FAITH

I was at the gym listening to Stars play a concert at the 9:30 club in D.C. After the show, Bob Boylan of NPR interviewed the band. As I was treading away on the elliptical trainer, Torquil Campbell, their lead singer said something that resonated with me on a really deep level. He spoke of a kind of faith in a way I hadn't really thought of before. He said,

“It’s an act of faith I think. You know, Just like any theatre, any play, or any piece of art. It’s an act of faith. You have to have faith in the receiver that they’re going to extend, you know, they’re going to suspend their disbelief and go there with you. And you have to have faith in yourself that it’s worth saying. You know? And if you can keep that little thread floating in the air, of faith, through the course of the gig, it’s a beautiful gig. And it seems light as air you know. But if it comes down to Earth then getting it back up again is a hard thing to do. So it’s really just about having faith in it being a good thing to do with your time, you know.”

The first thing I thought was of yesterday when I found myself acting very loudly and really grinding the words in my mouth as I acted. And I could feel myself doing it but wasn't exactly sure how to stop it. But then, toward the end of the show, I said to myself very consciously, "Carson. Just say one or two lines at the volume and speed you'd say them to a friend in the room with you right now and see what happens." And when I did, I felt the room close in. I felt the attention intensify. I felt the response grow.

And I was so happy that I'd done it, but I wasn't sure exactly what I'd done. I mean, sure, I'd switched from condescending Shakespeare "acting" to a more honest mode of "living" in space with people watching, sure. But I'd also done something else that I hadn't named. So I was in a really receptive place when I heard that interview and heard Torquil talk about having that kind of "faith". I think what I realized, listening to the interview, is that because these audiences aren't typical theatre goers and because they haven't paid an admission price (and frankly because at the first homeless shelter we went to people would just get up and walk out on us!) I didn't have faith or trust in our audience's desire to hear or watch our story. Also, because some of the rooms we've been in have been full of buzzing fans and vending machines, I didn't trust that they could even hear us, let alone understand us. And yesterday, while I didn't couch it in those terms, I came around a corner and began to have a bit more faith in them and in my own ability to communicate with them more authentically by communicating with fellow actors more authentically. I feel fortunate to have listened to that interview yesterday to have Torquil put words to a feeling that had already been going on inside me all day.

So today, as we head out to the Boys and Girls Club in beautiful Newark, NJ, I'm excited to keep the experiment afloat and the faith alive. I'll trust that they're present, listening, aware and that I don't have to work so GD hard to keep the feather in the air.

My First Time In Prison

It was my first time in prison, and I was in denial. I was in denial for a variety of reasons. First, I was in denial that we, as an acting company commissioned by The Public Theatre of New York, were about to perform an almost uncut version of Measure for Measure in front of anyone with only sixteen days of rehearsal. Second, I was in denial that we were actually going to be performing the play for the first time in front of the inmates of the Arthur Kill correctional facility on Staten Island.

But denial usually stops when reality comes crashing into you like a sidewalk-hogging New Yorker who shoulder checks you hard to assert their metropolitan dominance. As we pulled into the parking lot at Arthur Kill, our stage manager reminded us that we were to leave everything except our IDs in the car. We all stripped ourselves of our keys and wallets and put them in our bags. Moments later we were all in the parking lot waiting to be summoned to the front of the building to begin the process of, uh, processing.

It was only 4:45 p.m., but the late-fall sun was racing through the clouds in a seeming race to be done with the day. Consequently, the cloudy afternoon sky turned into a strange fluffy layer-cake of bright orange and pink behind the razor-wire topped gates of the prison. As we stood there waiting, we could see inmates traversing the yard bundled up in all green. I hadn’t imagined inmates in green. I’d imagined either construction-vest orange or Shawshank Redemption blue. The green made them look like a gang of Central Park employees on a massive conservation assignment. It was about at this time that I said, “Is anyone else nervous that we’re going to be acting just a few feet in front of convicted criminals?” Everyone kind of laughed and Will Harper, our Claudio mused, “Well, this is a medium security prison. I imagine there are a lot of a folk up in here that were just, ‘In The Car’. You know? Like, ‘Yeah, my cousin Mario was driving and he had a bunch of guns and drugs with him and I was IN THE CAR with him soooo…” I laughed hard and we proceeded to act out a half dozen improvised scenarios of “In The Car” all ending with the hapless accessory to the crime having been completely innocent other than having been “In The Car”. The lightened mood made me feel better. Our director, Michelle Hensley, who has been doing this for years also chimed in, “Now I’ve never been to a New York prison, but in my twenty years in Minnesota, we’ve never had any problems at all. They are usually incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to see the work and are very polite.” I looked at her and joked, “Yeah. But this is New York. This is definitely not a Prairie Home Companion Prison.”

Not long after, we were waved over to the front of the prison. We all ambled up toward the door and our costume designer, Vivian, began running up to us with extra costume pieces, throwing them over our heads or stuffing them into our pockets. “These are pieces we’ve added in the last few days and so they weren’t on the pre-approved list of items we could bring in. But you can bring them in as part of your personal outfits. They just can’t come in as “props” or “costumes” because they weren’t on the list.” So we all looked a little silly as we began to accessorize with chunky ropes, sweaters, and other mismatched costume and prop pieces to head into the processing lobby. I also thought it was funny how the system worked. They guards had JUST seen all of these items and vetoed them for entry because they were not on a pre-approved list. Now, just moments later, apparently these items would be fine to come in, as long as they were haphazardly draped around our necks or hanging out of our pockets. That’s just some crazy bureaucratic bullshit at its’ finest right there.

As we entered the front room of the prison, we all had to present our IDs for inspection and, like the airport, take off any belts or metals and subject our jackets and coats to inspection. Vivian, our costume designer, was made to take her keys out to the parking lot and hide them under the wheel well of her car because she had an electronic door-opening button on her keychain. No outside electronics allowed. As each of us was processed, we were stamped with a kind of translucent yellowish goo on our right hands. As we stood there waiting for everyone to get processed, we noticed that it wasn’t drying. “What the hell is this stuff?” we all began to wonder out loud. As large numbers of us got processed, we were then taken into a kind of “safe room” that served as a conduit between the outside world of society and the inside world of the prison. It was a square room with two sets of thick red metal sliding doors controlled remotely from another glassed in room. A security officer from that adjacent glass room opened the door to the lobby and a bunch of us went in. The door slid closed. “I need you all to hold up your hands that got stamped” an amplified voice said through a speaker in the upper corner of the room. We all did as we were asked. The light in the chamber went blinked off and the odd brown glow of a black light came on. Every piece of white clothing anyone was wearing became a bright blue beacon of light and, sure enough, all of our hands were slathered in a brightly lit glowing glop of yellow. If a picture were taken, we’d probably look like a bunch of kids packed into a dance club pumping our fists in the air to some new LCD Soundsystem track. But a moment later the fluorescent lights popped back on and the door to the inner prison silently dislodged and slid back to allow us in.

It was about this point, as we entered into the caged inner world of the prison, that I began to think about the show itself and the props that we’d been using for it. Items on the approved list that were actually ALLOWED into the prison included; a Billy Club, a variety of percussion mallets, a gavel, an iron key chain with prop “keys” made out of thick metal rebar, and a variety of ropes. I began to imagine every way in which a renegade inmate might be able to quickly commandeer one or many of these items and begin a murderous rampage through the visitor’s center of the prison where we were to perform. I imagined Will Harper making his first entrance as Elbow, the constable, twirling his baton. In my mind’s eye, the image of thick and hardened criminal, let’s call him Mike, appeared. Mike’s muscled up from years of relentless weight training in the yard. Mike’s in year fifteen of forty year sentence and he’s been feeling lately like there’s nothing left to lose and as he stares at that club, he becomes aroused by it’s crushing potential and it’s proximity to his free and powerful hands. I imagined Mike, as Will launched into his hilarious bit about catching his wife in a brothel, launching out of his front row chair and wrenching the baton out of Will’s hand and in a lightning fast motion spinning and jumping on top of one of the other prisoners, his nemisis Rick maybe, and being able to thoroughly beat the brains out of Rick’s surprised head. In the confusion that I imagined would follow, the security guards would run over and try to pry the murderous berzerker off of his now dead victim while out and out chaos took hold in the room. It would be at this point that the sex-starved criminals would begin running after the women of the cast and dragging them into the corners of the visitors center for horrifying gang rapes. All the while, I imagined I’d curl into a ball on the floor under one of the enormous Friar’s robes and pretend to be a pile of costumes while I listened to the horror around me and tried to reconcile myself to the fact that I would, should I survive the night, never sleep again.

The other nightmare that ran through my head was much more specific and personal. I imagined being on stage and saying my first line, “If the duke, with the other dukes, come not to composition with the King of Poland, why then all the dukes fall upon the king.” That line is a bitch. I’m classically trained and I know what I’m doing with Shakespeare and I had to sit with that line for ten minutes before I figured out that Lucio is just saying, “I bet the reason that the duke’s gone is that all the dukes are conspiring with the King of Poland. If they’re not, then they’re probably meeting up to plan to assassinate our king.” But even when I put it into the “easy read” translation like that, it’s still a big and heavy thought. In any event, I imagined a hardened and angry inmate thinking, “I hate the way this character uses such bullshit language. I hate that guy. I’m going to break his face.” And in the middle of one of my speeches, having someone jump up and tackle me and while punching my teeth in scream, “TALK LIKE A PERSON!! TALK LIKE A FUCKING PERSON!!” Suffice it to say, these were not my usual pre-show thoughts.

I tried to breathe through those thoughts and the actual visitor’s center itself helped me do just that. The room was warm and expansive and included a wall of vending machines, a sectioned off play area for children, and walls painted with friendly Disney characters and murals of the New York City skyline. It was not exactly what you would imagine as the backdrop to a horrible prison revolt and a nightmarish exploration of negative human potential. I relaxed a bit. The crudely drawn Mickey Mouse on the wall seemed to be saying, “There’s nothing to be afraid of Carson!” And he was right. As I thought about children, I thought about each of these men, not as stereotypes of bad people, but of specific human beings with specific families and specific sets of given circumstances that brought them into this prison. And then I thought about the fact that it is entirely possible one of the reasons they ended up in prison is that they were never really able to fully put themselves in someone else’s shoes or understand that there were choices available to them other than the ones they made. And, in a fairly self-aggrandizing way, I began to think nobly on the theatre and it’s function. I began to think about the way the early myths were meant not just as storytelling, but also as a means of socialization. The myths put people into situations that would flummox the best of us for understanding how to behave and then showed us choices that either worked or didn’t. But that’s an essay for another time. The point is that I thought, “There are a lot of things that are going to be said in this play that are going to be incredibly resonant for this audience.” All of a sudden I thought about one of my first lines, “Not to be weary with you, he’s in prison.” The line sat in my chest like a weight for the first time. I then thought, “Holy shit, three quarters of this play takes place in prison.” This is going be heavy.

As we walked through the room, running lines, feeling our voices out in the space, and calming our own nerves, different representatives of The Public showed up. Barry Edelstein, the head of the Shakespeare initiative, and Oskar Eustice, the artistic director of the theatre, both came for our first show. A few minutes before the inmates were brought in, the superintendent of the facility gathered us up and made some announcements. He was a professional and good humored man in his late fifties with a head of straight grey hair and glasses. He spoke with a slight Staten Island drawl. “So, we’re really glad to have you. This is clearly, a big deal for the inmates here. I hope everything’s been OK so far. Everyone get in OK? Not too big of a deal to get in? Good. Now wait ‘till you try to get out.” He smiled at his own gallows humor. We all smirked and nodded like, “Jesus.” He went on, “Now we understand that because of your performance, you’re probably going to want to make some sort of direct contact with inmates. We really want that to be as brief as possible. The big reason is, we don’t want people passing inmates drugs from the outside. We understand, it’s theatre and you may need to for your performance but we really do want it to be kept to a minimum. Keep in mind; with an event like this, the men usually have to be stripped when it’s over to make sure there wasn’t something passed to them. We’re not going to do that after this event. So, you know, you guys are kind of setting up how this is going to work for the next group that comes in. If this goes OK with you, then we can keep doing this and it gives the men something to look forward to. And you know, these guys all signed up for this. No one’s here against his will. So they should be pretty attentive. So…that’s all. Thanks again for coming. We hope you enjoy yourself. Thanks.”

Again, I began to think of these guys not in generalized terms, but in terms of their specific reality. And those specifics became even more pronounced as they began to enter the room from the yard. Each prisoner was frisked and patted down as they came into the room and it took a solid thirty minutes for the sixty or so guys to be brought in. The variety in age and race was pronounced. There were prisoners in their late fifties and there were prisoners as young as twenty. Black, white, tall, skinny, and fat. It was striking that any one of them could just change clothes and be on the street with me and I would never know in a million years that they were “criminals”.

The presence of the inmates weighed on a few of our female actresses. One of them became almost overwhelmed and said, “I just feel them so much.” Another felt that they, as criminal men, wouldn’t be able to relate to her characters’ point of view because her character is essentially, victimized by a criminal man in the play. Everyone was kind of processing how things were going to go down in their own way. I had kind of switched over into my usual actor-mode. My mind began to simply process through the script, the lines, the scenes, the actions, the blocking, and the hundreds of little things I needed to remember to do in the next few hours to hold up my responsibility to the piece.

At places I took my seat directly to the right of one of the prisoners in the front row. Barry Edelstein took the floor and introduced The Public’s Mobile Unit and explained a brief history of the Public Theatre and of Joe Papp and his dream of bringing Shakespeare to all New Yorkers. Then Michelle stood up to speak a bit. Michelle is about five feet tall and despite her black motorcycle boots, her inherent softness, kindness, and generosity shines out of her like a light. She cut a fascinating figure, juxtaposed against the assorted population of men in the room. She gave them an idea of what the play was about to her. “This play is a lot about what makes good justice and what makes real mercy. And I think the play says that to know, you really have to put yourself in someone elses’ place. And in this play, I think you’ll see how a lot of characters are put in each others’ places and then they have to see how they would act if those roles were reversed.” I looked around the room at what seemed to be very attentive and understanding faces listening to Michelle and I wondered what thoughts might be going through their heads when being spoken to about compassion. I admitted to myself I hadn’t really thought of Measure For Measure as a play about compassion. I’d thought of it as a play about lust, responsibility, justice, and power. But, as I often say, every fortunately composed piece of art speaks to the fact that we’re all in it together and that no one is alone. And Measure For Measure does have that message woven into its bloodied and lecherous fabric too. Michelle retreated to a back wall and Jackie, our percussionist, struck the opening gavel beats to commence the play.

The next few hours went by quickly and actually, fairly uneventfully. I have to say that my actor mind was at work a lot of the time. I was disappointed with the lack of sound quality in the room and the buzzing of the vending machines and the loud whirring of the fans forced me to act loudly and slowly in a way that made me feel artificial and, well, bad. I began to obsess about our lack of rehearsal time and I began to feel guilty that these prisoners were seeing our first public performance of this play in what I considered it’s under-rehearsed state. “Man, these are the people that should be seeing us really rock this play.” I thought. “We want them to really like Shakespeare. We want them to really get it! We don’t even get it yet!” But as the play went on, many of the men became more and more vocal with their responses. Not surprisingly, they came to really identify with my character, Lucio and with Rob Campbell’s Angelo. It was clear that they identified with the kind of rough-talking slanderous motormouth that Lucio is. And it was clear that they felt a great deal of sympathy for Angelo’s desire to do the right thing, but also to succumb to the temptation to abuse his newly appointed power for his own personal gratification. When the Duke at the end of the play busts Lucio and an officer takes him into custody, one of the guys said, “Oh damn. They got my boy!” I turned and looked at him and nodded solemnly like, “They did. Ah fuck. They did.”

When we finished the play, two things surprised me. First, they absolutely knew that play was over. They were following it fully and they understood the language and what was happening and when the last image had been established, they understood that the play was done. Secondly, they all instantly sprang to their feet to give us a standing ovation. They seemed genuinely happy and fulfilled and gratified to have been given this play. And it hit me in that moment what had transpired. We’d given them a gift. With our time and talent we’d created a show to give them. Without judgment of who they are or what they’d done, we’d given them a wild story, full of amazing thoughts and language to think about, mull over, and process. And they’d appreciated it. They had thoroughly received it in the spirit in which it was given. And, they’d given us a gift too. They’d signed up to be our audience. They’d given us their undivided attention and enthusiasm. They stood and clapped for a long time as we bowed, circled, bowed again, and retreated to the Superintendents’ office to change back into our street clothes.

As we changed, Oskar Eustis came into the dressing room to congratulate us. After a few hugs and “Good jobs” we ended up talking about pacing and how to make Act Five clearer. Soon we transformed into just theatre people in a typical post-show conversation, talking about how to really convey the inherent cacophonous insanity of Measure For Measure’s final act. But then I had a moment where I was thinking about where we were. We were in the Superintendent’s office of a major prison. And it hit me that Oskar had taken the time to drive an hour out of the city to support us as we all ushered in this project together. I detected a real pride in him that he was picking up the mantle from Papp and bringing Shakespeare directly to people who would have no other opportunity to experience it. It’s a noble idea and I was proud to be part of it’s actualization. My first acting engagement with the Public Theatre is fortuitously, exactly the kind of work that I want to do and exactly the way that I want to do it. I’m so aligned with the mission of this project and I’m thrilled to be part of it. I think we should expand it from prisons and shelters too. I think we should do it in the basement of the Empire State Building for the custodial staff of the building. I think we should do it in high school gymnasiums. I think we should do it anywhere that people who might not otherwise get to experience the live theatre, could get to.

The way out of Arthur Kill, thankfully, was not as difficult at the Superintendent had implied earlier. We gathered up our set pieces from the visitor’s center and many inmates called out words of praise to us. “Thanks for coming you guys!” and one guy shouted out to Rob, “Rob Campbell, you’re the truth!” No matter how that was meant, it was a profound compliment. But it does beg the question, “In what way is Rob Campbell the truth? Was it because he acted so truthfully? Or because Angelo is such a complicated and hard-core character and Rob had played him?” Something to chew on as we made our way through the halls with our iron gates and coat hooks. We all ended up again in the little metal and glass chamber with our hands up, still day-glow-gooped and illuminating brightly under the black light. Moments later we were outside.

The air felt clean and crisp in our noses and as the van pulled up we all checked in and talked about what had just happened. It was fascinating to hear everyone talk about what the impact of having criminals inside a prison watch our play felt like. It was both heavier and lighter than we’d imagined. For most of us, it was absolutely our first experience inside of a prison and was plenty of food for thought. And speaking of food, we were starving. We all climbed into the van and sandwiches were distributed amongst the cast. We all began to silently devour our meals as the van lurched out of the driveway and toward the distant Manhattan skyline in front of us. All of us eating…and processing.

"In any art form we seek the experience of going beyond what we already know. Many of us hear the stirring of the new, and it is the artist who must midwife the new reality that we (the audience) eagerly await. It is sight into this reality that inspires and regenerates us. This is the role of the artist, to give sight."- Viola Spolin

Church, Theatre, or Community Gathering? Yes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/theater/26secret.html

I had the great good fortune to attend the most recent “service” of The Secret City last Sunday morning. I’d learned about The Secret City through Facebook. My friend Lisa Rothe had posted something on her Facebook wall about The Secret City’s “Wonderwalk”, which was a fourteen hour walking tour of New York City that involved dozens of performance artists doing one-time-only-site-specific pieces to coincide with the walkers' pilgrimage throughout the city. Well, that sounded A-mazing to me and so I did some research to figure out what The Secret City was. I quickly found their website http://www.thesecretcity.org/ where I learned about the mission of The Secret City and their monthly “service.” They describe themselves in the following way. “THE SECRET CITY serves the spiritual, social and human needs of artists. We do this by creating and providing live, interactive programs that engage a growing community in restoring the sacred roots of art-making.” Uhmmm. YES please. I marked my calendar.

Last Sunday I got up, poured some coffee down my face, disappeared into the subway and emerged around the corner from Dixon Place, a small theatre on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that is the new home of The Secret City. When I arrived, the lobby of the theatre was crowded with people talking to each other, reading books, and sharing various baked goods and juice that people had brought. (How churchy! Except people had tattoos and were reading the new Jonathan Franzen novel.) Around 11:30, the theatre doors were opened and people began to shuffle into the space.

The theatre was simply decorated and evoked images of a theatre, church, and art gallery. In the middle of the stage, was an “altar” made out of a long folding table covered with a beautiful cloth. On the table was a candleholder with several lit candles, a vase full of fall colored flowers, and a few other items placed there by congregants. In front of the altar, was a stack of suitcases in different sizes. Suspended from the ceiling were various sculptures that suggested “angels” without necessarily being angels. To the (house) left of the altar was a music stand made into a pulpit by being draped with a flowing piece of brightly colored cloth. And to the left of the “pulpit” was a dresser’s mannequin with a robe on it that suggested Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. To the (house) right of the altar was a modest band that included a guitarist, cellist, and a few singers.

As I found a seat, there was a post-it note on the seat with a pen that said, “Today I am grateful for _____.” So I filled out what I was grateful for and shortly thereafter, the service began. Chris Wells, the singer and artist who founded The Secret City three years ago found his way behind his makeshift pulpit and said, “Welcome to The Secret City!” and began to clap. No sooner had he begun than the entire room was full of people standing, clapping, hooting, and hollering to celebrate the beginning of the ceremony. I felt waves of warmth running through my body and a profound happiness infusing itself into me. I was nervous and didn’t really know what to expect. In theory, I loved the idea of community ritual without religious dogma or ideology. In practice, I was nervous about the cult potential of such an endeavor. ("This is the part where we all get naked and throw rotten plums at each other! And also, let's all write down our bank account numbers and pass them to the front.") My nervousness turned to joy as Chris Wells said, “OK! Welcome to The Secret City! This month’s theme is ‘transformation’ and so we’ll be seeing some art, some magic, tasting some delicious caramels, watching a bit of a movie, and hearing some music all having to do with that theme! So we’re going to start with a little call and response. Your part is sung and it’s simply this, ‘We're CONNNNNNNEEEEECTED!’. OK? Let’s all try it.” I was hooked. Immediately.

I wrote to Chris and he was kind enough to email me the words to The Secret City Theme Song...

A Secret is a thing that you can share

A secret is both powerful and rare

To truly know a secret is to bear

Something the world wants to know

We’re connected

A secret can be cruel or it can be

Something that might set the world free

To truly know the secret is to feel

Something is behind what’s all around.

We’re connected

This is The Secret City

A world where everything is seen

This is a Secret City

Can you, feel it. Can you. Touch it.

Can you. Make it.

Live?

The Secret is that we all agree

There’s something underneath the sky and sea

And something floating in the air we breathe

Something the world needs to know

We’re connected

Building the Secret City

You’re here yes we’re all here today

This is a Secret City

Can you. Feel it. Can you. Touch it.

Can you. Make it.

Live?

Yes.

Today

It lives

Tell the Secret

Tell the Secret to

The World Today.

Ah, it was a great way to get things started! The service followed the format of a church ceremony almost to an item. There was a brief meet and greet at the beginning. There was call and response. There was a moment of silent meditation. There was a reading. There was a sermon. There was an offering. There was even a benediction. But, there were other, more unusual things that were incredibly rewarding and beautiful too. There was a “cultural calendar” section where a woman got up and read a kind of, “This Day In Art History” report. For instance, “It was on this day in 1909 when George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance opened in London.” Or “It was on this day two years ago that our brilliant Paul Newman passed.” In addition there was a “tasting” where Dan Jenkins passed out salted caramels he’d made for the service. There was also a “Look At This” section where an artist got up and talked about the aforementioned Technicolor dreamcoat. Broadway vet Michael Cerveris and cellist Leah Coloff did a fantastic rendition of David Bowie’s song Changes. Oh yeah, and a magic show!

It was really rewarding that the entire service was in service of exploring the theme of “transformation”. The dreamcoat that artist Larry Krone was working on was made up of dozens of needlepoint prints that he’d picked up at thrift shops. So by taking other people’s art work and sewing them together into a cape and then adding his own embroidery he was transforming many people’s art into a singular wearable piece. Dan Jenkins mused on the transformation of chemicals when cooking and talked about caramel as a unique food that’s neither liquid nor solid. A scene from Paris Is Burning dealt with transformation of man to woman (through drag) and also the transformation of a group of people from isolated and alienated to welcomed and celebrated within a kind of ceremony for themselves (A "ball"). The magic tricks featured the transformation of a dollar bill to a ripped up piece of paper back to a much stranger version of the same dollar bill. The sermon was Chris Wells story of coming out to his family and the transformation his mother underwent from distant and ashamed into a friendly and accepting. It occurred to me that no church service I’d ever been to in my life undertook such a multi-dimensional and effective exploration of a theme.

Early on in the service, I found myself incredibly moved by the energy in the room and the passion and generosity of Chris Wells's approach to MC-ing the service. I realized that I was experiencing something incredibly important to me. I was experiencing relevant resonant ritual. There was no talk of God and there was no excavation of ancient religious text to search for contemporary meaning. I felt that I was experiencing something truly spiritual and divine with other people in a sacred space.

Joseph Campbell talks about The New Myth being the old myth poetically renewed. (See the full quote at the bottom of the screen.) This is exactly what The Secret City is doing. Chris Wells and company have taken the structure of a ritual as old as the human race and have poetically renewed it, revivified it, and have made it relevant and beautiful. As I read an article in the New York Times about The Secret City later in the day, the reporter talked about it as being a performance piece and noted that The Secret City had won an Obie (off-Broadway theatre award) for 2010. Reading the article made me think back over the service as piece of theatre. In so doing, my psychological definition of what I’d participated in expanded slightly. Was it theatre? Was it church? Was it a show? Was it performance art? Well, yes. (Sidenote: The experience of reporting on The Secret City had so moved the reporter for the New York Times that he'd returned as a congregant.)

I’ve thought about theatre as a place of holy ritual for many years now. I think any place an important ritual is enacted, something holy is happening. I mean holy in the sense of getting after that spiritual potentiality of the human soul that mysteriously resides in us. As Thornton Wilder would describe it, "...that eternal part..." about human beings. Classrooms, rock concerts, theatres, churches, and sports arenas all are homes to rituals that tell important stories. They even have architecture and ceremonial order in common. They are designated places where an assembled group of people participate in a ritual that points past itself to something transcendent in the human condition. That eternal part inside human beings needs rituals. We look for them, pay for them, and use them to understand ourselves and how to live a human life and die a human death. Rituals pitch us out of our every day experience of life and lift us into a place where we have a more euphoric, revelatory, and inspired experience of living. Effective rituals move us, teach us, and change us.

When we watch a sporting event, we go to a kind of temple where we are watching the athletes participate in a competition that teaches us something. Most arena sports have teams of people that could serve as metaphors for armies, co-workers, nations, differing points of view, etc. (People argue that the Kansas/Mizzou rivalry is a yearly re-hashing of the fight over slavery hundreds of years ago!) Sports might also teach us something about team-work and cooperation. The team that wins often is the team that works well together. (“We’re all in this together. We do better when we work together.”) So there are little lessons in there wherever there is ritual whether we overtly see them or not. In classrooms a teacher performs (teaches) in front of an audience (class) and literally teaches them about the world they live in. We’ve come to a place in our human history where most people agree that the difference between an individual’s success and failure socially and financially in this life is directly related to the level of education he or she has. So, we can say that these stories (lessons) that these teachers are passing on are of tremendous personal value to those who receive them. So thank goodness for those rituals. (Classes) Churches feature the same dynamic. A religious figure stands in front of a congregation and tells stories from a religious text and then meditates aloud on how those stories should help us filter and understand the events of our lives. And then, of course, theatres are the exact same thing. There is a congregation gathered before an altar and when the curtain goes up the actors come out and tell one long story that is, like all of the other mentioned activities, trying to point past itself toward some larger truth about how to live or experience being alive. (In my favorite ones, the story is the same as sports; “We’re all in this together. We’re better when we work together.”)

What’s the point? Ah! My point is that, I feel like The Secret City is what it is…which is an interactive ritual that serves the human need to experience community and continuity while opening new dimensions in the soul and heart.

I often found myself weeping during the ceremony. I was so moved as the assembled congregation celebrated the magician, the artist, the singers, the sermon, and each other. I was so excited to participate in a call and response that was made up of ideas and structures of the old myth, “poetically renewed” for this group of people. The final recitation of the service was the following from Rachel Carson

Those who dwell among the mysteries of the earth

Shall never grow weary of life.

Those who contemplate the beauty of this earth

Will endure as long as life lasts.

The clearer we see the wonders of the earth

The less taste we shall have for destruction.

Now THAT is a group recitation I can speak from the heart.

Ultimately, I think what was most inspirational about my experience at The Secret City is that it affirmed my Field Of Dreams theory about the theatre. “If you build it, they will come.” That’s the sentence that the mysterious voice repeats to Kevin Costner’s character in the feature film Field Of Dreams. (Ultimately, the baseball field is a pretty transparent metaphor for church or religious ritual. He builds this place where his community can come and celebrate with the spirits of their ancestors, etc.) In any event, Chris Wells and friends have been building their own Field of Dreams for three years and have watched attendance multiply every month. It’s becoming a bigger and more exciting community of artists all the time. As word gets out, more and more people will come. He had a beautiful idea and there are so many people who want this kind of ritual and community and celebration in their lives. It’s ultimately what I want the theatre to be about and the kind of moving experience it provided for me is what I always hope for every time I start rehearsing a play. The theatre in my dreams is very much in line with the mission of The Secret City.

I want the theatre world in general to take note of what’s being done at The Secret City. I want the theatre to rise up to its mission and its potential and be a place of effective and powerful ritual. I want it to be a place for the human imagination to run wild. I want it to be a place where the old myths and stories can be poetically refreshed and renewed to resonate powerfully and passionately with the people who walk through the door. Whether it’s in the works of Chekhov or in an improvised play or in a community “service”, I want the theatre to embrace itself as life-affirming and necessary ritual and to have the power to enlighten and inspire and move. Joseph Campbell is correct in asserting that the world needs a New Myth and I feel like it is, as it has always been, the artists who will re-create it. (That's the subject of a whole other entry...) The Secret City, at the moment, is about and for artists. I'm glad it is. I think artists need to continually check in with their sense of mission and trajectory and impact. What better way than in an environment that celebrates and empowers them like The Secret City does? I’m hoping to be able to participate more and more in the rituals and projects aimed at discovering how that New Myth might manifest itself through me. But, I’m as sure as I’ve ever been sure about anything, that the New Myth that many people in the world have been waiting for, is taking shape within the walls of The Secret City. It’s a secret I’m happy to share. ("We're connnnnnneccccted.")

Testify!

Happy Holidays

I ran into a friend on the subway who said that he'd enjoyed reading about my idea for an actor bar in Hell's Kitchen. That conversation made me realize that people actually do check in from time to time to see if I've been writing and what I've been writing about.

So I want this to be a kind of pre-New Year's resolution.

I WILL be writing more here in 2010. My intention is to begin using this as a way of thinking out-loud about the theatre, my life in it, and what I hope for and want it to be....not just for me, but for all theatre artists. I want to write in the New Year about the way we do what we do, why we do what we do, and how we do what we do. But more than that, I want to write about changes in the whats, whys, and hows of what we do.

I want to begin to detail a blueprint for an "ideal" institution that would work synergistically with a specific community in a specific way, while empowering theatre artists to have a true "way of life" as members of that community.

So stay tuned, there's work to be done and important things to be discussed and thought about.

And in 2010...we will....the great work begins.

In the meantime, bless you, happy holidays, and I'll see you in the New Year!

"For you and me, we must say yes."- Joseph Campbell

THE GREEN ROOM

The Green Room
My friend Sara and I were talking this morning about the life of the typical actor in New York City. We talked about how most actors really struggle with the time in between jobs because they identify themselves so closely with what they do. Speaking for myself, I know that a lot of my identity is wrapped up in being an actor. I love learning lines, working with new people, discovering the world of the play, and I just absolutely delight in being in front of an audience. I think a lot of actors feel the same way. And it’s hard to go from being on stage in some beautiful costume, sharing the stage with brilliant actors, working on a great part, and basking in the applause of the curtain call to sitting at home alone on a Saturday night in a cold apartment with a glass of wine and a space heater WRITING about how great it is to be in a play. It’s hard not to feel a little down. Sara hilariously detailed her feeling that in between shows she feels as if she’s wasting valuable oxygen, burning up fossil fuels by keeping the lights on in her apartment, and single handedly keeping the Bourbon industry in business.
After talking about the difficulty of getting and keeping a “survival” job for a while, we opined that there should be an actor owned company in New York City that was specifically created to generate income for actors in the down time. We tried to brainstorm what kind of company it would be and what kind of service or product it could create. So we did that for about five minutes before we realized that there were already thousands of establishments that already serve the need we were articulating without that service being in anyway the purpose of the establishment. Of course we’re talking about bars and restaurants. Every bar and restaurant in the city employs actors, and other artists who are trying to stay in the city, ply their trade, and pay their rent. But none of them were created for that express purpose.
There are definitely “theatre restaurants” in New York City. Joe Allen, Sardi’s, Angus McIndoe, Orso, and all of the restaurants in hells kitchen are to some extent “theatre” restaurants because of the proximity to Broadway and because of the number of theatergoers and theatre artists who patronize these establishments. Most of the time, actors end up in these places after shows with friends, family, and fans when they’re in the midst of what we actors call the “good times”. Sardi’s is an “actor restaurant” but the wall is full of caricatures of actors who haven’t waited tables in years and probably never will again. But where is the place for people to go, work, and celebrate a life in the theatre during the unfortunate and often long periods of “down time” in between shows? Well, I think we might have a plan.
I’m putting a COPYRIGHT on this idea as of 11 p.m. April 4th, 2009.
The Green Room. The Green Room will be the official bar of the New York theatre artist. The Green Rooms’ dedicated mission is to employ, celebrate, understand, facilitate, and nourish theatre people. Here are some of the brainstorming characteristics I have for how this bar should operate. Call it a list of intentions and objectives.
• This bar will hire actors and theatre people that are in between jobs.
There should often be openings as I’d expect the wait and bar staff to be leaving the bar to do theatre work often.
• This bar will make every attempt to rehire returning “company members” or actors who have spent time at the bar in the past. They will need little to no training and be able to snap back into place quickly, provided an opening becomes available.
• This bar will have “understudies” who are bar-backs learning the ropes of how to tend bar, work the registers, wait tables, etc. They can and will be “on book” as they learn. There will be no shame in an “understudy” looking up how to make a Manhattan or an experienced “company member” needing to call “line” and look up how to make a specially requested or difficult drink.
• This bar will offer $4 pints and $6 top shelf pours to actors with a valid EQUITY, SAG, AFTRA, or other theatre union card.
• There will be free wireless high speed internet and a wireless printer. For .25 a page, actors can print out sides, appointment sheets, etc. “Understudies” can run to the back room and bring the pages out for patrons using the printer.
• The bar will be located in Hell’s Kitchen because not only are there a lot of theatres in the area, most auditions are in walking distance from the neighborhood.
• There will be many “casting couches” to recline on and lots of coffee tables to hold drinks, computers, scripts, design mock ups, etc.
• There will be an enormous bulletin board for people to put up post cards, flyers, sublet information, classes, etc.
• There will be a big chalk board where we will celebrate people who get jobs. If our bartender Greg Derelian books a big part at The Old Globe for the summer, then we’ll write “CONGRATULATIONS GREG! (AKA CORIOLANUS!!)”
• Patrons will be encouraged to support each other. If an actor needs someone to work on an audition with, this should be a place they can come and ask a complete stranger to go over it with them and have that stranger say, “Sure; as long as you don’t mind going over mine with me when we’re done!”
• There will be lots of bookcases in which everyone can deposit their old books, plays, and theatre texts. The books can be “checked out” on the honor system that a patron will bring the book back when they are finished with it.
• Peanuts will be served at the bar for both nutritional and humor value.
• There will be a mirror back by the bathrooms. The mirror will be classy with a nice frame around it. A hand-painted sign above the mirror will read, “You are vast. Every role that has ever been written is already alive inside of you. Be at peace. You are enough.”
• The Bathrooms will have doors marked, “Women’s Dressing Room A” and “Men’s Dressing Room A”
• The bathrooms will have big mirrors with lightbulbs all around them. However, these light bulbs will be on a dimmer and at night will simply conjure the feeling of a dressing room, not be lit like one.
• The bar will be stocked with great booze at reasonable prices.
• Anyone who gets “the call” while in the bar that they just booked a job gets a free beer and shot on the house.
• Anyone who brings in a residuals check under $1, can exchange it for a beer
• There will be a large projection TV so that anyone who is on an episode of television that night can bring their friends in and watch.

OK, so these are my initial ideas. Anyone who has other thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

ON IMPROVISATION (dedicated to Dan Spurgin)

ENLIGHTENED IMPROVISATION

I’ve been thinking a lot about improvisation lately. I’ve been involved with it on and off for more than fifteen years. In many ways I trace my acting career back to the little improv/comedy troupe I was asked to help start at the University of Kansas in 1992. I’ll never forget the Renegade theatre (an abandoned tire shop) on the South side of Lawrence where our little company would do marathon Saturday night shows for sold-out crowds until the wee hours of the morning. I fell in love with improvisation hard and fast and I’ve always kept it a big part of my artistic life. As I have grown older (not up) I’ve had many amazing opportunities to fuse the kind of spontaneity and energy I found in that early work with my “classical” training and conservatory approach to my professional life. One of the reasons I gravitated towards the NYU Graduate Acting Program when I did was that there was a discernable emphasis put on training through improvisation in the form of games, commedia dell’arte, and clown classes. Since getting my MFA, I’ve continued to be involved in improvisation, with a concentration on long-form scenic work. The training centers that embrace this scenic (rather than gimmick-oriented) approach to the work include Improv Olympic and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre; just to name a few.

I have always felt that the work that is being done in these scenic improv theatres is such important and crucial work for the professional actor. Whenever I’m in between jobs (and have the money), I get into a class to give my imagination a place to work out. Fortunately and unfortunately the last few years have been busy ones for me professionally and the time (and occasionally, the money) hasn’t really afforded me the opportunity keep up my training or given me the time to consistently participate in the long-form “community”. One of the crucial ways of learning how to do the work well is to be part of a consistent company (or team) of actors who work in sync in front of an audience on a regular basis. I’ve rarely had this opportunity myself. When I spent some time in Los Angeles, I briefly was able to be on a couple of teams and even found myself in a situation where I would be on stage multiple times a week with different teams. However, I then booked a play in New York that turned into another play in New York that turned into the journey of the last couple of years.

Now, a few years later, as I am taking stock of my life; where I’ve been, where I am, and where I would like to go, I feel in my bones that scenic improvisation both as an end in itself and as a means of development for more "scripted" material is going to play a larger and larger role in my artistic life. When I think about the values taught and exercised within the scenic-improv community and remind myself of the amazing variety of tools I was taught during my classical training, and finally think of the most common problems facing the professional actor in today’s American theatre, I can’t help but to think that the professional actor has much to gain from incorporating the philosophies and skills taught in the long-form improv world.

What’s interesting is that not everyone who is involved in the long form world has developed the “chops” to be a classical actor. I wouldn’t think that many of the people involved would be good at, or even interested in, taking on Websters' The White Devil. However, the skill set that is being exercised and developed within the long-form world, I am convinced would be absolutely revelatory and awe inspiring to the classical actor rehearsing The White Devil. I feel like I am at a very interesting intersection of skill sets. I started my artistic life with sketches and short-form laugh-oriented improvisation and now live an artistic life where I relish being able to mine the depths of Chekhov and Shakespeare but with an approach that is probably more informed by long-form scenic improvisation than almost anything else. I often describe myself as a “classically trained improviser who mostly does plays". That said, this long form world that I am talking about, is one that I have always felt a bit dangential to because I haven't been able to focus my full energies on it for any significant length of time. I want to keep developing this skill set through classes, training, and performance opportunities but often find myself challenged by economics or scheduling. But I would love to have an opportunity to do months of "intensive" work where I could really sink in, work with others, and internalize to an even deeper degree these important skill sets.

Additionally, when I think about the trajectory of my career and of my life, I am beginning to think more about directing and teaching. I’m often suspicious of graduate acting programs that require their students to teach undergrads. My thought is, “Wait a minute. If I’m here to shake myself up, expand the definition of myself, and develop a more coherent and useful skill set…what do I really have to offer as a teacher for undergrads?” But now, as I am nine years out of conservatory and have worked in films, television, regional theatre, non-profit theatre, basement theatre, readings, and Broadway with luminaries, students, divas, friends, role models, true artists, and true assholes, I feel like I really do have some perspective now on approaches to both the work of the actor and the life of the actor that not only work but make the world a more colorful and exciting place to live in. So I’ve been thinking about teaching. I’ve been thinking about teaching for a few reasons. First, because I think that I have some principles, approaches, and perspectives that make the work more doable and more enjoyable and I’d really like to share them with actors in training. And secondly, from a more self-interested point of view, I feel that teaching a class would force me to be able to articulate these approaches to students, and therefore to myself in a more simple and understandable way that wouldn’t just benefit my students, but also myself as an actor in continual “training.” I embrace the idea of the professional teacher as someone who can constantly learn more about themselves and their own craft by teaching it to others. And when I think about teaching and the things that I would like to teach, a quick few classes jump out at me. First, I would like to teach improvisation as the bedrock foundation work for the actor and second, scene study class. I'd like to teach them both because I would love to give actors that foundation work through games and improvisation and then be able to guide them in using those same techniques for exploring a "great" piece of drama.

So I’ve been writing on and on about how much I love long form improvisation and how valuable and useful I think it is. And I have been talking in incredibly personal, but broad strokes. But it’s the specifics that are so exciting, and so useful to the actor in training and in rehearsal. So what is it that I’m talking about? What is long form improvisation? What is scenic improvisation?

It’s my belief that teaching scenic long-form improvisation to actors emphasizes the imaginative resources of the actor with the aim of developing independent, supportive, company-minded, positive, and playful actors.

I firmly believe that improvisation is the foundation on which compelling, exciting, and illuminating acting is built. There is a sense of play, fun, high-stakes, risk-taking, and cooperation present in actors well-versed in improvisation that is often obviously lacking in actors who are not. An actor's ability to be at home on stage with only their own (and their fellow actors') resources to rely on is the crucial first step to an authentic and exciting life on stage.. If an actor can walk onto an empty stage with nothing but their own imagination and their fellow actors to rely on and feel confident that what will transpire will be a collaborative work of art, they will feel all the more confident and free when they have sets, props, costumes, and the words of William Shakespeare as a prism through which to shine those strengthened imaginative powers.

I know that quality conservatories understand that improvisation is an important aspect of actor training and have a number of quality classes in place designed to free the actor, ignite the imagination, and make actors feel comfortable “working without a net” on stage. That said, I think there is another level of skill development to be introduced that would make the improvisation work even more valuable to the actor in training. The next step in the evolution of improvisation within the conservatory is to introduce actors to games, skills, and structures that make it possible for them, as a company of actors, to improvise fully realized short plays. (This is where I finally tie back in the kind of long- form work I was discussing in general terms at the beginning of this post.) Del Close, an early Second City company member, felt this need more than twenty years ago. Frustrated by the limitations (and intentions) of the short games that were featured in Second City shows, he branched out on his own and started a theatre called Improv Olympic where he invented a set structure, or long-form improvisational game that he simply called, for lack of a better name, “The Harold”. The Harold is a loose structure in which actors, through a series of recurring scenes and characters, can thoroughly explore a theme. (Del was inspired by improvisational jazz musicians. The Harold’s structure works in the same way that jazz musicians begin with a standard rhythm or key that establishes the “song” that the musicians will improvise together. It’s the set structure that allows the musicians to branch off into the unknown and be able to return to the synergistic, continually-blossoming, and mutually created song.) Within the Harold, a word, topic or them inspires a thirty minute (or longer) series of scenes that are inspired to varying degrees by that topic or word. Within the game, scenes and characters begin to overlap until, ideally, by a third round of scenes, an array of different characters and given circumstances have begun to intersect and interact in a way that’s completely surprising, spontaneously discovered, and in the best case, amazingly realized and poignant. There have been dozens of variations on The Harold structure since Del Close introduced it in Chicago (he encouraged the form to be dismantled and reassembled constantly as he refused to be dogmatic about what it was "supposed" to be...it is improvisation after-all), but what strikes me as most useful to the actor in training is the structural component of revisiting scenes and characters over the course of a game or improvised play and allowing for unpredictable and unseen connections to occur between them. No matter what variation is used, the structure relies most heavily on recurring scenes with recurring characters. Del called it “The Harold”, I call it “scenic improvisation”.

There are many reasons why the actor in training can benefit from becoming skilled in scenic improvisation. First, for scenic improvisation to work, actors must completely internalize the phrase “Yes, and…”. One of the first lessons taught in most improvisation classes (and perhaps not coincidentally in many Buddhist temples) is that the student must say “Yes” to everything that happens on stage. The actor trained in scenic improvisation is conditioned to be “in the moment” and use what is actually happening in that moment in relationship with their scene partner(s). Through time, the actor lets go of the need to impose their idea of what should happen in a scene. The instinct to judge, force, or try to do the “right” thing slowly erodes and is replaced by an instinct to embrace, support, and celebrate what actually is happening on stage rather than long for what they think or have previously decided should be happening. This is an incredibly powerful principle to be internalized by an actor. (And one that all too often is obviously not embraced or internalized by many professionals in the field. "Are you going to do it like that?") An early exercise simply pairs two actors who build a scene from scratch one exchange at a time by saying “Yes, and…” to each other. Once the “Yes, and…” becomes second nature to the actor, a new way of seeing the stage (and often the world) begins to emerge for them. The “Yes” principle helps actors get beyond muscling scenes, judging their scene partners (and themselves), or ignoring things that spontaneously happen on stage. (How many times have we cringed to see the actor ignore the fly on stage or the saucer that just broke…or the fresh way their scene partner just communicated their intention?) The actor who has an internal switch flipped into the “yes and…” position is an actor ready to celebrate tonight’s performance in the here and now, with all of its’ guaranteed uncertainty and anarchy, scripted or not.

Secondly, scenic improvisation encourages good scene work. Just as yoga is wonderful for actors in training them to be “in the moment”, scenic improvisation is excellent practice in listening and reacting honestly. Unlike scripted material, where two unskilled actors can easily recite the lines of a play back and forth to each other without listening, being in the moment, or honestly reacting, unscripted scenes give the actor no such safety net to rely on. For a scene to work, the actors must be incredibly attentive to each other. There must be a constant give and take and a constant affirmation of the choices each actor makes. If actors aren’t listening to each other, the scene dies. If judgment creeps in, the scene dies. If actors aren’t supportive of each other, the scene dies. So, when actors, versed in scenic improvisation, approach regular “scene work”, they are more attuned to each other, better at listening to each other, less likely to judge, and more likely to say “yes and…” to what is happening in the moment with their fellow actor.

Thirdly, scenic improvisation gives actors the skill to be ready to work fully and creatively on day one of any process. An empty space or stage becomes the imaginations’ gymnasium to the actor versed in scenic improvisation. While exercising within the structure of scenic improvisation, actors learn to create their locations, relationships, and given circumstances with specificity and artistic skill. An actor who has improvised for years and has had to create coffee shops, freight boat decks, the back office of a mafia restaurant, and a thousand other locations will enter a rehearsal room for an Arthur Miller play with a thousand ideas erupting from the volcanic core of their being. (And not ideas they’ve been at home imagining; Ideas erupting and born from what and who is in the room they’re rehearsing in.) These actors won’t wait for the director to give them a task to do. They won’t need the script to tell them what kinds of props and settings might make the scene work better. They will simply begin their work with imagination and skill and their fellow actors and directors will be glad for it.

Fourth, scenic improvisation encourages actors to support each other and work together as a company. There are many ways in which scenic improvisation lends itself to company development. The actor trained in scenic improvisation is constantly looking for ways to help and support their fellow improvisers. Additionally, as previously stated, in scenic improvisation structures, actors are encouraged to look for connections between scenes, themes, and characters. Because what is happening on stage between two of an actors’ fellow company members can and will effect their own scenes throughout the structure, they must pay attention, care, support, and participate in those scenes. There is no “waiting to enter” for the actor trained in improvisation. There is, most commonly, the feeling of “What can I do to help?” A scenic improvisation may start with two policemen in a break room talking about their sons. Many scenes later, a kid may get caught shop-lifting, providing a perfect opportunity for one our policemen to re-enter the structure in a completely different set of circumstances… and for the kid to end up being one of the sons that had been talked about so extensively in the opening scene of the structure. In short, the more the actors listen, remember, invest, support, and care for one another, the better the stories become and the better it feels to play the game. The sense that you've "won" in the game is predicated on how good everyone feels when it's done that they were all fully out there for each other.

Fifth, the actor skilled in scenic, character, and relationship-driven improvisation is at an advantage in the working world than the actor without it. More and more films and television programs are hiring and relying on actors trained in this kind of improvisation to make their films and television programs more interesting, more entertaining, and more honest. Tina Fey, Will Farrell, Stephen Colbert, Stephen Carrell, Amy Poehler, Jack McBreyer, and the majority of the casts and writing staffs for the television shows The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, 30 Rock, The Office, and many others all have this long-form improv training in common. More and more, there is an elite professional company of actors at work in the commercial world. This company of actors also shares the distinction of being accomplished writers and producers. This company shares a common history, a common training, and a common approach to the work. And what may be most interesting is the fact that they are, in a way, a trained company of actors. They aren’t classically trained. Most don’t know what scansion is or what operative words are and even less could tell you much about the virtues of the Alexander technique. However, they have spent years together in small basement theatres, drinking beer and talking about how to give better “gifts” to each other on stage, how to be a better teammate, how to push the limits of their imaginations further, how to be more honest in their work and approach, and how to do more work that is artistically relevant and inspired for their audiences. This company is made up from members of different theatres across the country. From The Magnet Theatre in New York to Improv Olympic in Chicago to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles, they are having the same conversations and when they meet each other, it doesn’t matter that they didn’t take the same classes with the same teachers. The principles were the same all over and the shorthand dialogue about the work is fully ingrained. They work together easily and respond quickly to each other because of a shared philosophy. This company is becoming more and more artistically valuable, socially relevant and professionally powerful and any actor who is versed in the principles and techniques which serve as the foundation of this company will be at a comparative advantage to those who aren’t. Add to the mix that actors so trained who also have the incredible toolbox that classical training provides will simply be that much more attractive to this group and to each other. I realize I just made it sound like there was a long form improv illuminatti out there...and maybe there is...but they're not scary...they're mostly just funny.

Finally, to a similar point of having a professional advantage over actors without training in scenic improvisation, I believe that our culture as a whole is at a watershed moment. I believe that the contemporary theatre is poised to make a grand return toward actor-driven theatrical experiences. The economic realities facing America are going to necessitate that theatres concentrate less on ornate sets, costumes, and gimmicks and more on skilled actors telling stories in space on stage. Quality training programs have proliferated in the last few decades, resulting in the graduation of hundreds of skilled actors into the acting community each year. Where years ago, there were still many more actors than there were jobs, now the situation seems to be even more incredible in that there are so many more skilled and trained actors than there are jobs for them to do. The result is plain to see. Look at any television program and even the smallest part is usually expertly played by a highly skilled actor. (You didn’t get many Yale School of Drama Grads for one-line receptionist roles in 1973.) Look at Youtube.com and you will see hundreds of actors turned film-makers creating their own work and posting it for the world to see. (see iChannel) New actor driven theatres are popping up in places as far reaching as Kentucky, Missouri, California, and Maryland. I have spoken to many of the actors who are starting these theatres. For the most part, they are people who graduated from a quality training program, found Los Angeles and New York hostile to their desire to do good work with like-minded artists and left to find as Coriolanus said, “A world elsewhere.” These pro-active young actors are slowly and incrementally churning what I believe will become an artistic tidal wave bound to radically alter American culture in the decades to come.

It has been my experience that often the most satisfying work that an actor does is work that they have created themselves. Whether directing colleagues in a play, creating a new piece with friends, creating an avant-gard one-man show, or putting together a project for the Fringe Festival to play in a church basement on Leonard St, these actors tend to be happier and more artistically fulfilled than actors who simply wait by the phone waiting for their next audition. Scenic improvisation trains actors to be proactive and to exercise their imaginations daily. The growing skill level that accompanies practice ignites self-confidence and an awareness that directors, designers, and even playwrights are secondary additions to the immediacy and power of the actors’ independent spirit and craft. That self-confidence I believe gives actors an understanding of their own ability to not simply be a vessel for other people’s art, but become an ever-combustive muse of fire for themselves, capable indeed of ascending the brightest heaven of invention.