Saturday, May 02, 2009
Big Art flop
Big Art Group, though, was another story. I had heard some good things, and the pictures looked intriguing. When I sat down in the theater, though, I began to feel uneasy. My frame of reference for multimedia work is the incomparable Wooster Group, and one of the many things that was so dazzling about them was the way in which the multimedia equipment that decked the stage was always arranged and rearranged with an eye toward the overall visual composition of the landscape: human figures, scenic elements, video monitors, and mic stands conspired to form an eternally arresting composition, and this was even true upon entering the theater, in the time before the performance started.
The stage for Big Art Group was crowded with multimedia equipment that seemed to be arranged in no particular way relative to the rest of the space. There was nothing alluring or artful about the array of screens and mics and other stuff that lay in waiting for the performance to begin.
It turned out that this was shades of things to come. The performance was big and loud. The acting was not good. The subject matter, insofar as I could even grasp it at all, was glib and devoid of interest. The director seemed conflicted about whether we should watch the actors in the center of the stage or their projected faces on the giant screens above, and this conflict was not even remotely aesthetically interesting, just confused. I lasted about twenty-five minutes.
As much as I love California, I often wonder what new talents are exploding onto the scene back in NYC. This is one I won't need to wonder about anymore.
(This post is from the blog of the Mother of Invention Acting School in Los Angeles and San Francisco (www.utteracting.com): an acting class in Los Angeles and San Francisco for serious, motivated students.)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tim Rossi lands role in indie film Sedona's Rule
http://www.sedonasrule.com/
Congratulations Tim! Looking forward to seeing it!
A
(This post is from the blog of the Mother of Invention Acting School in Los Angeles and San Francisco (www.utteracting.com): an acting class in Los Angeles and San Francisco for serious, motivated students.)
Sunday, April 26, 2009
the Beatles' apprenticeship
He goes on to argue that talent is not some inborn, native ability, but simply the desire to practice, to make enormous sacrifices and compromises to be able to do what one loves. He says that it was the Beatles' genius to see the Hamburg gig as an opportunity, and not as an invitation to indentured servitude.
Few people recognize this as the truth about acting. What we associate with actors is the glamour and the slick presentation of the movies, but most actors never see even a moment of fame, and the ones that do find that it isn't what it's cracked up to be. What doesn't get seen is the endless hours of blood, sweat and tears that go into doing anything well. My class gives people a taste of that: an enormous amount is asked of the students in the way of time and preparation. I do my best to communicate the happiness of this challenge, this burden. "We must do what is difficult because it is difficult", wrote Rainer Maria Rilke. It is a message that not everyone is ready to hear, much less to embrace. But it's the ones that can lap up that vinegar like it's honey and ask for more that will come to know the true rewards of a creative life.
The Gladwell piece:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/04/26/gps.fareed.intv.malcolm.gladwell.cnn
Thursday, April 16, 2009
we don't know what we know
.
Then it dawned on me: Church and Market is close to the Castro, and there was some part of me that was looking forward to ogling, and being ogled by, the other gays at the Church and Market 24. But the funny thing is, my thoughts prior to the coaching session materializing about going to the gym had had nothing to do with this: I had been dreading the hour on the bike and the accompanying discomfort of the bicycle seat, the ennui, the CNN rightwing spokesmodels on the monitors with close spationing that didn't work as often as it did, and hoping the podcast I had in my iPod would make the time go by. I wasn't aware of contemplating potential eye candy ogling. And yet, somehow, I was banking on that prospect, because when it was potentially yanked away by the prospect of going to Potrero instead, I found myself mentally bemoaning that loss.
The point is that we have instinctual, preconscious ways of weighing prospects, possibilities, people, relationships, and courses of action. This is a big reason why the work of finding appropriate objectives to pursue is as challenging as it is: our real investment in our world and our practices and activities is often grasped only at this preconscious level, and yet grasping these things is often precisely what is necessary to unlock a scene. When it is our own world, we understand these things instinctively and, of course, require no explanation, except, perhaps, in situations where we find ourselves inclined to conduct ourselves in way we neither understand nor desire. But when embodying a character in a fictional world, we don't have the same automatic understandings, and often need to work things out in order to fully enter into them.
And that, my friends, is what they pay me the big bucks for.
(This post is from the blog of the Mother of Invention Acting School in Los Angeles and San Francisco (www.utteracting.com): an acting class in Los Angeles and San Francisco for serious, motivated students.)
Sunday, April 12, 2009
you never know
Here's what one of them said:
“He sat next to me in my acting class. Our instructor paired us up for a scene, so we exchanged numbers to rehearse. He kept sending me flirty texts and asked me out that weekend. Our first date was a picnic dinner in Griffith Park and a visit to the Griffith Observatory. We had an amazing view of downtown LA and the Hollywood sign. We kissed under the stars and were surrounded by city lights. It was so romantic and felt like it was straight out of a movie.” --Adrienne Tilden
And as a dating pool, you can't do better than my students. If I do say so myself.
(This post is from the blog of the Mother of Invention Acting School in Los Angeles and San Francisco (www.utteracting.com): an acting class in Los Angeles and San Francisco for serious, motivated students.)
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