April 2008 Archives

Enter: The Actors Alliance and One On One. Both are like Actor's Connection and The Network, i.e., they function as middlemen between actors (sellers) and casting directors, filmmakers, agents, managers and producers (buyers), but you need to audition for The Actors Alliance and One On One to be a member, and then you can take part in their agent and casting director's workshops and meet-and-greets --  and their audition process is not just a formality, i.e., last fall, I auditioned for One On One, but I was rejected for membership, so I've taken the advice and feedback I got from that audition, and I'm going to try again later this month.

However, I decided to try to kill two birds with one stone, and I took One On One's feedback and advice and today I went in and auditioned for membership in The Actors Alliance. Harry O'Reilly auditioned me (a terrific guy, a professional actor and successful businessman with a great ear and eye in terms of training and coaching actors), and he congratulated me on my audition technique and told me that Deborah Carlson's Word Of Mouth Studios had trained me well (I always knew she had, and I've worked hard, but this was terrific validation nonetheless).

I passed! I'm now a member! This has been a MAJOR goal of mine for almost a year now!

Bob Fraser has a great review of a somewhat unsung book by David Mamet called True And False:

. . . I saw A Life In The Theatre [by Mamet] and I became a fan. To me, it was the first play about acting that really got to the heart of the actor's life and problems. It was obviously written by someone who had a great love of acting and actors. It was a revelation ... I have watched Mamet's writing and directing career ever since ... In the fullness of time, I have no doubt that his influence will be considered crucial to the development of modern acting and story-telling.

His book, True and False, is the finest book I've read about acting since I first read Stanislavsky's trilogy (a must for every actor).

Mamet cuts right to the chase in this amazing book. It is not a tome, but rather a short, blunt treatise on the craft of acting – that I cannot recommend too highly.

Before you run out and get a copy though, I have a caveat: This is not a book for the beginning actor. Until you've spent some time on the boards, plying your craft, much of what Mamet says might be confusing and perhaps even misleading. The reason is simple; The book was written for the employed actor, who is looking for a useable method to build and sustain a performance in a professional setting.

Spencer Tracy, arguably one of the finest actors ever, is famously quoted as say about acting … "Just say the gags and don't bump into the furniture." This is a bon mot that has been repeated around green rooms and holding areas since Pluto was a pup, but few actors understand the import of it.

Mamet sets out to explain exactly what Tracy was talking about (although he never mentions the quote) in a well thought out, brilliantly written, cogent argument.

Laurence Olivier once said it took him twenty years to learn how to be simple. Again, this is an important bit of information for the actor who strives for believability and "realness." And again, Mamet's book goes a long way toward educating us about the exact meaning of Olivier's remark. (Bob Fraser on David Mamet's True And False)

The Herald.

Without noise came the Herald,

past the furious flags against a Snap Blue Sky.

Thundering nothing, heralding nothing, it stood at the end of the world, at the edge of the sea,

tiny waves lapped and danced and laughed at his feet as they eternally ever had without sound, without care, without effort.

And the Herald softened, relaxed, looking into forever, with no time at all.

And then he laid down to sleep with the eternal stars as his keep, and his dreams raced ahead,

announcing, announcing, announcing . . .

One of the things Deborah's been hammering home during our work at Word Of Mouth Studios is that it's always about the other. Simple (and hitting-the-nail-on-the-head) advice, but -- exactly, in practice, in rehearsal, in performance, what did that really mean? How did one really do that?

To start -- what Is attention?

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction. (William James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2).

Attention is a nice thing because once deployed on some object, additional brain resources (sensory, perceptual, cognitive) are automatically allocated to the object, i.e., you start to take it in, all of it, every aspects. There's obviously levels of intensity, i.e., the processes of paying attention to whether or not a street sign says walk or don't work are less intense then if someone is pointing a gun in your face and asking for all your money.

For actors, the issue is really concentration, and learning how to to fully concentrate on the other, growing one's powers of concentration, is a critical skill. I feel my ability to concentrate has improved though practice (i.e., simply reminding myself to pay full attention to the other) and meditation, especially the Holosync audio technology by Centerpoint.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch is dying from pancreatic cancer, and he gave his last lecture at Carnegie Mellow university on September 18, 2007.

The topic of his lecture was not about his work, not about computational algorithms or immersive virtual reality systems -- its topic was instead:

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.

The lecture, just for his students, colleagues and visitors, swelled to over 400 attendees in the large McConomy Auditorium. It was recorded and released on youtube where it became a world wide phenomena.

The Apostle Paul counsels us in the 13th Corinthians, verse 11: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.

Yet there are some childish things that should not be put away, or at least not thought of as childish things, and that is -- our Hopes and our Dreams. They are what we begin with, and they will be with us in the end -- if we keep, hold, and cherish them always.

Give yourself a quiet uninterrupted hour and 15 minutes to listen to his lecture. He's a very successful happy guy, and he gives some great advice, but what stands out, in the end, is what we think are the most important things are not really those things -- it's something else: it's not what we get (though that is very important stuff!) -- it's what we give, and we give though the realization of our hopes and dreams:

More Insights From Deborah Carlson's 'Word Of Mouth Studios:'

Rehearsals for Other People are finally done, the show has opened, and I now have to time to catch up on a ton of writing that's been slowly piling up into a precarious teetering tower on the corner of my desk.

We're getting to the end of a second 6-week session working on scenes from Uncle Vanya adapted by Brian Friel.

Chekhov is great to work on because it's all to easy -- perhaps especially with Chekhov -- to play the "problem" rather than the "solution." Playing the "problem" means focusing on what the character doesn't want. For example, Vanya wants Elena, and -- we all know that will never happen -- and Vanya probably, somewhere deep inside, knows this too, but he stays focus on his love for her and indulges in fantasies of a life with her (that he, at some level, of course, knows will not happen). Playing the problem is playing Vanya depressed, resigned, bitter -- doing his monologues from this perspective, in affect telling the other characters something he already knows, i.e., how about depressed he feels, how resigned he is, how bitter he is. That's not what Vanya -- or any character in his place -- is doing.

The play and scenes take off in beautiful flights of longing and desire, longing and desire of the true human spirit, when you play the solutions. Great advice, but -- exactly how do you really do that? This is what I've learned so far:

His energies and talents in his later years went more towards promoting traditional conservative causes, such as the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.