Author: jcroft

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Actor’s Showcase with Chris Cole Harris

I would encourage everyone to signup for this class. Yes it is a class, educational and all that, but with the performance at the end. What that does for you is gives you two notches on your resume: One under training, the Second under Stage experience. The performance at the end falls under the category of “Repertory Theatre”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online lists Repertory Theatre as:
Play production by a resident acting troupe, in which a number of plays are always ready for performance; thus acting company alternates plays, and individuals various roles, on a regular basis, while occasionally adding new plays to its repertoire.

Webster’s Online Dictionary says:
Properly, repertory is a style of a number of repertory companies which rehearsed and performed plays in a fortnight. Originally a British idea, these were professionals but due to time restraints and commercial restraints they played like amateurs. The largest repertory theatre company was and still is in Liverpool. There was a form of touring repertory called fit-up which involved carting round the set for about five different plays. The plays were shown on consecutive nights. Nowadays repertories perform just once or twice a year. The term is used in the theatre to refer to any number of two or more plays which are rotated within a season, usually alternating with different plays every night for a period of time. Plays are rehearsed at all once or in rapid succession, and often feature the same actors or company in several plays.

Even though we are not an official troupe or more actually a maintained organized group, the Actor?s Showcase still qualifies. We will have a set of monologues and one acts that we will perform on a single night. And all those monologues will add to your personal repertoire.

Class & Performance Details:

Actor’s Showcase
Instructor: Chris Cole Harris
When: Mondays, 6:30 – 9:30 PM
Dates: September 19 – November 7, 2005
Cost: $176 + Supply Fee
Where: Pinckneyville Community Center
Description: Basics of Acting: monologues, scenes and improvisation with a showcase on November 11, 2005 from 6 PM to 9 PM. Note: price increase due to class length.

Actor?s Showcase Performance
When: Saturday, November 12, 2005, 6 PM – 9 PM
Where: Pinckneyville Community Center
Cost: $5
Description: Delightful acting experience as our adult acting class demonstrates monologues/scene studies in a fun atmosphere. Followed by dessert and coffee. Call (770)417-2200 for more Information.

See Gwinnett LIFE for Registration Information

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Auditioned for “Never Too Late”

Damn it to hell! It never fails that when I audition for Robert Egizio at Stage Door Players I screw up. It really annoys me that I do very well at other theatres but not here. Of the 4 times I have auditioned for Robert, I blew a monologue twice, and for a musical I forced my voice as if I were singing to 10,000 people without a microphone.

Last night, after blowing my monologue, I read the part of the Father. Robert said there are 4 characters similar in nature and so a reading of one would do for all of those 4 parts. The Father, HARRY LAMBERT, was described as a “politically correct Archie Bunker” and “blustery”. The side was read with HARRY’s wife, EDITH. So instead of reading it like a “blustery Archie Bunker” like Robert described, I read it like a morose husband, somewhat sympathetic to EDITH but appalled that he may be the butt of a joke.

Another audition I did for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, after reading a side with one actress and was to read again with another actress, I was told that the character was a lawyer. I did not think about it right then, but did after I left. I read the side like I heard other people doing, as an angry person. It should have been read in an analytical way. The lawyer is logically stepping thought what he will do to achieve his goal and not angry.

Last night again, I did not really think about it and just read. I did not have much time to prepare and think about the side, but I did not read it like the director described the character.

What I need to do is to keep that information in my head like a mantra
“a blustery Archie Bunker”
“a blustery Archie Bunker”
“a blustery Archie Bunker”
“a blustery Archie Bunker”
“a blustery Archie Bunker”
“a blustery Archie Bunker”
even when I am reading the side. I need to force myself to spend 30 seconds and analyze what was told to me. This is critical in following the director’s instructions. I will never get anywhere if I do not.

This is one theatre I really want to do a play in. There are 4 levels of theatre in my opinion:
Professional/Community – Non-Equity only – open casting calls
Professional/Community – Non-Equity and Equity – open casting calls
Professional/Community ? Invitational only
Professional ? Equity only

Even though Stage Door Players states that it is a “metro-Atlanta non-professional theater that provides a venue to showcase the talents of up-and-coming local actors, directors and designers”, but will cast Equity actors, I still consider it a step above and would consider it an achievement if I were cast in one of it’s plays. This is just my opinion and impression of the theatre.

Still, not even a DQ Hot Fudge Sunday could console me on the way home last night.

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Domingo Montoya

Book: The Princess Bride
Author: William Goldman

Description: Domingo Montoya, Inigo’s father, explains to his friend, a fellow sword-maker, why he refuses to help him out by making a sword for some Italian noble.

Domingo: Why? My fat friend asks me why? He sits there on his world-class ass and has the nerve to ask me why? Yeste. Come to me sometime with a challenge. Once, just once, ride up and say, “Domingo, I need a sword for an eighty-year-old man to fight a duel,” and I would embrace you and cry, “Yes!” Because to make a sword for an eighty-year-old man to survive a duel, that would be something. Because the sword would have to be strong enough to win, yet light enough not to tire his weary arm. I would have to use my all to perhaps find an unknown metal, strong but very light, or devise a different formula for a known one, mix some bronze with some iron and some air in a way ignored for a thousand years. I would kiss your smelly feet for an opportunity like that, fat Yeste. But to make a stupid sword with stupid jewels in the form of stupid initials so some stupid Italian can thrill his stupid mistress, no. That, I will not do.