Notes on Acting

National Novel Writing Month : Ah, Damn.

2009-11-12T15:51:00.000-08:00

As National Novel Writing Month gallops along I've fallen wheezing off the back of the pack. No matter. It's made me start writing. I'm making discoveries each time I type even a few words, so I'm going to finish way, way later than the end of November, but I'm going to finish. The bonzai! approach didn't quite work out for me on this one, but it didn't quite fail, either. I still owe Suzie V. at least a paragraph at the end of each day. That's something.

One over-arching discovery: in the past, my attempts at writing fiction were often stymied because I didn't know as many different kinds of people as needed. Most novels don't thrive on nature descriptions alone, they need to be peopled. I'm finding that by now, however, I do indeed know many kinds of people. Finding characters to fuel events is no longer a problem.

Update: DANGEROUS WRITING

2009-11-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

DANGEROUS WRITING (the movie) inches toward completion! Picture is locked. Original music for the soundtrack is nearly done; a trailer is in the works; end credits will soon be done; color correction will happen anon. A major reason for my trip to Portland this coming December is to do my part in moving it to completion.

Neal A. Corl has written, directed and co-produced this film as a labor of love and dedication to an inquisitive, highly intelligent, deeply creative mode of filmmaking. Neal experiments with film form, invites the audience to take chances, and challenges himself, actors, and artistic collaborators to work with clarity and improvisation. Neal marries a still photographer's eye, novelist's sense of detail, and screenwriter's dramatic instincts. When and if he subverts narrative expectations, he does it after having slyly invited his audience to collude, simultaneously challenging and seducing his audience, which is quite a trick. DANGEROUS WRITING is often deeply funny by being deeply sly: there's a lot going on in its complex mise en scene. You'll see what I mean.

I'm deeply proud of our film's quirky, sometimes enigmatic, beautifully filmed, questing little soul. And you're going to hate me in it.

I mean that in a good way.

Google Search of the Day

2009-11-10T09:53:00.001-08:00

Favorite recent search that landed a reader on my blog:

"how did the theatre smell affect the acting?"

My guess: badly.

2009-11-10T08:55:00.000-08:00

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

-- Oscar Wilde

Being Legit ≠ Good Work

2009-11-09T08:41:00.000-08:00

I have days on which I accept the life of an artist and many on which I resist it. I don't think I've yet entirely embraced all that living a life in the arts means, however. I would like to. I need to. But, I constantly fight the drag of expectations of rewards. I continue to expect sweat equity to pay-off in tangible dividends in the form of either money or professional respect. The former certainly isn't yet happening (of course!) and it's impossible (as of yet) for me to gauge the later.

One reason for my resistance to embracing all that working and living in the arts really means is that I still crave the respect--no, no, let's be honest: the adoration!--of others (especially family) in the same degree as I see others get respect, and adoration, for material achievement. The lawyers, doctors, professors, and successful business people I know are lauded, while I find myself avoiding questions at family gatherings. That would change if I were "published," or in the movies, or tenured. We all feel this, of course.

One extenuating circumstance for me is that my financial need is not as great as it is for many artists. On the one hand, I'll never own a home, given the extra-theatre world income that I now have. On the other hand, I'll never be without a home nor go without health insurance. This gives me far greater latitude in my choices than most of the working artists I know. I also feel significant shame about my relative material freedom. You may roll your eyes but the shame is real: I'm aware of the degree to which I embody a small host of cultural cliches, which literally nauseate me, as I think about them. I force myself to remember that the arts have always been made possible through the financial backing of non-artists; that many more artists than admit it have come from financially secure beginnings. But, those who haven't come from such beginnings are so exalted by our culture for exemplifying the (frequently illusory) American faith that anyone can go from rags to riches, that not to come from 'nothing' seems illegitimate. The artist who comes up from nothing is a hero; the one who is materially secure is a dilettante; in current vernacular, a "trustafarian."

My resistance to the insecurity of an artist's life and my craving for material reward or respect is my need, above all, to legitimize my choice to live that life. If I can produce work that others buy, or that others praise, then I'm no longer a cultural joke; my more-secure-than-average-beginnings will be mostly-forgiven. During the long while when Nick Cage was actually doing decent work, we were all willing to forgive the outright nepotism that allowed him to be such a bad actor for so long (now that he sucks again, we may be less willing to forgive him.)

You see the real trouble though, don't you? The result of my need to legitimize myself in this way translates into "people pleasing"--trying to make everyone a fan--when that is quite literally, and rightfully, impossible. Trying to please everyone makes my work hesitant, unclear, and inauthentic. Thus, it's no accident that I have almost always done my best work after I've already failed! E.g., at URTA three years ago, my auditions got better and better the more I saw auditors glaze over. I just kept going into those rooms despite the string of rejections and despite my own self-disgust until I didn't give a damn. Fifteen years ago, after suffering writer's block on a graduate paper, I gave up on writing it on the night before it was due and went to a movie (Miller's Crossing). The next day, after a leisurely coffee and pastry, I flipped on my computer at 11:00 a.m., and for the hell of it, sat down to see what might happen. The paper was done by 4 p.m. and handed in by 5:00 p.m., securing my 'A' for the course. And more recently, as I stumbled in two or three of my first post-MFA auditions, I finally began to find my feet as I accepted my initial failures. My work began to look more like me. Yes, you might think I would have learned this lesson during grad school, not after it, but this I know about life and art: it's all re-iterative. Progress does occur and is real, but happens by passing again and again over apparently old ground. I finally understand the movie, GROUNDHOG DAY.

In order to produce work that does truly please people--satisfy their desire to be surprised, entertained, and edified--I must let go of my need to legitimize my self. If I continue attempting to legitimize myself through art, the work will not find an audience. If I can let 'myself' go, however, it will.

Survival : Actor's Humanity

2009-11-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

[For a reporter who asked what success in acting means] I summed up success in the acting world with one word, "survival." .... I think we all know this--the privilege to be able to continue in one's career to whatever end is all-important and separates the men from the boys; and the desire to survive is what inspires the humanity in an actor--the wit--the possibilities that actor betrays that he is, after all, a human being."

-- Vincent Price

So You Want to be a Writer?

2009-11-04T19:08:00.000-08:00

Suzy Vitello posted this on her blog.

so you want to be a writer? by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you

in spite of everything,

don't do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your

heart and your mind and your mouth

and your gut,

don't do it.

if you have to sit for hours

staring at your computer screen

or hunched over your

typewriter

searching for words,

don't do it.

if you're doing it for money or

fame,

don't do it.

if you're doing it because you want

women in your bed,

don't do it.

if you have to sit there and

rewrite it again and again,

don't do it.

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,

don't do it.

if you're trying to write like somebody

else,

forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of

you,

then wait patiently.

if it never does roar out of you,

do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend

or your parents or to anybody at all,

you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,

don't be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don't be dull and boring and

pretentious, don't be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

don't add to that.

don't do it.

unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don't do it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

Today's moderate Republicans = Tomorrow's Conservative Democrats?

2009-11-04T09:31:00.000-08:00

If the lunatic (and ascendent!) right wing of the Republican party manages to purify the party of any tendency toward "moderation," or traditional, 'moderate Republicanism,' what is going to happen when today's moderate Republicans become tomorrow's conservative Democrats? The smaller and nastier the Republican party gets the happier I am: it's correspondingly less relevant to a majority of voters. But, I'm NOT so happy with seeing the heterodoxy and fractiousness increase among the Democrats, whose party just barely finds common ground, today, e.g., the freak'n health care bill has been as endangered by "moderate" Democrats as by petulant Republicans. And a THIRD PARTY? You may think you want to go there, but I'm not sure you do: we're already unhappy with pluralities deciding elections. Do we really want a president elected by 31% of the vote? (Somebody else figure out my math. I admit childlike incompetence with such things.)

But, if we did see a smaller, even more intensely fanatical Republican Party, would the Democrats be forced to split into more than one party? Would there be less dissaray and more focus across the spectrum if there were a truly 'liberal' party to the left of a conservative (not right wing) 'Democratic' rump? Ugh.

Mother

2009-11-01T19:13:00.000-08:00

Today, I finally began my novel, MOTHER. I'm throwing out expectation as well as I can and writing for the finish line--almost literally, as part of the National Novel Writing Month competition. Suzy Vitello (already a novelist) and Tim Sailer (fellow blogger and actor) are my "buddies," whose word counts I check hourly. Suzy is way ahead at the moment. Tim is 50 words behind. I know Suzy is working from an extensive outline and oodles of information about what makes a plot tick. I'm working from memory, wishful thinking, vengeance and a dab of elemental prurience. I don't know what Tim is working from--he'll have to let me know.

I had a rude awakening today when I began. I have a title, characters, a basic situation, and little more. I wrote a first sentence, which seemed to hold some deductive and inferential promise (if I can deduce the entire novel from the first sentence, so much the better!) The sentence I chose is six words long, including a proper noun. Unfortunately, this proper noun did not belong to any of the characters who are at the center of my story. This seemed worrisome for a moment. But then, after mixing and adding freely traits from at least three people I tangled with in the distant past, I realized I was fine: stories can start anywhere, and with anyone. And so I'm off, covering a whole lot of narrative ground from a swooping god's eye view, but what the hell. If it's worth anything, I can touch feet to ground when the first draft is done and go beating the episodic bushes then. Hell man, I LIKE narrative. It's one of the glories of the novel.

I have some serious catch up to do tomorrow.

Tuesday Update: Holy toledo, I'm writing drivel!

Rocky Horror Show @ UH

2009-11-01T15:46:00.000-08:00

The Oct 31, 2009 11 pm performance of THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW in the UH Wortham Theatre won't soon be forgotten. A particularly rowdy crowd--well versed in the rituals and call-and-response of The Rocky Horror Picture Show--made life a very pleasant hell for the actors on stage, who had to fight for the audience's attention. Matt Lusk, a young performer and stand-up comedian soon to graduate from the UH undergrad theater program, chewed up and spat out more than one highly amped, Halloween heckler. Well done, everyone.

J Street: Response to Chait Column

2009-10-30T08:25:00.000-07:00

I'm Zionist because I, like Yglesias, live in a world where (mostly ethnic) nationalism remains the only apparent mechanism for 'self determination' and framework for peace available to most of the world. Nationalism, per se, sort of sickens me. But, genocide sickens me much, much more. And the multiple pathologies that accrue around anti-semitism--in America, Europe, Arabia, Asia--frequently drive me to angry despair, so I cannot talk about Israel with 95% of my non-Jewish liberal friends, with whom I agree on most everything else (I, er, get upset, and sound a lot like Marty Peretz, whose tone I frequently find abrasive, myself.)

I've been hoping against hope that J Street might turn out to be a strong defender of Zionism without confusing criticism of any particularly wrong-headed Israeli strategies (e.g., especially west bank settlements) with Anti-zionism. If it goes in the direction of Ben-Ami, I will join it. If it tacks toward the Walt/Mersheimer/The Nation left, I'm out.

As you can tell, I'm more passionate than bright about these matters, but I probably well represent the feelings of many Jewish American liberals.

The Black Room

2009-10-29T06:46:00.000-07:00

I'm enjoying the 'adult fairy tale' quality of these 1930s-1940s horror films. I'm also enjoying Boris Karloff's mid-Atlantic diction and very stagy physicality. The theatricality of these early films often refreshes my eye for story and character detail by not burying them in ostentatious naturalism; Naturalism and Realism often being crutches for lack of audience imagination.

(Anyways: I strongly believe that naturalism and realism are such stylistically strong choices in their own right that they can become genres of spectacle. The smell of bacon in the pan or the sound of rain water--any effect that strives for verisimilitude--is an "ooooooo-aaaaaahhh" moment.)

Targets

2009-10-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

Last night, I watched Karloff in TARGETS. He's wonderfully old fashioned, and looks grateful to be in Peter Bogdanovitch's film, which allows him mostly to be himself. Bogdanovitch says in the dvd interview that he doesn't like horror movies, so this is the only one he made (for Roger Corman). Few contemporary viewers would recognize it as a "horror" film. They would call it a "thriller." I would call it a horror film, however, for the simple reason that seeing innocent people gunned down from the killer's point of view disturbed me more than it excited me. In a thriller, I'm excited to see characters attempt to outwit some closing trap. In most contemporary horror films, I'm supposed to be excited by seeing characters grow terrified, and frequently die in terrible suffering... though that's not quite what TARGETS asks of me. Instead of titillating me with fanciful creatures--e.g., Frankenstein's monster, pinhead, Jason--TARGETS asks me to recognize a 'new' kind of horror, committed by an 'ordinary' boy, that's been unleashed in the real world. The horror in TARGETS is of a 'natural' monstrosity, which appears to be without logical explanation, on the one hand, but stirs our suspicion that it is the creature of changes in contemporary life--as we see them in the uglified landscape of drive ins, car dealerships and the highways of the southern California among which TARGETS is set--for which we are all somehow mutely responsible, on the other hand.

Most contemporary horror films are a far cry from either the kind of 'horror' film Karloff appeared in or Bogdanovitch's film. Karloff would say that 'classic' horror "terrified," but did not "horrify" audiences. I don't at all enjoy contemporary horror. To me, it's 'violence porn,' and offends my sensibilities more than does 'erotic' porn. I do enjoy TARGETS, and every performance I've seen by Karloff, so far. He's even good in THE TERROR, which is Corman shlock at (what I hope) is his worst.

Search Engines

2009-10-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

Results for "David Millstone"

Google
1. Notes on Acting
4. David Millstone.com

Bing
1. David Millstone.com
13. Notes on Acting

Posting a lot, over a long period of time, helps.

Notes from Stephen Sondheim-Frank Rich Conversation

2009-10-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

1) Keep it simple.
2) Let content dictate form.
3) God is in the details.
4) Ideas come from everywhere and they change.
5) Plot-driven musicals are most satisfying.
6) The audience needs to believe the premise and buy into the central dilemma; if it does, the plot can be as ridiculous as it wants as long as it follows LOGICALLY from the premise, e.g., AFUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM.
7) A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM is almost perfect.
8) Bobby in COMPANY and the giant in WOODS are neither gay nor 9/11 terrorists.
9) Sondheim doesn't like recitative. Opera doesn't do it for him.
10) SWEENY TODD is not an opera.
11) Neither is PORGY & BESS.
12) Opera Companies usually (not always) mess these up.
13) Sondheim doesn't cook, and often writes in a local steakhouse/sports bar, with the jukebox playing something completely different.
14) He also doesn't frequently compose at the piano, because muscle memory limits imagination. He also deliberately writes in a different key than he's used in a while in order to stay fresh.
15) Ticket prices still grate me, though they were worth it.

The Antipodes

2009-10-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

There are times I miss the open spaces I know from my few years living in Montana, and from several solo trips across the country, by car and motorcycle. I also miss the 360 degree horizon of the ocean, where I had once begun learning how to sail, but didn't keep with it (I may yet circumnavigate.) I love standing on skis at the top of a steep trail and looking out at the Canadian rockies or Green Mountains. I miss the imperious weather of these places. I miss outdoor solitude.

I also miss the cramped, busy life of New York City and Boston; the urgent conversations among grad students at Boston College (philosophy) and Teachers College (literature, writing, teaching); the sense of engagement I found in serious, funny, impromptu conversations while walking dogs with neighbors in Riverside Park; the diversity of ages in social circles. Civilization is born in close quarters. Art metastasizes from not-always healthy, but often interesting, original sources, there. It winds up everywhere, unkillable.

I blame automobiles for my loathing of suburbs, where social contact is thin, mostly a matter of civics and commerce. Arts there are packaged versions of the mess cooked up in cities (or, if not in cities, in colonies fed by nearby university or tourist towns,) which is far better than nothing, but man cannot live on touring musicals alone.

My nostalgia for city life, on the one hand, and open spaces, on the other, won't resolve into a fixed hierarchy. I want both. This is why people invent God: to contain contradicting objects of desire; to join the antipodes.

Discovering Boris

2009-10-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten that Karloff often appeared so sweet--child-like, innocent--in film, at least when he was older. Younger (and by that, I mean mid-forties and early fifties), he was frequently vulnerable, as well as impassioned and complex, especially when still, as lessor actors hammed and sawed the air around him. His acting style was simultaneously minimalist and brazenly theatrical, in a 19th-century, oratorical way (cf., Paul Robeson, who I don't believe was ever minimalist). It's a wonderful balance--frequently tipped one way or the other-which I can't yet parse. Karloff had a lot of stage experience before doing film, but little or no formal training. You can see the experience-without-training in the way he slurs beats--kind of how Sinatra slurs phrases, perhaps--in ways that can be interesting, but don't quite match the story being told. He would have been served well by more snap in his choices. But, on the other hand, there's a wonderful, wonderful truth in his ability to dive into an action. The actor does not hold back, apparently regardless of how deeply ludicrous the material might be.

I unexpectedly found myself humbled by watching him last night in a cheesy Roger Corman film, THE TERROR, with Jack Nicholson. The film is a straight-up gothic ghost story, set around a French Baron's castle in the mid 1700s. The actors have dialects ranging from southern California, Brooklyn, NY, and mid-Atlantic, so the dialogue is even more ridiculous in their mouths than it would have been on the page. Nicholson--who has no dialect tools--convinces through minimalism of gesture and physical movement. Karloff--who appears to have been in his seventies--throws himself into the part with great emotional and physical gusto, which was obviously physically demanding. He does not hold himself above the material, but treats it as if he were doing Lear (he did no Shakespeare anywhere in his career, as far as I can tell.) He does this for a cheap Corman flick. He pours himself into trash as if he could redeem it--and, by damned, frequently does. Watching him was like watching the lone brilliant, if untrained actor in an otherwise dreadful community theater production, who reminds you of what "honor" and "faithfulness" mean.

Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich: Cashing In

2009-10-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich are conducting a conversation for the public in Houston next Sunday, tickets for which range from $22 to $77, prices comparable for tickets to a full musical or concert.

I highly respect these gentlemen, but this is obnoxious. I understand high ticket prices for theatrical productions: they are a necessary evil. A taste for theater may be had by a relatively elite few in our culture, but access to theater should not be restricted to them. For two prominent, well-heeled theater people to collude in barring access to hearing them speak and having the chance to ask them questions, is unconscionable. How much can two chairs, a table, and pitcher of water and a night at Za Za (or where ever) cost? I'm offended wounded.

We'll probably go for the cheapest seats. But, hurrumpf!

(Okay, "collude" is a little strong, but I just want to open up the tent....)

The Art of Triangulating

2009-10-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

I seem to have conquered my fear of auditions (at least for now.) Recently, I've found myself entering auditions confident and playful. Nervous, of course, but not terror struck, as has often been true in the past. I seem to have turned a corner. Why? I think because I'm learning to manage the uncertainty of auditioning by keeping several irons in the fire and sustaining my focus on independent creative projects, which are not subject to outside approval. I'm learning to plot my actions by triangulating the objects of my creative energies; an essential skill for a theater gypsy (or for any free-lancer).

Also: whereas in the past I was afraid that the kind of focus necessary for writing would turn out to be at odds with that needed for acting, at the moment, I'm finding them complimentary. They're different energies, but at least for now, they seem to re-enforce rather than undermine one another.

London Calling

2009-10-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a long summer and autumn transitioning from school to professional life, but now, as options seem to be presenting themselves more clearly, and as I settle into creative work--and get out of my own little mad marketing frenzy--it's time for a short break. Irene and I are going to London over Thanksgiving, to enjoy another town, and see some theater. If you have any suggestions, drop me a note.

Today, I'm watching old movies, research for my one-man show. I'm also jotting structural notes for the 50,000 word novel I'm writing during November as a participant in "National Novel Writing Month." An hour per day of fast fiction writing will be my warm up to my main work of the first half of the month, writing a rough first draft of the show. A few hours a day with words and sentences? A vacation in its own right.

Art & Life

2009-10-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

This evening, I felt a moment of personal embarrassment that shot me to the quick; embarrassment intense enough to nauseate, without quite tipping over into humiliation. At first, I lost my appetite, couldn't look my lovely date in the eye (my embarrassment was not about her,) and went semi-silent. Then, I hardened. A black ice wrapped my heart. This hardness felt like focus and strength. It also liberated me from niceties. I spoke bluntly to strangers without tipping all the way into rudeness. I spoke to my date with just-chilled politeness. Her hand, which usually finds mine, stayed in her own lap, while we listened to E.L. Doctorow read from his most recent novel. We spoke to one another like a married couple a little bored with the routine. After the reading, we drove home, watched Ricky Gervais' romantic comedy Ghost Town on dvd, and not for the first time during the evening, I apologized--but this time, the ice had thawed, and I meant it.

More than once during this long evening I felt something else, too: comfort in my growing ability to speak Shakespearean verse on stage. I'm by no means brilliant at it. But, the more I do it, the more comprehensible are the smallish crimes I may commit against others and myself, day to day. Not 'comprehensible' as in intellectually grasped between ratiocinative pincers, but as in 'forgivable.' Speaking Shakespeare's text is like speaking in tongues; passions, doubts, aspirations, fears coil into sound and gesture and spring into external being. Biblical hermeneutics do this for some people, though not for me. The metaphysical ambiguity, borderline nihilism, articulate empathy, moral outrage and imaginative restlessness of Shakespeare do do it for me. Speaking Shakespeare's verse doesn't quite 'ennoble' me, but... it provides a context, which I don't necessarily find elsewhere (and I do mean "speaking" his verse, which puts Shakespeare into another category than mere literary experience.) This evening, when I felt my coldest and most alienated, I could still imagine speaking Shakespeare's lines--those of Hamlet, or Claudius, or Macbeth, or Henry IV--and after I thawed, I somehow felt... more capacious, and lighter on my feet. I felt I could traverse more quickly through the emotions of the moment without attempting to ignore them.

There were other intertwining threads of art and life this evening. The articulate good humor of E.L. Doctorow, the bland good faith of Ricky Gervais, our recent evening listening to Tony Kushner, a previous evening at Guy Robert's mesmerizing one-man Hamlet--all recent art experience bringing shape, color and warmth to a moment that may have felt merely mean, and barren. All of this made me a slightly better boyfriend, in a tricky moment.

Space

2009-10-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

Today, I organize my physical space to free up my spiritual and imaginative space. I've always proceeded this way: live with doubt and indecisiveness for weeks, suddenly pop into the clear with a determining idea to pursue, then re-arrange the furniture. Then work. Like clockwork. Irene may not recognize this room in a few days.

Adult Adventures

2009-10-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

Adulthood: still not used to it. I alternate between craving youthful physical adventure and turning inward for artistic adventure, which is harder spiritually, and perhaps as hard, physically, in its way. I get distracted by my cravings to ski, motorcycle, hike, sail, scuba dive (though I no longer ride bicycles long distance--out of respect for my little friend, the prostate.) I'm less distracted by a need to travel--or rather, site see--though I remain eager to travel as a working artist. But, distractions aside, I also need to sit at my desk to undergo the adult adventure of thinking and imagining (of course, there's also the adventure of the rehearsal room, but that's another post.)

I thought I was going to move to Philadelphia this month, but one of the balls I threw up in the air during September has recently been spotted descending to earth: there's interest out there in seeing me write and perform a one man show, for good artistic and practical reasons. SO, I have to hunker down. I have a deadline. I'm setting up the grandmother's mother-in-law's apartment (I'm a dork) over Irene's garage as a den of obsession and work. My imaginative adventures are moving more indoors, for a bit; I need to give one of my adult adventures a place to roost. I move to Philadelphia when my first deadline is complete and/or stage work permits. I'll know more about the later relatively soon.

The Importance of Being Earnest @ UH

2009-10-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST plays for five more shows, beginning tonight, in the Jose Quintero Theatre at the U. of Houston. I enjoyed director Jonathan Gonzalez's work with a cast made up primarily of MFA Acting students (though two undergrads are very funny as butlers,) who make choices that are not necessarily traditional, but do tell the story. Jack may be a bit dark and a wee-too naturalistic (which does make sense, considering the point in training in which the first-year MFA students find themselves now), but Lady Bracknell is hilariously nuts.

One Man Hamlet

2009-10-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

Actor Guy Roberts, Artistic Director of the Prague Shakespeare Festival, is now performing HAMLET, in a solo performance presented by the Classical Theatre Company, in Houston. The show is directed by John Johnston and Guy Roberts and plays in the HITS space on W 18th St., in the Heights. We saw it Monday. Roberts is terrific. He is physically and vocally skilled and obviously knows this text inside out. He performs only those scenes that include Hamlet himself, or which he overhears. His text is among the clearest I've heard. I heard every joke and understood every beat. It's a remarkable, lovely show.