It Takes a Village

I've been thinking a lot about my chosen profession, theatre, lately.  I've been lucky, being a big girl, to have had the small success I have had.  But what I have really been thinking about is that it takes a great many people to make theatre.  Painters, musicians, writers can all work by themselves, but to create a theatre production, it takes a village.

All the audience ever sees is the actors on stage.  They don't see the crew of board operators creating the sound and lighting effects.  They don't see the running crew behind stage changing the set.  They don't see the wardrobe people helping the actors change clothes.  They don't see the prop people organizing the items the actors carry on stage.  And they surely don't see the stage manager overseeing all of the work.

The audience also doesn't see the legion of designers and construction crews creating the sets, costumes, lighting plots, sound plots, properties that must be gathered and made before the show even opens.  The audience has no idea that these people have been working for weeks before the first ticket is sold.

And speaking of tickets, the audience has no idea of the marketing people who plan the campaign to bring them into the theatre to see the production.  The writers of press releases, the pursuers of theatre critics, the printers of tickets never get their names in the program (or almost never).

For every person the audience sees on stage, there are probably more than twenty who have had a hand in bringing the production to the stage.  Theatre is truly a collaborative process.  And so many of the people involved get little recognition.  They are, in essence, invisible.

So I want to take a moment this week to thank all the unsung heroes in my "village" who have made it possible for me to have my small success.  I may not remember your names, but I remember you.  And I am grateful for my costumes, my key light, my small career.  Thank you all very much.  Now take a well deserved bow.

The Cutting Room Floor

Sorry for the lapse of time between postings.  What can I say...life happens.

Recently, I booked a gig on The Mindy Project on Fox.  It was an absolutely wonderful two days of work.  I had a good time, met some nice people, liked my character and thought I'd have a good minute on film.  I had two lines, two small funny lines.

Well, the episode played this week and guess what?  One of my lines wound up on the cutting room floor.  Can I just say disappointed.  Not to mention that it was the longer of my two lines.  Instead of a minute of exposure, I had about ten seconds.  This has happened to me more than once.  It got me thinking about being cut.

I recently watched the special features for the film, Sweet Home Alabama.  It's a great little film with Reese Witherspoon and Patrick Dempsey.  In the deleted scene section, the director was talking about why scenes were cut.  Most of the scenes deleted were a secondary love thread that winds up in the movie only as a picture in a paper during the credits.  The character in the thread had a real supporting role and the director dropped her whole performance because the focus audiences didn't like her.  Had to be heartbreaking for her, especially because the director said he liked her performance.

In another film, Kate and Leopold, Liev Schrieber is at the bottom of an elevator shaft with a day player in another deleted scene.  The day player had a line.  The shot didn't make the movie.  Another disappointment.

Yes, getting cut is disappointing.  Just like auditioning and not getting the job is disappointing.  But unlike the audition, the cut job gets you a pay check.  I need to learn this lesson.  I work to get paid, not to be seen.  A job is a job.  Whatever winds up on the screen, large or small, is serendipity...totally out of my control.  Work is work.  Learn something new, do your best and get paid.  What could be better.

I'll try to remember this the next time I work.  For those of you who saw my ten seconds, thanks for not blinking.  Maybe next time, I'll get more screen time.

Rehearsal Clothes

Next week, I will attend the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.  I don't get to go often.   But since I am now working only one job and since it is happening in Los Angeles, I will be able to attend the whole festival.  I am very excited because I will be able to see some excellent productions from colleges across our Southwest region as well as student projects in all aspects of theatre design.  There are also a ton of theatre workshops.  Three days of exciting theatre activities right in my own backyard.

I am going to present a workshop at the festival on the correlation between costume design and developing a character as an actor with an emphasis on the importance of appropriate rehearsal clothes for actors.  This was my masters' thesis and a particular passion of mine.

As I've written before, I didn't intend to get into costuming.  Being a woman of size, I was pushed there by producers and directors who didn't want to have to take responsibility for making sure my clothes fit.  When they found out I could sew, they just handed me the whole shebang.  And so I became an actor who designs costumes.

What I found out as I began to learn more about costume design is that the skills that make me a good actor also makes me a good costume designer.  Clothes are an important part of our personality.  They are the first clue the world has about who we are and what we feel about ourselves.  We want to think that the world doesn't judge us on our externals, but reality proves daily that it does.  A costume designer trades on clothing stereotypes to help the audience understand the characters in a play.

A smart actor learns to work with their costumer to help create the appropriate "skin" for their character.  That doesn't mean that they tell the costumer what to design.  Each member of the theatre team must be allowed their own creativity.  But a savvy actor will know how to collaborate with the costume designer so that the designer understands the actor and the character.  That way both actor and designer get the visual effect they desire.

Most importantly, an actor will rehearse in clothing as close to his/her final costume as possible knowing that the clothes will inform the character.  This is important for more than period pieces.  We all know that undergarments like corsets, girdles, etc., change how you move.  Shoes do as well.  But even in contemporary clothing, what you are wearing will make a difference in how you move.  And physical movement is an important facet defining a character.

I could go on and on about this...I told you I was passionate about the subject.  I'll go into it further at a later date.  Just let me say today that I hope I have people in my workshop.  I'm a little afraid no one will attend.  Learning to use clothes as a tool for character development can make a difference between an okay performance and an outstanding one.  So I can wait until next week.

Theatre vs. Film/TV

Recently, I was talking with a student about his career goals and he told me he was going to teach because he wanted to stay a theatre actor.  I was intrigued because, of course, we live in a city dedicated to film and television.  Our discussion caused me to consider why I chose to come to LA to pursue an acting career when I, too, really love theatre.

My first calling was to theatre when I was sixteen.  I am theatre trained.  My early professional career was in regional summer stock.  I love the synergy that happen between actor and audience in live theatre.  I am passionate about the process.  Still, when the time came to choose between New York and Los Angeles...theatre or film and television...I chose LA.

My reasoning was this.  I've always been jealous of my visual art, writer and musician friends.  They have a permanence about their work.  When they have finished creating, they have a painting or sculpture, a story or a composition.  When I finish my work as a theatre artist, it's gone.  It can't be repeated.  Theatre is ephemeral because of the audience factor.  No two audiences are alike and each audience's interaction with the actors in a performance makes for a different show every night.  I longed to have something to mark my creativity.

Film and television does that.  When I have finished my work, I can look at it and reflect on it, critique and, hopefully, improve my technique.  I can go back in time and watch early work and see how I have changed (again, hopefully for the better).  It is, in a sense, my shot at immortality.

The downside is that film and television performance are contrived by someone other than myself.  The director, the director of photography, the editor all influence my performance with how they cut the piece.  Most times, only a portion of my full performance makes it to the screen.  Sometimes, my best work lays on the cutting room floor.

Theatre gives me the control of my acting.  My whole creation makes it to the stage.  The audience response will shape my performance, but I can also shape the audience's response.  It is the synergy that makes the magic.

As I ponder on whether or not I made the right choice, I can't tell you which craft is more engaging for me.  To be honest, I like them both.  Just wish film and television liked me better.  At least I have a little bit of immortality.  Maybe that will be enough.

Thinking = Subtext

The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival will take place in Los Angeles in early February.  Colleges from across our region will be bring students who have been nominated for Irene Ryan awards to downtown LA to compete to go to Washington, DC, for the national festival.  I have the honor of working with two very talented young men who are in the competition.  They have chosen as one of their selections a scene from Bent.  Bent is the story of two gay men in a Nazi concentration camp.  It is a challenging play and the scene they have selected is an extraordinarily emotional piece.  Yesterday, after they went through it once, we talked about the importance of the inner monologue, the subtext, that colors the written words of a play.  In other words, the thinking.

I've been cogitating a lot about thinking as it pertains to acting.  And I've come to the conclusion that what we are thinking when we speak is as important, if not more important, than what we say when we speak.

I don't know about you, but I always have an inner monologue running when I'm in conversation.  I may be unusual, but I don't think so...oops, there's that word again.  We've all had conversations where underneath we've thought, "I can't believe I'm saying this."  Or again, "I wish I could change the subject."  We all preview what we are going to respond to what the other person's saying.  Our likes and our dislikes run under our dialogue.  This inner monologue enriches a character we are portraying when we act.  The subtext shows when our characters are having difficult conversations, when we are revealing secrets, when we are telling truths.

This inner monologue is especially important when you are acting for the camera.  The camera reads a person's eyes.  Eyes that are thinking are much more interesting than eyes that are just remembering written lines.  Your face speaks volumes even when you don't have any words.  For the camera, you are what you think.

As someone who has trouble turning off her mind, thinking is not a problem for me.  Going for the hard "think," the inner voice that is confronting the things I don't want to think about is usually my challenge.  And it is the hard "think" that most drama is about, those hard truths that we'd rather hide from ourselves.  The "dark corners" we would rather not shine a light on.

So for my students, as we work on Bent, I am going to challenge them to think, to take that thinking to the hard places.  They have the ability and the talent.  I can't wait to see where they go.

Staying Positive

Acting is a difficult business.  You wait for an audition.  Often the opportunities don't come.  When you do get an audition, more often than not it's just that, an audition, no job.  You can go long stretches without work.  As a matter of fact, I just went through five dry years.  Acting can be a depressing, gut-wrenching business.  The trick is to stay positive.

How do you do that when most actors, or at least this actor, are insecure and sure they will never work again after their current job ends?  A really good question.  As I often tell my students...most actors have a screw loose; we're a little insane.  If we weren't, we'd have jobs that had some security and a reliable paycheck.  So how do you stay positive?  I don't have a really good answer, but I'm working on it.

Part of staying positive is believing in something, anything, but especially yourself.  Believing that something larger than yourself is ordering the universe can put life in perspective and give you something positive to hold onto.  You don't have to necessarily believe in God.  I do by the way.  But believing that there is a presence, a higher power, that makes living possible does help.  It works for AA.  Acting is an addiction for me, so I have to take positivity one day at a time.  For me, if God believes in me, I have to believe in myself.

Another part of staying positive is not putting all your creative eggs in one basket--acting.  Those of us who are artists usually have other creative outlets to get us through the dry spells in our main field of endeavor.  Many actors paint, or make music.  Johnny Depp, for instance, has a band.  I myself write.  I'm working on a book.  This allows my creative juices to flow even when I can't get acting work.

I also use visioning as a way to stay positive.  I have a vision board with the goals I want to achieve and I look at it often.  I remind myself of the goals I have accomplished and focus on ways to address my current goals.  I use my vision board as a visual pep talk when I begin to feel down.

Building a community of support can also help maintain positivity.  I've been blessed with a group of Power Ranger fans who encourage and support me and friends and family that believe in me.  Knowing that there are people holding good thoughts for my success lifts my spirits and buoys me when I begin to doubt.

I'm banking on positivity to make 2013 a very good year.  I believe that all good things have arrived already for me.  Just like Christmas, all I have to do is open the packages.  There will be days, I have no doubt, when it will be harder than it is today to be positive.   But I'm working a positive program and I am succeeding.  Today and every day, life is getting better and better.