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Inside the Box

Inside the Box and Into the Tornado with Audrey Francis

by Audrey

May 14, 2012

I’m probably going to read this someday and regret writing it.
Any “legitimate artist” will most likely disagree with my perspective.
I’m aware this sounds crazy, but I gotta throw it out there.

Has anyone ever wondered if our instincts on stage might be completely ass backward?

One of the quintessential lessons I’ve both learned and taught is to “follow your instinct.” In theory, I get this. 100%. If you want to do something on stage, do it. If you feel like kissing the girl, kiss her. If you feel like walking out, walk out. If you feel like letting go, let go. That part I get. I love that, I believe in it, I strive for it.

The problem is, is that I’m wondering what the fuck it is that we’ve been trained to want to do.

Almost all of my instincts in life are survival instincts. I’ve been trained to protect myself, to be careful with who I trust and selective with who give myself to. I’m assuming these instincts are fairly normal, right?

The problem is, that shit doesn’t disappear when I get on stage. My instinct is still to preserve myself. To survive. If something doesn’t feel safe, beneficial or doesn’t feel like I have control over it, my instinct is to get the fuck out. My instinct is that when I see a tornado, I go underground in the storm shelter with Auntie Em and wish the farm animals the best of luck.

I’m realizing these instincts translate on stage to: Not letting myself trust another human being, not allowing myself to feel hurt, stupid, embarrassed, turned on, rejected or genuinely happy. My instinct is to protect myself. Even with eye contact. The minute shit starts to get real on stage, my body has been trained to look away, do a dramatic cross and then laugh off the awkwardness.

I don’t like these instincts. I’m wondering if we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that survival instincts actually serve us on stage.

We talk a lot at Black Box about jumping out of an airplane. When you stand on the edge of of an airplane, you have two choices: 1) Jump out, or 2) Tell the stranger strapped to your back that you are not down with this and to get the fuck back in the plane.

Both of these options are incredibly difficult. The first option goes against every natural instinct I have. I’m choosing to plummet 13,000 feet with the faith that the equipment I’ve never used and the man whose family I’ve never met don’t fuck up. The second option also goes against every instinct I have. It means being excruciatingly honest with what I actually want, what my true feelings are and owning myself and my limits with no ego.

Both of these terrify to me. But what terrifies me the most, is if I had followed my initial survival instinct and never got on the plane to begin with.

Maybe the next audition, rehearsal, shoot or whatever we go on, maybe we should be a little more reckless with ourselves. Maybe we should double check that our instincts have not clouded our courage. Maybe one day we should go against everything we know to be “right” so we can define our own version of survival.

Lean into the tornado, jump out of the airplane, release the ego, kiss the fucking girl. Maybe the next time we step on stage we should fuck our survival instincts and live like it’s our last day.

By Audrey
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Save the Penguins – Inside the Box with Laura

by Laura

May 7, 2012

My heart is leaping out of my chest! Pure joy and extreme fear are warring an epic battle in my heart! Tears stream down my face as I erupt into giggles. My hands clench the steering wheel a little tighter, as I try to regain control of these overwhelming emotions. I’m driving with the windows down and my music blaring, old school. Singing. Then laughing. Then crying. I look totally crazy. It’s awesome.

I am driving home after my first rehearsal in three years. This break has clearly been good for my soul.

I feel alive.

When I used to hear about actors taking a break from the business, it seemed somehow, disloyal to me. Sad. Like if you take a break, you must not really, really love acting. My hunger to “tread the boards” was all consuming to me then. It was all I wanted to do, to an almost crippling degree.

What I realize now, is that there are those moments in life when your joy for acting IS tested by the reality of doing it. Whether it’s a series of rejection letters, a terrible review, or a life changing event, sometimes acknowledging that you need to step away from the industry, is a good thing. It can be healthy. It can be fulfilling on a whole other level and can make you come back ready to work, with a rejuvenated attitude. Like an actor’s spa retreat.

What I understand now, is that the industry will always be there. If you need to regroup for a bit, do it. There is nothing wrong with it.

Occasionally an actor will say to me “I don’t know what’s important to me. Nothing but my career is important to me.” The obvious issue with that is – If you don’t know what’s important to you as a living, breathing human, in your real life, than how do you expect to bring yourself to the stage?

Knowing what’s important to you, what makes you tick, what makes you livid, and the things that would make you live and die and fight and love and hate, those are the things to bring to the stage. And you must live life to know what those things are.

Listen to your body and your soul. If you need to take a break for a month, or a year, go live your life. Don’t skip your sister’s wedding or turn down an opportunity to save baby penguins in Antarctica. Please go. You will be a more fulfilled and interesting person. You will be a better actor for it.

By Laura
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Suteki Da Ne – Inside the Box

by Tate

May 1, 2012

“Suteki Da Ne” means “Isn’t It Wonderful?”

Life as an artist isn’t often wonderful. In fact, the wonder is often overshadowed by the rejection, disappointment, judgment and resentment. The incredible amount of blood, sweat and tears that we pour into our art often goes unnoticed and if it is noticed, so often it is regarded as unimportant.

In April alone I received four rejection letters and lost a literary prize, and as each came in (or rather didn’t), this terrible weight and dread spread across my life and I allowed myself to entertain thoughts that I’d never ever allowed myself to think — “What if I don’t make it?”

What if I don’t make it? What if the only thing I am prepared to do with my life doesn’t happen?

Pretty much death. However…

Meryl Streep once said, “my feeling about fears is, if you voice your fears, they may come true. I’m superstitious enough to believe that.”

And she’s right, as an artist you have so much against you already, with so few people on your side, why would you throw away your biggest ally? By allowing that fear to creep in and then acknowledging it you have handed control of your life to something that isn’t real. The fear may be real, but it doesn’t exist until you allow it to.

So what did I do? Took my rejection and my loss and I allowed myself to feel disappointed, sad and cry, because that what was honest, and as that moment passed I reexamined my work and I found that I was happy with the work that I put forth and then I submitted elsewhere.

As an artist you have to take it in and realize that just because you were rejected or lost an award doesn’t mean that you aren’t good, it just means that it wasn’t right, and all you can do is reflect and push forward.

And in the end, I know that my work, my work ethic and my life as an artist are all pretty suteki.

By Tate
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Notes from the Trenches: On Being a Teacher in Bootcamp by Elizabeth Murphy

by Black Box Acting

April 23, 2012

It’s the morning after I finish one of Black Box Acting’s infamous Bootcamps (the very accurate description on the website is “one weekend of sheer Meisner terror”), and I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.

I can’t stop crying, I’m alternately turned on and pissed off (actually, this is not altogether abnormal for me).

I’m struck mostly by two things:
1. My life has changed significantly since I took my first Bootcamp in 2010;
2. I absolutely suck at the Vegas line.

The latter is, to put it mildly, worrisome, since as a teacher, I am passionate about the Vegas line.

So, you’ll remember, from class, that the “Vegas line” separates the stage from the seats. In Vegas, there are no consequences for living fully, completely, and unapologetically owning your point of view (in life, of course, there are). The sanctity of Vegas relies on the actor’s professionalism: his willingness to leave the work in Vegas, and to let go of what happens up there. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Of all the tenets of Black Box, this is perhaps the one in which I believe most strongly. This is the one that lets us be brutally honest on stage, have our hearts broken, and then go have a drink with the producer and act like the normal, friendly people we would like to be. (And that, on occasion, we are.)

And so… it is of no little concern that I can’t seem to practice what I preach.

It occurs to me this morning, though, in between the bouts of vulnerability and defensiveness, that I may be making some progress on the matter.

I took a Black Box class a couple of years ago in which I did a scene where I was attracted to my scene partner. It was a pretty hot scene… Tennessee Williams, and all. I was married at the time, and pretty freaked out by the very real feelings I had for another man, while doing the work. And by the fact that these feelings didn’t exactly disappear the second I stepped off stage. In fact, they lingered. For a few months. Luckily, I kept these feelings and thoughts to myself.

A year or so later, by then an instructor, I took a Bootcamp class and had a scene with another lovely guy with whom I had to imagine that I was in love. Again, I was completely thrown by the fact that the residual effects of imagining the intimate details of a relationship didn’t automatically disappear once the class was over. But this time they disappeared after a couple of weeks (for the most part).

So, I figured, great – some day I’ll be able to let it go the same day, right? I’m on the right track. There was just one thing I hadn’t considered.

Six months later I find myself in this weekend’s Bootcamp. Here’s the difference: by this point I’d made the uncomfortable discovery that, in fact, I had to be as brave in my real life as I was in Vegas, if my work was to get any better. I couldn’t expect to be 100% honest on stage if I spent the majority of my time lying to myself about how I felt and what I wanted. In my relationships, in my career, in all aspects of my life. And the more I was willing apply some of that bravery I exercised in class to my real life, the more my real life began to change.

In her 2010 TEDx talk (Houston), the researcher Brené Brown cautioned that one cannot selectively numb feelings. When we numb discomfort, we also unintentionally numb joy. When we numb grief we also numb wonder. And when I check out, go numb, and lie in my real life, it will follow me onstage. I will be shut down.
This cuts both ways.
When I made the tough decisions in the last six months – in my real life – that allowed me to stop checking out so often, when I started to tell the truth more often than I hid or lied, the result was that I started to feel even more strongly than I thought was possible or tolerable. And this followed me on stage.

So when I found myself, in this weekend’s Bootcamp, attracted to another student on stage – a student that I’d actually taught before, no less – I was really attracted. “I wonder how much trouble I’d get into if I slept with a student” attracted.

When I found myself hurt by something another student said to me in a repetition warm-up – this time, a fellow instructor, and one of my best friends – I was really hurt. “I can’t ever look at him in the eye again” hurt.

When I was angry at another student on stage, I was really angry. “This bitch better not touch me right now” angry.

And when I stepped over the Vegas line, none of these feelings diminished. At all.

So I felt extremely guilty, and like a huge hypocrite for most of the weekend.
How the hell can I possibly be trusted to teach this technique if I can’t practice it myself? I’m a fraud.

But there’s that 10% of my brain that knows all of those feelings will diminish a tiny bit by tomorrow. And maybe this time, they’ll be gone in one week instead of three.

I am grateful to my teachers and fellow classmates at Bootcamp for giving me a safe place to practice. To practice being everything that I am – even when it’s too much. To practice investing in imaginary circumstances, and being willing to be changed on stage. To practice brutal honesty, and to practice letting myself be seen. And to practice letting go of the work when I step over that Vegas line. No matter how imperfectly.

Maybe the next time I take Bootcamp I’ll let it go the same night. In the meantime, though, I’ll be over here feeling more than I want to. And grateful that I’m no longer shut down.

By Black Box Acting
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The Lone Wolf — Inside the Box with Tate

by Tate

April 17, 2012

All my life all I’ve ever wanted to be was a writer. And the hardest thing about being a writer is what the art demands. A writer is a lone wolf. And most of the time, being a writer feels like you are chasing an invisible something in the middle of pitch black forest.

My main medium is the theatre. I’m a playwright. The term playwright doesn’t come from the obvious – writer of plays — it’s not playwrite. The “wright” comes from “wrought”. So a playwright is someone who beats and shapes words. Think of a wrought-iron fence from a hunk of iron.

Which brings me to the point. Doug Wright wrought the perfect sentence. The single sentence that has stuck with me more than any other in terms of who I am as an artist. In the play Quills, the laundress Maddie is caught reading the Marquis de Sade’s sexually violent Justine and is asked why she reads “that filth”. She responds, “If I wasn’t such a bad woman on the page, I couldn’t be such a good woman in life.”

What does that mean for me?

Writing is what keeps me sane. The deepest truth in me is that I am one of those artists. Emotionally self-destructive, violently moody and filled with intense, quiet, simmering anger. If you have read my work, you’d see all that and more live in my characters. In fact, the characters in my body of work are defined by the sexualized violence they wield as both sword and shield, their emotional tremors and their desperate grasping at a hope that continually slips further away.

By writing their stories, I am allowed to explore this terrifying and rabid part of me. And in doing so, the honest and emotionally dangerous part of me is free to ravage the world without consequence. Which leaves me as the slightly off-kilter, but mostly normal and sane person who interacts with the real world.

This is the way that I can stop chasing that something in the black forest and stand still. Stand still and let it come to me, turn on the light, and look at the scariest parts of me in the eye. I’m still a (mostly) lone wolf. But he’s a calm, well-fed lone wolf.

My mom reads everything I write before anyone else and after everything she has ever read she calls me and asks, “are you okay?”. The answer is an honest yes. Writing puts out the lit fuse. I’m the artistic equivalent of TNT.

Is this method flawless? No, I still fuck up all the time. But that’s okay, because good and bad doesn’t exist. Everyone is both at every moment. So a better revision for me as an artist is…

If I wasn’t such an animal on the page, I couldn’t be human in life.

By Tate
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Inside the Box with Conor Woods

by Black Box Acting

April 9, 2012

Villains (if there even is such a thing)

I started to list off all of my dream roles, and I realized they were all bad guys in some way or another. My initial reaction was, “Ew, what does that say about me that I want to play these “evil” people?” But as I thought about it, it makes perfect sense. There is something so human and gratifying about understanding a “villain’s” point of view. The stage is our safe place to be dangerous. It’s where we get to explore the darkest impulses and the most sinister of our intentions. Envy, greed, lust, pride. In the quiet dark of a theatre, an audience can look on with a bizarre combination of disgust and understanding. We’re all villains in someone else’s story anyway, right?

So with that in mind, here are my dream roles from the dark side:

1. Angelo in Measure of Measure. He’s a total liar, hypocrite, and sleaze. And I love it. I saw a production of this show in London that changed my life. It was so raw and captivating and moving. There was an unforgettable scene where the actor playing Angelo, who was really thin and geeky looking, pinned Isabella against a wall. Then he took out this pocket razor and trembeled as he cut open Isabella’s bra. He looked like this delicate pathetic spider. He was doing this grotesque horrible thing yet he was the one who looked so vulnerable. It was amazing. I just remember thinking, I want to be able to do that.

2. Constantine in Big Love. When my college did this show, I played the character of Giuliano, who is this gay, funny, supporting character. I didn’t even try out for Constantine, the antagonizing misogynist. I didn’t think I was manly enough. If I could go back, I would have had more faith in myself and gone out for this woman-hating punk.

3. Claudius in Hamlet. “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” He basically admits to himself that he isn’t even capable of being genuinely remorseful and therefore will go to hell. Heartbreaking. I love it.

4. Larry in Closer. I just love how this guy is all id. No matter how hard he tries, he’s just an animal. “BECAUSE I’M A CAVEMAN!” Love it.

By Black Box Acting
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Tom Chiola in UNDER THE RAINBOW FLAG

by Black Box Acting

April 3, 2012

BLACK BOXERS…
Tom Chiola as Bender


WHEN
Opening One performance only–Sunday, April 15, 4:30pm
Running through April 15
Staged reading/concert version of a new musical about gay soldiers in WWII with music, lyrics and book by Chicagoan Leo Schwartz. Part of the Great Gay Play weekend of new LGBT plays sponsored by Pride Films and Plays, April 13-15.at the Center on Halsted.


WHERE
Center on Halsted
3656 North Halsted Street Chicago, IL


TO RESERVE
$10 — available at the door or at brownpapertickets.com


MORE INFORMATION
www.pridefilmsandplays.com

By Black Box Acting
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Laura Hooper’s ‘The Death of Sexy’ – Inside the Box

by Laura

April 2, 2012

DREAM ROLE: Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Full disclosure: I played this part. In high school. I was 17 years old. I’m positive I was terrible. I want to give it a go now. Black Box style.

Here are a few things I fucked up on.

1. I was working really hard at “playing sexy”. Of course now, post-Black Box, I understand that “playing sexy” is actually the death of “sexy”. Nothing worse than watching a starlet bat her eyelashes and wiggle her hips, all while completely thinking about how she looks to the audience. Gross.

2. I never figured out why I, Laura, would fight so hard for my husband’s love. Does he hate me? Is he gay? Why in the world would I choose to stay with this man in real life? See Your Stanley is Gay for a solution to this issue.

3. My boyfriend at the time was playing my husband, Brick. Instead of using all the information I knew about him, in real life, and putting it into the work, I pretended that I DID NOT know him as my boyfriend. He was an actor, playing Brick. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT??? Exactly. It makes absolutely no sense!

But seriously, we have all done this at some point. Example: your BFF in real life is cast as your sister in a play. Instead of using the information you actually know about this person, in real life, you make up NEW information about her. Instead of letting your real history with this person fuel you, you make up completely new history. Why??? It’s so much extra work, and not nearly as personal. Just use what you actually know about them, good and bad.

Side note: No matter WHO you are on stage with, you must be able to articulate exactly what you like about that person, and exactly what you do not like about that person. Being an actor means having a HUGE point of view. About everything.

I would love to tackle that role again. I would love to allow myself to play the role without needing to control myself and control the performance.

What is YOUR do-over role???

By Laura
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Elizabeth’s Dream Roles – Inside the Box

by Black Box Acting

March 26, 2012

1) The Vampire King
It doesn’t matter which medium. It doesn’t matter which script.

No one has ever truly grasped how deeply I love vampires, and stories of vampires. Some have tried. But they don’t really get it.

My number one dream role is the Vampire King. Actually, any male vampire will do.
Don’t get all huffy about Twilight on me. I’ve always loved vampires.
Since before The Lost Boys. Since before forever.

To crave, with every cell of your body, with fang-dripping desire, that which simultaneously sustains you and destroys you? At various times in my life this has certainly been my deepest truth.

And why the King?
The depth of the want. The hunger. The maddening hunger.
The desire – the depth of the bloodlust – may belong to both sexes, but I want a chance to live through the man’s capacity to devour. To take, rather than be taken. In this realm, at least.

[To interject, as a theme may emerge here:
My dream roles generally involve madness, addiction, sex - or metaphors for them, as with the example above. This used to embarrass me. Not anymore. Now I wouldn’t trade places with anyone; it’s way more fun to embrace it than it is to hide.]

2) Tom in The Glass Menagerie
Being haunted. The meta-theatrics. The poetry. Perfection.

3) Anna in Burn This
Speaking of being haunted: I have a dark history with this play. If I ever happen to mention innocently that I’m planning on doing a production of it, just smack me in the head with a brick and hope I forget about it by the time I wake up.

Anna – utter fulfillment through art. The journey from dancer to choreographer. Insane, impossible passion. The worst of the bad boys, in Pale.
And Lanford Wilson’s language distilled to its simplest, purest form. Still gorgeous. But very, very spare. Just like the loft space in which it’s set.

4) Lady M – see my parenthetical description above. This likely needs no explanation.

5) And pretty much any role in A Chorus Line.

My deepest truth is that I’m a huge drama geek who grew up in the theater (or at least in class – up a steep and very narrow stairway), who thinks I’m a gay man, and who really, at the end of the day, just wants to sing and dance.

By Black Box Acting
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Inside the Box – Dream Roles of the Evil Pompadour

by Tate

March 19, 2012

Clov in Endgame
Clov is my favorite character from my favorite play. All that despair and beautiful dialogue, I reread the play at least once a year. He is a fascinating creation of dense pain, who is essentially a slave to himself under the man who raised him. And what’s underneath all that despair? The burden of obligation and the choice to be free. An amazing role to dive into.

Sally Bowles in Cabaret
Sally Bowles is one of the great musical roles. Wicked funny, amazing songs and all that divine decadence. I just want to slap on some green nail polish and hit the Berlin stage.

George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
One of the roles I’d love to do when I’m older. I love jumping into the trenches of family warfare. Free-flowing liquor, spewing venomous dialogue and hurtling headfirst towards disaster? I fucking love it.

Javert in Les Miserables
This has been one of my favorite musicals since I was super young, and the first time I heard “Stars” I fell so in love with Javert. I don’t even know what to say, I’m at a total loss of words, I just deeply love him.

Macbeth in Macbeth
And we’ll throw a Shakespeare in here for good measure. I think Macbeth is his best, I love the violence and tangled mess he weaves with his wife. A completely insane man and I’d love to explore his world.

By Tate
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