The Journey Begins...

Studying my script for FULLY COMMITTED while at rehearsal
for Half Moon Theatre's 10-minute Play Festival. 

Here I am. At last. In Ellenville, NY. It's the night before my first rehearsal for Shadowland Theatre's FULLY COMMITTED, Becky Mode's one-person play about an out-of-work actor who works in the reservations office of a four-star restaurant in Manhattan. 

I moved into the actor housing, had dinner with my wife, Heidi, and my son and then saw them off as they headed home, worked on the first third of the play, Skyped with my Dad and Heidi, and decided to log on to Blogger to put down my first thoughts before we begin.

Nervousness is still there. This feeling of a long journey that has to be undertaken in a short amount of time is still there. Uncertainty over lines and character choices and storytelling is still there. The fear is no longer as prominent because I've spent some time with the script and I've been saying the lines and thinking about the people who inhabit this play every day.

It will be interesting to me, and I hope to you as well, how the process will work to get this play to where it needs to be for opening night. As I work through each section, I'm beginning to visualize ways to make the characters more real, more true, more wanting of something authentic and less just "voices" that I change to distinguish between who is speaking.

For those of you who don't know the play, Sam, the out-work-actor, arrives at his reservation job in the basement of a ritzy restaurant and his manager, Bob, and co-worker, Sonya, aren't there. The phones are ringing off the hook and he gets right to work putting everyone he can on hold and trying to handle everyone else's problems as efficiently as possible.

Needless to say, problems escalate at a faster rate than Sam can keep up with them, and as he tries to keep everything from falling apart he is also trying to figure out how to get home for Christmas to stay with his recently widowed father and he is waiting to hear if he is going to get a second callback for a part in a show at Lincoln Center.

The actor playing Sam also plays all of the 39 other characters who try to yell, plead, cry and cajole Sam into giving them what they want. By the end of the play, Sam has grown, based on some feedback he receives from his agent's receptionist and his willingness to stand up for himself.

It's a fun piece and will be physically and mentally challenging. I'm at that point now where I'm looking forward to seeing what the rehearsal process will bring out of me as an actor and a person. I'm tired as I write this, but look forward to tomorrow with a kind of nervous excitement like that feeling I remember getting when I stepped on to the big yellow school bus for that first day of school when I was a kid.

Right now, I've got to get some sleep so I'll be well rested. I'm going use one of my tried and true memorization techniques which is to put on my earphones with a copy of the play I recorded (on a cassette tape, no less, remember those?), so I can drift off listening to the story and hoping my unconscious mind will pick up some of the words and plot points my conscious mind is still resisting.

I've got several places in the script where I'm still not quite sure what happens next, but I know as I take the risks needed to play each character fully and as Brendan Burke, the director, guides the telling of the story, my body and mind will eventually start to know what part of the story needs to be told at just the right time to be effective. It's all a race against the clock of opening night, which I can already hear ticking LOUDLY in my ears. (or maybe that's just my high blood pressure)

They say "the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step," but I say it can begin with one word spoken on a stage. I'll be posting again tomorrow after rehearsal. 

WP
http://imdb.me/waynepyle

10 Chances to Make Great Theatre

Half Moon Theatre's 10-minute Play Festival at the Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, NY was an exciting night of theater that really showcased our company and the playwrights who participated in the event.

The theme of this year's festival was anniversaries and it was the fifth anniversary of Half Moon Theatre being established. The first play was GUS AND GLORY by Darrah Cloud, the director of the newly formed Playwright's Collective. The play is a wonderful exploration of how we relate to each other (or not) in relationships by showing a couple who go to a drunk psychic and become possessed by the spirits of their dead mother and uncle.

AUNT PITTIPAT is a tour-de-force monologue written by David Simpatico about the first anniversary of 9/11 and remembering the loss of a loved one who was more than what the New York Times called, "A Planner of Family Fun." The writing is lyric, powerful and moving and the images will stay with you for awhile, much like the images from that event.

DEDICATED, by Suzanne Bradbeer, is another powerful piece about a mother who does not want her to son to go off to college because she can't seem to move on from her husband's death.

DAY ONE is about a young, newly married couple trying to get used to each other at a cabin in the woods. The husband is highly allergic to everything, and his agitation also seems to be symbolic of the anxiety he is having on day one of his new marriage.

MARY'S EDDY by Y York is a surreal piece about a woman who starts to make up an "imaginary" lover when her husband is out of the room. She swaggers around, trying to look sexy, changing voices for both herself and her lover. When her husband catches her, he says his name, trying to bring her back to reality.

DEAR CHINA by Rob Ackerman is about three window dressers in Brooklyn who take turns addressing the titular country about it's woes and wonders. I had the wonderful opportunity to play Duke in the production.

GOTCHADAY is a play by Rob Handel that shows us two parents who have adopted an Asian boy and they are semi-celebrating his "gotcha day" when they made the trip to Hanoi to claim him. They take turns telling their version of that day. The wife cajoles the husband into singing the lullaby that he has been singing to their son because it is the old Tin Pan Alley tune, "Rockabye your Baby to a Dixie Melody." The husband worries that his carefully edited but racist tune will somehow corrupt their adopted child in some way, but he sings it anyway, because it puts him to sleep. I had the privilege of directing this lovely piece and it was well received.

PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE is a play by Jude Albert that I didn't get to see because I was backstage tonight and one of the actors was ill during the rehearsal. From the audience response it was quite powerful.

I also had the great fortune to direct Chisa Hutchinson's BLUE LABEL. A milquetoast of a man comes into a tattoo parlor every year on the anniversary of his wife's death to get a hash mark placed above his heart. This is the tenth year and the tattoo artist has broken out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue to celebrate. They battle verbally and are attracted to one another and eventually he takes a step forward and kind of asks the tattoo artist out at the end. A very sweet and moving exploration of how to move on from sadness and loss.

The final play is ANNIVERSARY SEASON by Jenny Lyn Bader and this one skips ahead throughout the years of a couple's life as they celebrate their wedding anniversary with threats of hurricanes and unwanted guests.

I enjoy being a part of this festival because I like that we can put together a moving, funny, thought-provoking evening of theater without too much fuss and worry. We hold the scripts in hand, use minimal props, costumes, lighting and sound and the effectiveness of good words spoken by good actors is hard to top. I recommend that everyone experience something similar at least once in their lives. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how moving and enjoyable an experience it can be. Keep LLC'ing!

*Update: We've already had another 10 Minute Play Festival this year (2013)!

Crunching the Numbers: IMDb Starmeter Rankings

Wayne Pyle in Philadelphia, PA

At least once a week, I like to go to my IMDb profile and check my ranking to see how much it has gone up or down that week. If the little arrow chart symbol at the front of the ranking is green, it means it has gone up, if it's red it means it's gone down. If I hover my cursor over the words SEE RANK it tells me exactly how much I've gone up or down in the last week.

As I hover over it right now while I'm writing this, it tells me that I've gone up 11,646 this week. Last week, I shot up over 106,000. In order to see the actual numbers, you have to look under IMDbPro which I subscribe to. From May 13, 2012 to May 27, 2012 I went from  being ranked 189,998 to being ranked 71,719. The lower your score, the better. Steve Carrell is currently 196. But if you go back to February 1999, when he was on The Daily Show, he was only ranked 109,267.

Some people think that the IMDb Starmeter rankings are related to the number of hits to your page, or the rankings of the films you are in, or even some mathematical formula that IMDb won't release, but no matter how it works, I just enjoy seeing how much it fluctuates depending on the amount of blogging I'm doing, how many Twitter posts I make and how much the films I've been in have been in the news.

I don't think the rankings really "mean" anything for someone at my level, but I do feel like I'm "active" in the independent film scene when my numbers hover around the 70's to 30's. People in that range seem to be working fairly often and doing interesting projects. Looking back at other actor's rankings is also interesting because you can get a sense of when they really took off and which of their projects  got them there.

In my everyday actor's life, these number don't really do much to advance my career. I'm busy right now trying to learn the lines for Shadowland's FULLY COMMITTED that I'm going to perform in June and July, preparing to do a performance for Marist's Center for Lifetime Study tomorrow morning and preparing for Half Moon Theater's 10-minute Play Reading Festival this Friday and Saturday. (Please join us!)

The feedback I'll get from these live theater events will be immediate and is part of the reason I love doing live theater. But the fluctuating numbers of IMDb's Starmeter rankings also give me a sense of satisfaction in knowing that I am part of the dynamic and fascinating world of filmmaking and that the films I've worked on are out there in the world affecting people's lives.

For other interesting takes on the IMDb Starmeter ranking system check out:

How to Boost your Starmeter Ranking by Tommy C. Kendrick

IMDb: The Basics and Starmeter by BENWHITEHAIR

Internet Movie Database on Wikipedia

Face the Fear

Wayne Pyle as Sam (and 40 others) in FULLY COMMITTED at Shadowland Theatre, Ellenville, NY.

This has been a particularly productive time in my actor's life. I played Franklin in Liza Johnson's film RETURN, starring Linda Cardellini and Michael Shannon, ended up in the trailer and it opened in some great theaters and had great reviews and lots of press across the country. I directed BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS at SUNY Dutchess. I just finished working on Eddie Mullins' new film, DOOMSDAYS, with Heidi. I'm prepping right now to perform in Becky Mode's one-person comedy FULLY COMMITTED at Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville, NY. I'm directing staged readings of two ten-minute plays for Half Moon Theatre Company in Poughkeepsie, acting in another, preparing two other readings for another Half Moon event, recording voiceover work for clients and working on my own scripts as well as finishing up one semester of teaching and trying to prepare for another at SUNY New Paltz.

Let's talk about the summer today. I've been working on Becky Mode's FULLY COMMITTED for a few weeks now, trying to get the 40 different characters I have to portray to play nice with each other and working on a few pages each day to get a vague idea of what each character wants, how they might sound, what physicality they might embody and what else I might have to do to fully commit to this whirlwind of a comedy. Each day brings new insights and new challenges and I'm looking forward to working with my director, Brendan Burke, to really get the play up on its feet and try to figure out to make this farce fly.

At almost 90 intermissionless minutes, the memorization task seems enormously daunting right now, but I know with steady work and concentration I'll soon have the whole story in my mind and be ready to explore these people and situations out there on the stage instead of in my cramped living room. This is the first time I'm taking on such a huge actor's task and looking at what I still have to accomplish, I would say that the emotion I'm mostly feeling is...SCARED.

I think it's healthy to be scared of certain things like heights, snakes, weird looking plants, some people, daunting acting challenges, because it's our body's way of telling us, “Proceed with caution. Harm could be done.” Even though it can be extremely painful at times, I do like to do things that scare me, that take me out of my normal comfort zone, because I know that in the past when I've “faced the fear” and done it anyway, I've always grown as a person and an actor. I've definitely gotten a few bumps and bruises and cuts and scrapes here and there, but what an adventure I've had in the process.

Usually when I feel that fear coming on, about memorization, auditioning, a role that I'm not sure I'm cut out for, I try to focus on the work process and see where it leads me, rather than focusing on the outcome that hasn't occurred yet. By focusing on what I'm doing now, how I'm doing it, and why it is being done, I become more present and that chattering voice that says things like, “You'll never get those lines memorized, you're not really very good at this, don't try THAT, that will never work,” starts to get quieter. If I don't do that, that little voice gets very, very LOUD.

By engaging in the struggle, feeling the feelings of unworthiness or inauthenticity or stupidity or whatever else might come up and acknowledging that those feelings are there, I find that they dissipate much more quickly than when I try to resist them and pretend they don't exist. By acknowledging the fear and focusing on the process, I'm often left tired, but with a great feeling of having done something worthwhile just because I did it despite being afraid that I might fail.

What are some things you've done that you've been afraid of but were later really glad you did them? I'd love to hear from you.

Gotta go memorize some lines, but I'll leave you with this video of my first tandem skydive at The Ranch, in Gardiner, NY. I recommend jumping out of a plane to get your mind in the present pretty darn quickly. Scared, yes, but an amazing day and an experience I won't forget.

WP

http://imdb.me/waynepyle

Welcome to An Actor's Life for Me!

Although I plan on covering many topics in this blog, the main focus will be on what an actor's life is like from day to day. There seem to be so many ideas about what being an actor means and I'd like to dispel some of the myths that so many young people seem to have when they enter this business and explore my own reasons for becoming and continuing to pursue an actor's life.

I have a lot of experience as an actor in films, television and onstage and yet I still struggle day to day with finding the joy in the work and finding the best way to express myself within my chosen art form. 

I like to do many things besides acting as well. I garden, write poetry and scripts, teach classes at various colleges, do voiceover work, make films, videos and art, use social media like Twitter and Facebook and I've dabbled in many different kinds of hobbies and pastimes. I love spending time with my children, my wife and my family. I love that an actor's life is a collaborative one, not just for projects, plays and films, but also in the everyday living of life.

I'm about to embark on a more detailed journey than I ever have before. I've been acting since I was very young when my parents first enrolled me on Romper Room, a children's television program from the seventies. I've been doing this for a long time, but this is the first time I've ever explored what and how I do what I do in any depth by writing out my process, thoughts, struggles and rewards.

I hope you'll join me in this journey inward and outward and that my words will inspire, educate and entertain you whether you are pursuing the actor's life yourself, or  just a curious onlooker. Thank you for allowing me to spend some time with you, I'm looking forward to seeing what we create together.

Since I live near Hyde Park, NY in the beautiful Hudson Valley, I'll leave you today with this quote from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose home and library is nearby. 

"Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples."

*Update: Renamed the blog YOU, LLC and I'm currently living in Tivoli, New York. Although I will continue to cover topics on acting, I'm also looking at how we can all live our lives more creatively. YOU, LLC.

WP 
http://imdb.me/waynepyle