December 2007 Archives

While the production has been successfully produced in both Israel and Europe, it has meet with resistance and controversy here in the states.

I "get" why the Polish government is  irritation with the way Poland, overall, is portrayed, especially in light of its horrific past jewish persecutions, and I'm sure many many good Polish citizens would take strong exception to any implication that they, personally, are anti-Semitic. Nor can one forget that Poland itself suffered enormously under German National Socialism and later Soviet Communism (see Karolina Lanckoronska's Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman's War Against the Nazis).

On the other hand, I have no sympathy for or understanding of the New York Times refusal to review the play -- a national newspaper of record indeed . . . 

I have no sympathy for them because there IS today a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism in Europe, and, in my opinion, the Polish Government would have been better off acknowledging the entrenched Polish anti-Semitism that obviously exists today along with convincing assurances that all it's citizens are protected from violence and persecution, both from within and without rather than responding as they did. 

I finally have time to catch my breath, to look forward (planning for next year) and back (seeing how far I've come -- one of the main reasons for keeping this blog). Looking back, in brief:

• I arrived, rather clumsily, in New York City in the last summer of the 20th Century, quite by accident, but it seemed to be providence anyway . . .
• In late 2001, I took a basic introductory acting class at NYU's School Of Continuing & Professional Studies (it was taught by a talented Kathryn Rossetter) . . .
• In the spring of the following year later, I took a monologue workshop at the Playwrights Horizons Theater School (taught by a terrific John Ruocco) . . .
• I waited almost a year and a half, until the end of '03, before I actually got up the nerve to audition for anything, and about six months & four or five audition later, I got a break in the summer of '04 when Ron Parrella & The Impact Theatre in Brooklyn cast me in The Adding Machine, my first role, my first time on stage (though I did stage manage shows a few times for a couple of years before that).

Since The Adding Machine, I've only grown more serious and committed, and one of my striving goals has always been to perform in a show at the the off-Broadway level. I'm not sure what classifies a show as "off-Broadway," but I guess you can do no better than consult the New York Times Arts-Theatre Section about these things, and there you'll see it, in the Off-Broadway listings : The Last Jew in Europe.

The show supports a cast of six, all sizable, though my role (Papa Jocka) is the smallest, which is good as I'm probably the least experienced of the cast: this is the first time I've ever had a costume I didn't have to put together on my own, a program I didn't have to help to make, there's actually a dressing room, a full time stage manager, a demanding producer and director with high standards, and a long run.

Looking back, while not that much time has passed, it does seem like I've come a long way from that summer '04, from my cowboy "I'll teach myself to act by just doing it" approach to the surprisingly disciplined approach I've now taken -- not only towards training -- but towards the whole enterprise of attempting to become the best actor I can become, and I find all this enormously gratifying.

This is exactly what I wanted, and it's hard believe it's happened -- in fact, I was so busy with rehearsals for both Angel Heart (which just closed) and this production, I didn't realize it was, technically, my off-Broadway debut.

The show opened, quite successfully, to a very receptive audience this last Tuesday evening, 12 . 18 . 2007, 7PM, The Triad, New York City.

. . . Dreams and Taking A Chance . . .

Rehearsals for The Last Jew In Europe have been going well, smoother then with most shows. For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, the lines have been easier to learn than in other shows. I suspect, however, that this may have to do with my strong, almost fanatical text-based approach, and simply always, in rehearsal, saying my lines like I mean what I'm saying.

The role is further challenging for me because I need to have a convincing Polish accent -- I find Dr. David Alan Stern's Acting With an Accent series a terrific resource (amazon.com probably has the best prices):

Something else I found surprising -- I just stopped working on "building a character," i.e., I've just been working within a strong text-based approach, and the notes I've been getting from the director have been your intentions are good, they're on the right track, they're right there. However, I've never really thought about, or at least put much effort into thinking about, my "character," my "actions" or "intentions" simply because Tuvia, the playwright, has done all the work for me, i.e., all that stuff is IN the lines! 

Everything I've been learning in Deborah Carlson's Word of Mouth Studios I've been faithfully and rigorously applying in rehearsal and preparation, and it seems to have taken me quite far, much farther than I ever expected, at least for this production. This approach, in my estimation and experience, is definitely the foundation of acting -- you're dead, theatrically speaking, if you don't have it -- an actor may be using this approach natually/organically, but if they're not, they'll need to learn it (like me).

Angel Heart just closed and I'm in rehearsal for The Last Jew In Europe which opens in a few days. I'm always so grateful for these off-Off-Broadway opportunities because they give me a chance to keep learning how to act (The Great Joy & Purpose Of My Life), and a big part of learning how to act, I'm learning, is learning how to rehearse, by myself and with others. Patsy Rodenburg, in the preface to her book chapter Voice And Text Meet Rehearsal, effectively hammers this home:

I am sometimes alarmed at [the] complete ignorance of acting craft or just how fundamental it is for a successful show to have actors who know to work properly on themselves, with each other, and on a text.

I've cyber-penned few posts about the critical importance of the relationship between meaning and rhythm in language, and why it's one of the first thing an actor should do when they pick up brand new text.

I've both witnessed (as a stage manage) and experienced (as a actor) a rehearsal technique called "speed throughs," and in light of what I've been learning about rhythm and meaning, this technique comes off -- at best --  as weird and of limited value, or -- worse -- counter productive and a waste of time.

On a frigid city wind-swept Saturday evening, December 15th (ahead the season's first Nor 'easter), on East 3rd Street, The Lower East Side, New York City, we closed out Angel Heart.

While it was only a 3 day run, I'm always eternally grateful for these small off-Off-Broadway performance opportunities, and I try to work as hard as I can because I get a chance to put into full practice the training I'm getting and all the time, effort, and $$ I'm putting into that training -- it completes the circle, so to speak, of growth, of activating one's inner talent and aptitude:

. . . Anson Dorrance [...] as head coach of the University of North Carolina women's soccer team, The Tar Heels, [and] his associate Bill Palladino, shaped one of the most dominate sports programs in the history of professional or collegiate sports. The North Carolina program helped the United States dominate women's soccer globally, winning the inaugural woman's world cup in China in 1991.

. . . rival [coaches said] Dorrance's teams won because he had the best athletes [but] Dorrance argued just the opposite -- that there were habits that activated talent and made it more potent. He set out to create structures and routines that would build [and support "talent"]. (Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Confidence, page 48).

While I think I did my best (in terms of breathing and listening, responding, being in the moment, it was the best work I've done so far) the production was challenging for a couple of reasons:

Simon Ager of Omniglot, a second (third, forth, & fifth) language acquisition and linguistics blog, followed up on my Don't Skim Over Text. The Organization of Language: From Rhythm to Meaning post. He points out that using an unnatural rhythm in a second language may make it more difficult to understand you:

The main point is that language has inherent rhythms which are crucial because they are where the meaning is found. When you read a text in your mother tongue, you naturally break it up into meaningful chunks and adjust your rhythm as appropriate. If you apply unnatural rhythm to a text, it will be difficult to follow and you may not understand what you’re saying, neither will others.

Prosody is a linguist's term having to do with the study of rhythm, intonation, and related attributes in speech:

Prosodic units do not always correspond to grammatical units, although both may reflect how the brain processes speech. Phrases and clauses are grammatical concepts, but they may have prosodic equivalents, commonly called prosodic units, intonation units, or declination units, which are the actual phonetic spurts or chunks of speech.

Wikipedia has some good examples of how prosody maps onto grammatical structure .

As this blog is more about what I do than who I am, I won't say much about this, but it does (or did intersect) with my personal life and a "job" I used to have, and this music video will always bring back those dark, dank, rat infested days, and the totally insane, rarely sober -- no, I take that back -- never sober, crazy people who always, somehow, managed to brighten my day in that underground 3rd world sOhO HELL!!!!!!! . . . I give you, The Dead Betties Hellevator . . . it's everyone's nightmare/secret fantasy/best day ever.

P.S. As a somewhat unrelated aside, check out these pretty damn good photos of New York City @ laughingsquid . . .

One of the great Orators in the Western Cannon is Shakespeare's Marc Antony. It's little known that Marlon Brando, early in his career, played an electrifying Antony, and you can see part of his performance here, skillfully turning the crowd against Brutus in his speech after the murder of Caesar. Play the movie clip ("Dogs of War" monologue) and then you'll have the option to play the next clip, the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" monologue as an introduction to the lost art of public speaking, of speaking aloud: Oration, Recitation, Rhetoric. . .

Visual Thesaurus interviewed Harvard Professor James Engell, author of The Committed Word: Literature and Public Values, who revived the study of rhetoric at his university after a 60 year hiatus -- and who argues that a classical literary education is critical for today's communicators:

the definition of literature [in the 19th Century] was broader [than it is today]. It meant not just poems, plays and novels and the criticism associated with them, which is what usually people take to mean by "literature" today. "Literature" back then really meant the written record of human experience, particularly anything in which attention was paid to the resourcefulness of language, its aesthetic qualities, its richness of vocabulary, its persuasive effects and its ability to engage emotion and intellect at the same time. Historical works were considered literature. Works on politics were generally considered to be literary.

"How To "Think" your way through a text by speaking it, to really "get it" at all levels, intellectual, emotional, is not only the foundation of classical literary education, it is the foundation of Theatre, of Acting, and it's a lost art there too:

In a critically important class here in New York City, new actors are being taught a new respect for "the text," i.e., they're being taught to not skim over the text as they speak but to pay attention to the natural organization of language, to pay attention to and take in its rhythms in order to find out what the author or playwright really meant.

Disclosure about how well I'm trying to manipulate you: the headline of this post ('Oration, Recitation, & How to Think your way through Text') has an Emotional Marketing Value Score of 22.22%, not bad, but below what a professional copywrighter could do. On the plus side though, it does appeal primarily to your spiritual side.

1. Stage adaptation of Angel Heart by Christopher Dames. Produced by Urban Theatrical Players. Opens at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, New York City at 7PM on Thursday, December 13th, 2007. Angel Heart is highly atmospheric 1987 film, combining elements of film noir, hard-boiled detective stories and horror. The film is great, and so is trailer -- check it out!
2. The Jewish Theatre of New York's production of The Last Jew In Europe with the second cast, written and directed by Tuvia Tenenbom, the Artistic Director The Jewish Theater of New York, opens at The Triad, New York City at 7PM on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 and runs through January 2008.

The Last Jew In Europe is a controversial play . . to say the least -- (and The Jewish Theatre of New York has also managed to even offend Howard Stern . . . which doesn't seem possible at all, but they did it anyway). I've been too busy with rehearsals to think much about exactly why the play is so controversial, beyond the obvious reasons stated in the articles. Later, after the second cast opens, I'll have a chance to catch my breathe and try to figure out for myself what all the rumpus is about. It's all fascinating to me, to be in the middle of a political whirlwind and barely notice it, but I just haven't had time to think about of it.

I have, however, written about theatre that's political and/or socially motivated before. While, I'm suspicious of putting any adjectives in front of "Theater" (except for good or bad), I'm neither for nor against political theater -- in my mind, and heart, it's just a question, always, of making sure you've got the horse before the cart rather than that other way around . . .

This is actually a HUGE topic -- just type in "rhythm language" in goggle, and you'll pull up links to 100's of research groups and labs in major universities all over the planet, not to mention links to literally tens of 1000's of research articles and books on the topic. The relationship between language and thought is one of the main questions today driving research in the area of Complex Systems and Brain Sciences.

For my purposes, however, the exercises we're doing really derive from the foundational work of Edith Skinner's Speak with Distinction: The Classic Skinner Method to Speech on the Stage (Applause Acting Series) -- one of the very first "acting" class I ever took at HB studio -- but Word of Mouth Studios has taken it all a step further.