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Dear Joy,

           The show closed last Saturday. It was a good experience and I found it very challenging -- though I'm not sure why yet: Comedy, I've heard, is always harder than drama, but I always thought it would come easier to me (and comedy does, actually, seem to come easier), but nevertheless, I found it surprisingly challenging.

          For awhile, I was 'blaming' the script, and while no young playwright is "Shakespeare," in the end, that was just an excuse for how hard I found it . . .

          And so realizing this, I just bore down as best I could, refusing to blame anything for what I though was going wrong and concentrated fully on just doing my absolute best and then . . . just letting it all go (and learning as much as possible on the way) . . . I think the value of the lessons I learned (whatever they were) will manifest themselves at some point in the future -- they'll be there for me when I need them. Take care.

        - Love,
                 C

The second performance went very well -- Stacey and I are navigating our way around on the coach much better.

It's fascinating how different it is with a new partner. L had to leave the show a week before opening, and Stacey was brave enough to step into the role: There's one moment where I leap over the coach that early on naturally came out of rehearsal, and it was 100% a response to what L did at that moment, and that moment was repeatable, so I just kept leaping, and it was always funny

Stacey's take on the moment was her own -- for several rehearsals, and even during the opening, I keep leaping over the coach at the same line, but it never quite worked because the paring stimulus was gone, i.e., L set it up, and I delivered the physical "punch" line -- classic comic delivery. Stacey was actually giving me something else, and for too long, I tried to make a past moment work. I could have asked Stacey to deliver her line the way L had, but that didn't feel right at all (and even if it did, the rule is always: never direct another actor).

I could have asked the director to ask Stacey . . . but that felt like cheating to me, i.e., asking Stacey to change her performance for my convenience -- it would have been the easy way out of my own performance problem (and my personal rule is: never export your own problems into someone else's life/work).

So finally tonight, I did what I should have done at the beginning -- I just really paid attention to Stacey up to and through that moment, keeping an eye open for a possible setup-punch line combination (because it is in the writing), but not pushing it, and lo and behold, something unplanned happened: the quality and timing of my leap changed, and it got the biggest laugh of the run.

Lesson:

Never try to hang onto the past, neither in life nor on stage. If you do, you'll feel frustrated and stuck, like nothing's working out and you're not moving ahead at all -- and you're not. Much more rewarding to look for what opportunities do exist rather than searching for what you want/hope to find: Instead, seeing what was right in front of me, available to me right then and there -- that's all I needed.

Post-script:

For some reason, both the very talented & attractive female co-stars (who's great performances really helped save my own), Darynn Zimmer & Stacey Newsome-Santiago, wanted to add kissing to the "climax" of their scenes with me, and the director (showing great wisdom) agreed to the changes, and I thought they worked very well.

Last night, going back to Brooklyn on the A line, two middle aged Asian women sitting next to me were twisting their heads to look at me and then back to each other, laughing and pointing. I looked at them quizzically, and they asked, with hands half covering their mouths, what had I been doing that night. Now really looking confused, they burst out laughing and one pointed to my collar and my face: lipstick (two different shades), perfume, & makeup were all over the place. I was taken aback and I stammered that I was in a play that night, and other people nearby in the car started in with: oh yeah ... sure you were . . .

Well, it went well. What a relief! And, I have to admit, I didn't give the play itself enough credit -- the audience laughed, and much more than I anticipated. And I was much funnier than I anticipated -- I was fully prepared to, well . . . suck.

After, the director was effusive with her complements and told us all that we had done very well, which was very gratifying to hear.

Another director gave me a big compliment on something I've always (secretly) prided myself on - my comic timing -- which she said was great! That was very nice to hear because it reaffirmed what I've always felt was a relative strength, and it's one of the important things I wanted to bring to the role, to the production.

Whenever I feel better, because I've thought/felt that I've done a good job, I always spontaneously turn to these two questions:

What is good theatre, what is good acting?

Partial answer: Good acting is theatricality infused with truth, or truth shaped by theatricality. Real life is always true, but it's not always interesting to watch.

95% of my theatricality feels like an affectation or a glimmer of the truth, but not full blown truth. I think I've got a better handle on theatricality than I do on truth. I have a hard time, usually, remembering what happened during a performance, but I do remember clearly the cracks, the blanks, the indicating of a moment that's just not there. And that's good, I hope, i.e., if I can see when and where the performance cracks, then I have a chance to do something about it -- it's telling me something about how I work as an actor, and what I need to learn.

My bad acting is really a teacher, if I can just listen closely enough, i.e., . . .

Question:

we do the "logical" indication, but how do we know what indication to use (e.g., the gesture of the back of the hand to the forehead to indicate distress)?

Two answers/issues:

1. If I find myself indicating a moment, it just might mean that I haven't gone down deep enough, and maybe there is a tiny truth inside me, just enough to tell me not only how to indicate but also how to find a deeper truth. When this happens in rehearsal, just try breathing into what's going on -- don't rush to the indication.
2. It could also be that I don't trust the truth to read, and so I indicate. Again, give myself a chance to succeed in these moments rather than rushing to an indication.