Hopper Does San Francisco

I'm sitting in a rented apartment, about half an hour before I need to catch my flight out of town. I've spent a week with four other members of the DICE crew in the foggy neighborhood of Sunset in San Francisco. We just finished our show last night.

Like all DICE shows, it was (almost) entirely improvised. Each night, two of us would step onstage, one as Edward Hopper, famous 20th century painter of Nighthawks fame, the other as his wife Josephine, or one of the other people influential to his life and art. After a ten minute improvised scene, we would show a painting, and two more people would come on stage, starting in the places of the characters in the painting, and improvise a scene of what happened to those characters. Sometimes the parallels were obvious, sometimes they were subtle. But you could see them every time.

The show was part of a theater festival hosted by foolsFury, called Factory Parts. The point of the festival was to give ensemble pieces without a traditional scriptwriting process a chance to do something analogous to a staged reading. Were were still working out the kinks in the concept. Others were still working on the shows themselves.

There was a workshop over the weekend before we performed, hosted by director Mark Jackson. It started off seemingly as an unassuming list of lists of things about theater. But some of the items and discussions it provoked were certainly memorable. Aside from a few odd proclamations from participants about crop circles or brown rice, one thing that Mark himself said stuck with me: As artists, the product we create isn't the performance, or the object, or the thing we actually have our hands on, it's the experience of our audience. That's the thing we make, and as I interpreted it, that's what we're responsible for in our art.

It's something I'd always sort of felt, but never before quite had the words to explain. When I'm concerned about a piece of writing or a performance I'm part of, I'm usually thinking about the audience's experience. Obviously we can't be responsible for every single reaction of any audience member, but it's important to acknowledge that we at least share the responsibility.

Which is partially why I had a good time working with DICE on this project. People really enjoyed the piece. We got great feedback from our audiences in talkbacks and immediately after the shows. Sometimes when I'm doing dramatic improv, it doesn't totally feel quite like it's fitting. But when you hear afterwards that your audience thought it hit home, you know that no mater how you felt, you did something right.

I don't know what's next for the company, but I think we're going good places.

Party Tomorrow, Reading Next Week, Touring Show Next Month

Lots happening. Links galore to follow. Cliffs notes version, come see me perform and party tomorrow night, then come see me again next week. Then I'm leaving the country, then coming back, then you can see me perform again in San Francisco in July!

First. This is a photo for next week's gig. It was taken by Allison Stock, and it's promoting a reading I'm going to be in next week of Yasmina Reza's awesome play, Art. It all started when my friend, Adam Souza (center) and I started talking about the idea on GChat, and then invited Sean Devare (left) on board. Rehearsals with our director, Emily Snyder, have gone great, and I'm really looking forward to the end product. June 20, Space on White, 81 White St. Please RSVP on the Facebook event so we can ask for the right number of chairs. Admission is free, donations to pay for the space rental greatly appreciated.

But that's not all, tomorrow night I'm going to be performing for a big party for DICE. We're raising money for our trip out to perform in San Francisco in the FoolsFury Theater Festival. We're doing dramatic improv based off of secrets gathered anonymously from the audience, a comedic troupe will be doing their thing, and we've got two singer-songwriters doing their thing as well. Come join the party: 7pm, Pine Box Rock Shop, 12 Grattan St, Brooklyn. $5 cover, cheap drinks, and if you want to donate to help us go on the road, we'll wuv yu fuhevah.

See you at one and/or both! It's you last chance to see me before I go to Ethiopia.

Nonstop Bard

Last night at 2am, I finished performing in a reading of Richard II where I played Norfolk, Northumberland, Green, "Another Lord," A Servant, and a Groom.

Six hours previously, I did not know this reading was happening or that it needed actors.

And that's not the crazy part. That's actually sort of normal for a reading. The crazy part is that, while I've long since left, the show is still going. Right now. It's not Richard II anymore, I think they're on King John, but the same stage as I was on is still being performed on with probably some of the same actors from Facing Page Productions.

You see, Facing Page Productions is putting on, as I type this, The Company's Marathon. It's all 37 of Shakespeare's plays read onstage in a row without intermission. It started yesterday and will finish this Saturday, with no breaks. If you want to see Julius Caesar at 4:30am tonight, you can go see Julius Caesar at 4:30am. Expect to be out around 6:30am, in time for Much Ado About Nothing. And so on.

It's a place full of comfy chairs and sofas onstage, literally piles of scripts, and a constant stream of the most famous drama in the English language. If you come to watch, don't be surprised if you get sucked into the story. I don't mean engrossed. I mean handed one of the parts and asked to perform.

He That Shall Live This Day

Tonight was a show-stopper.

Background: I am applying to eight graduate schools for International Relations. Prior to today I had already been accepted to George Washington University and American University's masters programs. The other six all said they would email their decisions sometime in March.

I am also a Resident Artist at The Shakespeare Forum. This means I go to a Tuesday night donation-based workshop of about 60-80 people to help facilitate monologues and feedback for actors.

Forum has a little thing we call a "Bard-Off," where someone can challenge someone else to do a speech they are too scared to do, don't like, or for whatever reason, wouldn't normally do. If the person accepts, they get to assign the challenger a corresponding speech. I challenged my friend, Meryl, to one a long time ago, making her do a Cleopatra piece she always wanted to do, but dreaded. In turn, I took on Henry V's Crispin Day speech.

So. Today. Today was the day we finally agreed on performing. I'd been running the lines on my own and with my girlfriend for days beforehand. I was feeling good about it as I got on the subway tonight.

To distract myself, I opened my email, just as we no longer had cell service. At the top of my inbox was a message from Johns Hopkins SAIS, one of the top international relations schools in the world. I opened it. It said my admissions decision was ready and viewable online.

I couldn't of course get online from the New York subway. That was a long train ride.

By the end of it, I had decided I wasn't going to check until after forum. So I turned off my phone. I was physically shaking for a good hour, watching everyone perform. I don't know if it was knowing about the hovering admissions decision or about my getting up in front of a packed house to give arguably the biggest pre-battle speech in the English language.

There was the break. Some announcements. Then the third to last monologue, the second to last, and then the last one. Then came time for the Bard-Off. The crowd started chanting "Bard-OFF! Bard-OFF! Bard-OFF!"

Meryl pulled out a gold circlet, took off her jacket, strode onstage, and knocked that piece out. She was great. Applause and cheers, assorted looks from the audience in my direction clearly saying "good luck topping that" and Meryl walked off. I shook her hand, and stepped forward as the chants began again.

I stood for a moment in front, and then silenced the chant with a wave-to-fist of a choir director. Laughter. Then came the lines.

This speech is given by King Henry to his battered, exhausted men as they are surrounded by thousands upon thousands of French troops, fresh and in full armor, knowing soon they are going to be attacked.

If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

I paused. People started cheering. I quieted them again and started fresh:

This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Henry goes on to lead those battered, outnumbered troops to victory. It's a great speech, and it got a big reaction. That felt good.

Twenty minutes later, I was at the bar with everyone. I made sure I had a whiskey in my hand. While I was playing Henry, the University of Washington had also sent me an email decision. I got out my phone, logged in to the sites and read the messages.

I'd been admitted to both programs.

It's been a great night.

I Love/Hate/Heart NY

If there's one thing New Yorkers love doing more than bragging about New York, It's complaining about New York. It's late, I feel like indulging. I may update this later as things occur to me. Gives me a place to put all these things.

The case against New York: 

I pay about as much rent as my brother pays for his monthly mortgage payment. He lives in a two-story house outside of Chicago. I live in an essentially unheated walk-up one-bedroom apartment, maybe 400 sq ft, no appliances, no onsite anything, in a not-very-nice area of town.

Buying groceries costs more here than dining out does in other cities. My girlfriend paid $5 for a dozen eggs last week. A store two blocks from my apartment advertises milk prices the same way most places advertise gasoline, with exchangeable numbers. To add gastronomic insult to financial injury, produce in normal grocery stores is rarely any good.

Despite making well under the national average  for annual income, I have to pay so much in taxes every year that I have to send checks five times a year to not only the federal and state governments, but also the city government.

I miss nature. When I say "I miss nature," to people here, they tell me to go to Central Park. At which point I explain the phrase "man-made" to them, and their eyes glaze over.

Central and Prospect Parks aside, parks are so sad that what amount to traffic islands are considered city parks. I'm not kidding. They occasionally have a shrub and a bench near the parks dept sign.

Marked city bike paths often include cobblestones, and sometimes include stairs.

The weather is really unpleasant six months out of the year.

Because everyone thinks the city has everything, nobody ever leaves. Anyone from New York who meets someone who lives elsewhere thinks that they must be, on some level, joking.

Other cities have parking strips, planter boxes, and other nice things on the side of the sidewalk. In New York, because there are no alleyways (and therefore no dumpsters), all garbage is piled out onto the sidewalk. And it stinks-- while the rest of the country moved on to separate not just recyclables but also food waste, New York still hasn't quite figured out the recycling part. They're trying. Sorta.


The case for New York:

I'll almost never want or need to drive a car as long as I'm in the city. The subway is so good that we come to any given station without looking at a train schedule ever, and whine if a train doesn't show up within five minutes.

I spent last weekend in an on-site reading of Checkov's Three Sisters, after which I saw Eddie Izzard from the third row in a small club in the lower east side, and the next day I did a film shoot with a dramatic improv crew. Wednesday I got an email offering me tickets to see two prominent TV actors perform in a production of Much Ado About Nothing. I went to work, finished, and saw the show that night.

Every Tuesday I spend my evenings with 60-80 amazingly talented actors performing Shakespeare in basement, and then go en-masse to a bar afterwards where the manager likes to give me free drinks while I'm at the free-play pool table. Thursdays I have a couchsurfing meetup I can go to where I can and do meet about sixty people from literally all over the world.

You never have to meet or talk to a boring person ever again. Almost everyone you meet is from somewhere cool and is doing something cool, and has awesome stories.

I get paid enough per hour to help rich kids with their homework for about ten to fifteen hours a week (not counting prep and transport, which makes it closer to 30 but still) that I can pay rent referenced above and have some left over.

If it exists in any city and can be done in a city, I just need to use my phone to find out how I can get to the place it can be done in less than an hour. Doesn't matter what it is. Similarly, anything that tours anywhere comes here. If it doesn't, it's probably not interesting enough for us to want to see it anyway.

All of your friends and family from out of town love the idea of visiting you. Some even love visiting you.

--

So in other words, NY is kind of a horrible, expensive place to live, full of awesome people doing awesome things.

I guess I'll take it for now.

Say Protopopov Five-Times, Fast

Reading a script by Checkov is weird.

I'd forgotten this in the years since I last did it. Any self-respecting professional actor is well up on their Checkov. Unlike them, I write a blog, and honesty makes for more interesting entries than self-respect. I'm pretty sure the last and only time I read anything by the man was in high school, when we were assigned The Cherry Orchard. I didn't understand much of it, and our teacher told us, that's okay, the playwright wrote it thinking it was a comedy, and the first director thought it was a tragedy. So if you don't get it, you're not alone.

Fast forward to last week. I'd just come from a rehearsal for the one-act festival I was in that weekend to a birthday party in a turn-of-the-century house in Brooklyn, where my friend, Jessica, invited me on board to play Vershinin in a site-specific staged read of Three Sisters, opposite her Masha.

My now ex-girlfriend playing Irina in college taught me most of what I knew about the play. That was very little, mostly because I was studying abroad in India during her entire rehearsal process and run of the show. I knew that it had been a mind-blowing experience for her, and that she played the youngest of three sisters who seemed to spend most of their time Not Going To Moscow.

So tapped my way to Project Gutenberg using my newly hacked e-reader, and downloaded a free copy to read on the subway. After four acts of trying to decipher oddly self-centered monologues and seemingly random bouts of laughter and tears interspersed in the dialogue for seasoning, I scratched my head and hoped that we had a really good director.

Luckily, we do. When said director, Nicole, told me she'd spent four years studying in the Moscow Arts Theater, I knew we were probably in good hands. I just spent this afternoon with the actors playing the sisters and the man playing the youngest sister's main suitor, Tuzenbach. It's amazing how this play starts to make so much more sense when you read it out loud with a good director and cast. For one thing, those seemingly self-centered monologues suddenly work their way into the relationships between characters instead of watching them take turns grandstanding. The refresher course on Russian triple names and diminutives didn't hurt, either.

The reading is going be in an old rickety house in Brooklyn, with the audience invited to the party, which morphs from a regular Brooklyn house party in an awesome setting to Irina's name day party in the first scene of the play. They can then follow us from room to room as we read the main action, though some might want to explore and see some of the "Etudes" we're developing of off-stage action between characters. A little like a tiny Sleep No More in terms of audience experience.

It's going to be a good reading, and it's going to be this Friday, 7pm. Space is very limited, so contact me if you're in town and want to see it.

Teaching Shakespeare in Public Schools

This morning, at 8:05 am, I was in New Dorp High School in Staten Island. I was there to teach Shakespeare.

To be honest, I was mostly watching.  This was the first workshop I’d ever done in a school for The Shakespeare Forum. I am resident artist, and with me were the Forum’s Associate Director of Education Programs and the Executive Director. They outrank me. So I sat, watched, and handed out scripts, while they did most of the real teaching.

You ever want to see a tough crowd? Try a captive audience of seventeen-year-olds at 8am. Never before have I seen a group of people so scared of theater warm-ups.

But Sybille and Claire are pros, so I got to just watch them work, and they did some brilliant stuff. First of all, they chatted with the students before class began, in order to learn more about them, make them feel comfortable, and to make a mental note of who had good, audible speaking voices to read parts later.

Then they broke up “To be or not to be, that is the question” into syllables, lined ten kids up, and had them each read one to break down Iambic pentameter. It was just the perfect task to hand them, enough to get them on their feet and participating, but short and diffuse enough that the chance (and fear) of embarrassing themselves in front of the class was minimal (though one kid pulled it off by not listening and assuming we were counting instead of reading, which turned the first reading into: “To” “be” “or” “not” “to” “six”).

I think my favorite moment though came from when we were doing a speech of Lysander’s, where he talking over Hermia while she sleeps:

She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there,

And never mayst thou come Lysander near!

For as surfeit of the sweetet things

The deepest loathing to the stomach brings…

We asked the kids what they noticed about how it sounded. The third student we asked pointed out that it had a lot of “sss” sounds in it.

“So,” Sybille said, “Hermia’s there, asleep in the forest. There’s al this “sss”ing going on. What does that make you think of?”

“Snakes.” Offered a kid on the side.

“Very good! Guess what, the next line after Lysander leaves, the very next thing that happens is that Hermia wakes up and says she had a horrible dream about snakes.”

Immediately came a quiet voice in the back,

“…whoa.”

Priceless. It’s great when you can pick out that one thing that really hits people and makes them realize just how good this writer really was.

But there’s another part to this story that goes outside of the classroom, or even anything Sybille, Claire, or I were doing as part of the Shakespeare Forum. I was talking to the teacher (a Forum regular herself) after the class, and she told me something about the student we playing Hermia: she’d lost her home to flooding from Hurricane Sandy.

Much of Staten Island is still very much a recovery zone. FEMA is operating tents and trailers just outside the school parking lot. Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan was visiting the school the same day we were, assessing what recovering community schools need most right now. Occupy Sandy is still operating, A couple subway stations and lines are still closed, and some people are still without power, heat, or in some extreme cases, homes.

It’s harder to remember when it’s not in front of you, but these people still need our help. The hurricane feels like it was long time ago, but recovery is still happening today, and without media coverage (unlikely-- there's little "news" to what's happening) a lot of people are going to forget about it. Even though I live in the same city, I hear more about the debates in Washington DC over funding recovery than I do about the my neighbors who need the help. That doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not sure how to change it.

One of the other students asked us about why Shakespeare seems to intertwine comedy and tragedy in his plays, one right after the other. I don't know if I was satisfied with our answer exactly, but I learn by example, and I guess if this blog post is any indication I'm still using it today. Life's like that. Not everything has a neat ending.

My Next Show

EDIT: (11/26/12) Dates have changed since last posting and are now accurate below

I will be performing at the Manhattan Repertory Theater with DICE Theater company. December 7 and 9 (won't be part of the Dec 5th show due to work conflict).  More details below.

Reserve tickets by emailing mrtreserve@gmail.com.

It will be intense, and not all stories will be resolved. But we got a standing ovation last time we did it, so something about it works.

See you there!

My First Day With Occupy Sandy

Kendra and I went to check out one of the two major headquarters of the Occupy Sandy hurricane relief effort. Anyone reading who's ever been part of Scav Hunt at the University of Chicago would instantly feel at home. Same form of no-budget organized chaos, only this time instead of trying make an x-wing out of Paris Metro tickets, contacting a medal of honor recipient, or cobbling together a nuclear reactor, we're trying to help people who've been hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy and it's aftershock nor'easter.

This is Occupy, so yes, it's ostensibly political. There's an orientation every half hour where they make the point that our job is not charity, it's something they call "mutual aid." In other words, the mission is not to parachute in, drop blankets and food randomly, and leave. It's to come in and see what's already on the ground and how we can best help, even if it's just listening to people, and often it's following orders of people who live in the communities and know much better what's going on than any of us. Also just as important, the help is for you, too. All volunteers need to take care of themselves and each other.

Granted, the manner of the presentation will turn some people off in being overly generalized. Even those who like the sound of an anit-racist, anti-classist, etc. movement would be a bit irked by the attitude with which the platform is presented to new recruits in this orientation, but their hearts are clearly in the right place, the orientation only takes about ten minutes and is then done, and more importantly these people are organized and they know what they are doing.

How organized? Slate thinks they just might be outdoing the Red Cross. If Kendra and my experience were any example, as soon as we came in with donations (which we had seen calls for on their site), unannounced, at a time nobody had asked for people, we were effortlessly funneled first to a table where we could drop stuff off, then to a coat check, then to an orientation which started in less than ten minutes, to a second canvassers orientation, then to join a group that was ready to go with a van, fully supplied, to Coney Island. As they gave us flashlights, ways to contact the system to tell HQ what was needed where, we were informed that social workers would be on hand to talk to us afterwards about our experiences if we needed someone to debrief with, and we were encouraged to grab something to eat from the kitchens if we were hungry (though they were so quick that we didn't have time, so we just snacked from the cooler our driver had been provisioned with instead in the van).

Key to the system in place is a knowledge of community organization from the activist founders of the original occupy wall street movement, and clear setup that conveys as much information as possible with as little human resources wasted as possible. Unlike most other volunteer organizations, they accept everyone who comes and wants to help, no questions. You very well could end up just picking up trash around the neighborhood, but you will be doing something. The sheer numbers ensure that something is getting done, and the leaderless lateral system of communications ensures that if someone screws up, the mistake is channeled back to HQ, learned from, and adapted to future teams and efforts so that it (probably) won't be made again.

As someone who is applying to graduate schools to learn about international development, I feel I just might learn more from these guys on how to run an effective development organization than I'd learn almost anywhere else.

The New York Times ran a great article on how it looks in there: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-short-occupy-sandy-was-there.html?pagewanted=all

In short, while I always sympathised with the Occupy Wall Street movement, I used to not feel they were all that effective because of lack of goals. Suddenly, they have a goal, they have relevance, and oh man, are they effective.

Check em out: http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/

Life with Sandy Frankenstorm

Eight days ago I got stuck for a few minutes on the Charles river at sunset. The "T," as the subway is known in Boston, had to stop on its way from Harvard to the station where I'd be meeting a cousin for the first time in years. Apparently there was a sick passenger ahead. Not so great for the sick passenger, pretty nice for me as I watched the view.

I didn't realize it then, but this was going to be a theme for the next few days.

I hadn't really known anything about Hurricane Sandy, or Frankenstorm as people were calling it, until I was on my way back to New York Sunday morning. I figured it was going to be another Irene-- all bark and no bite. But the I found out that they were closing the subway that night at 7pm. So I started making arrangements from my bus back to Chinatown. By the time I had crossed from Massachusetts into Connecticut, I had preliminary arrangements with my students to arrange their sessions as conditions developed, and a plan with my girlfriend to camp out at her place in Park Slope for the storm. I made sure I could bring my bicycle, just in case.

After I got home, I rushed to unpack one bag to pack my big backpack (same one I use as my only bag on international travel), meet with a neighbor for a quick GRE study session, pick up a couple gallons of water, then ride my bike to the subway. I got into a position where I could hold the bag, the bike and myself upright for about an hour and rode it out to Brooklyn. Then I hauled everything to street level, got some cash from an ATM, and pedaled to Kendra's.

I'd be misleading you if I described the next few days in terms of a young couple huddled in a small space in a hurricane. Picture and guy with his girlfriend who don't see each other enough finally getting some quality time, stocked up with lots of good food, DVDs and a Netflix account. If it were still raining and we still didn't have to go to work. we might still be there now. All we saw out the window was some wind and rain. The lights flickered a few times. That was it. We starting joking to each other that it was the "best hurricane ever."

We stopped making those jokes on Tuesday. Not because of us; the internet had cut out, but we were still having a great time. It was when we started looking at the news headlines and pictures on my phone. Staten Island, Red Hook, the Lower East Side, flooded. A Rockaway town called Breezy Point in smoldering ruins. The lower third of Manhattan without power. All seven subway tunnels under the East River out of commission, at least one filled with water from track to ceiling.

We spent another couple days in Brooklyn, me waiting as each of my students canceled their appointments, one by one. They didn't have school. One was without power in Tribeca. Another was without power in New Jersey and with a tree fallen across their driveway.

So I stayed in Brooklyn through Halloween. Went to Barnes and Noble where I studied for the GRE, and Kendra edited one of her author's manuscripts. We stopped by a cell phone store to check something for her, and then and checked out the biggest fallen tree in the neighborhood (apparently some teen there stepped out of her house with a friend, looked at the small crowd of onlookers taking pictures, rolled her eyes and told her friend "It's been like this all day.")

Halloween night we picked our way among sugar-loaded, three-foot, creatures rocketing around the streets to eat homemade apple caramels and cake, and watch Hocus Pocus with a half dozen of gay male friends (the token straight couple has to be there somewhere, right?).

So it was Thursday that I finally decided to head home. Friday was my GRE, and I had a couple students in Manhattan who wanted to meet up. So I got my stuff, said goodbye to my girlfriend, and brought my bike and somewhat lightened bag to the newly running, fare-free subway line.

It got me as far as the Brooklyn side of Brooklyn Bridge. I had no idea what I was going to find on the other side. What was flooded? What had power? Would it be gridlocked, or empty of cars entirely? I biked towards the bridge's bike path and saw bikes coming over in the other direction. I hailed a group of them and asked what things were like on the other side. It became clear quickly that they were French tourists and didn't understand what I was asking. A good sign-- if tourists are biking around, it can't be that bad on the other side.

Sure enough, when I hit downtown Manhattan for the first time in a week, everything was dry, and the traffic was light. It was also a bit confused. No electricity anywhere, and therefore no traffic lights. Police in neon vests were directing traffic at almost every intersection.

It was like being on a fairground after it had closed. You're so used to seeing everything in operation that the absence of any people and open shops feels eerie. I could hear generators and cars around, but I've never seen Chinatown or SoHo that quiet. I rode up to Bleecker and Houston and the only traffic was a dude in the middle of the street dragging a shopping cart.

At Union Square I saw a line of about forty people near a small truck. On the back of the truck was a cardboard sign advertising a place to recharge your cell phone. I biked up Park avenue and started seeing military vehicles parked along the streets.

I took a picture at 39th st, the line where power was and was not working. In the foreground, traffic lights that weren't working. In the background, traffic lights that were, and traffic to go with them.

By 50th street, it was completely gridlocked. by 59th it was back to a normal day in New York.

My apartment had power and internet. Several things in my fridge had gone bad. Everything else was fine. I saw two of my students, one a little earlier than usual. He lives somewhere with what normally has a view of the whole island south of 50th st. But in the dark that night, it looked like the city stopped existing about twenty blocks away. Everything was black except the freedom tower construction in the distance.

After taking the GREs yesterday and recovering with some friends in a postage stamp sized Hells Kitchen apartment, over wine, food, conversation and a little live music, I've come back and started figuring out what to do next. I'm listening to a lot of local public radio, hearing stories about what happened, what's happening, and what will happen here. I've signed up to volunteer with relief efforts with the city and with the organization New York Cares. There's essentially a waiting list for opportunities, that many people want to help out.

I don't have an ending to the story. Maybe I'll have one for you soon. We're still recovering.

I've Got Wheels!

I bought a bike on Friday! This has been a very long time coming. I got it from a guy who calls himself The Bike Doctor. The good doctor (really named Carlos) met me at my street and sold me a Fuji S-12 ten speed with straight handlebars, freshly tuned with some new components for $175 (literally half what most comparable used bikes are selling for in New York City). It's light, it's fast, it's my size, and most importantly, it just works. A visit to Mikhael at Pedal Universe netted me a new helmet, Kryptonite U-lock with cable and bracket, LED lights, and a little bell for $95.

Biking in this town is an adventure. I've already leaned that my free NYC bike map, published by the city, can't be trusted. It shows dedicated bike lanes on the Triboro bridge, for example. You ever seen a dedicated bike lane that had signs saying you can't ride your bike on one section and then three flights of stairs on the following section that supposedly you could ride on? Google Maps' bike directions are also wildly optimistic about travel times. A supposed 25-minute ride took me well over an hour, and I'm a pretty fast rider. That said, it's good to get the exercise, and I'm looking forward to getting a better feel for how the city is put together off the subway grid.

Other adventures these last few days:

I did a staged reading of Othello, with 18 hours notice. I didn't know if I was going to be a non-speaking extra or Michael Cassio until I showed up. Ended up reading for a couple Senators and Gentlemen. Fun times. My girlfriend and another cast mate's parents made up our whole audience, and I ended up having to say my goodbyes with my girlfriend after intermission so we could make the rest of our plans. It didn't occur to me until afterwards that that was the closest I've come to being in a Shakespeare production since I was Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night, in third grade.

I've got a second round interview for a job with the Media Coalition tomorrow. Great organization, and small enough that I could really get my hands dirty with real, effective policy work on behalf of of the first amendment! And since I'd basically be the organization's communications wing, it's exactly the kind of work I think I'm suited for in the sector. I know I'm competing against people with graduate degrees, but I have an excellent reference from someone on the inside. Either way, I'm just pleased to have gotten as far as I have.

Speaking of graduate degrees, today I more or less finalized the list of public policy schools I'm applying to:

1. Columbia/SIPA
2. Universty of Washington/Evans
3. Harvard/Kennedy
4. Johns Hopkins/SAIS
5. George Washington University/Elliot
6. Princeton/Woodrow Wilson
7. American University/SIS
8. Georgetown/SFS

I'm shooting very, very high, and probably competing against people with way more impressive professional credentials. But I've got a very strong academic background and nobody my age can touch me when it comes to international travel experience. Besides, I can't get in if I don't apply right? And anyway, who knows, if I end up with the Media Coalition job (or any other policy job) I just might decide working will be the better move instead of a Master's.

Wish me luck!

I'll be on TV this Saturday

Remember my story about filming a TV episode? Well I just got word that my episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories will appear Saturday, September 22, on the Biography Channel 9pm Pacific and Eastern time. Look for the story of Kevin Sorbo.

I'm what's called a "featured extra." It's a nonspeaking role, scary in a very goofy way, that's part of one of the flashbacks. I have not seen the episode and have NO IDEA how it will look. There's even a chance I won't be in it at all. If they don't show how the woman who is the ghost died, I won't be. But I think that's unlikely.

Enjoy!

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image property of The Biography Channel, All Rights Reserved

You Are What You Read

I finished my first tutoring session of the year a few days ago and decided to take a stroll across central park to the east side subway. A couple blocks from the train, I found a branch of the New York Public Library. I hadn't been in this one before, so I decided to take a peek. I didn't need any books, I just thought I'd see what kind of things were lying around for future reference.

I really should know some things about myself by now. Like the fact that walking into a library is dangerous. You know the people who can't walk into a bookstore without spending money? Imagine sending them into a bookstore where everything is free.

This picture is of the pile I brought back with me, stuffed in with the two standardized test textbooks I was hauling already. I'm going to need some specialized shoulder exercises if I insist on "just seeing what's lying around" a library on a regular basis.

I grew up on a steady diet of fiction. Mostly what is known as the "Hero's Journey" to story pros. I wrote it up on Backstage as the following: "main character is at home, gets called out onto a quest, refuses, gets dragged out anyway, overcomes trials, conquers evil, saves world, comes home a better character." Sound familiar?

Well I'm still reading a couple good novels along those lines, but as you can see from my pile here, I've strayed into a big set of nonfiction books, mostly on Behavioral Economics, Social Business, and Story Construction. In other words, I've gotten really interested in what actually makes people tick, how you can do something that both makes money and makes a difference, and how stories operate. All of these are very much related.

That along with the TED talks I've recently been watching has gotten me thinking about what kind of things determine our thoughts and actions day-to-day. Because it's election season and an election year, one of the things that this really seems to impact is how people are going to vote. I used to think that Republicans and Democrats identified as such because the values they believe in. Now I'm starting to think that they identify as such because of the facts they believe in. They are much more likely to disagree on facts rather than what's important to them. But that's a huge topic that would be better addressed somewhere else. More important to me is how people generally learn facts and how those facts go on to shape their life.

Here's one of the basic, but interesting things I've learned: people remember stories far more readily than facts in isolation. Seems simple and intuitive enough. But it has special implications for someone like me who pays rent by teaching.

Storytelling at its core is a lot like joke-telling. you have your set up (banana peel on the floor, some jerk you don't like walking merrily towards it, his mind more occupied with how pleased he is about doing something you don't like) and then either your expected payoff (jerk steps on banana peel and bites it) or unexpected surprise and payoff (jerk hops peel, only to cross the path of a gorilla looking for more bananas who smacks the jerk in the face). We remember things with this construction. Especially if they're funny or have an emotional impact. The dry theory is interesting. The example teaches you something.

So if you want to shape the things you spend your life thinking about, talking about, and doing something about, try shaping the stories you take in. I feel like this is one of those things that's obvious to anyone thinking about it, but that few people actually follow that train of thought. You know the phrase "You are what you eat?" Maybe the more accurate one is "You are what you read."

So, what kind of stories are you going to seek out?

Where the @#3(% is Joel?

I realize I've been putting things out for a while now telling people what I've been up to just about everywhere online but on here. When I first started blogging my adventures, Twitter didn't exist, Facebook wasn't nearly such a public platform as it is now, and nobody paid attention to Livejournal anymore. I blogged because the alternative was mass email to people with already stuffed inboxes. Things have changed a bit. I'll get back to that theme in a minute.

But first I should explain myself for the month. As you know if you've been reading this for a while, I primarily pay my bills by working as a private tutor in New York City. Turns out, not surprisingly, that not too many kids want help with their homework in August. So I decided the sublet my place and take the month off.

I spent the first three weeks or so in Seattle and Eastern Washington visiting family and friends. I then spent a couple nights in Portland, OR, and am now writing from my couchsurfing host's apartment in the Mission district of San Francisco. I head to LA next week and (with any luck) will be back in NYC before labor day.

I didn't take a computer with me this time, and blogging with my phone and it's keyboard would produce sub-par entries. But I have plenty of material-- so much more happens every day when you're traveling! I haven't taken the time to write my adventures up yet, but if I do, you'll find them on my old travel blog.

In the meantime, I need to talk about what's going to happen to this blog. I've been thinking a lot about my future and mission lately, and I think this blog is going to start following things I've been doing a little more accurately, though likely not more frequently.

I came to New York to see how I'd do as an actor. In a couple weeks, it will have been two years. I'm not famous, and I'm not on Broadway, or even Off-Broadway. But I've paid to act both on stage (including essentially a one-man show) in NYC and on national television. I've gotten sold out crowds and a standing ovation, and I'll soon have an IMDB page to my name. I'm being invited to do voiceover work, and I've made a lot friends, especially in the New York Shakespeare realm.

More importantly, I'm starting to realize the difference between a passion and an interest. Acting is an interest of mine. I enjoy it greatly, and I think I'm pretty good at it. But it's not really my passion. It by itself is not what gets me up in the morning. I'd be lying if I said I knew exactly what did, but I'm starting to branch out in my quest to find out.

I majored in international studies and political science, and I'm going to start moving back to those fields and exploring what opportunities are available there. This means looking at graduate programs in public policy, volunteering in a few places, trying my hand at grant-writing, maybe even getting a part time job in a related field.

I am by no means quitting acting, but I don't think it's going to be my primary objective anymore. At least not for now. I'm still going to be an active member of the acting companies I am a member of, and you will still hear about any readings and performances I'm involved in here on this blog. But I think as my mission evolves, so will what I write about here.

I guess the only way to find out how is if you stay tuned and keep reading!

Let's Make a Ghost

I've been meaning to write this one up for weeks, but I've got a legitimate excuse for why I didn't this time: I had to wait until it was cleared with the legal department of a cable TV network.

This is one of the weird things about blogging as an actor. Once you get to a certain point, there are things that it's really difficult to disclose online, and even those things that are okay to disclose, you usually have to wait a long time before you do.

I guess technically it's only been 13 days, but it feels like it's been much longer. Heck, when this happened, I was technically single and didn't know what I was going to do with myself in August. Now I just met my new girlfriend's mother, confirmed a subletter for my apartment for the next month, and booked with multiple couchsurfing hosts across the west coast. So I feel like it's been a while.

Thirteen days ago, I was on the set of my first TV show (ignoring the online show with NBC Universal, anyway). Ever since I did it, I've told lots of my friends and family about it, and I don't think I've yet managed to say what show it was and what I was doing while keeping a straight face. So consider this an early warning about what my very first IMDB credit is going to be (once the production team comes around to registering my page):

Appeared in "Celebrity Ghost Stories" (2012) as "The Murderer"

I was shipped up to a small town just north of New Jersey with about a half a dozen other people for a small "reenactment" of a legend that ends with somebody dying at my character's hands. It involved some very tense scenes in period costume, and a couple stunts with a dummy in a bridal gown. Interesting day's work. I had a great time with everyone involved, especially the director and the rest of the cast of 1930s wedding guests. To say more I think might get me in trouble.

So for the the full story, you're just going to have to watch the Biography Channel for the episode of Celebrity Ghost stories featuring Kevin Sorbo this fall. once I get an exact date, I'll let everyone know.

Recession Project

I'm turning 26 in three days.

I sometimes joke about signs of the times, especially the economy. Back when I was in high school, I would go to the bakery and the people working behind the counter would be about my age, sometimes a little older. Now, I'm in my twenties, I go to that bakery... and the people working the counter are about my age, sometimes a little older.

I meet and hang out with 35 and 40-year-olds who are doing basically the same thing they did when they were teenagers. Which is fine, only you can't lead an adult lifestyle on a teenager's wage. Everyone's broke. One of these friends came to me recently and admitted that he was about to get kicked out of his apartment. He said he was behind on his rent and was going to have to go to one of those quick loan places. I asked him how far behind he was. He said "not that much, just five months."

Multiple friends of mine are talking about their credit card debt and how they just can't pay it off. They're trying, but it keeps growing. I ask people what they're doing about health insurance, most of them say they don't have it.

I used to think these people had chosen this lifestyle for their art. But a lot of them haven't. A lot of them aren't artists of any kind. They just live this way because it's the only way they can.

I had drinks with a couple friends from college I hadn't seen in years. One of them used to be on the football team. All of his teammates were Economics majors, one of them now works in oil futures. Whatever that means. He makes US $4 million a year. He's two years older than I am.

Now I know a lot of people can and do argue that that guy is probably not as happy as my friends making less. But forget happiness-- how about the money that could have been used to make it so that if one of my uninsured friends suffers a medical condition, they can get the care they need to live? If oil future man was making, say, $400k (still a huge salary), how many of my uninsured friends could be employed with liveable wages and health benefits with the other $3.6 million?

So forget my tutoring rich kids about the Gilded Age this past spring for a moment, and look at something a little more visceral:

In 2006 I filmed my first episode of a show about my study abroad experiences in India. And there's a 45 second clip near the end where I talk about something I'd never experienced firsthand before. I'd just arrived in the country. And the thing that smacked me in the face was the divide between the "haves" and the "have nots." And I just remember feeling grateful to be going home to a place where the disparity in income wasn't nearly so high.

Well. There's a measure of the disparity in income between countries. It's called the Gini Coefficient. It's measured from 0.0 to 1.0. A gini coefficient of 0.0 means perfect equality, 1.0 means one person in the country has literally all of the income.

India has a Gini coefficient of .37. The United States has one of .41.

In other words, I went on a show with NBC Universal and openly lamented how unequal one country was, only to come home to country that is now even more unequal.

As I said, I'll be turning 26 soon. I have this feeling that I should be doing something more adult and responsible with my life now.

Right now meaning I'm paid on an hourly basis for a job that mostly works in the evenings and has no real opportunities for advancement. I live alone in a not-that-nice-but-livable neighborhood in an apartment furnished mostly with hand-me-downs and free pieces from Craigslist or the curb. I have no debt (thanks to parents who could both pay for my education and taught me to always pay my bills in full on the date they're due). I started a Roth IRA a few months back, and I'm searching for individual health insurance plans I can afford that will actually pay for hospital care (surprisingly not a given).

In other words by the standards of my childhood, I'm kind of a bum. But by the standards of today, I'm doing very well. Perversely, I feel there's something wrong with that.

And I have a good amount of free time and energy.

I've been watching a lot of TED talks about how people work, what's going wrong with our world, how people are working to fix it. Thanks to my travel, I wanted to work in international development or international relations. Saving the world. But I'm starting to realize that the world that I should work to save may be a lot closer to home.

I don't believe in a conspiracy that causes income inequality. One of my favorite shirts from the Occupy movement was a short young man wearing a T-shirt saying on the front "I'm part of the 1%" and on the back "Tax me. I'm good for it." I believe in a system that needs a little tweaking, and people who, if they can separate themselves from partisan politics for a bit, really want to help.

And the first place I'm thinking of starting is making it simpler to hire people. I've got some interesting ideas related to using this theory to implement some ideas from this book  and this other book to make people want to hire more, possibly in conjunction with this campaign as well as lobbying this group to take action among its members.

But first I need to talk to more small business owners. This could get interesting.

A Toast

I'll admit it. I'm not entirely sober as I write this. So, since I've been drinking, I've just come home, and it's nearly two in the morning, I'm gonna do what you do when you're drunk and happy: I'm proposing a toast.

 To art, to the gods and animals we create and channel for an audience, and for the moments they catch their breath at our most human.

To friends, the false, the true, and those who meet us at a bar to laugh at our sorrows and everything else worth laughing about.

To this wonderful city, full of self-absorbed whiners awaiting recognition of their greatness, and the hilarious magical deeds they perform without even trying because they're here.

To nature and the fragile beauty we'll never own, conquer, or  control, no matter how hard we try or try not to.

To love and lovers, drinking each others eyes and lips and getting in the way of people who need to be somewhere else, occupying the bliss of another world that only holds them for that moment.

To the past, for the lessons it will never teach us because we're too busy to pay attention, and the ones that we learn anyway against all odds  thanks to the elders who deserve more respect than they get.

To the future, whatever the hell it turns out to be.

To cats that purr, dogs that wag their tails, and all creatures great and small that know how to smile in their own way, and have reason to do so.

To music, to capture the truth of moments I'll never be able to write in a blog post.

To smart people and their ideas, and their ability to share them.

To those who use those ideas and make the world better, both because of and in spite of their best efforts.

To death, for showing us how great life is by our fear of its absence.

To life.

To gratitude.

To you.

Thank you.

My Next Show: Dramatic Improv with DICE Theater

In just about two weeks I'm going to go onstage with a bunch of pretty, talented actors, and perform onstage. And I have no idea what any of us will be doing.

I've joined the ranks of DICE Theater. We do improv. Only we do it a little differently. Most improv groups' express goal is to make you laugh. Our goal is to make you feel like the characters you're seeing are real. Yes it can be funny sometimes, but more to the point, it's powerful.

I don't know what you'll see, but from what I've seen the rest of the company do, it's going to be good. I do know that we will also follow it up with a ten minute play inspired by a past improv session that has won a couple awards, and then host a reception.

So here is what I advise you do. Five simple steps:

Step 1: Buy a ticket for yourself and a friend (or several) or a date (....or several) here. ($10 for one)

Step 2: On Saturday, June 23rd, Come to the Drama Bookshop's black box theater at 250 40th St, before the 7:30pm showtime. Get a good seat.

Step 3: Enjoy our show.

Step 4: Clap a lot at the end. If you really really really liked it, you can stand up while clapping, too.

Step 5: Hang out with me and my friends afterwards at the reception.

You can do that, right? See you there!

Exit to Fire Island

Two nights ago I was sitting by a copper fire pit in a Long Island backyard, making s'mores, trying to look up the French word for 'Asbestos' to help an a guy from Adelaide explain something to a woman from Brittany. The something had to do with how the fire had been started by our host using a can of gasoline in such a way that prompted his one-toothed father in a sleeveless shirt to yell at him from the porch for a good couple minutes. Apparently even though asbestos being inhaled as particles is horribly dangerous for you, putting a sheet of it down on dry grass is a good idea for protecting against fire.

A group of eight couchsurfers, either living in or traveling through New York were camping in the yard so that we would be up and ready to spend the next day, Memorial Day, on Fire Island. It's a 50km long pencil shaving of a barrier island, and averaging about 300 m wide, just a bit east of where I got horrifically sunburned while on set for Men In Black III. We were headed for Atlantique Beach.

The ferry ride was half an hour on a cloudless day that left no doubt about summer's arrival. We sat in the upper deck, in the back, letting the wind do crazy things with our hair and the Aussie's beard (still substantial even after one of the slightly more inebriated locals had snipped off about five inches of it with kitchen scissors the evening before). We docked, paused for the restrooms and hilariously awkward debate with the Hong Kong native about guessing certain clothing sizes of women walking by. Then we walked the five minute walk from the bay side to the ocean side.

I've seen some beaches before, and this had some of the nicest white sand beaches I'd seen in some time. It would have been perfect had the water been warmer than ice. It was still pretty nice just hitting the sand and walking along the shore, pausing to grab a quart of Ben and Jerry's, sitting on a bench near the dock, passing it down a line and making fun of ducks.

In fact, really that was what made the trip: sharing stuff. Whether it was taking a walk with the Armenian interior designer to get coffee, a loaf of bread, and two dozen eggs to augment the bacon our host had out for breakfast, or three of us in a row at the chowder house near sunset, passing down our bowls of seafood bisque, Manhattan clam chowder, and New England clam chowder in a line so everyone could try some to wash down the raw clams and oysters we'd practically inhaled minutes before. The food was only part of it. It was the times and stories we shared to that made the trip. The only one things we all had in common was that we were all travelers registered on couchsurfing.org, we all had a decent grasp of English, and we were all there. And that was all we needed.

It's good to have weekends like these.

Inspiration

I found a two minute monologue that is perfect for me, less than half an hour ago. Ten minutes ago I memorized it. This never happens. Not to me, not to anyone. But it just did.

The monologue isn't even really a monologue. It's a poem, written by the guy pictured to the left, who, one hour ago, I'd never heard of. I was having an instant messenger conversation with a good friend of mine about my tutoring, and she asked me if I would consider being a teacher. I gave my standard answer of no and my explanation, but a second later out of curiosity, I Googled "What do teachers make."

If I had used the more appropriate question "How much do teachers make," I never would have found that poem.

Taylor Mali wrote the poem, anonymously at the time, about exactly what it is teachers make. He's since performed it for a huge variety of venues. I read it once, then again, then watched him do it twice. I loved the words, and there was no doubt his performance was passionate, but a little part of me started thinking "I'd actually read it a little bit more like this..."

I printed it out, made a few cuts, and read it twice. Then I put the paper down, and recited the whole thing, top to bottom, only checking the sheet twice. The second time I did it, I was off book. And it felt good.

This never happens to me. It took me three weeks to memorize a monologue half this long. I must have read it on the subway hundreds of times. But this new piece I have down cold, and it's so good that I want to go to auditions now just to deliver it.