A few days ago I was talking to a friend, a fellow climber, at the gym. As we chatted he let me know that he followed this blog, that occasionally he would pop on and catch up with some of my posts. He said he enjoyed reading about the process and getting insight into my actor's mind, that it was interesting to see another side of me, outside of my climber self that he knows. I was shocked, pleasantly, someone; who I would not think of as reading my blog, is reading it.
In my mind, a few of my actor friends would be my readers, if someone was thinking of casting me they may have look at it; basically if someone had an acting link to me then there was a chance it would get read. I was definitively wrong. In being so I was reminded that as a performer I appeal to a wide variety of people, that my craft and my talent can affect those outside of my acting circle. It was humbling to be reminded of this. Why? Because I follow my craft for a love of the craft itself and part of that love, part of what the craft entails for me is effecting my audience. I had that as a view of audience and performer on stage. But it goes beyond that: Stage, Film, TV, Commercial, Blog...one in the same; they are ways in which I potentially effect.
So I send out a special thank you to N. for bringing this point home to me. I also thank anyone who reads, who skims, who visits this blog. I appreciate that you are there, I am pleased to know that in some way I effect and that you participate by allowing yourself to be effected.
With Gratitude
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
Asher Lev II: Finding Asher
Every actor has a different process for learning their lines. I alone have a few different styles which I use depending on what I have to learn.
If it is quick dialogue, short responses, I usually just work on memorization and then I move to playing with my fellow actor to get the beat/rhythm of the dialogue.
If it is longer dialogue, full sentences, conversations etc. I tend to learn it in sections. Reading mostly but still heavy on the "line drill". Again working with fellow actors to get rhythm.
For solo shows, I am constantly running it with my director and tying the movements to blocking. Thus the lines start to fall into place before I think of memorization/learning.
For Asher Lev, I have monologue after monologue. Quite extensive, most of the play is me talking. I was unsure how to approach this much solo work, as the other actors are on stage and integral to the scenes, so the director can not focus with me as in a one man show. I thought about it for a few days and decided to try something new. I would simply read and read and read some more. Constantly reading this play.
Well as I moved to line drill I realized most of my lines were in a great place and ready to go. I found something new, or found it again as I had forgotten it, the more you read a piece, the deeper the understanding gets. With this in mind, I began reading even more frequently. In doing so I am finding Asher Lev as a person, which makes it easier for me to move him out of my head and onto the stage. It is an interesting process delving into a character this way, one that I am enjoying.
If it is quick dialogue, short responses, I usually just work on memorization and then I move to playing with my fellow actor to get the beat/rhythm of the dialogue.
If it is longer dialogue, full sentences, conversations etc. I tend to learn it in sections. Reading mostly but still heavy on the "line drill". Again working with fellow actors to get rhythm.
For solo shows, I am constantly running it with my director and tying the movements to blocking. Thus the lines start to fall into place before I think of memorization/learning.
For Asher Lev, I have monologue after monologue. Quite extensive, most of the play is me talking. I was unsure how to approach this much solo work, as the other actors are on stage and integral to the scenes, so the director can not focus with me as in a one man show. I thought about it for a few days and decided to try something new. I would simply read and read and read some more. Constantly reading this play.
Well as I moved to line drill I realized most of my lines were in a great place and ready to go. I found something new, or found it again as I had forgotten it, the more you read a piece, the deeper the understanding gets. With this in mind, I began reading even more frequently. In doing so I am finding Asher Lev as a person, which makes it easier for me to move him out of my head and onto the stage. It is an interesting process delving into a character this way, one that I am enjoying.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Asher Lev I
Yesterday was the first day of rehearsal. We joked about the monologue which is the play called Asher Lev, interrupted occasionally by the other characters. Upon reading it with the other two actors, and hearing my own voice, continuously, it is...overwhelming. There is a lot of monologue, broken by some dialogue, and the challenge of learning it all is, at the least, daunting, at the best foreboding. However, it is a task I know I can face and overcome.
I say learn, not memorize. For in memorizing something, it removes it's heart and soul. To memorize another human may look good, but it would never have the soul of that person. A play is, in its own way, a living breathing, entity. Thus to memorize it would remove that which makes it move, breathe, beat, and show its flame...its scream to get out and be told. So I must learn this play. If I am to do it justice, and justice is the only thing that will do it well.
As I read it, time and time again, I am haunted by the words, "conduits of the story". They don't leave me. They come at me without warning while I walk, talk, move, and exist in every aspect of my life. So as I read, I think more and more on the idea of what is this story? It sings in me, I feel it, sense it as truth, but how do I say it? Tell it? Give it life? Make it true, so that you the audience will feel and understand it? For I want you all to feel and understand, to get that meaning of what it is to find your own voice against all odds, against the challenges that are so great they could kill you. It is a universal theme, which my life, my art has touched on many times. Never in so graceful a manor as Asher Lev.
And so I work to learn the words of the playwright, translated from the author, given to a character and brought to life by me: the conduit of the story. At best frightening. But as I read, I am discovering a lilt, a song to his voice, one that is touched by pain and anguish for the trials and tribulations that make him the artist he is. That I am. I understand that pain. No, maybe not at the cost he has felt, it is after all a play, and we do not go to plays to see the ordinary, but rather, the extraordinary. So I have felt that pain, and I understand that lilt. It is interesting to how the lilt changes at different points in the story, how it does not exist, but manifests itself in other tones. Tones that hint at its coming, the growth of, the life of the character. It is interesting to start the play, as the character, knowing the outcome. It is interesting, as the actor, to find the character's growth and discover something new about that which he already knows.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
On Set: TV Series One
Last week I spent three days on set of my first TV series. It is a docudrama, you know the type of show where all the reenactment happens while a deep voiced narrator explains what is happening. The show is called Perfect Storms and it will begin airing early next year on History Channel North America.
I always imagined that my first show would be an interesting experience but I had no idea it would be like this. I spent three days in a simulated hurricane, as I was playing a key person involved with the hurricane of 1900 that destroyed Galveston Texas and killed about 10,000 people. Day one was mostly wind turbines and rain towers outside, with stuff blowing around me. But on day two and three we went to studio. They had built two small swimming pools and in one they built the living room of a house, and the other the exterior of a house and an enormous pile of debris surrounding it. Inside the house knee deep in water as the storm grew worse. Outside the house floating in a period costume up to my neck while rain towers and wind turbines blew all around me. What an experience.
Truly a great introduction to the world of acting in television.
I always imagined that my first show would be an interesting experience but I had no idea it would be like this. I spent three days in a simulated hurricane, as I was playing a key person involved with the hurricane of 1900 that destroyed Galveston Texas and killed about 10,000 people. Day one was mostly wind turbines and rain towers outside, with stuff blowing around me. But on day two and three we went to studio. They had built two small swimming pools and in one they built the living room of a house, and the other the exterior of a house and an enormous pile of debris surrounding it. Inside the house knee deep in water as the storm grew worse. Outside the house floating in a period costume up to my neck while rain towers and wind turbines blew all around me. What an experience.
Truly a great introduction to the world of acting in television.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Conduits of the story
A good, no a great, friend of mine said that to me a few days back. "We are nothing but conduits of the story." Those simple words have haunted me ever since; I say "haunted" and the images of ghosts and ghouls come to my mind and, I guess in some ways, that is what I mean. I mean that it has lingered with me since, fading in and out like a phantom in an eerie old house from tales of old; a ghoul that will not leave me be. This images offer terror and fear; but, I also mean that it has stayed with me and I have contemplated it. Today, as a tear left my eye, those words resonated and some understanding came to me.
Back in June, I was cast in a story (note the word choice) called Sundance. A play that offered a commentary on ideals of death, presented through the classic western gunslinger archetypes. I played Jesse, the ruthless killer who murdered because he liked it, got off on it; as long as the victims were weak and helpless, those who could not fight back. The coward on the inside hidden, only vaguely, by the macho bravado on the outside. This character was one that touched my creativity.
Somewhere deep inside, a chord was struck and all the facets of my training culminated in a glorious rush of detailed nuance, specificity, and reality never before played by me (so noted several friends who have worked with me). For myself, I recognized that I was doing better work than I had ever done before. This realization does not make me great, nor do I claim to be so; this recognition simply says that where ever I was this performance was better than that and for me, growth as an actor, moving from one level to another is key; it is the only way in which I can shape a fulfilling life as an artist. So I continually strive to be better than I ever have been. The portrayal of this character did that and more.
Over the past while I have been focussing my skills. Training with great teachers, and putting to practice in performance those skills shown me. The recent run of classes, through http://www.carolineazar.com, gave me an astounding insight which united the history of my work and offered me a way to clearly see how to build. Great, awesome, astounding and fabulous. I felt as though I could create any character, build anything and be a great actor. Regardless of actual talent or not the confidence helps. In Sundance, I feel I demonstrated this ability to create character, and the response from audience, critics and friends supports that. During Sundance, in the back of my head sat the knowledge that come September I would begin rehearsals on my next show My Name Is Asher Lev; this little piece of knowledge excited me and continues to excite me today. More importantly, today this upcoming role linked character creation with story telling and I feel an understanding, a power, a commitment, and an obligation to those haunting words "We are nothing but conduits of the story."
In reading for the audition I was provided with a few excerpts from the play the director would like me to bring to life. In addition to this I was provided the full play to read. Typically, with my busy schedule I don't have time to read a full play, I skim through, get an idea and bring to the table my best take on the sides (excerpts) offered to me. Fortune has it that a I had the time to read the full play before this audition and something magical happened that began the understanding of those haunting words. I read the play in full four times before looking at my sides. I read with enthusiasm and complete abandon, the story is one which is riveting and pulled me in. Following the read researched the play, thinking it was based on a true story (it is not), and learned that it was a book first, the author produced some of the paintings which the book pivots around and that it is simply a story. Entranced by its power I moved to the sides and did the audition to secure the title role. Of course I discovered it was a book and it became necessary in my mind that I should read this text and during Sundance I thought when shall I do this?
For the past two weeks I have been reading the book My Name is Asher Lev. The book is done great justice by its ancestor the play; but in this reading I have found something deeper something more powerful. Asher Lev, is a child who does not understand who he is or the world he lives in. For on one hand he knows who he is and what he feels of himself, but he is told that he cannot be those things. On the other hand, he knows the world he lives in and what he perceives it to be, but cannot what it is because it conflicts with who he feels he is. This conflict leads to the greatness of Asher Lev, the man, the painter, the Jew, but to become great he must hurt those he loves. To become great he must tear his soul apart fighting with what he sees and believes versus what he feels and perceives. Asher Lev being an artist is driven by a force he, nor anyone else can understand, and therefore must to this. He does not seek greatness but is thrust toward it by the unspoken demon of the artists soul. From this the only way he can achieve his greatness, be true to himself and claim who he is, he must display his torment to the world and in doing so must crush those whom he loves with all his heart. This is the story of an artist, and to my knowledge to date, it has no equal in explaining the soul of the artist.
I have learned to create powerful characters through my craft and inadvertently told story. By hearing the words of my friend, through the haunting power they offered, combined with the great story My Name Is Asher Lev, I learned that my craft is story telling. That I am afforded the luxury of sharing with others a journey of a character. This gift to share is more powerful than the characters I create; I am only a conduit of the story. Everything I have learned is in service to that fact.
Back in June, I was cast in a story (note the word choice) called Sundance. A play that offered a commentary on ideals of death, presented through the classic western gunslinger archetypes. I played Jesse, the ruthless killer who murdered because he liked it, got off on it; as long as the victims were weak and helpless, those who could not fight back. The coward on the inside hidden, only vaguely, by the macho bravado on the outside. This character was one that touched my creativity.
Somewhere deep inside, a chord was struck and all the facets of my training culminated in a glorious rush of detailed nuance, specificity, and reality never before played by me (so noted several friends who have worked with me). For myself, I recognized that I was doing better work than I had ever done before. This realization does not make me great, nor do I claim to be so; this recognition simply says that where ever I was this performance was better than that and for me, growth as an actor, moving from one level to another is key; it is the only way in which I can shape a fulfilling life as an artist. So I continually strive to be better than I ever have been. The portrayal of this character did that and more.
Over the past while I have been focussing my skills. Training with great teachers, and putting to practice in performance those skills shown me. The recent run of classes, through http://www.carolineazar.com, gave me an astounding insight which united the history of my work and offered me a way to clearly see how to build. Great, awesome, astounding and fabulous. I felt as though I could create any character, build anything and be a great actor. Regardless of actual talent or not the confidence helps. In Sundance, I feel I demonstrated this ability to create character, and the response from audience, critics and friends supports that. During Sundance, in the back of my head sat the knowledge that come September I would begin rehearsals on my next show My Name Is Asher Lev; this little piece of knowledge excited me and continues to excite me today. More importantly, today this upcoming role linked character creation with story telling and I feel an understanding, a power, a commitment, and an obligation to those haunting words "We are nothing but conduits of the story."
In reading for the audition I was provided with a few excerpts from the play the director would like me to bring to life. In addition to this I was provided the full play to read. Typically, with my busy schedule I don't have time to read a full play, I skim through, get an idea and bring to the table my best take on the sides (excerpts) offered to me. Fortune has it that a I had the time to read the full play before this audition and something magical happened that began the understanding of those haunting words. I read the play in full four times before looking at my sides. I read with enthusiasm and complete abandon, the story is one which is riveting and pulled me in. Following the read researched the play, thinking it was based on a true story (it is not), and learned that it was a book first, the author produced some of the paintings which the book pivots around and that it is simply a story. Entranced by its power I moved to the sides and did the audition to secure the title role. Of course I discovered it was a book and it became necessary in my mind that I should read this text and during Sundance I thought when shall I do this?
For the past two weeks I have been reading the book My Name is Asher Lev. The book is done great justice by its ancestor the play; but in this reading I have found something deeper something more powerful. Asher Lev, is a child who does not understand who he is or the world he lives in. For on one hand he knows who he is and what he feels of himself, but he is told that he cannot be those things. On the other hand, he knows the world he lives in and what he perceives it to be, but cannot what it is because it conflicts with who he feels he is. This conflict leads to the greatness of Asher Lev, the man, the painter, the Jew, but to become great he must hurt those he loves. To become great he must tear his soul apart fighting with what he sees and believes versus what he feels and perceives. Asher Lev being an artist is driven by a force he, nor anyone else can understand, and therefore must to this. He does not seek greatness but is thrust toward it by the unspoken demon of the artists soul. From this the only way he can achieve his greatness, be true to himself and claim who he is, he must display his torment to the world and in doing so must crush those whom he loves with all his heart. This is the story of an artist, and to my knowledge to date, it has no equal in explaining the soul of the artist.
I have learned to create powerful characters through my craft and inadvertently told story. By hearing the words of my friend, through the haunting power they offered, combined with the great story My Name Is Asher Lev, I learned that my craft is story telling. That I am afforded the luxury of sharing with others a journey of a character. This gift to share is more powerful than the characters I create; I am only a conduit of the story. Everything I have learned is in service to that fact.
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