Spoke with my Mom today.  We talked about everyday things.  Which might normally mean nothing in particular.  But every family has their stuff.  Their struggles.  Their small but poignant personal tragedies.  None of it matters in the grand scheme of things.  A speck in the vast cosmos of Creation.

She was in her thirties when she lost her oldest son.  He was 12, one month away from his 13th birthday.  It was July 4th when the “bomb in the brain” went off.  Something closely similar to an aneurysm.  A tangle of blood vessels waiting to burst.  He passed on four days later.

She, as well as her husband, was responsible to two other kids.  One 11, one 10.  No time to mourne excessively.  There was swimming practice to get to in the morning, softball and baseball practices to get to as well.  Camping trips and visits to the Jersey Shore.  Because normalcy had to be restored.  Bills had to be paid, challenges had to be met.  Life goes on, and the world doesn’t stop spinning.

So she gathered her deceased son’s belongings.  Memorabilia to be packed away.  His infant cup, his baptismal gown, his baseball uniform and glove, his baseball card collection.  On and on.  Amazing how much stuff we acquire over the course of even the shortest of lives.

It’s a confusing time.  Death.  All things are thrown into a different light.  But the world doesn’t stop spinning and life continues to move forward.  And in the rush of daily life things get less than the desired attention.  So some of her deceased son’s belongings got labeled as donation and were given to a local charity.  His infant cup and other personal effects.  Irreplaceable and momentary.  The little and only evidence that he was here.

So in a momentary lapse of attention, the precious items were gone.  And she was lost.  In grief.  An all too new grief.  Caused by her lack of attention.  Her brief moment of inattention.  She was inconsolable.  She was alone.  His death was not her fault, but her inattentiveness to his worldly possessions, his worldly reminders, was perhaps inexcusable.

Enter Mrs. Edgett.  She had suffered the loss of her own son, 8 years old, some time ago.  There was no one else that could understand.  Not even my mom’s own mother.  Who else could understand, who else could pass judgment, could excuse such inattentiveness, could recognize the new tragedy that had occurred.  (If you haven’t been through it, you haven’t been through it.  Yes, you can sympathize.  But, still, you haven’t been through it.  You just don’t know.)

A random, desperate phone call.  Mrs. Edgett wasted no time.  Unintelligible sobs told Mrs. Edgett that this was not a conversation that could take place over a wire.  She and my mother were not close friends.  They were members of a tragic sorority who understood an incommunicable experience.

So Mrs. Edgett hung up the phone.  Travelled immediately to my mother’s house.  Sat beside her.  And simply and gently stroked her back, stayed by her side, and let her know that she was not alone, that she was not to blame.

I only learned of this recently during a random phone call.  It’s amazing the stories we each have to tell.  More importantly, that we each have the opportunity to witness.  Once learned, to which we each have to testify.  To say, in the simplest of terms, that this did happen, that this did matter.  If not on a grand scale for all to view and validate, then on the precious personal level to receive, respect, and recall in a simple, small effort to affirm the heightened value of each human experience.

I am from New Jersey.  Born and raised.  Therefore the title to this particular Blahg, the reason for the deep-seated need to connect myself through any manner whatsoever to the greatest man to ever rise from the swamps of Jersey (all due respect to Frank Sinatra and Jack Nicholson and even Danny DeVito)….Anyway, I recently attended a day of general auditions.  I arrived early to get an audition slot closer to the sun’s rising than to its setting, I then sought out a private corner of the surrounding area to go over my audition piece.  Run the text over and over in my head if only to pass the time until my 10am less-than-two-minute performance.  Huddled, hidden in a remote corner of a building, I began to notice figures, shadows, flashes of movement against the horizon.  Something was moving out there in the distance.  Amidst the foliage.  Gesticulating figures expressing inaudible passion.  Then more could be seen displaying aggressive sound and fury.  Humming, warbling, swooning in sound.  Posing committedly for an absent audience.  (Like something out of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.)  Like a bunch of artistically driven zombies traipsing their way hopefully toward a single moment of recognition that might bring them back to life and make the hungry days before seem worthwhile…..It was a frightening sight.  A bunch of people who willingly seemed to have left their minds.  Walking about aimlessly yet with an enigmatic inner purpose.  I always feel oddly embarrassed the moments leading up to the audition.  The waiting truly is the hardest part.  Trying to act like it’s all good, and I’m not nervous when really I’m a hot mess inside.  Oh god.  The need, the desire, the want.  What a frickin’ wide open place to live.  To unabashedly have the proverbial hand out.

Find out!

I highly recommend the book The Art Spirit by Robert Henri compiled by Margery A. Ayerson.  It was recommended to me by my Mom!

True Story:

My Mom and I were talking on the phone.  She and my Dad were preparing to meet with a contractor due to property damages from Super Storm Sandy.  She mentioned the book.  Said it was a must for my wife Jessica and me.  Jessica and I were in my
mother-in-law’s home.  While speaking on the phone with my Mom, I turned around towards the bookshelf behind me.  There, on top shelf, the second from the top of a stack of eight books, lay The Art Spirit by Robert Henri.

Disclaimer:  My mother-in-law was a painter.  (She sadly passed away two weeks ago after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer.)  More accurately, she was an artist.
In so many ways.  Her house is a respite from the chaos of the world.  Her backyard a fortress of tranquility.  The artwork that adorns the walls of her house the soft strokes and gentle hues of water color.  So it really is no surprise perhaps that Pat would have the book my Mom suggested.

However, the book is years out of print.  If I am correct (and that’s a big IF), the last and first paperback printing was back in 1984.  According to mathematics, that’s 28 years ago.

Also, my Mom was a primary school teacher and not a specialist in the arts as my mother-in-law Pat was.  How my Mom all of a sudden suggested this uniquely inspiring book on painting (and all artistic endeavors) is beyond my imagination.

Except now I do now recall that recently my Mom took up the study of water color.  And, based upon samples of her work that she sent to Pat, she is quite good.  She
seems to have an intrinsic understanding and instinctive touch.

So now it seems that things have come full circle?  No, not really, just a curious coincidence.  My Mom takes up water color painting (which happens to be a specialty of my mother-in-law), reads the book The Art Spirit by Robert Henri (which happens to be on my mother-in-law’s bookshelf), she mentions it to me while in a phone discussion, I turn around during the same conversation and look directly at that very same title The
Art Spirit printed on the binding of the first book upon which I lay my eyes on the top shelf…. Oh yeah.  The book is out of print.

Private investigators and police detectives say there is no such thing as coincidence.  I don’t care what you believe.   You are entitled to your own opinion.  But your certainly should do yourself the favor of finding and reading a copy of The Art Spirit.

“Know what the old masters did.  Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful.  They made their language.  You make yours.  They can help you.  All the past can help you.”

Excerpt from The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

I came home.  I was tired, a little spent from the day.  Not from the day per se.  Just from the driving, the constant driving that is the definition of living in Southern California.  There’s no romance to it these days.  Drought.  Heat — excessive heat.  Okay, nothing like what’s going on in other parts of the country.  But this is So Cal.  We have no ability to roll with the changes.  We are trained to meet life with a Wal-Mart mentality — a comfortably climate-controlled environment and every item on its proper shelf.  (Except between midnight and 6am.  Have you ever been?  It’s a disaster.  What the hell was Sam thinking?!  I’ve spent the best years of my life on two days in particular at a Wal-Mart nearby between those specific hours.  Never again.)

Anyway, I got home.  My wife was in the kitchen.  The cats and the dog were there too.  Hugs and kisses all around.  And my wife just staring at me.  Not creepy or anything.  Just something that I would notice — because I live with her, I know her habits, her behaviors.  But I let it slide.  I was tired.  I was hot.  I was sweaty.  I was thoroughly unappealing.  But something was weird.  She just kept staring.  Waiting, it seemed.  For what?  I had no clue.  I had some groceries, some cat litter, some other various sundries to deposit in their proper places.  So I did what needed to be done or attempted to do so when it caught my eye.  There on the counter.  I had been in the house for more than 10 minutes and had been standing right next to it.  The Gift!

A brand new coffee maker.  (I am am, I eagerly confess, a caffeine enthusiast.)  A kind of fancy one by our standards.  It was a brilliant crimson red!  (Our previous one, which had broken down two days before, was a standard innocuous white.)  But this new one was whatever the opposite of innocuous is..  It was the color of a femme fatale’s finger nails.

But still it took me 10 minutes to notice.

So often I am seemingly hyper-aware.  I know everything that is going on, know where everything is, what’s out of place, what’s new or strange, etc.  But that’s crap.  I always forget that we rarely notice right away what is new and different.  Because we are consumed with some other very important activity at the time that we enter a room.  We have our own ambition, our own goal, our own mission.  We come into the room to get something done and often to the exclusion of anything new that might be noticed.  That new thing has to strike us, has to arrest our attention.  The surprise.  All too often I know exactly where I am going on stage rather than knowing where I wish to go and dealing with the new circumstance that is the surprise.

I think that one of the hardest things to do is to speak your mind.  Which is kind of ironic — seemingly false but true — when you live in the United States of America.  After all, one of the founding principles is freedom of speech.  But to speak one’s mind is dangerous.  In addition to the fact that you might upset or offend or be viewed as odd or stupid, you also immediately become vulnerable.  Because you have dared to reveal yourself.  To reveal something that you believe.  Some secret desire or hope that you you held dear for quite some time that may now be judged, criticized, ridiculed….FYI, I tend to view things from a glass half empty kind of way.

This kind of daring is the quality that makes a performance dangerous, scary, thrilling, and watchable.  Because something is immediately at risk.  Something personal is at stake.  If it isn’t personal, it isn’t worth it.  It isn’t fun to perform.  It isn’t fun to watch.

It’s important undoubtedly to determine what your character is going for, trying for, attempting to do in each scene.  The all-essential objective.  The mission.  The want the need that thing I must have cannot leave the room without and am fighting for.

But it’s just as useful and necessary and important to consider the doubts and uncertainties that plague a character and persist throughout the story.  Doubts provide the possibility for failure in a scene, provide obstacles throughout the action of the play, and make the character’s journey much more interesting, much more inspiring.

Everyone suffers at some time from the point of view, “Who am I to get what I desire?”  We question that we deserve to succeed, that we have the ability — the skill and talent.  If we consider that doubt is a big part of a character’s journey, it can excite our imaginations and our personal responses to the circumstances of the story and propel us into action.  It can provide the actor with his or her own idiosyncratic hook into the story.

Actors can become obsessed with the desire to appear “natural” or “real”.  They can become enveloped in this quest.  Trapped.  Things they do, responses they have are all determined by what someone else – the audience – will believe.  Or, even worse, what the audience will accept.

“Natural” or “real” (although quite different terms artistically) have, for the most part, come to describe behavior that looks like something that might be witnessed in the real world.  At the coffee shop.  In a bar.  In the park.  At the beach.  In any standard, normal everyday environment. 

But plays don’t take place in any standard, normal every day environment.  Plays take place in the world of the play.  Sounds like double-speak.  Or just plain BS.  But a play is a heightened event.  Most stories are.  Whether on the stage, on the screen, or on the page.  We read, listen to, and watch stories because something out of the ordinary, non-standard, and abnormal is very likely to take place.  It could be as magical as falling down a rabbit hole.  Or it could be as sublime as falling in love.  It is the atypical event that hooks us:  the listener, the reader, the spectator.

And it is usually the atypical responses of the actor that intrigue and hook us as well.  These responses, based upon the world of the play, can free the actor from the obsession to appear natural or real.  The better question or concern for the actor is, given the world of the play, Do I Believe What I Am Doing?  If the actor believes, the audience will believe as well. 

I find myself going through a script and writing that oh-so-mundane phrase as I read each and every line of text:  WTF?  or OMG!

I am not proud of this fact.  Rather embarrassed as a matter of fact.  I feel as if I am trying desperately to fit into a world in which I don’t belong.  I am nowhere near the age of a teenager, nor have I recently moved beyond that demographic.  But I incessantly borrow the text message phrasing of the younger generation whenever I try to analyze a script.

Most actors make the mistake of reading a script solely for facts.  Rarely do they consider the more important consideration:  What is your Strong Point of View? 

BIG MISTAKE.  (Please do yourself the favor of reading the work of Sandford Meisner, Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, Uta Hagen, Robert Lewis, and a whole of host of excellent theatre artists.)

The character believes many things fervently.  But the character knows NOTHING.  The character is operating on a strong sense of faith in what cannot be proved.

A script is a continual exchange of points of view.  Yes, there are facts, there are undeniable circumstances; but facts are boring, and circumstances are influences which force or propel characters to behave in ways in which they might never have imagined themeselves capable.  The character of any play is always behaving with incomplete information.  This is what makes the character’s decisions so exciting, so riveting.

There is nothing more boring than the actor solely revealing the facts of the case.

A script is an argument, a debate, something unsettled and yet to be determined.  Some kind of fate or outcome always hangs in the balance — what is at stake?  [By the way, I hate that phrase, What is at stake (steak)?  It always causes me to imagine a large pile of sirloin, one finely cut piece of animal flesh piled on top of the other, eventually rotting in the sun, altogether unappealing.  I prefer the question:  What are you willing to do to get what you want?  And, conversely, what are you NOT willing to do to get what you want?  (Please read Uta Hagen's A Challenge for the Actor.)]

Point of view has to do with opinion.  People without opinions, STRONG opinions, are inherently boring in performance.  If it doesn’t matter to you, why should it matter to the audience?

Every line is a surprise.  At the very least, a potential surprise.  A shift in the action.  A deviation from what is expected.  Each line is a chance for the unexpected.

There is nothing casual, nothing commonplace, nothing normal on stage or in performance that is spoken or enacted.  Stories are chronicles of the unexpected, of events FUBAR, of the ever present SNAFU, a continual series of inescapable moments leading to the question:  WHAT THE F#$%?! 

It’s been sometime since I’ve taken a moment to sit down at the keyboard to type out my all-too-random and self-indulgent musings.  My computer told me that I haven’t updated or even visited the site since February 23rd.  Almost two and a half months.  Thanks to anyone who might read this for your patience as well as your time.

During the past several months, I have been in three productions and am directing another.  As much as I believe in the necessity of learning in a classroom, there is truly nothing as comparable as learning live on stage in front of an audience.  Learning by mistake.  Screwing up in public — a paying public.  Confronting the terrifying and unpredictable moment when large chunks of text completely vacate your mind.  Having no clue as to how to move beyond this blank moment — other than to stare dumbly, pleadingly, yet intensely into your scene partner’s eyes while he or she stares dumbly back as if to say, “Sorry, you’re on your own.”  That is, of course, assuming you do have a scene partner and aren’t performing a one-man or one-woman show.  Then it’s just a matter of shifting the dumb, pleading, intense stare out toward the audience.  (I’ve found that if you hold that dumb, pleading, intense stare long enough the audience will begin to believe that they are somehow at fault!)

There are many reasons for “going up” on lines, or, as in my case, huge passages of text.  There are some very legitimate reasons.  For instance, the woman in the back who randomly stood up toward the end of Act 1 and started waving her arms.  Perhaps it was an effort to determine where the air-conditioning vent was, or maybe she was just being friendly.  I’m not sure.  Or the individuals, and they are always, always in attendance, who decide or forget to turn off the ringers on their cellphones.  Nothing like the theme to American Beauty or Led Zeplin’s Kashmir occurring during the second act of a period play.

More often than not, however, it is my own fault.  I forget the text because I have failed to determine its value.  What it means to me and what it means to my scene my partner and the other characters in the play.  I like to remind myself — have to remind myself – constantly that there are no facts in a play.  There are only opinions.  Strong opinions.  Opinions so strong that they influence with an almost dictatorial precision my behavior on stage.  I think it was Elia Kazan who reportedly said something like plays and films are just like life with all the boring parts cut out.  I need to constantly remember that about the text the playwright provides my character.  There is no small talk.  Everything has purpose and is precise.

For each line that is spoken to me on stage, I have to determine two things:  What I Think about it and What I do Do about it.  I have a Reaction to it, and then I have a Response to it.  Sanford Meisner referred to this Reaction-Response as a Strong Point of View.  Sometimes my response mirrors my reaction; other times it does not.  Sometimes my response is opposite my reaction.  As actors, we fall into the trap of providing ourselves weak points of view to no points of view at all.  Weak Reactions followed by Weak Responses.  When we do this, everything becomes casual, unimportant, insignificant, and purposeless.  Casual, unimportant, insignificant, and purposeless things are easily forgotten.  (No wonder I am forced all too frequently to employ an intense and pleading blank stare!)

Feelings.  Actors are continually oppressed by the notion that they need to feel something.  But most actors already feel something all the time every day of the week.  24/7.  It’s never a matter of feeling.  It’s a matter of doing.  What is the character in any scene trying to do to the other character or for himself or herself?  We may wish to feel a certain thing in life and on stage, but this feeling, this emotional response, is triggered by what we are trying to do and the outcome of our actions.  Feelings are a reaction.  To the circumstances that surround us.  The people, the environment influences.  Feelings are a response.  They are not stimulae.  We see something.  We feel something.  Seeing is an action.  We hear something.  We feel something.  Hearing is an action.  We touch something.  We feel something.  Feeling is an action.  And so on and so forth.

It’s quite annoying to watch an actor conjure an emotional response on stage.  It’s distracting.  The audience is taken out of the story, and the collective attention is directed toward the skillful trick of the actor.  And it does impress many.  But it doesn’t tell the story.  It shows off the actors ability to move himself or herself.

To borrow a statement from a much smarter artist than I could ever hope to be:  The play’s the thing.  The story is what’s important.  What’s the story?  When the actor understands the story and his or her role in that story, they cannot help but be moved.  Moved in the service of the story.  Not moved in an attempt to get the audience on his or her side.  Not moved in attempt to get the sympathy of the viewing crowd.  Not moved in an attempt to edify his or her faith in some depth of sensitivity.

Leave yourself alone.  Start from who you are.  Start from where you are.  Tell the story.  And you just might move mountains.