Tuesday, April 25, 2006




Cassie Powell gets rave in SF Chronicle

Cassie Powell got this review for her performance in Shove, Custom Made Theater's current production. Congratulations Cassie! We at Mother of Invention salute you!

Shove me tender

"The alleged subway murderer is pretty creepy in Ross Pasquale's unsettlingly disturbed performance, but Cassie Powell is even scarier as the relentlessly upbeat, obsessed jury forewoman who feels empowered after having convinced her peers to acquit him. An intriguingly conceived and brightly portrayed Genette ( Powell) is the pulsing heart of Mark Eisman's "Shove," a recent Los Angeles hit receiving its second staging in a Custom Made Theatre production that opened Friday at Custom's Off-Market Theaters home.

It's an intriguing play that could profit from a more tightly paced outing than it receives at the hands of director Christopher Jenkins. Set in subway stations and other locations in New York (a striking, compact set by Bruce Walters with dynamic lighting and sound effects by Ted Crimy), "Shove" explores the fatal intersection of four lonely lives with an edgy wit and quirky originality.

Genette is a runaway who was taken in by the kindly, maternal newspaper vendor (a slow, steady A.J. Davenport) for whom she works. Played by Powell on a continual, preternatural high, she's still walking on air from having saved the accused man's life, having had to turn around eight other jurors to do it. One of those jurors, Selden (a shy, immature loner turn by Todd Brotze), has fallen in love with her -- an obsession she encourages and frustrates with breezy lack of concern as she pursues her conviction that the jurors and defendant should bond in post-trial harmony.

Powell strikes the right note as the cheerfully obsessed, idealistic stalker who won't let Pasquale's anguished Lowell retreat into his shell. Eisman develops the relationships between Genette, Selden and Lowell with engaging skill, though in a few too many short, choppy scenes. Jenkins calls too much attention to the structural problems with slack pacing and by punctuating the scenes too repetitively with subway effects. An intriguing effort loses momentum as it moves toward what should be its relentless climax."
Posted by Andrew Wood Acting Studio at 9:55 AM 0 comments




Wednesday, April 19, 2006




the man with the magic hands

Part of the way that I have been working on promoting greater
mind/body integration in myself is through myofascial massage, a type
of deep-tissue massage related to and derived from Rolfing and Feldenkrais, two other
deep-tissue massage techniquse. Both Rolfing and Feldenkrais have been
used at the Julliard School as ways of developing actors' physical
potential. Myofascial is quite intense, bordering on (but not ultimately) painful, but the
potential rewards are great. We have all kinds of knots and
maladjustments that have developed over the years, and this form of
massage seeks to release them. Sometimes it can release emotional
energies that have been stuck somewhere, so the effect can be quite potent.
However, as these energies get released and reabsorbed (I really don't
sound like I grew up on the East Coast, do I?), it is possible to find a new physical and emotional freedom.

I like the practitioner I have been working with, Stephen Tynan, a lot. He is well-versed in acupressure and Chinese medicine as well, so his insights have a breadth to them that I really appreciate. He is also very reasonably-priced, as these things go. His email is stynan@babwa.com.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Andrew
Posted by Andrew Wood Acting Studio at 1:47 PM 0 comments




Tuesday, April 18, 2006




the word from New York

I've been sounding off recently in class and in the blog about the importance of physical training for actors. One of our number, Jay Kiecolt-Wahl, just visited New York, where there is a remarkable exhibition about the human body, featuring actual cadavers that have been opened up to provide us with unprecedented visual access to the systems that make us go. For more information:

http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com

PS Notice that the graphics involve ball-throwing!
Posted by Andrew Wood Acting Studio at 12:42 PM 0 comments







bubble

I rented Steven Soderbergh's latest effort Bubble last night, about a triangle between three empyoees in a doll factory in an American small town. The actors were "regular people" (i.e. non-actors) that Soderbergh found. The woman who plays Martha gives an excellent performance. The film is good enough, certainly not great, but I enjoyed it for the perfomance I mentioned (the detective is quite good as well), and for the way that they showed what this kind of world really looks like. It is familiar to all of us, yet because it is not at all glamorous, it is relatively rare that it is treated with this kind of candor on screen.

Another interesting point is that I read somewhere that Soderbergh released the film in the cinemas, on DVD, and through cable TV all at the same time, attempting a kind of marketing coup. Not sure how much of a tremor he really made, but it could be shades of things to come.
Posted by Andrew Wood Acting Studio at 9:13 AM 0 comments




Saturday, April 15, 2006




of interest to film actors

In my last post, I wrote about a film called Friends with Money. I mentioned a few of the performances that stood out, and one was that of an actor named Simon McBurney. He was magnetic, real, precise, funny, physically animated, emotionally full. In short, everything you could look for in an actor. The performance was one of the best I have seen in a long while. There was something familiar about his name to me, and I checked IMDB, and then remembered where I had see his name. He is the founder of an internationally acclaimed theater company in London called Theatre de Complicite. I saw their work at the Lincolcn Center Festival perhaps eight years ago. The production was transformational, meaning the set was minimal, and the actors' bodies accomplished much of the constant scenic transformation. We've all seen this kind of thing, but this company managed to do it so inventively that it seemed totally new. The actors were clearly all highly trained movement specialists, who had remarkable powers of articulation throughout their entire bodies. If I remember rightly, they studied a rigorous form of movement training called Le Coq. the actor in the movie, Simon McBurney, had directed the production I had seen, and had choreographed it. Anyway, I found it significant that this actor who had stood out so strongly in the film had had such a strong background in theater and in theatrical movement specifically. It supports my ongoing claim that the differences between acting for theater and film get way too much play, that the important things is learning to be engaged with others in a truthful,compelling way. It also underscores the fact that getting a solid, thorough movement background is an enormous asset to all actors, regardless of their professional goals.
Posted by Andrew Wood Acting Studio at 9:24 PM 0 comments




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