GOOD PEOPLE and Musical Inspiration

I've played around with music to help me "find" characters in the past, most notably my "Frankenstein Playlist." That exercise was pretty extreme, but it was helpful. I don't usually go that far, but I very often will find myself listening to music, being struck by a lyric, or an emotional response to a tune, that informs the project I'm working on.

My current project is at Redtwist Theatre, GOOD PEOPLE by David Lindsay-Abaire and directed by Matt Hawkins. We're down to the wire on this one, a few days before tech, and in the middle of those moments when every mistake, no matter how trivial, feels apocalyptic, and the connection to the characters feels more and more like trying to grab and hold running water. Which is pretty much the way everybody feels about every show they work on when you're getting this close to the point of no return.

It's hard to maintain your confidence, essentially, when the rubber hits the road, as they say, but the team is strong and committed. The Redtwist ensemble members, Jacqueline Grandt, KC Karen Hill, Aaron Kirby and Kathleen Ruhl, and the other guest artist in the cast, Kiki Layne, are doing excellent work, well worth of Mr. Lindsay-Abaire's tremendous script. Matt Hawkins is a open, collaborative director, always ready to react and adjust to discoveries on the fly. Assistant Director Scott Wolf, and our Stage Management team, Allison Queen and her assistant, Melissa Nelson, are organized and prepared.

The design team are about to swing into the hard part, as we head to tech weekend. I can't wait to see what Eric Luchen (Set Designer), Kathryn A. Lesko (Lighting Designer), Karli Blalock (Sound Designer), Allison M. Smith (Costume Designer) and Jan Ellen Graves (Prop Designer) have in store. What we've seen so far is terrific.

I'm proud of this show. I'm proud of being in it, and the work I'm doing. I can't wait for people to see it next week.

But, again...the triggers from certain songs. The way that you can hear a tune, maybe even one you know well, and it suddenly reflect something about your character, your show. I had a moment like that just yesterday. I've been listening to a lot of Rush lately, having just seen the R40 Tour last Friday night. I'll probably have another blog, at some point, about seeing one of my favorite bands for what is likely to be the last time, but...Neil Peart's lyrics once again reached out to me.

GOOD PEOPLE deals with class inequality, choice and opportunity. Part of the real fun of this show is how it grapples with many questions that I myself grapple with. I don't think that subsidies are going to be long-term solutions to the inequality in our country, and I do believe that people will have to identify their own opportunities, and act upon them to better themselves. Yet, it's very clear that opportunity is not a universal, and that acting upon those opportunities isn't as easy as it seems for a lot of people. The show asks these questions.

It's also VERY funny, and tells a cracking good story. It's not about preaching, it's about showing us people within these questions, and telling their stories. It's the best kind of storytelling, where the story is first, and it happens to illuminate these issues.

Anyway...long way around to this song:


Half The World

Half the world hates
What half the world does every day
Half the world waits
While half gets on with it anyway

Half the world lives
Half the world makes
Half the world gives
While the other half takes

Half the world is
Half the world was
Half the world thinks
While the other half does

Half the world talks
With half a mind on what they say
Half the world walks
With half a mind to run away

Half the world lies
Half the world learns
Half the world flies
As half the world turns

Half the world cries
Half the world laughs
Half the world tries
To be the other half

Half of us divided
Like a torn-up photograph
Half of us are trying
To reach the other half

Half the world cares
While half the world is wasting the day
Half the world shares
While half the world is stealing away

Feeling the Influence of the Boss Again

I am always amused at how my consumption of pop culture tends to come and go in floods. Nowhere is this more obvious than in music. I tend to gorge myself on an artist or band, then move on to another, rinse, repeat.

Springsteen consistently returns to me, soothes me, reaffirms me, and arms me to keep fighting, in the face of my darkest and most disillusioned times. Which, frankly, I am very much in right now. I keep coming back to his lessons about endurance and commitment. All this will pass, you must simply...work through it.

"And you've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above"
- from Tunnel of Love

 His work speaks to me on such an intimate, immediate, emotional level. He grapples with the biggest questions facing our society, and never lets the focus grow beyond the immediate. The personal. He never writes about class struggle, he writes about the man who toils in the the factory, or the woman in the car wash. He doesn't write about immigration policy, he writes about two Mexican brothers with no option but working in a meth lab in the Southwestern desert, or turtles eating the eyes of a poor traveler who didn't quite make it across the Rio Grande.

I wish more chroniclers of our times could make this simple connection...big ideas are based on personal stories, and personal stories are what can change hearts and minds. Tell a person's story, and it doesn't have to be positive, negative, or anything else. It has to be honest. That's all. Don't wrap it in a agenda. Just tell the fucking story. Trust the audience to make up their own damn mind.

"And the poets down here don't write nothing at all. They just stand back and let it all be"

- from Jungleland

I have struggled with my story. In my acting, in my music, in my life. I have felt lost far, for more often than I have not. I have felt abandoned, betrayed and misled. I have felt my time wasted, time that grows more and more precious to me as the proverbial little crystal in my palm hews more and more toward red. I have felt faith betrayed and loyalty shit on...

...and here I stand.

"Born down in a dead man's town. The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much. Till you spend half your life just covering up"

- from Born in the USA

Waiting for that spark of inspiration. Waiting for faith to be rewarded. Waiting for my own skills and abilities to carry me onward. Waiting for belief. Waiting for brotherhood.

It's no secret that, musically, I would love to be Springsteen-esque. I harbor a dream of a sound that is like Zeppelin fronted by Bruce. The powerful hard rock musicality merged with Springsteen's storytelling. I may not have the actual skill to accomplish it, but I reach for it. The challenge drives me onward.

As an actor, I yearn for the honest moment that The Boss always finds on stage, in his own idiom. The moment where performer and audience merge with an emotional release that illuminates something primal. There are moments when it comes, for me, they are fleeting but pure. I marvel at how the man can extend it to shows that stretch to three hours, or more. It's an act. We know that. I wasn't really Randall P. McMurphy, or Milt Shanks, either, but the connection, and the emotion, is real.

At this moment, as I write, Bruce is playing. I need him now. My strength is low, my faith is broken, but the work must be done.

There's a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain't got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted

The dogs on Main Street howl

'Cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain't a boy, no I'm a man

And I believe in a promised land

- from The Promised Land