Stand-In 101

Stand-in.  We’ve all heard the term.  They stand-in for the actors, right. It’s right there in the name.  How hard can that be?  You just stand there, right?

Sort of.

I always thought stand-ins stood in place, so that the light and camera guys could focus the lights and the cameras.  And that is true, but there is more to it than that.

I arrived on set about a forty minutes early.  It would have been an hour early, but I waited in the car for a while until I couldn’t take it any more.  I had planned on extra time to get there in case I got lost, since I don’t know Portland at all, and also in case I ran into traffic.  Turns out neither happened. I took this opportunity to find the honeywagon among the rows of trailers, and pop in my contacts and relieve my nervous bladder.

When you get on a set the first thing you notice is that there are people, generally a lot of them, mostly dressed in black,  going this way and that. My rule of thumb is to find someone with a radio attached to them.  The people with radios know things, and if they don’t know what you need to know, they can ask over the radio and find out who does.  I didn’t see a radio person at first, so I asked a few random people, until I was pointed toward a guy with a radio. They were rolling at the moment, so everyone was standing quietly, and I patiently waited until “cut” was called so I could slide on up to him.  I said, I’m supposed to be a stand-in today, where do I go?

He got me over to the wardrobe truck to get my “color cover”, and radioed to find Matt the Background Coordinator to come and get me. Color cover is items of clothing that are the color of the clothing that the real actor is going to be wearing.  I had thought I would get a costume that more or less was what the person was really wearing, but as it turns out the color of the item is the important thing, rather than it match exactly in form.  So for instance, my character was wearing a hospital gown.  Did I wear a hospital gown?  Seems like an easy enough thing to procure, but no, I wore a button up dress shirt (three sizes to large) that was the color of the hospital gown.

After I changed into that, I met up with Matt who took me over to the soundstage, which was located in a big warehouse.  He kindly took a moment to give me a tour of the set when they were in between shooting set-ups. They section off different areas of the warehouse with the different sets they build. Some are just for one episode, and some will be used repeatedly.  Matt took me around the different areas.  It was the first day of shooting for this new series, so it was nice to get this orientation. I’d been an extra on Leverage and they have a similar warehouse set up, but no one took us lowly extras around.  I had settle for stealing quick glimpses as we walked through.

After the tour he took me to the background holding area, basically an office space attached to the warehouse that had a few well-worn couches to match the even more well-worn carpet.  I was to hang out until they needed me, which as it turns out wasn’t going to be for a few hours.  Hurry up and wait.

Which brings me to a special note.  Not that I’ve been doing this sort of work for a long time, so I wouldn’t consider myself an expert in any way, but I have learned that two things that will get you through the day are flexibility and patience.  If you don’t have these attributes, you will have a much harder time of it.   You will be called over in a rush, and then stand there for a half hour.  You won’t get your call-times for the next day until late the evening before.  They will tell you something and then it will change. If you are a person who needs to know how everything is going to be beforehand, well, you are going to be very disappointed.

So I chill in the holding area, until suddenly someone comes to get me. I’m on.  They take me over to the part of the warehouse where we will be shooting.  It’s a mockup of the inside of a camping trailer, the kind you would pull behind your car in the 1960’s.  I’m not going to go into a ton of detail because you aren’t supposed to talk about this kind of thing.  Don’t want to have spoilers and all.

Luckily the person asks me if I’d been a stand-in before.  I say no. So he explains it to me. He says, what you have to do is watch the actor you are standing in for, and then do what they do.

That’s it, in a nutshell.  A simple one-sentence description of what a stand-in does.

The actors and the director work out the blocking of the scene.  My job is to watch this.  This is hard because there are lighting, camera, sound, costume and makeup people standing around in front of you trying to do the same thing.  There are set people trying to get the last-minute things they need to do done.  There are PA’s running around doing what they are doing.  So basically there are 15 people standing in front of you, and you are trying to see around them and through them to see what the actors are doing.

My character enters the trailer.  Pauses at point A.  I count.  Seems like about three seconds, and then she moves to point B.  She looks at something, says something to the other character, then moves to point C.  She opens a cupboard and removes something.  She returns to point B. Then she does a specific movement.  This changes a few times, but basically by a few run-throughs this seems to be the settled on progression. Then she leaves.  Now it’s my turn.

I enter the trailer.  Stop.  Now I wait while the lighting and camera guys come over and look at me.  Really I’m pretty much the equivalent of furniture at this point.  How is the light hitting the sofa, I mean, um, person standing here?  We need more light here?  A little discussion, somebody radios for some kind of light to be hung. The Director of Photography tells the set dresser what he’d like to see in the background in the way of props.  Then, get someone to paint this door edge a little darker, it’s too bright.  OK, now back to me.  Go outside and enter again. Stop.  OK, now move to point B.  OK. Repeat process. Lights, set fiddling, props moved, cameras focused. OK. Go back to point A, then go to Point B.

Now I put in the pause.  The stop at Point B.  OK.  Go outside, then Point A, then Point B.  Put in my pause. Three beats.  Then move on.  I’m serious because this is a serious scene.  Something bad happens at the end.  I’m trying to recreate the mood.  This time I make it over to Point C.  I open the cabinet.  OK. Pause.  Fiddle with the lights again. Someone’s on the radio to get some blackwrap to block out a light.  Someone’s moving some props around to get a better foreground shot.  OK.  Back outside to move through the points.  A, pause, B,C, Open, return to C. Action.

You get the idea. Then when the camera, lighting, and props guys have everything worked out, and have rehearsed the camera moves with me a few times, the real actors come in and do the actual acting.  Then, when their takes are good, they leave.  We did the shot sequence Wide, Medium, Close Ups, from the one side, but now we have to get the other side. I go through my moves again, but this time the lights and camera have to be in a different place.  Props have to be moved. More fiddling.  Then the real actors come in and do their bit. Repeat.

You stand around, get stared at, and a bunch of people are moving around you constantly. You have to listen to the conversations around you because mixed in all that is a someone telling you to do something.  Move over here.  Back to one. You have to hit the same marks the actors do when they are doing their scene. I can’t imagine how the actors manage to do the movements and say their lines with any sort of emotion.  But then again, when they come on to do their stuff there isn’t this chaos, and everyone is quiet. All this is done with me instead, to make the actor’s life easier. And no doubt the crews life easier too.

I try to pay attention, and I also try to soak up as much information as I can.  I’m watching everyone as much as they are watching me.  I’m curious, and I also don’t want to get yelled at.  I try to joke with the crew as much as I can while I’m standing in one spot.  I joke with the other stand-in since I’m mimicking doing something painful to him repeatedly. I’m going to be here for three days so time to start learning names.  It’s hard to pick them out of the conversations, but eventually I get most of the people I’m interacting with names down, either by hearing them or seeing them written in sharpie on their radios.

During one of the changes in set-up I am standing off to the side waiting and I hear my name mentioned a few times.  Then a guy comes over to me and asks me if I have a place to stay in town.  I’m like yeah, thinking how late is this going anyway, I’m supposed to go back to Seattle and work the next day.  Then he asks me if blocks are OK?

Blocks?

You’re from Seattle right?

Yes.

So blocks would be better?

Um…blocks?

I finally figured out that he meant blocks of time.  As in multiple days in a row.

Yes, blocks would be better.

They asked if you were local, but I told them you are from Seattle.  They really like what you are doing, so they wanted to work you as much as possible.

Wow, That’s great. Thanks

I realized that I have had a lot of experience watching someone and then trying to recreate movement.  I do Aikido, and the teaching methodology is that the sensei demonstrates the technique in front of the class.  We all watch, and then we try to do it the same way.  I’ve been doing that in Aikido for years, and now I can transfer that to something else.  Very cool.  I felt pretty flattered by the compliment.  Really what I was trying to do was pay attention and not get yelled at.  And do what I was told to do as best as I could manage.

Watch what the actor is doing, and then do what they do.

That’s all there is to it.

Stand-In the Place Where You Aren’t.

Sometimes things come out of the blue.  Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes not.  Luckily the call I got last week was of the good variety. The phone rang at 5:30 on a Friday evening.  I had a voicemail from background casting for the new NBC series Grimm.  They were looking for a stand-in for three days.  I freaked out, called back and said yes, even though I hadn’t gotten permission from work for the time off.  I figured I’d work it out somehow, and my job has always been very accommodating.  However, this time period fell right in the middle of one of the two deadlines that I have all month.

The days I would be working would be Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, so I would go to my day job on Monday and Wednesday.  Seems pretty simple except that this show is shooting in Portland, Oregon.  I live in Seattle.  It’s a three hour and smidge drive when there isn’t traffic, and when there is, well, let’s just say it isn’t pretty.  I also have to have a place to spend the night.

Luckily for me, my girlfriend has family down in Vancouver, WA area, just across the border from Portland.  And luckily for me her cousin happened to be up visiting us, so I could ask her if I could stay at her place.  She gracefully said yes, so there was one hurdle down.  Next, getting approval for time off.

Of course I found this out on Friday at 5:30 after everyone (including me) had gone home.  My boss(es) weren’t there, although I did try calling in hopes of catching someone.  Then I thought, hey, they are workaholic types and will probably be coming in on the weekend, so I sent an email and begged for the time off.  Just as I hoped I got a reply, at 9:30 Friday night.  People, you work too much, but I appreciate it!

Unfortunately, the email said, this probably won’t be a problem, but there is this meeting on Tuesday (that no one told me about) so you have to check with the big boss to see if it’s OK.  So at this point, I’m a nervous wreck because I told the Grimm guy that I’d do it, yet what if my boss said no, which I intellectually couldn’t imagine, and yet who knows.  She is a new boss to us, only been here a little over a month.  Who knows what she is capable of.  She seems nice, but…

I’m a worrier by nature.  I try and override it, or more accurately supress it, but I spent most of the weekend freaking out, until I got an email from the big boss saying sure I can go.  Yeah!

Monday I went to work trying to get my stuff done as much as I could. The Grimm guy, whose name is Matt, called to confirm.  He’d send me the call time for the next day later.  When he said later, I thought he meant around the afternoon or so.  So when around 6:30pm I hadn’t heard anything I called to see what was up.  Matt patiently told me he’d get the schedule to me when he got it, but he was still waiting for it.

Now if the call time is 6am, and I have a three hour drive, it means I would have to leave at 3:00 in the morning to get there.  If the call is at noon, then I could leave in the morning.  So when I was supposed to be there would be helpful in my planning.  By 7:30 I still hadn’t heard anything, so I decided to drive down to Portland and spend the night at my girfriend’s cousin’s house.  That way if the call was early morning, I could just get up and go and have a much shorter drive.

When I had talked to Matt earlier, I had also tried to get wardrobe requirements out of him.  As an extra, which I have been before, you are required to bring clothes with you.  What the scene is will determine the types of clothes you bring.  If it’s in an office, you would bring work clothes, or if it is in the forest you might bring things you would wear camping.  Often there are requirements to wear certain colors, or not others. So I wanted to know what to bring, and asked him, but he said they would give me some “color cover” which, I didn’t know what that mean, but took to mean wearing my regular clothes would be fine.

So off to Portland I go.  Luckily most of rush hour traffic is done, and I only have a slight slowdown near Tacoma.  I’m cruising along, about an hour from my sleeping destination, when the phone goes off.  I have a text.  Call times are in check your email.  So I get to a rest stop, pull over and check my email.  Call time is 12:45 pm.  I could have stayed at home and slept in my own bed.  Oh well.

So in all this you might wonder about the cost-benefit analysis.  I’m going to drive three hours each way, spend a significant amount of money on gas, impose upon relatives, make some people at work follow-up on things that didn’t quite get done (through no fault of my own), and use up three days of my vacation time, which I’m pathetically low on, and this will just about clean me out.  All for $9.50 an hour.  Yep $9.50 an hour.  Welcome to the world of the non-union stand-in and extras work.  Actually this is pretty good money since the extras only make $8.50 an hour. And I’m guaranteed 8 hours whether I work it or not.

Of course I’ll be learning lots and lots of stuff.  This is a real set,  network TV.  The major leagues as it were, so for that alone it’s worth the time and effort I think.  Probably by the time I factor in my travel expenses, and subtract my wages, I’ll break about even.   But as those Mastercard commercials point out, some experiences are priceless.

Apr 13 – Acting for the Camera

So I’ve been a little remiss in my blog updating, mostly because not much has been happening on the acting front these days, that is until recently.  Nothing super exciting, I haven’t gotten any great acting gigs, but at least these things are acting related and will hopefully further my career.

First of all I got new headshots.  I chopped my hair off a few weeks ago, and adding to that the fact I’ve lost some weight, I don’t really look much like my old headshots.  And since you are supposed to look like your headshot (or your headshot is supposed to look like you) to avoid pissing of the casting directors when you walk in the door, I had to get new ones taken.

I went back to Mark Brennan.  I think he does good work.  My only complaint is that my headshots look like me.  I know there supposed to, but somehow I keep hoping that I will suddenly get 25% more attractive, and my hair will get thicker, and my nose will get, well I don’t know, less like my nose I guess.  But those are my hang-ups and Mark does make me look pretty good.

The second thing I have done is to take a more  in-depth Acting for the Camera class.  This time from Tony Doupe, who was recommended by Jodi Rothfield, whose one day class Auditioning for the Camera I had taken and wrote about in a previous post.

I’m really liking it so for.  It is sort of an extension of Jodi’s class in that it covers some of the same material, and even more.  Tony talks about auditioning and the things you need to do for that, but the class goes further in terms of types of work you would be doing.  Industrial videos, commercials, film and television.  It’s sort of a sampler class, a little bit of this a little bit of that.

The first class we did an industrial training video.  The sort of things company’s show their employees.  Our subject happened to be sexual harassment.  We broke into pairs and were given short scenes to perform.  We were given about 20 minutes to work with our partner and to run lines.

Then Tony set up the camera and we shot the scenes.  We did multiple takes with one person in the camera view and then reset the camera so the other person was in camera.   We also brought video tapes on which our performances were recorded and we could take them home and watch them.  I don’t have a VCR at the moment so I haven’t watched it (and I’m not sure I could bring myself to do it anyway if I did).

We were also given commercials to memorize for the next class, where we had to do a walk and talk.  You see it all the time on commercials and news type segments where the host or actor is walking and telling you whatever it is they have to tell you.  I would just like to say that this is a lot harder than it looks.  A lot.

The set up was to pretend to be leaving our apartment, then “naturally” start talking to the camera, saying our commercial spiel,  as we started to walk down the hallway.  There were three points we had to hit marked out with yellow sticky notes on the floor.  At each of these points we had to pause, say some of our text, and then natural move onto the next point.

When I see these people on TV doing this now I have a lot more respect.

We practiced a cold reading like it would be in an audition circumstance.  We got a partner and a scene, had about 10 minutes to run through it and then we were up in front of the camera.  Tony directed us a bit, critiqued us a bit.  Then for the next week we were to memorize those scenes and do them as if we were doing a film or television episode. More on that later.

Overall I really like the class.  It is an interesting mix of people.  We have teenagers to people in their 50’s.  More women than men, which seems to be typical of acting classes.  Some people hadn’t done any acting before, some had done it in high school and college many years before.  In fact I am probably, with one possible exception, the most trained person there, which is an oddly incongruous feeling,  since I feel like a newbie to acting.

I like learning about camera acting, which is different from theater acting.  Not that the actual acting is so different, it’s  that you have more constraints on you when the camera is on you.  You can only move so much or you’ll be out of frame. You have to take into account how your physical actions have to be repeated the same each take to facilitate editing.  You have to know how to hit your marks and stay in your light.  You sometimes have to pretend the camera, an inanimate object made of plastic and metal, is a person you have to connect with.  It’s challenging, and fun, and challenging.  And fun.

Feb 21 – Extra. Extra. Read all about it.

So you wanna be in pictures?  Well, I finally got my chance yesterday as I started out on the bottom rung of the acting ladder.  Yes, I had my first paying gig as an Extra.

I answered a posting from Foreground Background looking for extras for a film to be shot in Washington state under the working title of  “Late Autumn“. I submitted my headshot and resume, and was surprised when I got a call back a few weeks later saying they’d like to book me to be a prisoner for a prison scene.  I said yes.

Not only would I get to be a prisoner, but I would actually get to go to Twin Rivers Correctional Complex  in Monroe.  I’d be on the Inside in the Big House.  I had to give information, so they could do a background check on me and everything.

The day for my shoot finally came after some delays due to productions issues of some sort.  The production was kindly offering a shuttle up to the prison which is about 30 miles outside of Seattle, or you could drive yourself. I opted for the bus ride.  I figured then I wouldn’t have to worry about getting lost, which I normally do.

Call time to catch the bus was 6:00am.  I’d been up a little to late the night before at a dinner party, and was working on only 4.5 hours of sleep when the alarm went off at 5am.

I crawled out of bed and into the shower, but didn’t wash my hair, because it was specifically requested by the hair and makeup people.  Apparently slightly dirty hair is easier to style.  Who knew?

I also had to apply my own makeup.  Just foundation and mascara, but those who know me, know that is stretching my abilities to the breaking point, but I managed.  They said the makeup people would add whatever else they needed on set.

You know how you get up extra early, to make sure you get somewhere on time, and then somehow time drifts away, and you end up leaving the house 5 minutes late?  Well, that happened to me.  I ended up rushing to the location trying to read the map I was provided while driving.  The bus was to leave Magnuson Park at 6:00.  I got to the park, which is an old retired naval base and quite large.  I made one wrong turn, but realized it quickly when the road dead-ended.  I flipped around found the right road, and zoomed down to the rendezvous point by one of the old hangers.

The were a number of cars parked there, along with two tour buses.  There was one car parked with headlights on, and I could make out a woman talking on her cell phone.  I thought, OK I made it.  I looked at my cell phone.  It was 6:00am exactly.  I always aim to get somewhere 10 minutes early.  Not this time, but at least I wasn’t technically late.

I looked around and realized I didn’t see anyone else.  I figured maybe they are in the building, so I got out of the car to see if there was a door to go in.  As I walked past the car with the headlights on, it shot off across the parking lot and away down the road.  I was alone next to the massive airplane hangar.  I didn’t see a door, or anyone. It  was dark and quiet. Then I looked over at the tour buses.  I saw heads in the windows.  Oh, they are just sitting on the bus waiting with the lights off.  I headed over.  As I got closer I realized the people were mannequins.   I was alone.  There was no one else there.

Luckily, Denise Gibbs from Foreground Background had called me the day before, so her number was in my phone.  I called her.  Um, yeah, I think I’m in the right place, but no one is here.

Let me call someone one I’ll call you back.

OK.

I wait in the dark.  The phone rings.

The bus, which was actually a van, left without you.

Oh.

Let me call someone and I’ll call you back.

OK.  I sat in the dark.  The phone rings again.

So can you drive yourself up there to Monroe?

Yes, but I didn’t bring the directions, since I was taking the bus.

Denise kindly gave me the directions, and said if I got lost to call her, she help me out.  I drove off frantically, feeling bad about missing the bus and not being professional, but then again, I was technically on time.  I went back and forth as I tried to drive fast, but not too fast for fear of getting pulled over and delayed even more.

I made it up to Monroe, found the prison after my obligatory wrong turn.  I pulled into the parking lot after checking in at the metal squawk box.  There were several people who were dressed like film crew (black jeans and shirts, and a little bit scruffy) heading in one direction.  I followed them figuring they were going where I need to go.

I tried to find someone who looked like the person I should report to.  There were people unloading trucks and carrying things.  Then I saw her, someone with a headset on.  People with radios sticking out of their ears tend to know things, or know who knows things.  I walked up to her.  She asked if I was Courtney.  I said, no and gave her my name.  She said, oh good.  She was the Extra Wrangler for the day.  I’m bad with names, but I think her name was Darcy.  I had found the right person right off the bat.  Something was finally going right.

She pointed me over to a small tent structure.

That’s the Extras Tent.

Is there a bathroom tent? I asked

She pointed to a trailer.  I relieved my stressed out bladder and headed into the tent.  There was propane heater going inside, since it was about 36 degrees outside.  There were some others in there already, the other extras.

Darcy reappeared to escort me off to the costume trailer.  I went inside.  There was Gerard, who I had met the day before at my wardrobe fitting.  He was harried and crisply gave me part of my uniform.  I had been changed from a prisoner to a guard.  I got dark navy polyester pants, a black t-shirt, and a pair of HUGE combat boots.  My overshirt was in the process of having my law enforcement patches sewn on it, so i just stood in the corner of the trailer and waited.

Gerard went about fitting the other prisoners into their orange jump suits.  They were led back into the cold once they were fitted.  I got to stay in the trailer, which probably was only about 10 degrees warmer than outside, so I wasn’t sure who was luckier, since they had the heater.

The prop guy game and fitted me for a belt, the kind with all the attachments for handcuffs, keys, and radio, and then went on his way.  Then suddenly there was a problem.  The other guard, the one who gets to talk, her pants don’t fit.  They demand my pants.  I take them off.  I get another pair which are a little big, but I’m fine with it since the other pair was a little small.  Apparently they fit the other guard, and crisis averted, the wardrobe crew continues on with their assigned tasks, and I keep waiting for my shirt to get its patches.

Finally the patches are done.  I put the shirt on.  Then I get pinned with a shiny star-pointed badge.  I get a coat to put on over my uniform, and am ushered back out to the Extra’s tent to wait.  And wait.

Darcy comes and takes me to another woman, who is standing out between some trailers.  Now I’m waiting outside, away from the heater.  It’s very cold.  Apparently we are waiting to pick up the other guard from her trailer.  She talks so she gets to have a trailer.  How nice for her.

Eventually we get rounded up and head over to the prison.  We have to be let in through a big gate in a 20′ high chain link fence frosted at the top with razor wire.   We have to stop at a guard house where we turn over our ID’s and get visitor badges to wear.  Then its through another gate, under they eyes of the guards in the tall watchtower.  A corrections officer escorts us up to the prison block we are shooting in.

Inside the place is a hive of crew-bees.  There are people standing around, people moving things, people talking to each other.  I’m led to a cell.  I look around, since I figure (hopefully) this is the only time I’m going to be in a real prison cell.  There are two bunks, a cold looking stainless steel toilet, and a skylight that shows a bit of the sky if you happen to be lying on the top bunk. I imagine the top bunk is the prime real estate.

Also inside is the prop guy I met before.  He has the belt he tried on me earlier, but now apparently it is going to the guard who talks.  Damn her.  Not only does she get to say lines, she gets a trailer, my pants, and now my belt.

The prop guy hands me another belt, but it is too small.  Then he hands me another, it’s kind of ratty, but it fits.  He gives me handcuffs to put in the handcuff thingy, and I get a radio with a separate microphone attached by a coiled wire that’s clipped onto my shoulder.  I was ready to go.

Back out into the cell block, I’m led down to my spot.  Apparently I’m going to be sitting in the “control room” for the cell block.   A room with a panoramic view of the cell block behind its thick bullet proof glass. This is where the buttons are to open/close the cell doors, the outside doors.  Plus  there are ventilation controls, the sound system (there are microphones all over the place, so you can listen in on the convict conversation, and surveillance camera monitors.  Also a handy bathroom, which I imagine would come in handy in case there is a prison riot.  That way you don’t have to leave the safety of your bullet proof enclosure to go potty.

More waiting around as they set up the shot.   I stand around trying to figure out who the director is, but I can’t tell.  I figure it’s best to know so I can stay out of his way.  I see the star Tang Wei in her orange jumpsuit, she gets led off to her cell.

The shot is going to be tracking behind the guard as she walks through one wing of the cell block, past me in the control room, then into the other wing that has the cell that Tang Wei is in.  Then the guard will put a key in the cell door to open it, and says “Prisoner 8234 report to the Sargent’s office”.  For that one line, she gets over twice as much money as me, a trailer, my pants, and my belt.  I do have to say she did look more like a prison guard than I did, so I guess I should just be happy I got the part I did.

As the guard passes me she gives me a wave and a nod and a slight smile.  The first time through rehearsal this surprised me, so I did what I thought I would do naturally, which is nod and give a smile back.  But I wondered was this what they wanted?  Is this a mean prison with evil guards, should I scowl more.  Should I wave back?  No one came to direct me, so I went with the nod and slight smile back.  I figured if they didn’t like it they’d tell me to do something else.

No one did.  The only thing the corrected on me was to put my hair in a pony tail, and tell me to sit down, which I was glad for, since there was a bar across the window right at the level of my face.  I though, great, I’m going to be this body with my head covered over by a bar, assuming I’m not cut out in the first place.

There was a real corrections officer with me during rehearsal and he was answering questions and opening doors to let people in and out.  In the shot we were doing the cell door is opened by the guard with a key, but this isn’t really how the cells open.  They normally open by pushing a button in the control room.  So they faked the cell opening with keys, and then pushing the open button in the control room.

Since I was sitting at the control panel as the guard walked by the corrections officer suggested that I could just push the buttons, since he wasn’t supposed to be in the shot.  I was like sure, I can do that.  Gives me something to do.  So they let me.  Someone behind the camera with a radio on would say door at the right time to someone standing next to me with a radio on, and then I would hit the door button.  The director would yell cut.  Then I’d close the door to the cell for the next take.

This was a step in fulfilling my dream of being Gary Jones, the actor who plays Walter Harriman, the  guy on Stargate SG-1 who “operates” the stargate.    Why do I want to be Gary Jones.  There is a guy who got regular work.  He was in 108 of 200+ episodes, plus a few of the movies and crossovers to the other Stargate series.  A minor character sure, but paid and fed, and since he talked, I imagine he got his own trailer.  And I bet no one took his pants.

There is a funny scene in an episode where Walter explains his job.  Here.  And there is a funny scene on one of the DVD extra features where Gary Jones the actor explains his technique for pretending he was working the equipment and pushing buttons, and how he couldn’t actually type on the keyboard because of the noise, so he would pretend type, and then reach for something.  Pretend type and reach. This may not sound exciting, but I bet it is more fun than putting numbers into spreadsheets and filing.

My second scene of the day was being out in the “yard” escorting a prisoner in handcuffs.  I doubt anyone will see me, since the camera was on the inside of the cell block, focused on the star, who was standing in front of a window looking out into the yard.  They put fake bars over the window.  Then about 50 feet out from that they had me and the prisoner crossing, plus some other prisoners scattered about.  Just window dressing.

The most amusing part of this scene is that the “yard” is really just a a lawn between the two cell blocks.  The cell block we were not filming in was in use, and full of prisoners, who also happened to be mostly sex offenders according to one of the officers.  So they advised us not to pay them any attention to avoid getting them worked up and rowdy.  They were hooting and hollering as it was, playing music, offering us cigarettes to dance for them, yelling Action and Cut! a thousand times.  Probably we were the most exciting thing they had seen in a long time.

If you add up my entire amount of time on screen between the two scenes, I imagine it will add up to about 3.5 seconds.  Still you have to start somewhere I suppose.

Feb 20 – OK, um, let’s try that again.

Since I’ve been doing rather badly on my auditions lately, I decided to take Jodi Rothfield’s Auditioning for the Camera class. I’m glad I did.

Jodi Rothfield is as highly respected casting agent in Seattle.  I’d been wanting to take her class for a long time.  She was endorsed by one of my teacher’s at Freehold, George Lewis. I can’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect of, she is an ethical and real person in a business not known for that.  Because of that comment, I was looking forward to meeting her.  I was not disappointed.

Jodi is a boisterous, passionate person, in that way that people from New York can carry off.  For those of you who know Robin Lynn Smith, I’d say there is a similarity of energy that I found comforting.

I showed at up her office.  She was efficiently handling conversations with the people already there, while informing me that still owed her $75, and telling everyone to ignore the signs that said that everything in the fridge was a dollar, and that really it was free for the class, and to sit down and make myself comfortable, and that bathrooms were around the corner.  She sat at her desk in the ping-ponging conversation with everyone.

When everyone arrived she ushered us into the casting room.  The first part of the class was lecture.  She tells you what you need to have and to do to show up as a professional for an audition.  Very helpful.  Some of it I knew, but the questions you are supposed to ask when you get called by a casting agent for and audition was great.  Not only did she tell you what you were supposed to do, but she gave you the reasons why you did them. Most of which distilled down into “this will make your life easier, and the casting director’s life easier.”

One of her main points of the day was that “Auditioning is the most unnatural thing you will do as an actor.” She stated this over and over again.  All her tips and tools presented that day were to help you survive this crazy process.

Another point she made is that acting for the camera, and acting in general, is about connection.  But how do you connect with an inanimate assembly of plastic and metal?  It’s not going to give you any feedback or respond to your demands. You can play your action at it all day long, it doesn’t care…it can’t.

She gives you three simple questions to ask when you do a cold read, and a process to answer them for yourself, so that when you go in front of the camera, you have something to work with.  For the second part of the class she gave us some text from commercials she’s cast.  She gave us some time to work through her process on them.  Then we went in front of the camera.  The rest of the group got to watch you on the TV.

I went first, because I like to get the painful experiences over with as soon as possible.  I got worked over a lot, but that was OK, I didn’t expect less, and it was handled humourously and compassionately.  My big issues were trying to read my lines from the paper, while also trying to have them somewhat memorized.  It doesn’t work real well.

We would do readings in acting class where you would look down at the paper, get a chunk of lines, then look up at the person you were reading with, say your chunk of line, then look back down. Repeat.  This doesn’t work for auditioning for the camera.  You need to be able to read lines and remain connected at the same time.  Your script has to become and extension of your body so you can glance at it and move it naturally at any time you need to.  This is very hard.  Did I mention that auditioning is the most unnatural thing you can do as an actor?

We watched each other as we went up.  She corrected and encouraged.  After lunch we did the same thing again.  It was amazing how much better everyone was with just that one earlier session.  Not that we all couldn’t improve a lot, because we could all use a lot more work, but everyone was improved.

After the second round, Jodi opened it up for questions. She is very actor friendly and very supportive.  If we had questions, or needed recommendations for things, she offered herself up to being called and emailed.  You really got the vibe that she wanted to help you and was in your corner.

Anyway, I’d recommend her class.  Sign up at her site at World Perc to get on her email list, or call her office to find out when the next class is.

Dec 18 – One audition. One part.

It’s been a while since the last post.  There hasn’t been too much to report…until now.  A month and a half ago I did an audition for an independent short.  It was down in Olympia, which is an hour and a half away, but I figured beggars can’t be choosers, and I’ll take whatever part I can get.  And if nothing else it will be audition practice.

So I drive down to Olympia, show up at the Evergreen College campus, where the director, and fresh-faced intrepid young man, is a student.  My girlfriend used to go there, so I’m not totally unfamiliar with the campus.  I find the audition room easily.  I enter, and no one is there.  There is a bottle of water and some printed sides on the floor next to a chair.  That’s all that is in the room.  I head back out into the hall and look around.  No one is around.

I was surprised that no one else was there. I sort of expected a cattle call audition with people out in the hall waiting for their few moments to shine.  He gave me a time range of 2 – 4 o’clock, so I assumed there were other people scheduled as well, but if they were they weren’t there, and either was he.  A few minutes later though, he came down the hall.  Potty break.

We chatted a bit.  He asked my experience, and I said not much, just got done with acting school, and I’m looking to work, etc, etc.  This is his first film.  He seems with it, and somewhat conservatively dressed for Evergreen, which is known for its hordes of, um, free thinking, tree-hugger types, who sort of float around campus doing whatever it is they do.

He did indicate that he had gotten a lot of responses from TPS, which is where I saw the audition notice.  We chatted a bit about Aikido, since he saw that on my resume.  Then we chatted a bit about the movie.  A mockumentary short on the subject of religious cults and how people are easily enticed to believe some things that others find ridiculous, and how this sort of thing can spread like wildfire under the right conditions.

My role was to be the Woman, a believer in the cult, and enthusiastic supporter.  It’s pretty simple scene.  I’m being interviewed by the documentary film maker and narrator.  All in one room, all in one take sort of thing.

He explains what he is looking for, and then I read it through cold.  I give it my best shot.  I try to keep as much eye contact as I can with him while I’m reading, but of course you have to look at the paper when you read.  I run through, he gives me a few notes, I do it again.  I feel weird, since I am in this huge room, with just him and me.  Luckily I’ve had plenty of practice feeling weird, uncomfortable, and winging it in acting class, so I just ride the wave.

He likes what I’m doing, gives me a few more notes, and then video tapes me.  After that he offers me the part.  I’m excited of course, but part of me is like, did anyone else show up?  Is it just me?  Still, he was laughing when I rad a few lines, so I must have been doing something right.  I leave happy, and excited to do my first film role.

I went down about a week and half later for a read through with a few other cast members.  Another rehearsal was to be scheduled, but I heard nothing for two weeks, then an email from the director saying he is still trying to get things together, apparently the camera he was planning on using fell through, and of course he is a student, poor, and also has a day job, so I get it.  I write back, just let me know when you are ready, and I’ll be there.  I’m not holding my breath.

This is the second role in an independent, mockumentary style short that I have been cast in that hasn’t gone anywhere.  The other film was written by a guy I went to acting school with.  He was having trouble working with his D.P., so it got put on hold, while he finds someone else.  Again, I’m not holding my breath.  Call me when you are ready for my close-up. Until then, I fish the audition waters.

So on the good news, I submitted my headshot to be a featured extra in a real film.  One where they like pay you, and has famous people in it.  Well, at least they are famous in Asia.  I don’t know the details yet, but I’m going to be a woman in prison.  How cool is that?  And we actually get to go to a real prison and film.  Sounds fun.  It will be sometime in February, and they will actually pay me.  Not hardly anything, but I’ll take it.  And since it is a film with a budget, I think it will actually get made.  This time I am holding my breath.

Oct 7 – Smile please. And a little to the left.

So I got the pharmaceutical photo shoot gig, or I should say my girlfriend and I got it.  I think they liked her best, and I got picked up since we were a couple, but I will take whatever I can get.  The job pays, and pays well.

We got and email from Michael Bini, the producer at On Request Images, saying they would like to use us, and that the wardrobe person would be contacting us soon about what to wear.  Colette called a few days later, and gave us a list, some of which I didn’t have, so it was an excuse to go shopping.  The things I was mainly looking for were some dressier shoes, a lightweight jacket that wasn’t black, and some pants that were khaki colored.  After two shopping trips I managed to find things that a) were cheap and b) were actually things I would wear after this was over, if we ended up using them.

Shoot day came and the call was at 7:30 am.  We both have to get up early for work, so it wasn’t that much of a hardship.  The shoot is at a nice Victorian house up on Queen Anne Hill.  Now if you are not familiar with Seattle, let’s just say that this neighborhood has money.  The houses are beautiful, and the yards are immaculate.  The house we were at could have been in the pages of Architectural Digest, or the finished product of This Old House.

They production company had a RV trailer out front which is where we were to check in.  We got there a little early, so we spent most of the time just sitting in the RV’s living room watching the crew run back and forth getting ready.  The caterer showed up with some food.  Bacon, quiche with asparagus, red pepper and goat cheese, and cinnamon rolls.  I was in heaven.  I have to say, one of the reason’s I have gotten into this business is for the food.  People ask do you want to do film or theatre, and I’m answer film…they at least feed you, even if they don’t pay you.  Here I was getting both.

We sat and chatted with people as we waited.  Turns out Michael the producer and my girlfriend are from the same neck of the woods and went to rival high schools.  I chatted with one of the guys we were going to be  doing our shoot with, and he owns a small women’s clothing boutique downtown.

We got our makeup put on, and then we went through a few clothing changes.  I ended up using the pants I bought and a pair of shoes.  The rest they had bought for the shoot or had on hand.  We went through a few choices because we had to have the right colors that didn’t blend in with the house we were in front of, or the patio furniture that we were sitting on.  Plus, we had to blend nicely, but not too much, with each other.

The scenario was the my girlfriend and I are having a nice casual front porch get together with our nice gay male friends.  We got to sit outside, acting as if it was a nice summer day, even though it was about 50 degrees out and overcast.  At first it wasn’t so bad, but after a while it got to be pretty darn cold sitting there.  The crew would bring us jackets to wear while they were setting up different scenarios, but then we would have to take them off for stretches of time.  We also had to hold glasses of ice water, and cold ceramic plates with appetizers  on them.  That didn’t help.

We’d get directions, like lean a little forward, ok, hold up your glass like you are going to take a drink, tilt your head a little, smile, ok try shifting your one leg forward, and then put your weight on your other leg, smile, good, now everyone look at Trent, ok smile…

One person from each couple was picked to be the “caretaker/hero” for each couple.  That person who is always making sure that everyone has what they need, or make sure that you take your medicine, or don’t eat the donut, etc.  The guy caretaker went first.  He compassionately offered us hors d’oeuver, and we all smiled and looked up at him thankfully.  We tried different positions, my girlfriend with her hand on my shoulder, the guys holding hands, us looking like we were having a toast and clinking glasses.

Then my girlfriend got to be the chosen one (see, I knew they liked her better).  We repeated the process, although by this time we were freezing to death, so it was harder to keep the smiling going realistically.  Luckily the guys who we were with (who weren’t a real couple) were both very friendly and charming.

We joked a lot.  Lots of gay inside jokes, that we gay people can always fall back on in a pinch.  Stuff about butts and sex, and how obviously this house was so neat it must belong to the guys, but we lesbians built the porch for them in trade for getting my hair highlighted. I sort of wonder if the other groups have their standard repertoire.  Anyway, it helped break the ice and gave us something to laugh at so we didn’t have fake smiles.  I do not have a good fake smile.

After some more shots, we got to wrap up, give the clothes that weren’t ours back, and then get our clothes packed up.  Had a few more snacks at the craft table, said thank you to everyone, and then headed out the door.

One job done.  I hope there are more.  With food.

Sep 18 – Just Shoot Me.

So I had my first casting call today.  Not for a film, not for a play, but for a photo shoot for print and web media for an unnamed pharmaceutical company.

I saw the audition notice and saw that I fit one of the categories of people they were looking for.  Now that I actually have my headshots, I could easily email the JPGs over, which is what I did.  They were looking for the following types:

People with physical disabilities, Native Americans, and LBGT youth and middle aged couples.    They were looking for people to be doctors, nurses, etc, of any race and gender.

So I thought I had two chances.  I could be a doctor.  I mean I work in a hospital, even if my job consists entirely of putting numbers into spreadsheets.  And I also qualified under the LBGT, and since they were looking for couples, I noted in my email, that I have a girlfriend and I’d be happy to bring her along.

I was happy when the next day I got an email, saying come on down to the casting, and bring your squeeze.  How exciting.  I didn’t know what to expect, but I figured I’d at least had one photoshoot experience, my headshots, and how different could it be.

The day of, I picked out what I thought were hip middle-aged lesbian clothes to wear.  And told my girlie to attire herself similarly.  Now I should mention neither of us are fashion mavens, in fact the opposite, but I think we did OK.  I was a little worried, because my girlfriend looked cuter than me.  What if they want her to be the doctor?

Anyway we get there, feeling a little unsure what to do, but the company doing the photography runs like a well-oiled machine.  We are waved in and told to sit down in some rows of chairs they have set up on one side of the room.  The other side of the room is blocked by dividers, but the flashing lights coming through the cracks indicate where the photographs are being snapped.

I scope the competition.  So far no other obvious lesbian couples.  That’s good, maybe there won’t be to many to compete against.  We get waved up to the table to check in.

It turns out to be the guy who I emailed in the first place, and who said to come on down.  He was gay.  In fact it seemed like almost everyone working there was gay.  I try to be friendly and charming to cover up my nervousness. We give our names, addresses, and the like, and then sit back down.

A fashionable young man with cool glasses waves me up.  He has a white board and has me write my name on it. We wait a bit until the previous person is done with the photographer.  Then he escorts me and my girlfriend into the back to meet the photographer.

The photographer is also a fashionably dressed man, who warmly introduces himself to me, and shakes my hand.  He then asks me to stand back.  I look down and see an “x” taped on the floor.  I say, do you want me on the x? and he says, oh you can see that? It was small and put on with clear tape.

The white board is put into my hands and a picture is snapped.  Then he takes a closeup of my face, then he has me turn to the side. Glasses on. Click. Glasses off.  Click.  Then he says 3/4 turn. Click.

Then he asks me to move my head back.  I move it what I think is back, but that’s apparently not the right way, so I try another way.  What he meant was to rotate my head towards him, but his description, and my comprehension of that movement weren’t synching up.  I felt like a little bit of a dork, when I figured it out, but oh well.  Click. Body shot. Click.

Then it was my girlfriends turn.  Same routine, but they had her put her hand on her hip in a few shots.  I thought, hey, I didn’t have to put my hand on my hip, what does that mean? Do they like her better?

Then we got to do a few shots together. That was fun.  i would like to have seen them, but the monitor was facing away from us.  Click, click, click.  It was over.

I made sure to thank everyone, the photographer, and the person who checked us in.   And out the door we headed.

If we are going to hear anything it should be by the end of next week.  I think we have an OK chance.  I’ll think it is funny, if my girlfriend got a spot and I didn’t.  Ha ha. Sigh.

Did I mention that this pays really well? I guess that’s because they are paying us not just for the actual shoot, but for the right to use our images on the company pamphlets, website and advertisements.

Anyway, I guess we just have to wait and see now.

Sep 7 – Heads up.

So things are warming up a little in the acting world.  Revving back up after taking some downtime after the Meisner class at Freehold.  I’ve gotten my headshots, I’ve gotten a part in a short film that a fellow Meisnerite is doing, and I’m working on a project with another fellow Meisner classmate.  So there are irons in the fire.

The big thing I wanted to do was get my headshots. I felt like I was off the hook until then.  I didn’t have to go out into the big scary world and audition, and get rejected, since you need headshots (or should have them so you don’t look unprofessional) to audition.

I had been searching the web looking for people, and I ended up picking Mark Brennan.  He is up in Vancouver, BC, and I was willing to drive up, but then I found out that he comes down to Seattle once a month to take people’s pictures, so that made it even easier.  Although I was a little disappointed that I didn’t have a reason to visit Vancouver.

Why Mark Brennan, and not someone local?  I don’t know.  I just like the way his photos captured people, especially the eyes.  Check out his website and see what you think.

To get ready for the photos, I had to get some new clothes.  I’m am a, um, how shall we say, fashion failure, and I’m a butch dyke at heart.  But I figured that I needed some girly clothes, since there are more regular girl parts out there than butch lesbian trucker parts.  I took one of my friends who actually has a sense of fashion and taste, and she helped me pick out clothes, most of which didn’t make it in the photo shoot, but I have them for auditions now.

I kept saying to myself as she would hand me something, I wouldn’t wear that.  But then I thought that is like an actor saying, but my character wouldn’t do that.   If the part (and the director) calls for it, you have to make it work. So I tried them on and apparently I looked good even though I felt uncomfortable and dorky.  Fish out of water.

The shoot day arrived.  Mark Brennan and his make-up person, whose name I have sadly forgotten, were really great.  I was tired that day because I had just finished the Danskin triathlon about two hours before.  He would have me stand different ways, and then give me cues, such as, I’ve just walked in the room, and you are really happy to see me, or, you are a bitch, and you don’t care if firing me ruins my life, in fact you enjoy it.

There was the technical part of being in the right position.  He would have me lean forward or tilt my head a certain way, and then add in the emotions as he cued me.  He also just talked to me, trying to get me relaxed.  I was actually feeling pretty relaxed at the beginning since I was still zoned out from the triathlon.  After awhile of standing there my shoulders and neck tightened up (from the swim I think), and he’d be like ok, relax your shoulders.  And I’m thinking, I can’t, they won’t go down.

We finished up the shoot, and I waited for him to send me the photos, so I could pick which ones I wanted to use.   He took about 100 photos, picked out his favorites, his seconds favorites, and then sent the rest.  Now my job was to pick the two I liked and he would color correct and touch them up for me.

I have to say, I was hoping for miracles.  I’m not bad looking, I think I’m nicely average, but I was hoping to look like a movie star, but instead I just looked like myself, with makeup and some fancier clothes on than I normally wear.  They always say your headshot should look like you, and not someone else, so in that respect they succeed rather well.  I was just hoping for more, but I guess that’s my baggage.

I narrowed down the choices to about eight, which was hard.  Then I posted those up on my facebook page and let people vote.  I’ve posted the results below.

I must say that putting my pictures up on my blog makes me feel a little exposed, since it is nice to hang out and write anonymously to the three or four people who actually stumble across this blog and read it.  But I figured I have to get used to putting myself out there.  I’m an actor after all.  People are supposed to see me.

July 31 – Where it’s at.

Been on a bit of a hiatus.  Finished the Meisner program at Freehold Theatre, and boy did I need a break.  That was a tough run, but good.  That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger sort of thing.

This will be a short post since there isn’t much going on at the moment.  I have an appointment to get my headshots in a couple a weeks, from a guy whose work I really like.  Mark Brennan.  Check out his website.

After that I’ll be ready to audition.  That’s frightening.  I’m nervous about that, but what actor isn’t I suppose.  I’m looking to do maybe some short film type work for now, get some stuff together for a reel.

There is also a class at Freehold this fall that looks promising.  Advanced Rehearsal and Performance.  It’s being taught by Annette Toutonghi, who is a great teacher.  I’ve taken Rehearsal and Performance before (twice), but this is Advanced, you have to have completed Meisner or equivalent to be in the class.

Part of me is like, do I want to take this class because it will be a good learning experience, and I’ll get more performance practice under my belt, or is it just an excuse for me to keep taking classes, and not get out into the real world.

I like to procrastinate, and this would be a way to procrastinate while seemingly not procrastinating.  I keep going back and forth with it.  I think I will end up taking the class though.  It seems to good of an opportunity to waste.

And finally, I’m working on a script with my friend Bill.  Our goal is to do a web series, get a following, and somehow make money.  It’s a great concept (Bill’s idea), and I think we can work it into something.

Of course I can’t talk about it now, not because we are being all secretive, but because we haven’t worked out the details of the story line yet.  Of course when we do, then we won’t be able to talk about it, because we don’t want anyone stealing our cool idea.

June 26 – The end and the beginning.

So it’s over.  Last night was the final class of the Meisner progression that I have been taking for the last nine months at Freehold.  I have spent the last three years taking acting classes at Freehold Theater.  It has been a wonderful, terrifying, exciting, hard, frustrating, magical, roller-coaster of a ride.

The last class was a performance where we presented the scenes we have been working on for the past few weeks to our friends, family, and other students.  My scene partner Bill and I did a scene from The Marriage Play by Edward Albee.  We have been working hard on it, and it paid off last night.

The process wasn’t without its turmoil though.  Our last two rehearsals with our teacher, the incomparable Robin Lynn Smith, were hell.  When she starts of her notes with, “Well, the nicest thing I can say is that you don’t have any stakes,” then you know you are in trouble. She sliced and diced our performances until we were left thinking, why are we here?  What have I been doing for the past three years?  I have to say this was justified ginsu-ing.  We were lackluster, but we didn’t realize it, until we really turned up the heat.

My scene partner Bill had a hard time with his part of the scene.  He has a rather long monolog in the middle of it.  He would get contradictory notes from Robin each time we had a rehearsal.  He tried to do them all and ended up in a mush.  My problem was getting my stakes.  I had trouble connecting emotionally with the scene, because I don’t behave the way my character does, and I didn’t know how to be that way.  I got a lot of notes, that I had to go further, be bigger, be more of this, or more of that. I’m timid by nature, so this was really hard for me.

The last few days I was so desperate to break through my inhibitions I started to try self-hypnosis.  I stared at a hypnotic swirl on my computer screen and repeated phrases like, when I perform I am fearless and confidant.  When I perform my emotions flow freely.  When I perform I am relaxed and creative.  Anyway, I think it actually worked.  I was nervous, but not as much as I normally am, and I was really able to amp it up during our final performance.  I did things we hadn’t rehearsed, and I dealt spontaneously with the fact that my shoe fell apart in the middle of the scene.  I also was able to respond to Bill when he tried new things in the scene.

He too really shone in the final performance.  He managed to overcome what had been giving him so much trouble, by deciding that instead of trying to do the notes Robin gave him, he should do what worked for him.  It totally worked.  It wasn’t that he didn’t do what Robin suggested, because he did, but not all of it.  He worked out for himself what worked, and then allowed that to happen.

Before the scenes started Robin reminded us that we are here to learn how to use all the tools we have been shown, and that though this was a performance, we should approach it with astonishment as if it was happening for the first time.  I think this really helped us all.  We both tried new things in the scene. We played.  It was fun. everyone’s scenes in class were wonderful.  It was amazing to see how everyone grew, even in the last few weeks.  We all shone up there, basking in the glow of the support of our families, friends, and fellow students.  It was a wonderful experience, that filled me with hope, and a sense that I have arrived, not at the final destination, but at the top of the long hill I’ve been climbing, and now I can look back and see where I have been, while getting ready to descend into the forest, the unknown future.  Not with a sense of dread, but a sense of accomplishment, and a sense of adventure.

I’m an actor.  Now I have to act.

June 12 – Kick em when they’re down.

So we are less than two weeks away from the big final performance of our scene.  I feel as if we are doing as much work as we would for a whole play as we are doing for this ten minute scene.  We are doing a scene from Edward Albee’s The Marriage Play.  In the section we picked to do there is a knockdown fight.  My scene partner Bill and I really wanted to be able to do a good fight, since it really makes the scene, so we hired one of the teachers at our school to help us choreograph the fight, and make sure we didn’t kill each other, while trying to kill each other.

The first night we got together with the wonderful Brynna Jourden to help us, she ran us through some basic moves and concepts.  I’ve had three quarters of stage combat, but that was a year ago so I was a bit rusty, and Bill hadn’t had any experience with stage fighting.  We started warming up with trying to touch the other person’s stomach while trying to keep the other person from touching our stomach.  Our hands and forearms had to maintain some contact with each other.  It’s a fun thing to do.

Then we moved on to doing some basic unarmed combat techniques.  Mostly review for me, but new for Bill. He did really good on picking things up.  We did some slaps, some strangling, elbows to the stomach, arms twisting, groin kicking, basic falling, and rolling around on top of each other. A good start, and we didn’t get injured, so that was good, although I’m feeling a little tenderized from rolling on the hardwood floor.

We got together a few days later and then started crafting the actual choreography.  Brynna had some ideas, but took our input and modified things to our abilities as well.  At the end of our two hour session we had the basics of a good fight.  We are supposed to be exhausted at the end of this fight, our characters laying on the floor, and there won’t be any problem with playing that.  No actual acting necessary.  We were properly winded and we weren’t even going that fast yet.

I think it is a good fight, it has some slaps, some wrestling, a groin kick (scripted), some choking, rolling, hair-pulling, grasping, biting, crawling, and elbows and strangleholds.  What more could you ask for.  Now we have to work this into the part where we are doing the “acting”.  It’s almost like working on two scenes that we now have to put together.  We only have four classes left, and we are going to cram as many rehearsals in as we can.

This Sunday, we have our first full run through in front of our teacher, Robin, and this is the first time she will see the fight, and we will  see how much we can actually pull off.  It will be interesting to hear what she has to say.  I will report back with an update .

June 1 – Wrestlemania

Last night in Meisner class we got to do our physical metaphors.  What is a physical metaphor?  Well, we are supposed to take the essential conflict of our scene, and then translate that into something physical that we can do.  In our scene, from Edward Albee’s The Marriage Play, I want to keep my husband of 30 years from leaving me, and he wants to get understanding from me as to why he needs to leave.

So my challenge was to tie him up with a sheet, thereby keeping him from leaving.  His goal was to get an item (a sock) that I had hidden on my body somewhere (not on my foot that would be too obvious), and then get out of the door.  To add to the difficulty, I had to stay sitting on a mattress while doing this.

We had to do this while saying our lines.  To help us out, we each had “shadows”,  people who would feed us our lines, in little phrase bits.  We both were pretty much off book, so this was something  just to help us out, because in the struggling you can forget where you are in the text.  We also had a selection of spotters that were around us to make sure we didn’t run into poles, or furniture, or other people.

I don’t know how long it actually was, but it felt like an eternity.  Guessing on how long it was for the other people I’d say it was about 10 minutes.  Try wrestling with someone for ten minutes, it’s exhausting.  I was wearing a pair of cargo capris with lots of pockets.  I stashed the sock in the lowest pocket on my right leg, right about knee level.  I folded it flat as possible, so it wouldn’t be noticeable.

We started out energetically.  I tried slinging the shet over him and getting it wrapped around his arms.  He kept searching me.  He didn’t go for the lower pockets, tried sticking his hands in my upper pockets and back pockets.  I kept trying to wrap his arms up, or get the sheet around him, and of course do his task, he kept having to break free of my attempts.  This worked in my favor, at least for a while, because he couldn’t search while he was trying to free himself.

Eventually though, he found out where the sock was.  Then my game plan changed from trying to wrap him up, to keep him from getting the sock.  I twisted and turned so he couldn’t reach the pocket, rolling one way and another, but eventually he got it.  Then he tried to leave, so now my job became to hold on to him and not let him go.  I’m supposed to stay sitting on the mattress, but he is stronger than me, so eventually he pulled me off, but I wouldn’t let go.

He was on his butt, dragging himself across the floor, pushing with his legs.  I was holding on with a death grip to his pants (each hand located dangerously close to either side of his crotch), on my stomach, as he dragged me along with him.  I wanted to let go, and get a better grip, but I knew if I did that he would spring away, and the way I was laying I wouldn’t be able to get him fast enough before he got out the door.

So we inched along across the floor, with our entourage of shadows and spotters.  Frantically saying our lines, until finally… finally, Robin came over and told us to stop, when we were about five feet from the door.  We lay there in an exhausted heap, sweaty and out of breath.

Fun you ask?  Yes,  but it also had the desperation of the scene, especially at the end.  I couldn’t do much but hang on and hope that he wouldn’t leave.  He interestingly said, that at that point he was hoping I would do more to keep him from leaving.  Interesting when you think about it.  A husband who wants to leave, and wants his wife’s blessing as it were, but also wants her to fight to keep him more than she is.

I also got in touch with the desperation that my character has.  That was important for me, because I hadn’t been able to get in touch with that much, just on an intellectual level.  Also, interesting was that the fighting was fun.  In the play, the husband and wife snipe and verbally jab at each other.  I think this, in better times for them, is how they have fun and connect, how they challenge and stimulate each other.  That came out in the wrestling

So very productive, if exhausting.  I burned a lot of calories.  I was saying, who needs aerobics, and Tae Bo, and ab machines.  Find someone and wrestle them for ten to fifteen minutes.  You’ll get a great workout, and you might learn some interesting things about your relationship.

May 29 – There’s always tomorrow.

So here is something I’ve learned about being an actor.  It’s not good to be a procrastinator and be an actor.

Should seem obvious, but it took me a while to catch on.  First of all, I shall admit  that I am a procrastinator, and a fairly skilled one at that.  I have pretty much managed to get through my life knowing how long I could get away with postponing something. Then running around frantically doing whatever it was I had to do at the last minute, cursing myself, that if I had done this earlier I wouldn’t be all stressed out.

I think I learned this in school as a kid.  I was smart enough to figure out what I needed to do to pass a class, and that’s pretty much all I did, and generally waited until the last moment to do it.  This sort of method, while stressful, lends itself to a more academic and paper writing, test-taking environment.  Not so much the performance world.

Because let’s face it.  It’s hard to memorize a bunch of text in a short amount of time. I find for myself this is done best in short bursts over a longer period of time, rather than trying to cram everything in at once.  It doesn’t stick very well, and the brain has trouble processing it all.

Then of course, anyone who has done a play or a scene realizes that you can always use more time to work on it.  Eventually you just have to go as is, but there is a certain amount of groundwork that needs to be done, or it just comes off as crap.

So here is my problem.  I’m a dyed-in-the-wool procrastinator, in fact at this moment I’m writing in my blog instead of doing my play research, and even this blog post was delayed several days, while I browsed the internet for useless widgets and weight loss miracles.  How do I get over this and start working on my acting preps that I’ve posted about before?

I have to day dream my character’s life and relationships. I have to read the play and mine it for statements about my character.  I have to analyze my scene for beats, and actions, and triggers, and blah blah blah.  Somehow I find time not to do it, and then, of course,  I stress out about not being prepared enough.  Why?

It’s that line about insanity is doing something the same way over and over again and expecting a different result.  My job is to figure out how to break this habit of procrastinating, because I want to do a good job.  There’s enough crappy acting out there, I don’t need to add to the pile.

Anyway, if anyone has suggestions, let me know.

May 5 – Tools of the trade

So we have attacked the text of the play we have been studying from all sorts of angles.  The way we have learned to break down text so that you as an actor have a fighting chance of pulling out a good performance is as follows:

Read the play or script, a lot.  Read through a few times just to read it, as an audience member, for enjoyment, whatever.

Then read the play and go through and pick out all the things said about your character by your character, by other characters, and by the author in the description.  Things are are stated out plainly and things that are implied.

Research things.  The author, the culture and history of the time period in which the play takes place, and in which the author lived at the time  they wrote the play.  You should also go through and find words you don’t know and learn how to pronounce them, learn what they mean.  If there are names of people in the play that are real people, find out who they are, and try and learn why they were included by the author.

Look at all the relationships in the play.  Who wants what from whom? and why?  Who are you allied with?  Who are you against?  Who has power?  Who doesn’t?  And does the power shift?

Find the main conflict of the play, and the major turning points throughout. Look for changes in the dynamics and tactics of the characters, especially your own.

Then start looking at the scenes.  What is the  conflict of the scene?  What does your character want and how do they go about getting it?  Is this scene a private scene between characters or is it “public” among the other characters?  Important to know since people behave differently in public and private.  Yes, you have to pretend that a bunch of people aren’t watching you on stage for your private moments.

Then you have to start looking at the beats.  Why am I saying this?  What am I trying to get from the other character?  How do I want them to react to what I’m saying?  Is it working?  Do I need to change tactics?  What is my stake in this situation?  What are my obstacles?  Are there secrets that I have that other’s don’t know?

What about the physicality of the scenes?  Why do you move to a certain place when you say this?  Are you close, are you far away?  Is your back turned, and how does that effect the dynamic and power plays between characters?  The director will do a lot of this in blocking, but trying it on your own in rehearsal can be very enlightening.  I found myself moving to one part of the stage, only to feel that it wasn’t right, or maybe tried sitting on a line or standing, to see if it had a different feel, a different emotional effect.

This is only some of the things to ask yourself, there are more, but these are the ones I could remember off the top of my head.  You can spend, and should spend, a lot of time with this.  If it seems overwhelming, it is.  I’m overwhelmed.  We are about to start our final scenes that we will present at the end of our nine month journey.  We are to use all the things we’ve learned to help us.  It’s a lot of stuff.  I’m not sure I realized that until now.

I guess it’s good that we have a bunch of tools to use. Nothing is more annoying than trying to build something, fix something, put some IKEA furniture together and not having the right tools.  The more tools, the more likely we will have what we need. So I will take the overwhelmed feeling I have now, and try and enjoy it.

Apr 22 – What does that mean?

We have entered the third quarter of Meisner.  This quarter is dedicated to analyzing text and than using that analysis to bring life to the characters and play.  Sounds simple enough, but it is really hard.

We’ve been given two plays to read and study.  Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, and Miss Julie by August Strindberg.  These two plays share many similarities.  The were both written about the same time, both by Scandinavian authors, both deal with the characters inability to conform to the given social structures, and both title characters kill themselves at the end of the play, finding it the only means of escape from their circumstances. A bit of a downer I say.

After reading both plays, we were assigned a character from one of the plays.  Then we had to go through the text of the play and find all the facts about our character that were said by us, by other characters, or implied indirectly by the text.  I got Hedda Gabler.

I have to say, in the first reading of the play, I didn’t like Hedda.  She was a bitch, and actually after a few readings still remains somewhat of a bitch, but now I acknowledge she might have her reasons to be.  This is not the first time where my first instinct in having to deal with a character is…this person is horrible.  Then after working with them for a while you get to understand them and like them, despite their flaws. Reminds me of some family and friends.

After this we were assigned scenes to go work on.  My scene has three people in it.  Hedda (Me), Lovborg, and Thea.  Last night in class we were to get up and do a working reading through the scene.  We set up some basic furniture and wore some basic costuming to get us in the mood.

Then we started reading the lines and trying to “play our actions” as best we good while staring at a piece of paper.  For those who may not be familiar with the acting terminology “playing an action” is basically figuring out what your character wants from another character and what your character does to get what they want.

I may want you to give me some money because I need it to escape my bad situation.   My action is that I need to get the dough, the way I do it is the tactics.  The action is drawn from the text of the play, say the mob is after me because I spilled the beans.  The words I say (along with the physical expression), and how I say them is my tactics.  I might try and seduce you, or threaten you, or plead with you, etc, etc.

It’s complicated.  We spent maybe a half hour going through the text break down each sentence, phrase, and sometimes single word, to find it’s action.  What do I mean when I say yes here?  Do I mean yes, or do I mean no, but am saying yes because that’s my tactic?  Am I saying it sweetly, mockingly, and why? What am I trying to get with this tactic?  Is it working?  How is the other person responding?  What does their response do to me? On and on and on.

We got maybe 10 lines done in a half hour of working.  With Robin, our teacher, coaching us with the above questions, and our repeated responses of, um, I don’t know.  Oh, I didn’t realize that.  Oh, I see, wow, so that’s what that means.

I think most of us who went up were pretty much ready to have a nervous breakdown.  It was a bit overwhelming to realize how much information was in the text that we had glossed over.  How are we ever going to learn how to do this?  Robin seeing us all, reminded us that’s why we are in this class, and we will get there.  I hope so.

April 13 – Mirror Mirror.

Still recapping last quarter since I was too discombobulated to write about all this stuff then.  Plus, we have only had one class this quarter and that was mostly talking about what we are going to be doing.  No action yet.

One of the big exercises we had to do last quarter was calle The Mirror.  Sounds harmless enough you say, and if by harmless you mean physically and emotionally exhausting, then you would be right.

What you do is go up in front of the class.  The rest of the class stands opposite you.  Whatever you do, they do.  whatever you say, they say.  As you might imagine, having 15 or so people watching you intently, mimicking your every move, tends to make you feel a little, um, shall we say, uncomfortable.

What you are supposed to do with this uncomfortable energy that is running through you is throw it back onto the group.  You can do this by shouting at them, or waving your arms, or grunting, stomping your feet, whatever, but it has to be at them.  Which is all well and good until they do it back to you.

Robin sits off to the side and lets this first phase go one for a while.  Then she starts to side coach you.  She’ll throw out a person or situation and you were supposed to act it out.  So for instance she would say you are a puppy, and the person would drop to the floor, wag their imaginary tail, scratch fleas, bark to try and get you to play, run away scared, and roll over.  It was all improvisation.

Common things thrown out at you were some animals, puppies, cats, chimps, wolves.  Often you would have to protect your young.  Lots of growling, swiping of claws and gnashing of teeth.

Then there were the erotic dancers, and street prostitutes in the Holland Tunnel hustling for johns, and had to fight off the young uppity ho, who thought she could take your spot.  You could go from Can Can Dancer, to boxer, to stand up comedian dealing with a heckler, to Elvis.

Often you would have to sing something.  I had to be a country-western singer performing in front of live audience at the Grand Ol Opry.  It’s amazing how when someone asks you to sing a song, all the words go right out of your head.

You would also often have to confront an imaginary person(s), who would be doing something horrible, say like torturing an animal, or about to kill a bunch of women and children.  And you would have to stop them with your words alone.  This was really hard.  My thing was I had to stop a town of religious zealots from stoning two women they thought were lesbians.  Fun.

It’s tiring. No matter what side of the mirror you are on.  You end up moving around for about 20 minutes or so.  At some point Robin lets the group drop out and then it’s just you.  She’ll make you stay still, and say some phrase over and over again, or sing some childhood song to each person who is standing in the group not moving, but watching intently.

She’s looking for our “masks” to fall away, those shields we put over us to keep from being vulnerable.  This exercise does that.  You don’t realize it while it is happening, but as a group member watching, you can see the transformation.

Most people at the end have a childlike essence.  It’s hard to describe without seeing it, but often I could see the person as the would have been when they were five, just simply standing there and being themselves, without the artifice of having to be with-it and in control.

Some people cried, some laughed, some left the planet for a bit, but all returned and came back as themselves.  Beautifully and simply themselves.

April 10 – A little imagination

Hmmm…sorry?  What was that?  Oh.  I’m sorry, I was daydreaming, and I didn’t hear a word of that.

So day dreaming, you say, Why?  Basically it’s like running.  It’s exercise, but instead of building up your body, it builds up your creative faculties.  Like any sort of exercise, unless you are magically gifted, it’s hard at first and gets easier as you go along.

We had to do some more exercises where we set up a space to be a room in our house.  We brought meaningful props in and used some Freehold furniture to make a representation of our room.  Then we again sat in there daydreaming, people watched us.

The next round we had to bring an activity and a circumstance, similar to what we had done in our repetition exercises in the previous quarter, and then we had to sit in our space and daydream.

My activity was to learn Amazing Grace on the banjo, and my circumstance was that my mom had died, and was to learn to play this for her funeral service. This is the song she wants played.

At first nothing was happening; I was too busy trying to play the song, which I didn’t know how to play. So I decided to stop and just sit there, and in that quiet spot not doing anything,  I managed to imagine what playing Amazing Grace at my mom’s funeral really meant, and I started crying.  Oh, a good amount too, more than the last time I cried.

It was interesting that I had to do nothing to get in touch with the emotions.  At other times I’ve relied on physical activity to get me into a scene.  I guess the lesson there is what you need depends on the situation.  This time it was daydreaming.

Apr 9 – Imagine that.

Boy it’s been a long time since I’ve posted.  In fact a whole quarter of Meisner went by.  So now I feel forced to sum it up, so we can move on to the third quarter, and I can start talking about that. It might take a few posts, but I’ll get there.

The focus of the second quarter of the Meisner track at Freehold is developing the “instrument.”  That’s the actor’s body and mind to put it into layman’s terms. The point (as I see it anyway) is to disassemble our cultural programming enough to act/react spontaneously to the imaginary circumstances in which we find ourselves during a play or film.

Sounds kind of high-falutin, but really it’s about teaching adults to play make believe after such frivolous time-wasting abilites were crushed out of us by the monolithic weight of our western European, Protestant, technology riddled 21st century adult responsibilities.

Things that came naturally to us as children do not come naturally as an adult.  We may be able to drive and shop online, but kids have us beat in the imagination department.

I can remember spending hours playing on the jungle gym, that was really a rocket ship, trying not to touch the hot lava playground sand.  Or running through our neighborhood playing Charlie’s Angles (the original 70’s show – I’m old), fighting over who got to play which Angel.  For the record I didn’t fight; I was always Sabrina; she was the smart one, but my friends fought like cats and dogs over who got to be Jill (Farah). The loser had to be Kelly.

So what did we do in the first part of the second quarter of Meisner?  We imagined things. We daydreamed.  Sounds easy?  It’s not.  It’s easy to daydream when you are just drifting through your day, trying to escape from your tedious job by having some fun in your head.

Maybe you are rescuing kittens from a burning building and become the town hero, or maybe it’s imagining what you are going to say to someone in some confrontational conversation you are planning having.  We slip in and out all day, but suddenly someone says, you need to imagine and you need to do it now.  Then the clamps clamp down and the gears screech to a halt.

Daydreaming is controlled by our subconscious, and because of that we don’t tend to have much control over it, which is actually what makes daydreaming useful.  Our subconscious minds, if given free reign, will take us to interesting places, that our conscious mind, so worried about trying to not make a fool out of itself, won’t. Perhaps because it is afraid, or mostly because it doesn’t even occur to it to go there in the first place.

So one of the first exercises that we did in class was to daydream.  You had to get up in front of the class, lie on one of the questionable Freehold mattresses, and daydream, while the rest of the class watched.  Yes, that’s what we did.  Imagine a room of adults sitting in rows of folding metal chairs, watching someone lying on mattress with their eyes closed daydreaming.

The funny thing was it was interesting.  In my experience, I was too aware in the beginning to really day dream, but as I laid there long enough, things started percolating.  When you’d watch other people you could see emotions flit across their faces.  That was interesting.  They probably didn’t even know it was happening, but it was happening, and it was interesting.

So the first step was taken, lying down.

Dec 12 – Say it like you mean it.

I could start of this post saying how I’m going to recommit to posting regularly again, but I think we all know how that will go.

I’ve just finished my first quarter of Meisner training at Freehold Theatre Studio Lab.  It has been a long, somewhat tiring, but mostly fun ride.

We started out with the classic Meisner repition exercise, expanding onto that to calling behavior, and then added the activities and circumstances (see previous posts for explanations of these).  The last step we added this quarter was text, specifically a short scene from a play.

We were paired up with a partner.  Robin made the decisions and I’m not quite sure what her criteria were, but everyone seemed well matched, so I can only imagine she had her reasons.  We were then given a short scene from a play.  We were told not to read the play, at least until after we were done working on it.

We did a short scene from I Never Sang For My Father.  It was a brother and sister trying to figure out what to do with their aging jerk of a dad after their mother dies.  Sis says it’s nursing home time for bad dad, and Bro’ says  I feel guilty about not loving him and and I feel like I should  take care of him even though it will ruin my chance at love and happiness.

We then worked on just reading the text mechanically.  This means reading it with no inflection of rhythm, tone, emotional content, whatever.  It sort of like reading it like a ro-bot where e-ver-y-thing is pro-nounced with the same weight and syl-la-bles are all the same.

We would sit across from each other at a table, not looking at each other in the beginning because we were to busy reading, and read our lines mechanically.  The idea being that eventually the emotional content will come out on it’s own without us forcing it.  We just read like two rock-em sock-em robots that have decided to put down the dukes and give conversation a go.

After a few days of that, we then superimposed the calling behavior onto our text, so we could say our line, or we might be inclined to say something like: you aren’t paying attention to me. Then they might repeat, I’m not paying attention to you, or they might say their next line.  Sometimes the repeating would go on for a bit.  Robin would side coach us, telling us to say our line as we would say our calling behavior.

For instance, someone telling me: you are annoying me, might make me defensive. I would answer back, I’m annoying you, and let my defensiveness shine through.  Then they might say again: you are annoying me, and then I could say my line of text again with the emotional coming through.

It’s hard to explain this process and much easier to see it happening.  It make for a very natural reading of lines, and makes it more obvious when you are “acting” the lines, faking the emotion as it were.

We learned some tricks for memorizing lines as well, such as throwing a ball back and forth with your partner while saying your lines as fast as you can, writing your lines down by hand, and writing down your lines with no punctuation, so you are not trapped into one way of thinking and saying them.

We also had different tricks during our little scene performances.  All the scenes had some element of conflict to them.  So when people were not letting the combative nature come out, or were “acting” it Robin gave them pillows to hit each other with while saying their lines.  It was amazing how real it became and how dramatically honest the lines came out.

In my scene my partner and I were told to take a twin mattress that was lying around in the studio and each hold one end, and play tug-o-war, while saying our lines.  It was amazing. It felt very freeing.  I was so involved with the physical activity and saying the lines, that they just came out however they came out, apparently much more dramatically, but also more naturally.  It just felt good and effortless, even though I was red-faced and breathing hard at the end of it.

Now I just need to figure out how to do that without a mattress.