Presidential Election Thoughts

I think this presidential race is going to be a close one, it's going to be a close, dirty, angry race, but i do believe Obama will pull through.

I think the first and most basic reason is that at the end of the day Obama is more likable than Romney. Romney may be trying to make Obama look bad, but both Obama AND Romney are making Romney look bad.  Romney is a millionaire, the first presidential candidate to have overseas bank accounts, he won'r release his tax returns.

This doesn't mean Obama is some kind of paragon of presidency.  He has his failings, and there are programs and laws he had suggested that have been shut down, and he has said things that allowed for extremely negative interpretation.

But nothing Obama has done is above and beyond what a typical president would not succede in accomplishing.  I don't believe the dissatisfaction of Obama's presidency is strong enough to convince people to vote against their own interests.  It's not as strong as the sentiment against Bush, its just disillusionment that Obama is not as awesome as his strongest supporters said he'd be.

Given the fact that sitting presidents are rarely voted out of office (only 10 out of 38), and Obama certainly hasen't made anything worse, i do not believe the Obama hate is strong enough to un-seat him.

Unless Romney gets caught volunteering in a soup kitchen in Detroit handing out 100 dollar bills, (which he wont do), or Obama get caught banging an intern (which I hope he wont do either), i believe it will be close, but Obama's got it.

Actors: Rivers and Freight Trains

In my experience acting in and around New York City, i have come across many actors.  I'd say that  most of these actors fall into two basic types.

Rivers and Freight Trains.

River actors are like what the name implies, they move in largely the same direction, following the path laid out for them.  Whenever something is in the river, that usually isn't there, say a boat, a swimmer, or a rock, the river moves around it and it's flow adjusts to whatever is necessary to flow around the obstacle.

River actors are masters of spontaneity, no matter what happens on stage, a late entrance, a missed/jumped line, or a technical failure, these actors can adjust, adapt, and move on.

Freight Train actors are the opposite.  Freight Trains travel along an established track, going at the exact speed thats allowed by the track.  The train may stop from time to time, to let off passengers or take on cargo, however the start and end of the trains route do not change.  Freight trains also take really long to slow down, and a really long time to accelerate.

Freight Train actors are masters of consistency.  These actors have a practiced and rehearsed performance, they know what they're going to do, when they are going to do it, and everything in between.

So which are you?

Are you a Bricklayer or a Paintballer?

I'm not a person who like to make generalizations.

That being said.  I think most actors can fall into more or less two different methods of work durring rehearsal.

Paintballers and Bricklayers.

Bricklayers, spend many hours constructing (preparation) bricks (their playable choices) and will bring the bricks over to the worksite (rehearsal) and lays the brick with cement, but will let someone else do the brushing with the foxtail (the director)

Paintballers are the more chaotic of the two.  Paintballers come to rehearsal with a paintball gun (preparation), some paintballs (their playable choices), and an infinite row of canvases (rehearsal).  The Paintballer simply shoots the living crap out of the canvas and asks what the art critic (the director) what thinks.


the thing is that both these approaches lead to the same thing.  A practiced and well prepared performance.

So are you a bricklayer of a Paintballer?

A milestone!

Today i signed a W4 for an acting job. While i've been paid to act before, this is the first time I am officially declaring a portion of my yearly income as an actor.

I consider this one the first significant milestones of my career in Acting.  Often a lot of actors will consider themselves a professional once they get paid, but i find that criteria a little off target, because i've been paid to be an actor plenty of times, however it was usually a payment of maybe a hundred bucks or so; more of a 'Hey thanks for doing this, we can't pay you a real wage but here's some dough for transportation/drinking money."

Some background information, i'm spending the summer out in Massachusetts with the Plymouth Players, a Shakespeare company in residence at the Plymouth Plantation, a museum dedicated to educating people about the lives of the original Mayflower Colonists.

So i guess the next three months of blog entries (because i update sooooo regularly) will be focused on my experience out here in Plymouth/Cape Cod, and the joys of preparing two of Shakespeares plays in repertory.

More to come!

The trick is...

When i tell people i'm an (aspiring) actor.  It's always met with some degree of admiration and contempt.

i'll get to the contempt in a second....

The admiration comes from a variety of sources, some because they aren't brave enough to perform in front of a theater full of people, others because they just don't have any talent, (sorry but true), but many others say the same thing;

"I could never memorize all those lines!"

I would like to clarify that memorizing lines is not the hardest thing about being an aspiring or working actor.  There are many things that actors have to worry about;

Rent.

Food.

Medical Insurance.

The next job, or getting an acting job period.

Backup plan in case acting doesn't work out.

Parents bugging you to get a real job.

Talent-less camera whores stealing your job with their reality tv series (i'm looking at you Kardashian!)

Memorizing is easy!  You know your phone number right?  Your Social security number?  Your address?  The address of a few close friends?  Thats what i can think of off the top of my head, and i've already listed a combination of about 20 numbers and a ton of words.  I bet you can rattle them off without blinking.

We all have things memorized in common to;

"I pledge allegiance, to the flag..."

"We hold these truths to be self evident..."

"(insert multitude of bible verses here)"

I mean, we all know the ABC's right?

You see the trick of memorizing the lines and/or speeches, is not the memorizing at all!  It's saying it during performance like you didn't memorize it at all!  

I think creating a believable and organic performance/scene/play with your fellow actors is the hardest part of acting.  So many young actors act in a void, saying the lines the same way, playing the scene the same way, marking their way through the entire show without sending or receiving energy from anyone in the cast.  That kind of actor is very dangerous because he sucks all the energy out of the show, because every time he opens his mouth, he may as well be saying "i pledge allegiance to the flag..."

But when you get a roomful of actors really listening to each other feeling each other, taking each other in and responding naturally from their characters desires and motivations, you get a beautiful thing.

Oh, and the contempt?  Thats easy.  Actors always get a bad rap.  Back in ancient Rome, if a Roman citizen caught an actor in bed with his wife, he could kill him where he stood (lay?) and no charges would be brought to him, because actors held less social privilege than slaves.

Even in Shakespeare's time, when theater was at a relative high point in respectability and popularity, an actor had to prove he was in the service of a lord or member of nobility...  or be considered a vagrant (thats a fancy word for homeless), and he would be carted off to jail.

In todays modern era, while actors have slightly more rights than we used to have.  We still still cock an eyebrow or two when we tell people we want to be on stage or camera for a living, as opposed to all the useful jobs out there we could be holding (those that haven't gone to India or China that is), that are actually useful to society.  

We have reps as potheads, drunks, adulterers, druggies, and generally self obsessed artsy types who don't have a clue what the world may be like outside our little bubbles we make for ourselves.

And don't get me started about Uber-Religous types who insist were liars and deceivers for playing pretend all the time.

But i'm side-tracking myself.  

Point is;

Memorizing is easy

Acting is hard

Any questions?