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

What did real men fear in the '60s? Just watch Star Trek.

Confession:  There are quite a few episodes of original Star Trek I'd never seen.  I recently set out to remedy that, since they're on Netflix now, and it's like watching a show that was made by a different culture.  You know - like when you watch a European movie, and you can understand it, but you don't really relate to it.

Since Captain James Tiberius Kirk is the epitome of manly man-ness (tough but compassionate, intelligent and overprotective), I figured if Kirk flips out over something, it probably means it's something the Real Men of the 1960s were worried about, too.

I'm only through season one so far, and it seems pretty clear.  In order of terrifyingness, Real Men feared:

Failure or loss of personal manliness: 8 episodes

Technology run amok:  8 episodes

Career/workplace failure:  7 episodes

Manipulative women:  4 episodes

Politicians:  3 episodes

Drugs/madness/ignorance:  3 episodes

Women occasionally have to avenge a father, brother, husband, or child, or put up with harassment at work, but they're really only afraid of one thing:  Ending up with the wrong man, or no man.  And since Kirk is really the only right man, it's a universe of failing.  Sorry.



There are more than 29 total, because some episodes are in 2 categories.  Here's the complete breakdown, by episode number (the original pilot is under the 2-part episode 11/12).  Sometimes women get their own thing to be scared of.

1.  I could be tricked (shapeshifting/telepathy) into having sex with a hideous, life-sucking monster.

2.  A whiny teenager might steal my job.  Women: a whiny teenager might rape me.

3.  The guy who works for me might end up as my boss. Women: my boyfriend might be a power-tripping asshole.

4.  I might get drunk around my coworkers, and they'd know what I'm really like.

5.  If I stop acting tough, people will think I'm some kind of wuss.

6.  I might get tricked (drugs) into having sex with an average-looking woman.  Women:  I might not be gorgeous enough to find a man.

7.  Science might steal my humanity. (Women: my boyfriend could replace me with a sexbot.)

8.  I might get beat up by a gang of kids.  Women:  I might die before I find a man.

9.  Science might take away my free will.  Women:  He might just not be into me.

10.  I might have a problem I can't punch/shoot my way out of.

11/12.  MULTIPLE LESSONS!
        I could be tricked (telepathy) into having sex with a woman who's disfigured/not gorgeous.
        I could be paralyzed/disfigured and completely conscious but unable to move.
        Someone who works for me could screw up my career.

13.  The hot chick might be the murderer.

14.  Some crazy foreigners might attack us with fancy new technology.

15.  Anything that seems remotely enjoyable is actually a deadly trap that distracts me from focusing on my job.

16.  A politician might take decision-making power away from the Real Men.

17.  Some kid with fancy technology might be more powerful than me.

18.  I might be forced to accept a peaceful resolution rather than getting my revenge.

19.  I might have to be in a wacky time-travel episode.

20.  Somebody might take the word of a computer over the word of a Real Man.

21.  A computer could take away my manly rage and make me live a bland, peaceful life.

22.  Science (genetics) could make supervillains who take all my stuff.

23.  Wartime decisions might be made by a computer instead of by Real Men.

24.  Drugs could make me think everything is great.  (Side note:  everything on Drug Planet apparently is actually great, but is still makes the Real Man mad)

25.  Some blue-collar morons could start a war with their uneducated greed.

26.  Someone might (telepathically) make me unable to fight/kill my enemies.

27.  Someone with an undiagnosed psychological disorder could be in a position to destroy the universe.

28.  I might have to let my girlfriend die, because otherwise the wussy "peace movement" will let the Nazis take over the world.  (Also, another wacky time-travel episode)

29.  Science will let me down when I finally admit I need it.

I mostly found it odd how overt all these things were.  At the time, maybe they seemed more familiar ("Of course he wouldn't want to end up with her!  She's like 35 or something!  She was pretending to be younger!"), but now they seem... weird? sexist? paranoid?  insecure?
But don't take my work for it - they're all on Netflix.

Every Political Statement Ever

You know what I'm in favor of?  More good stuff for everybody.

You know who's stopping us all from getting it?  The jerks over there, in that other group.

Remember, I'm just like you.  And nothing is OUR fault, because we're the regular people.  Those people over there, they're not like us.  And since there's less of them than us, we're gonna get our way.

Those (generically disliked group) people are the ones stopping you from having all the wonderful things you deserve.  It's not that there's just not enough, or that you need to work harder, or that uncontrollable factors sometimes affect your life, or that decisions are sometimes made that you don't fully understand the reasons for.

They're doing it on purpose.  They're out to get you.  It's a conspiracy to deprive you of what you DESERVE.

Luckily, I'm here.  We're going to get together and get rid of those guys.  Naturally, it'll look like I get a few more privileges than the rest of you, but that's because I'm working so hard to get you what you deserve.  And let's not forget how bad those other guys are.

So if they don't watch out and do exactly what we (I) say, they'd better watch out.  Cause, I don't want to say it, and I'm the last one to want to hurt anyone, but if we don't get what we want, we're gonna start beating people up and stealing things.  And then if we still don't get what we (I) want, we're gonna start killing people.  Not that we want to, but see this gun?  I'm just saying.

So let's show those guys just how much you all agree with me.  Because we all should have all the good stuff they're stopping us from getting.  And don't forget - I'm just like you.  A regular person who works hard and was somehow ripped off by those other guys.


***For further reading, see:  the Old Testament, the US Declaration of Independence, the Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, Tea Party propaganda, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the... you get the idea.  I'm not saying they're all equally valid or invalid, I'm saying they're all formulaic and ultimately serve to replace one elite with another.  And that anyone who sets themselves up as the "regular guy" hero probably isn't.