Wendy Wasserstein Dies at 55; Her Plays Spoke to a Generation - New York Times

RIP.  She will be sorely missed.

Association for Psychological Science: ‘To be or, or … um … line!’

This is a fantastic article on the process of memorizing for the actor. Apparently, this couple has been doing research for a long time about this and have come up with the same principles that I discovered for myself in just 3 years of grad school! Anyway, for any actor, this article is a must.

This link was provided to me from Widgett over at Needcoffee, who discovered it over at Boing Boing. Enjoy.

I had my first commercial audition since being “back in the saddle again” on Thursday afternoon last week. It was with Kim Petrasky which was nice. I hadn’t seen her in a number of years. She actually cast me as an extra in my first ever on-camera job a million years ago. We had a little moment of reminiscence and then got on with the audition. After nearly two years of being out of the loop, it felt great to be back in front of a camera again…even if it was only for an audition. I was afraid that I might have been a little rusty and, I must admit, there was a little bit of anxiety going in, but those are the breaks.

The lesson there is that acting is like working out. If you don’t use your acting “muscles” at every opportunity you can, those muscles will atrophy. I’m just glad I didn’t wait any longer to really get going again. If you got into (or are thinking about getting into) this business, you’d better make damn sure you love it, because it’s a hard one. But, then again, nothing worth doing in life is ever easy is it? It’s just not for most people.

Tom Stoppard had it right. Actors are truly the opposite of people.

In other news, I’m on campus today doing the interview portion of the auditions for the Tennessee Governor’s School of the Arts. Since I’m not from Tennessee originally, I never got a chance to take part in it, but I do know that it’s a good thing. It’s a statewide summer fine arts (theatre, music, visual arts, etc.) camp for high school students and the quality of the work (at least so far) seems very encouraging. It’s something you don’t ever hear too much about, but I’m glad that Tennessee has not given in and cancelled this very worthwhile project in the light of their recent budget problems. The Governor’s School remains strong. It’s a good feeling.

Okay.  I have a little confession to make.  I have been taking most of the last two years off from my professional acting career.  After my son was born, my wife and I were going through some tough times and it just made sense to put everything else on hold.  Get ourselves re-set to take on life and now things are finally starting to happen in that direction again.

So, I can finally say that I’m getting “back in the saddle”!  I have an interview with a union signatory agent in Nashville on Monday morning, so I’m hoping that will get my face back in front of the camera again!  I’m even starting my workout program back up to shed this “baby weight” that I’ve put on since the birth of my son (I didn’t actually give birth to him, my wife did…).

Not only that, but I’ve decided to audition for the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Scottish Play.  That happens later in the Spring, but be on the lookout for information about that right here.

In the meantime, the auditions for Waiting for Lefty happen in less than a week and I’m excited to get back in front of a cast to produce a show, too.  We have some good kids here and I’m excited to be part of it!

More news later!

Thought I’d talk for a little bit about my newest foray into the acting world, that of teacher. I’m teaching an acting class at a local college. Not only that, I’m directing their semester musical. I’m only a week into it, and I’ve discovered already that the two jobs are damn near the same thing. There’s a huge amount of preparation beforehand, and, much like being a parent, you are expected to know everything. So by preparing for this class, I’m discovering just how much I don’t know about what I do.

I remember at one point during my college years realizing how little I felt like I was learning, and I don’t know if, as a result, I shut down and stopped learning, or if it just didn’t make sense to me then. I knew there was at least one professor whom I felt I knew more than, whether it was true or not. I remember being extremely disillusioned with Stanislavski, feeling like it served no real purpose. After all, the audience was never going to read my character analysis, so why bother doing it?

I’ve only had experience with a couple of “methods”, and neither of them appealed to me much just because they seemed to bog things down in rehearsal. I simply got more out of being onstage and doing it, and here I agree with David Mamet - the best actor training is to get on the stage and do it. Let the audience tell you what you’re doing wrong. Since acting is largely intuitive, and you have to learn how to “feel” what the audience is responding to, getting in front of them and showing them what you’ve got is the best way I’ve come across yet to teach you how to do it. This was the best part of my college experience; since there was no graduate acting program, everything was done by the undergrads. We got all the time onstage we could get cast for. This is a problem I see with the way that many programs are structured. You need the experience to learn, and how do you get the experience? It’s like trying to get your union card, when you have to get a union job to join, but you can’t get the job unless you’re union. Curiouser and curiouser.
There are pitfalls, of course, to the onstage training idea. If you’ve got a funny, expressive face, you may learn how to mug and that’s all. Or you may become a genius at slapstick. Or crying on cue. Whatever. All valuable skills to have, so in many ways the tims isn’t wasted. Real world experience has also made me lean more toward the attitude that it’s mostly intuition and bravery. When you’ve got two weeks of rehearsal time, including tech, to mount a show, you don’t waste a lot of time asking the director what your motivation is. You get up there and find it.

But it was my first show at the Children’s Theatre that taught me the value of training. I was playing Long John Silver in TREASURE ISLAND (helluva debut, eh? I loved that show and I would do it again in a heartbeat.), and Scot Copeland (Producing Director) would give us little motivations and ideas to get us to do what he wanted onstage. One day at the end of rehearsal he said,”All of this character stuff we do, it’s just for us. It’s fun for us, and it gets our imaginations working and gets us where we need to be. The audience will never see it. It’s not important that the audience knows what you’re thinking, it’s only important that they know that you ARE thinking, that SOMETHING is going on in your head up there. Let them see that in your face and your body, and they’ll fill in the rest.”

That’s when it all made sense. I still don’t do in-depth character analyses where I create a character in my head who looks different from me, who is taller or has different hair - all of that is pretty much useless to me, because no matter what, I’m gonna be six feet tall and I’m still gonna have black hair and brown eyes. But it’s knowing the WHY of what I do while I’m onstage that makes it fun for me and interesting for the audience. So I do analyze my scenes now and make sure that I know what’s going on. I do the actor homework, finding my beats and my actions. I know what my objectives are, and that makes it all easier. I’ve become a much better actor for it.

And now I’m supposed to pass that along to a new generation of actors, which is exciting and daunting at the same time. So I’m relearning everything myself to make sure that I know what I’m doing and what I’m saying. The last thing I want to do is turn these guys off by leaving something unexplained. So I find myself rewording what I want to say constantly and trying to find the right way to say what I mean. I have to know WHY. In the end, I’m going to become a better actor as well. Which is also exciting.

I also have to recommend A Practical Handbook For The Actor. I find it to be a very simple, effective approach to the craft of acting. It removes the bullshit and gets to the action. Acting is DOING, not being. This is my textbook for my acting class. What’s extremely beautiful about it is that it doesn’t belittle or negate any other acting training you may have. Instead, it simplifies it and relates it back to the whole. It gets to the heart of what every acting “method” is really about: knowing why you’re there, what you want, and how you’re going to get it. And above all, it advocates LISTENING to the other people onstage. Beautiful.

Acting is a full-body workout. It’s an intellectual/physical/emotional workout. If you’re doing it right. It makes every part of you strong and fit. Plus, chicks dig it. Or so I’m told. So what I’m getting at is this: training and education never hurts, it can only help. You shouldn’t accept anyone’s word at face value, especially when it comes to what you want to do for a living, but a little common sense and intelligence will help you extrapolate from those lessons, and in the end you’ll teach yourself loads about your craft. learn your tools and how to use them. They can only help you. The bag of tricks will run dry someday, and if you haven’t learned how to listen and how to learn, you’re gonna be out of work. Take what you can from training courses and use it ONLY IF IT HELPS YOU. If it gets in your way, leave it. But like a good tool, keep it stored away somewhere just in case you ever need it.

Somebody quoted a saying to me once: “Leap, and the net will appear.” Think
it’s an old Buddhist maxim, but I could be wrong. In any case, I figured I’d
get the ball rolling on my contribution to this site and get myself familiar
with the readers. So anyway, I’m Ross Brooks, and I’m stoked to be writing
for Tee’s blog. Tee and I have known each other for years-schoolchums, as it
were, and it’s good to be working with him again.

So, you’ve got my bio, which tells you the basics, but I suppose I could
elaborate more on who I am and what I’m about. I’m a Nashville native, born
and raised in Music City. I’ve lived on both coasts long enough to know that
neither one was for me, so I decided to move back to Nashville after grad
school and a stint in LA, and I’ve been happier and working much more
steadily ever since. All in all, Nashville has got a wonderfully vibrant,
albeit small, theatre scene, with only a few Equity houses. The recession
and subsequent cuts in arts funding have taken their toll on budgets round
here, but this is the town of the little theatre company that could, lemme
tell ya. A quick rundown of (and free publicity for) the major companies in
Nashville:

Nashville Children’s Theatre - the country’s oldest children’s theatre,
started by the Junior League of Nashville in the 30s, and recently rated by
Time Magazine as one of the top 5 children’s theatres in the country. Scot
Copeland, the Producing Director, is internationally recognized as one of
the driving forces in TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences, to use the correct
nomenclature), and he’s a brilliantly gifted director as well as being a
talented playwright and performer. Plus, he’s one hell of a guy, and a good
friend and mentor to me. Hands down, this is the best theatre you’re going
to see in Nashville, no matter how old your driver’s license says you are.
The shows are top notch from every angle. While NCT has no true resident
company, it has a stable of regular actors which it considers its “company”,
and I’m proud to say I’ve been a member for a few years now. It’s a
wonderful place to work - you’re there with family.

Tennessee Repertory Theatre - The largest regional theatre in Tennessee, the
Rep has been going strong for a good twenty or so years now, and altho it
has had its ups and downs, it still produces good work. The Rep changed
hands a couple of years ago and is now run by the team of David Alford and
Rene Copeland, founders of the smaller local company Mockingbird Theatre,
which closed its doors earlier this year at the behest of Alford. The
mission of Mockingbird pretty much moved over to the Rep with David and
Rene, so the quality of the work is high and consistent.

Nashville Shakespeare Festival - Damn near every major city has one of
these, and it’s a good thing, too. NSF has been around for nearly twenty
years, and it has been producing free Shakespeare in the Park every summer
for about ten of those now. Helmed by Denice Hicks, NSF works to keep the
Bard’s words alive.

People’s Branch Theatre - started in 2000 by local actor Brian Niece, PBT
publicizes itself as Nashville’s leading experimental theatre, producing
original works as well as imaginative takes on classics and literary
adaptations. PBT also changed hands roughly three years ago, and is now run
by Matt Chiorini, who has revitalized what was a struggling SPT company.

That’s really it for the professional companies in town. There are a number
of semipro and amatuer companies around that put out good work, the flagship
of these being Actor’s Bridge Ensemble, a semipro company founded and led by
Bill Feehely, a New Jersey transplant. They’ve been around for about ten
years now, give or take, and they do consistently high-quality,
groundbreaking work. They ain’t afraid to take a chance or two.

In 2003, Nashville became a Equity Liaison city, meaning that there are at
least one hundred active members of AEA living and working here. While all
of the major companies in town are committed to using local talent as
opposed to bringing in actors from NY-LA-Chicago, the Children’s Theatre is
the only full Equity company in town. By this I mean that, regardless of
whether you are a member of the union or not, you get the same contract
offered to you and the same pay. NCT also pays money into the Equity Pension
and Health Fund for you regardless of whether or not you are a member. Since
Tennessee is a Right-To-Work state, labor laws prohibit closed shops, so
theatres are free to hire both Equity and non-Equity actors. However, any
theatre with an Equity contract must hire a certain number of union members
per show. The rest of the companies are either on SPT (Small Professional
Theatre) or LOA (Letter Of Agreement) contracts with Equity, allowing them
to offer different contracts to non-Equity talent. This means they don’t pay
into the Health and Pension Fund, and if you aren’t union, you aren’t
eligible for any benefits from them.

The state of the Union is a huge concern in the professional world right
now. Contract negotiations and strikes have been well-publicized lately, and
the acting community is finding itself with a rough road ahead. In
Nashville, this problem is especially relevant. Due to the large pool of
talent and the small number of contracts available, it is becoming harder
and harder for even the best actors in town to get enough work weeks to get
a year’s worth of insurance. If you arent’ familiar with how this system
works, here’s a quick rundown: In order to qualify for health insurance thru
Equity, an actor must work twenty weeks in a year. This is not necessarily a
calendar year - it really depends on when you joined. The union does a
lookback every six months and tabulates the number of weeks you are recorded
to have worked, and after twelve months, they tell you whether or not you
qualify for a year’s worth of health insurance. Once you’ve got that first
year, you still have to get twenty weeks in the next year to keep it going
with no lapses. When I joined in 2002, things were in such good shape in the
economy that you only had to work twelve weeks to get a year’s worth, but
soon after I joined the number went up, thanks to spiraling health care
costs and the unprecedented depletion of the Equity fund. Good or bad,
Equity quickly raised the number back to twenty weeks, where it had been
about seven or eight years before, and now it’s harder than ever to get your
insurance. I’m one of the lucky few who has managed to keep myself insured
consecutively ever since i joined, but the next year looks to be tough for
me, too. Some of it is luck of the draw - you don’t always get cast like you
think you will, and some of it is just lack of work. In any case,
Equity-wise, Nashville is in a precarious place at the moment, and the local
acting community is rallying itself together to try and make some changes.
One of the great things about Nashville for actors is that it’s a very
friendly town. It’s big enough that it has plenty to do, and the art scene
is strong, if small. It’s a great place to raise a family, so if you’re an
actor who wants to have kids someday, this ain’t a bad place to be. However,
there are plenty of challenges to face that could make things less
hospitable round here for theatre, so we’ve got plenty of work to do to keep
ourselves working. But I have to tell you, I love my hometown, and I think
it has the potential to be a major theatrical center. The talent is here,
and so is the money to fund it, we just have to find new ways to draw the
audience.

Whew. I hadn’t intended to ramble quite so much, but I got on a roll. I
think I said more about Nashville than about myself, but that’s okay. This
is my first foray into the blogging world, so give me a little leeway. In
the coming days and months I hope I manage to impart some interesting
information and provoke some exchange of ideas. I’m facing some new
challenges in my career at the moment - i’m moving into teaching, which is
kind of new territory for me. I’m teaching an acting class at a local
community college as well as directing a show there, so I’ll most likely be
sharing my thoughts and experiences with that as time goes by. Plus, i’m
trying to keep my writing career going strong as well, so anytime I have
something I need to rant about, this is probably where you’ll find it. But
my fingers are getting sore, so I’m gonna stop now.

Ross

I’ve got a couple of announcements today. First off, I’m happy to announce that we will have Ross Brooks joining our ranks as a contributor to the site. He’s a professional actor, director, and playwright and works primarily in the Nashville area. He’s had plays produced with Nashville Children’s Theatre. Be on the lookout for his headshot to be added to the site soon.

In other news, I’m going to be co-directing a production of Clifford Odetts’ Waiting for Lefty for MTSU’s Studio Theatre. It’s being produced as this semester’s Freshperson’s Showcase which is a production or collection of scenes directed by faculty that focuses on providing new students (whether first year students or incoming transfer students) an opportunity to perform other than the Mainstage productions. Be on the lookout for my journal about my experiences directing this show!
More news as it happens.

The New York Times has a great article on the state of acting today. I would suggest that, if you are an actor or are considering pursuing acting as a career, it’s a bad idea to stop reading this article before you are finished; you’ll just get depressed. The article is an honest look at the life of the “non-celebrity” actor.

Stage Acting: It’s Nice Work if You Can Afford It. - New York Times

A Practical Handbook for the Actor

by: Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previto, and Scott Zigler, with an introduction by David Mamet

Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, New York, � 1986

My thoughts: Own it. Don’t wait. Go now.

We all know that not everyone believes in or adheres to the same approach to acting technique. Most of us realize that there is some kind of process to develop a character for performance however, not many of us agree on what that process is exactly. That’s because each of us is a completely different human being (gasp!) and has our own needs and methods of working. Failure to truly grasp this concept has been the problem with so many books on acting in the past. Everyone was trying to write a book that would explain what it is that an actor does and how great performances are derived.

No such book exists. Not even this one.

The writers of this book don’t try to make the claim that this is the only book you’ll ever need to learn the craft and the art of acting. However, they do provide a simple, concise look at a technique that has been developed and has worked for many people all over the world with some success.

The entire book weighs in at less than 100 pages (only slightly more than most play scripts) and can honestly boast that it has dug it’s way past all the years of crap and stigma that Acting has had heaped on it and gotten to its core. The techniques listed here are derived from the Stanislavki’s method, but his method has been modified, added to, and subtracted from in order to update it for a more modern (and, I might add, American) audience. To be quite honest, whether you are a newcomer to the world of theatre with stars in your eyes, but not much experience, or you are a hardened veteran of the stage, this book is worth keeping on your shelf and returning to time and again.

The book is broken up into two major sections: The Technique and Pitfalls (Working in the Real World).

The first section is not filled with exercises that are impossible to figure out (much less learn anything from) in book form. It simply goes through a technique of analyzing a script and preparing a performance. The writers’ major philosophy is that acting is doing; you can’t just be something. After they establish this, they simply and elegantly lay out a method for which you can decide what it is you want to do on stage. However, it doesn’t stop there.

After you have figured out what to do, the writers tell you to get the hell out of the way. You should always be ready to improvise within your given circumstances in the moment. They provide examples of this, but unless you are familiar with the plays they use as examples, you will feel a bit lost. As always, being as well-read in the world of theatrical literature is a must for any actor.

The second section deals (in very simple terms) with working and using these techniques in the real world. It is titled “Pitfalls” for a reason. It is very honest with its readers about the fact that this technique is great in the studio where you’ve got the freedom to fail and learn from those failures, but is more difficult to put into practice in the real world because of time contraints, budgets, overbearing (and often impatient) directors, and, of course, the egos of actors (yours and others’). When you are in rehearsal for a professional production, it is expected that you come to each rehearsal prepared; having done your homework. The technique outlined in the first section, they say, is your homework! You are expected to do your homework outside of rehearsal and bring that homework into rehearsal ready to put it to the test.

The other great thing about this book is that they place emphasis on the fact that simply reading this book and writing down some analysis on paper will not make you a great actor. You must get this stuff up on its feet and put it in…say it with me…action! They stress that the best way to do this is to continually seek out acting classes; merely reading about acting can not and will not make a novice a better actor or an experienced actor any better.

If you don’t already own a copy of this book, go ahead and pick it up from amazon! It’s a quick, easy read and it really quite insipiring.

I’m pleased to announce our first guest contributor to the site! Jeffrey Nauman will be posting on the site from time to time. Check out his bio!