I can’t help it. When I read the line in my script, the name “Samuel L. Jackson” popped into my head. I’m sure slipping that into a performance would get some laughter from the crowd, but the Samuel L. Jackson version of the line? We could lose half the audience, easily. And for the sake of said audience, I’m going to keep the revised version off the main page via a “Continue reading” link. Continue reading “I know it says “Samuel Johnson”, but…”
I didn’t think being onstage would be so draining.
It didn’t seem like it during Mind Over Matt, but I may have simply forgotten: that play was only almost three years ago. In retrospect, though, I might not have been out of shape back then. Or I might not have had to be “up” quite as often. Or I might not have needed to “act” as much.
The character Matt was a lot like me. There were a few personality differences that made it a lot of fun, but it wasn’t really a stretch. Bradford Winter? Not me. Not at all. I mean, he even likes wearing a tie, for God’s sake!
Regardless, everyone both onstage and off survived Opening Night, no one broke their legs and we’re looking forward to five more excellent performances. After that, well, I don’t know about waiting three years to be in another play, but I’ll definitely need a long nap.
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Me? I—I am Professor Bradford Winter!
Tonight is the final dress rehearsal; tomorrow is opening night for Everybody Loves Opal. (Oddly enough, I was having trouble sleeping last night, so we’ll see how tonight goes.) I think it’ll be a good show with a lot of laughs and we’ve got a lot of good performers… well, there are only six cast members, so maybe that’s not a lot… but it should be good anyway. Here’s some more specific information if you’re thinking about attending.
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It’s at the Lakeville Area Arts Center in downtown Lakeville (20965 Holyoke Ave, Lakeville, MN 55044) and it’s running from August 9-18.
August 9-10 & 16-17, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.
August 11 & 18, 2013 at 2 p.m.
Tickets are $14.50 apiece.
There’s a Facebook event page that has a description of the play plus the above information. (If you’re addicted to Facebook, that might preclude you from attending, but I suggest you tear your eyes away from the computer monitor for an afternoon/evening to come see it—I think you’ll find it worthwhile.)
This website includes all of that plus a separate link to buy tickets online and a phone number to preorder them.
You can also buy them on the date of the performance—if I remember right, they start selling tickets at the desk an hour before the show and the doors open up half an hour after that.
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I hope to see whole bunches of you there. Well, I’m not sure how many of you I’ll be able to see since I won’t be wearing my glasses onstage, but I hope whole bunches of you show up.
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Chaff (n.) – Results of overacting
First off, a partial explanation for my prolonged absence. Over the last few weeks now, I’ve been focusing my attention on a play called Everybody Loves Opal, my third show with Expressions Theater here in Lakeville. I played Matt in Mind Over Matt a few years ago and my duties with Wage Warfare this spring included creative consultant (giving the director suggestions he’d usually reject), swing (filling other actors’ roles for rehearsals when they were absent) and “Smoke Machine Guy.” Yep, I got to operate the smoke machine backstage. And I was GOOD at it!
But now we’re preparing the summer show and things haven’t been moving quite as smoothly, in part because people are taking a break from acting for the summer. We didn’t have enough people audition, so we didn’t have a full cast when rehearsals started. I was supposed to be an assistant director for this show, but since we were short on male actors, I ended up being a swing again right away. No big deal, right?
Except we finished the first week of rehearsals and still suffered from a distinct lack of a male actor to fill a major role. I wasn’t really comfortable doing it because this upcoming Thursday, I’ll be heading to summer camp for a week.
Missing a week of rehearsals… not really comfortable.
Having no one to fill that major male role… even less comfortable.
There’ll still be a few weeks between my getting home and opening night, so I guess the kids will have to deal with me occasionally trying to learn my lines during free time at camp. (The fact that I’ve already been reading that role as the swing means I’ve got a head start!)
The other actors seem pretty awesome and it should be a good overall production. However, there’s a little bit of scar tissue in my memory banks because I’ve seen other actors who seemed pretty awesome, but they thought they were more awesome than they actually were. They thought they were more awesome than the script, the other actors, the director… those people drive me nuts.
(Note to the Grammar Police: Yes, I know I’m about to use the plural forms “their” and “they” to refer to a single individual, but it seems like the easiest way to conceal that individual’s gender. Or I’m doing it because I’m lazy, take your pick.)
The most recent example I saw was when an actor got some terrible news on the phone, then dropped their head on the table and cried out, “WHY ME?!?!” Three lines later, that actor provided the answer. When I mentioned it afterward, they replied, “Oh, that’s not so bad.” HEARING THAT MADE ME AN UNHAPPY CAMPER.
For those of you who have read this blog in the past, you’ll know that I’m very particular about how I phrase things, the words I use, etc. If you read an entry just after it’s posted, then refresh the screen half an hour later, you may notice some changes. I’m nitpicky like that, which means the Grammar Police might be even more pissed off at me for what I just did.
Being a playwright isn’t much different than writing blog posts. Well, aside from their needing to develop a plot. And characters. And making sure it doesn’t suck. Okay, so maybe it’s pretty different. However, there’s one thing that holds true for them as it does for me: they choose their words carefully. They are particular and nitpicky because what actors say onstage affects how the audience perceives their characters. If someone screws up a line or two, hey, shit happens. I can accept that. If the actor starts changing lines intentionally, IT MAKES ME AN UNHAPPY CAMPER.
And that’s what brought about the title of this blog post. When people are overacting and adding extra lines or even just “y’know” and “or something” to the ends of their sentences, yes, they get to say more and draw more attention to themselves. They also add chaff to the script. Shitty little bits and pieces of dialogue that would get wiped out by a halfway decent playwright. It rarely adds anything beneficial to the production and could potentially harm it (even if the actor thinks “that’s not so bad”), which makes me want to stab that person in the brain.
I don’t expect that scar tissue to affect our play. The fact that no one got overly anxious and demanded that we find someone when that major role wasn’t filled yet probably indicates that everyone wants to make it a good show (i.e., chaff-free). If that’s not the case, I don’t care what the title of the play is, Opal COULD MAKE ME AN UNHAPPY CAMPER.
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2013 – 2005 = A lot of years
I know, I know, backdating entries is usually a no-no, but when a man misses an anniversary… I gotta cover my tracks somehow, so I’m “posting this on June 1st”.
Why was June 1st a big deal? Because it marked the 8th anniversary of the premiere of Beauty and the Geek.
The date didn’t involve a romantic relationship, so maybe it’s not quite as important. It still boggles my mind that everything happened so long ago, but the fact that I missed the anniversary isn’t quite as important. That’s probably a good thing since the traditional gifts for an eighth anniversary are bronze and pottery, neither of which would make a couch more comfortable if I’d been stuck sleeping on one for the next few weeks.
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Some emotional memories die hard
Some of you may have already noticed the change in the menu bar at the top of the screen: there’s now a page that has YouTube videos of every episode from Season 1 of Beauty and the Geek (there’s a link to the VEVO page there that has seasons from the U.S., the U.K. and Australia). Putting all of those videos here on the blog required getting their web addresses, so I went to each one, copied the address, then decided to check out all of the comments sections as well.
Comments were sparse compared to chat boards when the show was on the air, but that’s kind of a given since it was eight years ago. Still, there was one… I don’t want to say it struck a nerve, but I almost responded to it. During Episode 5, she thought it was sad that when Scarlet was so pissed off at me, “no one stood up for Shawn, not even Shawn himself.” My response would have been along the lines of “It’s hard to stand up to someone when you agree with her.” And for some godforsaken reason, that inspired me to watch our final confrontation. [Insert ominous music here]
She asked me if I wanted to come pick up branches and I knew she was going to yell at me again, so there wasn’t much point in delaying the inevitable. That time, though… I’ve probably described it in here before. I can’t remember the last time I’ve come so close to snapping. If she’d said one more thing, I would have. I knew I would have. And as I watched it happening again on my computer screen, I suddenly realized that I was clenching my jaw. Hard.
I turned the video off pretty soon after that, then brought my laptop downstairs to my room. Strangely, I’m in “the basement” even though it’s at ground level. I decided to play a game on my phone for a little while, then heard a noise. Out in the driveway. The sound of a car door slamming.
My first thought was wondering why my parents were home from the family cabin so soon. My second thought was that they took the vehicle that’s parked in the garage and there was no reason for anyone to be in the driveway. My third thought was remembering when someone tried breaking into our house while I was home. Into my room in the basement while I was in bed.
I leaped out of bed, grabbed some clothes, grabbed the shorts that had my keys, started to move to the stairs, then reached back to grab my phone. In retrospect, I could have used the house phone to call the police, but my first instinct was that I’d need to call using my phone.
I bolted upstairs and ran to my dad’s room that has a good view of the driveway. I saw his truck and my car, but nothing else. (That’s why I brought my shorts with my keys: if someone was there, I could hit the button to set off the car alarm.) I moved to another window and looked out. Nothing at the end of the driveway or in the street. It really didn’t matter that I could see outside. The sky was dimly lit at 5:30 in the morning, but it would only take a couple minutes to get in, grab some valuable stuff and get out.
I finally sat down on Dad’s bed and realized that I was shaking, breathing too quickly and it felt like my stomach was twisted into knots. I tried to relax, standing up to look out the windows now and then. Still nothing, but that didn’t stop me from shaking.
I eventually got up and went to another room where I could see behind the house and the fronts of the vehicles. They looked fine, so it was probably an acorn or branch or something that bounced off one of them. Either that or someone got into and out of one of the vehicles without making any noise, which made staying inside a great idea.
I sat down on the recliner for a while and hoping that it would help me calm down a little. And it did. A little. Then I decided that I wanted to grab my laptop so I could either chat with some people on Facebook or write a blog entry. (Kind of ironic that I was thinking about writing about emotional memories and my jaw clenching when watching that video from Beauty and the Geek.)
So I stood up and walked toward the stairs. It was just a couple strides before… have you ever been cold, but not cold enough to shiver? It builds up in your system for a couple seconds, then there’s just one big body spasm? That’s how the shaking started again. I was okay at first, but pretty soon, I was shaking again. Still, I was committed to getting downstairs and getting my laptop. I needed some sort of connection: I didn’t want to just sit in the recliner by myself.
I got to the top of the stairs, made it three steps down before I sat down and started crying and hyperventilating. I would have been sobbing, but my breathing was too fast and shallow. I couldn’t do it. (It was bad enough that I’m tearing up writing this.) I got just calm enough to stand up and head back upstairs.
A few minutes later, I got mad. I put on my best scowl and started thinking, “I’m not going to be a victim in my own home. I’m not going to be a victim in my own home. I’m not going to be a victim in my own home.” That scowl stayed on my face the entire time I was downstairs and I kept that thought in my head as I quickly grabbed my laptop and walked back upstairs: “I’m not going to be a victim in my own home.”
It worked long enough for me to get back to the recliner so I could sit down, turn on the computer and log onto Facebook in hopes that I could find someone to chat with at 6:00 in the morning. Sleep was not an option. Unfortunately, I wasn’t getting any replies, so I went with what was behind Door #3: write a blog entry.
It’s helped some. I got to write about emotional memories (and had two examples instead of just one!). Focusing on writing has helped me get rid of the shakes, though I’m still tearing up from time to time. Sleeping might be an option eventually, though this recliner feels pretty comfortable compared to my bed downstairs right now. In the meantime, maybe I’ll try to find someone to chat with on Facebook. I could try calling someone on the phone, but if my hand starts shaking again, I might drop it, which could sound a lot worse than a car door slamming.
