I can't stand namedroppers, I would never talk about the time I was in a play with Ethan Hawke, Hope Davis, Blair Brown, Kathryn Hahn, Jimmi Simpson, Charlie Day, to not name a few (there are not even more big names but I can't recall as its been awhile) and then me and a bunch of other chorus types. I'm not talking about the best play I ever ensembled, I'm not talking about the best theatrical summer I ever had, I'm not talking about Williamstown Theatre Festival, the summer of '99, baby. oh, yeah.
I have a swarm of memories from that summer in the Berkshires-walking from one building to another and waving to Paul Newman and his sweetheart, Joanne Woodward (she was unbelievably even more attractive than he was) as they picnicked. Or on final curtain call for Camino Real when Jimmi Simpson bowed revealing a happy face painted on his naked tush to those of us on stage behind him. Or remarking to Bebe Neuwirth as she lazed on a couch in the greenroom, "It's like being in Toone Town, everywhere I look someone from the screen!" and her saying, "we're not cartoons, we're people." I thought "yikes! thats' exactly what a Toone would say!" But what strikes me most is that I was in the main beating artery of the acting world and had no idea until weeks after I got there.
It was the summer before my last year at The Actor's Studio, MFA program, (class of Bradley Cooper -oops, hand on mouth, I dropped one again? obscene!) and my teacher Sam Schacht recommended I go to Williamstown. He told me where the office was on Union Square, to go there and get an application. He said it was a swell place, he thought I would like it, do well there. I took him up on it because I had no other sense of what to do and when the time came to go I did. Never knowing I was to apprentice under some of the best talent in our country.
Throw your soul through every open door. - Adele
My parents dropped me off. There were a group of about thirty college looking kids hanging outside the building excitedly talking and (re)acquainting themselves. I felt a strong pulse around me, everyone seemed to know each other so I kept to myself. I spent the night in my assigned dorm room with an older woman who was tall in stature and short on words. I tried getting intel on what was going on, what to expect etc. She seemed to know as little as I did, I never saw her after that night. The next day there was an audition, everyone in the company, probably 500 or so people met on that bright summer morning, then sat in a dark theatre and watched as each of us appentices got up and auditioned on a lit stage with the monologue of our choice. It would be the second audition in my life, the first was in order to gain admittance to the MFA program. I knew from the forms they sent out that we were to come prepared with a monologue, that scared me. I had spent the last two years in classes without venturing from the cocoon of teacher and comraderie. I didn't feel connected to the few female parts in the contemporary plays I had read and so I wrote my own piece. I wrote it from the sadness kept at the deepest part of my being. I remember tears streaking the ink as my pen fumbled down the page. I must have ran the lines through my head a thousand times before falling asleep. Determined to express my heartache and confusion, I got up and bared my soul. By the time I got to the second line I heard the laughter and then giant booms of laughter after that. I thought with each line, now they'll get that this isn't funny and pushed harder to make my point and then they'd laugh even harder and on and on. At one point I was shouting over their guffaws in order to be heard and then I took it to a real quiet place and they came with me and when I concluded, applause. Feet stomping, whistles and applause. I thought "Well, that went differently than expected." Proof not to act with a result in mind.
When I got back to my seat the girl next to me whispered, "you nailed it."
We were auditioning for parts in the various plays produced at the festival. I got cast into the Main Stage production of Camino Real by Tennesee Williams starring Ethan Hawke and Hope Davis, I didn't know who she was but since I feel like I've seen her in everything. Since, I feel like I see everyone in everything. Everyone but me, just kidding.
A guy named Brad, different from "the Brad", befriended me, he gave me the lowdown pretty much on everything and little by slowly I realized where I was and how it could probably change my life. And knowing that made me act weird. And weirdos don't get asked back. How weird you ask? Well, the day before rehearsals for Camino started some girl told me that Charlie Day, (of then nothing but now, It's Always Sunny...and soon to be released Horrible Bosses), was this hugely talented important up and comer. So when he walked up and said "hi" at first rehearsal like a normal person, I looked up from under my eyebrows and then averted my eyes and cringed kind of like how my five year old does when I ask him to say "thank you" to a clerk or hug his Nana. That weird. I had never been like that before so I didn't know how to work my way out of it so I just stuck with it. Or like when Gwyneth Paltrow was outside taking a smoke break from rehearsing As You Like It, instead of saying, "I really like your work", as I passed her a light, or just passing it, I tried lighting it for her, burned my finger on the matches and tossed the pack at her. That weird. Awkward. And weird. Or like when I shook hands with Paul Newman and he said, "you did great in the play." My eyes welled up with tears and I said, "I love you, you're everything." Joanne Woodward rubbed my back. Other than those and a few more star struck social disasters like them it really was the best summer of my life. Before I had my little boys, and now playing with them on the beach is. At least there's nothing awkward about that and usually I know why they're laughing at me. Usually.
I have a swarm of memories from that summer in the Berkshires-walking from one building to another and waving to Paul Newman and his sweetheart, Joanne Woodward (she was unbelievably even more attractive than he was) as they picnicked. Or on final curtain call for Camino Real when Jimmi Simpson bowed revealing a happy face painted on his naked tush to those of us on stage behind him. Or remarking to Bebe Neuwirth as she lazed on a couch in the greenroom, "It's like being in Toone Town, everywhere I look someone from the screen!" and her saying, "we're not cartoons, we're people." I thought "yikes! thats' exactly what a Toone would say!" But what strikes me most is that I was in the main beating artery of the acting world and had no idea until weeks after I got there.
It was the summer before my last year at The Actor's Studio, MFA program, (class of Bradley Cooper -oops, hand on mouth, I dropped one again? obscene!) and my teacher Sam Schacht recommended I go to Williamstown. He told me where the office was on Union Square, to go there and get an application. He said it was a swell place, he thought I would like it, do well there. I took him up on it because I had no other sense of what to do and when the time came to go I did. Never knowing I was to apprentice under some of the best talent in our country.
Throw your soul through every open door. - Adele
My parents dropped me off. There were a group of about thirty college looking kids hanging outside the building excitedly talking and (re)acquainting themselves. I felt a strong pulse around me, everyone seemed to know each other so I kept to myself. I spent the night in my assigned dorm room with an older woman who was tall in stature and short on words. I tried getting intel on what was going on, what to expect etc. She seemed to know as little as I did, I never saw her after that night. The next day there was an audition, everyone in the company, probably 500 or so people met on that bright summer morning, then sat in a dark theatre and watched as each of us appentices got up and auditioned on a lit stage with the monologue of our choice. It would be the second audition in my life, the first was in order to gain admittance to the MFA program. I knew from the forms they sent out that we were to come prepared with a monologue, that scared me. I had spent the last two years in classes without venturing from the cocoon of teacher and comraderie. I didn't feel connected to the few female parts in the contemporary plays I had read and so I wrote my own piece. I wrote it from the sadness kept at the deepest part of my being. I remember tears streaking the ink as my pen fumbled down the page. I must have ran the lines through my head a thousand times before falling asleep. Determined to express my heartache and confusion, I got up and bared my soul. By the time I got to the second line I heard the laughter and then giant booms of laughter after that. I thought with each line, now they'll get that this isn't funny and pushed harder to make my point and then they'd laugh even harder and on and on. At one point I was shouting over their guffaws in order to be heard and then I took it to a real quiet place and they came with me and when I concluded, applause. Feet stomping, whistles and applause. I thought "Well, that went differently than expected." Proof not to act with a result in mind.
When I got back to my seat the girl next to me whispered, "you nailed it."
We were auditioning for parts in the various plays produced at the festival. I got cast into the Main Stage production of Camino Real by Tennesee Williams starring Ethan Hawke and Hope Davis, I didn't know who she was but since I feel like I've seen her in everything. Since, I feel like I see everyone in everything. Everyone but me, just kidding.
A guy named Brad, different from "the Brad", befriended me, he gave me the lowdown pretty much on everything and little by slowly I realized where I was and how it could probably change my life. And knowing that made me act weird. And weirdos don't get asked back. How weird you ask? Well, the day before rehearsals for Camino started some girl told me that Charlie Day, (of then nothing but now, It's Always Sunny...and soon to be released Horrible Bosses), was this hugely talented important up and comer. So when he walked up and said "hi" at first rehearsal like a normal person, I looked up from under my eyebrows and then averted my eyes and cringed kind of like how my five year old does when I ask him to say "thank you" to a clerk or hug his Nana. That weird. I had never been like that before so I didn't know how to work my way out of it so I just stuck with it. Or like when Gwyneth Paltrow was outside taking a smoke break from rehearsing As You Like It, instead of saying, "I really like your work", as I passed her a light, or just passing it, I tried lighting it for her, burned my finger on the matches and tossed the pack at her. That weird. Awkward. And weird. Or like when I shook hands with Paul Newman and he said, "you did great in the play." My eyes welled up with tears and I said, "I love you, you're everything." Joanne Woodward rubbed my back. Other than those and a few more star struck social disasters like them it really was the best summer of my life. Before I had my little boys, and now playing with them on the beach is. At least there's nothing awkward about that and usually I know why they're laughing at me. Usually.
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