(Guest blog for ActorsAndCrew)
And these admirers often ask this question: “Don’t you get nervous?” Read more…
This was the first week of rehearsals on the play “Honey Brown Eyes.” More info can be found here:
An interesting point was raised by Ron Van Lieu in class yesterday at The Actors Center. After offering some notes on a scene from “A Doll House,” the work started up again. After the second go around, Ron noted that the actress had taken his notes and veered straight into “character,” nearly forsaking the content of the “scene.” What she did was certainly entertaining, but it neglected something fundamental. Read more…
A piece about tonight’s reading: “Gomorra” Reaches the New York Stages
If I have a regret in my professional life it’s that I didn’t get a degree in theatre. Countless people have done fine without it, of course, but I would have benefitted from it. I’ve studied, and have returned to doing so, but there’s something to enrolling in a program that teaches you everything from voice to fencing to working with text, and makes you sweat it out for a few years exclusively. Read more…
Before you get the wrong idea, no, I haven’t been fired from anything, nor am I firing anybody. I was fired from a play once, but that was years ago. To this day I have no idea why. I’d been to rehearsal, all seemed fine, I get home, and there’s a message on my answering machine telling me not to come back. It was bewildering, but it taught me an early lesson in they why’s and how’s of this business. There are none. Read more…
Last summer I did a film in which I had to deliver speeches to crowds. And every time after filming, I nearly lost my voice, which caused me no end of embarrassment. How can a professional actor not know how to support his voice for two days? It was another reminder that I had gotten off-track in nearly every aspect of my life. Read more…
There is no higher art than learning itself. Returning to study this month has reminded me why I started in on this profession of acting in the first place. We need it to understand ourselves, and, at its best, those of us who put our faces, bodies and voices on display are offering a way to make sense of our collective experiences in this lifetime. We aggrandize the normal in order to highlight its significance. But I’m not so naive to believe these things are always offered with such noble intentions – there’s that little matter of narcissism, ego, and an unhealthy need for attention that seems to linger in most actors. Still, there are two sides to this coin. Read more…
