I posted this on Facebook today. The response was so overwhelming I thought I'd share it here. If you'd like to see the original post, here's the link: http://on.fb.me/16EKtgu

In praise of actors, my people, my kin:

In 15 years of auditioning for national commercials, I've never booked. Not one. I've taken awesome classes, I do strong work, I'm not a novice. I work in other mediums--TV, films, theater. Not commercials. Not yet. Lots of callbacks, "on avails," etc, but never the booking. So this week, I'm on avail for a big one, right? Which basically means it's down to me and a couple other actors for the role. And my agent texts me last night and says, "So sorry hon, you've been released," which means I didn't get the gig. Again. Also? Didn't get the huge guest star for that long-running network show I went in for on the same day. And? The killer role at that fantastic theater I spent most of last week preparing a taped audition for--no word. Yet. So you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to do what actors do. I'm going to keep showing up. Keep doing the work. Keep putting myself on the line. When you see an actor's performance on the screen or in the theater, you're seeing the tip of the iceberg. You aren't seeing the hundreds of other auditions it took to get to that job. Don't misunderstand--this is neither bitch-fest nor complaint. This is what I signed up for. It's what I love to do. The thing that so many people who aren't actors--and even some who are--don't understand is that "no" is standard issue for us. We just don't listen to it.

 

uh, yeah, there's a little bit of theater in L.A. part deux

If you're seriously involved in Los Angeles theater AND you've not been living under a rock for the past week or so, you've already heard the wind-up to this conversation several times on different platforms. A distillation of what went down:

The LA Times Culture Monster announced a roundtable discussion around the question "Is LA a theater town?" featuring a panel of talented, distinguished folks who, together, could hardly be described as coming close to representing LA theater in full. In response, Colin Mitchell of the website Bitter Lemons got the ball rolling with a rabble-rousing facebook post connected to his blog. From there, comments flew fast and furious (mostly bewildered and/or negative and all of which have now been removed) onto the Culture Monster page wondering over the makeup of the panel and decrying the topic question as hardly the one we need to be asking.

So, ready to talk it out, this past Tuesday hundreds of us drove downtown through rush hour traffic, parked our cars for $10 a pop and took our seats only to listen to a bizarrely underwhelming and largely irrelevant back and forth that left most of us looking around in disbelief when it was cut short with no opportunity for Q&A. That night in response, Executive Director of the Theatre @ Boston Court, Michael Seel, took to facebook to ask those of us who were there "what was the conversation YOU wanted the panelists to have?" The comments, mine included, point to the fact that plenty of artists and arts administrators in this town intend to have a serious say in what the conversation actually needs to be.

You can read the distillation of Michael's post and the comments it drew at Boston Court's regularly excellent blog "we PLAY different". I invite you to continue the conversation in the comments section below or wherever you see fit. But continue it, let's do.

skateland, u.s.a

My son, Wyatt, went rollerskating for the first time last weekend. It was a birthday party for a classmate, and the whole class was there. He was ecstatic to finally get on skates and told me that when I came to pick him up after work, I'd see him zooming around the rink.

Hardly. 

About an hour and a half into the party, I arrived at the rink to the ear-splitting vocals of Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance' (appreciated) and multi-colored lights bouncing off the walls. I was tired. Rehearsal had been a tough one for me; I was disappointed by my work that day, and I really just wanted to get Wyatt, go home and nurse my bruised ego. As my eyes adjusted, I finally caught sight of him, alone at the opposite end of the rink making his way around, a death grip on the outer wall for balance. His progress was painfully slow in comparison to the speeding, dancing skaters around him. Occasionally he'd let go and coast a few feet, then smash violently to the floor. Up to the wall and a few more shuffles, then down again. And so it went until, many long minutes later, he rounded the bend and saw me. The shit-eating grin on his face and wobbly thumbs-up he threw my way were his assurance to me--he was having a blast, knee pads, bruises, sweat and all. His ego was faring just fine. And by the time we left, he was making it with the other skaters all the way around the rink. It wasn't pretty, but he was on his feet and moving forward.

Parent after parent approached me that night to tell me how unbelievably hard it had been for Wyatt to just stand on his skates that first hour. "Even holding onto the wall, he fell a hundred times," one said, adding, "if it'd been me, I'd have quit." I asked Wyatt what had kept him going. Before flailing away toward a friend he'd spotted, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "I really wanted to skate, so I kept getting up."