Self-Inflicted

I have, at present, one of those marks on my body that begs to be explained as a violent wound. There is a large purple welt on the inside of my left bicep, and it could easily be believed to be the result of one or more of the following:

• This guy grabbed me with his right hand so hard, I had to punch him in the nose to get him to let go.

• I'm studying Filipino stick fighting.

• Paintball, dude. Paintball.

Sadly, none are the case. No, my manly disfigurement arose from carrying an air conditioner home from the store. In other words, from my obstinacy. I could have taken a cab and been home in a jiffy, bruiseless, but I hate cabs and had assured myself that the air conditioner, to quote my own thoughts, "isn't that heavy and hey--useful plastic straps on the outside. I'll be fine." Of course, what probably exacerbated the hematoma (SOMEbody's suffering from SAT score envy) was the prompt application of push-ups after the air conditioner was actually installed.

I'm not trying to seem like a tough guy here. Wait. Well, actually, that's entirely the point. I am trying to seem like a tough guy. In August, unCommon Cause will at long last mount a finalized (somewhat) production of As Far As We Know as a part of the NYC Fringe Festival, and in said production I will be playing a captured soldier. The gentleman my role is based off of is a large, fit guy, and though I'm making no claims to be imitating him, one could definitely get a better impression of me as a soldier if I actually had pectoral muscles. So over the next few weeks I will be eating big breakfasts and making my arms very, very sore.

An actor's relationship to his or her body is an interesting one. We're probably second to models in our interest in keeping our physique attractive (with possibly a greater emphasis on functionality--definitely, when it comes to our voices) and are eligible for all the same benefits and foibles of behavior that can arise from that interest. There are some things that just can't be helped (apart from significant surgery), such as height, body type and facial features. The better among us learn to use such features to their advantages. Most dedicated actors, however, also feel a certain sense of responsibility (or just plain ol' fun) in modifying their appearance in ways appropriate to a given role. There are some very extreme examples of this from film (such as Christian Bale betwixtThe Machinist and Batman Begins), but it applies to the stage as well. The difference is that the stage at once hides more details (such as wrinkles) and demands more drastic effects to succeed in modifying appearance (such as Antony Sher's ordeals in transforming himself into Richard III).

(A) An (hopefully) interesting observation:

Not much has changed over the years (and years [and years]) of theatre history. Actors with a reputation for altering their appearances for roles are commonly known as "character actors," unless they've achieved celebrity status, in which case they're often known as "bold," or "crazy." (

Gary Oldman

is a fascinating hybrid in that he's internationally known, and rarely looks at all the same between roles.) Lead actors, particularly in film, actually have a vested interest in maintaining similar looks between movies. It makes them more recognizable and type-able, and very often is rooted in their best, or most attractive, look. Apart from the tastes of the general public (or rather, because of those tastes), this consideration arises out of lead roles almost invariably being involved in some romantic plot or other. Take this back to the commedia dell'arte tradition, and one finds it awfully familiar. In classic commedia dell'arte, the

innamorati

, or lovers, never wore

masks

, whereas almost all of the other characters did. The exceptions to this rule were some of the female "servant" characters, presumably because they were meant to also be seen as attractive, though perhaps in a less romantic sense.

Anyway, I'm not in terrible shape. My doctor (when I actually have the insurance to be able to afford her) tells me that I'm keeping myself in good exercise, at least internally speaking, and simply as a matter of course I tend to get in a little stretching and exercise every day. That habit suffered the most it has in years over this last winter-into-spring, what with my injury and the uncertainty surrounding it, but I now feel well-returned to the habit of regular exercise. (Of particular help in this was teaching "physical acting" to high schoolers last week.) Of course, I would be in better shape if I still had my weekly Kirkos session to look forward to, but in many ways the circus skills I've been learning the past few years are what got me in good shape to begin with, and I return to them on my own. It's just easier to push oneself when one isn't . . . er . . . just one. So: I'm a reasonably healthy thirty-year-old man with several extracurricular skills to apply to the pursuit of the desired effect.

That effect being

HUGENESS

.

It ain't gonna happen. At least not in time for this incarnation of

As Far As We Know

. It's just too basic a change to affect in such a short time and, unless the show goes far, it's not a body state I'm enthusiastic to be in. When I was a kid, I would have eaten it up. My body ideals were formed by superheroes, and in large part that means no chest can be too huge, no abdomen too rippled. Now, however, having worked on circus skills and developed a better-informed interest in things like martial arts and

le parkour

, dexterity and speed are more important to me. Perhaps, too, age is a factor. The past year has taught me a lot about what it means to age in the physical sense, and as I grow older, I want to be more agile, not necessarily stronger. Nevertheless, I'm curious to see how effectively I can emulate an all-American soldier in just a month.

I had to come to a certain peace about my body image a while ago. As a kid, I was overweight until I was about 16, whereupon I grew no taller, but over a period of about two-to-three months I lost 40 pounds. No lie. I went from weighing 160 pounds (at 5'8'', very little of it muscle) to 120 (still rather lacking in muscle), which also directly led to my getting some for the very first time ever. And by "some," I of course mean "anything, at all." That detail may seem tangential, but I'll come back to it. I never really understood why the change happened then, or so suddenly. Looking back, it's easy to file it under teenage hormones. It was hard to say at the time, though, because I had wished for it for so long, silently, and it happened so suddenly I wasn't even aware of it until people started commenting on it. Still, I hesitated to do anything with my transformation, not really getting around to it until college, when I was quite unexpectedly cast as d'Artagnon in

my school

's production of

The Three Musketeers

. I had never known what it was like to really work on something so intensely physical until I had to train for the fencing in that show, and I ended up

loving

it. I love having to sweat for my craft.

Some few years ago, I had a little sit-down with myself. "Self," said I, "Let's me and I get together on this body-image thing." It was prompted by an observation from a friend, who wondered aloud if what drove me to be so disciplined about pushing myself in exercise (said friend caught me on a good stretch) was the subconscious worry that someday I would mysteriously revert and regain that extra 40 pounds of baggage. Fear is a powerful motivator in drama, but I try to avoid it in the rest of my life . . . whenever possible. I realized that I was associating being loved, even being worthy of love, with something impermanent and mysterious to me. So I made an agreement with myself that I would try to judge my body more by what it could do than what it looked like. Friend Kate and others were pivotal in helping me come to this conclusion by introducing me to circus--something concrete I enjoyed and could aim for--and since then I have made every go of it.

Of course, one can't always avoid an exterior analysis, particularly in a profession as image-conscious as my own. The important thing for me is to keep that interior (though now, shared with all seven of my 'blog subscribers) priority, even in the face of others' stunning physiques, or casting directors who look at me like I'm a Hot Pocket that didn't get enough time in the microwave. In those instances--as when I'm working to create HUGE pectoral protrusions--I just keep thinking, "I can hold a handstand 0.7 seconds longer than I could last year, and climb things like a spider-monkey." This makes my willingness to literally cause myself pain, inside and out, in order to create some unkown version of myself a bit weaker. But it also makes my journey to whatever I'll achieve far more rewarding, and spontaneous.

Now I have to go do some push-ups. And post an ad on Craigslist to pimp myself out as an air conditioner mover.

Live Free or Die Hard or Make Something People Will Love

Yeah, okay. I caved yesterday and saw it. Sometimes the lowest common denominator appeals to me, I confess. At present I'm reading about the creation of

A Streetcar Named Desire

, from the debut production through the

Kazan

film, and I'm blown away by how viscerally

Brando

lived during his twenties. I feel as though I've positively wasted the last decade of my life (though perhaps retained a bit more cleanliness in general), and last night I wasted two more hours of it. If Brando had had action movies, would they have helped slake some of his youthful lust and mischief? Probably not. And, while on the subject, would I have felt more fulfilled by two hours of casual sex, a la Marlon? Probably not.

Then again, an acting class might not have been a complete waste of my time.

It's a strange stew I prepare for you today, seasoned with

Desire

,

Die Hard

and day-job interruptions. (Best part about being back: Time for 'bloggage. [Ability to pay for groceries also ranks high on the list.]) I was greeted when I sat to email today by an unaccustomed missive (stop it, jerk) by an unusual email from

Friend Anna

. She writes:

"I'm writing my paper on creativity, and was fielding thoughts with some people on the matter. ... What is creativity? What does it mean to be creative? (Are there certain characteristics you think of?) [And, is it a matter of inborn characteristics or influenced by upbringing and social environment? Is it innate talent or something that can be learned? Some scholars propose it is simply a matter of skills learned through hard work, a matter of motivation and discipline, not that anyone is innately more creative (genius) than anyone else. That is, it's conscious effort, they don't believe in it coming from unconscious.]"

I know so many people in school right now. It really does make them smarter. Is that an effect of age? Because, God knows, school didn't seem to make anyone smarter the last time I was in it. The most reasonable thing to do before responding to such questions would be to define my terms, terms such as "creativity," "genius" and "it." But as

John McClane

teaches us, it isn't reason that makes America so great; it's a willingness to do viciously risky and self-aggrandizing stunts involving the maximum amount of property damage. In that spirit, I dive right in.

First of all, let's release the concept of "artistry" from this discussion. Great artistry is its own creature, a thing born from arduous study, disciplined work and having a craft or technique. It's great, I love it, and maybe no great work can be great without it. Fine. But in our interests today we're exploring the nature of creativity, not artistry.

I would separate "creativity" from "genius." To my mind, creativity is a quality all possess. In a spiritual context, I believe it is our awareness of having been created (and not necessarily by an omnipotent deity--an awareness that we begin and end suffices) that compels us to emulate the process with our own actions, be this via child birth, entreprenurism or performance art. In a pragmatic context, I see a sense of creativity as one of the later stages of the evolution of intelligence. After one learns to perceive tools out of the objects around them, one may eventually come to refine such tools and create their own. In short, creativity to me is simply abstract thought, which some people take to greater extremes than others.

One interesting feature of abstract thought is the ability to conceive of concepts. (Is that redundant? John McClane wouldn't care. I don't care.) The real brain-twister is contemplating whether concepts are of themselves spontaneous creations on our part, similar to ancient peoples creating gods to explain the bits of the world they couldn't better understand, or master. In other words, have we created the concept of, say, love, in order to explain (or at least name) what seemingly illogical and irrational forces make us act like absolute idiots. Me, I tend to discount the notion of spontaneous creation. I am a fan of the law of

conservation of energy

, and believe that kind of balance applies to a great deal of reality. Similarly, for example, I agree that there are a finite number of stories in the world, and we just seem to create new ones by recombining, deconstructing and re-conceiving these few. To put it still another way, we are all inspired in our "creations" by everything that already

is

, around and within us. To this end, I don't really believe in genius, per se. There is no great, mysterious inborn gift that is only bestowed upon a few.

Then again, when I was faced with Michaelangelo's

David

(and listen: photographs will never express this work), not a force in the world could have convinced me it wasn't the result of genius.

Not even John McClane killing a helicopter with a car.

So my overall opinion is this: The magic of the original

Die Hard

had a lot to do with where the star was at that point in his career (spunky with something to prove, because he was an acknowledged television star but not by any means celebrated) and where the director was coming from (

John McTeirnan

tells us on the commentary that he wanted to find the joy in this otherwise harrowing tale). There's a synergy to it that came from taking risks and improvising, something that could never hope to be duplicated in a sequel. When

A Streetcar Named Desire

was brought to film, it brought together the Stanley from the Broadway cast and the Blanche from the London cast, and it should have exploded. Brash, method Brando set off against Lady Olivier (

Vivien Leigh

) seems a formula for an insane working environment. Yet it worked beautifully, and it never would have happened if the rules had been followed or sense had prevailed.

Whether it really exists or not, the creative person needs to believe in genius. Maybe, in looking back on a creation, we can readily name its sources and the whole thing seems like a masterminded manipulation of common elements. Yet the feeling of creating something good, of being in a creative spirit, isn't like that. It's a chartless territory, a blank page or a silent room. People often ask authors where they get their ideas from, and it's easy to say, "Oh, I was a closeted homosexual who grew up in the south, so . . . you know . . . ." I believe that it's belief that ideas come from. Creativity springs from a confrontation of nothingness with faith in that intangible genius that we can never prove, but that always intervenes.

. . . Eventually. Yippie-kiy-yay . . .

ITALIA: June 25, 2007

Here’s how it works in Italy. You get up early. (Don’t worry, that gets justified later in the working plan.) For breakfast, you have very little. (Again: Bear with me.) Then you get right straight to work, usually before it even strikes 9:00. This is part of why coffee is such a valued invention in the boot-shaped nation. Around 1:00 or 2:00, you’re pretty famished, and it is coming on HOT. I mean: HOT. It’s not there yet, but the promise is extant, and you won’t be able to work much longer without food or shelter. So, owing to your tiny breakfast, you have a huge lunch, preferably three courses with water and wine. Now it really is really HOT, and the only thing that makes sense is to go to sleep. Only mad dogs and Englishmen would be about their business after such a meal and in such sun, so you go take a nap in order to digest and allow the sun to burn off a little. Two hours later, say around 5:00 or 6:00, you get up feeling rejuvenated and get back to whatever work you were up to earlier in the morning. You only have a few hours in which to do it, so it goes quickly, and by 8:00 or 9:00 you’re out to walk around and enjoy the cooling night. Maybe you have a little dinner then; it’s the best time for something like pizza. You’ll be up until at least midnight, and maybe later, meeting and greeting and getting up to whatever you generally do with your free time. Then you go to sleep again, but you won’t need to for too long (given your midday siesta) before you’re up to do it all again.

Today we woke early to finish as much of our food as we could manage, pile our towels and sheets and sweep out our home of the last two weeks. Heather bid adieu to il Gatto—the cat who adopted us during our stay (I kept trying to get them to name it something other than “the Cat”)—and we drove into Orvieto for some last goodbyes and to drop off our recycling. Before too long we were back in the car headed for Rome, sans bottle and cans and with a gagillion LinguaSi brochures and a few new gifts for loved ones.

Finding the hotel we were to stay in for the next twenty-four hours was a challenge. It’s quite close to centro, but Rome is laid out according to thousands of years of cart trails and paths. It’s even more confusing than Washington D.C. With David as navigator, we eventually made our way to the place, compromising our morals a bit with oncoming-traffic-challenging U-turns and desperate spins around traffic circles. The room was tiny, but air-conditioned, which we haven’t really had in the two weeks of our stay. We dropped our stuff and marched off to find a restaurant for lunch. The waiter was a real charmer, speaking a mélange of Italian, French and English, and he gave Heather the hardest time. It was marvelous (sorry Heather—it really was), and we left smiling and probably remained that way until we collapsed into our air-conditioned beds for a couple of hours. This was the hottest weather we had yet known on the visit.

A couple of hours and a new shirt later, we were up to do what-you-will about the streets of Roma. Eventually we decided upon visiting the Villa Borghese, a huge park with lots of areas and interesting features. After a few wrong turns, and allowing time for David’s enthusiasm for architecture (there are some beautiful buildings here, but I inevitably find the challenge of navigation distracting) we approached the Museum of Modern Art, which lies across the street from the main entrance to the villa. We climbed a huge set of stairs to discover fascinating spaces of trees and neoclassical sculpture and monuments. People were all over, enjoying the shade or resting from tourism. From a few signs, after walking about a bit, we discovered the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre we had heard about was nearby. Sebastiano had worked on building it, and we had wanted to see it the last time we were in Borghese. So we set out to.

Eventually we found it across the way from a huge track that looked to be for racing horses. It looked fairly authentic from the outside, and we walked all the way around it before we could find a space over the fence to peek through an open door, drawn as we were by the sound of some rustic music being played. Our limited view revealed the stage, covered in dust but being danced on by a large group of people. Huh, thought we. Perhaps a rehearsal. Heather and I postulated, based on the men wearing boots that covered their knees and the nature of the dance, perhaps for Much Ado About Nothing. This happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play. Hey gang, we suggested, let’s check the front to see what their season is.

Molto Rumore per Nulla opened their season…the next night. The night we were supposed to be flying back to America. We raged (raged, I tell you) at the injustice of it all. We went away to fume and admire gorgeous garden features, and of course aimed our way back by the theatre to see what we could see of what was going on there later. This was around 8:30, and the attori seemed to be outside chatting on their phones, lounging. Some were playing badminton, of all things (a favorite show-time activity of Heather and I). We hemmed, and we hawed, and I did everything I could to encourage David to go make introductions through the fence, short of actually suggesting that. We lamented Todd’s absence; this is what he’s made to do, to make instant friends and get us in to the party…even when he isn’t the only one who speaks the language with gusto. David wished aloud for him. I continued to say things like, “Hm…if a bunch of foreign actors asked to see our dress rehearsal…how would I respond?” Heather grew increasingly ironic in her commentary on how we had been sighted, ergo clearly stalking the company.

And then, dear goodness from above, David approached the fence and, after a while of hanging there, got the attention of a slender blonde man (one who had been involved with the badminton). I could barely make out what was being exchanged, but I picked up on the shift in tone as David introduced the fact that we were actors. It was touch-and-go, but the actor he spoke to was on our side and asked us to wait while he consulted his director (also playing Beatrice in the show). We anxiously awaited his return: “Ritornorette alla nove.”

And so, after fifteen minutes to find one food cart in one huge park, we returned at 9:00 and were let into the theatre for their final dress rehearsal. It’s a great reproduction, as far as I could tell. Anyway, it felt great to be in there. That’s rather underplaying it. I was thrilled. From where we sat, in the first floor of the benches, we watched the moon crown over and through the open roof, lighting up the sheets stretched across the stage in preparation for the start of the show.

It was magnificent. Didn’t get a word of it, of course (not entirely true, because I’ve got bits memorized), but it was definitely the best production of it I’d ever seen. As I sat there, savoring the play, I thought about a lot of things. They mostly had to do with the strange paths a life can take, how it can seem like what we want is never exactly what we get, yet what we get can—at just such moments—suddenly seem better than what we could have imagined. It’s a romantic place, Italy, in every sense of the word, and doubtless the last day of our visit was having its effect on me, but it also felt like a tiny, apt miracle to be in that theatre, watching a play we essentially had to ourselves. When the play finished, we wanted to stay but understood what comes after such an effort and how tiring such work can be, so we left. But we made sure to exit across the pit while the cast was gathered on stage, and we waved goodbye and wished “buon spectaculo” to our benefactor.

He waved back and called out, and the entire company joined him, “Grazie ragazzi! Ciao ragazzi!”

We walked late into the Roman night, eventually finding and enjoying Fontana di Trevi for a while. Maybe the clown version of Romeo & Juliet is just a dream, but we had one last Italian-inspired thought on it while there: to make the poster an homage to La Dolce Vita with Heather and I (or Todd, or whomever) wearing clown noses in the fountain. And, of course, before leaving to walk the silent Monday night streets of Rome, we cast coins over our left shoulders and into the fountain without looking back.

It’s a tradition. It guarantees your return.

ITALIA: June 22, 2007

Here’s where we went wrong, yesterday: When in Italy, you need to have desires, or goals. It is a land of great passion, desire and appetite. HOWEVER, no desire should ever, EVER take greater priority over your next cup of coffee.

Which is to say, listen to yourself and go with it. Don’t make yourself dopey by foregoing a good meal in order to get in the car to Florence quicker. You’ll only end up settling for roadside food and a caffeine insufficiency too late to really turn things around for you. Today we took this lesson to heart. First of all, our adventures of the previous day and the lateness of the hour of our return permitted us to sleep in quite a bit. I myself slept until 12:30, a normally unheard-of feat. When we were all up, the priority was a good meal. We knew we had the show in Pitigliano to attend later this night, so felt justified in moving at a simple pace and structuring things around when we accomplished them. This is why Italians are always late, and rarely frustrated.

So we had a nice lunch, and planned to visit our favorite little store in Orvieto for groceries and a visit with its proprietor, Vera. Doing this with no particular rush, we found we had plenty of time to eat, David swam and I exercised and acro’d on the lawn a bit (at one point looking up to find one of our neighbors on her porch watching with an expression that suggested a combination of fear and confusion), and we drove off to Orvieto feeling pretty fine. Once within its walls, Dvaid did some errands whilst Heather and I had cappuncini, used up our internet café cards and bought a plant for Vera. (The woman continually, unrelentingly takes lots of time to happily speak with us, not to mention gives us free bottles of wine and soda, when we visit her; we’ll never catch up on the gift front; she’s too good.) After a while we wound our way to Vera’s and had a lovely visit, incapable of escaping without having the wine we were trying to BUY from her hoisted upon us for no charge.

This entry—most of these later ones—grow more and more about a vacation than acting, theatre or The Third Life™. That’s one of the reasons we came here, I admit. As artists, we really don’t get “vacation time.” As Todd noted while he was here, so long as we get to do our work we generally don’t feel a need for vacation. What a lot of people outside of the effort of a Third Life® have trouble understanding is that we do work when we go out of town for a show, or take time for a tech week. The fact that we’re generally happier and better adjusted when we return just makes some people assume it was more like what sets them right, namely a couple of weeks out of the year to lie on a beach and sip margaritas, or some similar activity. As actors (and a director) our “vacations” coincide with our work, in part because that work is of necessity a third thing in our lives. It thrives most in these times we aren’t working to support our livelihood or focusing on a personal life. In other words, when we make time for it.

Not that I’m not grateful to be typing this on a sunny, vine-laced terrace in Europe, and not that it’s not luxurious and relaxing. I just wanted to express that observation to clear a little air.

So after dinner we headed to Pitigliano to see their production of Othello, or (as we shall henceforth refer to it):

La Strage del Teatro.

We had our warnings. Looking back, we had numerous cautions. And, I suppose, the worst of all possible outcomes would have been a show that sort of awkwardly straddled the fence between decent and sucky. Finally, to paraphrase Bernard in Black Books: “Enjoy. It’s dreadful, but it’s quite short.”

First of all, stupido Americani that we are, we arrived a half an hour before the time listed on the poster to have a gelato and take in that glorious Pitigliano sunset again. In so doing we witnessed the lead actor arrive, and one of the other, more punctual actors greet him at the door already in costume, said costume comprised of a lot of black gauze and satin. The doors didn’t open until the hour posted on the poster, and the show (if such a thing it may be called) didn’t begin until 10:00. Ah, we thought, let us remember this timing for when we plan a performance in Italy.

Imagine every parody, every farce, every pretentious off-off Broadway show, movie or skit you’ve seen, the subject of which is theatre or theatre life, roll them into one and make everyone speak Italian. You’ll approach what we witnessed. I have often thought it interesting, though etymologically difficult, how similar the words “tragedy” and “travesty” are. The idea has been made flesh. And black satin.

I’ve just conferred with my comrades, and there’s just no way to encapsulate all that was wrong with this show. Think of an aspect of theatre, and make it horribly, horribly wrong. David seemed to think that the director was someone who had seen a style of theatre in Rome or elsewhere Italian and decided that’s what he wanted to do, regardless of the show involved. I credit the director with less direction and more pretense and personal indulgence. Every character was dressed in black, gauze and satin, against a black backdrop. There was music during every interlude, of which there were dozens, and there was interpretive dance by non-dancers. Plus the acting was bad to the point of a approximating a slide show on what not to do on stage.

Redeeming qualities? Well, it was interesting to note—by way of this production and conversations with Andrea—that apparently not much Shakespeare is done in Italy. The language doesn’t translate well, and given the physical background of Italy’s theatre tradition, a language- or poetry-based theatre must seem fairly inaccessible to the general public. So what’s popular where Shakespeare is concerned (and he must be very concerned indeed), and was what we saw yester night, is to take the story and not the text itself. This is very interesting to me for two reasons. The first is that we would pretty much never think of doing this in the English-speaking countries unless the play was mere inspiration for an entirely different setting or conflict (West Side Story, for instance). The language is a major purpose of the plays for us, in other words. Secondly, transliterating Shakespeare strikes me as very similar—or perhaps a reverse-engineering—of what Shakespeare did to the commedia dell’arte plays he may have witnessed as a youth; plays such as may influenced A Comedy of Errors or All’s Well That Ends Well. Finally, for all the pretension of the director, the actors themselves were very earnest and modest in their efforts. This reminded us of Michael Green’s Coarse Acting plays, but it also reinforced for us that what we experienced was overall a positive experience, more full of good intention than an actual; disregard of or disrespect of us as an audience.

We drove home happily counting the Shakespearean clichés and regaling one another with our reinterpretations of favorite foibles. If the mark of a successful play is the continued effect it has on its audience, then this production of Othello was indeed successful.

Too successful, in its way.

That Is The Subject To Which I Am Referring!

It's a joke. It doesn't translate very well when typed. Friend Adam used to be quite fond of celebrating a victory--his or someone else's--by jumping up and shouting, "

That's

what I'm talking about!" (That's what he used to say. Now it's usually, "What!

What!

" As in, "What do you think of me now?") I got to sharing/mocking Adam's enthusiasm by chiming in with overly formal versions of this phrase, said with the same enthusiasm. Ergo: That is the subject to which I am referring! Other faves include:

• That is the topic of my conversation!

• That is what I am expositing upon!

• That is the approximate meaning of the words I am speaking!

Silliness, but it taps into a very personal aspect of my humor; specifically, the self-deprecating aspect of it. More specifically, mocking my formality, relative intellectualism and very sincere desire to join in the fun of rowdier, more relaxed personalities. It's interesting to me to think that, to some of my friends, I am that type. I do crazy things, like go to Italy and forego income for a month, or stilt walking, or standing on a platform in front of hundreds of people and crying. I have a job at a desk, and yet I insist on risking my health (usually sans health insurance) in order to elicit a few gasps or chuckles from people who probably haven't even paid for the privilege to see me do so. But most people I know, other performers, see me mostly as the conservative type.

This is on my mind today owing mostly to the apartment hunt. (ALL HAIL THE APARTMENT HUNT! ALL SERVE THE APARTMENT HUNT!) It's hard for me to phone strangers, to visit their apartments and stroll through neighborhoods that are A) unfamiliar, and B) usually not terribly similar to where I come from. I have lots of actors friends who

rule

at this sort of thing. Absolutely rule. They walk in a room smiling, shake your hand and make you feel like you're the one they've been looking for all day, yet not in a way that's overwhelming or artificial. Somehow they do it in a way that just makes you want more of their attention.

It seems like a natural extension of their craft. If you think about it, it means every part of their day is in some sense acted. We always talk about wanting to act more, we actors, and complain of not having enough opportunities. These may not be the exact circumstances we crave, these moments of conversational dexterity, but it incorporates a lot of the same skills, and it feeds so nicely into creating more opportunities for the real thing. Practice, praise, good vibes and more work, what's not to love about it?

This, however, is not me. I have my moments, true, when I captivate attention, but never in a sense that puts people at ease. Gets them excited or, at best, laughing suddenly, sure, but never relaxing or enticing them. In fact, my best bet for charming the socks off people is to trip when I come in the room and just keep up that clownish energy throughout. I used to perform in shows this way, always going, always with a forcefully klutzy energy. Hopefully I've learned enough to back off of that now and again on stage. In life, it has become balanced with a slightly more limited resource of energy and an almost complete intolerance for bullshit. Which is to say: I don't have time for this, people. Let's just say what we mean and mean what we say, and if you don't care, you don't care, and that's fine. I frequently don't care.

You've had a hard day, and want to share the details with me? Yeah, I don't care. I just want me coffee, thanks. You feel insulted to be the one who has to proctor the auditions when the show doesn't actually even need replacements right now, and want to at least feel like the actors coming in to audition find you attractive? Yeah, I don't care. I just want a job, or at least to feel like I'm fulfilling my obligation for useless auditions. You really, really enjoy walking around your apartment naked except for combat boots, and what's so wrong with that, and if that isn't cool with your roommate she should just get married already? Yeah, I DON'T CARE. I just want to find an apartment, get to the rehearsals for

As Far As We Know

already and get the hell off this subway car.

Sometimes it seems as though to be a high-functioning member of contemporary society is to be capable of dealing with a lot of bullshit. I am not functioning highly. I am done with this. But can I really be done with this? If it's going to make me unlikable and, worse, threaten my ability to get cast? I'm not talking about being a genuine person here. I want to be that regardless of my attitude toward bullshit. It's like the difference between having a great performance in which you didn't really feel in it, and the great performance in which you felt somehow like you were transcending all the pretense and sleight-of-hand to really embody the story. I want the latter. It's not enough to do good, but to do good right.

That

is the matter under discussion in my 'blog entry!