Magic Time Gives Crystal Another First

Today was our big performance day of the Magic Time radio play written by Marc Scott Zicree and Elaine Zicree in the Charlie Chaplin Theater at Raleigh Studios.

This was very exciting for me because I was getting a chance to act with veteran SAG actors as a colleague. I was on stage with actors of the caliber of Armin Shimerman (STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, BUFFY, BOSTON LEGAL), Christina Moses (Sulu's daughter in STAR TREK "World Enough and Time"), David Polcyn (Montag in Ray Bradbury's recent hit stage play FAHRENHEIT 451), Richard Tanner (STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, JAG, NYPD BLUE, THE ADAMS FAMILY movie), Anthony Cohen (SOLITARY, WAIT UNTIL DARK, THE CRUCIBLE, GUILTY OR INNOCENT) and Neil Kaplan (Optimus Prime in TRANSFORMERS, POWER RANGERS). I was also getting to work again with Sara Jo Elise who acted in the same film I did, BURDEN OF ESTEEM.

This was also exciting because this is the first production I have acted in under a Screen Actors Guild Internet/New Media contract and I felt really part of the acting community when signing it.

In the morning we had our dress rehearsal in front of an audience of family and friends. It went really well, except for one unfortunate omission I made. I had gotten my revised script after midnight last night and was highlighting my dialogue and putting in my walla even later than that. I thought I had double-checked that I had highlighted every line, but I apparently missed one line. It was the last of my lines in one of the scenes, and because I didn't realize it was there, of course, I didn't vocalize that line.

As luck would have it, that last line is a cue for another actor to say his line, and of all people, it had to be Armin Shimerman's Lungo character. While he's one of the last people whose cue I'd want to mess up, he is probably one of the most experienced at handling the glitch. Apparently, he didn't say at all the line following mine, since I missed giving it its cue, and he just went on as if it didn't exist. I don't know because I didn't even realize that I had skipped the line -- not until afterwards when Sara Jo pointed it out to me.

When she did, I looked into the script and sure enough there was the line that was mine and unhighlighted. One line, so easy to pass over. And yet, when you have a small role, every line is precious to you.

Of course, I was embarrassed and went up to Armin to apologize for messing up his next line. Like a true gentleman, he was gracious about it.

It was a good thing that Sara Jo had alerted me that I would probably hear about it because the producers and director were taking notes to give us feedback. And hear about it I did, from the director, the producer, the associate producer, even the sound recording guy. I apologized and apologized and reiterated it wouldn't happen again.

And it didn't, because now that I knew the line was in there, I had no problem remembering to say it. But the damage was done, because even though I said the line perfectly in the real performance, we only had that one take, so we had to do a pick-up on that line afterwards. There were plenty of lines that had to be picked up for one reason or another (like getting a clean reading without the walla), but to me my pick up loomed large because once again it called attention to the fact that I had flubbed up. Next time, I'll triple and quadruple check that I have all the lines highlighted.

The afternoon performance was the full performance in front of an invited audience, which included industry people. It went very well. The performance was solid and the audience enjoyed it. All the actors were superb. Sara Jo Elice was marvelous speaking in the innocent and vulnerable tones of a 12-year old, the age of her character. Anybody just listening to the performance would be surprised to learn she's an adult.

The standout to me was Neil Kaplan, who played three roles, brilliantly, each with different accents and different personalities and attitudes. One was a Russian doctor, another was a ne'er-do-well, live-in boy friend, and the third was pretty much a thug. It was so much fun to listen to him move easily between these totally different characters he inhabited.

The funny thing is that I have known Neil for years because we belong to the same networking group, and I've known the whole time he was an actor and voiceover artist, but this is the first time I've actually seen him perform.

And this is true for all of us -- until you get to work with someone or see firsthand his/her work, you don't truly know how and what he/she does.

Though pleased with the compliment, Neil saw the humor in the situation and made some joke to the effect that now I knew he wasn't just blowing smoke when he bragged how good he was. Not that I ever doubted him, for he has worked in the business for a long time, but seeing makes you even a better believer.

When it was all over, I was touched and grateful to those who came up to me and told me I did a good job. Especially those who were other actors. But what surprised me was the number of people who came up to me and talked about the walla... how much they liked it and how good it was -- from the actors performing it to the other actors to the sound guy recording it. I was pleased that it did its job.

Past this, there is more life to this project, Marc informs us. According to him, the two-hour radio drama that will be utilized as the audio track for an animatic (animated storyboard) that will be split into webisodes and possibly aired on STRIKE TV. This is all with a mind toward selling it ultimately as a TV series or series of films. So hopefully, those of you who are reading this will be also able to experience our performance in the near future.

First Film, then Stage, now Conquering Radio: Second, the Walla Rehearsal

As I mentioned last time, Marc and Elaine asked me to write the walla lines for the Magic Time Radio Play we were performing on Saturday. I was delighted to do so.

These were dialogue lines for the crowds of people going down steps as they evacuate an office building during an earthquake, for people cleaning up their broken treasures after the earthquake, for people witnessing objects falling from the sky and autos and such not working, for people attacking the cop shutting down the bread line before they got their handout, and a variety of other 'extremely important and relevant' dialogue.

Since Marc writes very ambitiously, there were many, many scenes that needed their walla written and I confess, I wondered a bit if I'd ever get done. But it was worth it when Marc liked them all. I was gratified, to say the least.

So today the group of people who were going to perform the walla got together to select their lines for each scene. Once they chose their lines, they would write them in the margins of their scripts at the proper place so they would have them handy when they needed to speak them.

Everybody loved the lines and had fun selecting. One of the guys, Gunnar, told me that the lines he had selected told the story all on their own and that he had deliberately chosen them. I hadn't realized that I was writing lines that would be sequential, but I guess since the scenes are sequential and I was writing dialogue appropriate, but innoculous for each individual scene, it shouldn't be surprising that it would all fit a pattern.

Now we just need to get the revised script that Marc would be putting out and we would all be ready for Saturday. There was going to be a tech rehearsal on Friday, but I wasn't free to attend that, so the next time I would see the group would be at dress rehearsal Saturday morning.

It would also be another first for me, since I have written walla in the past, but never performed it.

First Film, then Stage, now Conquering Radio: But First, the Table Read

On Saturday, we will be performing live MARC SCOTT ZICREE's full-length radio play version of the MAGIC TIME pilot written and directed by his wife Elaine and him. The pilot of course is based on Marc's trilogy of novels, in which all the machines in the world stop running and magic returns. It will star Armin Shimerman (STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, BUFFY, BOSTON LEGAL), Christina Moses (Sulu's daughter in STAR TREK "World Enough and Time"), David Polcyn (Montag in Ray Bradbury's recent hit stage play FAHRENHEIT 451), Richard Tanner (STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, JAG, NYPD BLUE, THE ADAMS FAMILY movie) and Neil Kaplan (Optimus Prime in TRANSFORMERS, POWER RANGERS).

I have a couple of small acting roles in this project. This is awesome, because I'm just embarking on an acting career, in addition to my writing career, and hence, trying to build an acting resume and gain experience, and here I am working with veteran SAG actors, like Armin Shimerman and Richard Tanner.

Yesterday, we had our table read for this project. For those who don't know what a table read is, it is exactly what it sounds like. Actors, writers, director and producers sit around a big table and read the lines. This gives the writers and director a chance to hear the words and determine if they work the way they intended. In our case, Elaine was also giving adjustments to the actors if their initial interpretations were different than she and Marc were looking for.

This isn't always the case. I've attended many table reads and some actors act out the lines -- vocally, that is, because everyone remains seated at the table -- and some just read like they are reading the phone book. The latter aren't being disrespectful; they are just saving the performance for the set so it will be fresher in front of the director. In the former group are those actors who might want to try an interpretation or a line reading that isn't readily apparent in the script and see if it flies with the writer and director. Scripts get changed based on what the writer and director likes hearing.

Me, I always like to try out my interpretation and see if it fits in with how the writer and director see the role. As I looked around the table, I was exhilarated for the company I was in.

Everything went fine in this first outing, except for the walla, which was a bit shaky.

Normally walla is recorded in the post production process, after the editor creates his cut (assembles the scenes in order into an episode or movie), the director gets his pass and the producers get their pass. Walla is all those background conversations going on in a crowd that the extras play. Typically, extras on set do not say anything because you want clear pickups of the actors' voices. But it would be pretty weird to have silent armies fighting, or silent crowd scenes, or a silent marketplace... so actual lines are recorded as needed to enhance reality.

Since the radio play was being recorded live, the walla would have to be recorded simultaneously. Hence, Elaine and Marc assigned various people to do the walla. As the table read progressed, and there were lots of places that walla was required, it became apparent that people were having trouble making it up on the spot. There are some requirements to good walla... it has to be innocuous enough that the audience hears it but doesn't hear it. For the audience needs to be paying attention to the actors speaking, not paying attention to the background sounds. So the lines can not draw attention to themselves. And yet, if they don't fit the scene, then that, too, will stick out as a sore thumb and draw attention to itself. Finally, walla can not step on the actors lines, in other words, the extra can't say a line in the background that the actor then says in the foreground.

As you can imagine, not the easiest thing to come up with suitable comments on the spur of the moment, when you have bare seconds as a scene unfolds and the actors are waiting for the background group to set the stage so they can say their own lines. It occurred to me that Marc, being the writer on several TV shows, wasn't used to writing walla lines because they were performed in post, not in principal photography and hence written independent of the script. Whereas me, who had written walla lines while I worked in the Hercules writing department, understood that the actors performing walla for the radio play needed lines written for them before we did the actual performance.

Still, one needs to tread lightly when offering advice to accomplished writers with long lists of TV credits behind them. In order to justify why I was telling Marc he should write out walla lines for his walla people, I mentioned that this is what we did on Hercules and that the reason I knew that was because I wrote them (well, I alternated episodes with another person, so I'm not trying to take credit for all of them and we weren't responsible for every year, just a couple.)

Before the words were completely out of my mouth, clever Elaine thanked me for volunteering to write the walla.

So, today, I wrote the walla and emailed it to Marc so he could make sure it was in line with what he had in mind. Though one always expects some of your lines are not going to pass muster, I was exhilarated that all of mine did, with a couple of minor tweaks.

And now we are good to go. I'm very excited to do this, especially since director Marc told me that I did very well in my roles before we left the table read. He was pleased with all of our performances, but what meant the most to me was that he was pleased with mine.

"More than word can wield the matter:" Goneril takes on King Lear

Fathers and daughters, a classic conundrum that has kept Shakespeare's King Lear play relevant for centuries. Last night I did my first real performance as Goneril in our stage reading work-in-progress of the play. And it was quite a wondrous feeling to play Goneril standing up to her dad, King Lear (played magnificently by DON BALDARAMOS, pictured to the right and below).

The plan had always been to perform the stage reading of the first two acts with audience on Don's birthday, which was December 6th, but apparently there was some kind of football game on that all the guys wanted to see, so we didn't go that elaborate. Nevertheless, we were still forging ahead, even if none of us invited anyone to see us. Too chicken, perhaps.

In my case, although I have friends who have expressed interest in seeing me play Goneril, I wanted to get one performance under my belt before I had the added stress of knowing friends were watching me perform. After all, the last time I had done any Shakespeare was a class project in high school, where we rendered Macbeth into modern hip talk. Our Lear guru, Don, told me that at this point, it would be best to just invite other actors because they understand 'work in progress'.

Actors also do another great thing... they seem to create a safe environment for a new person to explore and experiment and find her feet with them. And because they do so, it was so much fun to work with them.

I was prepared to work this night off book, with all my lines memorized. I also had my "actor's prop" -- a prop that represented the character to me and the backstory drawn of why, how, and what that item means to Goneril. It was a personal and powerful link to the character and I was proud that I was able to subtly work it into my performance.

Instead of reading text from our seats, Don (King Lear) and I (Goneril) were on our feet and in each other's faces. And what a difference it makes to the power of the piece. This was very evident in even the first scene we had together, where Lear demands of his daughters declarations of their love for him.

To me, Goneril is a chip off the old block in terms of strength and desire to be the one in charge. Her love for him is conflicted with the fact that he is making her jump through hoops to get a portion of the inheritance she should get in the entirety through primogeniture, would get if she were a son. Faced with such flagrant, capricious autocracy, she can hardly be blamed for feeling thus: Tell the old bastard what he wants to hear and not to worry what the truth is.

Going toe to toe, in each other's face, even in this insincere declaration of all-encompassing love makes it so believable that Lear would see sincerity in the sheer power of it.

But most illuminating of all was to stand there when Lear was ranting at me in my face. The harsh names and curses he rained down on me in rage and borderline insanity were hard to take and maintain composure... hard to not shrivel up and back away. While Goneril and her sister Regan may be the greedy, ungrateful betrayers of their father that people see them as, this made me appreciate how brave and strong they were to have stood up against their former and possibly still absolute monarch. Who could have had them killed in a heartbeat, or worse. And who maybe still can. Or at least Lear thinks he can... resume the mantle he gave away if he so wishes. It was chilling...

... and yet, exciting to be caught up in that powerful dynamic.

I can't wait to be part of the next step forward. And this time, I may even invite some friends over.