Almost

  My apologies to my four loyal readers for having been so negligent in my duty to promote myself through this blog and dump all of my thoughts on you sadists who continue to read what I write.  All four of you. I have been really busy, hustling to make ends meet (or is it end's meat?). Aside from rehearsing this and doing the occasional box office work at Little Fish, I am also working for CETA (California Educational Theatre Association) as and Area coordinator and play adjudicator.  I love it!  I see talented high school students and their amazing and inventive directors put on plays. And unlike you lot, they have to read what I write. Giving feedback to another generation of actors and theatre artists is very rewarding. But to the task at hand: Please come see this show! Those of you in Orange County who can't make it up to LA for stuff, I'm right down in your artistic center. Santa Ana is so cool! Of course, I've known this for many years, as we perform Shakespe...

  It's all over but the blues. Closing a show is usually a bittersweet experience.  You are joyous that you had such a great experience, and also looking forward to the next show, but you're tired from a long run and looking to recover.  This time, not so much.  Theaters remain closed (and although I did get a job offer, it's doesn't perform until March 2022), and who knows when they will open again?  It's not uncommon to get post-show blues.  I get them most of the time.  With this, I'm still in denial.  So they haven't even hit me yet.  I keep waking up in the morning and starting to run the show in my head before I realize my mistake. It was an indescribable joy to work on this production!  It was an honor to scratch my name amongst those who have undertaken the role of Richard.  It was truly a blessing to have this window during the pandemic to get out in front of a live audience and share this experience.  And my heart is ...

 I can't believe that we only have one performance left.  And yet it has been such a gift to even have these half-dozen live performances!  It is such an immense honor to be playing this role.  Dream role!  Bucket List!  That thing you hope you'll be able to do, although it's incredibly daunting role...call it what you will. I won't be greedy and bemoan our lack of a real rehearsal process, or a lengthy run.  We were lucky to get to do it at all!  This was almost another event filmed in our Little Fish parking lot with no audience.  But Lisa took a chance that we could maybe do this with an audience, and it has really paid off.  Especially for me.  When I think of doing all of these soliloquys to a camera instead of living, breathing, joyously hate-filled audience members, I am filled with nothing but gratitude.   My first year with Shakespeare by the Sea was 2002 when I played my first Macbeth, probably too young, and ver...

 Stephanie and I are a great team.  And not because we share the same aesthetic.  I mean, we do.  We think the same things about what theatre should be and generally like the same work.  But what makes us make one another better is that we also each have strength where the other my have deficiencies.  (I wrote fill one another's gaps, fill the holes in the other and other things before I gave up because it's still so stupid that a man and a woman in this age can't be close personal friends and longtime partners without the stigma being there.  Our families have vacationed together.  We are like brother and sister--and every so often we yell at each other as if we were...not often, but recently...lol).   Anyway, when directing, I stage the fights in all of her plays, and she stages the big group scenes in all of mine!  Because I know how to make violence safe and exciting and she knows how to make plays come together and be both pret...

 Short little blog entry tonight, just to keep the thoughts about this journey going, and so I can remember them myself, because it's been a whirlwind.  I'm glad that people are enjoying the show!  I really think it's going to grow into something very special, and much of it is already there.  The added element of the audience has leveled us up, for sure.  It's such a joy to be on a stage in front of humans again.  I know the pandemic has done a number on a great many businesses across the globe.  Theatre actors lost everything!  It's a tough enough racket anyway, finding enough paying theatre work to make ends meet.  But then it was all gone.  Poof.  And sure we did numerous zoom shows and at SBTS we even did two pseudo-productions in our parking lot.  But the missing element was the audience.  And it is palpable.  On zoom, you can't even look into your fellow actors' eyes.  And there is no response. Actors feel...

  (photo by Miguel Elliot) One of the first things you have to think about with your director and your costume designers is what exactly is the deformity that Richard has.  And there are some famous productions where it is all about the deformity.  Antony Sher's "bottled spider" inspired silhouette led him to settle on two walking crutches, which he goes in-depth about in his book Year of the King.  It's a fascinating read.  A few years ago, Branagh had a giant contraption on his body in a production.  Olivier's giant hunchback also springs easily to mind when thinking about this character.   Steph and I were both of the same mind (no surprise, we almost always are) that we didn't want it to be a play about the deformity.  We are also very sensitive to the fact that I am an able-bodied actor portraying somebody who is famously disabled, and we wanted the play to be about how his self-view and the scorns of enemies has shaped him into the mons...

 So...I may write a few blogs this week.  I usually post one a week when I'm doing a production, but since we had all of 6 live rehearsals for this show, five of them in the last week, and we just completed our opening weekend of live performances (and now we are half done with our run) I have way too much in my head to fit all of it in this blog tonight.  So, I will likely write several different blogs this week about process, opening, and an in-depth look at what the hell I'm doing playing Richard. Enjoy them at your own pace.  Don't try to read them every day.  That way madness lies.  Parcel them out over the summer, like little deranged treats for the brain, from the addled brain of a deranged actor, playing a deranged king. But, to tease you, coming blogs will include such exciting subjects as:  Why is St. Paul so often called upon by Richard?  What the hell is up with the strawberries?  A breakdown of the intricate relationships in the ...