3/11/2014 0 Comments It's Been . . . One Week Anyone who’s a Barenaked Ladies fan, switched on his or her radio in the 1990s, or has spent more than four minutes with me will know the song “One Week.” Well, it’s been one week since I started rehearsals, and holy cow, what a week. In some ways, this week felt like the year 2013 did for me: it went by SO FAST, but it feels like the beginning of it was AGES ago . . . The way rehearsals work for this particular show at Portland Stage Company (it changes show to show) is a six-hour day, usually noon-6pm (although it fluctuates slightly). With a lunch break and two ten-minute breaks, this is actually only five hours plus change. You might think, “That’s considered full-time work?” Well, think of it more like a school-day/day at university: for every hour I’ve been in rehearsal, I’ve racked up about half-an-hour of homework. Each day I’ve spent at least a few hours on the script in some manner (either memorizing lines or researching my character). Oh, and we have only one day off a week (Monday). What does one research? Well, I lucked out when I got cast as Daniel in Tribes, because I got a rich, deeply developed character with much to explore. After spending two full days of table-work (it’s what it sounds like – we sat around a table for two full days, reading through the script, pulling it apart; discussing the grand, sweeping themes of the text as well as the minutia of a particular character’s idiosyncrasies), as well as four full days of rehearsal, it was clear to me that the character I’m playing is bipolar. I’m so glad Nina Raine (the playwright) didn’t simply put “Daniel: 28 years old, bipolar.” It would have detrimentally simplified the character, and it was great to make this discovery on my own through well-placed clues throughout the text. At the end of the play, Daniel starts stammering for the first time since he was ten, he has auditory hallucinations, he can’t sleep . . . he’s a hot mess. So I’ve been researching different types of stammers/stutters, the ways bipolar disorder manifests itself, what factors might contribute/exacerbate Daniel’s condition, as well as cultural and societal influences (this play is set in London). Needless to say, I’ve had my hands full! The cast is an eclectic and hilarious mix of people (as evidenced by the photo above); in some ways, my first day of rehearsal felt like the first day of kindergarten: all of my castmates (except one local actor) are professional actors who do this as their full-time job; this isn’t something they all do after working a full day at the warehouse. These are people who have been honing their craft for, in some cases, almost thirty years. These are the COOL kids, the ones who know the playground and the lunch room and how to stay on the principal’s good side . . . Needless to say, I have a lot to learn from this bunch!
Questions? Comments? I’d love to hear from you? Be in touch! A very brief reflection of my first day of rehearsal! Just a quick update before rehearsals start! 3/1/2014 1 Comment No Man's Land Don’t worry, don’t worry. This is not a review of the Harold Pinter play No Man’s Land (although if you want the brief Matthew-review: don’t see it, it’s Pinter). No, no. This is not a theatre review. This is about the transition between Seattle and Portland; between dream and reality; between job and profession. And this is actually being written in No Man’s Land. Or rather, no man’s AIR: I’m on the flight from Seattle to Boston as I type. What better place to write about transition than in transit? In order to fully understand a transition, one must know the “was” and the “will be.” Here’s where I was: today, or . . . yesterday, I guess (Friday, let’s say), I had my last day of work at Diva Espresso in downtown Seattle. I have worked there for two years (with a six-month break in the middle to go on tour with my friend Bryan), and I have never enjoyed a job more (and I used to work in a HalloWEEN store!). The company itself is amazing to work for: quality-driven but casual (hey, I’m a fan of any place that lets me wear basketball shorts to work!), friendly, and invested. And on top of that, the branch I work at is pretty boss: I was at the Chinook branch, which was housed on the ground floor of a government building. What this meant for me was that I got a regular shift, every morning, Monday-Friday. We didn’t work weekends, and we didn’t work evenings. Heck, we even had holidays off! (Unpaid, of course J) Not a bad gig for the service industry! But even if the perks WEREN’T great, I’d still love that job. I got to make coffee and talk to people, and get PAID for it! On my last day of work, I received so much support from my co-workers and customers, all encouraging me to pursue my dream of acting and performing. The customers at the Chinook Diva are off-the-charts-awesome. Throughout my two years there, they would ask if I was in any performances over the weekend, ask how they went when they saw me on Monday, and some of them even came to see me perform! So when I informed my customers I was leaving to make acting my full-time job (at least, for six weeks), I received such warm blessings from everyone that I couldn’t help but be optimistic about choosing a career that can be brutally competitive, constantly uncertain, and hardly ever lucrative. But the best part of my day BY FAR was when my coworker Eric (who had to go out of his way to buy basketball shorts to achieve this) and two of our customers dressed up like me! I almost died laughing. So if that’s my “was,” what’s my “will be”? Well, today . . . or tomorrow, I guess (Saturday, let’s say) I will be landing in Boston at 6am after taking a redeye on the evening of my last day of work. Seeing as I’m already pretty tired after having been awake 22 straight hours (at the time of writing this), I’m pretty sure that by the time I POST it, I’ll be downright pooped. I’ll spend the day in Boston seeing a friend or two, then I’ll train/bus it up to Portland, where I’ll get settled and probably sleep for two years. Well, maybe not quite that long, but I do have Sunday and Monday to recover, because rehearsals for Tribes don’t start until Tuesday. Starting then, I’ll be rehearsing six hours a day, six days a week for three weeks. Then tech and dress rehearsals, then three weeks of performances (more details on those as they get closer).
So until Tuesday I’m hovering in limbo a little bit, preparing my heart for the joy of having my passion become my full-time job, and preparing my head to accept the reality of a dream come true. As I pause for breath at this frenetic crossroads, I give thanks for all the encouragement and support I’ve received, from Diva customers, from teachers and mentors, and from friends and family. One phrase I heard over and over on my last day at Diva was “Good luck, and have FUN.” I’m so grateful for the reminder that while this ride might be crazy, unstable, and sometimes frightening, it’s there to be enjoyed. Much love! As I have mentioned in previous posts, I will be moving to Portland, ME at the end of this month. The reason for this move is that I will be acting with Portland Stage Company, playing the role of Daniel in Tribes, by Nina Raine (Wikipedia says this about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribes_%28play%29). I am so unbelievably excited by this. Not only is this a beautifully written piece of theatre, and not only does my character have an amazing story arch and depth of soul, this is going to be my first gig as an Equity Actor. I would love to watch each of you read that last sentence, because most of my actor friends will read that and think either, “WHAT?!” or “Congrats!” whereas everyone else will probably read that and think: “Huh?” Let me explain what being an Equity Actor is. For those of you who already know, skip the next paragraph. Actor’s Equity Association, or AEA, is the union for stage actors and stage managers. You heard of the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG)? It’s basically that, except for stage actors instead of screen actors. It serves as a protective body for actors so they are not overworked or abused in the workplace (much like any other labor union). In many ways, AEA is a huge help for the actors, but at the same time, they can be a pain in the bum-hole for theatres. It makes contracts more complicated, regulations much stiffer, and some of the rules just seem totally unnecessary or silly. But overall, it’s a good thing, in my opinion. It is, however, not easy to join. Generally, it’s a bit of a Catch-22 situation: you can’t join the Union unless you work with certain theatres, but you can’t work at those theatres unless you’re in the Union. This isn’t – strictly speaking – entirely true. Union theatres have a few roles per season that are “non-union” or “non-professional” that anyone can audition for. But there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of actors going out for these few roles, so if you’re not in NYC, it is a difficult and long process to join the Union. So, now that you know what the Union IS, the question remains, how did I get there? Well, in early December, I got a text message from my girlfriend, Ella, saying, “Hey. Any interest in putting yourself on tape for us?” Now, you have to understand that this text followed closely on a conversation Ella and I had had about me chaperoning a mission trip with her in April. Naturally, my first thought was that she wanted me to make a video, introducing myself to the high schoolers who were going on this here trip. So I said, “Who’s us?” “Us. Portland stage. Video. For tribes.” Now I was confused as all get-out. Tribes? What? Was “tribes” what they were calling the youth group now? After I expressed my confusion, Ella backed up and explained that Tribes was a play Portland Stage Company (the regional theatre where Ella is the Company Manager) was doing in the spring and that I should submit a video AUDITION (ohhh!) for the role of Daniel. Ella explained that nothing would come of this video audition: by nature, they just suck. Video auditions are just not conducive to theatrical auditions – the media are so different. And there’s the simple fact that the director can’t ask you to read the part again in a different way (“All right, that was a good read. Can we try it again as if you’re a Mongolian refugee who has just learned he’s allergic to pineapple?”). Needless to say, the odds are against you when you’re auditioning via video, but I had two very important things going for me in this audition:
1) The role I was going for is right in my wheel-house. 2) Bryan Sullivan. Point number one was important because the director didn’t have to stretch his imagination to picture me in this role. I’m the right age, the right build, the right look. In other words, I’m the right “type.” Point number two was equally important because Bryan is an awesome actor who brings out way better performances in me than anybody else I’ve worked with. He read opposite me in the scene I taped, and he not only gave me a solid performance to react to (they say “acting is reacting”), but he also gave me invaluable feedback on my own performance. As always, he was incredibly patient and didn’t mind that we did forty thousand takes before I was happy. (And, of course, we had the obligatory giggle-session in the middle of filming the scene. Typical.) Once the video audition was filmed and uploaded, I sent it to Ella, who deemed it worthy of sending off to Anita, the artistic director of Portland Stage Company, and Chris, the director of Tribes. She passed it on, not mentioning my connection to her, but saying, simply: “Here’s a video audition from an actor who is not local but says he can be.” Ella’s plan was that I could be the one non-professional actor allotted by the Union for this show, and I could be local (so the theatre doesn’t have to pay my transportation or housing) because I can stay with Ella. But once Chris saw the video audition, he asked Anita if PSC had the ability to pay me a Union wage, because (from what I understand) he wanted to save the one non-union role for a smaller character in the play. Anita said they had the budget for it, which meant that Ella gave me a call the week before Christmas, calling on her office phone. I thought this was odd, especially when she said, “This is Ella Wrenn, calling on behalf Portland Stage Company. We would like to offer you the role of Daniel in Tribes by Nina Raine. Furthermore, we would like to inform you that we will make you a part of the Actor’s Equity Union in order to cast you.” There was a long silence, and I said, “I know you wouldn’t do this because you’re actually a nice person, but ARE YOU KIDDING?!” I couldn’t believe it. My mind was blown. The game had changed. I am now suddenly batting in the big leagues. Whoa. Since I decided in college that I wanted to be an actor, it has been my goal to pay the bills with acting alone. I don’t need fame, I don’t need to make $30 million per movie. I just want my full-time job to be acting. And for six-weeks, it will be. All right. So. Here’s what’s going on in my life right now, just for a little background’s sake: I’m an actor here in Seattle, which means I’m a barista here in Seattle. I work at Diva Espresso to feed the stomach, and I act and write and perform standup comedy to feed the soul. I have never been one to sit around and wait for the jobs to come to me (if they do, AWESOME – I’ll take what I can get), but I’m not Matt Damon or Johnny Depp: as funny as it may sound, high-powered producers aren’t scrambling to their phones to punch in my number and BEG me to be in their next big picture. So instead of being bored and feeling sad that nobody wants to cast me in anything, I try to do my own stuff. This time two years ago, longtime friend and collaborator Bryan Sullivan and I started a two-man theatre company – Wanderweg Productions – and hit the road with a play that I wrote called The Celtic Cross, which is what we described as “The Fox and the Hound with guns and Irish accents.” It’s about two men who grow up in war-torn Belfast during “The Troubles,” and become friends in spite of their circumstances. As they get older, they become more entrenched in their ideals, and they must choose between their friendship and their beliefs. I wrote the play when I was studying in Dublin and London, and in 2012, Bryan and I took it on a six-month, six-state tour. We both moved back to Seattle this time last year, and there honestly hasn’t been a whole lot of action from Wanderweg since, and 2013 was a pretty quiet year for me on the acting front (I was only in two staged productions the entire year, as well as a few short films). A smattering of the work I did in 2013 Which leads to the current flurry of activity, my recent return to standup comedy, my creating an email list, and my sudden drive to move things forward. 2014 has already proved to be a very fruitful year, and I’ll give a fuller update on the next post. But I’ll say right now that the first half of the year is pretty much lined up: in less than a month I will be moving to Portland, ME, where I will be working with Portland Stage Company (in an acting capacity) for six weeks. Then, this July, I’ll be returning to South Africa for the National Arts Festival. Again, more to come on this later.
Thank you again for your interest! If you haven’t already, please like my Facebook page (just click here). More from me soon! Matthew 1/9/2014 0 Comments It's Time to BeginHELLO! And welcome to my new blog! I'll be posting my thoughts and musings updates and interesting links and articles and such. Many people ask me what the life of an actor/comedian/writer/poor person is like, and here you can get some of the answers!
As anyone who knows me will know, I LOVE Imagine Dragons. I chose to title this first post after their first hit, "It's Time." There's a lot of forward momentum pulsing through that song, a lot of pent-up frustration being released, and I feel like 2014 is my Time to Begin. After 2013, which I felt was frustratingly stagnant, I feel like 2014 is going to present some exciting opportunities. There are already some exciting prospects on my horizons, which I will talk about here in this blog. But I just wanted to throw out an intro-post, to let you all know I'm starting this thang. Please feel free to leave comments to any/all posts - I'd love to hear from you! |
Matthew Stuart Jackson
Actor, writer, comedian, cat-lover, scratched-dvd-hater, and aspiring helicopter pirate. Archives
July 2014
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