What is the program?

Like a lot of programs in Chicago and elsewhere, they start with exercises used in Meisner classes. You learn to observe your partners behavior. You do repetition. Repetition is something that I’ve done for years. I thought this part of the curriculum would be old hat for me. But I certainly did learn new things.

My favorite lesson was how important it was to fight to see your partner. In my previous acting classes, there were often moments of vivid emotional life in the exercises. Sometimes people would be overwhelmed with feelings sparked by the exercises. I certainly had experiences like that. What was new for me at Black Box was how important it was to fight when you start to feel overwhelmed. That is the moment to push yourself to see your partner, and to know how they are behaving. In the past, I would just allow myself to get lost in my own emotional experience. I’ve certainly seen others do the same. I’m betting at some point, someone else gave me a similar note, but Black Box is where I first really heard and understood it.

By the second level, you are doing improvisations. These aren’t improv scenes where you create dialog, these are scenarios which you choose beforehand and spend time imagining the circumstances. The words you use are limited to repetition. They are similar to the independent activity exercises that Meisner pioneered. This is a particularly interesting class which forces you to really stretch your imagination. It’s a tough class. I remember agonizing for days over whether or not my activity would work, but it definitely gets easier with practice.

The third class really switches gears. This is when things start getting very physical. Here you get an introduction to viewpoints and a few other tools, and it’s where you begin to work with text. It felt a little crazy at first, all the things they were throwing at me. But as I used these tools with text in different combinations, as realized how powerful things like gesture, body shape and tempo were for grounding me into the circumstances of the text.

The fourth class is where things come together. You do a variety exercises, mostly with text. I worked on three different scenes and a monolog. We did mock auditions and rehearsals and used different tools from the previous classes to prepare. It really brought things together and gave me a sense that I was ready to tackle a show in ways that I never have before.

Why study at Black Box?

The program is fairly new. Laura Hooper and Audrey Francis, the owners, started the studio about two and half years ago. Most of the other teachers have been added in the last six months. I’ve met and worked with most of them too. I don’t think there is a bad one in the bunch. I’m been impressed with them all.

There are a couple things they do which I love and I hope they continue. One is team teaching. Every class I’ve taken has had at least two teachers. They don’t switch off. They both show up, they take turns running exercises and giving notes. In this last class, there were four teachers (three in training I believe). It was an incredible luxury to have that many eyeballs watching you work and thinking about how to improve your performance.

The other thing is that their teachers take classes there too. They are encouraged to be students and take the classes again periodically. In the class with four teachers, there were also two more teachers taking the class with us. So on most days teachers outnumbered students. That probably won’t happen again soon, but it’s an added perk when the person with whom you are doing a scene is a teacher.

Lastly, they listen. From the first class, I had the direct email addresses of my teachers and whenever I had a problem or question, I could contact them. They were very generous with their feedback. They were also very responsive to feedback about them. At the end of the second level, I was loving the program, but I had a couple issues which I wanted to discuss with them. I sent a long email with my thoughts. In the third level, Audrey approached me and thanked me for the feedback, saying that they had made some adjustments based on my feedback and they were working well.

Is it a perfect program? No. I wish it were longer and more intense. I’m sure some of my classmates think it was intense enough, but I wish I could train like that everyday. I’d like to learn more about viewpoints. What they taught me was very useful, but it’s obvious there is much more to learn about it.

I am very happy I went through it. I got two key things from it. First, I have a set of tools from which I’m putting together my process. I didn’t have this before. I feel like I could use these tools every day for the next few years and continue to learn. Second, I am ready to get out there and audition for shows here in Chicago. Last fall, when I returned to the theater, I didn’t quite know where to begin. Now, I feel ready to get back in there.

You might ask, why am I here? I’m here to get better. I feel out of shape as a performer. As an actor, I never really nailed down any particular process. I’d get a script, memorize it, go to rehearsal, try to absorb the blocking and direction, and try to figure out the best way to say my lines. It’s not a great process and it doesn’t seem to take advantage of all that early training which encouraged me to work off my partner. So the first priority was to find a studio, go back to class and figure out a process–a real process that starts with a script and ends with a full, dynamic, grounded and improvisational performance.

I’m in my third class at Black Box Acting Studio and I feel like I’m on my way to that goal. In the first two classes, they use exercises that are drawn from Meisner training, mostly repetition and independent activity exercises. In the next level, they bring in viewpoints and punctuation walks. Their process is a hybrid of things. It’s good practice and I feel a lot closer to that goal of a repeatable process.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve gradually fallen out of shape. I’m still well below my New York average weight, but I had lost enough ground, that I decided I had to do something about it. I’m back on a diet that is similar to the one I used a long time ago, when I first exercised seriously in my 20s. And I’m back in the gym. I’m reading the Four Hour Body by Tim Ferris and taking ideas from there. For instance, yesterday was my first day doing kettlebell swings, an exercise he recommends.

I’m doing other things too. I completed a few classes at the Annoyance, and now I’m in writing classes at Second City. I’m also taking guitar classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music. This upcoming year, I’m thinking as my DIY MFA project. My longer term plan is to start focusing on getting cast in some plays by the summer or fall. I want to get through one more class at Black Box and find a good scene study class that I can use to practice my process.

As usual I’m having trouble fitting everything in. I want to work on everything at once. I realize this is not the optimal way to do it. Eventually, I might narrow things down to writing or acting or improv again and focus my full force on that for a few years. But for the next 3-6 months, I’m going to continue down this path. It gets overwhelming if I try to think too many moves ahead. I want to keep focusing on what is the very next step and put my energy there. I’m going to trust that it will take me somewhere interesting.

Years ago I took a series of acting technique classes. The instructors didn’t mention Meisner, but it was obvious that the exercises and methods were similar. We used repetition. We improvised scenes using imaginary circumstances. It was exciting and visceral and raw.

I took those lessons and tried to apply them to my improv. It taught me to be present, to pay close attention to the emotional life of my scene partner and to act on my gut impulses. For years, I’ve taught workshops that try to bring those ideas from Meisner to improv. I’m teaching one of those workshops this weekend.

But I’ve always felt that I didn’t know enough about those techniques. I never fully integrated the lessons into my acting. I felt like I needed to start again, to study those ideas more deliberately and most importantly, practice them over and over until I could achieve those raw, exciting, visceral performances in scripted work. So that is why I’m back in Chicago and back in class.

I settled on Black Box Acting Studio, in part because I had heard some good things, but mostly it fit into my schedule better than the alternatives. I’m in the middle of my second class and it’s exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. The instructors are good and have created a good head space to do these exercises. The work is challenging and tough and the results so far have been quite satisfying.

The first thing I noticed is that the exercises seem to be a bit more connected to Meisner than the previous technique classes I had taken. They resembled the exercises described in Meisner’s book more than the ones I had used before. This isn’t necessarily better. I loved the technique classes I had taken in the past, but it did mean that I was going to get a different angle and learn new things.

I would think that if you were to observe the classes, you might think the class was about having emotional experiences. There certainly is a lot of crying. Emotional outbursts of all types are common and encouraged. But one thing I find particularly interesting about their approach is how much they force you to fight through your emotions at the point when you feel most overwhelmed. If you are hurt or upset or happy or angry, you can’t just wallow in your emotions. Feeling something is good, but it’s just the beginning. Instead you have to fight.

That fighting might be to hold on to your circumstances–the work you have done with your imagination before the exercise. But more likely, they want you to fight to put your focus back on your partner. It’s not enough to create circumstances which evoke deep feelings in yourself. It’s not enough to have the guts to reveal that emotional life on stage. That’s not acting and it’s not great theater. But watching someone who has achieved that and then is willing to fight to get what they want, now that is interesting.

I’m not sure if I was taught that before. I probably was, but I think I missed this particular idea. It’s that at that moment when you feel most overwhelmed, that you must push your focus outward and at your partner. How are they feeling? What do you want from them? And now what are you going to do to get it?

I’m not going to be satisfied with performing once a week. I’d like to perform six nights a week, and on my night off, I’d like to perform. I don’t want to be in four or five groups to accomplish this, although in the short term, I may do just that. I’d rather work with one ensemble and do one main show.

I’d like to rehearse often. I’d like to rehearse three or four times a week, especially at first. But even after the show opens, I’d like to rehearse more than weekly and try new things. I’d like to identify where we can push ourselves to be better and smarter and more interesting. I’d like to tape the shows and review them later, looking for ways to improve our craft. I’d like to borrow great ideas from other types of theater and art and bring them into our shows. I’d like to work harder than I’ve ever worked before.

In the near future, I’ll be returning to Chicago and dipping my feet into the improv pool again. I’ll be performing where I can and perhaps teaching here and there. But I’ll also be cornering people in bars and telling them my ideas and looking for people who share my desire to be a part of a group that works as hard as I’d like to work. I’ll be visiting New York and maybe LA. I’ll be traveling to a few improv festivals and interviewing more teachers and directors for my podcast. I’ll probably do some projects along the way which approach my ideal, where we rehearse in a concentrated fashion and perform multiple times a week. It might take me a while before I can put all the pieces in place, but barring some amazing opportunity which takes me down a different path or some unforeseen tragedy which interferes with my plans, this will happen.

Why write about this? Why put this in my blog? Because, I’m curious whether there are enough good performers out there who could commit themselves for a year or two or three to making this happen. I think you might be out there. I just haven’t found you yet.

As an atheist, I’m really not sure how I should respond. Usually, I’m polite and nod and say nothing. Like I said, they mean well. It’s difficult to know what to say in that situation. I believe they are trying to say that I’m making a good choice by being here. They certainly don’t mean to say something awkward. Instead they wish to comfort me. They have no idea that I don’t share their belief in the afterlife or god.

I could respond by saying, “Well, I don’t believe there is a heaven. And even if there is one, I don’t believe in your god and therefore I won’t be in heaven to get my present. I’m choosing to do this because it’s the right thing to do.” However, I don’t say this because it would be a monumentally jerky thing to say given the circumstances. I think I’m already responding to it in the best way I can respond, by simply letting it slide. Still there is something about them saying it, and the underlying assumptions, that bothers me.

I guess for me, thinking that somehow I’m going to be rewarded for this in the afterlife cheapens the experience. Do we really do good in this life because we want to get presents in heaven? I don’t think we do, whether we believe in a god or not.

I guess I can only speak for myself, but when I have a decision to make and one choice clearly feels more good, more moral, or more ethical, I feel compelled to make that choice. I don’t make it because I want a reward in heaven. It just feels bad to do the wrong thing. There is a certain emotional chaos and angst that I experience when I don’t do the right thing. When faced with the choice two years ago of whether I should help my sisters take care of my mom, the right thing seemed obvious. Had I walked away and not helped, I would have been haunted by that decision the rest of my days. It simply would not have been worth it.

Recently, I read Black Swan Green. It’s the novel about a thirteen year old boy. Late in the story, the boy finds the wallet of another kid, a kid who has been horrible to him through most of the book. The wallet contains a lot of money, more than $1000 in US currency, a fortune for this boy. It seems like a no brainer, the boy should keep the money, but there is a wrinkle. He finds out that the money belongs to the mean kid’s father. This guy is a real son of a bitch who beat his wife over much less than $1000. The boy knows if he keeps the money, the evil kid is going to get beaten bad, maybe even killed.

For most of a chapter, this boy tries to convince himself that he should keep the money and throw the wallet away. He anguishes over the decision but seems quite certain he will keep it. But in the end he gives it back, the money isn’t worth the strain of knowing that it’s not the right thing to do. Immediately he feels much better.

So what does this have to do with my mom? Well two years ago, when we started down this path, the right choice seemed clear: keep mom in her home and rotate between the three of us 24/7. For the most part, that’s what we have done. But things have changed. Her condition is worse, her care is mostly now in the hands of CNAs and nurses that we have hired. We still participate quite actively in her care, but much of the hands on dressing, bathing, feeding and bathroom help is now done by people we have hired. Two years ago, we think it would have been quite distressing for my mom to move to a nursing home. Two years ago, it made a great deal of difference that one of her kids was nearby in the house. I’m sure it made her feel safer to know one of us was nearby. Now I’m not so sure.

It’s very hard to tell what is going on with mom today. She has not spoken in many months. It’s hard to remember, it may be over a year since she has said a full sentence or an understandable phrase. You can read some emotions in her face for sure. If she is in pain or distress, you know it. She has a way of opening her mouth and biting down which means she is hungry. It’s even possible to still make her laugh, although that has become much harder. Beyond that, it’s hard to know if she understands what is happening around her. The bottom line is that I’m not sure she would feel much difference between being taken care of at home and being taken care of in a nursing home, provided that caregivers were kind to her and that we visited her often to spend time with her.

There are other parts to this story as well. All three of us have made sacrifices to do this, sacrifices that I don’t think my mom would have wanted. I think she would want us to make sure she got excellent care, and would want us to be a part of that care, but she would not want us to have put our lives on hold like we have.

Also, I’ve begun to feel the cost to our mental and physical health. This summer was a particularly bad one for me. My mom’s situation was not the catalyst, but my ability to deal with the issues I was faced with was badly compromised. Emotionally I was a wreck and it’s taken me a few months to climb out of it. And I’m afraid my compromised mental state will only get worse over time.

Someday soon, my sisters and I may come to a different conclusion, that perhaps the best thing for all of us will be for my mom to be in a nursing home and for us to start rebuilding our lives. If we make that choice, will there no longer be a reward for us in heaven? Will we have forfeited it? I don’t think so, but then I don’t think there ever was such a reward. I would hate to think that there was a god that allowed all the suffering in the world and tried to make up for it by giving us presents in the afterlife. That’s a truly repugnant idea to me.

When things start going badly, I start hearing from customers that they have lost their stuff. The things you own in Second Life, things you have bought, made or been given, only exist on the Second Life asset servers. You can’t back them up directly to your hard drive. Often you only have a single copy which you cannot even back up in Second Life. So when someone loses something it can be very upsetting. This week I’ve heard from a lot of upset people. It hasn’t been this bad in a long time.

Also, people have cut back on shopping. The week before was nearly a record week for me. This week, my business was cut in half. I don’t know if I’ve ever personally seen a week when my SL income dropped by more than 50% until now.

And then last night when I got home, eager to log in and catch up with my customer service requests, I couldn’t log in. Second Life was officially offline and had been for hours. I went to bed, woke up this morning, and tried to log in again. It appeared that it might be working again, but again I was unable to log in and soon after the same offline message appeared in the top left corner. This could be the beginning of a very serious outage.

This is the scary part of making Second Life your primary income, the knowledge that SL’s infrastructure can crumble at any moment. I suppose this is true with many types of businesses, but Second Life as a platform often still feels like it’s in beta.

I realized that I was unhappy in my administration job at the theatre where I worked, so I quit (although I kept teaching). I started winning at poker and began to think about pursuing it professionally. I found another new source of income when a hobby became a business. I left New York to spend some time with my father in Arizona, and finally I moved back to my hometown to take care of my mother. My old life has been completely interrupted.

This is not all bad. I’m very glad that I’ve been able to spend time with my family and being a caregiver for a parent does have many rewards. It’s hard not to feel a little lost at times though. Eventually, I will leave again, pick up my life and start over. And I’ll have many options in front of me.

Do I return to the theatre? If so, do I go back to Chicago, return to New York or join many of my friends in Los Angeles? Maybe I should go back to Arizona where the weather is amazing and theatre culture is still young, or perhaps I should reconnect with some of my oldest and best friends in Seattle. Do I teach for someone else like I have before or do I teach my own classes or even start my own theatre?

Part of me longs to travel, both here and abroad. Perhaps I should return to poker, hone my tournament skills and spend a year or two traveling from one tournament to another.

My business may still be doing well when it’s time to leave here, perhaps I should throw all my energy into that. I don’t think most people get several chances to build up a successful business. Second Life may peak and fall apart within the next 5 years. I should strike while the iron is hot, make as much money as I can before people move on to something else.

Still, perhaps this is the time to return to grad school. I could get an MFA in acting or directing. Perhaps teaching at a university would be great fun and a good way to spend the next twenty years or so.

But if I return to school, maybe this is the perfect opportunity to nurture a different interest. Maybe computer science is still something I could pursue and enjoy. Of course, I’m also very interested in mathematics, biology, economics, diet and nutrition, and a half a dozen other topics, so saying I’ll return to grad school only expands my options.

In part the purpose of this blog is for me to hone my sense of what things are most important to me. I know that I’m getting ready for the second big chunk of my adult life and I want it to be meaningful and satisfying. I don’t want to simply see where the wind takes me (or do I? Perhaps, that is exactly how I should spend life, hopping from opportunity to opportunity, never quite knowing where I will be five years from now).

Of course, I don’t need to decide this today or tomorrow. I think this blog will help me figure out just where my path lies when it comes time to move on to the next part of my life. You could call it a mid-life crisis, but I don’t think it is. It’s more of a mid-life pause. Life has forced me to narrow my focus, give up most of parts of what was my life temporarily. I’m determined to use it as an opportunity.

1. I will not work in an office that requires a tie.
2. I will not become a Christian missionary to Africa or Asia or anywhere else for that matter.
3. I will not become a pharmaceutical rep.
4. I will not become a jazz singer.
5. I will not tour every Major League Baseball park in America.
6. I will not sell major appliances, electronics, automobiles or real estate.
7. I will not open a franchise restaurant.
8. I will not become a lawyer.
9. I will not become a butcher.
10. I will not be a jet pilot.

What’s interesting to me is how many things that I think of and then discard from this list, because I can still see myself doing those things. Even eliminating absurd options is hard for me.