Deranged Ramblings

This is for those people who ask me "How is grad school going?" Well, here's the clearest and most detailed answer I have so far: "This letter is to summarize our December discussion regarding your work in your first semester. It includes comments from all of your major professors and comments from the MFA faculty meeting that took place at the end of the fall semester. The faculty agreed that although you came to the program with less formal training than most students, your hard work and strong desire to learn and grow has helped you to make real leaps in your training. You possess a fresh, open quality and do not possess a lot of bad habits. It was noted that you are an intelligent actor and that your sensitivity and emotional accessibility are aided, not hindered, by your keen intellect. Your work at being more fully present in the moment and successfully connecting with other actors is progressing nicely. You need to continue to take risks in your work and embra...

I like to travel. I like airports. Mind you, I wouldn't want to do it everyday, but every now and then its pretty fun. I travelled to the Columbia Airport with my friend Ian, who was flying home to New York. We chatted a bit in the waiting area until it was time to board my flight. I didn't really speak to anyone again until my brother picked me up in Salt Lake. But I watched everybody, and I saw some fascinating people. I had a blank piece of paper with me, so I took some notes on a few interesting people. Mr. Flight Attendant Kid He is young, possibly younger than me. At least, he looks unimpressed with everything - a sure sign of youth, I hear. He drones out the safety procedures litany with barely disguised boredom and cynicism, obviously reciting the words from memory without making any attempt to communicate by giving the words meaning. You can tell by the way his breath pauses appear unnaturally in the middle of a phrase. Throughout the flight, he does as little as poss...

The following is an excerpt from a paper for one of my courses, detailing the essence of my progress this first semester. It is applied specifically to the art of acting, so you actors out there may find it especially interesting, but the heart of it is pretty good stuff thats useful in almost anything if you are interested, and frankly I can understand if you didn't want to read some boring paper I wrote for class... We were told that the first semester of graduate school was going to be rough, but I don’t think I really understood what that meant. After all, the obvious problems of adjusting to a new and rigorous schedule, meeting high expectations, multi-tasking various assignments for several different classes, and still finding time to stop and breathe every now and then were daunting, yet hardly something I had not encountered before in my scholastic life. But what I did not understand was how challenging the first semester was going to be mentally, because basically what I f...

Attention everybody. I will be returning to Utah to celebrate the holidays on the 18th of December, and I will be staying until the 8th of January. Prepare yourselves, for I am coming. That is all.

Well the Thanksgiving break is over already. This year marked the first celebration of the holiday in many years in which I was not with my extended family in Utah enjoying Grandma's celebrated home-style cooking, but I was able to make it enjoyable none the less. Yes, the day is all about family, but what is so great about the holiday (and what makes it perhaps my favorite of all holidays) is that people who aren't family, who are in fact perfect strangers, go out of their way to make a family together, if only for that one day, for that one meal. I ate the feast with a group of local transplants from Utah, like me, and though I barely knew them we became a family together as we enjoyed the meal and gave thanks for how lucky we really are. So while I missed my family terribly, I was far from lonely on the big day. Besides the expected self-indulgent food rampage on Thursday, my weekend also included a trip to Savannah, Georgia with some of my dear friends (for pictures, look m...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the forces of Fate are combined for one ultimate purpose: to defeat and destroy me. That may be dramatic and illogical, but it does give me a sense of importance I would otherwise lack; and, as I've said before, it is easier to accept cosmic enmity than cosmic apathy. Not too long ago I was riding on a new surge of confidence after a highly successful audition for summer work. That confidence has been challenged by a grueling weekend of auditions for our upcoming mainstage shows. First off, let me say that I was screwed in the beginning, before the auditions even happened, because of the selection of the plays. They are great plays stuffed with great parts that I cannot play, for one reason or another. Most call for an age or a look or quality that I do not possess, or, even more likely, am not perceived by the powers that be to possess. A good chunk are beyond my admittedly raw and yet untrained acting capacitiy. So I went in to the proc...

So the story goes like this: I am sleeping, snuggled up comfortably on my inflatable single bed, dreaming of peaceful shores and relaxing breezes. I feel a delightful tickle on the back of my neck, like a cool breeze on a summer's day. I feel refreshed and peaceful. The tickle then moves to the front of my neck, on my chin, and then on to my face. It is at this moment the realization pierces through my sleeping brain that there is something alive and crawling on my face. You never have seen something go from so inert and inactive to alert and active. You never have seen someone jump up five feet into the air from a prone position. You have never seen someone bolt out of their little room in seconds, the blink of an eye. When the light was turned on, the culprit was found. A very large coakroach sitting innocently on my pillow, looking at me as if to say, "What? Yeah, I crawled on your face. You got a problem with that?" Unfortunately for him, I did. Down the toilet he wen...

Check out the production photos from "Good Person of Setzuan" and you'll get an idea of the craziness that has been my life for the last two months. Points for you if you can recognize me in any of the pictures! Production Photos

Yesterday I had a great day! I've been having a very rough couple of weeks where I have been greatly depressed about a great number of things, including my acting ability. I have this recurring nightmare that I actually suck and nobody is brave enough to tell me. Well, I received the perfect confirmation that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be yesterday, when I went to some screening auditions for summer work. It was a ridiculous cattle call style audition, with group after group of would-be actors filing in and trying to impress auditors in only 60 seconds that they are good enough to be considered for professional work. It was even scored on a points system, with those receiving the highest points being passed on to the actual audition for professional companies in March. Out of a possible 84 points, I got 83! Here were some of my comments: "Excellent." "You are instantly likeable." "Easy to follow, clearly spoken." "Well done - you know ...

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair. 'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his; In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is; Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair. Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade; But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare, And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair. Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat, And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare He can curse the God that made him for the colour of h...

I got my hair cut today, and I had them chop it all off. I have less than an inch left. I look like a jerk without any hair. I thought it was appropriate.

I've come to the rather surprising conclusion that I'd rather be the one who is hurt, rather than one who causes the hurt in others. At least then you have somebody else to blame for the pain you feel inside.

Those of you I've talked to a bit have heard that the play I'm currently in here is a bit.... unusual. Here's the only publicity photo I could get my hands on, and even though I only have a very small part they used me in the photos. Yes, thats me on the far right, sneakily stealing some rice from Brian's bowl. The whole cast will be in white face for the show. Should be interesting. I've done with complaining about this play. Its coming together alright, but there's something wrong when we get called to an all-day rehearsal and never get used once. The director is from Romania and there the actors are getting paid (by the government usually) to be at the theater so they all come whether they are being used or not, but in a school it shouldn't work like that. Oh well, we get this Thursday and Friday off for Fall Break, and I'm looking forward to some good old-fashioned loafing about. Also, an exciting event is happening soon (unconnected to school or the...

At last, picture proof of my adventures in South Carolina! This is a shot of the very first day we all met each other, in the Longstreet Theater, where the department offices are located. Here's a good shot of the whole group (minus a few), when we went to Frankie's Fun Park to celebrate Actor Jock's birthday. (That's AJ himself sitting on the rail on the left there) We had a lot of fun last weekend when we went to a Kareoke bar to celebrate Jen's birthday. Sonny (Brian) and Cher (Jen) sing "I've Got You Babe" Downey, recently voted by me as the coolest guy on the planet, had a little too much to drink... ...and sang "You Can Call Me Al" as if he was William Shatner... ... and danced with an old woman in a wheelchair... ...and endured the endless shame of an alcoholic gone out of control. His wife, Liesl, recently voted by me the coolest chick on the planet, sings a song and tries to keep a happy disposition in despite of her drunken husband....

And the work goes on! Here’s a few tidbits from my day today, which may give you a good sense of the experience I’m having in general. This morning I taught my acting class, which involved watching a couple students perform scenes in which they were to tell us a story, communicating clearly WHO they are, WHERE they are, WHAT they are doing, and WHEN it all takes places, simply by performing logical actions that give us that information. That was interesting. One student kept looking at me to get my reaction during his entire scene, which made me cringe because I KNOW I’ve done that in acting classes and it looks way tacky. After those scenes, I had them do some improvised scenes involving this idea of communicating given circumstances in ways other than speaking. It seemed to go pretty well. Even though my class is pretty quiet and reluctant to get into discussion, they will get up and do whatever I want them to without complaint. They also laugh at all my jokes, which is a big plus. ...

Ok, so you really can't blame me for not posting more often on my blog. For one thing, I'm not sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day with only about two hours worth of work to do, so I don't have the abundant opportunity or the desparate need to fill up time that I once had. For another, its difficult to know what exactly to do with my blog during these turbulent times of change. I never wanted it to become an online journal: "Then I did this, then I did this, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow so I can do this..." I wanted to use it to write about whatever in a semi-artistic format, like personal essays or whatever. Problem is that now that I'm so far away from everybody who reads this, its the easiest and most effective way to keep everybody posted about what I've been up to in my fabulous new life. So, I'll be working on combining these two roles of the blog in future posts. For now, more general stuff about my new life. If you...

Holy cow! That's all I can say so far. My time here has been a blur, but at the same time I feel like I've been living in Columbia, South Carolina for AGES. Still don't know my way around though, but at least I can get to all the buildings on campus I have anything to do with. Most of the last week was filled with training meeting after orientation meeting after meet-and-greet session, one right after the other. We met people five hundred thousand times, which is great because I need that in order to actually remember names and stuff. Yesterday there was a little showcase, where all of us first year MFA actors presented our audition monologues to the entire department faculty. There are ten of us in the class, and I have been amazed and humbled by the level of talent that each one of them exhibited in their monologues. I don't know if I'll be able to keep up! I don't know if I can say that I am the worst actor in the group, since thats really difficult to judge,...

Just a quick note to let you know the conclusion to my epic journey. I'll write a longer blog later when the dust clears some more. We arrived in Columbia on Sunday night and its been a crazy whirlwind of excitement ever since! My new roommate, we'll call him Jock Actor, or J.A., (since using Blog Names is all the rage now days), seems like somebody I can live with and laugh with, and our new apartment is, surprisingly, very nice considering we didn't have a clue what we were getting when we signed up for it. Somebody let us borrow a TV, somebody else gave us some air mattresses for a while, and we were able to bum a couch from the department. Things are coming together! I've met everybody in my program now, and they are all absolutely amazing. I've been amazed at how quickly we've been forming bonds. Almost instantaneously, we've become a family in just a few days. We all laugh at each other's jokes and enjoy each other's company. Working with these...