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The Nature of the Actor

The actor plays a unique role in society by bringing light and meaning to the relationship between the human and the ethereal.

The actor’s role is not to define life, but to interpret it through the blood and muscle of their bodies.

The actor is the heart of us, the beating of us, the rhythm of life within us all.

Without the actor in society, we crumble into our selfish selves and whine away the opportunities for insight into what made us thrive in the past while decaying in the now.

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Working the Boards in Buffalo

by Steve Gaines

In a back street…looking for seven dollars
(one of life’s little theatricals…outside the proscenium)

in December of nineteen ninety-eight I was working the boards in Buffalo

the Studio Arena … Main and West Tupper
a long gray building adorned with large gold stars on its side
anchoring the northeast corner of the theatre district
playing a Polish bartender eight shows a week
just returned to the Muse back from my old day job
fresh from retirement out of academia
without wheels and walking to and from my apartment between shows
about a half a mile eighteen times a week back and forth in that western
New York weather
where I met up with a “woman of the streets” along Virginia Place
a street too narrow to allow a casual avoidance without turning back in
a panic
knowing I was about to be “approached” hoping to avoid it

“never show fear in the face of the confrontation”…I had learned that somewhere
Continue reading → Working the Boards in Buffalo

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Notes on a Gig

by Steve Gaines

In the late winter of nineteen ninety-eight
I am setting out on a long and curious journey
across the mid-western States of this country
flying out of Omaha early in the morning
stepping into a new world
leaving behind a large and gathering family
about to descend on us for a Christmas reunion
just one year into my brand new retirement
making for the shores of a Great Lake Erie
heading for Buffalo, New York
going out to test the lake effect snows
my absence making a hole in the family
but ready to go
in the resiliency of my sixty-something resolve
looking for an late “adventure”
no longer nailed down to a day job
wearing the brand new label

Actor!

Continue reading → Notes on a Gig

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Macbeth & The Summer (An Actor's Tale)

by Steve Gaines

by the time she began to live in my brain
the words she would say were drilled into me
and the hold she had on me was well defined
by the hours we had spent wrestling on the floor
rehearsing the fire we would we burn in

Continue reading → Macbeth & The Summer (An Actor's Tale)