I Never Kid About My Work

Jeff Wills

is generally more friendly and easier to remember than

Jeffrey Wills

which reminds me of my mother and my day job, unlike

Jeffrey Allen Wills

which reminds me solely of my mother, at particular times of distress.

Jeffrey A. Wills

was what I used to designate my writing, until I realized it didn't really matter.

Allen

is what I went by for a whole year in elementary school, thinking

Jeffrey

, which means roughly "bringer of peace" (though it's descended from

God-a-Feared

Godfrey

and

Geoffrey

) and

Jeff

-- which presumably means the same, only less so -- were somehow childish.

Wills

is used by itself in sarcasm and in gym classes, which are not mutually exclusive concepts.

J. A. Wills

is what I use on my return-address labels, because it's distinguished and mysterious. I never use

J. Allen Wills

because that's just pretentious and wrong.

J. Wills

isn't so much, but I don't really use it anyway.

J.A.W.

, as was pointed out to me for the first time by a woman (Ms. Rice) who worked in my kindergarten, is an acronym that spells something, which is rad.

Jeffrey

also tends to imply a certain intimacy, and often gets used by folks trying to be more formal, or who like playing status games, or who don't actually know me. I've had many nicknames based on my given name:

Jeffy

Jeffy-Poo

Jeffe

("Hef-feh," or "chief")

J-

etc.

(dawg, bone, luv...); just as I've had quite a few with nothing at all to do with my actual name:

Sukeu

Bruce

Bats

Spoonman

Nuit

Nicknames are casually intimate things, at turns silly and profound, and I dig them. I was very nearly

Grant Allen Wills, Jr.

and think that might have been okay. I could be a Grant.

That's enough of that, I think. This whole thing is actually a bit of an experiment to see if/how it influences web searches for my name in the coming months. When I want to Google myself (not that I do that over-much, mind) I have to enter '"Jeff Wills'+actor" or some such, lest I get a stream of Willsians accomplished in other fields. If I've got this right, technically my name being all over one entry of the 'blog in different forms shouldn't do much, however the more people click on the link to here, the more prominent my standing. So it stands to reason that having an entry with different forms of "Jeff Wills" all over it should, ah, make the...thing...do that thing, where it...erm.... Yeah. I got nothing.

Names are cool.

I Could Be Way Off Here


Acting Strengths (in no particular order):

- Easily applicable look: average 20s-30s white male, strong features
- Nearly 20 years' acting experience, nearly a decade of professional experience
- Emotional sensitivity
- Active listener
- Intense work ethic
- Varied special skills: circus skills, dialect skills, physical theatre skills ("Girls only like guys with SKILLS!" Gosh!)
- Lack of pretension -- willingness to appear strange and/or goofy (see above)
- Good comic timing
- Extensive improvisation experience
- Extensive collaboration experience
- Easy-going in intercommunication
- Avid reader and writer
- Intelligent (Somewhat [Shu'up!])
- Non-confrontational in life. Which, you know, allows me to store it up for the stage/screen/private moments of personal abandon.


Acting Weaknesses (keepin' it real [WU-TANG!]):
- Occasional inclination toward "getting it right" rather than "getting it true"
- Want to earn special merit; don't want to have to actually receive it from people (What? True though.)
- Natural compulsion to be in control of self and moment
- Confused by abstracted dialogue (or, somewhat daft about modern stuff)
- Not comfortable singing on stage
- Can't stand dance choreography
- Opinionated when it comes to over-arching elements of story and style (director's domain)
- Utter inability to "fake sincerity"
- Don't enjoy mingling, hob-nobbing or otherwise making conversation
- Also not a big fan of talking about self
- Can't remember names. Seriously. CAN'T REMEMBER NAMES.


Acting Ambiguities (some go both ways):
- Analytical and logical
- Non-judgmental introvert
- Need for regular visual and aural stimulation
- Love making bold physical choices
- Hair actor; totally
- Clown


Just a little exercise in self-obsessed analysis here. Next week, watch for me typing out my name in a ker-gillion different ways!

Reading Loud and Clear

Hey! I've got work for you, Jeff!

Awesome! I love work! When are auditions?

You don't even have to audition!

I don't? That's unusual, but far be it from me to complain. I mean, I have been at this professionally for over a decade, and there's a few places for people to see my existing work. Plus, maybe a decade in New York solidifies your reputation with enough people who matter that you can be taken on recommendation. Sweet. What does it pay?

It doesn't pay.

Oh. Erm. It doesn't?

No. Are you so rude as to demand payment?

No! I mean: No. I'm not "so rude." It's a pretty reasonable question, I think, where my time is involved.

But it'll be fun.

I'm sure it will, yes. But, you see, I can have fun for myself. I don't need other's help for that, necessarily. And if I do, I have friends that fit the bill nicely and generally want to do -- if not exactly -- approximately the same things I want to do. So, you see, I'm doing okay on "fun."

Are you working on anything right now, acting-wise?

Well ... that's a complex question. I mean, I have auditions coming up. And I need to get my headshots to a new agency I'm freelancing with. And I've got a sort of film outline I'm in the process of writing for myself. And I help develop plays over at NYU, working with student playwrights and professional directors and actors. And I read plays. All the time. Plays, plays plays, nothin' but . . . okay. I have no show.

Well, we provide meals.

Oh! It's a film. Great; you should have said. I badly need reel material. That'll be worth it.

It's not a film.

Oh.

But there'll be very little time commitment.

Okay...

And it's local.

It's work here? In New York? Something people who make a difference to my future work could conceivably see?

Sure.

Well okay. That sounds ... doable.

Great. We'll see you at 7:00 on Tuesday.

Seven o'clock Tuesday? Don't I even read it first?

Read what?

The thing! The thing we're doing, whatever it is!

Oh. Well, you can, but there might not be much point.

Not much point? What is this?

I just mean it's subject to drastic change, the play.

The play I'd be working on might change drastically while I'm working on it?

Yes. Potentially overnight.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Non-paying local work I don't have to audition for, with a short rehearsal time, that's not a film, that's subject to change in its entirety the night before we perform, and you're offering me food as payment? This ... this is a staged reading, isn't it?

How did you know?

*&^$! (_*&

(%^$#

, ^%$#

*%^#

! A staged reading! Always with the staged readings! I swear to God, if I never stand behind another school-band music stand or sit on another backless stool again, it would be too soon! I love it! Do tell: Will it be just us, and the playwright, all at a table or in the basement or both, somewhere, poring over each line while the playwright moans at our delivery? Or will it be for a large audience of everyone else's peers, where I will be the only stranger, and all the bits everyone finds funny I have no idea about because I don't hang out at the same water cooler? Or, OR, will it be for a

Producer

, a backing audition, and, well,

I'm

not really right for the part, owing to some minor detail like being twice the age of the character, but just maybe the

Producer

will be

producing

some other project and see me and think, "Eureka!" Oo! Can I actually

hold

my script while I act, allowing me to

turn

toward the person I'm speaking and

move

my body as I like, or will that break "the style," so I should leave that script ON that music stand, not even daring to lift it when I turn pages? Tell me, do: Will I be supplying my own costume? Will I be paying for the privilege of traveling to the rehearsal(s) and "performance"? Should I get a haircut for this one night? Or is it taking place in the middle of the day, and I should get my fingers and toes shined, too?

So, you don't want to do it?

Of course I don't.

We're serving wine.

I'll see you Tuesday.

Inseparable

It has been my intention on this here 'blog to keep the details of my personal life out of it. I go back and forth on this policy, largely due to my feeling that my personal life unavoidably affects my artistic life. Should I be content to tell a partial story? Invariably, however, I return to my policy. Many people love 'blogs for the ultra-personal peek they afford into a given person's inner life. I've got nothing against that, in general. As an actor, however, I'm spending a lot of my time making very specific choices about what of me I'm showing. In my little world, there's something vaguely pornographic about indiscriminately baring everything about myself and my life for the world at large, not to mention recorded human history. Perhaps it's hypocritical of me. After all, actors who are really "in the moment" probably don't really have all that much conscious choice about what they're revealing of themselves. Nevertheless, I choose to make the distinction where I can.

This particular entry is a choice as well, and I choose it as an exception that proves the rule; hypocrisy be damned. In acting, we are taught to choose our moments as well as what we do with them. One tries to earn a dramatic pause through the pace and emotional incidents of moments leading up to it. One often tries to balance a bombastic or tyrannical character with the occasional moment of quiet expression, or vulnerability. I'm going to try to express something very personal, very significant to me, and just hope that a year's worth of holding to my own rule has earned me that luxury.

The only trouble is, someone beat me to the punch and expressed it, in my opinion,

much better than I ever could

.

When I first discovered Taoism, and was most ravenous for information about it, I was especially drawn to the concept of each person's life having a "way," a given direction one could sense. This resolved a lot of mixed feelings I had about concepts such as fate and destiny, which seemed too fixed and divinely bequeathed to me. Taoism seemed to be saying that yes, there was a path that was most right for one's life, but no omniscient force or forces were forcing the individual down that path. When you feel balanced, when less wasted force and effort is required, you are closer to your way. When it's otherwise, you're straying. Maybe you're careening into the jaws of misery or, more likely, you're doing a little exploring. (The Taoists are great about the value of mistakes and youthful error.) I step on and off my path for different periods of time, and I'll tell you this for nothing: It is a whole lot easier to feel when I've stepped back on to the path than when I've taken a step off of it.

Personally, I don't think one's way should ever serve as an excuse. ("I had to kill them hobos. It was part of my

Way

.") We just aren't aware enough of its nature moment-to-moment to load it with blame. Besides, how can we ever know whether we've left the path or been thrown off it, just to teach us a lesson? Just occasionally, however, I believe the path deserves some acclaim.

Last week I asked a woman I love if she'd let me spend the rest of my life with her, and she told me yes. (I have to take her at her word.) All the experiences leading up to my proposal, and the moment of proposing itself, showed me what all those infuriating married people meant when they would answer me, over and over again, "You just know." It's true, and there's not much else to say to describe it. I've had literally years of experience feeling, "Yes, now, this must be it. Right? Right?" That asking was always there, though, at the end. And now somehow, certainty -- of the for-better-or-worse variety -- lit on my heart and shot electrified emails to my body and mind. Surprisingly enough, that sense of certainty grew even stronger when I actually bent my knee(s).

What else can I say? I'm on my Way.