One of my things is definitely swimming in a swamp of thoughts as I wake up in the morning. So now I guess the true “journal” comes where I am taking the most recent happenings of my existence, after letting them bang around up there, to then scrawl them out in long form here.
Yesterday I spent the whole day at CETA as a chaperone. It’s not a difficult job. Drive energetic theatre kids to the gathering, watch them perform, have good safe truly old fashioned fun without a scent of nefarious maliciousness, and also participate in a whole catalog of professional led workshops.
I got to volunteer to be the adult in the room for one of the workshops led by Julie Garnyé, a stage actor and singer, producer, director, vocalist. She’s got a well covered list of offerings as a thorough professional of the acting universe.
I was expecting that a talk about the “Secrets of Theatre Acting”, would be about acting. But it was about being an actor in theatre. I was expecting to maybe get to watch kids craft their motivation, or act out some scenes. So, it wasn’t what I was expecting and therefore wasn’t thinking it would be particularly interesting. She started talking about the book she wrote during the lockdown of the pandemic with Michael Kostroff, The Stage Actor’s Handbook. I had some vague notion about it being a bunch of theatre aspects that were not necessarily for me.
Imagine my surprise when I grabbed my notebook and started scribbling, through both sessions. I ended up taking about eight pages of notes!
The kids weren’t as overtly energized or passionate about the material. Sitting quietly, sometimes asking questions, appearing as if they did not realize the amazing opportunity it is to be handed knowledge. But, I guess they get to sit in class every weekday getting spoon-fed mountains of knowledge. The gift and insight though, is that they were actually really engaged as they slouched for 90 minutes of an amazing brain dump of the real world of being an actor. I’m thinking there are many many high school teachers who would dream of the attention they paid her.
By the end of the session, after a moment of quiet, the questions started from the kids, and they were awesome, and they kept going. They might not have the notes, but they got it. But they weren’t the only ones with questions.
I had so many thoughts and connections forming as the went along, talking about your demeanor, the concept of “helping”, the superstitions of the theatre, the “first day of school”, and all the stories she’s lived, people she’s connected with, and shows she’s done.
I’ve got a lot of themes running through my thinking and writing, and one of them is how the outside world impacts the inside one. So here I am in, but at the same time out of my element feeling such familiarity with the stories, the “rules” she’s laying down, the songs, the dancing, the theatre, the shows, and the famous actors. Here I am as an old white male computer programmer working a “9 to 5” job doing a bad enough job just taking attendance and feeling very out of place, while at the same time, getting blasted with a world I actually know and feel both from afar and right up close.
She talks about Russell Crowe loaning her his driver in Australia for a weekend when he wasn’t there being on a job, and what nice person he was along with everybody else when they sang “One Day More” at the Oscars when the movie came out. And I wanted to ask her, “So why did Russell play Javert? Didn’t he ruin the whole movie?” Yeah, that one sticks in my craw. From the very first note out of his mouth and his ridiculous blue-boy outfit, I was jettisoned out of the movie from that moment forward only to feel the anger and sadness that the rest of the actors and singers who put their soul into their performances would never get the soundtrack residuals they deserve. But what she shared made me feel ashamed of thinking so harshly about him.
But that was only one of many thoughts formed during the workshop. She mentioned Johanna Gleason giving a quote for the book. And I ended up telling her how she is the only actor I’ve ever gone out of my way to walk up to and to thank her for her amazing performance in Into the Woods. Though I did give David Paymer a knowing glance and nod when I saw him on the street one time after Mr. Saturday Night!
After the workshops and after the last of the kids went on to dinner, I also mentioned how her book reminded me of the book “Back to One“, which is about being an extra in TV and Film. She noted that there’s no “back to one” in the theatre. Ah right that’s true! There’s also no extras at all!
My mom had bought the book back in the 90s and had become an “amature” extra, doing gigs on shows here and there especially when my sister called with one of the sitcoms she was on needing a gray haired lady. You’ll see her in a scene when Doug and Carrie Heffernan are disturbing an opera, and my mom frowns at them.
Me, being a hapless, anti-corporate, living-at-home, pain in my parent’s ass, with my Porsche 944 and I guess, no-income post-graduate Masters from Texas A&M grad “roomate”, found the book and joined the “profession” briefly. You might see me as a Trekkie (or is it still Trekker?) in an episode of Nurses called “Eat Something”. I believe they cut the scene I filmed for Wayne’s World. And then there was Paul Mazurski, who directed us in a scene from The Pickle with Danny Aiello. I still haven’t seen the film. I remember asking the AD what the film was about, he said it was about space aliens who had a spaceship shaped like a pickle. I started to wonder if he was blowing smoke up my ass. Let’s see. Okay, I’ve scanned the film and it looks like my scene was cut again! It turns out, there was a movie with a cucumber shaped spaceship inside the movie!
What I’ve always remembered from that day was how after every take, out from the director’s chair you’d hear Mazurski’s voice booming with stretched out vowels and high New York accent: “Beautiful! Marvelous! Fabulous!”. And a murmur of giggles and warmth wafted over the set. Then one time the take didn’t go so well and he said “Alright, well, next time we need to…” And you could feel the reality that we’d completely let him down. With no yelling, no screaming on his part were necessary. So different from most people who can barely ever whisper a complement was Mazurski. Garnyé spoke about one’s demeanor as an actor on the set and the importance of bringing light and warmth always wherever you are. Which reminded me of Mazurski.
That’s the thing that was dawning on me is how comfortable and totally uncomfortable I felt at the same time. I felt that I knew so much but also learned so much and yet I’m just this dad of a kid, adult in the room, guy having a job for 13 years at the same company, getting paid a salary all those years. But I have had many experiences in the arts. The extra work, a sword fighting troupe, spending two years as a grad student in computer science hanging out with the theatre gang, singing and dancing in Pirates of Penzance with the Aggie Players, a year of drama at UCI, a year of dance too, and even classes in singing at UCLA extension, and the excitement of watching my kid and helping to coach her in all I learned.
I started reflecting on the difference between this set of protocols for the actor that Garnyé embodied, presenting an air of energy and respect for all, staying in her “lane”, while for me, realizing that I drive all over people’s lanes, I “help” others, I don’t “trust” them to do their job, I don’t take it “off the bricks”, my public persona is as real as my private one and at least for an actor, that’s going to make your life extremely difficult. And, like her, I’m an “individual contributor” too. I’m “talent” in the sense that I am there to do what the others want of me with nobody to lead. I’m supposed to do my job, right? So am I wrong? Have I been driving people away for decades? And if so, is this why? So differently we’ve pursued our careers…
I mentioned Mazurski to her too but she didn’t recognize his name and I couldn’t remember his movies from freaking 30 years ago or more. I mentioned my cousin Rolf who’s played Billy Flynn in London, she also hadn’t heard of him as if this wasn’t going down a silly path already. I didn’t mention my sister’s working with Reese Whitherspoon’s company, or my dad editing Willy Wonka. This was all after the kids had left and she was walking to get her form signed for her day’s work where I got to witness the dissonance between my “public” persona and everything she had just talked about in the workshop.
I felt so uncomfortable talking to her in that I was perhaps taking all the air, or I looked like an idiot, or that I was not worthy. I apologized multiple times. Ultimately she switched over to dealing with forms, and I ended up walking away. She smiled with that “I gotta go” look but we didn’t actually wrap the scene.
I don’t really know what I wanted. Did I just need to say everything I’m writing here? To some extent, yes. Was I driving in her lane? Was I hinting from my male adult stranger random guy in her class not even a participant perspective what this professional should do? Did she think that? Did I want anything in return? I remember wanting to tell Vince Vaughn when we ran into him with his kids at the Baskin Robbins during the lockdown times, that his role on True Detective was freaking brilliant. But I blanked. Shoulda-would… but could I have?
And with the parents and teacher at CETA. I wasn’t asked more than who was my kid. I feel like if I didn’t say anything to them nothing would be said. We’d just be sitting there in a mob of screaming kids doing a conga in silence. I perked up and spoke. But through this all, I felt out of place. All the doubt going through my head.
And on top of it, knowing that the tracks of this train ride will disappear just as the soccer families and baseball families. And whatever I said and to who I said will be lost to me, but for this writing.
And there’s the unspoken contrast. Her proudly presenting herself and her networking professionally, my stumbling amid a cacophony of doubts, forgetful disjointed fragments of connections I had made so clearly when conversing, now fading unless I look at my notes in a field I’m totally just a “watcher” in. The gracious look in her eyes allowing me to be me, with all of her acting skill, while I feel I understand exactly what she’s thinking as I take up more time than I “deserve”, but knowing that’s not what she was really thinking. Is the contrast remembering? Professionalism? Am I just untrained???
This is how I wake up. All I did was leave my house and go to a day at CETA, and I’m thrown into a world of uncertainty and questions and reflections and sadness, that I don’t feel myself a part of a group. But why should I?
I can’t know what people think about me. And I think I’m probably wrong. What I do know is that what I’m thinking is so fucking consuming and monitored and controlled and flustered in the midst of strangers that I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore.
And I’m too lazy to get this right. I just need to stop.
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