After years of discovery and pondering, I have come to the clear decision that my favorite age of life for me, and for everyone else, is in The Year Twenty-Six. We aren’t in the Mozart Syndrome era yet — 26 is the imperfect and unsafe conflation of beauty and minding and of destruction and dismay.
Great teacher, friend, mentor and theatre historian, Dr. Howard Stein, shared a story with his Columbia University in the City of New York MFA Playwriting students at the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre studies. The topic was eminent actor Paul Newman who was visiting the Yale School of Drama at Howard’s request and he was speaking to the theatre students in a question and answer format. I will share that story with you now.
Continue reading → Paul Newman on Swapping Careers at the Yale University School of Drama
There’s an old saying in some theatrical circles that a play does not exist unless and until is has been performed on a live stage in front of an audience. You can imagine the heartache that creates for the amateur, but vigilant, Playwright who writes page after page only to have the work discounted in the end analysis by some because there is no final proof of production to validate the effort. Is that a right and fair way to deal with a written Art in Performance? Does the actor exist without being staged? Does the director have a role without filling an empty space?
When I was a wee lad, I had job at a radio station. I was lucky enough to work on both the AM and FM sides of the dial. The FM station was known as X103 and we were in the prehistoric rotary dial days before the Age of Digital Radio Tuners. One night, I was working on the FM side, and a listener called and told me he’d just spent $5,000.00USD on a new home stereo rig and his FM tuner was digital and our station was coming in clearest at 102.7 and not 103. He asked me why that was, and I told him that the station was actually broadcasting at 102.7, but that the rotary dial methods made 103 close enough for advertising purposes. The caller grunted and told me to fix it. A few years later, “X103” was gone, replaced by: “102.7 FM.”
In the early 1980’s, I was told by the radio station I had to work a weekend car expo for X103. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I was the low man on the hiring pole and they were going to pay me time and a half, so standing around for six hours handing out X103 car window stickers would at least stick some money in my pocket. I was also told that Adam West, aka Batman, had been hired and flown in from California to appear with me at the X103 van. Adam would be dressed in full Batman regalia. I was surprised that a big star like Adam West would be in Lincoln, Nebraska at a car show standing next to me.
Continue reading → The Non-Dynamic Duo: Me, Adam West, and Batman at the X103 Car Expo
The New York Times likes to consider itself the “newspaper of record” — and so when they place their foot on the throat of a production to test their muscle — theatre people the world over cringe and hope they don’t get hit with the tainted shrapnel. The NYTimes recently promoted an interactive “lesson in movie acting” with 14 celebrities “emoting” on their website.
From 1963-1966, actor William Hartnell portrayed the character of The Doctor on the British television program “Doctor Who.” Towards the end of his run, Hartnell was weary from the intense schedule and bowed out. The producers faced a fundamental dilemma: How to continue the series if they did not have their lead actor?
Continue reading → Regeneration Tricks: Same Show, Different Leads
One thing amateur actors lack is technique. Sometimes trying to embed a foreign technique into a new actor can be a challenge. One of the most important techniques any actor must have is the innate ability to control time and space. A good actor can speed up time or slow time to a crawl. Speeding up is easy; slowing down is hard.
Continue reading → Acting in Slow Motion Creates Perpetual Momentum
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