Break a Leg

As usual, I have been extremely busy trying to put my life into some semblance of order this last week:  I had a special performance of Shrew in the middle of an old-growth Redwood forest, cast party, going away party, battlegrounds to run, a roommate to find, a $1000 fine to avoid, a house to clean, my wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it...wait, I think that last bit was from somebody else.  Anyway, point is, I've had a lot on my mind.  So when it came time to write this blog I was completely blank.  So I asked one of my coworkers what I should write about.  Guess what he said.  Can you guess what he said?  Go ahead and guess what he said.  I bet you can guess what he said.

Now, I don't know a whole lot about farm animals.  Aside from they are tasty with gravy.  In fact, I think the idea stemmed from the fact that not 5 minutes prior to me starting this blog somebody had mentioned having ribs for lunch, which spawned a conversation about where one might conveniently and locally acquire said delicacy.  Most places are too far to be convenient to make the trip there and back in our 1/2 hour lunch break.

See, personally, my lunch break is about far more than filling my stomach with nutrients.  It's time away; a slight repreave from this madcap word of sign making.  I get my food, yes, but more importantly I escape the world for a little while.  I generally like to get a lot of reading done.  So if I have to spend my precious time running hither and yawn without getting to rest my brain and let somebody else do the work by opening a book....I feel unfulfilled.  I'm sure you can relate.  And now I'm completely off topic.

Over the weekend, at one of the parties I was attending I was told more or less the following story:

A fellow actor of mine, an older gentleman who's life partner had been in the interior design business, was at a party courting some rather rich and famous clients.  The owner of the house where this party was held also had cattle on the property, as eccentric Hollywood types are commonly wont to do.  Some of the guests decided that they would go have a look at the cows in question "for a change of pace."  One young starlet, respendant in some extremely expensive evening gown, asked if she could milk one of the cows.  So it was arranged.  While she was under there yanking inexpertly on the udders she asked, "Isn't it supposed to get hard?"

Wow.

Makes you think about just how much you know in relation just how much other people know.  I know a lot of people are somewhat scared of large barnyard animals.  I mean, if that thing decided it would rather reverse the order of the food chain, you could suddenly have 2 tons of stomach charging your opposable-thumb-having ass in an effort to make some Jennifer pate.  But actually, most of the farm animals I've encountered are pretty resigned to their role in life:  "I eat, I sleep, I poop, I get turned into dinner."  Or: "I am a beast of burden.  I carry this asshole around, I carry that asshole around.  Fine.  Where are my carrots?"  When I was in Korea everywhere you went you would see withered old men standing in the middle of a rice patty with a cow attached to a string.  What was the cow's job?  To poop.  What was the old man's job?  To hold the string.

What the hell does this have to do with anything, you ask?

At least I'm working on Break A Leg and not pooping in a field while tethered to a withered old Korean man.

Not an eloquent statement I know, but  I think it gives you some sort of perspective.

Happy Jenday!

Note: The video isn't up yet on the site but it IS up on YouTube. Check it out there and tell us what you think! Thanks guys!

Also, Robert: Season 2 is still up in the air. We're deciding!

--

Hey, guys.

Our newest video is going to be out and instead of an episode, it's an introduction. What is it an introduction to? For Your Imagination's new comedy network, the Axis of Comedy. 

Here's a quick blurb about it:

AXIS OF COMEDY is the ultimate online comedy network featuring a full slate of the best of the funniest web series. This one-of-a-kind network features original comedy hits Abigail's Teen Diary, Break a Leg, The Burg, GoodieBagTV, Goodnight Burbank, Kyle Piccolo, The Patrice Oneal Show and The Retributioners!

This isn't, by the way, a TV network, rather it's an online network of web series and we're proud to share the same virtual space as all of these guys and gals.

The second thing is about Break a Leg.  We have two episodes left -- two very epic, very dramatic episodes -- which we'd like to get as much eyeballs on as humanely possible. We also have until the end of October until our sponsorship with Holiday Inn Express (and Dan's Dildos) is up, so we've been debating what the best way to release the videos would be. What we've settled on is to hold off the last two episodes until the last two weeks of October and, in the meantime, give you various content every monday (bloopers, extra videos, a rap song!) I know that you're not especially keen on waiting that long -- but it gives us a chance to give Break a Leg the best possible send-off, it gives us time to push some press, get some things rolling to try and optimize the views we get for the Final Two.

So, we apologize profusely but we swear to you that it'll be worth it.

Finally, we have a plea for you all. Recently, activity here on the site as well as on YouTube has dwindled a bit. I know many of you are still watching and we ask you to please, please add your voice to wherever you can -- comments section, boards, YouTube (YouTube especially helps). This isn't just a way to stroke our egos (though it helps) it also, especially in the case of YouTube, gets the video to appear more in the rotation, giving it more views and helping spread the word about the show. Which, by the way, another great way to help us is to spread the word about the show to friends, enemies and past/future lovers.

Thanks a lot guys for everything. I know we still haven't answered the question of, "What happens after October?" and that's because we haven't answered it for ourselves yet either. So, sit tight, and we'll keep you updated. Thanks everyone!

-Yuri
 and the Team

If you haven't been to my website lately, then congratulations, that's one thing you're guaranteed to have not wasted valuable internet time doing. 

You may want to swing by for a moment and take a look, especially at the new masthead image I've put up. I start rehearsals for a play next week, and that shot is from our little publicity photo shoot. I apparently wear that wedding dress in the last scene of the play. You know me, I don't read scripts, so what do I know?

With the season finale of Break A Leg drawing near, and my shooting having been done for some time, it's basically like we're on hiatus. I may have mentioned before that one of the reasons I love working on this show is for that feeling of being involved in something, not just having to whore myself around from indie to indie just to try and fill up my spare time and still be able to call myself an actor. Well, hiatus is here now and I need something to do.

I tend to do roughly one play a year (can roughly really apply to the number one? I mean doing one thing a year is pretty precise, not a rough estimate at all). I hate rehearsing since it takes so much time away from my family, and then I hate performance since it takes so much time away from my family. Even though I hate both halves of the process roughly equally (there's a good roughly), I somehow end up loving the process as a whole. How does that work out?

I think it comes down to one thing: the audience. Some actors may tell you that they do it for the sake of art, or act because it's their calling, or because they don't know how else to live. That's bullshit, it all comes down to roughly one thing (just trying it again, no, "roughly one" doesn't work): ego. 

Now this is not bad ego I'm talking about, the kind that makes your head so big it won't fit through a door. This is more of the Freudian ego, the one that we all have. Ego is essential to psychological well-being, and it's the actor's ego that motivates their performances. It's not that we crave attention, though undoubtedly some of us do, but it's more that we crave the audience's input and feedback into our work. Actors who desire instant gratification and live energy gravitate towards theatre, those who don't mind waiting and love the "piecemeal" aspect of film gravitate to camera work.

I did have this one acting teacher who said he would dress up at home as King Richard and do monologues. Alone. For fun. That guy was just crazy.

Acting without an audience, no matter the nature of that audience, isn't acting. It's just pretending. Alone. It's those guys in that YouTube video playing "Dungeons & Dragons" live in the woods, with the one kid shouting "fireball" over and over again? It's really kind of pathetic, and it's certainly not art. Acting and performance art in general is unique in that the audience is required for you to be an artist, whether the audience is watching live or watching ten years from now.

I guess that's what I love about acting, and about theatre specifically. I know that there are people here right now that are enjoying this story we're telling, and they're going to go think about it and maybe talk about it later with some other people. It's also exciting that once the show's over, and especially once the play closes, the story is over, or at least our version of it. It can never exist again.

Break A Leg is exciting as well, since this newfangled internet thing allows our audience to give us almost instant feedback through comments and message boards. We get to hear and see and know that we have an audience at all, and that the story we're telling is being enjoyed and talked about and  thought about long after we've finished shooting and editing. The other thing the internet has done is of course made it available to the entire world, in perpetuity (or at least until The Beast turns off The Cloud and kicks us off the internet forever).

More people have seen me perform in Break A Leg... no, not even that. More people see me each and every week (more like within the first hour of the video hitting the site) than the largest community theatre audience I've ever performed in front of. More people have seen the most popular episodes of Break A Leg than have seen all of my theatrical and film performances ever, combined, ever. I'm leaving commercials out of this because that's just unfair.

Anyway, thanks for being a fan, thank you for watching, and thank you for always always being here on the site. We don't do this for ourselves: if it were up to us we would have probably quit ages ago. It's just too damn difficult, too damn tiring, and too damn thankless if it weren't for you guys watching and commenting every week. Don't get me wrong, it's fun as all hell, but so is Risk and I stopped playing that years ago.

Thanks for listening, and if you're in SF in late October/early November, come see March to November at the Phoenix Theater!

The new video is up and ready for your viewing, everyone! Check it on YouTube or here on the site. Don't forget to comment and tell us what you think! Thanks!

Now back to your regularly scheduled Jennifer.

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So, this last Thursday, I get an email from Yuri saying we needed content for Monday and when could I be available to shoot.  I had friends in town from out of town, I had a brush up rehearsal for Shrew in which we had to rework all the blocking for the entire show, it was my grandmother's 84th birthday, I still haven't found a new roommate, I need to get a smog check, and my blood elf priest is still only level 35.   When would you have time to shoot? 

So I said I was available that night.  Yuri said great, we'll be there about 9:30.  At about 10:30 they showed up. Typical.

But I didn't mind as much because it was Thursday and Thursday as traditionally the night that Nate comes over and we drink vodka and play Cribbage.  Anyone who has ever done this knows just how cool it can be.  Now, the reason I didn't mind the lateness was because A) I knew I wouldn't have much to say so the shoot wouldn't take too long, B) Nate's cool and patient and didn't need me there so he could drink, and C) Vodka. 

Now, the timing of this was actually perfect because with one room newly vacated, we had a near perfect place to shoot.  I say near perfect because it was about 90 degrees in the room, and I was sweating in quite the same way that pigs don't.  Aside from that, this was probably one of the easiest Break A Leg shoots I've had the fortune to participate in.  First, they came to my house, which I thought was very generous on their part.  Second, it was just a couple of short lines, no interaction, so I only had to worry about making myself look good and not having to drag others along with my creative genius when they were incapable of bifucating the condiments.*

And C) I got to do improv.  I love improv.  I'm good at improv.  I don't get to do enough improv, with the exception that pretty much every single conversation you ever have in your life is something you make up as you go.  But as far as getting up on a stage or getting in front of a camera, given a scenario (usually comic) and then just getting to run with it, I just don't get enough.  I probably could get into a group around here and start doing shows...but that's just one more thing to add to the list of things I should/could be doing.

So after we got done shooting the scripted stuff, I asked Yuri and Justin if we could just leave the camera on while they asked me questions.  We did that for a while and there were laughs all around.  Finally we felt we had enough material and I was about to resume the vodka and the cribbage when I saw the penny whistle and was inspired.  DId the shot in pretty much one take, if I remember correctly.  And the rest, as they say, was history.

*cut the mustard

Hey, guys.

We're up all night trying to finish the video for release today but -- it's just not going to happen. Dashiell and Justin are now getting ready for work without having slept all night and we're still not completely finished with today's video. So, we're going to ask you once again to be very kind, loving and supportive and take today, Monday, to rewatch various Break a Leg videos to feed your many Break a Leg hungries.

Then tomorrow, we'll have a new video for you and you will laugh, you will cry, you will think it beautiful.

Thanks for understanding, guys!

-Yuri and The Team