Why we can't have nice things.

Short version:  Assholes.

Long version:

Yesterday, somebody blew up a Buddhist shrine in a tourist spot in Thailand.  Twelve hours later, it looks like 18 dead, over a hundred more injured.  http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002363580

Nobody's saying, "It was me," yet.  There are a half-dozen religious, political, and religious/political groups considered potentially responsible, and the always-popular deranged individual theories.

So our range of motivations basically come down to these three:
1.  I think Buddhism is bad, and I want people to stop being Buddhist, so I will kill them to make them afraid and demonstrate that my religion will kill people who don't join us.
2.  I think the government is bad, and I want to deprive them of reputation and revenue, so I will kill tourists and make people afraid to come to my country because they'll think it's not safe.
3.  I think people in general need to be hurt or punished, because they deserve it and/or because it gives me pleasure or makes me feel better about my own life.

It's probably at least two, if not all three.
Now, the first two are, in the long run, self-defeating.  Though you might frighten people off from a religion for a bit, or destabilize a government, you sure as hell aren't going to attract anyone to your own religion, or inspire confidence in the government you're trying to put in place.
The third - what can possibly be more self-centered?  And is there really much doubt that it's at the heart of the political and religious folks who claim to be serving some higher ideal?

So that's my definition of an asshole - the person who says, "I deserve this, and you do not."  The person who says, "I deserve this at your expense."  The person who says, "If I can't be happy, then NOBODY can be happy."  The person who is so wrapped up in their own precious suffering and fragile sense of self-worth that anyone who infringes on - or fails to acknowledge - their superiority MUST be put in their place.

No group is free of assholes.  None.  No mission statement, no religious creed, no political platform, no club, no guild, no trade organization, no nation, no ethnicity, no team, no genre, no fandom, no online community.  There's no badge you can pin on that says, "This guarantees the wearer is not an asshole."

At the same time, no group is ALL assholes.  Even in the craziest nutjob extremist group that was founded based on hating some other subset of society, there are a few folks who are there because they're desperate to belong to something, because being on a team, not being alone, having someone say "You're a good guy," is a stunningly important part of human existence, and they haven't been able to find it from anyone else.  There are a few folks who legitimately think they're doing good work, not because they hate, but because they actually don't understand how their actions are affecting others.

So what do we do?

We don't make blanket statements.  We don't say, "If they were all dead, the problem would be solved."  We don't say, "You're __________, therefore you're __________."  We interact with each other as humans rather than as objects.
We deal with the assholes in our own groups.  We speak up and say, "The things you say and do are not acceptable."  We take the time to talk about the possible consequences of any course of action.  We don't snap back when someone offends us.
We apologize and try to understand better, and move forward together.

It's exhausting.  It's waaaaay easier to say, "These people are like me, those people are not like me."  It's how society has existed for millennia.  But we now live in a time when anyone - any one - out of the 7 billion people on the planet can go out and casually disrupt and destroy the lives of hundreds or thousands of people.

We can't afford to let the assholes win.  We can't afford to push each other away.

I love you.

The Final Countdown

Suddenly, I leave for Japan tomorrow.

For the last few months, it's been a thing (in my head) that happens "in a while."  Three months, a couple months, a few weeks - then, somehow, it jumped straight to "Wow, this is really happening SOON."

I'm mostly packed - I think/hope, and haven't forgotten anything critical.  Probably.  I'm trusting that my new employers have a good plan for getting us all settled in and trained, since they've been organized so far.  I keep telling myself to just be patient with all the nonsense at the airport - and then again at the airport on the other end.  I (mostly) know my lines.

Our apartment here feels like home.  We have routines, spots we prefer to sit on the couch, art on the walls.  It isn't quite done, but it's done enough.  It's the reference point from which I calculate distance and travel time now.

What will I miss most?

The weird balancing act of being a scrappy looking-for-work actor:  Scouring audition listings for worthwhile projects, the weird roller-coaster of hope and disappointment, the little frustrations and delights of every show or film that seem SO SIGNIFICANT, the times I run into an old friend at an audition or a rehearsal.

Our cats' weird personalities:  Savini, who just wants me to stay still so he can clamber into my lap, fall asleep, and drool all over my hands.  Isi, who will happily grumble and chirp her way through an entire conversation, and loves to burrow under the blankets at 6 AM.  Calamity, who's still kitten-fascinated by the world, and wants to climb everything and chase everything and run from everything, and so, so gentle.

Simple times with my wife:  slouching around in our bathrobes with coffee in the morning, separately checking our email and assorted websites before getting on with the day.  Scrounging Netflix for a hopefully-good movie, and knowing we'll have pretty much exactly the same reaction to whatever we find.  Walking to the park for some lazy reading in the sun.

The familiar, I suppose.  Super secret about me which will surprise nobody:  I don't like new things.

This year will either get me over that forever, or drive me so crazy that I'll spend the rest of my life at home, only eating frozen pizza and tortilla chips, watching old Star Trek on Netflix.  We'll see.

California Dreaming

This past Wednesday evening, we turned south at Barstow, and before too long, we hit the long downhill stretch of freeway - seemed like ten or fifteen miles of downhill.  The sun was just starting to set, and our introduction to our new home city came with a magenta sky and lights beginning to come on in the valley below us.

We'd been driving for three days, staying in cheapo motels, gradually wearing down our humanity in the way that only long travel seems to do.  The cats had become resigned to their new itinerant life, and mainly slumped around in the backseat, stress-numb and travel sick.  Our car had served amazingly well on this trip - no hint of any issues (I suspect it was as glad as we were to be leaving Chicago winter).

And then we were here.

Everything here looks to me like those scrabbly little vacation towns along the gulf coast of Florida. 
Franchise businesses are scattered among local independents, and everything's sun-bleached, dusty, and a little home-made looking.  It all feels so, so spread out - there's really not much within walking distance of our apartment, whereas in Chicago, it was only the last couple years that I even felt it necessary to have a car.

So it's different.

We've been errand-running like crazy, trying to fill in all the gaps, trying to remember what exactly is still on the way (95% of our stuff will be arriving next week), trying not to exhaust ourselves.  It's a strange in-between time, when we don't really live here yet, but don't live anywhere else.  Neither Kitten nor I has a real job at the moment - I have prep work and lines to learn, and she's submitting for auditions, but nothing regular to act as a foundation, a ground wire, as ballast to keep us steady in the midst of all this.

Tonight we get to go out and see people other than each other for a bit.  It'll be good.  It'll be tiring.  Neither of us is fantastic at small talk, and we're going to be around a couple (one?) people we've worked with but don't really know, and an unknown number of strangers.  We'll see.

This weekend we can catch our breath a bit and get to know our new city a little.  I hope it likes us.

The In-Between Time

Lately, there's been a lot of treading water.

Let's expand that metaphor, and make it even more convoluted and complex:

A bunch of shipwreck survivors are scraping out a living on an island.  They all know that once in a while, a boat passes by, but it can't be seen from the island, and there's no good way to predict when it'll arrive.  Sometimes the people on the boat are nice, and they'll rescue anyone they find in the ocean.  Sometimes they won't.  Or sometimes they'll let you on board for a bit and then throw you back in the ocean.
So you prepare - you build a raft, practice swimming along shore, stock up on coconuts and parrot meat.  Many of those around you have decided to make the best of things on the island, and their life looks pretty good in comparison to your scrabbling.  You have a few friends who have caught a boat - messages in bottles occasionally wash up, and you have other friends who are also preparing to try.
A few times a week you swim out to sea and back, never really expecting a boat, but also too stubborn to give up.  Then one day, there it is.  Big-ass boat, out on the horizon.  And there's a person on the deck waving a flag and yelling to you.
You shout back to your spouse on the beach, who loads all your stuff on the raft and kicks it out to meet you.  Together you kick further out into the ocean, to the point where it'd be really tough to make it back.  That person out on the boat is lowering a ladder and a rowboat, but it's going to be a while - and you still don't know exactly what kind of boat it's going to turn out to be.

Still with me?

A couple weeks ago (seriously?  it's only been two and a half weeks?) I accepted a job offer from Universal Studios Japan, and Kitten & I started uprooting our lives to make it happen.  We're fitting in a move to Los Angeles before my contract starts, which entails all kind of stress and complexity.  The whole thing is occurring on this weird, drawn-out timeline where we know there are lots of things that NEED to be done, but there's not much we CAN do yet.

Kitten's heading to LA to look for apartments at the end of the month, but we can't really prep yet - nothing for an end-of-February move is being listed yet.  We're semi-started packing and clearing out things that aren't worth moving, but there's still 2 months of living here to do.  We can't really look for acting work in a serious way, beyond the occasional 1-2 day short term, last minute stuff that comes up.

So, we're out on the raft, treading water for now.  We're hoping this boat means great things.  It's going to be a tough trip, either way.

In the meantime, we're swinging back and forth between desperately wanting to hang out with all our favorite people, and just wanting to curl up and watch Farscape on Netflix (if you want to watch Farscape with us, it's win-win).  Please put up with us if we're weirder than usual for a while.

The wand chooses the wizard.

Back in August, on a whim, I submitted to audition for Universal Studios Japan.  They come through Chicago once a year or so on a round-the-world audition tour, casting assorted singers, dancers, actors, and stunt people for their shows.  I'd seen the audition listings in the past, and generally laughed it off - what a crazy idea, right?
Lately I've been trying to learn to not reject myself for roles - if I'm not right, you can be sure someone will tell me, but if I never audition, I'll never know - so... I sent in my headshot and resume.  There was only one part I was qualified for (since I'm not a Broadway-style singer/dancer, not a stunt person, and don't speak Japanese), and I'm at the bottom of the age range they were looking for, so I figured my odds were low, but:
  1.  I actually like auditioning.  The worst they can say is no, there's no critics, and nobody's going to applaud you either way, so it's my chance to rock out and do things totally my way.
  2.  I try to test my limits.  Every once in a while I push myself to audition for something one level up, professionally, from where I've been working.
  3.  To keep working as an actor, you constantly look for work.  Say you get called in for 1/3 of what you submit for, and get called back for 1/4 of what you audition for, and get cast in 1/5 of what you're called back for.  That's 60 submissions for 1 job.  So I cast a wide net.

And, hey, they had me come in to audition.

There was a whole raft of dancers there when I arrived, who had just been through the miserable culling that, I gather, is typical of dance auditions.  The surviving few were getting measured and interviewed.  Three other actory types of varying degrees of awkwardness were hanging around, and we all had pretty low expectations of our chances.

And we did our Japanese language/British accent monologues, and a nice Australian woman interviewed me, and I got my measurements taken, and somehow in the space of an hour I'd been put on the short list of job candidates.

Whoa.

No idea how seriously to take this, at this point.  They were holding auditions in, like, 15 cities around the world, in pretty much any country where people could pass for English.  They had no idea how many jobs would even be open (returning cast gets 1st dibs).  And then September, October, and November came & went with basically no word from them.  Early December was the "casting takes a long time" email.  I had pretty much written this off.

December 21, job offer.  I can go work as a wandkeeper at Ollivander's.  In Japan.  For 13 months.  No wife, no cats.  Three days to reply & return signed paperwork if interested.

Now, far be it from me to judge this whole process, but that's not something you dump on people who are already in the midst of Christmas travel stress.  Really, now.

Skip ahead a week: after lots of talks with my wife, sharing the news with immediate family, and letting the idea sink in a bit, the official announcement:

More details will follow in later posts.  We'll be in Chicago for a while yet, so don't panic.  Just wanted to let you all in on the fun.

Not the center of the universe

For the first time in a long time, I'm doing a show where I'm not needed at every rehearsal, there are lots of scenes I'm not in, and I'll have time to kill backstage during the performance.  It's weird.

It's actually pretty normal, for theater, and I remember a time it was normal for me.  Not lately.  For the last two years or so, I've done very ensemble-y stuff, where if you weren't onstage at the moment, you were grabbing your next costume, bag of candy props, puppet or mask, or helping someone else with theirs.  From the moment the show started, if there was a moment's break, it was for catching your breath and drinking as much water as possible.
  I've also been doing a lot of film work, and while it's a totally different sort of schedule than theatre, there's a kind of bustle or urgency on set that's rarely present for stage work.  (Unless, presumably, you're working on such a modern classic as GHOST - THE MUSICAL.)

  It's weird.
  It makes me think about the ways I use theater as a time filler, an excuse for putting off other things (I can't do _____ this week, rehearsals are crazy...).  And about the ways it's way too easy to start overvaluing myself as an actor (Well, I'm not technically the lead, but I AM in pretty much every scene...).
  I've got a nice solid supporting part.  A few lovely scenes.  It's a part that really suits me as an actor.  But it's not sucking up my time, and I can't, by any stretch, pretend the production revolves around me.

  Those are good things, but they're things I wasn't expecting to be quite this aware of.  It's like a big note from myself, that says, "Hey - get over yourself, do your job, keep life moving forward."  It's a chance to use those days off rehearsal with purpose, rather than "Ugh, I'm so tired from rehearsal, I need a day off."
  I suppose the lesson in all this is -

Hang on.  Come see BAT-HAMLET!  It's exactly what it sounds like.  I'll be playing Lord Riddles, and my lovely wife will be playing Barbara Gordrick, daughter of the late king of Gothic Castle.  Every single person I know will enjoy some aspect of this production.  March 28-April 26 at the Cornservatory, 4210 N Lincoln.

 - to not get too comfortable, too cocky, too lazy.  Right?  Or something?

BAT-HAMLET!

"You're in this for the money..." (and other bullshit people say to actors)

A few days ago I was talking to an acquaintance who I've worked with a few times as an extra for TV and movies.  He's some variety of person who makes piles of money as an investor, and is looking to get into the producing side of filmmaking.  We were talking about "Breaking Bad," since the series finale had just aired.
  He asked, "Now on a show like that - a really great role, like Brian Cranston's - would you do that for no money?"
  Moment of thought.  "No."
  "What do you mean, you'd turn that down?"
  "No.  I mean, I'd probably do it for scale, for the first season - because that'd be a great opportunity, at this point in my career.  But then it'd be time to renegotiate."
  "Wait, so what you're saying, is, you're in this for the money?"
  "Yes.  Absolutely.  Because this is my career.  And somebody's making a pile of money off that show, and the actors deserve a cut."
  He think a moment.  "OK, you know, I can respect that.  That's honest."

[For those of you not in the industry, "scale" is the minimum a production company is allowed to pay a union actor for the specific type of work they're doing.]


This past year, as I've worked very deliberate ways to turn acting from an exhausting, time-consuming, expensive hobby into an exhausting, time-consuming, expensive way to make a living, I've been more and more aware of the ways that people, even (sometimes, particularly) people within the performing community, look down on actors who expect to be fairly compensated for their work.

  When I needed to miss one rehearsal (out of a six-month rehearsal process) to work on a film, our assistant director accused me of having "gone Hollywood."
  When the cast of a show I was working on suggested that perhaps it would be better to hire an assistant stage manager to: set up the theater before each show, tear down the set after every show, and run the lights during the show; rather than making the cast responsible for those duties, we were chastised.  We were scolded.  We were told, "That's just how theater is."  We were accused of being ungrateful.
   I read a smug blog in which the author admitted, "I didn't cry when I said goodbye to my friend" (moving to LA), and praised herself for staying in Chicago, because "some are not in search of fame or sun or a change of pace."

  (I'm going to try and trim most of the profanity from my response to all this.  No guarantees, though.)



  Nobody accuses a computer programmer of just being "in it for the money."  Or someone running a restaurant.  Or a florist.  They all expect to be paid for their work - because they're doing something that people value, and over time they've acquired the skills to do it well, either through training or work experience.  What makes acting different?
  In every job, a person grows in ability over time, and becomes more valuable, and is generally paid more as a result.  But even on their first day, when they're completely inept, they get their $7.25 an hour, because we, as a society, have said, "You can't pay people nothing."  You know, unless they're performers.  Somehow every acting job is thought to be so fulfilling, so educational, such an artistic expression that it's fine to abuse and impoverish actors.  And actors have been trained to believe that as well.

  Working for no money doesn't make your work pure and artistic.  Frankly, it's more likely to make your work half-assed, since you'll be perpetually late (because you're coming from your day job), impossible to schedule for (because your day job boss won't let you have Saturdays off to rehearse), and constantly sick (since you likely don't have insurance and certainly can't afford the time or money to eat decently).

  Theater companies complain that they can't pay actors, because the money just isn't coming in from ticket sales.  Here's a thought:  maybe, just maybe, if you can't sell tickets to your shows, paying your actors would help.
     Paid actors are grateful actors.
         I will go way the hell out of my way to promote a show that's treating me well, or one that's giving the cast a cut of the box office.  Because I want that theater company to keep existing.  If you treat me like shit and every night I show up hoping there's no audience and we cancel?  If I've got no incentive to bring people in?  I'll share the event on facebook.
     Paid actors are good actors.
         A theater that pays get way more actors to choose from at their auditions.  More choice = better cast = better show = happier audience = puppies and unicorns for everyone.  If you have to beg and plead people to come to your auditions, if you have to cast every guy who shows up and put mustaches on some women, if you have to recruit the parents of the kid who's in your show:  no choice = painful rehearsals = embarrassingly bad show = uncomfortable audience = awkward silence when you ask your friends, "So, what did you think?"
     Paid actors are responsible actors.
         Acting is a job.  If a job doesn't pay, who gives a shit if you show up on time?  Or at all?  Or if you've done the work that was assigned to you, met your deadlines?  Because frankly, what are they going to do?  Take away your opportunity to give up your Saturday afternoon performing a bad show for an audience of four?  Oh, no, Br'er Fox, please don't throw me in the briar patch.

  And here's the other possibility if a company is in the "but we don't have any money" situation.
  Maybe, maybe, just possibly maybe, you should stop.  Maybe Chicago doesn't need another theater company that was founded to produce the re-imagined adaptation of Three Sisters that could only have been produced by you and your six friends who all went to theater school together.  Maybe nobody has a sufficient audience base because there are approximately 80,000 "storefront" theater companies in Chicago.  Maybe if nobody's doing the kind of work you want to do, you should learn from the kind of work they want to do.  Maybe if nobody wants to hire you to direct, it's because you're 22 and you think that improv games are necessary at the beginning of rehearsals, because that's how your teachers killed time in college.

  Now, before you kill me:  I think community theater is great.  It's OK to do theater that's about training the people who work on the shows, about making theater accessible where it otherwise wouldn't be.  I learned a lot performing for no money - I didn't get a degree in acting, so working for free was my GED as a performer.
  I think we need a new name for that kind of theater.  "Community theater" just makes me think of Waiting for Guffman, and I think it's nonsense to call yourself a professional theater company if you're not paying people a reasonable wage.
  But please, just because you don't intend to make a career out of acting doesn't mean that those who do are in it for the money, seeking fame and sun, or throwing away their art.  So stop sneering, stop asking stupid questions.
  Because I swear, next person who does, I'm going to smash a breakaway chair over their head, beat them up in a carefully choreographed fight sequence, and throw you off a fake balcony onto an air bag.  AND THAT CHEAP STAGE BLOOD WILL STAIN YOUR SKIN FOR LIKE THREE DAYS.
  So there.


[PS:  Stirring up controversy!  Yay!  But seriously, if you have a strong opinion, or even a mild opinion, share it.  A lot of this was off the top of my head, and I might even be convinced to revise some stances.
Heh.  Nah.]

people who do show after show after show and five, ten years later realize that no real work has been done - See more at: http://www.chicagoelevated.com/2013/09/30/ones-stay/#sthash.aVkq2Ygy.dpuf

 

people who do show after show after show and five, ten years later realize that no real work has been done - See more at: http://www.chicagoelevated.com/2013/09/30/ones-stay/#sthash.aVkq2Ygy.dpuf