A Little Positive Feedback Never Hurt Anyone

Oh, I am a pretty girl

I ain't gonna lie, this...

(And I really hope I'm not stepping out of line sharing - names omitted [well, except mine] to protect the innocent)

I've seen you in several shows now and every time I've looked at the program at intermission and gone, "wait, that was Mark Pracht?". That's a compliment, btw...you've got a chameleon thing going on. I particularly loved what you did in "Sound of a Yellow Flower" - that was one of the more memorable characters I've seen onstage in a while.

 Is something I've needed to hear in recent months, especially from someone who isn't married, or in some other way related to me. I love you, CByrd, but you always see the best. Granted, I always see the worst, so that evens it all out.

Still, I have this horrible thing about myself and my work, I take compliments very, very badly. A lot of times, I don't even want to hear 'em. I hardly ever believe them. I'm always, without fail, the last person out of the dressing room, and that has a lot to do with not feeling comfortable with stepping out to the group of friends that's there, waiting to talk to you. I always figure that, y'know, people want to say something nice when they know you. They probably even believe it, I'm not saying my friends lie to me, just that...people who know you want the best for you. They look for the best. That's what friends are for.

What was particularly wonderful and sweet about that complement above was that it came pretty much out of nowhere, completely unexpected, and from someone who, frankly, doesn't know me overly well. A person who's experience with me comes, mainly, from my work. A theatre professional, yes, but not a regular comrade. I kinda just stopped me in my tracks, like a kick to the head.

I mean, that's distilling the idea of, well, respect to it's essence.

Not overly relevant, but funny

It's what all of those awards are supposed to be, the Oscars, the Emmys, whatever. The recognition of your peers. Of course, what's so very difficult about that is that friendship and ambition tend to overwhelm the purity. I mean, I was in a metropolitan area for several years that lived and died by these "peer voting awards," and it was so annoying. You'll find yourself voting for friends just because they're friends, not because they represent the real cream of the crop. Worse, you see people lobbying for votes. It turns into a popularity contest, because you're not a group of professional peers, but a gaggle of friends.

I was just jazzed to hear something really positive from someone who didn't have to say it. Maybe I'm exposing my own insecurities and ego issues with that statement, but I truly don't care. I've been doing this too damn long to not take those moments that really make you feel, well, accomplished, and really cherish them. Especially when the vast majority of what we get is pretty negative, or, at best, backhanded, weak compliments.

Ahhh, Friday

Extremely short handed at work today. Which, I guess, is just the perfect way to wrap up a week that's been fairly stressful and depressing. I don't want to get into all that, because, well, what's the point? I can vent all day, and the problem(s) will persist. It's a "theatre thing," of course, so no worries about the personal life and all that.

I did manage to find a new suit this week, which is great. We've got some weddings to attend over the next few weeks, and folks seem to frown upon my "jeans and sports coat" look. Last wedding we went to, I trotted out the last suits I got (over a decade ago...yeah, I don't dress up often), and found that I could manage to get the pants on, but it felt like I was getting pinched in half. The evening ended up being fine, I guess, but I was not comfortable.

I went to Macy's, and found a jacket and pants that fit very well. The sleeves felt a bit short, which is a recurring problem for me an my "gorilla arms." I started talking to the salesman about having some alterations done, and he assured me, strongly, that the cut of the jacket was perfect for me. I mean, what the hell do I know about suits, or fashion, at all? He says this is the "cool" look.

Apparently, It's OK to look like Frankenstein when you reach out while wearing a suit.

Ok, it's not really THAT extreme. But , hey, you learn something new everyday.

Anyway, in all other respects, a lovely suit. Better fitting than pretty much any I've ever owned. I also like the material and the lining. Top it off, it was ON SALE!!!

So there you go.

We're into the final, no more chances, weekend of The Sound of a Yellow Flower.

 As I write this there are only three more performances. Tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday afternoon. Last chance, so...don't say I didn't warn you.

The weekend will be fairly busy, the show, of course, and auditions on Saturday and Sunday. Both interesting shows, but one more than the other. It's weird to be auditioning for stuff so far in advance, but, I gues that's how things are going....

Along those lines...

I think I've finally come to a place where a new way of looking at how I give myself over to work needs to happen. For a very long time, I have tried to steer myself away from attitudes and actions I felt were "selfish." I had this belief that good will and loyalty were destined for reward. That you could stand up for yourself and still be deferential to those around you. Well, in recent weeks/months, I've found that I need to adjust that attitude.

I think I need to be more selfish, more protective of myself. Not just in actions (because, I figure at least a few people already think I am), but also in spirit. I'm well and truly sick of feeling guilty when I take actions for my own good, or to protect myself. Not only do I need to act for my own good, because no one else is going to do it for me, but I also have to not feel bad about it. I've spent too damn much time agonizing over how people would think of me.

Really, it only matters what I think of me. I don't want to intentionally piss anyone off, but, damn it, if you're my friend you ought to understand when I take an action that is for myself, it's for a reason. If you're upset that I would do that, then I guess maybe you need to re-assess our relationship.

To be clear, I'm not looking to be an asshole. I'm just looking to not be steamrolled, to not end up in situations where I feel crappy and depressed. Your friendship is always welcome, but I'm not putting my own feelings on the back-burner anymore.

...Yeah, I know. That'll last a week.

Thinking of Typecasting

Typecasting is a fact of life in this business. It ain't ever going to go away. I look the way I look, every actor does, and that look, whatever it may be, lends itself to certain roles more than others. I know I won't ever play a role where one of the specific requirements is to be weak or frail-looking. I'm 6' 3", and come in at over 200 pounds. I cannot change that.

Let's take The Sound of a Yellow Flower, for example.

It's a good show, the cast is great, Dustin wrote a solid piece, and Letitia put it together beautifully. I like my role, and it does have some inherent challenges for me, I'm not trying to denigrate the work that's on display, because I think it's very worthy...YOU SHOULD SEE IT.

...But it's also well within my "safety zone," my "type," if you will. I knew how to play Nikolai very quickly, and it all became a matter of refining. Chipping away, and adding, parts to a character, on a very broad-based level, I have played many, many times before. That's valid, and God knows, we're all a "type." I feel no shame in playing within that type when needed. It certainly doesn't really make things easier, I'm usually dripping sweat when I exit the stage from my last moment of Yellow Flower. It feels good. It feels like I worked for it.

The conehead strikes

Still, physical effort is only part of the deal. Endurance and creating a physical presence on stage have never been my problems. What I don't do in this show is worry that I'm not getting across what I want to the audience. The reasoning is two-fold, Dustin wrote a solid script, in regards to Nikolai's motivations, I knew how to play the character from long practice, and Letitia kept me from flying away from it.

It helps that the text itself gives me some great "left turns" away from the expected with Nikolai. I thank Dustin for that, profusely. I can't just "phone it in," thank God. Plus, Tisha would kick my ass.

What this has gone a long way to say is that I'm more than happy to play my type. I'm especially happy to do so in such a positive and supportive environment. Top that off with the fact that Strangeloop, as a company, really didn't know me at all. From their perspective, there's no reason to trust me with something outside my type. I understand that. I absolutely, 100% respect that.

Seriously, what is going on with my skull?

So, what I search for, and yearn for, are the roles, like in Yellow Flower, where the type takes strange turns and surprises you. Those roles, or the ones that are flexible enough to allow me to be the "big guy," and still play a teacher, or a scientist, or a writer.

I've played plenty of cops, crooks, soldiers, wife-beaters, thugs, etc. I'm not going to say I won't ever play them again, because, y'know...I haven't played Stanley Kowalski yet. I used to say, in college, that typecasting just meant you got all the best roles of that type, which is true, but you get older and realize you also get offered all the not-so-great roles of that type, too. I was young, and just wanted to get cast.

I mean, I still do. Who doesn't?

Thing is, how much of my own desire to try more and do more has to be balanced against that. As I've gotten older, I want to be challenged more. I flat turned down roles recently because I read the plays and realized that I could sleepwalk through the role. I could give absolutely zero effort, and still fulfill the needs of the production.

What the hell is the point of that?

I love the feeling of being scared of what you have to do, of fulfilling the needs of the role. Where I've felt that creeping sense of "maybe I really can't pull this off." It's that feeling, that fear, that makes me feel on top of the world on stage...If I can pull it off.

Because, if you don't? Ugggghhh.

That, however, is the point.

What's the use of doing this if you feel like every, single time you walk out there, you've got it under control? Where's the danger? Where's the risk? How can I ever fail? How can something amazing happen if there's no risk? No chance of failure?

I mean, it's not like I'm making a living at this. I can see myself playing anything I'm asked to, if a living wadge is involved. The shows I did at the Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville weren't challenging on pretty much any level (except the music, oh God, the music), and were 100% pure typecasting. I didn't care. I was making a living and surfing, and the shows were fun to do, because the check was the thing that made me feel fulfilled. I was a working actor, I was making a living.

It wasn't something I wanted to do forever, but it was a job.

I begin to wonder about my longevity in this business. Maybe I'm just freaking out because, not 3 years ago, I was working constantly and just busy as hell. Now, I routinely face months of inactivity and the lack of motivation that breeds in me. I hate it so much. It makes me feel useless, and a failure.

Which, of course, is a sure sign that I've wrapped too much of my self-worth into acting. God help me. Sure, I can write, or work on music, or whatever other projects I can dream up for myself. At the end of the day, however, I'm just not as good at that stuff as I am at acting (though, I'm sure some would debate me on that one- Ha! Ha!).

When I am not working, I just get depressed around other people in the business. That is my problem, I take all the responsibility, but the unfortunate thing is that others have to see the effects. I apologize for that, but, hey, if we didn't have psychological quirks, we probably wouldn't be in this insane business.

Anyway...Yeah, it's been another "vomiting up my personal bullshit" blogs.

...And So We Come to Thursday

I started a blog post earlier, and then deleted it, realizing the inherent whiny nature of what I had written.

It was a self-pity post. Mooning over yet another opportunity lost, a show I dearly, dearly wanted, and did not get. A loss that, try as I might, I still cannot take personal responsibility for. A role I think I could've played extremely well.

I feel cheated.

I feel angry, and I am not ready to let it go just yet.

Yet, I also don't feel the need to vent my spleen all over you, my loyal readers. So, we shall proceed to one of my patented "all over the place" blogs.

The work on the "Hayoth album project" continues. I've kinda swung back into it. The idea of making music has come around, and got exciting again.


I reserve the right to eventually reject this as the actual album cover, or not.

Picking up a new footswitch controller for my amp has helped me discover some new tones, as well as giving me a lot more control over the effects built into the amp. With my previous footswitch, I could only set up 4 amp presets, and I was stuck with the settings. I couldn't switch off the reverb, or turn the phaser on and off, without twiddling knobs on the front of the amp itself. Allowing me, with a tap of the toe, to alter the tone pretty drastically. So, I'm pretty excited about that.

Does give me a bit more to pay off on the Guitar Center card, but...12 months same-as-cash makes it all good. I'm thinking after this is paid off, I'm going to take the jump to Pro Tools, and start recording directly onto my computer. I hear the learning curve is a bit steep, but I've increasingly found working with only 8 tracks a bit limiting.

I think the other thing that's got me jumping more with music is finding a new album that's reall inspiring. Warp Riders is really kicking my ass.


Just buy the damn thing, will ya?

Yeah, I know I just wrote about it, but...it's great. I've grown more and more attached to it as I listen. I've actually had to force myself NOT to listen to it, so I wouldn't burn out on it. I haven't had to do that since Them Crooked Vultures (and I'm sure you're all still annoyed with me about gabbing on about that record.) There's something about the way this record sounds that really makes me want to play, and create my own stuff.

I still wish I had a band, but...sometimes you just learn to live with things.

So, yeah...I expect more progress. I still haven't recorded any vocals. I'm probably afraid of it. I really like how the music is coming out, and I think I have 5 solid tracks (my goal is almost always to end up with 12). My fear is that I'll start singing, and ruin them.

Again...wish I had a band. Or just a real singer, I guess.

Track titles are not set in stone, of course, but we have, 'Zep," "Gamble," "Reason," "We've Got Forever For This to Be Over," and "Poseidon." I am really, really aiming for a early 2011 "release." If I don't pick up a new show after The Sound of a Yellow Flower, I figure it can actually happen pretty easily. I mean, I'm almost halfway there.


It's yellow, it's a flower, it's making a sound....

Ah, Yellow Flower. I'm feeling pretty strong about what I'm doing in this show, and I think it's going to be very good. I've been very impressed with the Strangeloop folks, in general. I mean, yeah, it is another "thug"-kinda role, but there's a lot more going on. Something I am very, very thankful for.

We had a run last night that was...well, not spectacular. I was pretty disappointed in myself. We've only got two more rehearsals before we go into tech, so you want to be getting really solid and strong, but, y'know, it's not uncommon for there to be some fatigue at this stage. Still, it pissed me off. I'm supposed to be better than that.

The one thing I want to say. This is going to be a fine show. It may not connect with every audience, but our playwright, Dustin Spence, and director, Letitia Guillaud, have shaped something that I think will be surprising and interesting. For myself, there's a lot of areas to explore and things to play that are different.

What I'm saying is, it's worth your time. See it. If I've led you astray, you can berate me about it after.

Coming Up For Air

Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning.

There are times when I feel like the whole of my life is pushing in on me, and threatening to pull me under. Pull me into a place where I start to forget what's important, and how every part of my life feeds into what's important. As I have said before, my goal right now is to lead a creative life. To know that, when I pass on, something will be left behind to mark how I thought and felt while I was there.

I'd love to make a living doing that, but I've learned, through experience, that many times the things that will pay you are not the things you want to hang your soul, and your fullest efforts, upon. That, maybe, in order to give of yourself fully, in a creative sense, you have to accept that there will always be the things you MUST do, as well.

I also have become very aware that acting in the theatre is really a silly way to accomplish my goal. It's perhaps the most transitory of forms, gone before you even realize what it meant. Your greatest moments of honesty and connection will come and go without even a moment to savor them. To be able to savor them would mean they were never as true and connected as they felt.

Yet, I do love it, and I am fully aware it's the creative act I'm (probably) best at. Of all the things I have tried my hand at, it is the one that feel natural and instinctive more often than not. When things happen without conscious effort or planning. When you can set yourself riding on a flow of honesty.

I enjoy writing and playing music almost as much, as creative releases, but those are such solitary endeavors, lacking the moment when you look into the eyes of a partner and feel a whole world existing between you. Music could be like that, I suppose, but since my path has taken me away from a "band" situation for so long, it's become an craft of solitude for me. Not to mention that they do feel like WORK. I believe myself to be talented in each, but not even close to the facility I find in myself in the best moments on stage.

I make no secret of the fact that, on the acting front, the last year and a half has been immensely frustrating for me. Projects I was deeply invested in being a part of were lost, or denied, and the projects I did become involved with, while fun or challenging in nearly every case, never really connected with me deep down. I felt rudderless and adrift, auditions came and went, scripts were read, and nothing excited me. Or, if it did, I was let know, in one way or another, that "they" weren't excited about me.

My energy drifted away from me on the projects that I was excited about, in a haze of seeming apathy, and lack of support, from people around me. Even within my home theatre company I felt pigeonholed and typecast, looked at more for my physical size than anything having to do with craft or talent.

It was like fucking college all over again.

My work suffered. I was easily distracted, I lost focus. My skills seemed to slip away from me. I found myself unable to simply remember my damn lines, at times.

Perhaps I was spoiled. I had come off several shows in a row that I felt pushed me, and made an impact. Maybe they didn't sell like gangbusters, or garner awards, but I would remember them, and they would change me for the better. I was moving forward, career-wise, or in my personal development, and that made me feel very good.

Then, it stopped.

...And here I have been ever since. Projects thwarted, ideas rejected, feeling the sense that my "career," such as it is, was going to swallow me whole. That it would drown me.

Sometime during the middle of all this, my friends LeighB and DustinS came to me with a script Dustin had written called The Sound of a Yellow Flower. Leigh was directing a reading of the piece, and Dustin had, apparently, specifically wanted me to read the role of Nikolai. The script was based on t short one-act Dustin had done for the Loopshop Festival his company, Strangeloop Theatre, does every year. The original one-act didn't feature Nikolai, at all.

I'm going to be honest, I said yes more out of a desire to do SOMETHING at a point when I didn't feel I could pay someone to cast me. The character seemed more of the same, the big, thuggy guy. The heavy, the antagonist, the authority figure, the scary dude. I've done that. I've done it A LOT. I can't say that the reading changed my mind about it.

So when Dustin contacted me in, I think it was April, about reprising the role in a full production this Fall, I was a little hesitant. There's something to be said about beggars not being choosers, but there's also something to be said about an actor having only one power, the ability to say "no." Really, the only other thing on the radar was my company's Fall show, which featured...Yeah, you guessed it, another big, antagonist character. Rock and a hard place, is what it felt like.

Y'see, I hadn't even read the full production re-write Dustin sent to me. I hadn't read the new scenes, the changes, the way that Nikolai had changed and evolved. He'd become something new, and far deeper than what I'd read before. I hadn't expected the open hearts and minds from Dustin, and Director LetitiaG, to the ideas I had about him, and the play. I'm embarrassed to say I didn't expect to be challenged, and enjoy the role as much as I am.

I guess what I can say, at least on a professional level, is that, right now, I feel myself swimming for the surface. I think I can see the light from above. I think The Sound of a Yellow Flower is going to be a damn fine show, the cast is great, the people behind the scenes are great, and, if you live in Chicago, you'd be a damn fool to miss it.

Monday Thinking

I find myself sitting here with very little to say. It was an extremely busy weekend.

Took a road trip out to Dyersville, IA for a wedding on Saturday night, and then zipped out to the Field of Dreams movie site Sunday morning before we drove back.

The movie site is pretty cool, and I'm really glad we went. The movie has such magic, and hits right at the heart of the father/son dynamic that seems to get me every time. One thing I will caution is that, if you expect to really feel something out there on that baseball diamond, you will be disappointed.

It's a beautiful spot, especially right now when the corn is high, and that is very much worth a stop. There were some folks trying to get a pick-up game together, and so I got to take a couple of pitches, and that was nice. Don't expect to spend more than about a half hour.

The traffic on the trip back was nightmarish, but we made it. All good. I had intended to head down to Market Days on Halstead last night to catch Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, but I was so tired, I just collapsed in front of the TV after playing the guitar a bit.

Friday night was rehearsal for Sound of a Yellow Flower with Strangeloop Theatre in Evanston. well the rehearsals are in Evanston, the show is going up at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago, proper. That probably means nothing to my readers outside of Chicago, but Yellow Flower is rehearsing, mainly, in Evanston, which is a northern suburb of Chicago. Generally speaking, it's about 45 minutes to an hour by L train to get up there.

I get off work at 6:00, and rehearsal starts about 7:00.

So, yeah. It's pretty quick, and not a lot of room for messing around, or, y'know, food. Getting up to Evanston isn't the problem, really, it's the coming back at night. I get in really late pretty much no matter what I do.

...But that's the job, y'know. Hi-Diddley-Dee, and all that fun stuff.

This, however, is starting to compound, I think. Rehearsal is pretty much always a good time for me, Yellow Flower is absolutely no exception (Strangeloop is good people), but I have to admit, I am feeling run-down these days. I'm not sleeping well, lots of odd nightmares and waking up feeling disoriented during the night. Lot of things weighing on me right now, I think.

(No, it's nothing personal...CByrd and I are fine)

I guess I'm angry about a lot of things, and, where many times this would only motivate me to try to "make them better," I feel completely removed from them now. I just wonder if I even care anymore. If I don't care, why do I keep going through the motions?