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.
After doing 6 shows this weekend, I am SO glad that Monday is right around the corner!
With the major bulk of the play performances now over, I am starting to feel both a little sad and a little relieved. Sad because I know that a lot of the wonderful people that I am now surrounded with will move on to the next thing, as will I. Relieved because I am just a wee bit tired.
Now that I have been talking more to the crew, I am kind of wishing for just a little longer of a run. I always feel bad that I hardly ever get to learn about the crew people the way, I learn about the cast. Since we only have a 3 person crew, it’s a little easier, but because we were so focused on getting the show right and tightening up the shifts, there wasn’t much time to chat. As things come together, I have really enjoyed truly meeting Hugo, Rodrigo, and Hilda. Hilda was in the booth, while the boys worked the fly rail and move the sets.
At first, I was a little hesitant because they spoke in such rapid spanish with not only one another, but with other members of the cast, that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. However, I’ve picked up some stuff from them as well as a whole lot of laughs that I am grateful for. I still have to ask for A LOT of translation. Luckily, there are many people in the cast who take pity on me and help me out.
In light of yesterday’s post, I got a loverly comment from Anna, who owns my favorite comic book store: Illusive Comics. She said, to paraphrase, “Why don’t you just change your mindset?”
So that, my dearies, is exactly what I did tonight. I took the hour before the show to get into what I am gonna call the Pennywise motto…
Have you see the amazing TV movie “Stephen King’s IT“? Yeah, the ending is a little on the weak side, but it’s still a great movie. Definitely one of THE most evil characters ever portrayed on TV. There is a part during the second half of the movie where the bully, Henry Bowers escapes from jail after seeing Pennywise in the moon. The clown tells him to “Kill them all! Kill them all!” In the quiet of my car, I ran that quote through my mind over and over and over.
Every word that I said tonight had that message behind it. I even had a cockiness in the Juan Blas character that I never considered adding before. I don’t know how it read on the stage, but man it felt good. There was some evil chuckling added in there too. At one point, I almost circled one of the actors, Jay Vera, as though I was looking for his weakness, but something said not to do it.
I relished instigating (thank you, Luis!) the death of Lupito (Sam Valenzuela), taunting Ultima (Rosa Escalante). I think that sort of evilness is what I needed to get back into things.
I’ve realized that the arcs that my characters of Andrew and Juan Blas, even though I tried to make them as physically different as possible, are almost identical. They both have a scene that’s full of emotion one right after the other, so I can’t feel the difference in the scenes.
If you have never seen this movie, I HIGHLY recommend it. Especially if you have a fear of clowns. Muahahahah…
I am experiencing the strangest, um, cycle…no. That isn’t the right word for it. Sadly, I don’t have the proper way to say it concisely. With that in mind…Lemme tell you a story.
So when I began working on this show, I was elated. I was joyous. Over the moon, even. During the six week rehearsal process, from staging to building the characters, from rehearsing in an echo-y room to finally getting to the theatre, from playing with my fellow actors to venting with them, I have seem to come to a point where I feel stagnant. And I am absolutely ashamed to say it.
I don’t know what it is about this particular play, but right after Opening, I’ve just been feeling like I am in the middle of the road. The preview shows were fun as was Opening Night. However, since then while I am energetic and enthusiastic off stage, I personally feel like what I am putting forth is stale.
But if I were truly in “the moment” how in the hell, could find myself in the situation I am in? I don’t believe that I have ever played the same scene twice in a row. I am sure that it’s for selfish reasons, because I think I’ve played the way I have to illicit different responses from my cast mates.
I actually felt bad when I walked out to thank the audience for seeing the show. I hung out in the far back of the group, trying to not be seen. I wish I didn’t even go out there, but Rosa herded everyone out into the lobby, so I got stuck in the group. Even meeting Luis Valdez, the father of Chicano Theatre and author of Zoot Suit, was super cool, but I didn’t feel worthy of his compliment. I ducked out of the lobby very shortly after that. I was in my regular clothes and in my car before the rest of the cast even came back to the dressing rooms.
What makes you feel like you’ve stalled in the middle of your momentum? How do you overcome this obstacle? More importantly, once you figure it out, how do you prevent it from happening all over again?
I think this may be a picture from the forthcoming movie version of "Bless Me, Ultima"
One of the things that I love about Teatro Vision is that they truly are a company that wants to give the youth a theatre experience.
Tomorrow marks the first of our two student matinees. The other being on Friday. I have worked with a couple of companies in the area, and this is the only one that I’ve had the privilege of doing this with. I wish more of them did student matinees, or even opened up their final tech rehearsal to a couple of classrooms from neighboring schools. I think it’s really important for this one though. Who better to raise questions in than the younger generation? People who haven’t yet become set in their ways. People who are still in the process of learning.
I find this particular play important because it challenges a lot things and because of these challenges, people have banned the book from school libraries and from teachers’ reading lists. Often times, the people who are all high and mighty about doing this haven’t even read the book. For example in Lafayette, AR, there’s a lady who claims that “Bless Me, Ultima” is one of the 50+ books that she, as the voice of Parents Protecting the Minds of Children, says promote homosexuality and casual sex and wants to have removed from school library shelves. She has readily admitted she has not read all of the books and found many of the excerpts on various Web sites. “I don’t have to read an entire book to decide if the book is pornographic to me,” she said during the organizational meeting of the parents group.
Now call me crazy, but I wonder if she realizes that she may have read something that was edited to sound objectionable. As someone who has recently read this book, I think it’s utterly ridiculous to say that there is anything pornographic in nature written within it’s pages. There is mention of a place that is a brothel, but Rudolfo Anaya didn’t go into any detail about the deeds that happen there.
In 2005, a Colorado superintendent, based on a single complaint took the school’s copies and allowed the complainees to take them home and toss them in the trash. The reason for the complaint: It had profane language in the book. The class that was supposed to read it were 9th Graders, and I am pretty damn sure that they have said those same words on the school yard. The only difference is the words on the pager are in spanish.
Not only has the book been banned for language and supposed sexual situations, but also because it talks about the old traditional ways of the Native people of America. The right wingers take issue that the book doesn’t simply erase the part of the family where traditional Native practices are just as important and walking into a building and bowing down to two planks of wood attached together. Why shouldn’t people know that there were people in the 1940’s and 50’s that still practiced a religion that is older than Christianity and Catholicism? After all, those religions stole what it could make useful and demonized that which it couldn’t from the Pagans and other polytheistic cultures like the Greeks. I mean why does the incarnation of God look exactly like Zeus? But that’s not what this post is about.
The topic is that Teatro Vision tries very hard to give to the community. The first Sunday of every production is a free performance so those that can’t afford tickets to a show can share this experience. It actively invites students to come to the dress rehearsals by offering super steep discounts. And of course the student matinees. The student matinees are always awesome because when I was in school the only way I ever got to see plays were on field trips to the San Jose Center of Performing Arts. Those trips are part of why I have this intense love of theatre. I hope that somehow there’s someone in the audience tomorrow or Friday morning that has that same feeling.
just livin’ and a workin’. I’m takin’ what their giving cause I’m workin’ for a living.”
When I do my checkbook, I get what I like to call the “Moneytime Blues.” Unfortunately, it’s not a good tune. It’s a slow lethargic melody that paints a picture of me dragging a giant canvas bag through a swamp or a bog. The bag is constantly getting snagged on the reeds as the mud sucks at the shoes on my feet and the dirty water stains the legs of my jeans.
I wish there was a way to figure out how to stop making the ends barely meet, but to actually attach the ends to one another. I would love to be able to just focus on theatre and live.
There’s a feeling of responsibility though to make sure that there is always a roof over our head, so I work because of the stability. What would really be amazing is to have a work from home style job that isn’t a gimmick. Those never seem to be a real thing though.
After doing 6 shows this weekend, I am SO glad that Monday is right around the corner!
The Actorvist 