Wednesday was my day to be an actor. My writing partner played producer and PA today.
Michelle Actor speaking: I gave three transcendent performances in two separate scenes.
Michelle Producer speaking: Good, all you need is one good take of each scene.
I attribute my ability to give great performances partially to relinquishing producer worries for a few hours.
All my life I had to struggle.
All my life I had this notion that I was somebody, someone famous, someone who had done something important, someone who had a suite and a yacht named after me.
I never knew anything and I never had any friends —>
—> and I fell down a cliff with a leather jacket and no other clothes because I had gone to take a walk because the dog was using the bathtub. While I was in there. Nobody would help me up the cliff. I made it to a bar where the bartender said she’d make me a great drink for the end of my life. And then the bartender asked me how my life had been. I told her it had been shitty.
She said, “Did you ever use the secret word?
I said, “I don’t really know about it.”
She said. “It was always there for you.”
I told her that I had missed that part of the informational lecture because I’d fallen down a cliff.
So, I was always somebody; I was always somebody wonderful; I always had a lot to contribute: I just didn’t know how to ask for the help to get there.
…they write romance novels.
What is happening to performing artists nowadays? Have their standards disintegrated? What became of the starving artist, pure in intent, determined at all costs never to compromise, never to take a straight job…or even another creative job? What of capital-A Acting Art, to be spoken of loftily at dinner parties: is it all become Commerce?
All of a hard sudden, actors are turning to shabby, dusty jobs to make money. Take one Paulette, she of the delightful stand-up routines, she of the passionate defense of the beauty of art, she with the blue hair, she of the music-making and acting, she who lives in her car with her cats. This funny, authentic, lovely actor has descended the crumbling stone staircase to the soggy marshes which are the dwelling place of the Victorian pulp novel writer.
You protest,
“But, Michelle, you idiot fool, Jane Effing Austen wrote Victorian romance novels which are treasured as literature!”
I respond,
“Jane Austen be damned. Actors should never set ink to novel page.”
Yes, it’s sad. Almost every creative person I know has, at one time or other, been pummeled with the delusional notion that they need to write romance novels or thrillers or some such trashy pulp.
Now, Paulette succumbs. She writes “Parlour Intrigues,” not only a romance novel, but a Victorian one, to boot. High minded ladies, dead mothers, scandalous gossips and noble (wealthy) gentlemen, all clad in expensive raiment.
Is Paulette alone in her compulsion to write romance novels? No. I think not. I am betting there are chapters of ActorsWhoWrite Anonymous in every city.
“Hello, my name is Michelle and I have been clean for 40 days; I have not taken quill to paper for 40 days.”
“Welcome, Michelle.”
“Hello, my name is Paulette and I have made thousands of dollars on “Parlour Intrigues.”
“Who’s your agent? Who’s your publisher? How long did it take you?”
“Shut up and sit down. Say the serenity prayer. Back away from the quill.”
You may remember my friend Lisa the actor. You may not remember my friend Lisa the actor. In either case, I am about to tell you of her further adventures. Adventures wildly beyond.
Lisa, as you may or may not remember, spent the summer after her freshman year working in a psych hospital. She came away from the strait-jacketed revelations with a 3-act stage play.
Perhaps an unintended consequence. Or perhaps, she, brave, deliberately entered the extremes of the human mind to pick the dramatic fruits, the over-ripe, rotten dates that fall from the twisted back of the horse cart traveling along the twisted, steep… never mind.
Her new chapter is even better…even stranger…even truer.
In the fall of her sophomore year, Lisa was cast as Viola in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” That’s okay, don’t bother to run off to Google to remind yourself of the story. I summarize it here for you.
Viola disguised herself as Cesario, a young man, and thus found the freedom to live in the city on her own, get a job, move about as she pleased. All the bindings of a young woman’s life were cut, changing her place in the social structure.
Viola/Cesario went to work for a Big Shot Dude (a Duke, I think, but that was just Willy’s snobbery and not important to the play or the message.) Big Shot Dude sent Cesario/Viola to deliver gifts and flowers and candy to the Big Shot Dude’s girlfriend. Cesario/Viola was supposed to ask Girlfriend to marry the Big Shot Dude; but Girlfriend was charmed by Cesario/Viola (“Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”) and wanted to date him/her instead of Big Shot Dude.
And so forth with various gender confusion and falling in love with the wrong people because you like them, not because of what equipment they have. And all comes out okay in the end.
Some critics call Viola Will’s most powerful female heroine because she takes it into her own hands to improve her situation in life–she isn’t tricked into disguising herself as a man, as some other Shakespeare women are; but, rather, chooses to disguise herself.
Yes, Viola is a powerful role. Grief & loss are always right under Cesario/Viola’s epidermis. Hope, love, intelligence are in every twist of the page. Relief and redemption come at the end when her thought-dead twin brother re-appears.
Viola and all the players are filled with confusion and sex change. Viola expresses this: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I. / It is too hard a knot for me t’ untie.”
After the run of “Twelfth Night,” Lisa called me and said, “I have discovered that I am a boy in a girl’s body. I have always felt uncomfortable playing love scenes and I never knew why till just now. I’m going to have a gender re-assignment. My new name is Nick.”
…talk about the transformative power of drama.
It was surreal—I kept waiting to read that it was a performance piece. Couldn’t quite believe he was dead. It’s personally disappointing to me that a performer who had such connection with his audience and such success–that people wanted to pay to hear him –still could be suicidal.
How can we continue to live in the normal manner when the world is ending with such suffering?
What are we doing about it?
DO SOMETHING
I remember joining my first online acting discussion list group listserv chat room bulletin board way back in the early 90s or some-such date.
I introduced myself (to the then-extant Acting-L) with a big whiney post about how my life sucked and I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do artistically in life bla bla bla. And I remember everyone on the list was very supportive.
I also remember Ray and his wife who are workaday actors in NY; they always gave useful advice about making a living in NY. They hustled; they had paramedic wardrobes, cop wardrobes, business suits; they modeled at trade shows; they hand-delivered their headshots monthly. What troopers. They made a living acting.
I remember Pat who worked in LA and NY for 45 years, raised two sons, sent them to college, then went on to teach acting at the university level. Successful and busy and still took time to keep up with the chat list.
I remember Norma, who was booked so much as a day player that she couldn’t keep up with the list.
I remember Carla, who did stand-up year after year while battling lupus. (And, now that we mention it, also battling Bad Attitude.)
I remember Lelia who performed her one-woman shows with no money.
I remember Anne who acted, ran a theater and later became a screenwriter and screenwriting consultant.
I remember Joanne, who went from a Mom doing community theater to a busy commercial actress to a shopping network host to a producer of a comedy troupe.
I remember Jeff whose theater company is still going strong and winning some awards.
I remember Rick who did U-5s and then started producing his own indies.
All sorts of changes.
And I am still a whiney bitch.
Clara gets a newsletter called “Shooting People” from a cinematographer’s group in the UK.
Clara’s hubby saw the newsletter’s title.
“What kind of maniacs do you hang out with? ! Is this some kind of murder-for-hire? You’re scaring me.”
Dear Michelle,
Humans seem to want things to be answered, as in final answer. Tie everything together into one neat package so as to be easily understood. Knowledge is part of change and change is part of knowledge. This knowledge can only come about as a result of action, an experiment, a contact with reality which negates existing consciousness and as the result of this tension produces new consciousness—a new theory, hypothesis, or system of knowledge. This very increase in the generation of new qualities (which is time), become part of the conscious unknown. We can know it in the future because nothing is unknowable but time makes absolute knowledge unattainable.
We are “Lost”. We don’t have solutions for, global warming, poverty, famine, education, health care. As individuals we think if we win the lotto it will solve all our problems. Maybe we should move to the mountains and go back to nature. Find salvation in some form of God. Join a cult. Grow a beard. Lost is all over the map because as people we are all over the map. This show is reflecting so much about the present state of human kind.
A kitty is coming to live with me. Soon, right after my surgery. Hubby finally said yes, he wants one, too. We will go to the shelter and pick out a girl cat who likes to sit in laps and butt foreheads. Maybe we will get two kitties. Maybe we will get a puppy, too. Maybe two puppies. Maybe a pygmy goat or three. Yeah! A kitty is coming.
Oh, yeah, “Lost.” I don’t give a shit. I’m not even watching the last two weeks.
Michelle is..
an actor, performance artist, screenwriter, indie filmmaker. Her books are available at right on the front page of Reel Grok.
SHE wants YOU to cast HER in lead roles where sexy middle-aged women have hot affairs with younger men.
Senryu 38:
Many times I’ve said //
“I love your work.” I was false //
I loved his body //
Michelle can currently be seen performing in … well, is currently writing … a multi-media live / filmed performance with elements of insanity. In my work, my goal is to present fictional narrative entertainment that inspires people to change the world.
click to see a list of movies with cats
Senryu 92:
I wrote a screenplay//
My brilliant, unique story //
Tits and car crashes //
click to read more about my work
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