I love the Theatre. It's my church. It's my joy. I have been performing in plays and musicals for over half of my life, and I would be lost without it. Now more than ever, people are cutting back on everything that is too expensive or unimportant to their lives.
As an actor, heck as a person, I don't know of anything that is more important than the arts.
Art reflects history. It shows humanity at its worst but also its best.
Every day some artistic program is getting cut from a school or a great show goes unseen. Maybe a talented singer isn't able to audition for American Idol.
There are a ton of people who live in the South Bay Area of California, who go unseen or unheard. There are many production companies that are just bursting with talent, but people don't see the shows.
I will do my best to bring you interviews with local artists of every kind, send out the call for local companies looking to cast people in productions, and much more.
Stay tuned because this is only the beginning.
If you are really lucky, you get the chance to be in productions where you wish it wouldn’t end. At least once. I have been crazy for Crazy For You.
The reasons can be for anything; you love the role that you are playing, the show is going to Broadway, or like my case, the cast works so incredibly well together. We have celebrated birthdays for multiple people every single week of performances. We have laughed, been silly, stressed out, and danced ourselves sticky sweaty these last 10 weeks of rehearsals and performances.
It isn’t every show that I truly look forward to seeing every person every day. I feel a wee bit sad that I won’t get to see them as much. Even though I have left the theatre at the end of the night sometimes with the need to soak in an ice bath or a tub of icy hot and bruised up, I have had a truly wonderful time working alongside such an outstanding group of people from every aspect of this production.
Every drop of sweat, every achy muscle, and every bit of glue has been well spent. I think this little gem sparkles just right. But just for two more performances. Friday and Saturday…
It seems to me that in this modern day and time people don’t believe in love at first sight like we did when I was young.
As a young man, I lived a bit of a naive life in New York. I thought all I had to do was to just get to the right person and all the doors to the backstage of theatres would magically slam open for me. Mother always disliked the idea. She said repeatedly that “there is no way of making a living doing such useless things.” Nevertheless, I tried numerous times to catch the attention of Bela Zangler thinking that he was the key.
In a way, he was.
After the sixth audition that ended in an unbearably embarrassing fashion, (not that the others ended that much better) I knew that I probably would never get another shot. At least for a few years. My only shot was to see if my friends could smooth things over with Mr. Zangler. They were dancers in his show and he liked them well enough. Time was the big factor. Well, time and a few other people.
The problem was that both Irene, who was just a girlfriend who invited herself to be something more, and Mother, wanted me to follow in Father’s footsteps and be a “money man.” You see, what they didn’t know is that Father despised that life. Aside from the company parties and gentlemen clubs, there was no true passion in his life outside his marriage. He told me once that it was something he would always regret. He only committed to his job because of the power and life that came with it. Of course, Mother became accustomed to that life so when he passed she fought to keep his position on the board. But the difference was she enjoyed the challenge this brought her. This was her passion. Tangible, visually apparent and quantifiable results are what drove her. I don’t know if she understands the feeling of letting go of the pent up energy and emotion with a simple tap step or pirouette. The feeling of lightness that takes over the body and refuses to let gravity hold it down. Come to think of it, I don’t think I had ever seen her and Father dancing. Or just being silly.
When Mother sent me to Dead Rock, Nevada, I honestly just thought that it would be nice to get away from that voice of authority and that voice of control that was running my life in the city. I felt smothered and trapped. But out in the big openness of Nevada, I found a quiet that I couldn’t find anywhere.
Then I heard her.
Her voice sounded just like the openness and the fire that was causing that town to be so blazing hot. But that was nothing.
I picked myself up to look at that passionate voice and saw the little spit fire that I would chase until I caught. She was aglow with life. True life! Someone that had felt what hard work was but still looked effortlessly beautiful. Someone who earned all that she had and understood the value of what she earned. There was no pretense. She was exactly who I saw standing in front of me.
I think I would die.
I am not one for real world violence.
I don’t understand the need to hurt people. Doesn’t matter if it is emotional or physical. That’s why I can’t understand the popularity of MMA. Is there an innate bloodlust gene in us left over from our nomadic cave dwelling ancestors or maybe even further back?
Tonight I had tickets to see The Purge: Anarchy. I was anxious about seeing it all day. Specifically for the reason stated above. I know this is simply a movie.
The plot of the movie is that one night a year all crime is legal. The logic (?!!!) behind it is that you can get all your frustrations and grudges settled and be a model citizen for the entire rest of the year. Crime rates are way down and the gap between the haves and have-nots has miraculously shrank as well.
As the movie plays out, I began to see it as a story of profiteering through classism. Government or more specifically the military plays a role in the murder of innocent people in the movie for the sake of profit. Is it a subtle nudge to America saying “Wake the hell up, people?!” Could be.
I don’t want to spoil the story for you but when you find out about our unlikely anti-hero, it also sends a message of hope that even in the worst groups, there is a conscience.
While it made me anxious and unnerved and flinch A LOT, I really liked this movie. Go in thinking it is just another gratuitous gore fest, and I think you will be surprised by the story. Yes the commercials gave away too much information. And yes, there is a ton of blood and violence but look at all of the subtext too. That for me is where the real story is. There are so many questions that I left the theatre with.
Like I said with it just being a movie, I wondered were there people that would actually take to something like this. Then, as if on cue, a hulk of a mouth breather began spouting off horrible things like “I wanna purge right now! I wish I didn’t leave my knife in the car!” This, as he is walking between two people that had skin much darker than his own. It’s those people that scare me when it comes to movies like this.
When I first heard about the 70’s Sly Stallone movie being made into a musical, I laughed and rolled my eyes. Then, when I found out that Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Ragtime, Once on This Island, The Glorious Ones, Seussical) were involved, I stopped laughing. I went from being intrigued by how bad this could be to excited that this could be as good as the movie.
The noted duo have written some of my most favorite Broadway songs, many of them from the incredible OoTI, as it turns out. They have a knack for creating songs that seem to come from the very guts of the character and in turn they get a very deep emotional response from me. And with Rocky, their brilliance continues.
Up for 4 awards at tonight’s Tony Awards (CBS @ 8pm PST) “Rocky” is the story of a struggling boxer, Rocky Balboa (Andy Karl) who gets the break of a lifetime when reigning heavyweight champ, Apollo Creed (Terence Archie) offering him a shot at the belt. It is the ultimate underdog story. You can’t help but to root for him tk win the match and to get the girl.
Stand out numbers for me are Adrian’s (Margo Seibert) “Raining” and “I’m Done,” Rocky and Adrian’s charming duet “Flip Side of Me,” and Rocky’s beautiful ballad “Keep on Standing.”
Can it be on tour already? I am currently impatiently waiting until it does. The images in the booklet are so striking that I try to force them to move. So far, it hasn’t been working.
I guess for now I will have to settle with watching the source material and placing the songs in mentally.
When I was asked to come in and read for the part of Bobby Child, I never thought I would actually get it. I know that I shouldn’t think that way. When you are in contact with someone who teaches you something negative like this when you first start out, it is a hard thing to stop hearing in your head. Over the past few years, I have been trying to keep my distance from such people so I can retrain those bad thoughts.
This show has been a challenge and a chance for growth. It has had some great highs and personal breakthroughs as well as tons of self doubt and bouts of panic. What makes the whole thing incredible is the rest of this cast and staff. I am surrounded by unbelievably supportive, upbeat, and talented people that helped me through all of it. I adore them for this. When I speak of personal breakthroughs, I gotta say, I don’t feel like I have ever connected to a character as much as I have to Mr. Child. It has been said that this show was simply a fluff piece. I think of it differently. Like I thought of JC Superstar, it is a show about Love. Love is the greatest thing to fight for. Bobby has this tremendous love for theatre and an unquenchable need to be part of it. The first time I said the lines “Because this is my life. It’s all I care about.” aloud, I got that choking feel that one gets when you want to cry. Throughout this two and a half hour show, everything that he does to help just falls apart. So by the time he makes his way back to New York, he is not in the best state of mind. The producer that he auditioned for doesn’t want him. The show that he tries to put on doesn’t sell any tickets. The theatre that he was trying to save is getting sold to a forward thinking business man. The girl he falls in love with “sticks the knife in” when she says that there isn’t any reason for him to stay. After all of these failures, this guy still has a tiny bit of hope. And where there is hope, there is the will to fight.
The song “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” is such a fantastic song and it’s so upbeat. It’s about remembering every detail of this girl and their time together and knowing that there is never going to be a relationship. Whenever I hear it in the context of this show though, I feel like it is missing something. I know it’s probably just me being the weirdo that I am, but the song comes after all of the stuff in the paragraph above has happened. The first time we worked this scene, I couldn’t get through it because it made me so sad. Even just talking through the song had me weeping. It’s tragically romantic in a way and I began to think about my life and connections with this song grew into something heavier. As we worked through it, I began to dig deeper into what multiple disappointments feel like. What does the ultimate disappointment feel like? This man shouldn’t be so upbeat. He’s come to the realization that Mother has “won” and he must stop dreaming of a life in theatre and work in a bank. I believe there needs to be some weight to this song. I am so lucky that our Music Director, the AMAZING Joe Kelly, lets me slow the song down. The challenge there is if you sing it fast, you get it over with like “I don’t care, but deep inside I really do.” If you slow it down, you get to sink into the sadness a little more which could get you caught in that space where you full of emotion, but not holding out the notes. What I love about that is it makes you fight to get the train back on the track which, I hope, translates to Bobby Child accepting the cards dealt and heading home.
I love this well intentioned guy who doesn’t always think through every scenario. He dives right into half baked ideas. He believes in the theatre wholeheartedly. But most important is that he never gives up the fight. It was a part that was never on my radar of bucket list shows, but I cannot say how grateful I am that Bill Starr asked me to come in for this role. I have never worked so hard to try and get something right than I have on this show. It’s like playing yourself, but you can’t BE yourself and that makes it so much harder than being a whole new character.
Then came Opening Night and suddenly all of the weight of the work seemed to just disappear and while there were flashes of panic (mostly during some insane costume changes that only worked once Saturday night showed up), we put on a helluva show!
When I was asked to come in and read for the part of Bobby Child, I never thought I would actually get it. I know that I shouldn’t think that way. When you are in contact with someone who teaches you something negative like this when you first start out, it is a hard thing to stop hearing in your head. Over the past few years, I have been trying to keep my distance from such people so I can retrain those bad thoughts.
The Actorvist 