Look Itsa Pooka!

I'm in a pulitzer prize winning play!

Well, yeah the play was written in 1944 and yeah, its been done a million times and yeah, Jimmy Stewart starred in a movie about it in 1950, BUT I was just hired on for another show with Sierra Rep in the fall. Whoop, Ety, and Doo, folks. 

I'm incredibly excited. A wide sprint closer to Equity status. A paid professional theater job. A chance to continue honing and disciplining skills on which I sorely need to work.  A continued relationship with Sonora, the socially pocked capital of California. A longer time to explore personal, artistic endeavors. More time to ponder the IOOF. More time to explore Yosemite. More time to thrift. More time to read. More time to write. More time to practice yoga on my lonesome which I do often now and love.  More to watch hummingbirds. More yards from which to eat organic tomatoes, plums, peaches, apples. More ponds to ponder near. More cheap Knob Creek at the Iron Horse. More life to live and work to do toward goals I was already churning like butter in LA - and knowing I am near enough to be back soon.  

I feel very patient about everything right now. I don't know why except the change of pace. The stir-crazy feelings that should usually encroach don't because I am working as an actor. Its like my process and energy in rehearsals translates to a swipe of the blood of the Lamb on my front door frame while the Angel of Death floats past toward a different poor soul to envelop. Ten Commandments anyone? Anyone? Charlton Heston? Cecil B. DeMille epic? Oh. Man. Pom-Pom. So good. 

Hey, I know where to get good espresso, a great salmon salad, so-so sushi and I have a simple syrup lil' gym to visit if I want to be surrounded by high schoolers and their funny masks. Yes, we were all like that not long ago and wait, many haven't changed except to evolve their mask, refining them to a tee no one would quite notice because others are either too self-involved or are adept at doing the same thing and bored by yours. What? I didn't say that. Even though you know its true, though I'm not admitting it for a second. 

Instead, I can be truly concerned with this incredible script by Mary Chase - a woman who is apparently indirectly responsible for the Donnie Darko screenplay (I'm speculating!) because in 1944 she wrote about  an extremely pleasant alcoholic man who is best friends with a six foot (and a half!) tall white rabbit named Harvey, who is a Pooka. What is a Pooka? Here is a Pooka.  It's kind of fascinating. And the fact that Ms. Chase could popularize such subject matter within such a strict era context was pretty groundbreaking.  Reading about the main character, Elwood P. Dowd, I was inspired by his wonderfully lovely demeanor and overall true embodiment of tolerance over all things - specifically people and the handling of life that he is tied to.  It doesn't matter how many options are before us, there are always people pulling us in directions without our approval or consent.  Elwood, despite his alcoholism and constant companionship with a Celtic spirit, added the most truly evolved element to the lives of his loved ones and well, basically all newcomers to his conversation. 

He represents fairness, love, peace and many of the qualities we yearn for our own race on a majority level. Global loveliness. John Lennon-like levels. But this was all in 1944. So I really just want to talk to Mary Chase and understand who she based these people on.

In La-La, time is of the essence. No one is getting any younger. Time is money. In it to win it and all that. All I can say is, I'll be right back after these messages...from the Universe. 

Where the Wild You Is...

Welcome to the Afterlife. 

I'm in Sonora, California. It's not heaven, nor is it hell - despite the glowing fires visible last night from a lone Tuolomne cabin burning not so terribly far away, sitting like a vermilion fog across the mountainside. If Mordor was ever a real vision...Truly wild and uncontrollable rage of nature, awakening locals as normally as coffee brewing.  The smell of smoked branches and foliage permeating each household, clamping the hearts of loved ones personally tied to the meek bravery out there among the trees, or what's left of them.  I'm awash with helplessness and little relation to the whole thing save for my current location. Pay your verbal respects, know the containment percentages and buy a firefighter a Blackeye at Starbucks.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

I don't think Dylan was referring to a rim fire, but it is certainly fitting. I sat awestruck on the stroke of midnight, absorbing the orange cloud with my tired eyes and feeling nothing about myself, just wonder at a thing so powerful and so pure yet so foreign.  A sense of guilt lay suspended in the air for having thoughts of beauty tied to such a monstrous, damaging thing. I think I had the same experience with an ex once.  What can I say? Dark needs light and so on.

Earlier today, I claimed a need to be stirred and roused with emotion. I mean in the sense that one can have that uncontrollable, unconstrained wailing release of pure feeling. The dam is breaking. I am seeking a perfect host through which I can wet the dry walls of the well. You know, that Well that lives at your core being. Music has definitely stormed the sea up into a tizzy, but there is no wave yet to upturn the boat and lose oneself to the elements. Danger Mouse, Doves, Norah, Jack, Cass, CocoRosie - the emotional and the strange. I will take it for now despite their lacking crowbar efforts to crack the safe. Pair these things with a winding, rural drive and there is nearly a solution.

Don't get me wrong, it is a blessing to be moved by things.  But it is an intake/outtake issue.  Like Lion's Breath in yoga, one needs to exert as much as take in. The Libra in me screams balance, the Virgo in me seeks urgency and the Scorpio Rising watches with distanced interest how it all might play out.   Release is craved, in so many ways.  I believe the answers lie in the finely combed honeygrass 'cross these California landscapes.  The land may be burning, but it is also calling. 

As I age, the battle against myself to allow feeling, to allow instincts and to trust my own joys, horrors and reactions seems both less daunting and yet far more sensitive. I have been trying to give in to the wild parts as of late. I AM wild in certain parts - even the most conservative countryside has some wild patches here and there. But how will you know who you are if you don't explore these territories? If you let fear keep you on the same path day after day, letting the familiarity not only cloak you - but rob you of fresh air?  Breathe, my darlings, breathe.  Breathe every single day, long glorious breaths - unless there is smoke in the air.  I think therein lies the problem.   I am tumbling through youthful emotional spaces that may or may not have rattlesnakes. I say to all, yes, go, journey, but there are no promises of safety. Belt out a glorious peal of laughter but do not be affected by the emergence of judgement. Don't even give those disrupted humans the time of day. But go, GO into the wild, what's a little poison oak?

Round Sonora, I drive from town to town, county to county, location to location, rehearsal to rehearsal. I often pass the IOOF, it's proud electric pink lettering mockingly reminding me to enter on the side door. I'm not a man, so I'm not allowed (though I may be an odd fellow, I'll give myself that).  But as I steer away from the main strip, my headlights catch what appears to be a cat playing furiously by the sidewalk in the dark street, easily in harm's way. I wonder all at once if he is feral or a kitten or if he needs a home or has caught a rat. I park instantly around the corner and walk back to see if I might rescue the thing or at least absolve my curiosity.  On approach, the little beast is revealed to be motionless in a pool of blood. The witness of such wild writhing was actually of his last moments in death, a mere... ten seconds ago. I stand still, mouth covered by hand, and imagine the wealth of pain. Again, beauty in the horror. Or is it horror in the beauty? This strange portrait experience seems related to so many planes of the day and of Sonora in general. Equal parts terrible, true, lovely and pungent.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

Perhaps this is all too cryptic for you today. Perhaps my head is so chock full of things from a lack of blogging and lack of release that things are thick as coconut oil been sittin' in the fridge too lawng. Perhaps being out of urban territory has inspired way more synapses firing than I ever dreamed.  

I don't know, darlings. But have a beautiful day, won't you?

(PS, I took a photo of this door in Sonora four days before this event. It not only happens to be the very street on which my ill-fated stray died, its body was lying directly in before it.)

Go North, Young Man

Fool's gold. You might say that one finds alotta that stuff in La La. If you pan the creek day after day (mostly because you don't have access to the A-List Ocean and also because doing extra work really isn't that different of a task), you're bound to find bits and pieces of something perhaps worthy. At least, that's a little of what it was like moving here in the first place, not knowing really anyone, growing up outside of the industry, searching for scraps - scouting - hunting. I always say that and imagine growing up on the outside of a great, incredible wall that encases some glorious, inaccessible city.  How to find a way in and survive in the meantime?

Of course, you're always a bit like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters looking for the Gatekeeper; glasses askew, shirt untucked and heaving forth with an air of desperation and also unpolished debate.  Why are you worthy to go inside? These answers develop over time - as one gets to know one's self.   I think many actors' problems have exactly to do with that; being unsure with what they are capable of, where their limits are and how they fit in now and perhaps later. I find pitching myself to be exhausting, so lately I've been letting the work speak for itself.  Someone once communicated the sound argument that if you include, by practice and other means, your art in everyday life, like a true fusion of your mentality/physicality with said art, the work we desire will be drawn to us like a magnet.

This makes sense to me, except that waking up with the concept of acting is not so simple. There are plays to be read, workouts to be planned (and executed!), lines to be memorized, places to rehearse, diction to be perfected, movies to be seen, creativity to be tapped, people to meet, people to stay in touch with, people to run away screaming from, auditions to attend, hair to be done, checkbooks to balance, jobs to be found, and fool's gold to be panned for - among other things.  To incorporate the acting life is very much like stretching all the muscles of the body, as in yoga.  We breathe and flex for further progression into each category, all while trying to remain calm and focused.  The latter is much harder than it seems - Worry & Concern are terrible twins that tirelessly threaten to bully and mar the day. 

I have been proud of my progression this summer. Yes, I'll claim that statement! I have shot a national commercial, a guest spot on Days of Our Lives, a gun into the air as Annabella Schmidt in The 39 Steps, and soon I'll be heading up north near Yosemite to do Don't Dress for Dinner in the role of "Suzette", a French caterer and opportunist (Hey, I can play a caterer!! I can do that really REALLY well!!!).  I'll be working toward Equity status under this show as well as having a much needed vacay from La La. Don't get me wrong, love this town, but I need to TRAVEL, my friend. See some overgrown trees and squirrels, marvel at a cactus somewhere, move to a gold rush town in the middle of the northern state. Yes, let's do that. Oh, and I can't wait to attack their only thrift store.

More later on future endeavors. I've got other projects up my sleeve but they are in liquid form. I'll call you when they solidify. 

By the way, Breaking Bad is in four days. Four. August 11th. You haven't seen it? What is wrong with you? Get out your Netflix. Now.

Like a Rolling Hourglass...

My LA TV debut is a long time coming. Boy oh boy, I tell ya.

I got the good news this afternoon from my agent about booking a role on a very famous soap opera that I am wary to mention. Quick, lend me your tv guide articles! 
 (Who gets those anymore?)  Anyway, I auditioned for Marnie Saitta in February when I was dog-ass sick with the flu, BUT nevertheless very, very skinny - thanks, Flu!  I did my scene and Marnie just flat out told me that I'd never get cast in this role, or probably any role, because I look too much like one of their main stars. I didn't know who she was talking about, but I appreciated her candor. Hey, no skin off my toenail.

Suddenly last week I get a breakdown for a lookalike to this exact star for DoOL. I just realized that nobody probably ever abbreviates that title due to this outcome. Yikes. Anyway, COOL - Marnie remembers that I look like this woman and is calling me in! Mah-velous, dah-ling.

I was in the final throes of tech week for my play The 39 Steps when I received the audition.  There was a bout of confusion on Saturday (the audition being Monday) when I finally had a moment to open the sides. They were for a 17-year-old high school girl named Kira. And I thought: surely, they don't want me to play a 17-year-old version of this woman. Is this a flashback to her high school days moving forward into her...ahem, late twenties? How odd!  I finally deciphered that these are probably the wrong sides. So I received the right ones in the nick of time and ran to 3400 West Olive.

Bada-bing bada-boom. My only question thus far is, if this role is indeed an "Addict" (which that IS the name of the role and she is certainly high as a kite in the scene), then what drug is she using? I have to do some Youtube  research....or I could just knock on the gypsies' motor home door up the street and ask them if I can observe for a while. In exchange for a side table and some unwanted clothes, of course. Maybe a discman.

Anyway - I shoot next Tuesday. I do the show tomorrow night starting our second weekend of performances in Glendale. Oh yeah and I just shot a commercial for American Standard with a bad ass director in the shortest amount of crunched, stressed out time for a crew EVER. His work is here: Albert Kodagolian.

I leave you with a montage for THE 39 STEPS because its fun and you'll see a bit of what it might be about...

The 39 Steps

Or..."Ze Serty-Nine Shteps" as my German spy character, Annabella, would say.

This just a blog of self congratulations. I saw a notice of audition for this play. I bought said play. I made an audition appointment for said play. I rehearsed German, British and Scottish dialects for said play. I attended TWO callbacks for said play. Now I have BOOKED said play! Hoorah and hooray! Huzzah and kazoo.

I'm most looking forward to the following spokes in the wheel:

1. It is an intimate cast with only four folks - I play three characters within the play - all love interests, fleeting to slightly more involved. The main squeeze, Richard, stays himself throughout. The other two guys  tackle a whopping 150 roles combined filling in every other character in the show - at points they are playing two to three characters within a single scene.

2. Physical comedy in the round - this play moves FAST because our  hero, Richard, is running AND pursuing AND just going going going until the end. There is little room for a moment of boredom, even for the cotton-candy-haired.  Time to pull out some heroes of physical comedy and get a-studyin'. 

3. Dialects! Yeah, I know, I won't shut up about them. Well, I LOVE THEM DADDY! I LOVE THEM AND YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT! (Runs away sobbing to bedroom, slams door.) Other languages can not only be fascinating but hilarious. The mouth is a keyhole, the voice a key, and suddenly there you are unlocking perfectly wild characters from inside you. 

4. I haven't done a play in over 4 years!  Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? That is absolute craziness. I miss live theatre horribly - oh, the stage! - and I have a feeling this will sort of purify my acting spirit.  All that distracting stuff floating around inside my head and chest? It will be shaken out and the good stuff will compress at the bottom near the diaphragm. That's where it needs to live. 

Of course I will remind everyone when this show is going up and I will personally strangle anyone that doesn't show in what will be a 5 weekend run. We open JULY 13th at the Glendale Centre Theater and run until August 17th. Very much excite! 

Here is a fun history of the theater if you are so inclined. A long-standing staple of La La and Glen-Glen.

GLENDALE CENTRE THEATER ABOUT

Also, here is the entire film of the same title on which this play is based, an early Hitchcock endeavor.

Behind the Candelabra

It was Memorial Day and I celebrated by watching Behind the Candelabra - the new Soderbergh experiment. I call his films "experiments" because he has that snowglobe-director style of perpetual motion genre, never quite settling into one. He's a less masterful version of Ang Lee, but they are neighboring provinces in the game of Risk.  It is both enticing and admirable to watch a director kind of "work out" his kinks cinematically over the course of a career.  However, I have a love-hate relationship with Soderbergh because his concepts keep charming or intriguing me all the way to the box office and then I leave deflated or disappointed. The Girlfriend Experience? Please. A dump in a toilet could act better than Sasha Grey and MAYBE since the movie is entirely CARRIED by her it might be a good idea to cast an ACTRESS who has perhaps a little LIGHT behind her dead, dead eyes.  Hey, maybe she's considered the Garbo of Porn but Steven's "crossover" worked as well as a zombie and a chicken falling in love.

Also, Bubble - a super low budget indie flick starring no one, but apparently it was the first film to be available for immediate dvd purchase at the counter when you've....just seen it...I mean, maybe you wanna buy the movie you just saw cause.....you loved it so much.  And you wanted to take it home TODAY.  To watch LATER.  Or, immediately again if that is what you prefer. My question is: DID ANYONE BUY THAT FILM? I don't even know anyone who saw the damn thing except myself and an ex.  It might be worth calling him just to recap our vague feelings about a film from 8 years ago. I actually remembering liking it at the time, but not enough to be a proud owner afterwards. Also, that's when dvds were like $20.

Don't even get me started on The Informant. Yes, I walked out on Matt Damon. He was sending me on a fast train to Snoozeville and I hate fading in public. And you cannot make me watch The Good German again no matter how loyal I am to a Clooney flick.  A message to all directors: never ever shoot Tobey Maguire in black and white. His eyes were so bulbous and vacant, they had a natural 3D component.

All of this sounds like a Soderbergh hate party, but it ain't. Look at his credits on IMDB - there are a ton of good films all with astounding differences and risks that may or may not have been successfully sussed out.  But he is creating, doing, pouring, shooting, writing, producing, directing his passionate little heart out with projects that obviously aren't the easiest Hollywood sells. Who, I ask you, wasn't a little bit queasy imagining Michael Douglas and Matt Damon as star-studded (not crossed) lovers in a Swarovski whirlwind that is the story of Liberace?  Well, curiosity prevailed on that one.

MAN, first I must point out that Matt Damon just gets better with time. Six-seven years ago, someone proposed a seemingly common argument that Damon was better than DiCaprio and I scoffed mightily.  But I see the wonderfully connected strains, like gleaming golden threads, in his performances.  In Behind he is subtle - almost subdued - but very, very present and also marvelously committed. Michael Douglas comes across as everything you might expect him to be except that he is LIKABLE batting those deep brown eyes like they are swimming with innocent intention and not mixed with perversity.  He is a charming Liberace, but not overly so.  He doesn't really have all the right words, he just has lots of flamboyance (period-appropriate), talent, and luxury - lots and lots of luxury.  

Matt Damon mirrors the starlet who just moved to La-La.  Drawn to but entirely unsure of this extravagant, wigged man who may indeed be genuinely enamored, but is also very old and incredibly horny. We cringe and flinch when Douglas is near because he looks like such an ancient chic freak.  Plus we all know what he really wants - and what rich, famous Liberace wants? He gets. Such is this story - and Damon is sucked into a world that changes him completely and literally.  No, he literally gets plastic surgery in this film and the make-up is just fabulous, darling.  Mad props to that department.

Behind the Candelabra successfully reveals a sad transformation at the hands of the rich and powerful. A case of someone fair, grounded, moral and good being called by a siren and slowly sailing to her shore, only to have his head snatched off in a scorpion's instant.  If you date someone famous, or at least that deep into their own career and persona, beware that you will NEVER be - or at least stay - a true priority. The self is first in this case nearly every single time.  But Damon was being pursued by a skilled hunter on the hunter's land.  In the hunter's own LAIR even. So he didn't have much of a chance coupling that with, you know, LOVE - that darn concept, always obscuring everything.

I will keep watching Soderbergh's work.  He is one of the few true directors we have today despite not always executing with greatness, but he has his moments. And those moments are available for immediate purchase or download on your itunes.  PS, in staying true to his cat's cradle of media games, Steven made this film for HBO but it will be theatrically released come June 7th. PSS, BRILLIANT casting with Rob Lowe (and in general). Nice work, Carmen Cuba.

Plague

A dream plagued me last night. Or, a specific character. Over and over again I awoke in a bothered state and looked at my cell. Thirty minute bouts of time. Each moment of waking was heavier, more tired, and eventually a throbbing deeply rooted itself in the left temporal lobe. The sun was shining but the room cried rest so a silent spell was muttered to banish its clarity.

As usual I went about my day unsure but dreamy.  I decided on the first few order of things - breakfast, yes, but then what, how about reading that play, writing that blog or cleaning the floor of your room? Since the OCD nerves are most sensitive in my feet, I desperately swept the dirt and cat hair from the bedroom floor. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Amen. 

I nestled in comfortably to read "The 39 Steps" by Patrick Barlow - a comical and staged adaptation of the Alfred Hitchcock film. I have not been so thoroughly entertained when reading a play in AGES.  It wasn't just structured in perfect cleverness, it is also the kind of play one would have the time of their life performing.  Marvelous dialogue, classy melodrama with hilarious tongue-in-cheek tones - and dialects. Lots and lots of dialects.  I wound up dreaming within the reading, imagining the only female role so vividly and almost achingly, delighting in every banter and move she made. ('Why, I'd be perfect for that role!' the Actress thought)

Then the combatant mental reel turned on like a haunted radio, invading my mind not with possibilities, but possible impossibilities. Obstacles, hurdles, and skittish opportunities that appeared like brown rabbits in an autumn wood, lost upon approach. These thoughts were draining the half cup full!  Not destroying, but threatening and bullying any attempt to dream in good faith. It's strange when something we love - even an idea - is also so prone to our pain and hurt.  We lash out at our own good thoughts. Just the other night, a strange human sound wafted in from outside leading me to step onto the fire escape: was it laughter, was it tears? Protest? 

I looked down to see a man, huddled but standing against the brick wall by a dumpster, in a half light from the alley lamp-post. He was sobbing uncontrollably as a larger man moved to embrace him saying," I'm sorry, I just can't control it sometimes."  I froze, but was drawn forward to calculate and understand. I wanted to yell "Are you okay?" but there was only fear of the worst in my throat. This moment carried on with incessant crying at some sort of apology without being an apology.  Resistant embraces. Fear and love.  Words not reflecting behavior.  I silently turned and ran to call on some help.  It became apparent that these two men were lovers and were physically and verbally abusing each other. Eventually, the sob-stricken man weakly followed his boyfriend like a dying shadow down the alley and out of the light.

My heart sank. Because when you need someone THAT much - that you allow them to strike you, lash out at you and then hold you, as if they were the only thing that existed (and not just once or twice) - it is not worth it.  I do not want to NEED my dreams because that is not how they are born. They are born out of a simple love and pure desire of the heart.  They are meant to be followed with strength, optimism and personal illumination - not crawled after in shame, surrender or especially guilt. A dream should not be both your lover and your tormentor. And the harping voices that whisper-scream to jade, fade, and beat down the beauty? Don't just avoid them in the school hall between classes. Stand up to them and reveal WHO YOU ARE and who you've always been since you - the Creator - began your dream. This isn't R.U.R.

That broken man obviously felt he had no one else to turn to, but that was his delusional crux.  Understand that one cannot live on a dream alone - else it is a foolish attempt to sustain health on imaginary food while in reality the body withers away.   In the meantime, sow fulfillment in the normalcy of life - however that materializes; friends, gardening, cooking, writing, church, books,  film, cleaning (ahem) - something!  

I have to hold on to my dream every single day. I also must to add to it, but it is worth questioning what is becoming of the plant we water.  Is it a grand perennial or is it Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors?  (FEEEEEEEED me, Evaaaa!) How is pursuing your dream changing you?  Make sure it is for the better no matter what enemies lurk and grasp - physical, mental, emotional or otherwise. When you spot an enemy on the horizon - simply breathe them away. Recall a moment of joy you have had connected to that dream. Or...just say "Hey, it's a dream." And stride on. 

I want to you leave you with the words of Ang Lee upon winning his first oscar for Brokeback Mountain (Um, sidebar they are making that into a musical...hm....).  Warning: a brief sob is possible and also perfectly okay. It should always be. This may be serious stuff but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy it. 

ANG LEE: The Never-Ending Dream. 

Hopefully when I see you next, I'll have something dream-related to boast about...