"I'm Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today..."

Everyone knows that one:

Clerks

. Why quote

Clerks

? Some of you may guess by the first sentence of the next paragraph.

Yesterday I took the New Jersey Transit to the end of the line (this particular line endeth at Long Branch) to participate in a reading of

Justin Warner

's play

American Whupass

at the

New Jersey Repertory Company

theatre. It's a play I've been involved in readings of for some time now, and I was lucky enough to fall in with Justin when he was just starting to do readings of it in his apartment. I say lucky because I really enjoy the script. It's not like

As Far As We Know

(formerly known as

The Torture Project

) or Zuppa del Giorno; there's no need for me to sell my first-born to make it happen. It's got its own momentum, and it's being spearheaded by Justin. I just show up and try to do the best job acting that I can.

The which is interesting work, because every time I read the script it's a little bit different, and adjustments are required. It's a comedy, with very broad (and occasionally coarse) humor, nevertheless Justin manages to make every character a believable person to one degree or another, mostly by way of giving them real objectives to fight for and real motivations for those objectives. It seems basic, but you might be surprised how many playwrights fail to do this. (Myself included.) The character I play, for example, is a new campaign manager on an incumbent senator's campaign. He initiates morally corrupt actions on the senator's behalf, but he does it and defends it with the utmost sincerity. He really believes it's for the best, whatever has to be done to get a good man in office.

That + professional wrestling jokes = Lot's o' fun per Jeffe.

So I take this seemingly endless (hour and a half) ride out to the theatre, and when I get off the train it is so non-urban I panic immediately. Will I understand the directions to the theatre? Will streets be numbered, or just named? Fortunately, 3rd Avenue is indeed 3rd Avenue (not even "Third," but "3rd") and I make good progress. As I walk, I reflect on my experiences of New Jersey, and begin to better understand it's reputation elsewhere for being a little, er, blah. The sections of town I'm coursing through are very reminiscent of those parts of Scranton that have yet to receive the benevolent wand of gentrificated (is so a word) commerce. Only with shorter buildings. It reminds me, at times, of the environment

Clerks

was filmed in. Which makes enough sense, seeing as how Kevin Smith and that whole crew hail from somewhere close by.

I finally get to the theatre--a modest enough building crammed full of performance space and show photographs--and am instantly reminded of several things I really should have thought of before making the trek. Specifically:

  • The Laramie Project had its New Jersey debut there.
  • Friend Briana worked there for an entire summer, thereby earning her Equity card.
  • The core of UnCommon Cause (the artist formerly known as Joint Stock Theatre Alliance) probably attended this theatre whilst growing up in the Garden State.

So I go into the building, and am very kindly pointed back to where the actors are convening in the main space. There are only a few there yet, and I greet the returning actors, and I deal once again with not one of them recognizing me from previous readings (a regular occurrence in any venue, I assure you). Then I greet a new guy, and he looks familiar, and I almost start the inane "You Look So Familiar To Me Have You Ever Done Shows In The Yucatan?" game. But I don't. Some brain cell in me still operates to save my foot from being consumed by my mouth, occasionally, and fortunately it kicked in just then.

Because this guy was this guy.

Yeah. Brian O'Halloran was in the reading. As well he should be, because he works with the theatre all the time, and Friend Briana actually did another reading which I believe he directed shortly after her stint at N.J. Rep. So I should have put it together faster. As it was, I spent a good deal of time stealing looks and trying not to look as though I were trying to decide if he was who he is. Friends will attest: I am terrible at recognizing celebrities off the screen. Just awful. So I doubt the heck from myself at all times on such matters. Eventually the work of rehearsal took my mind off it completely, and then we broke for a ten. I was starving, having only had a light breakfast, but there was only time to get something from the theatre's concession stand. It was day time on a Monday, so no one was working it, and I could not espy me a money box, or jar, or bear-trap (Oh, you want to be a capitalist, do you? No hand for you!). Just as I was contemplating leaving me booty atop the counter, in swept Mr. O'Halloran to save the day. He took my money and handed me my Milky Way and presumably put the money where it needed to be. I only know one further thing about the experience:

Dante Hicks sold me a candy bar.

Yes. I have been officially Clerked. It was good for me. I'd do it 36 more times, if I could. But seriously, folks, it was at that moment, that divine conjunction of circumstances, that I became certain of his identity. Here's the thing: That's how down-to-earth he was. There was, as far as I observed, no mention during the day of his cult status, and he did a bang-up job with his part. His role was to play a variety of callers-in to various radio shows, and he made them each different in funny and convincing ways. To sum up: Modest, funny, talented and generally nice (insofar as one can tell over eight hours) guy.

And I managed not to ask him which he liked better, Jedi or The Empire Strikes Back.

The reading went very well, I think. I did feel I had done a better job in rehearsal than in actual performance, but we got a lot of of positive feedback from what we were assured was a very critical group. The whole thing was done in conjunction between Justin, N.J. Rep and a company also from New Jersey called Luna Stage. Apparently there's some hope that the show will be produced by one or both some time approaching 2008 (the big election year). It's interesting to consider a possibility so far in advance. Of course, I'm certain I would have to audition for a full production, so one never knows. If it was meant to happen, it will.

"A word of advice, my friend. Sometimes you gotta let those hard-to-reach chips go."

Critical Mass

"I have of late, though wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. Foregone all custom of exercises, and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave, o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire . . . why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours!"

Any errors in quotation are my fault, done from memory.

I wonder what kind of reviews

Hamlet

got in the days of its first revival. "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark, and mostly it has to do with the direction by Forsythe B. Fmythe . . .."

A Lie of the Mind

closes this week, and we got several reviews, but none by major players as far as I know. In fact, we had two from theatre websites, and three from weblogs. None from printed publications, as far as I've heard. And, of course, countless reviews from friends and enemies alike. On the whole, very positive reviews. The best of us got some excellent praise, and most of the harsher critique came of Shepard's script or staging and budget issues difficult to change.

However. How. Ever. I have never counted myself amongst "the best of us" in this show, and in fact had some trepidation early on that I may have been the weakest link--goodbye! The entire group is among the most supportive I have ever had the pleasure of working with, so I got by with my uncertainty and frustrations. Then came my reviews. "...vibrant, but relatively unadventurous..." "difficult time tapping into the vulnerability" "overdone frustration" "seems as though this cast often does all it can to ignore these cues and idle until a scene change frees them from their stasis" And of course a good deal of my friends had nothing but good things to say, and I thank them profoundly. I should thank the ones who have had more critical things to say, too . . . and I do. But these critical reviews have culminated for me, and I am left with questions I need answers to. At first I simply hated myself, and it showed in my performances, I'm ashamed to admit. So questions are welcome, even if doubt inspires them more than curiosity.

If I had to sum up the critical response to my work in this show, I suppose it would have something to do with being too mannered (a common blight of practicing so much physical theatre) yet at once a bit mild, or incapable of accessing that spark of passion so essential to Shepard. To put it bluntly, unbelievable and dull.

Owitch.

Okay, so . . . I'm going to assume from the get-go that I'm not the world's worst actor. That's a good place to start, as it circumvents the otherwise requisite removal of my own eyes with this letter opener,

Oedipus-like

. So: not the worst. I mean, I've been at this for some time now. Someone would have told me . . . and even if they wouldn't, I know I've worked with worse than me. That having been established, I have to tackle some cause-and-effect. This is tricky territory, as it is essentially excuse hunting. I need to be sure to slay all that what might delude me, and capture that reason most true.

Maybe I just don't relate to the play/Shepard in any kind of helpful way.

Tempting, but no. That excuses having to work extra hard to do a good job, not doing an actual bad one.

Maybe I'm sabotaged by my physical theatre practice.

Less tempting; and maybe I'm just kidding myself here, but it seems to me they should feed one another nicely, and it's not like I'm never in naturalistic plays. In the past year I've done two contemporary plays, dramatic and comic.

Maybe getting older is draining some of my capacity for creativity.

Some people are going to be up in arms over this one, I know already. Nevertheless, I find validity in it. It goes at different rates for different people, but wonder is generally a more precious commodity in older ages, and it takes wonder to be creative. Then again, I invented a whole routine out of getting out the backseat of Heather's car last weekend, so perhaps not.

Maybe being an actor is not what I need right now.

Huh. Could be something to that. At the risk of sounding fairly self-defeating, perhaps the reason I lack luster is that my needs are not being altogether met. I don't mean that in a blame-shifting sort of way; rather, I mean to take responsibility for diagnosing and then fulfilling my own needs. It is not something for which I am historically famous, this actor-heal-thyself behavior. All the more reason to take the idea seriously.

Of course, there is also the possibility that my work in

A Lie of the Mind

has been very good indeed, and simply lacked good, expressed opinion. It's possible. It's probable that I should just work to please myself--not to the deficit of the audience, but to a high personal standard of constant improvement. I try to do this. It's hard to adhere to, particularly in such a spectator/commentator sport, and especially when you've seen so many examples of actors who seem so blissfully ignorant of just how terrible their work is. The temptation there is to believe your negative feedback to be absolute in its truth, to accept the verdict that you are one of the failed and undeserving. Yet I continue to try to do good work. Why? The show must go on.

Also: The readiness is all.

Holler if you Hear Me

I just want to give a shout-out to my peeps.

Actually, I hate

Peeps

(TM). They're just glorified puffed sugar, like diabetes-inducing rice cakes. But I know some people who love the Peeps(r), and I love the people who love the Peeps(patent pending) so, ergo, ipso facto, I love the Peeps(k) too, and must shout it out unto them. This entry, thus, is for ma'

Peeps

.

Some of y'all (most of my peeps hail from Virginia [though Northern {which was going to secede just like West, until they realized they had no natural resources}]) may have wondered where the Aviary went for the past three days. Some, in fact, may have panicked, and I offer my most profound apologies to just those panicky some. It's all right. It's okay. You can cry without shame, and I will hold you just as long as you need to be held. Maybe a little longer. Why not? No one's looking. And maybe, if that's too warm for you, you can just go ahead and take your shirt off. That's cool. We're just friends hugging here. And if that hug gets a little rubby, you know, if the, fingers get curious and the breathing gets throaty, hey--

Whoa. Where was I going with that? Oh right: Jail. For lewd 'blogostomy.

Where have I been? Well, I was ill. Again. Yeah. Thas' right. Because I rule so bad. There are aspects of my reputation as a performer that I quite enjoy, such as being unerringly punctual (unless I miss rehearsal altogether, eh,

TP

ers?) and always having some outlandishly overwrought physical choice to contribute. The one I'd just as soon not have continue, however, is my proclivity for infection during the course of a show. I was wicked good at that in college (starring in

The Three Musketeers

with a swollen throat and fever of 102) and thought I had whipped it (whipped it good) in the early years of my adulthood, but the past year+ now has brought the return of the leprous liturgist. This time it was a head cold that fell into my throat, which created the intriguing aspect of never knowing if my voice would go out in the middle of

A Lie of the Mind

last weekend.

Owing to how we've staged the show, with cross-fades in lieu of blackouts, after the act break I end up lying mostly motionless on my side on a box for about twenty minutes at the top of our Act II (Shepard's Act III) before being suddenly woken to proclaim a somewhat lengthy monologue. Well, last weekend it was always a crap-shoot whether or not I'd have any voice whatsoever after my little silent nap. The worst was Friday night. I sat up and started talking, and it was like trying to rattle a piece of papyrus, my larynx had gone so brittle. I made it, thankfully. In fact, I got some compliments on how effectively I played the character's fever. Which I took. What? That's valid.

The other thing is, I plowed through my congestion to take yet another trip out to the sticks. Or, as it is more commonly known to those what live there, Scranton, Pennsylvania--home to all things

Northeast-Theatre

-like. I was there to go on a sort of first date.

Zuppa del Giorno

is beginning to collaborate with a few community groups for our upcoming projects, among them

Marywood University

and the

Scranton State School for the Deaf

. We were to attend a rehearsal for the latter's production of

Grease

, and while there show them a little something of what we do, too.

Yes:

Grease

. Yes: School for the deaf. I recognize that this smacks of a really poor set-up for some even worse punchlines. Such is not my intention, however, as the high schoolers we met that day probably have gone right out and found every single website associated with us they could. Gang, if you're reading, I can only hope I half rocked your world like you rocked mine.

As it was going to be just

Heather Stuart

and I to perform our half of the bargain, we planned to do our clown piece, "

Death + a Maiden

," and had to allot time to refresh it before unveiling its silly splendor for what we imagined to be culturally jaded teenagers. We had the theatre to ourselves, and that is a fairly big space. Well, huge from a struggling New York actor standpoint. I was reminded, between gasping for air without the use of my nose and chugging Alka-Seltzer Cold concoctions, of the sacredness of space for a performer. As Heather and I struggled to feel our roles again, to polish our beats 'til they shined like the top of the Chrysler Building, I thought of how it would be yet four more months until Zuppa rode out

our new debut

, and wondered what work lay before us.

Heather, as I have mentioned previously, has moved out to Scranton, and before we took to the stage of the deaf I got my first look at her new place. It's really nice; idyllic, in a

Benny and Joon

kind of way. The entire time I was there, she and David Zarko cracked jokes about how long I was going to wait before caving and moving out there myself. It's hard to say if they had any idea how much I'd thought about it in recent months. Still, their jokes peppered my appetite for New York adventures in a very appetizing way. Just tonight I was out past my bedtime, catching a mixed bag of short plays. How I would miss that sort of thing.

Before we even met the students at the Scranton School I felt simultaneously like I was dreaming and like I had returned to Italy. Obviously, all the faculty there use sign language. Not so obvious is who amongst them can speak as well. As in Italy, I found myself having to remind myself to look to the person being translated, rather than the translator, and as in a dream I began to sense the sense of a language and culture I had virtually no exposure to prior to the moment. It was a matter of only seconds before my mind began making connections and understanding the tone of some of what was being "said," if none of the words or symbols used. That would have been fascinating enough, but we were there to the meet actors who were native to that country.

In a gymnasium with a stage built into one end we met about twenty young actors and technicians who couldn't hear a word we said. Our introductions and conversation all flowed through the hands and lips of a translator or, often, several, as others "mirrored" what was being said in order for everyone to get what was being said. There were still kids more interested in what they had to say at the moment than what the class was discussing (one I think I even caught making something of a dirty joke with his pals) but in this context such side conversations were easy to let be . . . one just kept his eyes on the ball. Like all first dates, it was awkward at first. It was funny, actually. No one was quite sure what he or she was doing there, or what the other wanted from them. Eventually we determined that the home team would show their stuff first, so they brought us chairs as we sat back to see a scene from

Grease

.

Five girls played the sleepover scene, and broke into gesticulated song with "Frankie my Darling." ("Frankie my Love"? I don't know. I don't know

Grease

. Or sign language, for that matter.) There was no music--they were still working on getting their speakers rigged to vibrate the stage so the actors could feel the beat--but somehow the actors kept in perfect sync with one another. As they signed, a translator spoke, always about a beat or two behind their delivery. By the end of the scene, we weren't laughing at the translated lines, but at the delivery, silent and as literally inexplicable as could be, simply because we understood the characters and their feelings based on the acting and, somehow, the tone of the signing. Actually, it was some of the most naturalistic acting I have seen from high schoolers, and I wonder how much of that has to do with their living first and foremost in a physical language.

When they finished the scene, we applauded. There was an awkward silence. I mean, even hands were silent. We didn't know what was to come next; but I asked a question. Did they begin with a table reading, as we usually do? From this the actress playing Sandy launched into an explanation about how English is a kind of second language to them, signing being the first, and that there's no direct translation between the two. After all, it isn't like sign language evolved from a romantic or Latin-based language. It is its own entity, and so any time a script is performed in it, the whole thing doesn't just have to be translated, but transliterated. The interpretation an actor must perform begins at the level of the very language they choose, and thus there's an added dimension of reaching agreement between everyone in their understanding of the script. We asked them if they ever improvised, and had to spend some time explaining the very concept to them, so Zuppa may end up really giving them something different.

Finally, we took the stage with our little clown piece, and I was nervous as can be. Would they get it? Would they be insulted by the noses, or the style? Would the piece hang together without their hearing the music, getting the auditory jokes? At first it was silent. My entrance as a red-nosed Death usually elicits a healthy chuckle, but not this time, and I suddenly wondered how laughter came out of people unaccustomed to using sounds to communicate. Would I recognize it?

I did. Shortly after my entrance, I took an illustrative swing with my plastic scythe and the handle bent, hinging the blade back on itself cartoonishly for an instant before straightening out again. The laughter was some of the sweetest I've ever heard. From there in we were all set. They laughed at our courtship--an interesting parallel, the first-date scenario realized within a first date--and oo-ed at the acrobalance. When we finished, they clapped and we took our bows. There was a very brief question-and-answer session, akin to those following matinée performances at the theatre, in which one gets the impression everyone there is much more interested in lunch than information. But then class was dismissed, and every student came forward to shake our hands. When they saw we were not in a rush to go, they flooded us (in a necessarily one-at-a-time fashion) with questions. One boy said he loved "this clown stuff" and wanted to know if we'd teach him. One wanted to know if we'd be back the next day. One wanted to know if my character knew his kiss would kill the girl before he did it.

I can't wait to work with these kids again. Zuppa's becoming a sort of incorporation of different communities, and it's an exciting prospect. We speak of commedia dell'arte being a living tradition in our shows and workshops, and now it seems we're paying the tradition back a little for all the life it's given us. So let this entry be a shout-out to all the people who've supported Zuppa del Giorno along the way. And to our new friends at the Scranton State School, I raise the roof. You guys can teach me a cooler gesture when we work together in the fall.