Asher Lev IV: Questions

Jacob Kahn says to Asher: An artist either reflects his life, or comments on it.  
Jacob Kahn says to Asher: Every great artist has freed himself from something - his family, his nation, his race. Something. A truly great artist must be tied to only his art!
Jacob Kahn says to Asher: An artist is responsible to his art! To his art! Just that!

These are powerful statements from a mentor that guide Asher in becoming who he becomes.  

In playing every role, the text, for me anyway, slowly takes on meaning.  I will be part way through a run, rehearsal, reading and hear the line for the thousandth time when, DING, it hits me, "ahh, that is what the line means."  And so in rehearsal on Sunday, I was struck by these lines, and Asher was effected in the scenes.

In turn, I was effected in my life.  I am an artist.  Does my work reflect or comment on my life?  Have I freed myself from something?  Am I tied only to my art?  Are these valid questions or just the musings of an old bitter man in a play?

I think they are both valid and coming from a bitter man, so I must take them with some salt. However, I believe I must take them.  I have always spoke to the struggle which artists undertake, and here I am doing a show, portraying a character, who faces that struggle in its extremes.  Has the universe drawn me to a show, given me a voice to reach out and speak through my art, to diatribe, a point, a heart felt pain, to a larger audience than just a friend over coffee?

I have noted and wondered about my being the only artistic soul in my family; that is to say the only artistic soul who pursued professionally his art.  (My family screams in art).  Is this a sense of freeing myself from the confines that lead my family members to traditional work; something I believe would kill me?  Have I freed myself from my family?

Do I feel a responsibility to anything other than acting?  If so am I a weaker actor for it? Possibly.

In examining these questions have I, through the answers, defined myself as an artist?  Taking these statements from the character, or the voice of the playwright, to equal the requirements for artist, it would seem so.

In the end, I feel that these are philosophical discussions, which have great purpose in defining and leading to greater understanding of the self.  They could lead to a belief system for some.  For me, they, I believe, will remain philosophical thoughts and queries.  In this state, they leave me open, they leave me thoughtful.  As a person, they deepen me.  As a character named Asher Lev, they inform my argument in the play.

Asher Lev III: Progress

Where are we?  Ah, yes the middle of page thirty five, the first section of my monster three page monologue, my explanation of why I have done the paintings.

Where are we? Page twenty three, the end of the first act, the impact my art has on family.

Where are we? Page forty five, the final plea to the audience.

And so this question comes up time and time again, and the responses run in my head as I piece the show together.  Two weeks ago, pages equalled lines of text, that I was working to remember.  Today, when I am off book, as is the rest of the cast, and we have been running bits of the show together, pages are places in time, notices to where we are in the story.  

The show is becoming cohesive.  The lines are no longer lines but parts of a story which I am telling, and hoping you will be caught up in, that you will relate too.  I have gone beyond memorization to a point of understanding, of being, of sharing my Asher Lev life because it is who I am for a little while.  It is exciting to feel it coming together.  To hear myself, my fellow actors, and have it all pulling together, gathering steam, to a show that opens in twenty five ish days.

Thank you: A response to blogs on Asher Lev

 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

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.

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.  

The teachings of my teacher, mentor, friend, supporter, come to mind and I think it will be good to talk to her.  This is deep, it is wonderful, it is a "challenge!".  I have lived my whole life for this, this moment to be nothing more than "the conduit of the story."