Break a Leg

If you have never had the opportunity to do stage combat, you are missing out.  In fact, there are fencing classes out there open to everyone.  Finish reading this and then go sign up for the next available class.  You'll thank me.  I promise.

First, it's a pretty good workout without any heavy lifting.  Second, you get to play with swords!

Right now I'm in training for my next show: The Three Musketeers.  Now, if you haven't read the book, that's fine, but you should put it on your list.  I mean, it's a classic, people - get with the times...as it were.  Anyway, the script is an adaptation that has some slight plot differences from the book, like the fact that D'Artagnan's manservant is actually his sister in disguise.  This is an interesting twist on things because D'Artagnan HAS no sister in the original.  So some obviously license was taken with the adaptation.  It's also extremely cheesy.  You think my acting as Jennifer is cheesy?  It is but a mere squirt of E-Z Cheese to the Mountains of Gorgonzola, covered in drifts of parmesan, and surrounded by the Great Jarlsburg Plains that is this script. 

But really, that's not the important thing.  Or rather, it's apparent that since the writing is, as I believe I have said before: fluffier than teddy bear shit, that it is the action in this production that will be the main source of entertainment, as opposed to an actual plot or anything.

Now, our fight choreographer is this really cool guy Rick who knows lots and lots about stage combat and acting and theater and stuff.  And a lot of the stuff he's teaching is not new to me, but it's always good to go over the basics every once in a while.  Plus, there are a lot of people that have never held a sword before, so we all have to get on the same page.  One of the things  about this process that I think was actually pretty brilliant is that he gave us a sheet of paper with two identical stick figures, each surrounded by the numbers 1 through 9, and said "This is you fight choreography for the entire show."  At first this was confusing.  Usually, I am used to each fight being staged individually.   But eventually the sheer, simple brilliance of it became apparent.  Each number had a plus or a minus in front of it.  Each number had a twin on the opposite side of the page, only inverse.  So if +1 was on the right side, then -1 would be on the left side at the smae level.  The + sign means attack, the - sign means defend.  So, we paired off, holding this sheet of paper in our hand folded in half so we could only see one diagram, while our partner would be looking at the other, and went through the process of learning these nine basic steps. 

And then we got to the part where we were thinking "Ok, but won't the audience get bored with seeing the same fight over and over?"  That's when Rick started throwing in different things: Retreat when attacking and Advance when defending, travel from one side of the room to the other, switch hands, use an off-hand weapon, two vs one...and on and on.  And suddenly,  people who had only a few days before picked up a sword for the first time were now coming up with completely new and inventive ways to do basically the same moves over and over.  It wasn't the What, it was the How.  As in: What are we doing? We're doing the same 9 mores over and over again.  How are we doing it?  You have your choice of weapons, a grab-bag full of new moves and only the laws of physics to stop you - wing it.

We do this for 3 or 4 or even 5 hours about 3 times a week at this point...and it's never long enough.  Just when we're really starting to come up with some interesting stuff, they send us home to, sensibly, get some rest.  But I was never good at resting anyway. 

Added bonus: really cute girls turn just damned hot when they're trying to kill you with a sword, even if it's just for pretend.

Happy Jenday and Happy Fighting!

Lately I've been slowly coming to a realization: "work" sucks. I know it's a revolutionary position, but I don't care who I offend here. I can't afford to, my happiness is at stake here.

A co-worker of mine often tells me the story of a person he worked with at another job. This person was a bartender, who one day had the brilliant idea to put pancake batter in a spray can. Fast-forward years later and we can only assume this ex-bartender is either very rich or living off of pancake batter and spray can propellant. I like to think it's the former, although the latter is funnier.

That got us talking, and we decided that we need to do something immediately to get off this treadmill and start making decisions today to ensure a better future tomorrow. Sure he's a musician and I'm an actor, but we're talking about real solutions here, not pie-in-the-sky idealism and artsy nonsense.

Our first idea was (in my humble opinion) fucking brilliant. Building off of the pancake-in-a-can, what about sausage? Most sausage is ground meat (usually scraps, though there are exceptions) stuffed into a tube made of... skin, something?

What if we just toss out the skin altogether? There are skinless sausages out there, but they are expensive, top-of-the-line meat products.

I'm thinking more along the lines of a meat by-product. You know, the way sausage was intended?

Listen up, here it comes: toothpaste tubes.

That's right, sausage meat in a toothpaste tube. You just squeeze it into the pan, sizzles right up. Delicious!

Then I realized that brick-and-mortar products, real physical inventions, are not going to get us to the promised land. Start-up costs are high, and the price of failure is bankruptcy. No, a real game-changer of an idea has to be something involving the internet. In other words, something that doesn't actually exist.

While joking that I do not, in fact, like his wife (he thought I was joking, I actually do not, in fact, like her), I realized: Facebook. I know, there's already a Facebook. But hear me out.

Social networks these days are all about who-knows-who and favoritism. It's just "I like you" and "you're my friend". Being this way, there is no possibility for any true innovation in the field. Every social network will necessarily be identical to every other, except perhaps in some trivial way (a Facebook with only status updates? Try Twitter. Facebook skewed stupid? Myspace. Facebook for pedophiles? Orkut.)

Here is my modest proposal: Hatebook.

This is the place you go in order to tell the world who you can't stand, and you do it right to their face.

"Drew doesn't like Bob, and thinks that you might not like Bob either. Click here to Hate Bob."

"Trudy has left a comment on your picture.

'What a terrible picture. Your child is ugly and seems a little retard. I hate you.'

Click here to read the comment online!"

"Sina would like to join the group 'Drivers against Shakespeare", but doesn't like anybody in the group, so she won't."

If you ever start liking someone, you just remove them from your Anti-Friends list! There are no groups or fan clubs, just lists of "Clubs I would join if I didn't hate everybody here." Apps on the site would center around relative levels of dislike for various people, comparing and contrasting.

I think this idea stands a chance to really take off soon, I just need to get a team together to implement it. I'll start working on a Gantt chart now. Anyone interested in helping out? I'm pitching to VC funds tomorrow, my downstairs neighbor actually operates a VC fund out of his living-room so, you know, there's some capital right there.

 Did you also notice... I was going for a world-record in hyphenated phrases.

Hey, all!

First of all, hi to all the people visiting from AskMen.com -- the people over there were nice enough to mention Break a Leg again and it's given us an influx of new viewers. Hi!

Secondly, to new viewers and old -- Season 1 of Break a Leg is finished, of course. We're still trying to create more shows, however. We've been pitching, making, writing and talking to many people and we hope you still visit the site periodically because I guarantee we'll have some news in the next couple of months.

Thirdly, feel free to rewatch and comment some more on the videos! We always love hearing from you and all the actors/writers/creators still come around here to reply to your messages. If you have any film questions, need advice, etc. -- just ask away.

Thanks, all!

-Yuri

This last weekend was our last weekend performing "All The Great Books (Abridged)" at Sonoma County Repertory Theater.  Closing a show is always sad...well, not always.  There are some shows you can't wait to be done with by the time you hit opening night.  But this was one of the shows that, despite how physically demanding it is, I could keep on doing indefinitely.

For starters, the show is just friggin' hilarious.  It's very smart, very well written, and very fun to do.  Secondly, my cast mates are a couple of awesome guys, and we all clicked pretty much the moment we met.  Doing a show with people you don't like can be a really horrible experience - like a rash in a uncomfortable place that you can't get rid of and which keeps getting worse because the only thing you CAN do is the one thing that makes it worse.  But doing a show with people you like and trust - that just makes things FUN.  And when we're having fun, the audience has more fun, and that's when things get really fun.  So, having that kind of positive experience come to an end is kind of a bummer.

But, as it turns out, it's not quiteover.  We have one special performance that we're doing at a winery owned by one of the board members of the theater at the beginning of August, and then 2 more whole weekends in Napa in the brand new theater they are building at the college there.  On top of that, all three of us got cast in The 3 Musketeers, along with a bunch of our other friends who are also a bunch of fun-loving jackasses, so THAT will be fun.  We had our first read-through of the script last night, and while the writing is super cheesy and fluffier than teddy bear crap, we all had a pretty good time, which can only be indicative of things to come.

Yes, this is why I love being an actor: it's pretty much like being back in junior high, except now we can drink.

Oh hey, speaking of fun stuff: anybody out there heard of mybrute.com?  It's a pretty simple thing: you create a character, you make it fight other characters, it levels up.  That's it.  Become my pupil!  go to chadomancer.mybrute.com.  Go on, you know you want to fight me.

Happy Jenday!

I have mentioned the show I am currently in: "All The Great Books (Abridged)".  Let me give you a slighly more behind-the-scenes account of things...

The show is hard work.  It's literally a 1 hour 45 minute aerobic workout.  In fact, the other actors and I generally start sweating about 5 minutes in, and just get soggier from there.  The show moves.  And we are selling out pretty regularly, which is awesome.  The theater is talking about extending the show, due to its popularity.  We already have several special performances set up in other venues.  If you are in the Bay Area in the next couple weeks, I strenuously invite you to come and see it.  I promise you will laugh for the better part of two hours.  And if you do plan on coming, get your tickets in advance, because, as I said, our shows are selling out. Details at www.the-rep.com.

Many people who have seen the show ask us (the three actors) how we prepare for such a physically demanding show.  And the honest truth is that we arrive about an hour and a half before the show starts.  We get some frozen yoghurt - vanilla with fruity pebbles for preference.  We do a light, unstructured warm up for about 2 minutes.  We run through the fights, the dance, and the finale.  It's about 1 hour to show time at this point, so we sneak out the back door.  We go up to the dressing room.

Now, I feel it's important to point out that the theater used to be a corner drug store back in the late 1800's.  So the building isn't what you'd call "modern".  Above the theater are a series of offices, shared by the theater company and a local holistic massage academy. 

I assure you: there are no happy endings.

In fact, one afternoon, we arrived at the theater and were running lines to get our heads back into the show.  We were doing this at speed and volume, and guffawing along the way.  Suddenly this woman bursts into our tiny, antiquated dressing room and demands "Don't you know you aren't the only business here???"  We apologized profusely, but this didn't seem to sway the woman.  "I am in the middle of giving a massage RIGHT NOW!!!"  Now personally, I find the use of extra exclamation marks appalling, but they really applied to this woman.  Again, we decided on using tact, and apologized and promised to keep the noise down.  What we COLD have done was said "Actually no, we had no idea anybody else was here because there are no signs, only closed doors.  And since those doors are always closed, and we have no way of knowing who else is in the building, why don't you go take a long walk off a short peer?"  Again, this is being tactful.  We had some more explicit words chosen, but for the sake of decency, I leave you to come up with them on your own.

Anyway, the theater is a rather...intimate space.  Patrons have to actually walk backstage to get to the restrooms...which can be awkward when we're getting ready to go on stage.  "Oh, hello...number one or number two?  Won't be long, will you?  Only, we have this show we'd like to do." But it all works out.

So, back to the point: the ritual.  Our ritual, once we have done the warm up and the fight call and have ascended the stairs, is to result to complete ass-hattery.  Three guys, one dressing room, and all the machismo you can muster.  There are also Gatorade and peanuts.  Over in the corner sits a small mini-fridge, which is our goal for the end of the night.  For, within the mini-fridge lies a plentiful stock of what some might call ambrosia, and what some might call hillbilly juice. That's right, folks: Pabst Blue Ribbon.

You see, after an extended mental and physical workout, you need something to take the edge off.  And you definitely don't want something heavy.  But water just won't do, nor will Gatorade.  Pabst Blue Ribbon has become our magical elixir.  It's light, it's cheap, and it really doesn't taste bad at all when it's ice cold and you're thirsty as hell.  So after each show, we race up to the dressing room, stripping off our costume along the way, open the door, break open the fridge, crack open a cold one, down it to the dregs, finish derobing and get dressed in our normal clothes, then go downstairs to see if any of our friends have hung around afterwards so that we can give them sweaty hugs.

One one such post-show occasion, some of one of my fellow actor's friends had stuck around.  They were sitting there jawing about the show, when one of them turned to me and said "Aren't you in that internet show?  Break A Leg, or something."  I thought that was pretty awesome.  We conversed about it briefly, the conversation quickly got swept away into other matters of unimportance.  Still, it was a brief glimpse at fame, and a tip that people ARE still watching us.  And they are waiting for more *hint hint*.

Anyway, after our nightly schmooze session, we (the actors and the stage crew) head back upstairs for yet another cold, frosty, and delicious Pabst Blue Ribbon, and then we head whichever way the wind blows.

All in all, it's a good time.

Happy Jenday!