends off, but no! Not me! On Saturday I took a class with Kim Mischia of Bowling/Mischia casting, focusing on cold-reading with some side-points about headshots and resumes. The sides I read were from Third Watch, the now defunct Law & Order-like show about EMT’s that used to shoot in NYC. Kim was casting director for that show, and the sides were actually a good match for me#–I can see myself as the L & O type (that’s another show I need to pursue). She was pleased with my read and gave me some input on my headshot and resume#–with all the small credits I’ve accumulated taking up space, she felt it was time to take some things off and make the font a little bigger. A minor detail, to be sure, but something I quickly changed when I got home (it took all of about five seconds). She also felt that my headshot was a little dated, and I have to say I agree! I’ve already made the appointment to get new shots taken in December and I’m saving extra money to make it happen (anyone who wants to shoot extra cash my way is more that welcome). Again, this all falls in line with my Pilot Season Preparedness Project, and hopefully will pay off before Summer.
On the personal side, I just finished reading The Bourne Supremacy#–and while I loved the movies, I have to say I royally hated the book. This is something of a surprise for me, as I normally work in the opposite manner: books usually draw me in until I forsake most conversation and even other forms of entertainment until I’ve finished reading whatever has caught my attention. But this book was awful. The story, while a good idea, was executed with the skill and thought process equivalent to the act of creating a turd. Seriously. It was bad. And I’m not trying to be mean… I really just do not understand how great characters and a great story could be turned into such a laborious, badly-written sheaf of tree-mulch. It took me so long to read that I earned library fines. Ugh. And more annoying? I still do not know why Jason Bourne is from Nixa, Missouri. Nope. I’ve read over twelve-hundred pages in two books and no clue to the mystery has yet turned up. I hate myself for doing it, but I’m going to have to read the next one in the series. I’ll probably even gripe about it if it turns out to suck as much as the last one#–especially if I don’t find out about the origins of Bourne’s home town#–but I’m going to read it.
But not without some time away from Ludlum-land with a real literary delight. I just bought Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami and I am so excited about reading it that I’m denying myself the pleasure for another few days. I loved the last Murakami book that I read, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, more than any novel I’ve ever picked up. I wouldn’t call it life-changing, but it was certainly moving… and thought provoking, and entertaining, and engaging… I can’t recommend it enough.
Have you ever read something so wonderful that it left you with a physical feeling of joy? Something in the pit of your stomache that made you want to share it… or anything, really… with someone else? That’s how I feel about it. And any time I mention it to someone who has read it, their eyes light up and they unconsciously nod… that reaffirming “we share something” nod that you get only from fellow Dylan fans, or other computer nerds browsing the discount software rack.
Well… you know what I mean.
