Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Bombings

Buzzard's Bay, MA

This past weekend, I was leaving a funeral in Buzzard's Bay, MA for a beloved aunt on my wife's side of the family when I heard about the bombings in Boston. It was the first funeral I'd ever been to where hundreds of people showed up to pay their respects and say goodbye. There was a long line of people that wound its way around the funeral home and out the door into the parking lot.

I was very moved to see that this woman had touched so many lives. She had obviously made a difference in people's lives in her short time on this earth. It made me stop and think, "Have I touched as many lives? What is my contribution to this too short amount of time we all have? What small changes could I be making to make more of a difference?"

As we left Buzzard's Bay my wife, Heidi, reminded me that it was Patriot's Day. I had no idea what that was. I've lived in Boston, but I was working on Lion King at the time and going through the trauma of my divorce, so I didn't really participate in as many of the city's cultural events as I would have liked to.

She also said that it was the day of the Boston Marathon. I had just been thinking that one of things I would still like to do is run a marathon. In my imagination, I saw myself running the 26.2 miles looking around with joy and awe at the people around me going on their own journey. I could feel myself exerting my body, sweating, struggling, talking to myself, urging myself to finish, to just make it one more mile, one more mile. In my revery, I saw Heidi and my young son waiting for me at the finish line, smiling, happy, as I collapsed into their arms.

While imagining all of this, I hit the Twitter button on my phone. I wasn't looking for anything related to the marathon, just seeing what friends were up to. My imagined experience of running a marathon came crashing to a halt when one of my Twitter followers stated, "Oh no, I know some people running the marathon."

My heart jumped. I knew that something bad was happening. This was within 20 minutes of it actually happening. I was amazed at the speed news travels and I quickly searched the web and found out that bombs had gone off - right at the finish line.

The finish line - the goal - the hoped for future - nirvana - bliss - the end of struggle and the beginning of stories told about the race that happened...and suddenly all of that was twisted into a nightmare of human body parts and metal and death and destruction. I was saddened and angry by this news and wondered how best to respond.

How DO we continue to strive to make a difference when every other day the news is filled with these stories of shootings and bombings and revenge and death?

This was now the question on my mind as we drove on, away from Massachusetts and friends and family and back to New York, back to work, back to the students I teach every day at SUNY New Paltz and SUNY Dutchess Community College.

What do we DO?

As I stood before my first class, feeling defeated, feeling like they don't really care about the skills I am teaching them, feeling like they might give up in the face of all this violence, I had a revelation.

What do we do in the face of death and destruction?

We do what all artists have done and continue to do and will continue to do until our sun shrinks to a cold, white dwarf and we are no longer here. We CREATE.

We make something from nothing. We take our lives and experiences and skills and education and we create something new, something that never existed before and we share it with world and say, "Hey, take a look at this, what do you think?"

Sometimes, the world responds back with praise and money and fame and glory and sometimes just your best friend in the whole wide world sees the work and says, "Eh, try again." But the WORK of CREATION continues and will continue and that work, that drive to make beautiful and worthy and challenging things and films and plays and stories and myriad other forms, is light years away from the drive of the person who cobbled together some pressure cookers and ball bearings and blew up a small child and a family and other people who were there to celebrate the gloriousness of human beings and what they can accomplish when they put their minds and hearts and souls into something.

Those two bombs have hurt and killed and maimed. Their intention was to destroy and cause fear. But they cannot stop us from creating beauty out of chaos, they cannot maim our ability to love and reach out and create alone or together works that celebrate what it means to be a human being among human beings. They cannot stop art from happening and overwhelming the world with joy and beauty and light.

I urge all of you, in response to this tragic event, to create something beautiful, something worthy, something challenging, something funny as an oppositional response to this destructive event. Share your creations with me, with others, with the world or just hold it in the palm of your hand and know you have stepped on the other side of the line away from hate and fear and destruction.

My thoughts are with my Boston brothers and sisters today. May they find answers and closure and love and begin the journey of healing as soon as possible.

Fully Committed

It has been too long since I've last blogged about my experience acting in Becky Mode's one person play Fully Committed, but the journey has been an intensely fascinating one and I am going to be publishing a lot more commentary about the experience soon.

I've learned a hell of a lot from this job and I'm eager to share a list of about 30 amazing things that I have learned or have been brought to my attention by doing this show.

I stopped blogging right about day five or six into the rehearsals not because I was too busy or didn't get "around to it" but because the time and energy it took to get this show up and running left no time at all for sitting and thinking about the experience while I was in the moment of experiencing it. 

I had imagined when I started the process that I would be able to recap each day's rehearsal after I got home, but I often found myself continuing to work on the show long hours after I left the theatre and just crashing after the work. Now that we are open and heading into our last two weekends, I want to look back on the journey and share my thoughts from the past with this, my now future, self.

Needless to say, I survived the rehearsal process, but there were times when I was not quite sure that would be the case. I'll share all of that with you as well, but for right now, let this short blog be a placeholder. Here is a link to a review of the show for now and I may have a few comments on that review at a later date, too.

A review:

A Fully Committed Evening of Entertainment at Shadowland Theatre

A slide show and some improv with the various characters of the show

In the meantime, if you've seen the show, please contact me and let me know what you thought. We still have two more weekends and we play on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville, NY. Thank you for your patience while I explored the play as deeply as I was able to. I look forward to sharing more of this all-engaging, sometimes-frustrating, ever-fascinating, often-humbling process with you soon. Keep Living Life Creatively and I'll see you on the boards!

WP

http://imdb.me/waynepyle

Peace, Love & Misunderstanding or Day 3

Elizabeth Olsen, Jane Fonda and Catherine Keener in Bruce Beresford's PEACE, LOVE & MISUNDERSTANDING

I thought tonight's blog should be about the film PEACE, LOVE & MISUNDERSTANDING for several reasons. First, I'm in the film and the story about how I got involved is kind of interesting. Second, I'm feeling Peace, Love and Misunderstanding for the whole process of working on FULLY COMMITTED right now and wanted to share that with you as well.

I met Bruce Beresford, the film's director, after going to an open call for extra's for Peace, Love & Misunderstanding. They called me back in and I went to the BCDF film studios in Kerhonksen, NY to meet with the famous director. We had a chat, I read some scenes and he said that he'd love to have me do something in his film. He just wasn't sure what. I thought that was interesting but kind of unclear.

I showed up on the set that day as an extra for a dinner party scene. No one had sent me a script, and I didn't have any sides until that morning. I just had my nice suit and was hoping to sit next to Catherine Keener at the dinner table. Sure enough, they called us onto the set and I was just to Catherine's right. She introduced herself graciously, but was in complete concentration mode, fully in character and it was really amazing to watch her work. Bruce directed her gently, getting shades and nuances out of her character that must come across as really powerful on camera. I learned a lot from him that day as well. When I'm on set, I try to learn as much as I can while I'm there.

They served us our dinner party dinners and I was actually kind of hungry since I hadn't eaten all day, so I started to dig in. The props people asked me to take it easy on the food and I laughed, because I realized I was chowing down and everyone else was talking at the table, so they weren't eating very much. When we got to a certain part of the scene, the other extras were all agreeing with Kyle MacLachlan's character about how mundane and old-fashioned Eugene O'Neill's plays were and how they should never be performed. We all nodded in agreement, "yes, oh yeah, definitely" but it seemed kind of weird to me.

Prior to showing up on the set, I had done some research on my smartphone about O'neill and his plays, just in case some improv might be called for. Sure enough, Catherine stopped the scene and said, "I don't think everyone should agree with him, someone should disagree." So I said, "I have something." Then I choked back my asparagus, because I put myself out there. We ran the scene again and when everyone else was agreeing with Kyle's character I piped in and said, "Come on, the guy has like four Pulitzers" which is true. I may have exaggerated and said eight, I can't remember. I haven't even had a chance to see the movie yet, so I don't even know if I'm still in the scene. I am still listed in the credits on IMDb, so I'm assuming I'm still in the movie. I hope I get a chance to see it soon.

Anyway, Bruce cut and said he liked the line so keep it in. But I kept stepping on Kyle's lines so he told me to wait until after he said the line to throw mine in there. It was a funny and awkward moment and Kyle seemed kind of peeved with me, but I thought it was a good line and so did Catherine. After we were done shooting, she leaned in and said, "that's how you get ahead in this business." It was quite a thrill to work with and talk to someone whose acting work I really admire and I was also bumped up to a day player, which increased my salary significantly. It's the most I've been paid to improv to date!

So now, with day three of rehearsals under my belt for FULLY COMMITTED, I have to let you know I was a little freaked out tonight and was feeling a bit of misunderstanding for myself. I'm still worried about getting all the work done that needs to be done and I was kind of freaking out that I wasn't PERFECT in the part yet (after three rehearsals). My voice is also a little tired because we worked some pretty exhausting sections of the play today, so the worry about the voice holding up also came up for me. But after talking to Heidi, my wife, she helped me realize that I really just need to be focusing on where I am, not where I would like to be, because that is completely useless. She was right, of course, as she usually is, and I went back to work on my lines, still having some trepidation, but with a much more peaceful and loving attitude. As I worked on the lines and the work of the PLAY, I started to realize that, "oh yeah, I really enjoy doing plays and performing and since this frustration and the tiredness is all part of it, I should allow that to be there as well because it is all part of it and wishing that it wasn't there is using energy that I could be putting into getting the work done." Although it is frustrating right now, I have to trust the process and know that "the work will get me there, not the worry."

The film Peace, Love & Misunderstanding opens tonight and I'll be here in Ellenville at the Shadowland Theatre still working on my lines and blocking. I hope audiences will enjoy everyone's performances in the film, even the "party guest" who is stuffing his face and throws out a random line about O'Neill's Pulitzer Prizes. Let me know if you see the movie and if the line is still in there and whether or not you can tell Kyle MacLachlan was kind of annoyed with me. 

*Update: Saw the movie, line was cut, my facial expression was awesome! Keep LLC'ing people.

WP

http://imdb.me/waynepyle