Performing

As with directing, it was exciting for me as a young man to act in plays, first in my hometown around Chicago and then at Princeton, Yale and Harvard. But as with directing, it was never my true calling, because deep down I never wanted to be anyone other than myself. Then, in the early ‘90s, I started performing again, but this time as myself in the catch-all category of “performance art” (see last paragraph below). This communication with an audience also had a positive effect on my directing. Meanwhile, from time to time, I enjoy performing, albeit informally, various characters that have grown within me, and some day I might put together a little show that uses them.

 

“The School for Natural Movement”

This is a scene from my work Yes, Really. The full version can be found on this link.

 
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Being a comedian is probably my greatest natural talent…

…. always making my classmates laugh with my spontaneous comments, starting in the Third Grade and continuing through college and graduate school. But people do not always pursue a career in what comes easiest, maybe because what they’re not so good at is more attractive to them. In retrospect, I might have become rich and famous as a talk show host, but it never even occurred to me to pursue such a career.

Anyway, like most theater people, my first experiences in that medium were as an actor, beginning with “Our Town,” in which I played one of three baseball players, all with a single line. (One of the other two actors went on to win a Tony!) After that I never acted again in high school, but in college I had two small roles, in “Billy Budd” (Squeak) and in “Mister Roberts,” plus three summer gigs with the local church’s community players, including The Sewer Man in “The Madwoman of Chaillot,” a Monk in “The Lady’s Not for Burning,” and The Fireman in “The Bald Soprano.” I also sang one of the roles in “From Vassar from Love,” a musical I directed at that college (see Directing).

At Yale, after acting in some scenes…

…in our first year directing class, taught by Nikos Psacharopoulos, a lot of the directing students started casting me in various parts, (including A Corpse and The Tar Baby), culminating in the role of Trigorin in “The Seagull,” with members of the Yale Repertory Company. In the summer of 1967, I also played one of the parts in “Charley’s Aunt” (see Directing) and the lead in “Seven Loving Women” (see Writing) at theaters in Colorado.

After not performing for several decades, someone suggested I try Fieldwork, a weekly group of people performing their works and getting feedback on them from one another. Most of their “pieces” (as they called them) were not plays with scripts but various forms of performance art, which I had only read about but never seen. The texts were often combined with movement and/or sounds and music. After a few meetings, one night I just got up and started talking off the top of my head — and people liked it! Then maybe a year later, I started to let the words transform into sounds and vice versa, sort of like I used to do as a child when imitating Spike Jones. Eventually I began also using movement in these improvs, which greatly expanded my awareness of space and influenced my directing in a very positive way. All this led me to perform in group shows in over forty venues. Finally, I teamed up with Jennifer Neff, a ballet dancer, to create and perform many short pieces for several years.





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