Salt Water.

I have spent the last 5 days relaxing and reflecting. 

A much needed activity. 

I was on the bus yesterday and the only other passenger was an elderly woman. I had put my money in the fare counter and asked if she would corroborate my story (that I paid) if the driver came back and was suspicious. She said she would and I asked her about her day. In a matter of 10 minutes she had told me about her childhood travelling the coast of Oregon and how much her friends had became her family in recent years after her parents died. She embodied happiness for me. Here she was simply riding the bus to see where it would take her. She had her book, time and was ready for an adventure. It made me step back and think about the experiences I'm missing out on by rushing around not being present. 

I have had this wonderful opportunity presented to me, and although I am having the time of my life and meeting remarkable people, I find myself thinking about what needs to happen when this dream sequence ends: What is the next phase of my career? Where is my next paycheque coming from? Who do I need to meet next? Granted, these are all important questions for an actor to ask, but not as important as focusing on what is in front of me. 

When my class was working with Joe Ziegler, on A Midsummer Night's Dream, I had booked a short film, Bone Deep, back in Halifax while playing Theseus in the show. Joe generously said I could leave to shoot the film that weekend, but then the next day when we were working my scenes I was completely unprepared due to my preoccupation with the film. My work in the show suffered and Joe felt taken advantage of. After all was said and done he said this to me, "Do your best with what you have right now. Then when that is over, you can move onto the next thing." As it was before, it now has to become my mantra again. 

A few days ago I went to the beach and as soon as my feet hit the water my worries just slid off of me. I forget how soul cleansing it is. Perhaps it is the maritimer in me, but nothing eases my tensions more than the ocean. While I was treading water I thought about how simple my life could be if I just let go of all these trivial agendas. Being in that water, not only showed me how out of shape I am, but also how glorious it is to just be here, now. 

The people that I've caught up with are all at similar points in their life; feeling bogged down about their career paths or the need to keep up with the Jones'. If I'm learning anything lately it's that everyone has to forge their own paths. Trying to compare oneself with someone else is useless and ultimately thieving the joy from ones life. 

"Gratitude is the antidote to misery." - Robin Sharma

I have been working on incorporating this quote into all facets of my life and it has only brought positive experiences to me. Every person I have met and conversed with over the last few weeks has been nothing short of generous and insightful. The amount of people who have met me with generosity simply because I have taken the time to be real with them, listen to them speak about their lives and offer my advice, is huge. There is so much more to generosity than monetary gain, and my soul feels warmer because of it. 

If life is a series of experiences rather than number of years on the Earth, I really want to give every person and opportunity the time they deserve. I watched a wonderful Ted Talk the other night that spoke about how we need to focus more on our relationships and the legacy we are leaving behind rather than all of the superficial things that pollute our day-to-day lives. 

I couldn't agree more.  

W.

Snap Back to Reality.

Hey Abyss,

Many discoveries were made last week. I think the one that had the most impact on me was being put on the spot for not knowing my lines. That seems like a basic thing, an actor knowing their lines, but for some reason I have always struggled with memorizing text. Not a good quality to have in an actor, but it is not the worst thing. I can honestly tell you I have never gone on stage not knowing my lines, I have always managed to get everything down before we open, it just seems to takes me a lot longer than everyone else. Being at NTS has certainly enabled me to get better at locking the words in my brain by offering me a bounty full of approaches to do just that. 

I felt I had been doing well with my text for Midsummer Nights Dream and therefore over the last week, in anticipation for the weekend (which I will get into in a moment) did not do what is necessary for myself for the last part of my text. And, as it should, it came back to bite me. 

A few weeks ago I was offered a lead part in a short film that was being shot in Halifax, by a well known Actor/Director, named Jeremy Webb. His company’s previous film Wake garnered some notable attention in the festival circuit and was being back by CBC, not a bad combo. When the role was offered to me I clarified that the only way I could fly home and do it was to get the permission from my superiors at the school. So, I proceeded that Monday to acquire all the approval I needed, which was graciously given and I agreed to do the short that weekend. The plan was to fly home Thursday night and fly back Monday morning. So I would only miss two days of classes. 

Everything seemed to flow perfectly until Thursday came and I kept flubbing through my lines in the final part of the play. And it was at this time when I was put on the spot, by my director. I had been working extremely hard on my text, but due to the excitement of the weekend I failed to give it the added time I know it needed. This ultimately disappointed him, and made me feel like a complete schmuck, especially considering his generosity. He was harsh and to the point, and it was that snap back to reality that made me realize the lesson; Which was to focus on one thing at a time, and give it 150% of my energy. This problem is something that has been an issue for a while with myself. And I think it took this situation to finally let it sink in. 

Do your best with what you have right now. Then when that is over, focus on the next thing. This is my mantra for the next while until I can calm down and just enjoy what is in front of me rather than worrying about what is coming next. It is difficult, but this is what I want for a career more than anything else, and so I have to let it flow. 

The stress from not knowing my lines and disappointing my director, lead to me heading to the airport 12 hours earlier than my flight was scheduled to leave and left me stranded there for 4 hours until a friend of mine came and picked me up. Again, if I had just read the itinerary of the flight and chilled, instead of thinking how I may have been blacklisted from the class, that would not have happened and I would have been 60 dollars richer. Once, I finally got back to Halifax, everything became clearer and I spent every bit of downtime I had on set memorizing those lines for Monday. I came back yesterday, having done what should have been done and it feels good to be free of that pressure. 

Filming over the weekend was great and reminded me of how much I love film as a medium. The team was wonderful and there was such an artistry behind the whole thing, which made me feel proud to be part of it. The atmosphere on set, even though we were rushed for time, was positive and happy. There was a specific moment I recall on the second day where I was talking to Jessica Marsh over lunch and the crew and other cast members were all playing music and singing together, and it was this moment that encapsulated the whole shoot for me. A bunch of talented people coming together to make art. It was beautiful. And I am extremely grateful to have been part of such a piece. 

The film is called Bone Deep, and if you hit the link you can read more about it. 

We are into tech week right now for MSND, and so I have some things that need to get done tonight before I hit the hay. 

Night Abyss

The End is Near!

Hey Abyss,

I know that I have been commenting on how much is left of the semester in recent posts, but I cannot get over how the time flies. The school has this warp effect where the days are so long that they seem to slug by, but we are always working so the weeks just disappear.

A pointless clarification, but it's there now.

This week has been really great, we have made a lot of progress with Midsummer Nights Dream. As I have stated before, Joe is awesome. Him and I were talking about what he feels is the most important thing in performing Shakespeare, and he is a huge advocate for bringing it back to reality. Going through and understanding everything that you are saying and acting it from a true place, rather than an idea of what Shakespeare acting is. He has such a natural approach to the text, and I think that is because he revears the "story" so much. He has said, many times, that we as actors/directors/writers are to tell the story to the best of our ability. As soon as a production becomes about indulging, or making it "interesting" we are veering away from what the story is.

Could this be the secret to what makes good or bad Theatre?

Speaking of indulging. That word has been quite prevalent in my vocabulary this week. I think that it is such a pitfall in all acting. As soon as you start making the scenes about you and your ability, you have abandoned your fellow actors and made it the You Show. Now, that may sound awesome to some people, but I can guarantee you that you wont get work. As soon as you start pulling focus and being distracting on stage, sure you may get some laughs (in High school), but in the real world that kind of behaviour doesn't fly. It is about listening, to your scene partners and responding as realistically and true to the text as possible.

It is certainly a hard thing to do, and I still struggle with it everyday. The more we can listen the more realistic our responses can be.

This year has been a long journey for me about reclaiming my artistry. For some reason I lost sight of who I was and what things I loved when I started training here last year, and as much progress as I have made and as many things that I have learned it has only been the last few months that things have started to crystallize in my mind. I am here for me, to teach me about myself and how I can improve the talent that I have. How to become a stronger person and performer. And too be frank, I have wasted so much energy on trying to make sure everyone likes me, and it isn't as important as I thought.

For some reason I can't help but think of this The Weekenders episode.

For those of you who don't know me, Tino is a younger version of me.

We had a meeting with Alisa Palmer, our Artistic Director, on Thursday and she talked to us about the plans for our third and final year, and what we can expect. Tomorrow we are meeting Tadeusz Bradecki, he is currently directing Guys and Dolls at The Shaw Festival, and he will be directing our first show in the Ludger-Duvernay Theatre at The Monument-Nationale. The play is still undecided, but I am anxious to meet him.

Alisa also mentioned that over the next three weeks we will be meeting Ian Watson who will be working with us on our classical monologues in preparation for Theatre Ontario auditions. Alisa has spoken about how she wants our final year to consist of material that will ready us for a seamless transition into the acting world, and I am totally game.

Well, that's about it for now I am heading out to see The Place Beyond the Pines!

Night Abyss

BOOM.

Hey Abyss,

This week has zoomed by, the work with Joe has been wonderful, and considerably less stressful than I anticipated. He is such a generous man and is very text driven in his direction, which is providing a very organic space for us to work in. And by that I mean that he is allowing us to free form choices and blocking to some extent, as long as the focus is on truthfully speaking.

We finished "staging" the whole play on Friday and started to re-run through it on Saturday with a more fine toothed comb, which is great. Right now the challenge for me is getting off book and having the text truly live in me so that I can use it to my full advantage. It is such a blessing to have 5 weeks for a production, this is a luxury.

Today, along with doing my laundry and cleaning my insanely messy apartment I am learning lines for 4 different things: Midsummer Night's Dream, my Nova Scotia Talent Trust submission and two auditions in Halifax. So, needless to say I have a heavy day for memory. I am excited to be submitting for things in Halifax though, it is making me anxious to get back and be there in person. I miss it. I am hoping for a lucrative summer this year, as I usually am, and just hope that I can get some great work in.

Last summer, was really difficult but paid off in the end with the people I met and projects I was able to work on. And so I hope that similar opportunities arise this year.

Last night I celebrated my birthday with some of the cast and crew of Midsummer's and I had a blast. We went Laser Tagging and it was the most intense 20 minutes of my life. I ended up coming in last place out of 27 people.

It was the little Rambo children that kept killing me.

I really had fun though, and will most likely be going back before the year is out. So great. Then we went out to dinner to this place called Restaurant Hachoir which was very fancy and the food was amazing. I totally splurged and got a drink, appetizer, main course and dessert. But hey, it was my birthday!

What amazed me the most was the generosity of a few of the people at my table who paid for my entire bill, which was completely unnecessary, and extremely expensive. I was totally humbled. It is moments like those that make me believe in people and how generosity is something that is so rare and it truly is something special. I am so blessed and feel extremely grateful to have people in my life with this quality.

Well, I am off to do what I mentioned above and hope that If you are in town for May 1, 2 and 3rd that you will drop by The National Theatre School to see our rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream!\

Also, if you haven't already heard; Blackbird is being theatrically released on May 10th across canada in select theatres! Here is the trailer:

Blackbird Theatrical Trailer

Night, Abyss.

Open.

Hey Abyss,


Solo Show happened, and it was beautiful.

It was everything I anticipated and more.

I will reiterate the talent that I am surrounded by in my class. All eleven of us are so completely different, it's wonderful. I feel honoured to be part of such a diverse class that has so many things to offer. And really neat to see that we will all be pursuing something completely individual after we graduate next year.

Where has the time gone?

The performance was phenomenal, I don't think I have ever been so nervous.

It was surreal.

I performed on Saturday to a 110 person audience, who beautifully accepted Lioness in all its glory. The opportunity to play with the audience was something that I missed deeply. There is talks of me potentially remounting the piece in Halifax this summer, but that is still undecided. I really don't want that one performance to be the end, as wonderful as it was.

The wave of energy that accosted me when I walked out was something I have never experienced before and was truly remarkable, and once I figured out how to deal with the enormous amount of energy I was home. It brought me back to all the reasons of why I love what I do and what has made me pursue this. That feeling of making people laugh, and transporting them to my world, so we can play together. Simply unforgettable. It also reminded me that is doesn't have to only be my own work that these qualities happen in. This feeling should flow through all my work, I should be affecting people that much in every performance I do, regardless of who wrote the script!

My new goal is: I want to be as open and as brave as I can be in every role. To me, right now, this is the only way to have the audience trust me enough to convince them to follow me down the rabbit hole.

Thank you Adam and Jodi, you are amazing.

We have started rehearsal for A Midsummer Night's Dream and I am playing Theseus. Joe Ziegler is directing us and he is simply awesome. His energy and enthusiasm for the text is infectious and I am stoked to get on my feet with him. I am doing my best to crossover all the work that has been percolating in me from the start of the year into this project, as there is no time like the present.

(More to come on this over the next little bit...)

I read this quote today and I think it is perfect in reminding me how to make compelling work:

"The only mistake that can truly hurt you is choosing to do nothing simply because you’re too scared to make a mistake."

I as an actor want to challenge peoples ideas and make them think about what they are seeing, and the only way I can do that is to work hard and give myself over to the art and where it wants to take me.

There is no room for insecurity, only vulnerability.

I am inspired by so many things lately, I feel both focused and pulled open. I want to be in this state for as long as I can. Anything is possible here.

Night Abyss.

Sunday - A Day of Rest?

Hey Abyss,

Things have been busy over the last four weeks. I can't believe how quickly things are moving, but at the same time I am very anxious to get home to my family and friends in the Maritimes.

My classmates and I had a Christmas Party last night which was great, we had so much tasty food and I felt rather classy with my ugly sweater and glass of Whiskey. All I needed was a cigar and I would have been ready for a segment on the Art of Manliness. Of course being surrounded by all the food and Christmas music playing in the background made me a little more homesick. I am really looking forward to the break this year. The last few weeks have been especially draining, energetically.

The two weeks we had with Tanja Jacobs were interesting, to say the least, I felt I had the most fun in the last few days we worked with her. After those days I am quite interested to see how our process goes after the break.

We then worked with Yael Farber for the last two weeks, she is an intense woman. And I mean that in the best sense of the word. I learned a lot from her, she is a very generous and focused person and offered such wonderful insight into the characters that we were working with. The spine of the last two weeks were the text from After Miss Julie by Patrick Marber, and so it was a very fierce exploration, if you know Marber. The class was very sacred to me so I won't delve that much further into it, but I feel that it was exactly what I needed right now in my journey here at the school.

Another NTS moment that I won't soon forget.

We have been bombarded with many little projects lately, that have to be continually percolating with us at all moments of the day. This has made it hard to come home and relax, but everything is changing next semester because we start to move into productions for the next year and a half. As I stated in earlier posts; we have three studios shows next term.

The Seagull Directed by Tanja Jacobs

Solo Show Directed by Adam Lazarus and Jodi Essery

? Shakespeare Directed by Joe Ziegler

I am completely amped to start doing some productions, they are not fully fledged as they are still explorations but we do have public performances which is exciting in itself.

Today, in a couple of hours in fact, I am filming an audition for a movie that is shooting this summer, it is very much a shot in the dark considering it is an open call but I feel that there is no harm in submitting. I'm nervous about it because this is my one shot, its not like a regular audition where there is option to be directed. I submit one take.

Other than that there isn't really anything else going on. We start working on the staged reading of our text that David Yee has written for our class. I anticipate that it will be a fun week, I have some remaining research to do on the text before tomorrow though.

Wish me luck.

Night Abyss