all's well

Well a lot has happened in the five months that I have gone missing from the Blogosphere! I shall keep it brief here and start posting regularly with more details...

First off, I was indeed accepted in to Solofest 2010 at the Filling Station. The Bark & the Tree was selected as one of the festival openers on Friday night, along with Linda Rodeck’s Action Improv piece. We had a great house of close to 50 people. Linda’s piece was brilliant. It was a mode of working that I had never seen used as solo performance. It is truly compelling work. All the plays through out the festival were fantastic.

The premier of my solo piece was very well received. I was so involved in the process of getting it finished, rehearsed and produced that it was a bit of a wild ride to the last. The first performance felt emotionally connected and informed, the second show, the following week at the end of the fest, felt like a runaway train. The staging by Eb Lottimer was active and served the piece well and greatly helped the mission of getting the play up and running.

I later performed the play in Taos, to two sold out houses of friends and Art of the Song listeners at the Metta Theatre. Bruce MacIntosh creates a lovely intimate room for performance that is beautifully suited to solo performance work. It was there that the truth of the play began to show its self. After a delicious week of rehearsal, all by myself in this delightful theater, the text became more grounded and home-like.

And it was there that I took the risk of Stillness. Stillness on stage can be terrifying for both the actor and the audience. If the actor is not completely engaged in their thought process during the Stillness, the audience will become unsure, believing ultimately that something is amiss. As a performer, I chose to go for The Stillness because in some instances I simply had to stop, think about where I was, and how I felt about it. I owed it to the play somehow, to take time with the events and give them air. The fearsome thing is that it become too self involved, tipping the balance into a wallow of self reflection.

Feedback relayed that the pace was just right, that the silence allowed the audience to catch up and dig in a little deeper. Whew.

more news... I am shooting a pilot for ABC Family this week, playing Coach Lee, coach of the tennis team in The Lying Game, a new TV series based on a book by Sara Shepard featuring Helen Slater. ;-)