2002-12-17 - 11:52 a.m.

So.

It's been 6 weeks or so, and Christmas is nigh upon us. What all has happened in the space between then and now? Much. I closed the play in Coral Gables: a week early, but our final performance was wonderful. In the words of our director, 'We're ready to open!' I think the Dreamer's Theater will be closing in 6 months. This play was a flop, and a costly one at that. 9 actors for 21 parts, way too many, at $175/week each. No proper advertising, small crowds, and bad reviews. We killed the Dreamers. Oh, what fun.

My career has not ended there, however. Thank God. I've started rehearsing Bits of the Bard, a collection of shakespearean scenes. I'm understudy for the Young Man, which means doing Hamlet, Demetrius, Iago, Hal, and Romeo. I'm also understudying the Older Man, which means Shylock, Richard III, Polonius, Falstaff and many more. God help me if the Older Man gets sick: I can't pull it off. I'm learning a lot about performing Shakespeare: first off, I need to improve and master my voice: the two actors I'm UD-ing have wonderful voices and know how to use them; second off, I'm a much better actor than they are, at least in terms of understanding, being in the moment, and working the audience. I feel as if I'm going into another coccoon, to emerge that much closer to the great actor I want to be.

My career can be comapred to a horse-race: I am the dark-horse. I am missing the polish of a professional, I don't know the tricks of the trade, and I give off the scent of an amateur. On the other hand, I feel very strongly that I possess a certain untrained talent, a wild card, that could make or break me. I feel more real than they do, more immediate, and that can be very powerful. I've gotten to the point where I speak Schecky like Mamet. Does this destroy the power of the poetry? I don't think so. The poetry and rhymes are there whether I underscore them verbally or not. I get noticed, I am everyone's next-big-thing, I think. They won't give me the big roles yet, but I know they've got an eye out for me.

I auditioned for MacBeth recently, for the same company that's doing B.o.B. I've already been cast as the villain in Merry Wives. I auditioned for the New Theatre too, and got a call back for their Summer Shakespeare festival. They're hiring interns for the productions, which have Equity contracts. There are none attached to the internships, but there is a stipend, as well as the ability to appear in an Equity production. I did Iago for the audit. The director had me do it twice over, with different interpretations. He seemed very pleased, and God knows I was: working a monologue with the auditors is the best sign you can get, it means the director wants to see how you take direction, how easy you are to work with. It means he sees you in a part. I will get this internship, or drown the world in flames. Or something.

Next summer, B.o.B. will be touring South Florida's High Schools, and I understand there will be an Equity contract attached. I have been told I've got the part if I want it next year. That would leave me with money, union-membership, and substantial bad-ass credits to take with me to NYC. The plan is to go around October of 2003, assuming I don't get into Grad-school by then. I'm still going to apply, just for personal satisfaction, and the possibility of free room and board for a few years. I won't get in, because I'm too young, but to hell with that.

I've also become a stage-manager. Tina, if she's reading this, is now shaking her head at the folly of any organization which would hire me to organize anything more complicated than a sock drawer, but there you are. It's fun, if frustrating, and now I know just how annoying actor's are. They're so sunk into their damned preparation that working a scene for blocking involves smoothing egos in a limited amount of time. They're convinced that the questions they have are unique and immediate (as opposed to the same damned questions they asked last week, and are asked by every damn actor in every damn show), and worst, they waste time acting when you're just trying to get them to move from mark to mark, to see how the stage picture looks. Aside from being distracting, they use all their energy in false convulsions of 'feeling', and then need to recuperate, thus wasting more time. They already have the job, they don't need to be brilliant in the first week of rehearsals.

Anyway, my love life is still DOA, but there are many great plays coming out, and better movies, so distraction from and facillitation of dating will be much easier in December. Thank God. Also, it's finally down in the 60s, and I can wear nice clothes without sweating through them.

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