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The Courage to Collaborate
Not too long ago (though and hey: where the heck did March go already?) I was writing about my disillusionment with the collaborative work I had been doing of late (see
). Now I am suffused anew with the natural light of a hard-won, worthwhile collaborative experience. Am I fooling myself? Does this gratitude spring more from my frustration over the lately lack of long-term work in my life, or is it genuine and in response to reclaiming the better bits of collaboration?
I was gone last week. Did you miss me? (<--rhetorical) I was in Pennsylvania once again, working. Whilst there I taught various workshops, thanks in large part to the efforts of Friend Heather, and worked with
and
in initial efforts and training for a new original show. Well, somewhat original, at any rate. You may notice a new link to the left under the "Hugin" heading.
So last June the gang (gang this time: David Zarko, Heather Stuart, Todd d'Amour and yours truly) was sitting around the breakfast table in Italy, pondering a perfect project for collaboration with Italian artists as we sipped our espresso, munched our Nutella(R) plastered bread and peered out at the castle on the opposite peak. Thus encumbered by effort, we managed to mention
R&J
, and it tickled our fancy. (Fancy tickling being perfectly legal---nay, encouraged--in Europe.)
Romeo & Juliet
had, in a way, haunted us from our first trip to Italy, when we visited
by night and discovered that all those seemingly over-wrought
R&
J set designs, full of giant boulders and myriad irregular balconies, were in fact quite accurate. David said to me, "You're into Shakespeare, right?" I thought,
I am? Oh yeah! I am!
It had been so long for me, I had literally forgotten how much I loved studying and acting in Shakespeare's plays.
I can't recall who first suggested it be a clown show. (See
, paragraph 2.)
Cut to last week, and six Zuppianni,
Conor McGuigan, Italian actor
, and clown director
, playing at different times in the conveniently inactive space on Spruce Street. It was amazing. Sure, there were times when we couldn't communicate well, both due to linguistic differences and differences of vocabulary within the same language. There were many moments of being on stage and thinking/praying, "Dear God...send me an idea, please." There were even mornings when we arrived at the theatre and the consensus was that it was the last place we wanted to be. But every time we played, if we played long enough, we made beautiful discoveries. Commedia lazzi hundreds of years old surprised us with laughter. Clowns telling us a story we knew by heart, even while inserting punchlines, made us cry. And through all of it was a sense that we were somehow being reunited, even with those people with whom we had never played before.
I have often said that the beginning of a collaboration is my favorite part, the part when all the possibility seems most present. It's when the show still has the luxury of existing in your mind just as you want it to be, before any compromises, before anyone really knows anything, before argument, ego and expectation pressurize the palate. In the past year I've been forced--forced, because it's quite against my will--to accept the possibility that any collaboration may end in tears or, worse, sighs of resignation. But hope springs eternal, I suppose. Especially when one is so surrounded by brilliant friends.
Learing Glances
I was walking down the street the other day, on my way to il dayjobo, when I noticed a woman wearing boots with the kind of impossibly narrow and tall heel I see in anime, and believe to be a physical impossibility. She was having no trouble with them, and I considered asking her if she'd stilt with me some time, but then I noticed that the boots were black leather and patterned somewhere between a musketeer's and some kind of glam paratrooper. Aggressive boots. Which got me thinking.
Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of concept-heavy theatre. There's a great temptation to do it with Shakespeare, and many arguments for and against such approaches. I like my concepts light, and with little-to-no discernible influence on the dramatic action of the play, especially when it comes to The Bard. After all, the play's the thing. Don't change the ending of
Hamlet
. Face my wrath. That having been said, and in honor of beginning work on a clown version of the
Romeo & Juliet
story, I decided to share what this woman's boots got me thinking on.
A lot's been done with
King Lear
. I was in a Suzuki-styled production set in a sanitarium (molto originale), there was a recent movie called
A Thousand Acres
that set the story in rural America of the 90s, and of course there's
Ran
, Akiro Kurosawa's feudal-Japan take on the thing. It's been done to death. Still, these things get done to death because they resonate. It's a play about the anguish of youthful ambition and oncoming mortality, and that don't ever go away for we humans. So it may be done to death, and my ideas may fall far short of being original, but a strong idea benefits from expression.
I wonder how the play would change if it were the love of sons rather than daughters that incited the action?
Lear
has so many family relationships through it that in many ways it's all about family, so I got to wondering about that. Suppose Cordelia, Regan and Goneril were -- I don't know -- Corey, Ronald and Gary. They act completely the same, but have wives (or an imagined future bride, in Corey's case) they involve, and their possession of the inheritance is more assured. Not sure if Lear should be a father or mother in this case, and not sure if that altogether matters.
Once I'm imagining the story this way, I immediately want to set it in an urban, contemporary environment. Perhaps amongst some entitled New York family. There is a film version of
Hamlet
that does this (with Ethan Hawke) and, in my opinion, fails spectacularly to play past the adaptation, but I feel the idea can be done well. In this environment, the sons can be fairly underspoken, manipulative and cruel and it seems quite normal to us; masterminds of business, or media. Their wives take more direct action, but this is fitting in a contemporary environment as well. I can also see Lear (be he or she) as descended to a homeless state very clearly in this setting, and wonder how all the nature imagery might translate to an urban environment.
From here I wonder what else I can alter without getting in the way of the story. Suppose Corey is gay, and that contributes to his estrangement from Lear. It would have to be done without issue; the idea would be to avoid making a statement not found in the original story, to just have it proceed as you expect, but this son is gay. Suppose, too, that Edgar and Edmund are the same person.
WHAT?! I know. I start to doubt myself here, too, but I want to play it out; to play
with
it. So deal.
Without having read the text in years, I wonder if it could be played in such a way that the E.s are one guy with a personality disorder. I imagine him vaguely as a guy taking prescription medication, young and volatile, freshly returned from treatment. Gloucester, his father, is thereby a bit more justified in his ineffectiveness. He's been through a lot with this kid, who has his good days and his bad, and Gloucester finds him, on his bad days, to be a different sort of bastard. Gloucester also must humor E. in his dual personas, in the hopes of bringing him through to sanity, but everyone around him doesn't know how to respond to this, because it isn't clear how much is his humoring and how much he's come to believe his son is divided in two.
If you're still with me now: Let's go produce, because you are a rare creature.
Gloucester, of course, has his eyes dashed out for him by Cornwall, Regan's husband. Or Caroline, Ronald's wife, in this case. It was the glimpse of those boots that got me thinking about it all. In the production I participated in, I played Cornwall, and we stamped out Gloucester's eyes with my heel. Those boots would make that choice far more ... shall we say, effective. The rest of the ideas rolled out from there.
Violence. Such a potent aphrodisiac for romancing the id.
By this point, of course, I have to imagine the show out of the context of the language. You can subvert some lines here and there to justify cross-casting genders, but combining two characters into one? Introducing contemporary psychological understanding to Mr. Bill Shake-Off-Subtext? No, no. I imagine it now as a contemporary retelling, rest assured. Still and all, William had some unshakable lines. There's no escaping, in the end:
"Howl howl howl howl howl! Oh, you are men of stones! Had I your tongues and eyes I should use them so the heaven's vaults should crack! She is gone, forever..."
Balancing Act{ing}
Rewind to 2001, before the towers fell; months before, in the spring. Shortly after my one-year anniversary of having moved to New York, I got two jobs that have fundamentally affected every bit of acting work I've had in the seven years since. The first was that I actually found enough bravery (or naivety) to attend an open call for a touring company that required singing. The result was a production of
Der Talisman --
a flippin' MUSICAL, of all things -- which happened to be directed by some dude named David Zarko. This dude wasn't even at my audition or callback. He was a freelance hire. David, of course, went on to become the producing artistic director of
, where I have gone on to do the lion's share of my professional theatre work to date.
The other formative gig was a show I've mentioned here before,
Significant Circus
, directed by
. In the years since, Kate and I have shared other collaborative efforts and developed a pretty rad friendship to boot. Amidst all this work and play, it can be easy to lose track of who did and said what and when, and how we got to where we find ourselves at any given moment. (That's how it is when you are involved in a true collaboration to create a play, too. Someone will ask you, "Whose idea was it, the dancing donkey in Act Four?" and you'll reply, with great conviction, "I have absolutely no idea.") What amazes me, when I stop for a moment to consider it, is this one thing Kate contributed to my life. I can point to it, which is part of what makes it so remarkable. Look! Right there, it is!
In a word: acrobalance.
(In a compound word, I suppose I should say.)
Yeah. That stuff that has gotten me work, and that all the actors I've worked with in the past five years know me for? Kate's fault. All about Kate. Didn't know a thing about its existence prior to knowing Kate. Furthermore, because I learned it from Kate, I have loved it more than I otherwise would have, and it has had more influence over the rest of my life than it likely would had I learned it from someone else. Some of the most amazing things I've done on stage, some of the best, most interesting ideas I've come up with, never ever would have had a chance of existing in real life without Mz. Magram. It baffles me a little. She has changed me as an actor and person. Let me explain.
I have never been an athlete. In fact, and spent a good portion of my earlier years as a portly chap. When I was around 16, grandpa's genes kicked in with a vengeance and I lost 40 pounds in a few months. Suddenly I could move easier, and looked more the part for more central roles in plays. In college, I realized I did truly dig incorporating my whole body into parts as much as possible (and, still occasionally, more than is necessarily called for). I also realized that I didn't have any particular technique(s) for doing so. In college, and after graduation, I tried different things, and they were all good -- stage combat, Suzuki, Viewpoints -- but none of them thrilled me. I wanted something I didn't know. Ever feel that way?
I was lucky enough to find it. As I recall, part of what won me the part in
Significant Circus
was that I did a diving forward roll on a concrete floor in my audition. (A similar move cemented my audition for d'Artagnon in college; apparently a willingness to risk debilitating injury is like catnip to directors.) Then I got to my first rehearsal, and Kate asked me to balance myself against the feet of a beautiful woman while we lowered me down to kiss said beautiful woman.
"What?"
Acro-balance, partner balancing, however you want to term it, has some basics. These are what Kate taught me, and what I teach all over the place now as part of workshops for
Zuppa del Giorno,
and to sort of pay forward all the free training she gave me.
- Shared responsibility. The name "partner balance" is in a way more apt, because the essence of all the postures and moves is to distribute weight between two or more people in a way that looks impressive and/or beautiful, and uses one another's weight and effort in tandem. It requires a great deal of communication between partners, verbal and physical, which can be tricky to learn. In fact, there's no way to take responsibility entirely on one's self for any aspect of it. More significantly, there's no occasion in which you can blame the other for anything. There is always something more you can be doing to help your partner(s). This is shared responsibility.
- Half the ability lies in trust. Never mind all those trust games you played in high school, or at the team-building workshop you were subjected to on some three-day "weekend." In acrobalance, generally speaking, the base needs to be responsible for making the pose balanced, and the flier needs to be responsible for maintaining a strong shape (and both are responsible for communicating [see above]). Control freaks beware: Nothing wrecks a balance faster than a flier trying to change the balance, except maybe a base who refuses to adjust. And you'll be doing it again and again with this person, which as we know is long-term trust which, as we know, is as challenging as it is rewarding.
- Drawing straight lines into the ground. There's no defying gravity. Maybe you can make it look like there is, but there ain't. There are moves that require enormous strength and control, but the most important basic skill one can learn is to create a benevolent relationship to gravity. Get that down, and any move is open to you with a little effort. So straight lines. Straight limbs can hold weight by grounding it into the ... uh ... ground, and angles that direct weight toward the ground are more stable and architecturally sound.
- Always be spotting. We get tired, and we are used to having to fight for our own time to relax, so it's not surprising that people tend to let down their guard when they're not in the spotlight. Acrobalance, though, is high stakes. You're working as a group to achieve something, and trust is a twenty-four-hour necessity. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, be ready to catch someone else when they fall. Not if; when.
- Down. Things go wrong. People are fallible. Physics is complex. When something is flirting with F.U.B.A.R. -- and more so when you're intentionally, repeatedly approaching that something -- you need to have an agreed-upon vocabulary. When the fit hits the shan, we say "Down!", and that's what we do. Safely. Together.
Pretty simple stuff, but as with any simple, broadly applicable ideas, they make for a good regular practice. I have been practicing these with some regularity for years now, and teaching them to others. These "others" probably promptly go out and try the same moves whilst blithely forgetting these five concepts behind them, but, I don't know; I've found that the harder I work on moves, the more I need to remember these guide points. I need reminding of them, but I'll never forget them, because Kate taught them to me so well. Especially the first one.
I think it's pretty obvious how these concepts apply to life in general, and acting in particular (keep them in mind; explore the possibilities; from Kate to me to you, gratis [you're welcome]) so I won't spin on much longer here. This is just to say thanks to Kate (and to her friend, Leah) for reminding me once again of important keys to finding balance.
Pleasure Reading
Despite my recent ire vented vis-a-vis the "staged reading" (see
) I have had a lot of good opportunities and experiences with staged readings lately. (It's just that man can not live by bread alone, you understand.) NYU's "First Look" acting company has been keeping me busy with involvement in their Steinberg Lab, and tomorrow I perform the second and final reading of
Riding a Rocket Ship Into the Sun
, by
(sorry Alex--couldn't find a better link) of their graduate play writing group. Last week I did a reading completely separate of NYU, too, for a person I regard as a promising playwright,
. Readings are interesting practice. They have a strange combination of elements from things like straight playing, improvisation, public speaking and occasionally musical chairs. They are short-lived, and the attention is invariably more on the text than on the acting. Which, in a way, makes them a kind of odd perversion of conventional theatre. Conventional theatre, in this context, defined as theatre that says, "Hey everybody; this is really happening and you want to feel it happening as much as possible so we'll all happen to pretend it's really happening okay? okay."
But anyway. All the irksome details aside (bound to a chair or stool, ultra-brief rehearsal time, no money in it), it's the gray areas of a staged reading that can make it really fun for an actor. For example, you don't get terribly specific notes from your director (if, indeed, there is a director; last Thursday's had none) which means one's compulsion toward perfectionism (see
) doesn't get tweaked too badly. A staged reading, assuming it adheres to certain standards, can be a wonderfully relaxing experience for an actor. It is what it is, as a former boss of mine is fond of saying. Also, a staged reading has the benefit of being very direct in its relationship to its audience. This is hard to describe; it's as though because no one's expecting to entirely believe in the verity of moments on stage, the actors have more permission to listen to the audience's responses and adjust accordingly. Within reason, of course.
The script I've been reading most in the Steinberg Lab is one in which I play a would-be private detective from upstate. It's great for exercising my deadpan and drawing in little nods to types like Bogart's Spade, and other fast-talking PIs. The writer (who shall remain nameless until she decides to present the work for public consumption) has a good sense of comedy that she's still learning about, which is pretty fascinating to explore in conjunction with her development of this play. The only downside of the whole thing is that -- cripes and jimminy -- it can be
freaking tough
to spit-fire dialogue one's reading for the first time. The class has suffered through more than a few incidents of stumbled pronunciation or cracked character on my part, which kills me, given the specificity of the style.
Riding a Rocket Ship into the Sun
has actually been surprisingly beneficial for me. It reunited me with the director I worked with on my very first project at First Look, Kathryn Long, and who frankly spoiled me for many of my experiences following that. It's also a piece in which I play a "heavy," which I haven't done for years and find challenging. It's generally not what people see when they look at me, so I'm not overly upset by the rarity of that type of role. I do enjoy playing those characters, however I often find it difficult to fill out such roles without a lot of posturing and BS.
RRSS
has let me explore ways of just
being
in that capacity and, it appears, with some success. The responses to my reading have been wonderfully positive. I would guess that this ability came about simply from age and experience, save that I felt the discovery in rehearsal. If I hadn't worked on this script, it might have been years before I had another opportunity to figure out how to convincingly play a bad dude.
Working with Josh was the definition of brief. I got an email two Tuesdays back, rehearsed at his apartment Sunday night and performed Thursday. It was part of a play-writing group of which he is a member, so the event was informal and full of comrades. There was no director, and Josh's notes were naturally playwright-erly in nature, so "informal" really sums it up pretty neatly. I participated in two out of three pieces. In one,
Errand
, I played a jilted husband confronted with his best friend/business partner's return (his BF being the one what run oft wid his wife). In the other, entitled
Dry Run
(see Josh's link--Josh: this play from a short story of yours?), I played an interesting younger character in an interesting relationship, dealing with his significant other, who was rather freshly returned from a mental hospital. Both pieces took fairly standard scenarios and did some interesting things with them.
Errand
left room between the lines to show the confusion of a character who was used to forcing his life around, and discovering finally that it doesn't ultimately work. But it was
Dry Run
that was really interesting to me, and a real challenge. In it, I found a real parallel to follow between a typical male/female conflict of philosophies, and a struggle with mental illness. It was, in other words, not wholly alien to me. Plus there was a great, strong inner conflict for my character. That invariably sparks my enthusiasm as an actor. Not a lot's changed for me in that regard since my college days.
So staged readings: Not all bad. Don't let my cynicism fool you. It's just frustration over not having a show-show at present. Actually, I have another staged reading potentially coming up, this one for the Steinberg play mentioned above. It should lend itself well to the medium.
I only hope they give us chairs with backs for this one.