Six Months Out of School.

I originally wrote this article for the NYU Graduate Acting Program Alumni Website, but I thought I'd post it here as well.

The purgatorial Tisch Salute ambled on and on and on and on and on and on and on, on that otherwise perfectly perfect fifteenth day of May.

My mind began hanging less and less on such lofty thoughts as “What’s the combined total of the ages of all the undergrad drama students?” and “I wonder what it must feel like to be at a party thrown by the folks in the Arts and Public Policy Department”. Instead, the enormity, the permanence, and the singular finality of the entire event began to sink in, slowly, minute by minute.

I kept stealing looks back at the swell of people bursting from the jam-packed rows behind us in the Madison Square Garden Theater, trying to spot my one and only supporter that day: my Mom, who hates traveling and yet decided it was worth the trip to miss work and fly up from Virginia for the day to see her first-born son on this most momentous occasion. And I couldn’t stop myself from stealing looks at each of my soon-to-be-former classmates, each of us bitterly draped in our flowing purple robes that Herf-Jones fleeced us into wearing. It literally felt like yesterday when we all met and yet here we were, anxious and battle-weary, yet completely young, gorgeous, and stunning, listening to Whoopi warn us that “If you care about what people think of you, then you’re not strong enough for this business.” As the ceremony drew to a close and we were sent on our way, it suddenly dawned on me that Oh Shit, This is ACTUALLY Happening.

And it will never happen again.

Oddly enough, as quickly as those three years in the program vanished into the void, the Tisch Salute, Leagues, and all the tumult (that’s TYOO-mult) surrounding them, feels like it took place ages ago, and I feel far removed from the entire experience.

As I write this, I’m wearing my last pair of “good” jeans—meaning, jeans where the holes in the crotch aren’t especially noticeable yet; my face is ragged, its unattractive and grease-caked sheen barely clinging to the bones that I’ve been so well-trained to augment my resonance with; the soles of my feet are on fire, and no amount of Thinking Forward and Up will alleviate the pain in my lower back, which pops and cracks seemingly of its own accord now; it took the entire month of October to raise the rent for the month of October (and I didn’t pay September’s rent); I’m in seemingly perpetual debt to the Powers That Be at Verizon, Bank of America, and of course the Citibank and the feds; my last meal was a bag of Doritos at about midnight last night, and that was my last dollar; and I’ve just finished my second ever catering gig, where the verbal abuse I received from some of the staff for committing the sin of being new and inexperienced was actually comical and pitiful in its absurdity, because they were clearly even more unhappy to be there than I was. Oh, and some of you might know this, but there’s an economic recession going on, bringing with it six times the applicants per job opening and a nearly 10% unemployment rate, so now there are people that actually DO want the Jobs That Nobody Wants. And I haven’t even gotten to “The Business” yet.

“The Business” is, of course, a fire-breathing dragon of a different color entirely, bereft of any sort of logic or sanity, where those that cut out of school early wind up as the face of new TV series, and where PR skills can eclipse talent, and where the most Lustrous of artists appear at movie theaters being ordered about by pimple-faced 20-year-old shift managers instead of actually being IN the movies being shown that day.

Intellectually, I was prepared for The Struggle, having already ingested such sobering books such as How to Be a Working Actor and Making it on Broadway, which pull no punches in detailing the difficulties of pursuing an acting career and removing the glitz from the Broadway lifestyle, respectively. I also have the good fortune of having been a journeyman in the Washington, D.C. area for a couple of years, where I worked quite a bit but had nothing to show for it, sleeping on friend’s couches or in the back seat of my 1998 Mercury Sable (license plate: BLACTOR), while my high school buddies were getting married, having babies, and complaining about paying rents of $400 or some shit back in Virginia. But reading about the craziness is one thing; actually being IN it, though…

Because of my travails in D.C., and because of my time in New York, I have the great fortune of having a slew of unbelievably talented friends and loved ones. What can suck about that, though, is when it seems like their talent is being recognized over your own. Penis envy is something I can keep to myself—of course I merely say this as an example—but there’s no way to hide the fact that my friends are booking plays, TV gigs, commercials, films, and design jobs, and sometimes it seems as though I can’t even BUY an audition. Of course we all know, and I can tell myself, that oftentimes booking jobs can have very little to do with something as seemingly worthless to certain sects of the industry as Actual Talent, and at heart I wish the best for everyone, but it can be difficult at times not to question my own worth and ability when it feels as though I’m the only NYU actor that isn’t acting. This is, obviously, not the case, but insecurity and instability aren’t really known for breeding rational thought.

So to summarize, currently I’m tired, broke, anxious, confused, and scared out of my fucking mind. And I feel a bit overwhelmed, too, because I’m from a small city in Virginia called Newport News, and New York City is not the easiest place to live.

When people ask me “so what are you up to now?” or “How’s life after school?” I simply say “I’m livin’ the dream!”, my well-polished and rakish sense of humor masking the agony within. Sadly, the truth is that every well-meant assurance of “just be patient” and “things will get better” only serve to exacerbate my frustration, along with the age-old Napolean Hill/Norman Vincent Peale adage “Just Think Postive!” As true as I’m sure it is, when I hear that I simply “just” have to think positively, I automatically infer that I’m in possession of some tragic personal defect that doesn’t allow me to do something as mind-numbingly simple as Thinking Happy Thoughts.

If I come off as angry and even a little morbid, it’s because that’s exactly what and where I am at the moment, and I don’t really feel obliged to NOT write about it. I know I’m not the only one who is experiencing or who has experienced these types of feelings upon exiting grad school, and in fact I know several of my former classmates are having similar experiences. Furthermore, graduating from school is among one of the top-rated Life-Changing Events that can cause depression—right up there with the death of a loved one, or the end of a relationship. It is a period of transition, and things are in flux. I continue to struggle with overcoming feelings of despair, and worthlessness, and impulses even worse than those. While I am acutely aware of the danger of getting swallowed up by all the pain—and I will be the first to admit that I’m highly prone to surrendering to the blues—it seems like the best thing to do is just to recognize that it’s there, embrace it, and not hide from it.

In fact, I think all this muck is the best possible thing for me right now.

What’s ironic to me about my experience in grad school is that by spending 800 hours a week delving into the inner depths of my Artist Self, I never actually had time to be a fully formed human being; rather, I was always Clifton The Actor, as opposed to merely Clifton. Every single fiber of my being was dedicated to figuring out what I could about acting before I left school, and therefore the very core of my being, and what I assigned the most value to, was my ability to act. And I was lucky enough to snag theater work throughout both summer breaks during that three year period, so even then I didn’t give myself the opportunity to step away and be what they call a Person (additionally, being a twenty-something and having a slew of 50-to-80-somethings telling you every last detail about yourself and pointing out your personal weaknesses, it can be very difficult to maintain a sense of balance, stability, and self within that structure).

Camryn Manheim warns students not to wrap the whole of their being, or their self-worth, or their identity up in their having an acting job or not, but what the fuck else can you do while you’re in a conservatory program, especially if you’ve come straight from undergraduate study (which I didn’t, but I’ve also never been without an acting job for more than a couple months at a time)? It’s almost like a tasteless practical joke, really, to send people soaring at one thousand miles per hour out into The Real World—into a profession where a strong sense of Self is paramount—full of hunger and ambition and impatience, and throbbing to prove themselves, when there is often so little sense of a Self present, the Self having been replaced by this being called the Graduate Actor.

So it’s actually wonderful not to be in school and unemployed for the time being, because my priorities have shifted. Of course I still die a little on the inside every time I hear about people booking shit while I’m getting screamed at by prissy, neurotic catering staff, and scouring for new ways to make Ramen a heart-healthy meal (I may try dumping some Cheerios in there tonight); of course I’d rather be doing Broke-ology or be on tour with In the Heights or playing Fiyero in Wicked. But I’m not. And that’s okay for now, because now I get to shine the microscope on me, in a different way than I did while in school. And I get to reacquaint myself with the French language, and with my drawing, and I get to teach myself how to play piano, and I get to connect with friends and family that have been wondering where the hell I’ve been these past three years, and I get to build a life for myself. I’ve learned that I need to focus on building faith and courage within myself, and restore belief in Clifton The PERSON, not Clifton the Graduate Actor or Clifton The Artist—I will always be an artist, and nobody can take that away from me.

What it all comes down to, is that I get to build a Self. And the funny thing is, I know that as soon as I bring that Self, that full, lustrous, present self to my work and into the audition room, the jobs will come. Of course it’s going to be a lifelong process, but still, before I can bring humanity to my artistry, I must first discover the art in my humanity. Or something like that.

I remember reading a quote from Simon Callow’s classic Being an Actor, where a friend of his quipped “if you amount to nothing, then your art will amount to nothing.” Well, here and now, six months out of school, I’m not acting, hardship is threatening to sink me, I’m wrestling with feelings of despair and hopelessness and worthlessness, and through it all I know I’m in a perfect place. Doesn’t always feel pleasant, but I know I’ll be alright.

I’ve gone on long enough—thank you for allowing me to share with you…and I hope to work with you soon.

Sincerely,

Clifton Alphonzo Duncan

Why I Have A Problem with the "Surrogates" Ad Campaign.

Several weeks ago, via my Facebook status, I posed the question on whether or not any other New Yorkers were pissed off by the ads for the upcoming Bruce Willis sci-fi thriller Surrogates. Because people don't really like to talk about race, I didn't get a huge response, but from the responses I did get, the most interesting one was from an old friend of mine, who suggested I not play the race card just yet, because the trailers for the film tell a different story.

Well, I've seen the trailers, I'm still not satisfied.

Here's an overview of my rage:

Each day, New Yorkers who brave either the subway or the streets--which, I might add, is just about EVERYONE--are treated to what I'm sure some believe is a clever and provocative ad campaign for Bruce Willis' new film. But instead of plastering Willis' grizzled, ultra-familiar mug on posters everywhere, which would've probably been enough to entice movie-goers to at least search for more information on the film (Columbia Pictures was certainly sure of Will Smith's facial bankability judging from its ad campaign for the ultimately lukewarm Seven Pounds), Touchstone Pictures opted instead to promote their film like this, like this, and like this.

Oh, and let's not forget about this and this. And last, but not least, there's this.

Although a friend of mine says that these same posters and billboards are all over Los Angeles as well, I'm confining my post to their presence here in the Big Apple, because I think it illustrates my point even more clearly.

As of 2007, New York City's estimated population exceeds 8.3 million people, according to Wikipedia, which goes on to assert that "New York is notable among American cities...for the overall density and diversity of its population. In 2005, nearly 170 languages were spoken in the city and 36% of its population was born outside the United States." Actually, I think I'll just take a whole damn chunk from Wikipedia; any emphasis added is my own:

New York City is exceptionally diverse. Throughout its history the city has been a major point of entry for immigrants; the term melting pot was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. Today, 36.7% of the city's population is foreign-born and another 3.9% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. Island areas, or born abroad to American parents. Among American cities, this proportion is exceeded only by Los Angeles and Miami. While the immigrant communities in those cities are dominated by a few nationalities, in New York no single country or region of origin dominates. The ten largest countries of origin for modern immigration are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, and Russia. About 170 languages are spoken in the city.

The New York metropolitan area is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel; Tel Aviv proper (non-metro/within municipal limits) has a smaller population than the Jewish population of New York City proper, making New York the largest Jewish community in the world. About 12% of New Yorkers are Jewish or of Jewish descent and roots. It is also home to nearly a quarter of the nation's Indian Americans, and the largest African American community of any city in the United States.

The five largest ethnic groups as of the 2005 census estimates are: Puerto Ricans, Italians, West Indians, Dominicans and Chinese. The Puerto Rican population of New York City is the largest outside of Puerto Rico. Italians emigrated to the city in large numbers in the early twentieth century. The Irish, the sixth largest ethnic group, also have a notable presence; one in 50 New Yorkers of European origin carry a distinctive genetic signature on their Y chromosomes inherited from Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the fifth century A.D.

As of the 2005-2007 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, White Americans made up 44.1% of New York City's population; of which 35.1% were non-Hispanic whites. Blacks or African Americans made up 25.2% of New York City's population; of which 23.7% were non-Hispanic blacks. American Indians made up 0.4% of the city's population; of which 0.2% were non-Hispanic. Asian Americans made up 11.6% of the city's population; of which 11.5% were non-Hispanic. Pacific Islander Americans made up less than 0.1% of the city's population. Individuals from some other race made up 16.8% of the city's population; of which 1.0% were non-Hispanic. Individuals from two or more races made up 1.9% of the city's population; of which 1.0% were non-Hispanic. In addition, Hispanics and Latinos made up 27.4% of New York City's population.

My question is this:

In a city that is known for its density and diversity--and to a larger extent, in a country which stuffs its young full of false pride in its status as a "melting pot"--why on earth would Touchstone be so ignorant, so insensitive, so reckless, and frankly so stupid, to release an ad campaign that gives the label of "Human Perfection" exclusively to white people? The only diversity within the ad campaign is the difference in gender, and the fact that there are both blonde and brunette women. Was there no one at Touchstone who said that implying that ONLY people that look like these white models are "Perfect" might be a bad idea? Or that it might be insulting? Or that it makes you look stupid when you release such a marketing blitz in one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse cities in the world?

I suppose there are more pressing issues at hand in the nation at the moment, but I'm still surprised someone hasn't called Touchstone on their shit. And I'm also surprised that there are actually people who've tried to tell me to leave it alone, people of COLOR who've tried to tell me to leave it alone. I understand that race is a dirty word, and a dirty topic, and it isn't meant to be talked about in the open, because people might get their feelings hurt. But telling me that "the movie trailer tells a different story", simply because there are 3 or 4 faces in it that are NOT white, is a terribly deficient argument. Furthermore, I and the millions of yellow, brown and red New Yorkers who see these posters each day don't have the benefit of seeing the entire trailer, unless they plunk down $12.50 to see some other shitty summer blockbuster and happen to CATCH the trailer.

In a country that inaugurated its first black president 8 months ago, it's stunning and dismaying to think that marketing suits at some big budget studio thought that the best way to market their film was by releasing a bunch of posters that uphold The Great White Ideal as "Human Perfection". If it's rash to call the ad campaign blatantly racist, then at the very least one would have to concede that the ad campaign is insensitive and non-inclusive.

Thank you, Touchstone, for taking it upon yourselves to remind the millions of black, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, and Arab girls and women and boys and men that they simply aren't what the great melting pot of America considers beautiful. Or perfect. And let's not forget our plus-size friends, who also number many. They are always in need of more reminders of how unaccepted and imperfect they are as well, so I'm glad you all came to the rescue.

Fuckers.

When It's Too Much.

School's out.

It ended with very little fanfare, at least for me. Or perhaps I chose to ignore the fanfare; it's not unlikely, given my penchant for distancing myself from anything that actually matters. As I sat in Madison Square Garden on that afternoon way back in May, at the "Tisch Gala", I refused to see the point in the ceremony of it all, what the big deal was. Yet as the mostly yawn-inducing ceremony dragged on, it began to dawn on me that, no, this will never happen again. This day, this achievement, being with this group of people, receiving this M.F.A., completing this rigorous program, this celebration, will never happen again. It is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

And that realization fostered another realization, as I looked back at the hundreds of people in attendance, cheering us, the newly-minted graduates, on. And I saw the throngs of husbands, of wives, of mothers and fathers, of grandmothers and grandfathers, of aunts and uncles, and of childhood friends, urging on the other M.F.A. recipients in my class. Such support and love these friends and family members gave, and that my former classmates received; their troops had all come out to witness and experience this special day with their loved ones.

Although she was there, Mom may as well have been invisible among the screaming crowd. And I was shocked at how often I found myself looking back to see if I could see her and if she could see me, like I was some four-year-old in his first play disregarding the dramatic action to brazenly take a look out into the audience to see if my parent(s) approved. And each time I looked back and saw not her, but everyone ELSE's friends and family, I became resentful, anxious, and deeply sad.

By the end I realized that not only was the event once in a lifetime, but I had almost no one to share it with. And I downplayed the significance of the thing, I think, mostly to subvert the hurt of, once again, going it (virtually) alone, and feeling like it's my fault.

And that day, fraught with still-other tensions that I won't discuss here, was my entree into "The Real World". Or back into it, really.

It also happened to be the day that I began rehearsals for what would turn out to be the hottest show in New York City, and the pay-check combined with the limited responsibilities allowed me to coast for another month or two before scrambling to find that next gig. But being attached to that project was, in the end, for me, meaningless, until the very last night when I realized that it was ending. The stars would resume their lives being shrouded in the smoke and mirrors that obscured their humanity, and I would resume a life of...well, of what, really?

Of feeling as though I'm on auto-pilot all the time? A life of watching from afar as others sycophantically latch onto one another under this mythological thing called "love", while long for and sneer at their perceived happiness? A life of unfulfilment, where even those very few who actually DO give a damn are turned away with scars and third degree burns? A life marred by a strong intellect starved of attention yet relied on too heavily, paradoxically coupled with the slow burn of constantly marginalized emotions always simmering below and dying to escape? A life of grudges and unforgiveness, of self-doubt, contempt and loathing, a life devoid of faith?

When I'm not killing time on the Internet, stoking the guilt that I'm not actually doing something productive, I sometimes take to roaming the streets of Manhattan, the last vestiges of a once-debilitating plantar fascitis in my left heel altering how I stand and walk to the point where either activity is done with trepidation, and the resulting corruption of my body's alignment causes my lower back to feel like it's in a vice grip. These days, each breath feels as though I've just finished running a 10K race, so even breathing--an activity that's supposed to induce calm--has ironically begun to produce its own kind of anxiety. Because my mp3 player quit on me some weeks ago, I don't even have the comfort of my playlist, adorned with the sounds of A Tribe Called Quest, Donny Hathaway, Judy Garland, Sam Cooke, Jay-Z, Michael Jackson, Earth Wind and Fire, Rick James, etc.

Probably the worst thing about all this angst, however, is that somewhere, there is a level of comfort within it, even as I watch others bristle at meeting me and distance themselves, unable to read an exterior sternness hiding profound awkwardness and fear, and despair when the phone never rings, and the invitations don't come, and e-mail is all automated, and the Facebook wall remains virtually free from almost anyone that actually lives in New York City that I could potentially spend time with; yes, there is a feeling of familiarity in the shame of self-loathing, as you watch yourself sever ties with those that (claim to) care; there is comfort even as you feel foolish in trying to reach out, knowing that the harder you push to "put yourself out there" and make people like you, the less they pay attention and the more you begin to hate yourself and blame yourself for them not liking you and for you making a fucking fool of yourself. There is elation in second-guessing a sharp mind, a nimble wit, there is bliss in shitting on your own talent.

And wrapped in that cocoon, that armor of darkness, I then wonder how I got here. Again.

I've been reading a book that was given to me, called Black Pain, about depression in the black community, and how it's dealt with, and it hasn't been easy. This is on top of having read Cornel West's Race Matters, a searing and deeply resonant look at, among other things, nihilism and the sense of futility and lack of love, self-love, that runs rampant through many Black circles. On top of all this is an over-saturation of HBO's The Wire, which is compelling yet deeply disturbing and depressing television. Then there are current events, with both national and international matters revealing a world seemingly on the brink of insanity.

And skipping past the poverty and the recession, there are the rigors of my chosen profession, where along with being only one in a hyper-saturated field, I must also contend with being a black man in an industry that, at its core, is still aware that it doesn't really need to include me except when it needs to keep the economy afloat or to keep Culture Police happy (I also keep dealing with white people trying to convince me that things are "not as bad as they used to be", implying that I'm making at least some of this up and that I should shut up and be happy with what I've got. In this respect, it is a microcosm of American society, and the only way it could be worse is if I were black AND a woman). I have become stalwart against just about anyone calling themselves an actor, because I hate name-dropping, fame-whoredom, and bitchiness more than anything. Not saying I regret it, necessarily, but this is what I chose for myself.

There are also, in the present, crippling feelings of guilt for feeling so bad about myself--because you're not allowed to do that because it means you are weak, unable to function, and possibly a bit crazy, especially if you're black; plus hey, I'm only doing it for attention anyway, so now what?--as well as seething bitterness about many things that have already happened and that I cannot change. Not to mention the disheartening knowledge that, yes, dammit, you are what you think, and people can sense the darkness oozing from you from miles away, and it permeates through the universe, so you're basically to blame for everything that's fucking you up right at this moment.

I've essentially spent the last few years blaming myself for others' discomfort around me, and stifling myself to smooth things over. I really have no one else but me to blame for it (there I go again), misunderstood and small as I allowed myself to become, and somewhere those habits of round-the-clock lying and Self-sacrifice have bled into the core of who I am at present. Now, the rare compliment that I receive is brushed off, dismissed, or met with discomfort and utter confusion, as I have now pulled off the magnificent trick of convincing myself that there is, in fact, nothing about me that is worth a damn.

What's even more disturbing is that this has been a problem for a very long time. Reading Black Pain, I recognize so many parts of myself in the stories of others who have been aimless, lost, detached, disinterested, and filled with dread for so long, though the public perception of those people has, for the most part, been sterling. It's as if somewhere along the line, the capacity to recognize something's wrong died, because after a while it became so commonplace that, indeed, nothing WAS really "wrong", in that the darkness became ordinary.

It's a tragedy, when light, when joy, when love, in a man's life, is seen as an intruder.

Creating "the u n i VERSE", pt. 2

Inklings of a beginning.

But just inklings. In the coming days, I would search high and low for inspiration. I researched depression and isolation, I researched the work of poets such as Whitman and Emerson, I listened to my favorite musical artists, I looked at paintings, trying to find SOMETHING to move me. I know about myself now, though, that I can't try and CLUTCH at inspiration; I would have to simply absorb what I was looking at, and have FAITH that something would fall into place when it needed to.

Which is what happened, when I decided to look up quotes from Ralph Ellison's masterpiece Invisible Man, which I had read a couple years ago. The book opened my eyes significantly, and the quotes I found from it resonated so strongly that I KNEW I had to use them, thread them through the piece somehow. But that formed the spine.

So things were falling into place; I began forming outlines for the piece, building and editting.
I'll try to truncate this a but, but overall, I kept operating by a few rules as I created/wrote, picked up during my thus-far short stint as a theatrical artist, as well as my time at NYU Grad, and really pushed further by giving myself the gift of the Human Turntable conceit:

1) SHOW, and don't tell. If you talk about a character, or a place, or anything, you can SCRATCH and BECOME that character, or a representative of that place (in this case, a caricatured German tour guide was instantly scratched to to move the story forward). It's striking, it's a test of transformative power, and it's just plain fun to do. How dynamic and instantaneous and impressive can these switches be?

2) If you are getting tired of yourself, to something to change it up. This rule allowed me to say "okay, I'm talking too long here", or "I'm singing too long here", or "this rap is old now, they get the point", and then instantly scratch to something else. In fact, there was one section in the show where I didn't know how to get from point A to point B, and I REALLY had a beat I wanted to use and had written pages of rhymed material to use. I simply said "well, I can just say 'We'll pause for a quick break' and throw that bamma in there'", which I what I ended up doing. How cool is that?

3) Whatever you write, keep it tied to a spine, or a theme of some sort. I think a lot of dramatic writers would say that this is a useful tool; certainly Stuart Spencer (The Playwright's Handbook) and Lajos Egri (The Art of Dramatic Writing) emphasized this, in their own way. Whether or not that's true, it saved my ass in the later stages, as time dwindled and we were only DAYS away from tech, and I still hadn't quite "finished" the damned thing. It saved me from wandering from my purpose, and from overwriting, and when the well ran dry it gave me a place to return to. There were some pieces in Freeplay that could've benefitted from a strong central theme.

4) Whatever you do, it MUST be FUN. Personal joy was the mandate that I gave to myself. I followed my instincts, for better or worse, simply by what I actually felt like doing.

5) But it has to COST you something. I didn't want people to walk away just going "Wow, that was cool, he could rap and beatbox and sing." As I said earlier, I had to write about something difficult. That was the price I had to pay for indulging in my other talents. It was sort of a compromise, in a sense, but not in a bad way at all--I had set out to share myself, and honestly I wish I had gone MUCH further. But there is always next time...

I knew I wanted to begin with an Overture of some sort, so late one night I grabbed my tablet and just snapped one out--variations on a theme, using snippets from songs that I'd listed (from memory) to form complete thoughts:

("Someone to Watch Over Me", the Gershwins) There's a somebody I'm longing to see,
I hope that she//
("Find My Way", A Tribe Called Quest) Can help me find my way//
("The Message" Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five) Don't push me, cuz//
("Someone to...") I'm a little lamb that's lost in the wood,
I know I//
("Runnin'", Tha Pharcyde) Can't keep runnin' away//
("Little Ghetto Boy", Donny Hathaway) The world's a cruel place to live,
And it ain't gonna change//
("Inner City Blues", Marvin Gaye) Make me wanna holler
And throw up// (record skips)
Throw up//
Throw up//

I was convinced that that was preeeeeeeeeeeetty fuckin' dope.

What was funny about this process is that it was literally a series of instances of me freaking out and being creatively constipated, then getting like three or four hours of sleep, then coming back "fresh" and saying "Oh, okay, THAT's how this is supposed to go." My outline for the show kept getting clearer and clearer, and thanks to rule number 3, I had a place to come back to whenever things went astray. I had my Ellison "character" to thread through the piece, I'd selected 3 dope beats to use, and, slowly, lyrics were coming to match them.

But there were a couple pieces missing, still.

Then one night, I started thinking about Mecos again. One of my favorite songs of all time is Johnny Richards' (music) and Carolyn Leigh's (lyrics) Young at Heart, particularly as sung by Frank Sinatra. And a theme that was emerging was the past reflecting on the present, in a sort of cliche "this is what therapy is about" sort of way. And the stories I'd put into the piece thus far were all about me being a kid, which was sort of a happy accident. But I knew that in my experience with Mecos, and being ripped away from him, was something central and vital.

And so I wrote about it, put it in the piece, and sandwiched it within the song. Another happy accident occurred when I randomly thought of the old fuckin' CLASSIC by Ahmad, Back in the Day. ANYone who knows this song knows that, when it comes on, part of you tears up a little bit, as Ahmad waxes about the past. It's such an effective song about lost childhood, with lively lyrics backed by a lush sample-laden beat. It's SO good. And it became the bookend of my piece.

As it was coming together, slowly, the one thing that was REALLY elluding me was how to END the damn thing. I was convinced that I wanted to have this a capella, super-intense, verse, one of those 11 o' clock soul-bearing soliloquies in the format of a dope ass battle rap, but it just was NOT coming to me in the short time that I had. I will put it in eventually, but with tech a mere TWO days away, I had to have a complete script to give to my lighting designer, Xavier...as well as a complete show to actually REHEARSE.

So one night I stayed at Tisch until around 4 or 5 in the morning, racking my brain trying to write this verse, or trying to end the piece in some satisfactory way. Finally I just said "wait a minute, what if I'm trying too hard to end it? Does it have to 'resolve' at all?" Nope. So I just ended it. And it was actually pretty effective.

I finally had a 35-minute "Something" on my hands to work with.

During Tech and over the course of the next few days I worked and worked to try to rehearse and get comfortable in the material (and there was STILL another verse I had to write for the KRS-One beat...I didn't finish and memorize that until the day before opening!), as best I could.

So...in a somewhat heavily truncated form, that was the process of creating my piece.

As far as the aftermath, it was interesting.

People responded VERY DEEPLY to the piece, overall, which was a surprise for me, definitely. I had many people relate to me how the piece had stuck with them after leaving, and how they could relate to many of the feelings I shared. By the piece's end I could hear sniffling in the audience, and I knew that audiences were deeply moved.

I have to say that it was difficult for me to even fathom that something that I wrote, something that I did, could have affected people so widely, so deeply. That's where my level of self-worth has been living. I've always been embarrassed by the things I create (lessons from childhood...), so when someone says to me "what a gift that was. What a gift", it's like their speaking Mandarin Chinese or some shit, I'm like "what are you talking about?" For some reason I couldn't allow myself to take joy in the fact that people were so moved by what I put out there.

And why?

Well, part of the reason is that I was choosing to cling to the one or two people who made it their mission NOT to be affected, to try and cut me down (one of whom is in my class. They know who they are). I chose to become involved in the drama of the Haterade drinkers, as opposed to the overwhelmingly positive responses I'd gotten. It's tough, but it's nice to re-discover that there are just some people who are going to hate you, simply because you excel. One person even referred to my piece as "that thing you did." I should have hit them in the face right there, but I was too stunned to respond immediately.

Another, deeper reason though--and this is one of MANY issues that was stirred up during the creation of this personal work--is that lack of faith in the self. It's a habit, deeply-ingrained, that I am working to change. It's a habit to be afraid of success, and ashamed of my joy, and sorrow, and pain, and triumph. It's a habit to devalue myself and my achievements; it's a habit to step aside and let others dictate who I should be. I don't want to do that shit anymore.

Thinking on it now, writing "the uniVERSE project" (better title forthcoming) has had short and long-term benefits. The short (praise, accolades, a couple of GREAT agents reaching out to me) is nice, but the long term--the empowerment of being able to say "I CAN create, and do it well, and effectively, and I CAN trust my own talent and intuition, my genius, and I DO have something to offer to the world"; the opportunity to look at myself in-depth, and begin the healing process; the discovery of a voice and power inside that neither I nor my colleagues was truly aware of--I mean...I don't even know what to say.

Chuck Cooper told me that, to survive in this business, I have to find my own voice, and what I want to say as an artist, and stick to that. I've begun to do that, I feel.

So who can stop me now?

Special thanks to Martin Damien Wilkins and Xavier Pierce, whose talents and input helped make the thing what it became.

And thanks to everyone who lent their support, including my girlfriend who somehow withstood my craziness as I was putting this shit together. Love you, sweetheart.

Onward and upward...almost done with Grad School, y'all!!!!

FREEPLAY 2009: Creating "the uniVERSE project".

A long overdue postmortem.

For the uninitiated, each year at NYU's Graduate Acting Program, the soon-to-be-graduated third year students are called upon to participate in an event known as "Freeplay"; the title works on many levels, but essentially the Freeplay Festival is a celebration of the creative talents of the third year class. The week-long festival is free to the public, where they can come and see either plays that have been previously produced, or works that have been created specifically for the festival. More often than not, students opt to create work. And why not? When again will we have the opportunity to create whatever the fuck we want, without commercial or "real world" pressure? You're essentially creating work in a cocoon, the only real pressure is that which you place on your own shoulders.

I must say that I've felt heavily stifled during my time at NYU. It's not really the fault of any one person or one thing that can be named, I suppose; all I can really say is that I'm learning that the drum I march to seems to be significantly different than anyone else's I've ever met. Of course, each individual, noun, is just that, Individual, adjective. Artists, especially, have to bank on their uniqueness, as it is their stock and trade. It is what will bring them notoriety, should they be courageous enough to put it out there in its truest, unfiltered essence. Or, perhaps, filtered through form. But you know what I mean.

The truth is--and again, I can't say that this is really anyone's fault but my own--that I've subverted any uniqueness, any individuality, for quite some time. Since before coming to graduate school, in fact. But being at NYU--I found myself working...FIND myself working overtime to extinguish any fires of originality, merely for the comfort of those around me. Those with "acceptable" views, talents, ways of thinking, auras, have been allowed free reign. I've faded gradually into the background. I've never been one to ruffle feathers.

All this in mind, when the opportunity came for me to do something that was purely of my Self, I nearly balked. I had no clue what the fuck I was going to do, but I had to submit some sort of proposal MONTHS before the actual festival was going to happen. And I remember waiting until the very last moment, sitting in agony in front of a computer screen, not wanting to hit send, and finally forcing myself to do it:

Show Title?
the uniVERSE project

SEND.

That was in early January.

Now, it would seem like early January to early March is plenty of time to write and rehearse a half-hour performance piece, but you see, in my case there was this little beast called Six Degrees of Separation to slay first. Cruelly, that show closed the day before rehearsals for FREEPLAY 2009 were set to begin. When the first day of rehearsals arrived, I still had no clue what I was going to do.

All I knew was that I wanted to rap. Whatever the fuck I did, I knew for sure that hip-hop would be a major component of my show.

I knew that the raw material for the show would be me, simply because it was the most available source to write about.

Oh, and I also knew that I didn't want the audience leaving the theatre necessarily in a fine and dandy mood. In fact, I originally had some sort of gut-wrenching tragedy in mind at first. I wanted my audience to leave shaken and affected. Maybe that will come later.

Luckily, I was somewhat armed and dangerous: I had already spent time asking myself some essential questions and digging through my past. I scribbled down things I love, things I hate, things that piss me off, things that make me sad, that bring me joy, that I regret, that I want to do. Things as mundane as hobbies made their way onto pages and pages of ruled, golden tablet paper.

And as I recalled certain events and people of my past--namely my childhood best friend, Mecos--a theme began to emerge of not allowing myself joy, of distancing myself from people, places and things just to survive. It was a dreary and depressing discovery, but a discovery nonetheless: I had the makings of a spine, a theme to wrap my piece around.

But I still had no piece.

So then I asked myself several important questions: what are my weaknesses? what do I do really well? how can I utilize my talents effectively? Those yielded yet more lists. Useful, but lists just the same.

But the most important question was one I got from Jim Calder (and its importance was later reinforced when I read an interview with Mr. John Guare):

What am I afraid to write about???

I knew that, whatever I did, it couldn't be fluff, it couldn't be bullshit.

That first week of rehearsals after Six Degrees closed found me not rehearsing at all; I still had to write a SCRIPT to rehearse with! And so I toiled away for hours and hours, trying to write lyrics, trying to write a story, trying to create some type of framework for this marvelous, soul-searching theme I was going to write around.

And that shit did NOT work.

I spent the entire first week of a THREE week process TRYING to write, and getting NOTHING. After the first week, I had a lighting designer, a director, some ideas, and NO SCRIPT.

Oh shit.

It wasn't until I got OUT of my head, got out of the mode of trying to intellectually piece something together, that any work started getting done. I simply stayed in rooms for hours at a time, on my feet, dreaming up themes to improvise on, inspired by themes or articles or poems or music that interested me. I spent hours speaking into my mp3 recorder, sessions I dubbed "confessionals", going on long uncensored yarns about things that were bothering me. I thought up things to improvise--an instant musical of my life; a symphonic beatboxing concert; an MC battle with myself; friends and relatives speaking about me at my wake (morbid, I know); piecing together lyrics from songs and making stories out of them.

I ended up actually using VERY LITTLE of what I improvised (snatches of my "Confessionals" helped me complete and augment certain sections of the "final" piece), but I found things that were fun for me to do, and, most importantly, stumbled upon a conceit that would end up helping the piece come together:

The Human Turntable.

Upon improvising a beat-boxing symphony, I delighted in just how much FUN it was; but then I said "Okay. This is fun. How can I use this? This HAS to be in the piece somehow, but how can I use it?" Then the idea came: my show can be a mixtape of sorts, and I can skip from song to song or section to section, simply by "scratching" or "cutting" to the next unit.

I had my concept. With my powers of transformation, mimicry, and physical engagement, I could use the Human Turntable to play with Time, to INSTANTLY jump from character to character, to repeat, to juxtapose anything I wanted, as a real DJ does. How fun would that be???

Inspiration hit during Six Degrees rehearsal one day; I grabbed a pen and pad and began writing lyrics about my past. I don't know where the inspiration came from; perhaps it's simply what Napolean Hill calls Infinite Intelligence. But, using the Turntable concept, I wrote:

SAM COOKE: I was born by the riv--
ERYKAH: I was born on the water--
ME: I was born in '82, under the sign of the Scorpion.
My conception wasn't immaculate,
I'm an absentee's ejaculate//
My conception wasn't immaculate,
I'm an absentee's ejaculate,
Fuck that sack o' shit.
I know these bars are hard and intense,
But I was born in Germany, so pardon my French.

Bingo. Had a place to start from: the Cooke and Badu songs to scratch between would be fun and imaginative, and scratch into sharp, ear-grabbing lyrics about my origins. Inklings of a beginning.

To be continued...I've decided to break this up, for your sake.

Six Degrees of Separation: Postmortem

I wasn't actually sad about closing Six Degrees of Separation until I picked up this notebook with all of my magic scribblings in them, about this mysterious, elusive, and infinitely complex young man whom John Guare only calls Paul (I know his real name, but that's a secret I think I'll keep to myself). I thought I'd steeled myself against putting this show and this role to bed, having so many other things to work on--but as I peer through my notebook, detailing my process, my imaginings, my frustrations, my questions, it hit me that I'll no longer be needing this little black book with "Paul Poitier" written in black ink on the faded cardboard comprising the notebook's backside.

It's probably obvious by now, but I've abandoned any further attempt to expostulate on my experience working on Chekhov's Three Sisters (trust me, I am doing us both a favor; there was a LOT more to say); I mean, who wants to peer through some pretentious actor's notes on how he prepared for a silly play in grad school? Why would anyone give a fuck? So, I'll be brief here.

This process started off pretty shitty for me, actually. We began rehearsals a mere eight days after the Chekhov closed, so I felt immediately in the position of not having time to really start to wrap my head around not just who Paul is, but the wealth of knowledge he possesses. Our calendar states we were to begin rehearsals in early January, and I was wondering how I'd get to immerse myself in Paul's knowledge, and the world of that play--modern art, Poitier, South Africa, The Andy Warhol Diaries, beginning to understand WASP culture, for starters--by that time, et alone eight fucking days after closing a big show. Sure enough, initial rehearsals were frustrating for many involved, as we felt like a bunch of unprepared amateurs who hadn't put any work into the script beforehand. So much for training burgeoning professionals.

But I digress.

Not to take anything away from anyone else, but the actor playing Paul has GOT to be the best, most on-point actor in the show. The play can be read to be as much about his journey as Ouisa's (more on my deliberately muddy wording of that phrase later), but if you're playing Paul I think you REALLY have to be on your shit and know what you're doing, and as much about WHY you're doing it as you can muster. Every other part in this play is clearly delineated: you know who everyone is, what the want, why they're there. But Paul is written as a mystery--Guare doesn't give you SQUAT. He comes from nowhere, there is next to nothing concrete about his past or his motives, and what he really wants doesn't begin to reveal itself until the end of the play, and even THEN it is dubious, suspect, and entirely subject to actor/director interpretation and audience skepticism.

Of course, the plus side of this character being a jigsaw puzzle is that it automatically puts the audience in the position of trying to figure him out. If you're good, they'll still be wondering long after the curtain call.

There was a point in rehearsal where I became depressed and thought to myself "this character's imagination is far stronger than my own." Which is probably true: the actor playing Paul must have an incredible imagination, must trick himself, and transform time after time in the course of the play.

The actor playing Paul must possess a ton of energy--he has a several page dissertation on the deeper implications of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, and that comes AFTER ten or fifteen minutes of stage time spent doing everything in your power to charm and win and coax and seduce and tantalize and bowl over the other three characters in the scene. He must have a command of language. He must be both oblique and totally open, must have charisma and a strong personality, must be completely flexible, and possess a mesmeric sexuality. Otherwise it don't work.

So to summarize and re-iterate: THE ACTOR PLAYING PAUL HAS THE HARDEST JOB IN THE SHOW. If anyone says anything different, they are full of shit. If anyone you know is playing this part, offer to buy him a drink or something, I'm sure he'll be grateful.

Although the ambiguity of the role is a plus (as far as the aforementioned "jigsaw factor"), it also necessitates a razor sharp idea of just why you're doing what you're doing. It seems apparent just WHAT he is doing, at least on the surface (although specificity in that department obviously doesn't hurt either); the major question is WHY. Once you figure that out for yourself, you're a little bit closer to golden. But he's written as a sort of ghost, and why he does what he does is never really examined or spelled out. THE ACTOR PLAYING PAUL HAS THE HARDEST JOB IN THE SHOW. At least for those addicted to nerdy actor shit, like knowing characters and motivations and crap like that.

For me, another tough aspect was knowing that--talented and hardworking and interesting as I am--I had to take a back seat in what predictably becomes a show centered around the "Magic Negro" syndrome. Black entertainment historian Donald Bogle defines this term in his fantastic book Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. Essentially, the magic Negro is the black character appearing in countless stories that ultimately serves as some type of teacher or spiritual guide to the main (white) character(s). Coincidentally Leonce Gaiter, blogging for "The Huffington Post" during the hey-day of the Obama presidential campaign, writes:

It is a character seen as selflessly serving white people--with his life if necessary. Think Scatman Crothers in The Shining, who sacrifices his life to save the white hero. Think the semi-retarded "magical" creature in The Green Mile, who uses his healing Negro powers to save the lives of white people associated with his false imprisonment.

...

Well-educated, affluent whites comprised another initial Obama support base. In his piece, Ehrenstein highlights John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation, based on the true story of a young, gay, black con man who gained access to New York's intellectual and financial elite by playing on their Magic Negro longings. He posed as the son of the iconic Sidney Poitier, the epitome of the Magic Negro stereotype.

Bogle pinpoints the magic negro as yet another in a long line of creations by white authors where their white characters experience some sort of profound fulfillment or enlightenment through their involvement with some black character who is more "alive" in some way than they are--usually alive in an area where the white characters are lacking. The story then becomes about the black character existing basically to make the white characters better people.

So here I am, busting my ass in this part, knowing I'm going to take a back seat to this white woman's journey. I had to fight a lot of resentment and not think of myself as merely functional, there only to serve as a launching pad for this rich, privelidged white woman. To me, Paul's story is the most tragic. Why should we care about this rich white lady's awakening?

On top of all this are the issues and questions the play raises. For instance, the issue of blackness. What it is. What it means. Paul is the first part I've played where I felt like "Oh, every fucking black actor wants to play this part, so they're gonna judge me; no matter what I do or how well I do it, they're gonna be sitting there thinking about how they'd do it differently. Or better." Everyone has their opinions on the part. And I operated for a while feeling beholden to everyone ELSE's vision of the part; I wanted to cover every possible base because I had to represent every black person ever while I was on stage, and I didn't want anyone to be able to criticize or say SHIT to me when all was said and done. I mean, there was only ONE of me in the show, you know? I'm still fighting the feeling that I've "disappointed" this person or the other, which is unfair to me since now almost everyone seems to think that I was a success in the part. How dare I allow others to rob me of my own triumph. When they play the part, let them do it their own fucking way. I had fun in the doing of it, but now I'm allowing it to be tarnished.

Another tangent. Sorry.

As far as blackness, I'm curious to see what the BLACK reaction to the show is. As I said before, I had to fight a lot of bitterness in rehearsing because I knew it was going to be the same old shit. John Guare's a great writer, but here I was going "well, it's the white show, AGAIN." And what does this play say, really?

Some (white) people were appalled that it seems a theme of the play is that Paul's search for identity and validation via white culture is offensive--I argue that that is merely a microcosm of the history of blacks in America, and it's part of what makes Paul's story so tragic to me, that he DOES try to find himself in a culture that neither desires, needs, or understands him. If anything, what's offensive is the play's structure, to which I alluded before: why should I care about this woman when there's a troubled, interesting, and absolutely BRILLIANT black youth being sold up the river? Who may never get a chance to shine?

There are millions of youths like Paul in slums and ghettos all over the country. Knowing that, why should I care that this white, priviledged, educated, arrogant woman who lives on 5th Avenue is deprived somehow? Paul literally illuminates every person he comes into contact with in the play, he excites them or changes them somehow. That, to me, is amazing: an alien triumphing on foreign soil. Not some tired narrative about some WASP having a mirror held up to herself. I WENT to the Upper East Side while researching, and almost NONE of those people looked twice at my black ass, and one lady who dared and deigned to do so gave me a once-over that was so damning and dismissive that I felt she would've asked that I be kicked out, had I not been talking to the doormen. So why should I, as a black person, give a shit about a play written about these people?

In all, the experience was fun, and the feedback I got was great. But it seems contaminated for some reason. It's good though, because it sets me to thinking about WHY that is. And I can use that knowledge in the future. If I ever come to REALLY know...

Three Sisters: A Postmortem, part I

We closed our production of Chekhov'v The Three Sisters on Wednesday, December 3rd; thanks to the powers that be, there will be next to no down-time, as this coming Thursday--a mere eight days after closing the Chekhov, eight days filled with make-up classes, no less--I'll begin rehearsals as Paul in John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation, nearly a full month sooner than anticipated. No, I'm not happy about it. Still, with a brand new experience looming ahead, I thought I'd take some time to debrief myself on the Three Sisters. I've been meaning to use this blog as a sort of public artistic journal for quite some time, and have only managed to do it twice before, in ancient entries that I'm too lazy to link for you.

This is pretty fuckin' long, so I'll break it up into different parts.

I once read an article centering around Denzel Washington's preparation for the title role in Spike Lee's Malcolm X. In the article Mr. Washington claims that "everything I've done as an actor before this was a stepping stone to prepare me for this role", or something along those line; this is a man who, by this time, had already won an Obie in Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play, gotten an Oscar nod for his portrayal of Steven Biko in the otherwise-flaccid Cry, Freedom, and, of course, had already left his searingly indelible stamp as Tripp in Glory, for which he won his first Oscar; not to mention he'd already portrayed Malcolm X off-Broadway in Laurence Holden's When the Chickens Come Home to Roost many years prior.

Now' I'm not about to compare myself to one of the greatest actors oh our time (whose career manages to churn along, no matter how many mediocre movies he does...), but I finally really understand just what he was saying. I'm not saying that everything I've done in my short career has prepared me to do Three Sisters, because that presume that I did something in Three Sisters worthy of note...and I don't know if that's true. Plus, I'm not Kenneth Branagh, and thus not prone to doing things such as writing an autobiography at the age of 28. But what I AM saying is that I now get how each role brings about new challenges and illuminates new aspects of your craft (and YOU), as well as gaps in your technique. Each role builds, consciously or unconsciously, on the last.

PREPARATION

I learned over the summer that I'd be playing the role of Aleksandr Ignatyevich Vershinin in our winter slot. I'd never read the play before, but was happy to get to work on such a great author's material. When I told people my casting, the responses ranged from "wow! Congrats, that's like the MAIN GUY!" to "hmm...that's a good role for you!" to "...yo, that cat talks a BUNCH." Now, seeing as how there are over a dozen characters, including a grip of sizable, meaty parts for men, and that the play is indeed called The Three SISTERS, I quickly got over my slight disappointment that Vershinin is NOT, in fact, "the main guy"; he is far from it, in my view. But maybe this was just something I was telling myself to let myself off the hook. Who knows. Secondly, upon skimming the play, I saw that "Holy shit, I DO talk a bunch." As to the role being a good fit for me, that obviously had yet to be seen.

I never approach a part I am to play and go "man, this is a hard part" or "this is NOTHING like me, how the hell am I gonna do this?"; I think it's out of naivete rather than arrogance that I usually get to work on a role EXPECTING to be able to play it. And to me, Chekhov isn't this huge mythological deity of literature that has some type of style that one must adhere to. I'd never worked on or even read a Chekhov play before August of 2006, but ignorance is usually bliss for me in these instances because I have no preconceived notions of "What Chekhov is Supposed to Be". Furthermore, since arriving in New York I've been treated to two good productions of The Seagull (the one last year at BAM and the one currently playing on Broadway), and through them I was able to say "oh, okay. What's everyone talking about? Chekhov just seems like another good playwright to me...why is everyone trippin' about how boring it is or how hard it is to pull off?" And truthfully, I still feel that way--I don't find the material "hard" so much as simply "complex" ...but people are complex, and Anton Pavlovich was clearly a very astute observer of people. Do you work and honor your own complexity and you don't cheapen yourself or the material. I'm still learning that in all my work, but this is the play that's really illuminated that truth for me.

Zelda Fichandler is a huge proponent of research, and I agree with her that a thousand hours of research is worth one moment of inspiration. Actually, I don't think it was SHE that actually said that, but she DID say that information can ignite the imagination, and I believe this to be true. I began poring over beautiful paintings by Shishkin, Levitan, Fedotov, and (my favorite) Repin, looking at landscapes and the interior decoration and the colors and the fabrics, the musculature in the faces of the people; I treated myself to the works of Tchaikovsky, trying to enforce a new internal rhythm beyond the hip-hop, soul, and jazz that is in my bones; I read essays on life in Imperial Russia, written by those who were there to live it; I read Chekhov's letters and some of his short stories, getting a grasp on the size of his heart, his keen eye for observation and detail, his views on humanity, and his droll sense of humor; I cracked open a little Pushkin, and was bowled over by how lively, witty, and vivacious his material is. I read about Russian history and culture, its educational system, and about life in the military; I scoured photos of Moscow, getting a sense of what the hell these sisters wanted to badly to return to.

Some actors abhor research, and I ain't mad at 'em--Meryl Streep, I believe, doesn't do research...I think she's doing okay for herself), but this is always fun for me. Of course, the danger is getting TOO steeped in all that "knowledge", and trying to execute your homework onstage, as opposed to, you know, being a PERSON.

THE "WORK" WORK BEGINS

And what an interesting person Mr. Vershinin is. Perhaps a normal reaction for most people when they get a part is "who in the hell IS this person??? I don't understand them at ALL." But this is the first time I've finished a play and literally been like "man, I understand every other fuckin' person EXCEPT the one I'm gonna play." Vershinin just seemed so vague to me, I couldn't really tell what he wanted, or where he was coming from; I didn't know what his spine, or super-objective, or whatever, was. And yes, Chekhov does give some history--age, two kids, a wife (second marriage), and a history with the Prozorov family...the Moscow connection. And we learn that he talks a lot. But I like to try and get a vague idea of what every character wants, and what the main spine of the play is, and how I compare and contrast against other characters, so I have a place to maybe start from, a base. But even after several readings (a couple of them backwards...thank you, David Ball), I was still a little lost. But that turned out to be a good thing, actually.

As far as the "characterization": a sentence I read in one of the many essays I perused sparked my imagination--"Russians love their land, they are very connected to their environment" or something to that effect. Interestingly, in Act I Vershinin says to Olga "here you have the beauty of the pure Russian climate, the forest, the river...and you have birch trees...I love them more than any other tree...it's paradise living here." So I said "this is an earthbound guy. He's a little older, he's in charge, he's more settled in himself than Andrey or Tusenbach...he's rooted to the earth, in some way."

Coincidentally, one of the things I'm working on as an actor is giving myself permission to take my time--allow breath and thoughts and other people to enter into me, to not get ahead of myself and rush over precious interactions...to really be PRESENT, allow myself the space and time to simply EXIST. Furthermore, those who inhabit more open areas expand more, take up more space than people who are used to burrowing through over-crowded metropolises and squeezing into and out of saturated subway cars. So I said "well shit...I may have been in Moscow for 20 years--which at the time was actually comparable to NYC in a way--but I'm a country boy at heart, I love wide open space". So I took my time, slowed my physical and vocal rhythms on a purely technical level. It actually didn't feel put on at first, and was easier than I thought, though as rehearsals progressed I'd feared that I wasn't moving fast enough and was slowing the ENTIRE PLAY down (this was, in fact, not the case...it was probably just that fear and discomfort that stems from operating in a new way).

So anyway, all this translated to me as "this guy has a deep voice, moves like a mountain; he's poised and elegant, but a little languid". He's an officer, and I remembered reading in one of Stella Adler's books that Russian officers have a carriage and strength of presence (and pride) that no other men on earth possess; her mother married one, she says. So how fun would THAT be, to play with? In later rehearsals, in fact, I would incorporate the physicality that I saw watching old clips of Tsar Nicolas II--it was fascinating watching this otherwise small man walk with such grace, bearing, and confidence, but in a relaxed and easeful way; he was comfortable within his power. I said "I GOTTA use that."

Emotionally, all I really knew at first was that he loves his little girls more than anything else; that resonated the most for me at first. And of course, I knew that he must love Masha, nakedly, deeply, and fully. It was suggested at one point that maybe the whole "my wife sucks and my little girls aren't well" lines that he says are merely a ploy to manipulate Masha into bed, as he's done so many other women. And Tusenbach does say that his wife "attempts suicide every other day, it seems, just to get even with her husband". But A) he was teased and called the "lovesick major" when he was younger. If you're lovesick you're not just out for a nut; B) if this WERE true, I'd deeply resent Vershinin and would be loath to play him; I mean what's the point if all I really want to do is fuck her?; C) it would make an idiot of Masha, who is clearly written as one sharp cookie whom I doubt would be sucked in by some roaming lothario...but that's just my opinion; and D) Chekhov himself wrote of his desire to portray military men not as roguish, uncouth rabble-rousers, but as decent people. So, from an emotional standpoint, I had a place to begin asking more questions.

The Places that Scare Me.

I don't know how many times I've tried to write this thing, but it's been on my mind, and I have a little time, so write it I must.

Twenty-six years ago today I was born in Heidelberg, Germany. My mother was only two years younger than I, in the army, and finally, I'm sure, terrified. As I grew older I began to resent he shyness, misinterpreting it as a coldness and lack of warmth; a lack of the love and affection that I so desperately crave in my adult life. However, I've had to reminded time and again of the incredible sacrifices that she's made in order that I (and my younger brother) have had a good life; in deed, although she isn't the most expressive person, there isn't a doubt in my mind that she would've done anything to take care of her sons. That is indisputable. Yet through the good times and bad, the triumphs and the mistakes, the shared affections and the painful absences, there was always one key element missing, a conspicuous and glaring void: Alphonzo.

And that is all I know about my father--his name, and the grubby old color photo of him, that looks like it was taken in the early 80's; an innocuous-looking man, with a button-down shirt and his hat cocked to the side (and the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree in that regard, mysteriously), with a hint of menace behind his eyes. He was and is rarely spoken of, and has never, ever, been a presence in my life. I don't know the conditions of his absence, and I bear no ill will toward the man, for I don't know him.

But in a way, it was still the first abandonment that I experienced in my life.

In my subsequent life as a nomad, via Mom's militaristic career, there've been a string of abandonments, in fact. Or desertions--I've either been left or done the leaving. Even with my mother, in fact, my extreme sensitivity could be met with scorn, or she would out of necessity by absent at key events in my life. Those factors, in addition to her general preference for introversion on many levels, may have further contributed to the issues I wrestle with today; and this is outside of the social pressures and teasing and torments, great or small, that most youngsters are forced to endure. I feel that by the 8th grade--twelve years of age--my heart had already begun to harden, having started to scab over, when I returned to Virginia from Belgium to find that my childhood friends had either moved away or forgotten me entirely. Rather than obsess over my forgotten presence, I was saddened by it but for some reason I'd just convinced myself that that was what was supposed to happen...sort of separating myself from my feelings, putting myself ahead and above the situation.

This could turn into a VERY long entry; suffice to say that I've been cursed with both and at-times unbearable fragility and grossly compensatory suit of emotional armor. Thank God for grad school, for if it hadn't been for NYU (or, even, the craft of acting), I may never had had to face these demons, face MYSELF in this way.

In our work, we're always told to keep an open, compassionate, empathetic instrument. I've reached an impasse in my work, in which I hate nearly everything that I do. Sure, it looks and sounds "good" or "right", but I know it has no heart, no soul, no real depth, no humanity. Just a lot of sound and fury. Ive' been told to stay open and out, and I know this is the direction in which I must go, and where I WANT to go, and yet I can, in this moment in my life, feel myself as more withdrawn and disconnected from myself than I've been since before I entered NYU. And if I know what's required of me, and I WANT to "go there", as they all annoyingly and vaguely say, then why not just fucking DO it?? The answer lies beyond the fact that, with my past, I seem almost hard-wired to remain at safe distances from people and from life; it's that the alternative is so horrifying. I know this because I've experienced it first hand.

Many months ago, when I was in the throes of training, opened up by the constant barrage of Yoga and Alexander Technique and harrowing movement classes and clown classes and scene study classes, and faced with utter confusion as to who I was before and who I was becoming, and finally beaten down by plain ol' EXHAUSTION, I began to experience the world through every fiber of my body, through a more open and sensitive (and slightly unstable) self--the self I'd long buried, the self prone to outbursts and crying jags and melodrama and fits of rage and temper tantrums and intense cravings for attention and acceptance--and it was, to say the least, very difficult. EVERYTHING seemed overwhelming, to have some sort of effect on me; the most innocuously sad things would cause torrents of emotion. I remember one day where I was in a room by myself, gazing out of the window, and seeing the vitality on the streets below, and the sunlight bathing the buildings, and being transfixed, and within a split second of a thought flashing and flickering through my body I INSTANTLY burst into tears. I had NO IDEA what was happening to me, and the world seemed too much to bear. Zelda merely said "You're beginning to open up and develop a greater sensitivity to the world, and things are affecting you. It's your greatest gift and greatest curse as an artist." And of course, being Zelda, she was right. Somehow an artist, and actor in particular, must be an open vessel, and yet harness that openness and manage to channel it into something useful. One HAS to exert some control over it, otherwise it would be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to function in society. There's simply WAY too much to be affected by, particularly in New York City. One would go MAD.

Furthermore, when you're that open and exposed, and allowing things to affect you, people have a much greater capacity to hurt you, even if it is unintentional. I experienced this as well, and let someone in, and it was completely new and scary for me. And I experienced a rejection that, to this day, even though it's been more than resolved, still shoots searing pain straight through my heart and brings me to tears, touching a chord that is obviously too raw and too deep for me to comprehend. And it hurt so much because I was open to receiving it. That, for me, is where the danger lies. Well, for anyone, really. Why stick your neck out and risk so much? To have to choose between a safe yet unfulfilled existence and dead, plastic artistry, or scary, sure-to-be-as-painful-as-joyous life and rich artistry...I mean, I'm wrestling with the latter option right now. I'm tired of feeling dead inside, but I'm scared of my true self at the moment. And I'm afraid that others will be scared as well.

Which, by extension, makes me afraid of my artistry.

There's a LOT bubbling inside, and I've only touched upon flashes of it. People say they want to see it. Then they do, and I feel they sometimes run away. How can I live with that?

Am I cut out for this?

Obama.

Last Saturday, I surprised my mother by visiting her at her home in Newport News, VA; she turned 50 last Tuesday, so I wanted to be sure to celebrate with her in person, somehow, some way. As we downed our cholesterol-rich food at an IHOP half an hour from our house, the topic inevitably turned to the then-upcoming election. My mother--her cynicism crusted over and dimming the memories I have of her youthful exuberance when she was my age--said "my life isn't going to change or get any better just because he's president." And, on a fundamental level, that is true; an Obama presidency won't be a magic pill that will solve all that ails her, or me, or black Americans as a whole.

But, I argued, the effect of his election is more long-term and psychological, and therein lies its greatest impact and importance.

I started to write about the possible effect Obama's election will have on white Americans, but it would be skewed conjecture and, frankly, at this moment I could care less about the effect Obama's election has on white people. I'm exposed to what white people believe about anything and everything, all day every day anyway.

Right now, there are millions of young black boys who are sharp-witted, talented, charismatic, and hard-working, and unfortunately, their brilliance is funneled down the wrong avenues; the next generation of mathematicians and engineers are busy calculating measurements and net gains and losses and profits for providing their oppressed and equally-lost clientele a ride on the white horse; the driven, proactive businessmen are arranging drug deals and building empires underground--hustling; tomorrow's chemists and biologists are concocting altered substances and recording the effects on the human mind and body; the would-be artists are scorned for their sensitivity and succumb to the world around them that they understand, are effected by, and desperately want to speak out about. And these boys are lead by strong-willed, magnetic, inspirational leaders who in another life would be community leaders or Senators or Nobel Prize winners or Presidents. And it seems that the only real escapes from poverty are the black market, or sports, or (these days) rap.

These same misguided young men are likely raised, as I was, by mothers who either did the best they could, or did nothing at all. And they often occupy the same cage as young men like myself as a child: the so-called Smart Kid; the Kid who made good grades, and spoke English close-to-flawlessly, who opted for TAG programs and Social Studies rather than sports or the streets. And the Smart Black Boy has an entirely, infinitely worse burden than his nerdy white brethren, who only suffer under the banner of "Nerd"; for the Nerd who has the added misfortune of being black is, in fact, not even considered black at all in the eyes of his like-complexioned peers. He is completely at sea, for while he's rejected by a large portion of his own people, the white kindred with whom he eventually and inevitably must take refuge (if they're even available) can't help but reveal their own ignorance at some point, either through subtle hints that THIS Black Boy is somehow "different" from other Black Boys, or by a rejection or superficial understanding of the things that make him culturally unique. And while he may gain the respect, admiration, and trust of his white friends, the more he assimilates, the more alien to his native culture and people he becomes. He becomes a stranger in his own house.

At the simplest, most basic, fundamental level, the mere IMAGE of a black man as president of the United States of America has a profound and immediate effect that is two-fold: the misguided youths will see that they can strive for the stars, that they're not necessarily limited by a system of covert and ingrained racist attitudes and deep-seeded beliefs. The Smart Black Boy will see this too, but because Mr. Obama is the type of man he is, he will also see that he needn't be afraid of his intellect, the he should embrace it. There will no longer be any shame in being smart, nor will there be as much crippling cynicism, for both parties of Young Black Boys now have a strong example and role model for what can really be accomplished by someone who looks like them; they will be scholars and artists and businessmen and scientists and leaders and Presidents and better fathers and stronger husbands. And they will do all these things with their heads held high, in the same country that, in the past, had to hold Congressional meetings to decide whether or not Niggers had any rights as human beings. Or, indeed, if we were even PEOPLE in the first place.

He did it, he did it, HE DID IT. And it's WONDERFUL. Even if his presidency is a failure (which I don't believe it will be...and after the last 8 years, how much worse can it possibly get if we actually have someone in office who is QUALIFIED to do the job?), the fact it even EXISTS will have a profoundly positive effect on generations of Young Black Boys to come. And they will know in their hearts, for they have seen it with their eyes, that Yes, indeed:

He Can.

True Freedom.

Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself...The first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders.

~Jean-Paul Sartre, from "Existentialism and Humanism"

The other night, a friend of mine asked me about this blog, and the (perhaps unusual?) level of, shall we say, intimacy--forthrightness--contained herein. I paused a while before answering, trying to craft what I hoped would sound a witty, intelligent, deep, thought-provoking response; trying to craft a thought that would, in essence, make me appear either wise or straight-forward...maybe both; in short, trying to craft a response that would ensure her approval: thus, I paused in order to appease her, in hopes that she would like me better. That very pause, the result of over two decades of conditioning, is the very thing I wish to examine now--why couldn't I just be free to speak what was on my mind, in that very moment?

There is no freedom. At least, it seems, for the time being, not for me.

The imprisonment is partially self-imposed, admittedly.

I was looking through some old journal entries--always a dicey activity, as this thick, leather-bound behemoth is filled with at least a couple hundred pages of raw, searing agony; near Grecian depths of sturm and drang. Reading it, one would wonder how anyone with so much (seeming) drama in their life could even bear to live long enough to fill up that many pages with their suffering; surely they would've thrown themselves in front of an A train rather than scratch away at the blank page. The stark truth was, and is, that that pain was a direct result of my own imprisonment: I tend to view myself in an extremely small and limited way.

Because this sense of self is so small, it easily becomes affected by scads of intangibles that, in the end, are unimportant: the weather, the amount of noise in a given room, the ignorance and insensitivity of those who claim to be your allies, the hatred and envy of others. This is a KILLER list of things to be a slave to. And that is EXACTLY what I have been: a fucking slave.

I am the descendant of a people whose culture, intelligence, bodies, minds, souls, ARTISTRY, were erased, ignored, mutilated, disparaged, buried, and FEARED (and really, has that fear of our artistry subsided?); these people were subhuman, viewed through the eyes of ruthless captors who saw fit to justify their cruelties by shielding themselves with bibles (and now that same ilk attack so-called "Islamofacists" for the terror they cause!). Although under much worse conditions, these people were, like myself, enslaved. But what differentiates them from me, is that those people actually had courage; they had strength, guts, to stand up for themselves; they had, as our next president says, the audacity to hope.

I am still fighting for my freedom: my own personal and artistic freedom.

This self-imposed prison is the result of years of searching, striving for something outside of myself to satisfy myself, completely ignoring and denigrating the artistry, intelligence, strength, and warmth that is already there. In this, my twenty-fifth year of life, I am finally conscious of all of the richness within, and although it ain't easy or pleasant, I can sense what that hole is inside of me, needing to be filled. No amount of money or applause will fill it. No woman will fill it, though try she might (And lord knows I want her to try! In fact, on this point, I've come to learn the meaning in "you can't love another until you love yourself." It seems we're always looking for someone to make us feel "whole". If you weren't "whole" before you met this other person, then what the hell will you be if they leave you? And what exactly WERE you before???). And this hole will remain, as long as I remain a slave to my own fear.

But I said this prison was PARTIALLY self-imposed.

After what's been a long, frustrating, uncomfortable, and at times miserable funk, today was perhaps the worst day. I decided at the start of the day not to inhibit myself, to experience whatever I was experiencing, and not censor myself no matter what I was thinking or feeling--trying to break free of my prison, which in this case is my perception that I have no right to have thoughts or emotions. I breezed into rehearsal today, after a shitty commute from Queens, rife with irritation and bile, not really wishing to speak to anyone, much less deal with the usual stream of what I perceive as bullshit from the people around me. By the end of the day I was one massive juggernaut of ugliness, internal ugliness. And I KNOW it was felt.

In my mind, this is quite alright: let me have my tantrums, give me space to be prickly, and then leave it alone. I try to do the same for others. Water under the bridge, life goes forward.

But in my case, that doesn't seem to be an option. In my case, I've observed time and time again, I am not extended the same liberties regarding my emotions and states of being as others are. When others are upset or angry or depressed, they are flocked to like police bullets to black bodies; an outpouring of compassion. However, if my mood is dark in the SLIGHTEST, no amount of warmth or apology on my part can save me from becoming an instant pariah. I suppose one could categorize this as me victimizing myself, but I've literally observed those same people who wish for me to "stay out" run in the other direction; I suppose I am not "out" in a way that is comfortable or pleasing for them, out in the way they wish me to be.

I can be very imposing. I can be intimidating. I can be a force of nature. Those very few that I count among friends know this. I am moody. I brood. I shine like springtime sun at one moment, and become pensive and deeply introspective in the next. The walls of my prison are engraved with the etchings of those who have always tried to make me feel that this is a bad thing; that I am troubled, or defective, or dysfunctional in some way. I feel imprisoned by the discomfort of others; their FEAR.

And as I looked back through those angst-ridden journal entries, I saw that I was constantly tethered to those whose fear of me overrode whatever respect, admiration, or affection they claimed to have for me, and my lack of self-worth caused me to place too much faith in them, and I perceived their fear as rejection, and thus the drama intensified.

But I can't do that anymore. This has essentially been the theme of my last few blog entries, but I seek freedom to Be. Just to be whoever or whatever it is that I am, without judgement. I seek the freedom to be One, untethered to transiency of externals. I seek the freedom of inner space and peace.

And I seek the same freedoms in my work.

I seek the freedom of uninhibited expression, in whatever medium I undertake. I seek the freedom not to be held back by the lack of courage in others in my pursuit of personal fulfillment. I seek the freedom to radiate and give whatever I have to give to the world, and not feel the need to apologize for it. I seek the freedom to make statements that speak for themselves and shake you to the core.

I seek the freedom to ascend to my fucking throne. I got too much good goin' on to let others and myself box me in.

...but how to begin the Emancipation?

SOLLY: I give you sugar for sugar
And salt for salt,
SOLLY AND ELI: If you can't get along with me,
It's your own damn fault!
--From "Gem of the Ocean", by August Wilson

The Next Episode.

Jean-Paul Sartre asserted that writers should write for their own time; they should not write for posterity, nor should they write to uphold some tradition, to fit within some pre-established mode. At least in his earlier days, he was a firm believer in the free will of man--both a great liberation as well as a daunting and burdensome responsibility.

I believe that much of what Sartre had to say--not that I'm the definitive Sartre scholar, as to me his writings and philosophies and modes of thinking are new and have attracted my interest only recently--can apply to ANY artist, and not just writers.

Unwittingly, I've been gradually enveloped in the influence of the metaphysical; a submersion that was likely kick-started this summer by one of the movement instructors at Chautauqua, who claimed to no longer pay any attention to books and works on theories about the craft of acting; rather, he's now solely engaged with the metaphysical, the spiritual, the psycho-physical aspects of what we do, as artists and as people. And I have to say, with the things I experienced in his class, I'm slowly becoming a believer.

Many months ago, a voice instructor of mine put forth his belief that whatever someone believes about themselves will manifest itself not only in that person 's inner life, but also that person's external world; i.e., the people this person attracts and even the unforeseeable events that are to steer this person's life and influence them from the outside.

At the time I heard it, and registered it, and I filed it away.

But now I'm beginning to think heavily about the validity of that statement.

Even now as I write this, I think about the resentment and the bitterness that have been allowed to fester in my heart for many, many years, fed by betrayals and broken promises and deflated hopes and stagnant ambitions; I think about the doors I've shut when others have gotten too close; I think about the misery and the rampant self-destruction that have been seemingly integral, seemingly at the core of who I am. In fact, I've known for quite some time that I'm far better at keeping myself down than up, a thick crust of cynicism coating each word, each interaction, each action, and each relationship.

The joy never lasts; the pain remains. Regrets from the past hold me down; fear of the future holds me back.

And AGAIN I ask: What For???

Thanks to word of mouth, I must admit with a somewhat bowed head that I'm joining the mainstream wagon (i.e., the "New York Times Best-seller" wagon, the "Oprah's Book Club" wagon) and reading Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now." A lot of his arguments--about finding joy in the present moment, and in your Being, and finding peace within the dynamic creature that is yourself--to me are very persuasive, and not solely out of some need for fulfillment or curiosity. I KNOW now, from my recent experiences as an actor, that much of what Tolle has to say is, if not the absolute truth (we all believe what we must in order to make our lives bearable, yes?), extraordinarily VIABLE.

There is indeed strength in "right now", and strength in having a sense of your own aliveness, of your vitality. I hope I don't sound like I'm falling under the influence of some cultist, but really: what more do you have, in the end, than yourself?

And so, with this in mind, and reading about the South African theatre that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s--theatre that emerged out of urgency and need, theatre that was/is vital, and reading about the fearlessness and determination of those artists, I feel as though I'm slowly evolving inside, and that wheels and turning, and that gears are shifting somehow.

I only need the courage to follow wherever these changes lead me.

The next step, then, is to live. To finally LIVE.

LIBERATION is the next step, in my life and in my art.

Life is too short, and the world is too large.

Time to ascend to the throne.

A Crisis of Confidence.

I either take myself too seriously, or not seriously enough.

In a profession where those that burn brightest are often the most individualistic and eccentric of performers; where at the very base the goal is merely be seen; where the spectator, whether aware or unaware of the work that goes into creating theatre will ultimately cast its gaze upon those who seem to crave it the most; where shame and scruple must be exchanged for abandon and courage; it seems that being a "good actor" is nowhere near enough.

In my summer at Chautauqua, I've been privileged to work in a company of 13 other actors who, from top to bottom, are rock solid actors at the very LEAST; acting well is the LEAST of this group's problems. Thankfully, working together effectively has also been a non-issue. The fact that talent and collaboration have been so fruitful is a testament to the artistic directors and their eye for talent, as well as the high quality of training taking place at top institutions across the country (and overseas).

Today is my last full day in Chautauqua, NY, and I've begun to play the dangerous game of wondering who's left the greatest impression.

After freaking out and plunging into depression a couple of weeks ago, regarding my work in our production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, I've developed a bit of ease, and even a sense of play as Theseus/Oberon (or Obeseus, as Ben coined it). However, although both roles together make for a hefty bit of stage time, they're not particularly glamorous or interesting: Theseus book-ends the play, appearing at its top and bottom, to set the plot in motion and to tie up its loose ends, essentially; and nearly each and every time Oberon is onstage, it is merely to tell Puck what to do. The fun for the audience is watching PUCK in action, as well as to see the consequences of his mistakes as the lovers take each other to task. In fact, the lovers themselves, when cast with great actors, don't have to be bland, whiney, chipper, ignorant, and repulsive--they are vibrant, living creatures fighting passionately to pursue an objective that everyone in the audience can identify with: the pursuit of that special someone.

As an actor, it can be deadly to pass judgment on a given role--but the truth of the matter is that there's a reason that Obeseus is often overlooked in the countless reviews I read of other productions of Midsummer (as even the actor playing Titania gets to have fun in her ridiculous pursuit of a man with an "ass' nole fix'd on his head", allowing for a wide range of behavior and fireworks). And although I think there's something interesting in a character that is literally able to predict the future, and has the ability to set out commands and put them into motion, and has the wiles and wares to play an elaborate and funny prank, but the judgment to know when it's gone too far ("Her dotage now I do begin to pity," he says), where's the drama in that? What's dramatic about a character who's only real battle is to keep Puck in line?

I hate to admit being tainted by reviews (and, granted, the reviewers are far from the Frank Riches and Brooks Atkinsons of a previous eras, for publications with far less circulation and still far less clout than the New York Times), but tainted I was; for reviewers (and audiences) inevitably gravitate(d) toward Puck or Bottom or the lovers (and, in one particularly preposterous instance, a "reticent" fairy!); and there is nothing quite like coming out last at the curtain call and receiving a noticeably cooler reception than the actor who's just taken a bow before you. This is taking nothing away from any of the actors' work in the show, as any and everybody in this particular production who is or was singled out certainly deserves it!

But there is another level, beyond the vapid superficiality of "wanting to be recognized", in this case.

There are some actors who take complete command, and are forces of nature, and will make you look at them no matter how hard you try not to, and will make great impressions even in the tiniest of roles. Sometimes I watch these people, and I wonder to myself if they are being "fair" or generous to the other actors onstage, as at some points it seems that the only goal is to draw the most attention to themselves. But then I sort of realize that, at least in one particular case, their onstage persona and antics are merely an extension of their whirlwind personalities (and insecurities) in their offstage life.

And these are the people that are remembered, not just by audiences, but by directors and other actors; by peers.

And I then I look at myself and my surroundings, and I begin engaging in the deadly comparison game.

And I try and appreciate my own strengths and abilities, and my own character, and in the end I always come up short.

Intellectually, I know there is always someone who is more clever, more well read, more knowledgeable, more passionate, more confident, more eloquent, more sexualized, more eager, more motivated, more elegant, funnier, louder, more interesting, better-looking, with more charisma, more talent, more drive; there is always someone who is better. Intellectually, I believe that one should welcome those that have strengths different and greater than your own, as you could always stand to learn a thing or eight from these people. Intellectually, I hypothesize that when people actually delve into and reveal the deepest parts of themselves, and express their truest, most naked selves, that is the cultural and societal and social gold we could all benefit from.

But sometimes, it just seems that--despite what they tell you at these top institutions, over and over and over and over and over and over again--I am not enough.

Another student once told me that the greatest-worst day of your training is when you first bump into your limitations and weaknesses. I feel as though I crash head first into them all the time; either that or they are constantly pinpointed and nit-picked in some way, shape, or form.

So then, what does one do? Am I taking myself too seriously, and letting these voices and this derision and this self-burdening and flagellation get the best of me? Or do I not care enough, aiming to improve (not fix) the weaknesses in myself--or, said another way: to change the things about myself that I don't like? But then wouldn't I just be straying from whatever my true gold is, and, as I put forth in the previous entry, living through the lens of other people? Inevitably it comes down to, I think, trying to fit in with whatever group you're with at any given time, doesn't it?

Why do we care about such stupid things in our twenties?

So now, here I stand, dreading the final year of grad school, with a growing belief that perhaps I'm not cut out to be an actor. This is different than previous bouts of doubt, wherein I wondered if I really had the passion or the desire to act; thankfully, as least for now, I'm allowing myself a great deal of enjoyment; but now I'm reeling, because for so long I've been told that I'm "so talented" and, to quote Zelda, "unusually gifted"; I've been led to believe that I am one of the "stronger links" in any given group of actors; I've been told that I have "that thing", that extra je ne sais quoi that makes it difficult for people not to watch me; I've been told that my presence, my aura, is very strong and dynamic, and that it radiates, and that that is rare, and that I am a leader.

I suppose if you hear something over and over again, from different people in different walks of your life, it must be true, right???

But lately I've been asking myself--are these things really true? And if they are, why doesn't it seem to matter? Do I even care???

I guess I just feel like I'm overlooked time and again; but then I ask myself why do I care about being overlooked (the old "they don't know what they're missing"), and after that I ask myself if I'm simply playing into some old image of myself as victim and worthless person who has nothing to offer.

I don't have the time right now to really go further into this, and this entry is quite long already, but these are the questions of the moment, the general state of the union.

Oberon says "I am invisible", and his delight in his abilities tickles the audience; my invisibility to myself, which extends to invisibility to others, is not so enjoyable.

What For?

I've been spending the last hour trying to make this entry sound "smart." I've been paralyzed by trying to find just the right turn of phrase, just the right poetry, just the right wit, just the right amount of verve and snap to make this as joyous for any potential readers as for myself. But it is an extension of the same problem I face in life, essentially.

As the summer nears its end, and 2008 is slowly being swallowed into the annals of time, of nothingness, I say "when are you going to start living for YOU? When are you going to begin believing in YOURSELF, and what you have to offer?"

Today I was reading a New York Times article, which examined the new black politicians--senators, governors, mayors, congressmen--and the generational divide that separates them from the Civil Rights leaders of a by-gone era. And as I read about these men--Ivy Leaguers, educated at Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, etc.; men who are "toasts of the town" on Capitol Hill; men who are making waves, and creating change, and leading, and making a difference, and extending themselves beyond themselves and into their communities, their districts, in the WORLD, and I said "what am I doing?"

Earlier in the day I was thinking about rules and laws; their creation and their enforcement. Why are rules created? And why are they obeyed, when history has proven time and again that those who are willing to bend and stretch, or even ignore the rules, are the ones who cause the most stir, and not always in a negative light?

I was actually weighing this question in my mind particularly in regards to my acting, the deficiencies of which I am well aware, and have been reminded of over and over again. And I became bitter and resentful, as I realized that while there are thousands of theoretical books on the art of acting (which in itself should give one pause--how can you distill the inner workings of an artform into a single book? How can you teach someone how to create in the first place?), which are filled with "guidelines" and "How-to's" and, in many cases, RULES.

Rules are wrought from fear.

Everyone agrees that all artists have their own way of working, but yet when the output of that artist's work doesn't meet the standards of the spectator's aesthetic, then the art needs to be fixed. In this case it seems like rules, guidelines, laws, are created out of a fear of an inability to know; an inability to recognize what is in front of them, an inability to follow or pigeonhole or truly peg just what it is one is observing.

At present I don't have the internal resources to really elaborate on these opinions, but in regards to myself, I wonder, again: "What am I doing?"

Why do I feel so beholden to all these rules, these laws of living???

I'm hemmed in by them. Or rather, I'm hemming myself within them.

We're taught at school to be daring, and risk-taking, and bold, and original, and individual, and creative. Who doesn't want to be these things? But I've found in my life whenever I've tried to be any of these things I've been chastised in some way. I think that this is the experience of all the great individuals with history; perhaps what made (or makes) them great is not solely their ideas or their actions, but their ability to rise above the slew of opposing forces surrounding them, barring them for achieving what they were born to do.

As I enter my third and final year of graduate school, the "real world" closing in with a vengeance, with student loans begging to be paid, and relationships needing mending, and a career needing energizing, and a future to be forged, and a youth slipping away at an alarming rate (I'm only twenty-five now; in a few hours it'll be November and I'll be twenty-six), I'm asking myself about myself, in a different light than before.

There are people who can discourse at length about politics, or literature, or history, or science; there are people who are able to dissect and analyze situations with alacrity and skill and act accordingly; there are people who are empathetic and compassionate to the nth degree, who are open-hearted and kind and warm and inviting and have many supporters and lead wonderful lives; there are people who have prodigious talents and utilize them to great effect, bowling over communities and cultures and giving people experiences that can't be duplicated.

And am I any of these things?

I am ignorant of politics and literature and history and science; I freeze in situations in which I have to see beyond my nose; I am far more self-centered and guarded than warm and compassionate; and I've been led to believe that I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the things that I am able to do, but a) how true IS that, really?, and b) what the hell am I doing with the talents that I have????

I'll tell you what I'm doing. I'm crying over spilt milk; I'm moaning at not being the most popular; I'm languishing and playing Nintendo and sleeping and chasing women and picking out a good outfit and ignoring my finances and giving up on myself. I'm penning self-flagellating blog entries and ways of thought that are swallowing any shred of brilliance I may (or may not) possess. I'm allowing myself to be boxed in by the viewpoints of others, and their perception of what the god-damn RULES are.

What for?

Developing the Strength to Be.

Why hello--it's been a while!

The reason for the delay is that I've been mainly updating my now-defunct Myspace blog. But that chapter is over.

Since my last post, a LOT has happened; so much, in fact, that in order to spare you, the reader, I'll limit myself to only a few choice happenings right now, and elaborate on the other choice happenings in a different post.

I suppose I'll start with school.

My the final semester of my second year at NYU was the richest, most difficult, and ultimately most rewarding experience I've yet had in my short quarter-of-a-century journey in this world. I battled insecurities, uncertainties, depressions, and rages, both in my work and in my personal affairs. I had my heart broken at probably the least convenient time it could have happened. By the end of the year, although I'd developed an openness to myself and my work, and--even more importantly to me--a pride and JOY in my craft, I still found myself in a place of profound sadness and loneliness.

There've been a few catch-phrases that have buoyed me throughout these trying times:

Be your own best friend.
Ms. Hecht stressed this to me. I'm still learning to understand precisely what this statement means, but it isn't the same as self-sufficiency. I've relied (and still rely, largely) on the opinions and emotions of others for far too long, and lost touch with what makes me stand out among the billions of other people on this planet. Part of that is because I have trouble owning what's good about me, and I discovered that, deep down, I really don't feel myself worthy of a lot of the things I'm able to do. This, clearly, is disheartening, given who I am, what I can do, and what I've meant to other people over the years.

Random thoughts often occur to me in the shower--songs I've not thought of in years, people who've been outside my consciousness for even longer, etc. In late May a startling moment of clarity hit me as I was stepping into the tub; I thought to myself "You know what? You may be alone for the next few days, weeks, months, years, or even decades." Without context, this is a starkly depression thought; however, it was a celebratory moment for me, in that I made the realization that if this were indeed true, and I was to be solitary for the remainder of my life, then I damn well better be the best "Me" I can forge myself to be, because that's all I'm going to have if I'm on my own. I was okay, for once, with saying to myself that I may be on my own; it was freeing myself, allowing myself the room to expand and flourish into all that I am.

You Have Something to Offer.
This is a biggie, and helped me develop a confidence in my work and in my appetite for work that I didn't have before. Mr. Calder furnished me with this one. I'd been talking to him about some of the things going on with me, and after telling me to stand up, be a man, and for fuck's sake, try to WIN!, he simply said "Clifton, you have to believe that you have something to offer to the world, that other people can get something from you. I realized the moment he said it that I've NEVER put myself in the position to say that others can and will benefit from my thoughts, feelings, talent, and artistry. It NEVER occurred to me. It never occurred to me because I've never had people around me who made me believe it; and the ones that, later on in my life, HAVE tried to make me see it, I simply ignored them out of habit. Yes, I DO have something to offer, something to give. I have gifts that all can benefit from. Which leads us to:

The Arrogance of Generosity.
Also a Calder-ism, though we both sort of coined it together. Jim is always telling me I could use more arrogance, and I believe him, but this is another matter altogether, and is absolutely CRUCIAL. People such as myself--be they actors, writers, painters, athletes, scholars, doctors, even politicians--have a duty to be as generous as possible with our talents. It is a large responsibility, but it is a necessary one. But with that generosity, that willingness to give it our all, is a HUGE sense of vanity; i.e., "I'm going to give you all of my talent, and I have ABSOLUTE FAITH that you're going to want to SEE what I have to bring to the table." There is an arrogance in that faith, that all artists need. It sounds ugly, but I find it to be absolutely true, and a lot of the great older actors I've seen are complete givers onstage, and are wonderfully open and warm and generous people offstage. But there is still an arrogance inherent in their compassion and strength, but it isn't negative.

It's a great act of courage, actually.

Writing this is actually great, because I can remind myself of what to focus on as I move ahead for the summer. I've just come back from the town of Ithaca, NY, where I worked on the Hangar Theatre's production of J.T. Rogers' The Overwhelming. It was only a four-week gig, but the experiences I had there were wonderful. In making the effort to stay OUT, and go FORWARD, and get OUTSIDE of myself and onto the life around me, I've met wonderful people--one of which I was actually very sad to have to leave behind, and whom I hope to cross paths with again someday. I was able to indulge in myself a bit, which turned out to give me the boost I needed to be able to face others. I was also lucky to be around people who inspired me constantly, to be a better artist and person.

This weekend I will be going to Chautauqua, and I should set the goal in writing now to not stop challenging myself and to carry FORWARD all the wonderful things that have come to be within the last couple of months, because to be honest I became a little lazy in Ithaca.

There will be more to come.

It's great to be back!

End of Semester Wrap-up, and the Cabaret.

I've now officially reached the half-way point of my education at NYU's Graduate Acting Program. It is a milestone for several reasons, the least of them being that it means I only have a year and a half to go at the school.

Last year, around October or so, I burst into Zelda Fichandler's office, my guts twisted into burning knots, my emotions tangled, and my state-of-mind in basic disarray. She took time out of her busy schedule to speak to her ailing student, during which time he expressed his extreme anxiety and confusion as to his presence in NYU's Graduate Acting Program--in his mind, the best actor-training institution in these United States--and his future as an actor...if he had one.

Essentially, after the first week of classes, I had a crisis--which I still feel the pangs of to this day, and will probably continue to for a while--I felt that, in the presence of all these other people who were sincerely passionate about acting and theatre that I was the odd man out. I was the fraud, the one who didn't have any burning desire to create theatre, or participate in it. There was no intense drive, no commitment to spelunking into the depths of the human experience for artistic truth, enlightenment, illumination, what-have-you. I believe I've documented this crisis elsewhere in this blog; I'll not go into detail here. Needless to say, I was pretty miserable.

I left Zelda's office with a deadline:

"Wait until after the first semester of second year," Zelda said, "before you decide."

I also left with a little reassurance:

"I think you'll have a wonderful career in the theatre...I wouldn't let you leave."

Since then, there've been Games Projects, Shakespeare Projects, a gut-wrenching yet enlightening summer at Williamstown, an illuminating and triumphant production of Gem of the Ocean, and my third Cabaret this year. In-between Gem and the Cabaret, there was even more turmoil.

So where do I stand now? I must say, I haven't thought about leaving until just now. There seems to be too much to do. But, because I'm a worrier (one of the things I'm working to release--I tie myself up in so many mental knots that my Alexander teachers are telling me that it may be resulting in physical tightness), just entertaining the thought makes me think "well...do I REALLY want to stay? Do I REALLY want to remain an actor?"

Here's the thing.

Gem of the Ocean seems to have been a watermark, a turning point. During that process, working with Tory, Nyambi, Chivas, Nikeyah, Krystal, and Ben, and under Benny Ambush's direction, I learned some things about myself, I experienced things that were exciting and unexpected.

I learned the value of research, what that work can ignite within you. I learned about developing an interest and curiosity about the people and culture I was inhabiting. I learned about the power of images and music, and spiritual things about what the soul can communicate, despite generational gaps. I learned about acting as an act of generosity, as opposed to egomania--about surrendering oneself to an experience.

I learned a thing or two about self-transformation--the magic of the craft of acting and the theatre, what all that internal and external work can accomplish...there is something indescribable, mysterious, vague, and even uneasy about applying make-up to yourself and, once finished, looking in the mirror and both recognizing and NOT recognizing yourself.

I think the faculty was impressed; even surprised. Zelda effused that "not only are you an actor...you're a character actor," echoing Mr. Ambush's sentiment to me earlier that "I talked about transformation...and you did it. That's rare, and not a lot of people can do that." Jim Calder, the only instructor that I am afraid of, who is at once ruthless and loving, always pushing his students and challenging them to go further, could only say "beautiful work, Clifton."

So yes, it was a triumph. But something was missing--this performance, this play, had moved so many people...why did I feel nothing special about the experience?

Then Calder dropped a bomb during a one-on-one discussion I had with him in a cafe a couple of weeks after the closing. I was going on and on about my troubles, my frustration at being within my company, and talking around my lack of pride in my work, and how I was worried because I didn't feel as though I was "enjoying" it.

All he said was "your body looked like it was enjoying it."

So I think the two of us came to a conclusion about myself--that I DEPRIVE myself of enjoyment. This is a very serious matter, deserving of much observation and examination at a later date, as it extends beyond the realm of acting.

Calder went on to say "you were so free and so strong onstage. You were like a force of nature". Wow. But I already had my problem to chew on.

So, this semester became about examining just WHY I take no pride or joy in my talent. After all, my friend and fellow-rapper, Chris Napper, exclaimed in bewilderment to me sometime ago--"how can you be THAT good at something and NOT enjoy it???" I couldn't answer his question. It doesn't make much sense, does it?

The semester rolled on...the memory of "Gem" faded, very quickly. You see, I was the sole second year student who was cast in a third year production. Everyone else was embroiled in either Bus Stop or Picnic, two plays by William Inge. And so the semester became about those two plays. In fact, from the BEGINNING of the semester it was all about those two plays.

Before rehearsals for the Inge plays began, no one seemed able to remember that one of the their classmates had already been working on a play since a week before classes started. Once rehearsals were in full swing, the collective anxiety took over, and 17 people became solely concerned with their own experiences, understandably so. But "Gem" was rarely a subject of conversation, and when it was, it was all-too-brief. But even the one time where the play was discussed at length, in Bev's class, I sat and listened to a room full of people praise nearly everyone else in the cast, seemingly tacking on compliments at the end for yours truly as an after-thought; as if they realized it may have been inconsiderate NOT to say anything. This was confusing to me, as it seemed the faculty seemed to have way more to say than a group of people who see me 8+ hours a day.

Much of the remainder of the semester was about the work various teachers saw in the Inge plays, how people came together as an ensemble, how great the work was. In one class we even dedicated something like three sessions to Inge and the world that he wrote about. I spent a scant 8 minutes at the end of a class talking about "Gem". Teachers were constantly referencing the Inge plays; friends of classmates sending their congrats to "the whole second year class". I literally felt like Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist, the true Invisible Man.

These feelings were only fueled by the frustration inherent in spending 50+ hours a week around people from a seemingly narrow cultural persuasion; feeling overwhelmed and buried by their musical tastes, their sense of humor, their comportment, their language. Fueled by a lack of communication among the group which still must be remedied. Fueled by the feeling that nobody was interested in this nigger being himself.

After working on "Gem", it was and is difficult to exist within the confines of what is (and what will continue to be) an essentially Anglo-centric ensemble and curriculum. Yes, 19th Century Russia is endlessly fascinating; yes, Ibsen's battling of the status quo is intriguing; yep, clothes in the era sure were nice, weren't they? Inge was a fine playwright; but so was August Wilson. Why not spend a day talking about HIM? The third years took a field trip to some museum so they could delve into a little Irish history for the other third year production in rehearsal at the time, Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars...why not take a trip to the Schomburg Museum and learn about Black people?

Sure, you can teach me about the whale-bone industry that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. That's nice. Do you know what BLACK FOLKS were doing at that time? What they were battling? It's irksome to sit and listen to people melt into puddles at how "gorgeous" all these clothes are; in my mind, clothes pale in comparison to Jim Crow.

But that's a frustration for another time, I suppose.

Anyway, tensions didn't necessarily cease when Cabaret began.

Already feeling frustrated and invisible, rehearsals for Cabaret were like having yet another monkey heaped onto my back. As predicted by many, I was very busy in the cabaret, doing several numbers in addition to a solo. But it's hard operating with a deep shame and resentment within yourself: shame because I excel at singing in a way that most do not, and resentment that I feel that I am viewed merely as a strong singer and not an actor (despite the fact that, even with a couple of musical credits and the word "singer" prominently written on my resume after the word "actor", none of my auditors--Janet Zarish, Victor Pappas, Richard Feldman, or Zelda Fichandler--EVER asked me to sing. I suppose what little acting I did was quite sufficient). Insecurity? Probably. But it seemed very real at the time. Still does.

What made the process even worse was the unexpected and acute onset of illness during the week of the run. I rarely ever get sick. In fact, the only time I've been sick this year was during the week we performed the fucking cabaret. Obviously, I was even more resentful that something I'd been looking forward to doing for over year was hampered by something as unwelcome and wholly RANDOM as a fucking cold. But the physical sickness was augmented by the fact that it seemed that no one, save the director, really seemed to be concerned that I was sick. In fact, it seemed people were running, while doting over others who had fallen ill.

A stupid, sick nigger. I was convinced that these people couldn't have cared less. Fuck them, I thought. I became consumed by, sick with resentment. Feelings of isolation came on even stronger than before. Feelings of insecurity were amplified by the lack of standout accolades from those who came to see the show: "nice Cabaret!" "Great cabaret!" "Nice job in the cabaret." " You were good in the cabaret."

I'm better than that. I'm better than "nice" or "good".

Right?

So what in the end turned out to be a great thing, was marred by internal (and partially external) strife.

So after an entire semester of feeling reviled, pushed to the wayside, misunderstood, ignored, invisible, buried, constricted, and even discriminated against, what happened?

I cried.

I wept.

I sobbed.

It was "Secret Santa" day. My disposition being crotchety already--I didn't want to get gifts for people who clearly didn't think very much of my existence, so fuck them...not to mention I have NO money to spend on anyone--I sat in this circle with my company, watching people give gifts to each other. My gift was two bags of Skittles and a $20 iTunes gift certificate. Anyone who gave a shit about me would've known that I quit eating Skittles in May; on top of that, I neither own an iPod nor a working computer, so what use do I have for the certificate? Watching the thought that obviously went into the gifts for others, ashamed at my inability to provide a gift for the person I was supposed to give to, and overcome with what felt like the onset of nausea (that's how perturbed I was), I left the room.

I eventually wandered into the Shubert theatre, feeling emotions welling up, but not wanting to release themselves.

Julie and Kim found me. By this time I had teared up. They saw me, and I apologized for leaving.

Then the dam burst.

For the next twenty or thirty minutes I sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, emptying out all that had been aching inside me since JANUARY.

And Julie, and Kim, and Lauren, and Chris, and Zoey, and Jon, and Matt, and David, and Jason listened to me. And they offered kindness and understanding. And encouragement.

And love.

The event, which took place nearly a week ago, has left me uneasy, feeling vulnerable, ever since. I nearly come to tears just thinking about what happened.

But what was important, aside from the sheer release, was the fact that I was wrong.

I was wrong about my company. I'd written them off, had been resentful, and yet here they--well, some of them--were, offering their support. And I couldn't stop crying. I just couldn't stop crying.

I've felt so alone for so long--an unsatisfying and stifled love-life; a jarring and unfortunate experience at Williamstown; constantly carrying the military brat's dedication to fast and shallow adaptation; watching families come from North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, New Orleans, even California to see their loved ones in shows, while my own family is merely six hours south and refuses to even respond to my pleas of their attendance at my shows.

Earlier in the semester I lamented to someone that I know I hold onto a lot of pain, but I have no idea how to access it, or where it lives, and I've begun to catch just how I dodge those inner areas.

It seems the bottle's been opened, at least for now. And there's a LOT in there to be mucked in.

So the question remains:

With a sure craft falling into place; with a great deal of technical prowess becoming apparent; with the prospect of delving even further into Clifton, the man as artist looming; with confidence, pride, and joy beginning to buoy up the experiences;

Am I going to leave school now, and quit being an actor?

Guess.