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Showing posts from April, 2017

Shakespeare's Army

In my younger days as a professional actor, I spent a lot of time carrying a spear (as the saying goes).  Not at first.  In High School and College, I played lead roles.  When I left college and entered the acting world, I was a kid with talent, but no real technique.  (This is not meant as a slight to the schools I went to as an undergrad. Technique is something you acquire by doing the work. The whole Malcolm Gladwell thing about 10,000 hours needed to master something thing). Fortunately, I love to work.  I love the process.  I really fucking love creating theatre.  So, when I moved from Las Cruces to Washington DC, and a couple of years later to Seattle, I took whatever I could.  The day I arrived in DC, I auditioned for a "Julius Caesar" with the Washington Shakespeare Company.  I got cast as the sort of right hand man to Caesar who became the right hand man to Antony (lots of little roles tied together).  I was a kid, but I was in the room with some really great actor

I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

Time is flying.  Time is fleeting.  Time is precious. Our second week of Macbeth Revisited has come and gone.  Doing a play two nights a week is the norm in LA theatre.  But that doesn't mean that it is easy.  We had such a great run up leading to opening weekend.  We have been rehearsing 5 nights a week for like a month and a half.  We were living in the world of the play nearly every day.  And then we open and...see you in a week.  It's jarring.  Especially in a piece like this where there are so many of us who have been breathing the same air, getting on one another's nerves, getting over it and coming together.--And then there was tech. Speaking of so many of us, I wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the other people in the play.  Don't get used to it...if they want to be talked about they can write their own blogs.  But I do love them all. David Purdham, who is an absolute treasure of a human being and genius actor (playing Duncan and the Porter) is

For 'tis my limited service.

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We opened the show!  It's been an amazing journey already and we still have a ways to go--a ways to grow.  (See what I did there?)  I'm really proud of this show, and so happy to be working with so many people who are near and dear to me. (Blogger note:  I started writing this on opening night, but got too tired.  I was going to write about many of the other actors in the show, but as I picked up the thread, other things came to me...about me--sorry friends).  Having an audience this weekend was so instructive and exciting.  And the show jumped to a whole new level. What sets theatre apart from other art forms is that it is a living breathing artistic endeavor and there is almost always growth during the run of a play. With Jack directing, there will never be a time to sit back and rest on our laurels.  And that's one of the things I admire most about him.  It's all journey, after all. And the journey for me has been a little bit crazy already.  When Jack calle