The ACTion COLLECTIVE: ACT V, scene i - Physical Character

It seems strange to write about last night's workshop; I suppose because I led it, but that doesn't actually make any sense: I write here all the time about my own work, The Action Collective is something of which I am one of two founders and last night was a great start to incorporating workshops into our regular schedule of events. It went well, the new (to us) space was perfect (replete with five-flight walk-up warm-up) and I was duly (and unsurprisingly) impressed with the work that each attendee cranked out of it. Perhaps what's tripping me up about it is that even though this was our fifth event, neither Andrew nor I actually led the previous ones. We kind of try to set up a mechanism for each evening, and we nudge it along and try to set people at ease, but in that this was our first workshop I really functioned as a leader. And I guess I feel a little odd reviewing myself at this time. I plea the fifth, regardless of whether or not it actually applies to my circumstances.

So instead, I'll bare my plans and schemes. Below is the outline I prepared for the workshop (apologies for the lack of indentation; I have wrestled with Blogger, and I have definitively lost). I wish I had some photographs or video as well, but alas, I am not a multitasker. You should take me to task, though, Dear Reader. Read it. Agree, disagree, let me know what confuses, and what you want more information about. I've led many a workshop in my time, but they're normally for amateur or inexperienced actors (occasionally, for non-actors) and the real challenge this time was to tackle similar material in a way that would be helpful and entertaining for experienced performers. I think it was helpful. I'm less assured about the entertainment value, but I was tremendously entertained by their work, so: Yay me!

Act V, scene i Lesson Plan

Premise:
There are two basic situations of physical character creation -- characters created from cues in a script or other supporting material, and those created from scratch and/or in improvisation. The key priorities these have in common are:

1. Distinguishing physical characteristics of character from physical characteristics of actor.
2. Creating physical characteristics that enhance the story.
3. Living through the characteristics, as opposed to demonstrating them.

In this workshop we will aim to learn and share methods of creating and distinguishing physical choices for a character, refining those choices to serve the larger picture, and incorporating those choices into instinctive behavior.

Outline:
I. Introduction
A. Introductions all around
B. Introduce AC, Jeff & Andrew
C. Introduce ACT V & scene i
1. Goals
2. My background
D. Introduce Megan
II. Warm-Up
A. Megan's Yoga (15 minutes)
III. Groundwork - Distinguishing the Choices
A. Review viewpoints grid
B. Teach "active neutral"
C. Request "neutralizing" techniques
IV. Scratch/Improv. Techniques
*. Request improv. techniques
A. Body centers
B. Appetites
C. Animals?
V. Script Techniques
A. Introduce Laban vocabulary
1. Body
2. Shape
3. Space
4. Effort
a. space - direct/indirect
b. weight - strong/light
c. time - sudden/sustained
d. flow - bound/free
B. Text analysis in relation to Laban
1. Adjectives about character
2. Verbs & nouns by character
3. Rhythm and pace experimentation
4. Word from a hat
C. Request script techniques
VI. Unification
A. Practice, practice, practice
B. Respect the space/mask
C. Externalize the inner-work
1. Passing impulse
2. Props
3. Passing ball
VII. Wrap-Up/Discussion

The ACTion COLLECTIVE: ACT IV - It's All About You

On Thursday last, The Action Collective fired up its first event of the new year. (January we devoted our energies instead to internal structuring and producing our very first newsletter, which we hope to make a regular, monthly occurrence.) I wasn't sure what to expect from this one. It was different in that we were asking for a great deal more preparation from our actors than we have to date: we asked them to write a scene. The scenes were then cast in the room, and performed after only a quick read-through "rehearsal" with some notes from the writer. Andrew and I committed ourselves to the same assignment, in keeping with our ethos that we are members of the Collective along with being the ones who make it run. We were mercifully (for us, and all involved, I think) saved by the bell from having our pieces performed. It is in part because of this that I can say with absolute confidence that all the scenes that night were really, really good.

(Actually, for all I know, I would have been the only writing liability of the evening. Andrew's good at, like, everything, so he's probably good at playwriting too. [Jerkface.])

I was eager to have another event after such a break, but also uniquely nervous, given that exposing my writing makes me way more anxious than exposing, say, myself on stage. It's entirely debatable which of these is actually more revealing about a person, but I tend to feel more in control of the latter, I suppose. That's part of what was amazing about the whole thing -- people brought it. It got broughten. And by "it," I mean risk-taking, specific choices and strong results. Andrew and I have talked about producing a show through The AC for as long as we've talked about the organization itself, and last Thursday showed me that member-generated work would not only function in this, it could be relied upon entirely.

Here we had actors working with other actors' scripts, and it created what I found to be a unique synergy of like-mindedness. We could quickly grasp what our fellow artist had intended, because we spoke similar languages, and this resulted in the actors being pleasantly surprised by what accessible material they had to work with, and the playwrights (some of the same people, in their turns) being surprised by what could be brought to their words. It was win-win, in other words, and as the evening progressed it seemed we all grew quite proud of one another. Feedback flowed more easily, and people started to feel truly at home in the process. Just when I think The AC has achieved the sense of community I was aiming for, the next event shows me a new and promising way to allow that sense to grow.

Friend Nat (who was in attendance) coined a term some three years ago on this here 'blog: "creactors." The Chimeric nature of that word is really grotesque, which made me laugh, and so it has since been a tag on many a post here ever since. It refers to actors who also create their own work with skills outside of those traditionally associated with acting. In other words, actors who write, choreograph, direct and produce, paint and draw, etc. It covers most people, actually, but only ever refers to those who take the risk of creating their own work. And ACT IV brought it home for me that The Action Collective is a group that is perfect for "creators," and already has many talented ones actively involved in shaping it. Which couldn't please me more.

Except that it will; it holds great promise, and opens up the possibilities for what our fledgling community can hope to achieve. Andrew and I are excitedly gathering resources for the next event and newsletter, as well as for long-range plans for the year. Watch this space (or, you know, the AC 'blog, Facebook and/or Twitter pages). It's all about you, after all...

The Role of Director

See what I did there?

Well, it is done.

Josh Sohn

's

Flowers --

a ten-minute comedy about a cab ride, estrangement and obligation --

premiered and closed

this weekend past. I should mention that it was all of those things, plus

a production I directed

, and in a breathtakingly limited amount of time at that. Six rehearsals, for a total of 9.5 hours' rehearsal time. That's just shy of an hour of time per page, and that's supposed to be all the time one absolutely needs, assuming everyone gets off book in their own time, and I'm here to tell you that this standard is horse hockey. High-sticking horse hockey. But a good time was had by all, I think, and it was nice to return to directing with such a definitive deadline and good friends with whom to work.

Josh of course is someone with whom I am in collaboration more and more, but the actors were folks I have known for years and worked with on separate but similarly intensive projects:

Nat Cassidy

and

Richard Grunn

. In both cases, I worked with these actors as a fellow actor, so we were all pretty adjusted to my quirks and peccadilloes, I'd say. I hope. You know, it's actually hard to say, because being the director is a somewhat lonely experience. Of course, everyone involved was perfectly friendly and engaging, and I think I was more than encouraging toward nurturing an atmosphere in which we could play and say anything. It's just a different environment for the director. If the director isn't a bit outside, he or she can't really do the job. The whole, brief thing got me thinking about that work in some more specific ways than I have in the past. I mean, part of why I wanted to do it was to dip my toes in the waters of directing again, see how hospitable they felt and whether or not I'd want to go for a swim there again. (My metaphor needs arm floaties, it's getting so distended.)

It seems to me that I used to ask an awful lot of my directors, and I wonder if this is still the case. I never had any of them complain (to my face) along these lines, but in thinking back I've realized I was really looking for a kind of artistic affinity at best, and a sort of grandiose mentorat worst. I suppose it's natural for any actor to seek approval from his or her director, but there are limits and I'm not sure that when I was younger I placed enough priority on exploring my own standards when it came to fulfilling a role. It also seems to me that directing is really not all that different from teaching; or perhaps tutoring may be a closer comparison. That is, if your teaching philosophy is similar to mine, in which it's all about communication and being as prepared to learn from the student as to instruct him or her. If there is a major difference, I believe it's that the director has to apply personal prejudice to the process, simply in the interest of functioning as some kind of leader. Some may disagree, but I think directors should be leaders, in the sense that they should take all of the blame and little of the credit, and give everyone something unified to aim for.

This was not a high-pressure project-- apart from the amount of notice I had upon taking it on -- and I had what turned out to be very realistic expectations for both the process and the venue. Which is to say, the venue met with my expectations, but the actors I was working with exceeded them. (And my contribution? Not sure yet. Need time to process. [But I totally exceeded when it came to a prop we needed, which will have a 'blog post ALL ITS OWN.]) Ten minutes is not a lot of time in which to establish a memorable character and make it both believable and entertaining, but Nat and Rich accomplished all this while scoring laughs and poignant moments. These guys have some very interesting similarities and differences as artists, which played well into their relationship on stage, I thought.

[Spoiler alert:

that of an estranged father and son.

]

They're both excellent with comic timing and self-generated work, which I find lends itself to good strong characterization, but Rich has very different rhythms and a more subconscious style, whereas Nat's approach seems more cognizant and edgy. They did great, and allowed me to relax into the process.

Despite all these reasons for calm, I fretted, like a dual-necked guitar. It's just part of the (read: my) process. I had two primary concerns: getting us together on the same page about the story of the action, and not squelching or (perhaps worse) misinterpreting their contributions. Compromise may seem like a simple watchword given both of these concerns, and it is certainly a necessary skill for a director, but there's also a degree of resolve involved. In other words, that somewhat un-exercised muscle of mine in acting, the one for fighting for your interpretation or point of view, had to be a little warmed up by the experience. The actors never, ever fought me on anything; nevertheless, I was in unfamiliar territory in having an obligation to lead. I think I did okay, for my first real appreciation of this task. Directors get perhaps less immediate feedback -- as compared to actors who have a feeling about the job they're doing throughout the performance -- but I feel pretty good about it.

Horse hockey and all.

The Horror, The Horror...

Do you think anyone has yet mashed up Brando's famous delivery in

Apocalypse Now

with shots of men in traditional Jewish garb dancing traditional Jewish dances? If they haven't, the Internet is a failed experiment.

Sunday last I participated in a staged reading of

Friend Nat

's latest playscript:

Pierce, or, A Ghost of the Union

. The story

is

a ghost one, surrounding the presidency of Franklin Pierce. Nat excels at creating these unlikely mash-ups of supernatural tropes and (supposedly) more lofty and academic material; he's a smart guy who loves Japanese horror films and the work of Stephen King, and his previous plays have included

Any Day Now

(kitchen-sink drama and zombies) and

The Reckoning of Kit & Little Boots

(classical tragedy and time-bending magical [sur]reality). So as unlikely as the combination may seem, it really rather works in the hands of someone who can encompass all the contributing factors, such as Nat.

It reminds me of Friend Geoff, who is lightly obsessed with the hope that a stage play can be genuinely terrifying, and not just existentially, but immediately as well. I've seen two shows that scared me rather well: one was

The Pillowman

, the other a smaller-scale production but awfully well done from Friend Avi's group, Creative Mechanics:

Fall of the House of Usher

.

Pillowman

served up a series of shocks, in effect, that cumulatively broke my sense of trust in the narrative, whereas

Usher

was all-around creepy, seeping into me throughout by way of some incredibly weird and committed performances.

Pierce

is fascinating to me because it seems to adhere so directly to the rhythm of a horror movie, the way such movies often function like roller-coasters, undulating and setting you up over and over again for bigger and bigger drops. This is a far more delicate feat in the theatre than on the screen, though. It takes pitch-perfect balance. It's almost like comedy in its daring: Nowhere to hide or obfuscate your intentions -- you are there, and everyone knows this, to make people laugh. Or in this case, shudder with fear.

Theatre used to do this, you know. Theatre used to do it all, even with equivalents to the glorious orangey fireballs and computer-rendered creatures. It did it all, because it had to. It was all we had, and then just as now we liked being scared, made sad, laughing, and all the good junk in between. Somewhere up the line there started to come these other vicarious, verisimilitudinous experiences, and somewhere not too far beyond that theatre started to place a priority on distinguishing itself. By and large, I think this was good for theatre; I love exploration and a pursuit of specificity, and one of my favorite admonishments I received in college was to, damn it, find what theatre can do that no other medium can. That has served me well, and I'm still making discoveries in that vein. However, it irks me somewhat when specificity leans its way into limitation, and anyway movies do not have exclusive domain over anything having to do with entertainment, with the possible exception of having made and spent astronomical figures on it.

So: Fear. It makes for some pretty powerful catharsis. That's what all the scary movies are about, after all -- inciting some kind of visceral, emotional response from us that we somehow find comfort in (or at least afterward). As with any play or movie, the catharsis needs a good story on which to hang its hat, even if it's a very simple one (such as, mildly troubled family stays in hotel, gets stranded and violently disintegrates) and

Pierce

achieves that with a variety of contextual details such as slavery and impending secession, government and politics, and the strange evolution of the idea of "the media." Perhaps most satisfying, absolutely every character is changed by the events that unfold. In that sense, horror could be called a curious combination of comedy and tragedy (perhaps the eleven-fingered love child). It progresses with a comic rhythm of set-ups and deliveries, yet results in a tragic change, a horrible finality.

Then again, my favorite horror movies have that coda in which it is implied that the horror, the undeniable lack of control, is inescapable and cyclical and bound to repeat itself. Human behavior, at its most horrible. Now who wouldn't cast politicians in such a story?

In the Name of Action

Last Thursday The ACTion Collective made its big debut, rounding up roughly a dozen incredibly talented and daring actors for an event that invited them to bring scripts to be performed that very same night with minimal preparation, in most cases working with someone new-to-you. It was an experiment, a game, and I think a rousing success. Certainly preparing for it and the results we achieved roused enthusiasm in me for another such event, and so far the feedback has been positive enough to warrant that response. People had fun, and people have ideas for more fun along similar lines. As I've stated before, I'm a big fan of beginnings and the energy they engender. I think I'm becoming more and more appreciative of continuity, though -- particularly when it's my work I'm talking about, of course.

Our work, I should say, because a lion's share of the preparation for Thursday and for laying the groundwork for ACTion Collective at-large was achieved by Friend Andrew. It's been frankly inspiring (and only a little frightening at times) to work with such a reliable and responsive collaborative partner. We all have our projects, and we actors are notoriously wicked when it comes to neglecting one to serve seventeen others, and I am certainly guilty of letting slide a thing or two, here or there, from time to time . . . uh . . . over and over. I never realized before, however, that this occurs most often because I don't receive a response on my outgoing work soon enough. Such is not the case with Andrew, even remotely. It probably helps that we're both geeks (and getting geekier by the hour). We may as well call the Gods of Google our silent third(s?), and Andrew's a Mac, I'm a PC.

The event itself ("ACT I," we've taken to calling it) was a giant collaboration, in fact, which is part of why I wanted to do it in the first place. Fostering a sense of collaboration empowers actors, I believe, and also lends us some perspective on the many reasons that people with other jobs in creating theatre (or film, or what-you-will) may not always understand us. I was concerned about ACT I feeling too much like a potluck, without structure, yet wanted to allow room for participant contribution in a social setting. We found a nice balance -- people even contributed food and drink without prompting, and took every challenge we threw out at them with grace and eagerness. I think next time we'll feel more at ease to structure, leaving the freedom up to folks' own sense of proportion. The experiment is ongoing, but it definitely feels as though it's going forward.

Some of the contributing ideas to ACTion Collective, in no particular order:

• It's called a "play" for a reason. (This is paraphrased from somewhere - Dario Fo, perhaps?)


• Actors need to be empowered, because much of the audition and rehearsal processes can and do (intentionally or non-) relegate the actor's craft to a low priority.


• Unlike other creative artists, actors need other people in order to act, because without them the equation isn't balanced, and the work is incomplete.


• As actors, we can instinctively be in competition with one another, but this sabotages what we want to achieve in myriad ways -- see above.


• The typical model of work-flow for a working actor largely puts him or her in the position of relying on others' decision-making for when they work and what they work on.


• An actors' work is always, always better when s/he can combine the relaxation of game-play and experimentation with the desire to work toward the most effective expression of a script, which one doesn't always have the time or permission to achieve in a necessarily short rehearsal period.


• Acting takes practice; good acting takes regular practice.


• It's fun.


• Most actors are willing to work for the sake of the work, but we must resist it in the interests of a sustainable career; being free to focus on the craft on a regular basis, without such worries, empowers us to make sure we value the rest of our efforts as we should.


• Networking is not enough; we need a community.


• Action begets action.

It's exciting work in an exciting time. At first, I was going to describe a bit of what happened, the little challenges and victories that came about, the laughs, and of course the pumpkin fudge, which doesn't sound natural but is an amazing and delightful adventure of the taste buds. But the fact is, it loses something in translation. Words will not suffice. It's not enough to hear about it, or even witness it.

To know it, you have to do it.