Movies today

I was sitting in the theatre awaiting the beginning of what would prove to be a terrible film and, after being comically entertained by hearing one of my best friend’s voice booming through the theater as backdrop to an advertisement for some cough syrup, I sat through the requisite dozen or so previews of films slated for a spring 2018 release. And I despaired. I came of age during a decade of marvelous film making but I realize how subjective that statement is. It was however demonstrably a time in which films were centered around the human condition. Some might disparagingly call them ‘kitchen sink dramas’. Stories of ordinary people and their struggles as opposed to tales of kings and queens. But that was then. Out of the dozen previews shown today only two could be credibly seen as centering on the human condition as it is. The rest were set in the world of fantasy. Stories that ran from futuristic fantasies to the supernatural to the virtual and on down to the comic book action hero. It left me breathless, and not because I found any of the hyper mega tales compelling but because I wondered why writers of today have abandoned the human being. My most generous guess is that adults don’t go to movies anymore and so the content has shifted toward that geared for the pubescent. The lesser guess on the generosity scale is that the generations now populating the writers guild can’t grapple with the everyday struggle of their own species but must look to the fantastical. Of course they would argue that the fantasy they weave is an allegory or a parable illuminating our shared condition to which I say nice try. They are contrived and tired devices practically empty of any real examination or content. Some people are still penning good movies, no doubt. But so few when yesterday there seemed to be many. I must be getting old.

Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

The lights faded to black and I left the stage, the piano still ringing from the last chords of “I Happen To Like New York.” I had done it. Three performances of my very first Cabaret at Don’t Tell Mama NYC.  Good night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

            People have asked me why? What made you decide to do it? At age 56, all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere?  I tell them I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I tell them I’ve always liked singing and I’ve taken lessons over the years, here and there, from various teachers. Most of my friends and acquaintances know me as an actor, so are not surprised I am up on a stage. But singing? Who knew? Others know me as an ex stage manager of opera who was occasionally discovered making dubious sounds of vocal exploration in hidden away practice rooms. A few know me as the guy who remodeled their kitchen. But no one had me pegged for a stand-alone crooner, except my biggest fan.

            My mother adored singing. Her father, whom she adored in equal measure, used to teach her tune after tune. Together he, in his solid baritone, and she, in her girlish soprano would traverse the great American songbook. He left her with an encyclopedic repertoire that she trotted out with the least provocation. Her voice was not terribly polished, she never had the time to pursue it, but her love of the material and the joy she derived from singing was unmatched. And she shared that with me from the minute I was born.

            The bond between my mother and I when I was very young was particularly strong. She was near to obsessive and would rarely let me out of her sight. This eased as my parents had more children and by the time there were five of us, I was just the first of her gaggle of darlings. It wasn’t until we were all in adulthood that we learned our mother had been forced to give up a child to adoption. A child she had conceived before she met our father. The circumstances of this unwanted pregnancy were never revealed to us but there was the suggestion of darkness about it, of betrayal, perhaps even of violence. So when I arrived, as her firstborn within her young marriage, I was scooped up, held, and seldom put down.

            Singing became our secret language. It filled the afternoons of a young stay-at-home mother and her chubby toddler. It was delight for us. It was exclusionary for the other presences in the house.

My father can’t sing or so the mythology goes. An absurdity since all but the most severely tone-deaf can. Yet my mother teased him regularly with this pseudo-fact. And for a young father, sharing his wife with a newly arrived intruder, albeit his son, being excluded from this sung language, this secret communication, and told he cannot participate, well how can one not build resentment? So a joyful act, lifting one’s voice in song became in our family, fraught with alliances. Over the years, quite unintentionally, my uninhibited sounds of full-throated singing were teased into submission. Sarcasm mixed with criticism tore at my confidence. My mother remained my unwavering champion yet damage had been done. Balthasar’s proclamation before singing in Much Ado About Nothing expressed my level of self-esteem.

Note this before my notes;

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.

           

As anyone who has been in therapy knows, change happens slowly. My career has been a careful crawl from the wings to center stage. My psychological development an equally lugubrious traverse from insecure to fairly certain I’m not a complete failure. This change, however slow, was bolstered always by the unwavering constant of my mother’s encouragement and support. It was for her as much as for myself that I wanted to push in those uncomfortable directions, taking on challenges that were scary and by surviving, grow.

            The times my mother was able to see me do something she could take a special pride in were times I cherish. They reverberate in me still. Walking backstage with her at the Chicago Lyric Opera House. Introducing her to Judd Hirsch and Cleavon Little while on a national tour of I’m Not Rappaport. Inviting her down to opening night of The Who’s Tommy at La Jolla Playhouse or to watch me perform Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew in Iowa City. Those moments gave her so much joy but they were wholly unnecessary, not at all conditional to secure her love. They were just damned fun.

            As I looked into our future and imagined more moments like those. More achievements to share, there was one I knew would carry a special weight. Yet the thought of standing alone and singing still shortened my breath. One day. I’ll take a few more lessons. Maybe do some musicals on the side, in small out of the way places to crack the ice. Too late. The ice melted. My mother died.

            In the latter days of her cancer we would skype to keep in touch when I couldn’t be with her. During one session my mother signed off with a strange farewell and began to cry. She had been remarkably free of self-pity or bouts of despair. But here she broke down using these words: “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” Jimmy Durante used to sign off his show in this way. It referred to his late wife who died suddenly of a heart ailment. It was clear that in that moment my mother was in touch with her mortality and with the fact we were losing each other. We had no more time.

            People ask why a cabaret? Why now? What I really should say is the truth. I did it for my mother. I sang to make her proud. I wish I had not waited. I wish she were alive to see it. In the opening night audience were one of her daughters and one of her granddaughters, among others, watching her eldest son sing. She would have been over the moon.

            I urge us all to imagine a way to make our mothers proud, now or in the future, but don’t wait too long. If your mother is no longer with you, then accomplish in her memory. Even if it makes you scared, do it. To make her smile is worth a million anythings. Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

Audio Clips from Cabaret at my website

Questions for Houston

While we mourn with the people of Texas during their ordeal and loss of property and life today, eventually many questions will have to be answered regarding the conservative view of life and how we square that with the future. Questions regarding Big Government, handouts, bootstraps and the like. Questions like compassion for others (Sandy victims come to mind) and what it means to be a real Christian if that’s your professed religion of choice. Questions of science and climate change. Questions of the sense of rebuilding in areas that will most certainly flood more and more often. Questions of who will pay for questionable rebuilding. Questions of building codes (think regulations) that allow sprawl with a lack of planning, sub-standard materials and practices and little preparedness for the new normal weather patterns. And questions of labor. Who will rebuild Texas? White people? No. Brown people. And you will be glad they are there until your house is cleaned up and put right. And then you will call for deportation. Questions of how conservatives conduct themselves, think about life and country and what is right and how to move forward in a world and climate that they deny.

Stop Talking Back

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A recent Facebook exchange got me to thinking. Since Facebook has trouble supporting thoughts more complicated than ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ I refrained from posting my half-cent.  But it was certainly a starting point for a worthwhile discussion.

It seems that a certain playwright has added a clause to his royalty contract that prohibits the practice of talkbacks following a performance. This was roundly poo-pooed by the commentators on the Facebook posting.

Now the playwright in question is David Mamet, which leaves me in a quandary. I dislike Mamet almost as much as I dislike talkbacks. To be fair I don’t know the man. I’ve met him only once a long time ago. I do like his early plays a great deal. But pretty much everything he’s written or said about acting, or the theater, I’ve found to be bunk. Recently, I hear he’s been teaching writing. Maybe he’ll be better at that.

So it’s difficult to side with the man. And although I do share his disdain for the talkback, I can’t rid his contractual stipulation from the usual helping of Mamet arrogance that accompanies anything he does or says. Did it really need to be commanded from on high? Thou shalt not talk back! Was it necessary he involve himself in what theaters around the country choose to do with (or to) their audiences? It’s another case of an artist trying to control his or her work beyond the simple doing of it. Reminiscent of Albee’s attempted control of casting or Di Modica’s demand that Charging Bull be removed in the face of the Fearless Girl because it’s changing the nature of the work.

But lets be clear. Talkbacks are stupid. I can’t remember when they began to proliferate but they seem to be everywhere. They also seem to have grown in tandem with the rise of the dramaturge. A talkback, for those unfamiliar with the practice, is a forum following directly after the conclusion of a performance whereby the audience is invited to stay in the theater and participate in an informal question and answer period, sometimes moderated, with some representation of the artists involved in the production. Typically the director, if present, plus several or all of the actors, perhaps the playwright and more often than not a dramaturge or literary manager type who either has worked on the production during rehearsal or somehow represents the theatre company. The purpose generally is to educate or to add to the experience of seeing a play or to engage interested audience members in discussion or to get a chance to ask questions of (usually) the director (what were you thinking!) or actors, (how do you remember all those lines).

If I were to guess at the main objection from Mamet I would think it similar to the main objection from most (certainly not all) actors. Namely, I have just spent my energy and skill creating for the last two hours a fiction and now, before it can even be half baked into the minds of the audience, you want me to go out in front of them, in my street clothes, with my own voice and opinions, and shatter that work? Shall I bring a hammer or a grinder? How many pieces would you like? Mamet’s objection might be similar. Leave the play alone. Let it work in the minds of those who just experienced it. At least for a night before you dismantle it or pollute it with your insightful (goes without saying) observations and critique.

The actual experience of the talkback is almost always fairly empty. People who like to hear themselves talk dominate, and everyone else waits out the event until they can get to the bar.  There are of course wonderful discussions to be had about a play or a particular production but they never seem to occur during a talkback.

A favorite forum of mine was a beginning-of-the-season event at a summer festival. Patrons were invited to the theater on a scheduled evening. Rehearsals were suspended so all the actors could attend as part of the audience. The directors of the productions were up onstage with some various other artistic personnel, the company dramaturge, and as special guest, a preeminent scholar from the nearby university. In a curated way the plays of the season, past productions and the plans for the upcoming productions were discussed. The insight of the scholar was a wonderful proving ground for the ideas of the various directors and actors involved and at a time where it could actually be useful. Audience members were often caught up in a lively discussion. It was intellectually stimulating while running very little chance of offending and it didn’t interfere with the experience of watching a production because it was not in close proximity to it. A good and workable model.

So I say, really Mamet? Really? As most of the Facebook posters did but soto voce I would tell him, I get it. And to the dramaturges and PHD’s of the theater world I say, I love you, I love you! But can we please keep some distance between the ‘work’ and a dissection of it. I liken it to seeing a movie with an old friend of mine who, the minute the lights come up tells me exactly what he thought of every moment in the film, thereby obliterating my experience before it even had time to gestate, or going to a museum and standing before a work trying to form my own opinions of it based on how it is affecting me only to be overwhelmed by the opinion of someone describing to their friend how the color in the upper right corner symbolizes the dawning of reason as depicted in an earlier work blah blah blah. I turn and walk away with nothing but that nasal voice in my ear and no sense of how I feel about the painting I was just trying to take in.

Leave it alone. Have your discussion at another time. I believe Mamet only requires that two hours go by between the end of a performance and the beginning of a talkback. That’s a small ask. Make it a day.

Sarah's great adventure

https://www.gofundme.com/ItaintBrainSurgery

Sourdough life

Sitting atop the kitchen windowsill at 116^th Place SE, overlooking the 405 freeway and Lake Washington beyond, long before the 405 ever had a traffic jam, was a container, a glass I think, or a big jar without a lid. A rubber band held a cellophane sheet on top of the jar and inside was what my mom called ‘starter’. I was fifteen or so and my mother had just begun her life as a working mom. Prior to this moment she was the traditional stay at home mom because someone has to take care of the five kids and there would have been dead bodies and prison time if my father were to try. So she did it, which was pretty typical for the time if you will recall. Tough financial times had come for my dad in the form of stretches of unemployment and a failed start-up. This was before anyone called them start-ups. They were just new businesses then. My mom, also typically, went to work to pick up the slack. Somewhere in the early stages of this transition she decided that sour dough bread should be grown on our windowsill. And so the glass jar and the creature that lived inside. It needed to be fed once or twice a week. A little flower and water thrown into the mold which would consume it voraciously. Then once in a while she would tear off a chunk of the growing spongy doughy mass and make bread with it, wonderful San Francisco style sourdough bread. This lasted maybe half a year or so. I never knew why she became interested in it or why she let it go. The mold, unfed, withered and died. But I always thought it was cool, this living icky thing that made such stuff of life, such bread. And I loved my mom for doing it.

Recently I am again treated to sourdough delights. Bread, muffins, pancakes.  I am much older than fifteen and my mother died last year. But about three months ago the love of my life brought home a little jar or a glass or some such container. Inside was a piece of starter that had been torn off another starter somewhere in New Jersey by a co-worker and given to her to raise as her very own. I don’t know why my darling became interested in this endeavor and I hope she doesn’t let it go, at least not for a while. I am no mystic, nor no believer in afterlives or spirits, ghosts or goblins. Still, I marvel at serendipity, wonder at recurring patterns, embrace the quantum mechanics of folded space-time, and with the same heart as loved my mother dearly, I love the woman now who bakes such golden brown goodness. And I eat the bread.

One of those Press Questionnaires

QUESTION FOR THE ACTORS:

1. When did you know you wanted to be an actor? 

I snuck up on acting indirectly and relatively late. I started out on the technical / management side of things. During undergrad school and for about a decade after I was a professional stage manager in theatre, opera and dance. My intention was to move into directing as many stage managers used to do. Unfortunately I was several decades out of step as the rise of MFA programs created another path for young, would-be directors. During those stage management years I was directing and producing and sometimes even acting in smaller venues on the side. What I discovered is that I did not feel able to communicate with actors about their process because I had never studied it. I wanted to be able to say to an actor during a rehearsal, “I see what you are going for, try this” and have confidence that it would be useful, helpful direction because I have experienced it myself. So I went to graduate school, not as a director but as an actor, and, well, sorta kinda fell in love with it.

2. Tell me about AN AMERICAN DRUM CIRCLE. How do you feel rehearsals are going? What do you love most about the play?

When I first read the play I thought that this part is not for me. Or more to the point, I am not right for the part. That’s often an indication that you should take a second look because maybe you’re a little bit scared of trying to fit into that guy. Once I began working on it I realized that I have very personal models for parts of Ron’s character and that’s probably what made me uncomfortable. The play engages us on the topic of faith, belief. If you’re going to talk about fundamental aspects of the human condition, you have my full attention.

3. What kind of writing inspires you?

I ran away from the ‘well made play’ and jumped into the downtown 1980’s avant guarde scene when I came to New York from Seattle. I re-embraced the classics and the 'cannon of respectability' as an actor because there are just so many damn good parts in there. I’m engaged by writing that is visceral no matter its genre. And language. Theater is language based, film is image based. Writing for the theater should continue to revel in what it does best, speak.

4. Who or what has been the biggest influence on your work as an actor thus far?

So many influences have contributed. Teachers, friends, mentors, idols. Picking one borders on arbitrary but here it goes. A friend introduced me to a teacher who taught an actor training method taught to him by it’s originator. I went to UCSD because of this teacher and was fortunate enough to travel to Japan with him and a small group to meet and study further with Tadashi Suzuki, the inventor of this training method. Anne Bogart and the SITI company here in New York use Suzuki’s physical work in their productions and it remains for me one of the touch stones of my approach to acting.

5. What else are you working on right now?

I’m remodeling two apartments. Yes, that's what I do for what us actors used to call bread-and-butter jobs. www.renaissancecontracting.net . I’m also writing a little to see if I can put my money where my mouth is when it comes to theater. And I’m looking for the next gig, like always.