These “Tough Economic Times”

You just can’t turn on a football game these days without hearing about “tough economic times.”  Oh, wait.  Yes you can.  And I think most of us did.  For only $2.6 million, you, too, can buy your very own 30-second spot during the Superbowl.  How much were tickets to the game?  I’d assume that most of the fans in the stands weren’t necessarily from Tampa, so that’s lodging and food, too.  I guess, in the end, it’s a question of priorities.

Andrew Wade (formerly of the Royal Shakespeare Company) came by my acting class for a few hours and we got on the topic of live theater vs. screen (big or small).  For someone who routinely begins sentences with the phrase, “In Shakespeare’s time…” I find him to be a pretty down to earth kind of cat.  He’s cool and approachable with a you-feelin’-the-knowledge-I-just-dropped-on-you-homie? demeanor, so while he’s telling us about the relative illiteracy of Shakespeare’s audience, I’m inclined to believe him.  The conversation turned to the role that the audience plays in theater (versus, say, in a movie), so he ventured into this neck of the woods [and I paraphrase]:

People think they have to be quiet.  “I paid good money to hear and see this play, not to have you gasping/weeping/otherwise reacting to it.”

“Don’t we do that in sports? And at concerts?”  I chimed in.

I don’t remember how he responded exactly, but the long and short of it was this:  People don’t get excited like that about theater anymore.

I’ve been there when there’s a few seconds left on the clock, the Vikes have marched down the field and the only thing separating them from victory or defeat is a kickers leg.  I’m on the edge of my seat.  My palms get hot.  And there’s that moment where the commentators are inevitably saying, “the crowd is on it’s feet!”  That’s drama.  In fact, a friend of mine broke his remote control during a Jets game simply by squeezing it at just such a moment.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota wants to phase out all government funding for the arts in the next 2 years.  This after the people of Minnesota voted overwhelmingly for a constitutional amendment raising our taxes in order to properly fund clean water, protecting the environment, and–wait for it–the arts.  So we can drop him into the “not excited” column as well, right next to “not listening to his constituency.”  I guess, in the end, it’s a question of priorities.

So while the poor are trying desperately to get the ends to, at least, vaguely recognize each other, and the rich are buying Superbowl ads, is it too much to ask for people to forget about their problems for 2 hours?  Spend the $20 bucks you set aside to numb the pain at the bar and take your girl or guy out to a show.  I can’t promise any game-winning field goals, but if you are in the right frame of mind, it’ll feel that way.

It only lasts 30 seconds, but it drives the ladies craaaazy

That’s right kids. That’s me. “Mike” in the Rasmussen Business College commercial.

Wile E.’s Theory of Relativity

The Minneapolis Fringe Festival is one of the biggest in the country.  Last night, as I willed my eyes not to bleed after seeing what can only be described as straddling the line of being possibly one of the most horrible shows ever OR the awesomest theatrical presentation I’ve ever seen, I had this very quiet thought:

Fringing is like dating.  You have to sit through the really shitty shows in order to appreciate the good ones.

Dude, I Just Wanna Dance.

The shows I’m auditioning for lately are all for next season, which means that unless I get into something for the Mpls Fringe Festival, I’m gonna have a pretty quiet summer. Quiet in the sense of not having to perform…necessarily. Since I’ve been back in the Minny, I’ve gotten back into my acting class, taken a handful of tap classes and have been asked to do 2 dance shows (one of which I’m actually doing). Items left on the docket are Capoeira classes, which would be right by my new apt., and Ballroom Dance classes, also near my new apartment.

“They” say that if you can do something other than acting, do it. And I’ve always taken that to mean that you gotta love performing to really commit to it. Now that I have this lull in work, I’m thinking about the whole long term of this thing. I could go to space camp and become an astronaut. I could continue my DOD training and join the FBI or the CIA or some other agency with a three letter acronym and take down the bad guys. But honestly, sometimes I think that if I could focus on being a really good tap or ballroom dancer, I could live out the rest of my days a happy man.

Here’s how it plays out in my head:

I start taking some classes. After a while I’m a much better dancer and maybe get a chance to perform, create my own pieces, win some awards, etc. etc. Later on I start teaching, which affords me the chance to dance every day, open my own school, and live out the rest of my days a tap/ballroom legend.

Other considerations:

I don’t want to leave theater.
I am 29 and most really good dancers my age started dancing about 25 years ago.
Classes are expensive and, let’s face it, I work at the BGSC.

BUT: There will always be a myriad of reasons NOT to do something. So that’s that.

So we’ll see what the next few months have in store for me. Worst case scenario: I don’t get into any of the shows I’m doing and I continue going to my classes and slinging shrimp for a living. Which really isn’t that bad of a worst case.

The Year in Review, Chapter 3: Coming Home

A friend of mine and I got tickets to see a show in downtown San Diego and I had arrived a little bit early to the theater. We’re talking about a Saturday night at about 7:30pm. Suddenly my phone rang.

It was the General Manager of La Jolla Playhouse.

“Have you seen The Seven?” She asked.

“Yeah, it was great.”

“Well, a few people are pretty sick and we almost had to cancel some performances because we don’t have an understudy…”

I honestly don’t remember much of what else she said because my inner monologue was going, “what? HOLY SHIT. OH MY FRIGGIN’ GOD. They want me to understudy The Seven? I can’t believe this is happening.”

So I said yes.

She asked if I was available to come to the Sunday performances and I was, so she set up up with comp tickets for the entire week. Since it was the weekend, we had to wait until Monday or Tuesday to get all the paperwork together, but that I should start studying the show.

Walking into a situation like that is always overwhelming. You watch the show from a completely different perspective. I’m the kind of person who likes to get caught up in the story, but when you’re an understudy everything becomes technical. The problem was that I didn’t know who I was supposed to watch. So here I am in a theater trying to track 10 people and see what they’re doing at any given moment in the show. I started to sweat. Flop sweat.

I tracked down the Stage Manager after the matinee and introduced myself. She hadn’t heard about the theater’s plan to hire me as an understudy but she seemed glad that someone was available. I snagged a copy of the script and we talked about when I could rehearse.

Keeping in mind that thru the week, I was still working 6am-2pm on Salsalandia, I scheduled rehearsals for Tuesday thru Friday. I met with Shaneeka, the dance captain, and Wendy, the Stage Manager and we started working thru the show. I tried desperately not to show my fear. Understudying is probably one of the most stressful jobs in the theater business. You gotta learn the part with minimal rehearsal time and be ready to go on at a moment’s notice.

That moment came at the following Saturday matinee. I rehearsed through the week, after doing Salsalandia in the mornings, then I’d stick around the theater and watch the show to see what I’d retained. I showed up early on Saturday hoping to get onstage to rehearse on my own, and when it was almost time to open the doors for the audience, I picked a quiet spot outside of the lobby to keep rehearsing.

The Stage Manager found me out there.

“Hey. I don’t want to make you nervous, but I want to give you a heads up that Shaneeka is pretty sick. She’s gonna do the matinee, but you might want to focus on watching her during this performance.”

Flop sweat.

“Ok.” I said.

“Oh, and could you come backstage during intermission? We have a costume for you to try on.”

She did her best to calm my nerves before she retired to the booth to start prepping for the show. But my stomach was in knots. I went into the theater and was very hawk-like in my pursuit of watching Shaneeka’s track.

During my last-minute-impromptu-costume-fitting, the Stage Manager knocked on the door.

“How would you feel if I asked you to go on during the second half?”

Flop sweat.

I was honest and told her that the second act was where I felt weakest. Of the 4 or 5 hours of rehearsal I’d gotten, we had focused mainly on getting the first act down.

Shaneeka decided to go on for the second act, and I stuck around backstage to get the lay of the land. Backstage is usually a dark maze of set pieces, props and blue lighting. Shaneeka looked like hell. Like deathbed kind of stuff.

She made it thru the show and I stayed in between shows to rehearse with the Stage Manager, assuming that Shaneeka would be too sick to do the evening show.

At this point there were 2 options: 1) rehearse for a bit, bring in the cast an hour early for a short put-in rehearsal and do the show, or 2) cancel the evening performance and do a full put-in rehearsal. Nobody knew if Shaneeka would be able to do the Sunday shows, so we plowed forward with that whole “the show must go on” attitude.

The cast came in an hour early, the theater bought me and the Stage Manager dinner, and the flop sweat showed up right on cue. I got into my costume and tried to enjoy the playful banter of the guys in the dressing room.

Shirley, the literary manager of the Playhouse, made a speech before the show about what had happened and that I was filling in on short notice. That took a little bit of the edge off, but I still had put a lot of pressure on myself to not fuck it up.

I don’t remember much about doing the show. Bits and pieces. I went zen. Moving from moment to moment. The cast was really great and supportive, and I appreciated their nonverbal cues that told me where to stand, when to move and what to do. I remember the curtain call, where the cast gave me a little shout out right before the full cast bow. I went down to the dressing room, took off my mic and costume, and headed back out into the cool ocean breeze.

On my way up the stairs from the dressing rooms, I started to cry. Don’t know where it came from, but I did my best to find a corner where I could hide until the rush of emotion went away.

For the rest of the week, people referred to me as a hero, but I certainly didn’t feel like one. I felt like the kid crying in the corner.

Thursday approached quickly and the anticipation was killing me. My crush had developed into a healthy infatuation for this girl. I was looking at pictures of her online and wondering if I should hug her at the airport or not. I was excited to see if/how our hands would fit together… if we even got to the point of holding hands.

Her flight got in just after Midnight on Thursday night/Friday morning. Because it was spring break season, the only ticket we could get flew into LA, so I drove up to meet her. After circling the airport loop for a half hour or so, I saw her standing by the curb. I had spent a few hours doing my hair and picking out an outfit to wear. After all, I wanted to make a good second first impression. I went for the hug.

“Wanna go to the beach?” I asked when we got back in the car. She agreed, and we took the first exit off the interstate with the word beach in it. Manhattan Beach.

I love the beach at night. There’s just something about the way the surf moves and the sounds and smells, the darkness, and being alone.

I had misjudged one particular wave and ended up soaked from the waist down, instead of the intended calf down, which is what I had prepared for. We left the beach covered in sand and salt water, and seeing her smile as we played in the surf made me all warm and tingly inside.

It was a 2 hour drive home to a warm bed and a dry pair of pants.

During one of our conversations I had joked about sleeping in the bunk beds that are in one of my aunt and uncle’s spare rooms. She held me to it and we spent the night in the bunk beds (she got the top bunk).

Friday I still had shows to do and she came along. I had cleared it with the production assistant and stage manager, at this point they were probably getting sick of hearing about her. I even made everyone audition what they were gonna say when they met her. I insisted that we keep all the “I’ve heard so much about you”s as far away as possible. I didn’t want to freak her out, especially since we had the next 6 days to spend together. The cast was cool and teased me incessantly in front of her, but they were entitled.

She looked beautiful. She was excited to escape the Minnesota cold and try out a new summer outfit, and I was immediately smitten. We held hands on the way back to the van after the performance. I’m not usually one to snuggle and tell, but there was a little back seat snuggle on the way back to the theater. Naturally, I was ecstatic.

I’ll spare you the sordid details of the following weekend, but for my money, it was quite possibly the most romantically fun weekend of my life. I still had shows to do, but she was fine with going to the zoo and hanging with the elephants, panda bears, koalas, and apparently, a parrot that had learned to hit on the pretty girls passing by.

We packed up the car and headed to the Grand Canyon. This was the only condition of her coming out to drive back to me. She wanted to see the Grand Canyon. We got there at about mid-afternoon and stayed until it was dark. It was considerably colder in that part of Arizona, so we bundled up and braved it.

The Navajo Reservation was our next stop. The Quality Inn somewhere just across the Arizona border into Utah. We went back and forth about which hotel to stay in… Hampton Inns are her favorite, which she learned on a national tour. But The Quality Inn was the best we could get. Then the day that will live on as a day of greatness.

We woke up the next morning, grabbed a little continental breakfast and got back out on the road. Over the Rockies and into Denver. That was the plan. As we wound our way up the Rockie mountains, a thought creeped in our heads. We might not make it back in time for the classes she needed to teach. She started doing the math, and we decided to forgo dinner and drive on. As it got dark, we crossed into Nebraska, hoping to make it to Omaha for our next stop. The math didn’t sound promising, however. We would need to leave Omaha at 6am at the latest to get into Minneapolis in time.

I had been driving most of the way and decided to nap so that I could drive later into the night. When I woke up, there was a very stressed out and frazzled girl driving my car.

“We’re not gonna make it. We’re gonna get to Omaha at like 2 in the morning, then we have to leave by 6.”

We pulled of the road, stopped for gas and to grab some munchies, I took over the driving duties and we headed out again. An hour and a half to Omaha. It was a little after midnight.

I was feeling pretty good as we neared Omaha, a beautiful girl with her glasses circa 1993 crookedly smushed against her face as she slumbered in the passenger seat. I read the signs and calculated in my head that I might be able to make it to Des Moines in about an hour and a half. There were only a few cars to deal with and the semis were easy to spot as I quietly dreamed that if I had a flux capacitor, I’d be able to travel thru time.

We pulled into West Des Moines, and found I-35. Then I spotted it: The Hampton Inn tucked neatly in the corner of I-80 and I-35. I pulled in just as she mumbled in a half-asleep daze:

“Are we in Omaha?”

“No babe… we’re in Des Moines.” I couldn’t help but be filled with glee at my accomplishment: 4 states in 16 hours.

“What?” Then she realized that we were at the Hampton Inn, and she smiled.

Des Moines is only about 4 hours from Minneapolis, which meant we could sleep in til about 10. We got up the next morning, another continental breakfast, and then the home stretch. As the license plates changed from Iowa to Minnesota, there was a sense of something familiar mixed with a feeling of anxiousness. There were a considerable number of ghosts that hung around Minneapolis that I knew I’d have to tackle, but it was good to be home.

30 hours in a car will do something to you. When I dropped off my wing-woman, I felt something akin to what an amputee must feel like. We’d spent the last 6 days together and I missed her instantly. If not for the company, for the occasional sound of the window rolling down whenever she needed to fart. See what I mean? 30 hours in a car will do something to you.

The X had one more cameo in my life. I was scheduled to do a reading at Playwright’s Center for the following two days. When I arrived on Thursday morning, I met the playwright and she and I were the only ones there. “God, please don’t let me sit in this room with just my X…” I thought. Luckily a few more people showed up before she did. I kept it cordial, but disengaged.

A formerly mutual friend, Sun Mee, showed up and dashed any hope for normalcy on my part. There was a very pointed, very obviously awkward, and what can only be described as the worst attempt at discretion that I’ve ever witnessed: “Hey Rose… ARE… YOU… OKAY?” It was the opposite of nonchalant. It was chalant. It was dipped in a vat of pure chalance. I buried my nose in my script. “Professionalism will set you free,” I thought.

I survived it without cutting off my arm just to have something to hit me over the head with, which was a blessing. I spent a few days with the fam, saw some friends, started going back to my acting class, went back to the BGSC, and my driving companion was transitioning nicely into TGID. Things were moving along.

The month of April flew by and I started looking for apartments. I had been living with someone of my parent’s generation since last July and it was starting to wear on me. I needed my own space.

So here I am, 29 and a few days. I can’t help but think of this time of my life as the moment when the clouds break and the sun peeks through. I’m a pinata. Occasionally, life beats me down, but at least candy spills out.

It’s gonna be a good year.

“If you’re going to the callback, please step forward… not you.”

I’m not sure which is better:

a) Going to an audition, not hearing back and assuming they didn’t want to see you for a callback, or

2) Going to an audition, only to have them call you a few days later to tell you that they’re having callbacks and you’re not invited.

On one hand, the result is the same. On the other hand, you get your hopes up when you hear “Hi, it’s So & So from Such ‘N Such Theater…” only to have your albeit brief hopes dashed to smaller and smaller pieces the more they continue to talk.

I’ve developed a rather useful ability to forget about auditions after I leave the theater. This doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough to be notable. After all, if you’re a go-getter in the biz, you go on a lot of auditions. So when I get the “thanks for coming in to audition, but…” call, my inner monologue sounds like this:

Oh, wait… which theater is this? Ok. Shit, I’ve already forgotten this person’s name. Anyway. When did I audition? Was I good? Well, they’re calling me aren’t they? What show was this for? Did I fuck up my monologue? Oh, THAT audition. I felt good about that one/That one sucked. Ok, when is the callback? Oh… shit. Sound breezy. Say thank you. Hang up the phone now.

Ok. Bullshit. I know which is better: just don’t call. I don’t need you to give my already fragile ego a paper cut, throw salt in it and squirt lemon juice on it. I’ll be ok not knowing. You don’t spend time calling the friends you didn’t invite to your party to tell them they weren’t invited, do you? I didn’t think so.

Break’s Over.

You know that feeling where your teacher says there’s gonna be a pop quiz today and you know you are gonna bomb? That was the feeling I got today at my most recent audition. Totally and utterly unprepared.

I got a call from a dancer/choreographer friend of mine who mentioned that there weren’t enough guys at an audition that involved partnering.

Long story short, I didn’t get a callback.

But what I learned today was that I’m desperately out of shape. Not necessarily in the physical sense, but in the sense that I’m not ready for when those once-in-a-while-auditions come up. I’m firmly rooted in the belief that everything happens for a reason and while I might not have gotten the job, I learned a lot from this audition.

A friend of mine in LA told me that when the work dries up, most actors just take a break. From her experience living in NYC, she developed a work ethic that was based on continually taking classes, getting into workshops, etc. She said she did this just to stay in shape. She’s been on Broadway, TV and film and has had a pretty successful career from what I can see. A lot of actors in her position might think, “I’ve arrived!” but she cautioned me against that. Because when Broadway or Hollywood come calling, you better be in tip top shape, and have the chops to get the gig.

If today was any indication of what would happen if the batphone rings, I think it’s time to get my sweet, sweet ass in gear.

In my frustration, I turned to my book of Bruce Lee aphorisms, closed my eyes, flipped to a random page, and read what was on it. Here’s what it said:

The will to win–The attitude “That you can win if you want to badly enough” means that the will to win is constant and no amount of punishment, no amount of effort, or no condition is too “tough” to take in order to win. Such an attitude can be developed only if winning is closely tied to the practitioner’s ideals and dreams. Experience shows that an athlete who forces himself to the limit, can keep going as long as necessary. It means that ordinary effort will not tap or release the tremendous store of reserve power latent in the human body. Extraordinary effort, highly emotionalized conditions, or a true determination to win at all costs will release this extra energy. Therefore an athlete is actually as tired as he feels and if he is determined to win he can keep on almost indefinitely in order to achieve his objective.

Break’s over.

Ahh, The Magic of Live Theater

I performed in The Seven the other night. I’m the new understudy and one of the cast members got sick. Such is life. In the midst of an 8 hour long freak-out session, someone told me to “breathe, relax, and remember why you do theater.” What’s that supposed to mean? “remember why you do theater.”

I wonder if my dad ever had to remind himself why he became an accountant.

I’m not one of those kids who saw a community theater production of Oklahoma, tugged on my mommy’s sleeve and said, “That’s what I wanna do when I grow up!” I got picked on when I was little. I was a shy kid. So my parents put me in acting classes to get me to come out of my shell. I didn’t love it back then. But as the awkwardness of pubescent low-self esteem set in, the idea of not being me for a few hours sounded pretty good.

I didn’t set out to be a role model, but as time went on I felt a growing sense of purpose in giving a voice and a face to people who might feel marginalized. So I pushed on through. And twenty-some years after my first appearance as a particularly well-dressed shepherd in the nativity play at the Paskong Pilipino ‘83, I’m still acting.

That covers the “how,” but not quite the “why.”

In some parallel universe somewhere, I’m probably a big movie star. But in this universe, my first love is theater. I love that it’s live. I love that you can feel the audience when you’re on stage. I love that there’re no second chances. I love that you can leave your blood and guts out there on stage and only the people who showed up to witness it first hand will ever see it, even though they probably will never know the difference.

You have to use your imagination in theater. It’s pretty easy to watch TV or go to the movies and see what someone else wants you to see, but in theater you have to give back. And what you give back fuels the performance in front of you. There’s no right or wrong, only the acceptance of what happens right before your eyes. Theater is active. It lives and breathes. You can choose to be a passive observer, but it’s like choosing to do “nothing;” it doesn’t benefit you.

Here’s my Miss America answer: I want to see change in the world. I want to leave this place a little bit better than I found it. And the way I plan on doing that, for the time being, is by creating great characters and telling great stories. So if one audience member leaves the theater with the seed of a new idea in their brain, or if someone feels a sense of connection to a story and finds a moment of peace in their life because of it, then that’s what I want to be my legacy.

But for now, I’m just gonna relax and breathe. And I’ll find out why my dad became an accountant.