Break a Leg

So most of you should already know how much I love television. I don't know if I really went into exactly why, there are so many reasons.

As a footnote, I've just discovered USA Network's Burn Notice. Holy crap, new favorite show ever.

Moving along, I started thinking this week about something I think often about from time to time: acting. Surprised? I am, I actually don't think about acting per se all that much, I find the subject itself (as opposed to the practice) kind of boring.

One aspect of acting I do enjoy thinking about is acting on stage versus acting on screen. They're both very different, both very challenging, and one is better than the other (in my book) for non-obvious reasons (kind of like how Batman is better than Superman).

I acted for several years on stage only, mainly in my formative acting years when I was in school. That is of course where I fell in love with the art form, not unlike how little children first fall in love with the concept of superheroes by watching and reading about Superman.

I got involved in theatre for the same reason everybody else does: girls. Even girls get into theatre to meet girls, that's what's so hot about it. After my first night on stage in high school (as a member of the barbershop quartet in The Music Man), I had a dream that I was lost in a maze of wings. It was exciting and dreadful all at the same time.

Acting on stage offers that same mixture of terror and excitement every night, kind of like getting on the same roller coaster over and over. Except there's hopefully much less chance that someone on the roller coaster forgot their lines and it will send you hurtling off the rails to your death.

Stage acting also offers you something that screen acting cannot, by definition, ever really do: instant gratification. Along with that comes the interplay of your energy with the audiences, and the thrill of reliving the same moment night after night as if it were the first time. You also of course don't get any do-overs on stage, and that is where the terror and excitement all come to a head.

Acting on screen on the other hand has more subtle pleasures and nuances to the craft, though it lacks the aerobic quality that stage acting has. You never have to do the entire film straight through (there are of course exceptions), and for most films and TV shows you just couldn't possibly do so.

What screen acting does is force you to work, by yourself or with usually no more than one other person, by digging down deep and finding that place you're both trying to reach, without external influences to guide you. There's no audience laughter crescendo to pause for before moving on to the next line, no still and deadly silence in the dramatic moments that lets you know they're just as shocked by the dramatic turn in the scene as you are. It's just you and that guy across from you, trying to connect.

In its purest form of course, stage acting has that at its core as well, and some would say it's more challenging since you don't get to keep doing it and doing it until you get it right. You don't edit the stage picture in a dark room for weeks before revealing the finished product. You just get up there and do it, offering warts and all what you've rehearsed for weeks and months. If you trip on your entrance, you're stuck with it so it better damn well be a comedy.

That's all true. In that sense, you could say stage acting is "better" than film acting. It all depends on what yardstick you're using to measure it.

Imagine this: two painters. One locks himself in a studio for months before revealing his latest masterpiece, fully completed. The other practices his brushstrokes for the same amount of time, then creates his masterpiece in one session as you watch. Which painter worked harder? Which painting is more true to the form.

So I lied. I have no answer to which is the truer or better expression of the art and craft of acting.

Batman is still better than Superman. 

This was the closing weekend of Taming of the Shrew for me.  And with that came a whole hell of a lot of other stuff.  I'll get to that in a second.  First: the show.

(This is me mooching for food and wine before the show actually starts)

Firstly, we set a record for audience attendance with this show, so congrats to us.  It's outdoors on a lawn in a park in a small town, so the most the theater had seen before was something like 250 people.  On saturday night we had around 340.  They were scrunched in like sardines.  The gave us a  standing ovation.  It was awesome.

(This is me and co-star Ben Stowe placing the flag and singing a pirate song.  Usually it would be Jay Rogers and myself, but he had a personal emergency and had to miss Opening weekend.  The producing director of the theater, Scott Phillips learned the part in 4 hours and held Jay's place until Jay could return.)

Children, particularly loved this show, mostly because it had pirates in.  They didn't care that it was Shakespeare and couldn't understand anything we were saying.  They were rapt.  In fact, there was this one little boy named Oliver that was about 5 and made his parents bring him to almost every single show.  I think he missed two.  And he always came dressed in his own pirate garb.  It was awesome.  He would usually leave at intermission because it was his bed time, but before he left he would always come back stage (our backstage was some picnic tables and some of those stand-alone barbeque pits which nobody ever cleans out) and he would yell "Yarr!" at us.  We would yell "Yarr!" back. this would go on for several minutes until his mother or his father dragged him off in a cart that for some innocent, child reason had a huge town train in it. 

Anyway...We had to get dressed at the theater, which was about 2 blocks from the park.  Once we were dressed we would walk up the main street on our way to the theater.  Imagine about 20 people walking down the street in some podunk little town dressed as pirates and offering to buy any woman we came across, or yelling at every car that drove by as if we might run out and steal their hubcaps if they weren't carefull.  Then there was the final approach to the stage: we had to walk through a play ground and then through the crowd just to get where we were going.  I decided early on that it should be more than a walk through.  So we got a drum and marched along in cadence, yelling "RUM!" in rhythm with the drum.  It was awesome.  On closing night, just when we were gathering to start drumming and yelling, Oliver comes running up in his pirate gear, with his little pirate sword and his little pirate flag, with a little pirate mustache painted on his little pirate face.

It was the cutest thing I have ever seen.

And as a group, and completely unspoken, we decided that Oliver should lead us in.

So imagine sitting on a lawn in a park, and suddenly you start hearing drums, and people yelling...

Tum, ta-ta-tum, Ta-ta-tum, Ta-ta-tum, Ta-ta-tum 'RUM!" I threw in some penny whistle just to add to the ambience.  And here comes this group of pirates, sneering, dirty, smelly, dangerous, without moral terpitude...and a cute little blonde kid leading them all.

And when we were halfway through the crowd...Oliver sees his mom and bolts.

It was awesome.

So good closing.

Couple that with working 9-5 M-F and doing shows Thurs-Sun, while trying to find a roommate because one is moving out and having to deal with the fact that i just got a notice that my registration is expired effective 1 month ago even though I just got the notice last week, my credit card is expiring and all my online bill payments aren't going through, and I got a speeding ticket which will cost me about $1000 unless I am able to jump through more hoops than the Cirque Du Soleil...AND...I'm no good when it comes to women....AND...AND...they edited RIGHT THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF THE COMBAT ROLL....it's been a busy week.  But I did just get the last piece for my Epic PVP gear set, so that's ok.

Happy Jenday!

See Jimmy's kid's army! See Amber's pretty face! See Jennifer do a combat roll! All this and more in Episode 15 of Break a Leg!

Just two more episodes after this one left in the season! Make sure to watch!

Here's the summary:

Jimmy Scotch takes David to his camp where an army of children await battle, in the meantime, Chase finds Amber, Sebastian and Jennifer -- all four have received a message and all four know that their pasts are about to catch up with them.

Don't forget to comment, rate, favorite and subscribe on YouTube! It really helps! Feel free to also leave a comment right here on the website and tell us what you think as well as debate where it's all going (at least help out poor St. Kevin with theories! He's at his wit's end!)

Thanks, guys!

-Yuri

Completely Unrelated Editor's Note: Thanks to everyone who went to the TV Week site and wrote Break a Leg as their  favorite show! You're our favorite FANS, so THERE! If you haven't posted a comment, keep sending them in (the link is in the blog below)!

Thanks guys! Words can't describe how much we love you -- but actions can. Which is why we built a whole, super cool ramp -- just for your entertainment.

Thanks!

Now back to your regularly scheduled Jennifer...

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I don't have a lot to say today.  I'm pretty tired.  Shrew is going very well.  I urge any with the ability to come see it to do so.  I have a lot of older women coming up to me after the show and telling me how sexy I am.  And when I say older women, I don't mean the hot older kind.  I mean 60-70 range.  It's a little disturbing.  There's only one weekend left...for which I am sorta glad because once next week is over it'll mean I'll get a day off for the first time on weeks. 
This is going to be another one of those blogs where I just kind of let me mind wander around the general area of my topic while the idea germinates in my mind even as I write it.  And I guess the topic is loosely related to the Liar Blog, so there may be parallels: perhaps not actually stated, but ones that form themselves in your mind through the genius of creation.  And now you're thinking "Why the curse word are you giving us a disclaimer?  Just get on with the bull."  So anyway...

The way I see it, stories are made up basically of 2 things: things we want to happen, and things we don't.  There are the things that are wonderful and good, like love and food and fun, and there are the things that are not so wonderful and good, like plagues and cheaters and stab wounds  A lot of the things in the stories, both good and bad, are completely unlikely to happen or come into being: like dragons or magic or Keanu Reeves' acting ability.  And there are things that, while possible, happen so rarely and so far away that they might as well not happen at all.  The stories don't need these things  to be true for the stories to live on. 

But there is some part of us that wants the impossible to be true, so we tell ourselves stories about killer cricket-playing robots or a guy and his demi-brother and their god for a father.  We want to believe that there are special things that go on without us knowing about it.  And why?  Because, sometimes, life sucks.  Stories tell us that if anything can be true somewhere, then something might be able to be true anywhere.  And that any where just might be where you are.  And that something might make the world just a little bit more tolerable.

But in a story, it's not your life that sucks, it's somebody else's.  You get to ride along with them and watch them suffer, struggle, endure, and usually emerge victorious at the end.  We may empathize with them, but when the shit hits the fan, you can close the book, hit pause, turn the stereo off and go take a dump.   Actually, I like to take the book with my into the loo.  I like something to focus on other than one of the more disgusting realities of being an earthling.

Stories are to inspire, educate, entertain - they make a shape of the world for us to fit our minds into.  It's through the understanding of stories: things which are not true, that we can see what is true about the real world.  It's that whole "mirror up to life thing".  It's like the mice.  It's like...well, it's like a story.

And plus...we would be bored as hell without them.

Happy Jenday!