Open Wardrobes

Last Sunday afternoon we wrapped up Doubt with our last performance, and 15 minutes later were hard at work tearing the set apart. Four weekends felt like the right amount of time to me for a run. I'm always sad to have a show over: you may work with the same people again or do the same play again, but it's never quite the same. Each production is it's own unique experience that can never be recaptured again, on stage or off, and that is part of what is so wonderful about it. It is transient, but there is a beauty in that transience, just as there is in a sunset. It happens every day and yet each in unique, and were it not so it could easily become mundane. Even within a production every performance is different. The wonder of live performance is that it never is the same twice but wholly unique. And we as actors and audience are changed by the experience, in large ways and small, and do not come out of it the same as we went in, not if we are truly experiencing it. The end of a production means leaving the character behind, parting ways after spending so much time together, but I am always conscious that a piece of the character stays with me. I am a different person than I would have been for not portraying this role (which is why I believe that a good actor is not someone who can play any role, but is someone who knows what roles they should play). The experience of being in a show is too an interesting observation of human nature. You can throw a group of random people together, potentially where none of they have ever met each other before, and by the end of the show have a group that functions as a family. Certainly this does not always happen, most actors probably have at least one story of a completely dysfunctional cast, but when it happens there is a magic there and it translates to what you see on stage.


And the show is over, and these people you have spent hours and hours with over the course of weeks or months you may not see again. But something special has been created that goes beyond the performance. It is, I think, akin to what is meant in the Christian sense when we talk of the Body of Christ: together we are something that we could not be alone, and yet without any loss of our individuality. C. S. Lewis compares the Christian view with others that seek a Oneness of humanity, pointing out that Christianity differs in its thoughts on this in that as the Body of Christ we are more ourselves, not less, for being one in God. A theater performance is much the same: we need to be our unique selves in order to create something together that is more than the sum of its parts. It is a paradox, but one thing life has taught me is that "paradox" is not a synonym for "false," however much it means we may not understand.

After a week of tech and dress rehearsals we opened Doubt last night to a full crowd. The performance went great and it was nice to at last perform for more than an empty theater. :-D The audience was very responsive and found much of the show much funnier than we expected, but those surprise reactions are always fun. Sister Aloysius was a bit hit (the audience clearly loved to hate to her!) and the Father O'Rourke speech went over really well too. It's just such a solid cast and they have all been a pleasure and joy to work with. I'm looking forward to the rest of the run! For all the details visit the Lakeshore Players website. I hope to see you at the show!

I am been very remiss in blogging about Doubt rehearsals (which you should of course come and see; details here). We started rehearsals nearly a month ago, which has flown by! We did have a week break in there for Christmas which gave us all a nice chunk of time to work on lines. It's a tough show, no doubt about it (no pun intended), but that's what makes it so satisfying as an actor. With just a cast of four the show will ultimately rise or fall on us. We have a fantastic director (Kevin T. Houle) who is helping us all dig deeper and deeper into this piece, not to mention one of the best stage managers I've worked with (Sue Kuta) who I know will keep things running extremely smoothly, but in the end we four actors have to sustain an hour and a half of thought-provoking drama on our own. It has been a daunting task, as least I've found it to be so, and a ton of work. When so many people have at least seen the movie version, how do you break people's preconceived notions of this play? How do you keep the characters interesting and dynamic above and beyond the concepts being wrestled with? If they are not, the show becomes merely pedantic and the characters two-dimensional mouthpieces.


This at least is a taste of what I've been wrestling with. As Kevin has pointed out many times, this plays is most definitely NOT about whether or not Father Flynn did it. One of my challenges has been to not make that question too easy, to give the audience doubt about what my character may or may not be capable of. We have just under two weeks to go and we are definitely getting there. We have a great cast and I've been enjoying working with them on this. I'm excited for performances and to see what the audiences have to say.


But a New Year would not be complete without a new writing project. November of course was spent in NaNoWriMo, and December brought with it the start of rehearsals and Christmas, but during my break I've finally found some traction on a new project. My friend Brian teaches middle school theater in Georgia and awhile back we had talked about the idea of me writing a short show that he could use as scenes in class. Brian has build a small stage in his classroom (beyond acting he is an accomplished designer) and a flexible set comprised of many doors. We talked about writing something in the commedia dell'arte style, as we both though it would work well with minimal set and the stock characters would give his students s starting place. At the time I was knee-deep in writing the Fringe show, and so while I loved the idea it had to sit on the back burner for awhile.


But over the past few weeks I finally started doing some research on the commedia characters and over the last week started writing a scenario. As the original commedia was all improvised, the actors would choose a scenario for a performance that detailed the entrances and exits and gave the general gist of the plot. From there the performers, who each specialized in one stock character, would create the show on the fly. Later on playwrights such as Goldoni wrote full plays using the commedia characters and style and this was my goal as well. I don't normally start plays with a detailed outline, but in this case I wanted to create such a scenario first in order to replicate the commedia process as much as possible. And so, now having such a scenario in hand I have now started in on the writing process and shall see where it goes.

As an actor I have long had this fantasy. I find the time between auditions and getting the "yea" or "nay" to be the most nerve-wracking, stressful part of the acting process, and so I have long had this fantasy where as soon as auditions are done I get the call from the director to do the part I really, really want to do.


Tonight that fantasy came true. The second night of Doubt auditions wrapped up at about 9 PM tonight, and at 9:07 PM I had a call from the director. "It must be about callbacks," I thought, for the director hadn't been certain last night if he would have them or not. It was not about callbacks. It was the director asking me if I wanted to play the part of Father Flynn in Doubt.


I said yes.

The opening night of Schrödinger's Cat Must Die! went GREAT! I had a wonderful house, about two-thirds full, who were incredibly responsive right from the get go (I was surprised at how well even the pre-show bits went over!). It was awesome to finally have an audience for this piece and see how well it was received. The classroom was the perfect setting for it, and just the right size, and people seemed to be engaged in the science as well as the comedy. Just writing the Schrödinger's equation on the blackboard produced a laugh.

Anyway, it was a fantastic opening, as good as I ever could have hoped for, and the run continues tonight with back-to-back shows at 7 and 8:30 PM.

Fringe: Day 3, woohoo!

It's finally here!!! Tonight at 8:30 PM, at North Central University, my one-man physics show Schrödinger's Cat Must Die! opens as part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival!!! I am SUPER excited to finally be putting this show before an audience!!! It's been about a year since I started working on the show in earnest and now, after many months of writing, rehearsing, and so on, the day when it all comes together has arrived. I hope you'll join me at the show between now and the close of the Fringe on Sunday August 9. See you at the Fringe!

Fringe: Day TWO!

Last night's Fringe-For-All went very, very well! I was up 9th in the first half (15 companies in each half), following a couple of videos from out-of-town shows. With 30 companies up total in the evening the 3-minute time limit is very strictly enforced as the audience is instructed to applaud you offstage once your time runs out. For my show I chose to keep it simple: the description of the Schrödinger's cat experiment, punctuated at the end by the "crush the can" experiment that I also used in my trailer. My biggest fear was that something would go wrong with the experiment (which requires boiling water and steam to work correctly), and with only 3 minutes there isn't a lot of time to fix anything. Fortunately the experiment went PERFECT and the can crushed exactly when I wanted it to, plus the description of Schrödinger's cat went over very well.

I received a lot of positive feedback afterward which had me very excited! The Ritz Theatre was packed, which means a total crowd of around 200 or so people, and so the stakes at the Fringe-For-All can be high. Perform well, and people who might not have your show on their radar decide to check it out. Perform badly and even those who were interested in your show may cross you off their list.

Being in the first half allowed me to watch the majority of the other performances, including a few shows I'd seen previews of before, and overall the quality of the shows was very good. It's clear there will be no shortage of good shows to attend, the only difficult is fitting them all in (which I know I never will, especially with 10 performances of my own).

So I'm definitely pleased with how last night turned out, and I even made a mention in MinnPost today!

Over the past week or so I've participated in several Fringe previews, mostly library showcases, which have been a great way to start getting Schrödinger's Cat Must Die! before an audience. Tonight is my last preview, as part of this year's second Fringe-For-All at the Ritz Theatre in Minneapolis. Thirty different companies will each perform a 3-minute segment of their show. The Fringe-For-Alls have become a very popular way for people to get a sneak peek of a lot of different shows, enough that this year they held two, and so it's an excellent way to start building the pre-Festival buzz. I finally settled last night on what piece from my own show to do which I hope will grab people's attention and make then want to see more.

I've also enjoyed doing the previews as a way to meet other people doing Fringe shows this year. I've met a number of artists I hadn't known before, people doing some really interesting shows. That's the thing about Fringe. There are always shows that don't necessarily jump out at you based on the title or description, but once you see a piece of it really grab the attention. As we get a little closer I'll post some links to a few of the other ones that have caught my eye and I plan to make every effort to see. The unfortunate side of doing 10 performances is that it greatly curtails my ability to see other shows, but I plan to squeeze in as many as I can!

Last week, as rehearsals continued, I also did my first few runthroughs of the full show which is always an exciting moment. All the various pieces finally start to come together and you can see a coherent, final shape begin to emerge. The show is running a little long, and so will need to be trimmed down a bit, but that's always a better problem than running too short (which was my fear while writing the script). Other than that, it's now a matter of smoothing out the rough spots and tightening the show up to move at a good pace.

So we're into the final stretch now - just 10 days until Fringe and 11 days until opening night! Have you bought your tickets yet?

Last night I had my first Fringe preview as part of Rockstar Storyteller's monthly Word Ninjas event. About 15 different Fringe companies were present to perform for about 5 minutes each. Finding a 5-minute sample that captures the essence of my show is difficult, but I settled on a brief physical demonstration with the Assistant (which received some laughs, hooray!), then into a brief intro with Dr. Volt and the description of the Schrödinger's Cat experiment. It felt good to put a piece of the show on stage and see how it played in front of an audience, plus just getting the show out there will (hopefully) help build an audience. After all, opening night is just 23 days away! And don't forget, tickets are now on sale and can be bought here.

I've put together a video trailer for the Fringe which you can view below:

Also, today is the day that the Fringe Festival website goes live with this year's schedule. What does this mean? It means you can see all the details of this year's Fringey fun, create your own Fringe schedule, and of course buy tickets! So head on over today and check it out!