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.
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!
I have been called crazy probably a million times.
Lemme ask you something. Is it crazy to look for ideas from the world around me? For example, the picture above is actually a white strip in a parking lot that marked the spot that I parked in. Upon opening the door, I looked down immediately and saw this. I know most people will see random grey and white markings and not much else. To me, it looks like a cosmic notice calling out. I can see my name. Well, at least the first 3 letters. What are the odds that I was just about to put my foot on this exact spot as I got out of my car.
This is how I see the world. Check out this:
Image taken on 8/14/10
This image I took in the parking structure of the Santa Clara Library. It is simply a tire smudge on a column. I see a Native American tribal elder.
Image taken on 5/12/12
I call this one a Crystal Skull. I got this image when I was closing a window one day. This is just a reflection off the glass, but it freaked me out a little. I know that our brains are hard wired to look for patterns. Facial patterns are usually the easiest ones to recognize. I find a ton of them in the dots on our bathroom floor.
I don’t like to think of myself as crazy, though I can see why people would use that word. I know that my imagination is always working. Sometimes it is a curse when I can’t turn it off at night. I like my skewed view of the world and even though I see a lot of dark things like this image above, I try to always focus on the fun and happy things.
Goofy things are the best kind of things and they always seem to find me. I call the next one “red Wilson” Hahahahaha.
Image taken on 4/14/14
I never thought I would find a use for any of these pics aside from the first one, but it was nice to dig back in my photos to see this pattern emerge.
I look at the world and see things all the time that I glean ideas from. The smallest things like a steady stream of cars driving over a grate give me the beginnings of a beat for music which I usually forget before I can get to a computer. I will see the way a vine trails up a stake and seek to place that motion into a dance step.
Somewhere in my “insanity” I find my inspiration.
How do you get inspired? Nature hikes? Those are fun, too.
Cast and Crew of SUPERSTAR being goofy! Photo by Edmond Kwong
I have been pussyfooting around the acknowledgement that this show that I have lived with for the last 13.5 months has finally come to an end. On my last two days off of work I was expecting to get hit with a blast of depression that comes with ending a show. One of this magnitude, I was sure would take me out of the game for a while. But it never came.
When we started this show, I said I see this show as a fight for love. Instead of the show being a simple Judas wronged Jesus, it was accidental. There was no one to “blame.” Everything was supposed to happen. Like Jesus sings, “You’re far too keen on where and how but not so hot on why.” I wanted a positive spin on the show. I also wanted Jesus to be as human as everyone else. My hope was that people would be moved to see a fellow human being treated so horribly during act 2. To see that he was afraid and sad but still willing to go through this for his love of the people. I had the white out at the end to ask the audience to look inside and find your love for your fellow man and for hope that this world can be a better place in doing so.
Then I was lucky enough to get this amazing, supportive cast! But my luck didn’t run out there. One of the very first things I fought for was an amazing sound department which was an incredible 3 man team. So John, Dan, and Brett: Thank you for an outstanding job with this difficult show! The crew was small but mighty and headed by an amazing Stage Manager, Ms. Pye! I am grateful to the amazing producers Nancy and Liz, who worked so tirelessly to ensure that the vocal director, Judy, and music director, Jean, and I had everything we needed.
I have realized that there is a reason for the non-depression. As I disassemble the Blooming Wall, I have the chance to read all the beautiful paper “flowers” with things that people love. Simple things. And I understand that we did exactly what we set out to do. We did share the love.
And so did they. With that in mind, what is there to be depressed about?
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 