Two-Day Acting Intensive with Joe Sabatino Was Great Experience

Last night, I completed the second night of a two part Acting Intensive with Joe Sabatino, co-executive producer of the fun show, "Necessary Roughness." On the first night, I performed a dramatic monologue which went over very well. For the second night, I chose a comedy since we each had a scene partner. The awesome scene was from an award-winning pilot my friend Carla Robinson wrote, called "Bedlam, NY". We rocked the house and got laughs in all the right places. So I feel confident our performance was impressive. Not only did I learn a lot, but I had great fun.

Cold Reading with Casting Director Jami Rudofsky

Had a great Cold Reading Workshop at SAG Foundation, CAP event, today with casting director Jami Rudofsky. I got to play Emily Gilmore of the Gilmore Girls. Imagine that. After all the years I spent watching Gilmore Girls, I got to play Emily Gilmore for a scene. And it was a great scene. It's the one in which she goes to visit and check out Mia, the woman who took in the pregnant Loralei when she ran away from home. Very poignant.

New Headshots Ready to be Distributed

There are so many factors that go into getting new head shots ready to passed around. First you have to hire a photographer to do them, then you have to go through all the prints, and make selections. And if you are like me, who hates most of the photos I take -- always have -- that means asking people to give you their feedback and select the ones they like. And of course, the ones you ask initially won't agree on the same photos, so you have to ask more people. Then of course, you have to get your name on them and get them printed up.

Here are the final 4 that will be used. The way the industry works now is that you have to have one smiley one for commercial submissions and one serious one for theatrical. The two printed up for submissions have already been chosen, but I thought it'd be fun to which one readers of this blog would choose... so free to leave comments on which ones you'd choose. All are by photographer Jeff Xander.

And here are some photos from another session. These were done by a friend of mine whom I'm not sure he wants his name published on the Internet. Will amend if he changes his mind.

Call Backs for The Family Crystal Web Series

Yesterday, we had call backs for the various roles in The Family Crystal which had not been cast already. If you recall, this is the web series Elaine Zicree wrote for me to star in, as Crystal. She also wrote the role of my father with fine actor Tom Katsis in mind. Happily he accepted.

The Family Crystal is about the trials and tribulations of a beleaguered, long-suffering, much put-upon daughter of an alcoholic elderly father and her vapid, intellectually challenged, pretty sister who doesn't want to share in parental caretaking.

Ryan Beard ran the camera which was videotaping our performances so that Elaine could review them later and maker her choices. He also was one of the actors vying for the tutor role and he did a terrific job, helped along by his wonderful British accent (South Hampton).

The auditions will apparently be online on a closed casting directors access website, where only the casting director and the actor auditioning can access. Dare I look at me?

So, we were casting for the roles of my sister Rhonda, her husband Eric, and the tutor. I wasn't able to make the initial auditions, which I would have liked to sit in on for experience. But I was available to come to CAZT on Formosa Ave in LA to read with the actors in the call backs. The above photo shows the team we were reading for, producer Susan Shearer, writer/director Elaine Zicree, and producer Richard Redlin.

This was great fun for me as I had never done a call back before, and certainly not from the secure position of having already been cast. I read with two young women vying for the role of Rhonda and I read with three young men for the role of her husband, Eric. It was an awesome learning experience.

Then I watched the Rhondas read with four young men for the roles of Eric and the tutor. This was an awesome experience as well, and it taught me a lot.

Then Elaine asked me to read from the sidelines for a scene I was peripherally in, but in reality was between Rhonda and Eric, so that too was interesting, although I've done that before, when I got to play Kirk.

I'm so excited about this project. The scenes are very funny and I can have so much fun with them. And they are so true to life. I just hope I can do them justice.

For further information, check out my article on "The Process of Casting a Web Series" on Suite101.com.

The Family Crystal Web Series

I mentioned before that I will be starring in a web series that Elaine Zicree wrote for me and Richard Redlin is producing. I learned last night at our Table meeting that we now have the beginnings of a website for it. Things are moving along nicely and I'm excited.

Bringing King Lear to the Park

Here is a view of the duck pond in Douglas Park in Santa Monica, CA where we held today's rehearsal for our staged reading of King Lear. Yes, I could have gotten closer so you could see the ducks better, but I am standing on the "stage" from whence we will be performing the play on October 4, 2009 at 7 pm. Anyone who would like to see this work in progress staged reading is welcome to come. Just bring a blanket because you will be sitting on the hill facing our "stage."

You heard of bringing plays to the street? Well, our street performance of Shakespeare will be in the park. Cool, right?

To the right you see some of our actors rehearsing the play on our new stage. Gloucester is on the left, Edmund is in the center and Lear is on the right.

I'm playing Goneril, but since I'm working the camera here, you won't see my picture when I'm doing my scenes. We did some blocking for this new stage. And we ran through some of my scenes as well. Don who plays King Lear is also our director for this staged reading.

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: 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.

Good Acting Instincts Make a Scene Rock

Today we had another rehearsal/read of King Lear, but this time, instead of being in my Rec Room, it was on an outdoor stage at the home of the director we hope to mount this when he gets theaters sorted out. The one he had when this project started with Don playing the title role got sold out from under him, but that is another story.

Aside from being out in the fresh air on a lovely sunny day, this had the added advantage of feeling like we really were acting out the play. But this post is about following instincts.

I'm still learning about being an actor. In a scene where Goneril has been trying to convince her father that his men are being disruptive in her castle and she wants him to dismiss half of his retinue, which King Lear doesn't want to hear, and where Lear's Fool is subtly berating him for giving his kingdom to his daughters, Lear has a line which made me instinctively feel that Goneril enters and comes over to her dad. Since it was pointed out that Goneril was already in the scene, even though she had been an inactive player for a while, I figured I just made an error of forgetfulness.

But Don thought it was a great idea and said come to me when he asked who I was. So I did and as I began my speech about what I wanted him to do and my reasons why it was necessary, he proceeded to ignore me, this time by keeping his back to me. Since I feel Goneril is a strong woman and very much her father's daughter in feeling that her position means she should have her way, I kept trying to get to his front to hammer my points in with eye contact. Since Lear doesn't want to do what I want, he kept denying me the face-to-face I wanted. I'd scoot around to his left and he'd turn to the right so his back would still be towards me. Then I'd scoot around to his right and he'd turn to the left. No matter how hard I tried to get around him while delivering the lines, he denied me. This cat and mouse game gave the scene so much life and felt so real that I think we were both right in our choices.

Finally I was getting so frustrated; I realized that Goneril wouldn't put up with this. I felt I knew here well enough, understood how strong she was, that I knew she would walk away and stop trying like she was begging. So I did and that felt so right, the scene was just so much fun.

Don has been very generous in teaching me the process of acting... helping me learn about making decisions about the character, finding my way into the character by using my own experiences and then just substituting Shakespeare's words, making the character real from the inside, and in following my instincts. As he keeps saying, you can't do better than learn from Shakespeare because it's all there in the words.

I also learned another valuable lesson from him -- that actors are only responsible for their own characters and they do not think about the motivations or character creations of other actors. That is not their place to do so. In a way, that is very freeing for me, because as someone new to this, there's a part of me that always worries whether the others are thinking I'm playing the character right or whether I should be making other choices. It was freeing to learn that they are not thinking anything along those lines, just going with the interpretation I create and reacting to it... not judging it.

He's making it so much fun and I'm learning so much about acting doing this. I'm so glad I said yes to doing this.

Most Awe-Inspiring Man I've Ever Met

I met him a few years before I ever thought of doing a blog, so hence I didn't bring a camera to a friend's college alumni luncheon where he was speaking. But still today he remains the most awe-inspiring man I've ever met in person and the only one for which my stomach went jittery, as I was awestruck to be shaking his hand.

Those who know me are probably wondering which actor I'm talking about, and in a way, they'd be right, because he is an actor now. But it isn't because he's an actor that meeting him filled me with awe that day. And it isn't even because he's an activist or sees his acting as a way to reach more people as an activist than he could on the lecture circuit.

What struck awe in me as I went up to say hello and shake his hand was that this was talking to a very important part of history. In 1972, this man, with others, had stood up against the might of our soldiers and FBI agents armed with guns, facing those guns for the rights of his people. In a standoff at Wounded Knee -- a place of a terrible massacre of Sioux Indians in the 19th century -- he faced down getting shot and killed by modern-day, fellow citizenry white men who hated him for the color of his skin and for his unwillingness to sink with his culture down into oblivion, who hated him for protesting against all the broken promises and stolen land and treaty violations our government has perpetrated on his people.

I've marched in protest with other like-minded college students, I've supported causes for the rights of people, I've written letters and stuffed envelopes and collected food and clothing. I've written stories and scripts to spread my beliefs. I even helped collect food and clothing to be backpacked through the mountains and hence smuggled past the US government blockade of those brave members of AIM (American Indian Movement) who stood up in defiance so bravely for weeks. But I've never faced guns pointed at me out of hatred and with the full blessing of my government and I'm not even sure that I could. To be truthful, I never want to find out.

I've never been shot or stabbed or incarcerated in prison for my beliefs like this man has. I never want to have to find out whether I can take it and bounce out the other side still fighting to have the voice of my people heard. I don't want to find out how it feels to have that kind of pain or suffer that kind of anguish. I truly doubt I'd have the strength.

But that's why meeting Russell Means, the first national director of the American Indian Movement (AIM), in person was such a momentous and awesome encounter. Because he's the real thing. While we write and act it out in our fantasy worlds of screen and TV, he's the one who actually did it -- put his life on the line for what he was saying.

That he doesn't do that now, and puts his efforts more into acting and producing stories about his people I fully understand. Few people heard of the standoff at Wounded Knee because there was no Internet back in 1972 and the government was pretty successful at getting a media blackout. Yet millions have seen what Native Americans and Native American cultures are all about in movies such as Last of the Mohicans, Black Cloud, Into the West, and various other television shows that raise awareness while entertaining.

Even our humanitarian efforts at supplying food and warm clothing for those protestors went for naught. While we figured many would be caught, we figured that some of the backpackers would get through... and aid was being sent from all states in the Union. What we didn't know then and didn't find out until much later was that all that aid was stopped at the borders of the various states it was collected in and hence none of it got through. It was illegal to stop it and the ACLU successively fought it in the courts, but it mattered little because by then the protestors were starved into submission. And in the grand scheme of things, very few people ever heard of any of it.

So maybe the most effective ways to change people's minds and hearts are through movies like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Flags of our Fathers. But I still stand in awe of meeting the real life person, who laid it all the line in real life, and took being shot and stabbed and incarcerated in stride to try to help his people.