ASF to USF in one simple step that only took fifteen years.

I haven't posted in several months, mainly because nothing has been going on.  I was in a tremendously long slump.  I haven't done a play since Deathtrap in October.  I sent in a few self-tapes, but didn't even get callbacks, which people tell me is normal, but I was on a hot streak for a long time.  But that has finally come to an end.  The wonderful people at Utah Shakespeare Festival cast me in their 2024 season!  I'll be playing Lovell in Henry VIII and Antonio in Much Ado. As well as some really cool understudy tracks.  

Fifteen years ago, this is the kind of work I thought I was ready for.  Part of the reason I went to Alabama Shakespeare for my MFA was because it too was one of the largest Shakespeare festivals in the country.  However, the best laid plans of mice and MFAs often go awry.  My timing probably couldn't have been worse.  Halfway through my first year, the Artistic Director got in a pissing match with the University of Alabama over who should be responsible to pay to cut the grass on the grounds surrounding the theatre.  Apparently, the University threatened him with termination, so he decided to take a sword to the gordian knot that was the long partnership between the two entities and got the board to vote to get rid of the MFA program.  My class was permitted to finish our degrees there; however this particular AD was so vindictive that he denied us the ability to make any other connections in the theatre world and directed all the plays himself.  Plays in which he hid me in the rafters in one show, blocked me in the Vom facing upstage in another (and he would sit in the farthest seat behind me and nightly give me notes that he couldn't hear me).  Finally, he denied me the ability to play Athos, which was basically earmarked for me and instead thought he'd be able to hide my ability by giving me a small comedic role.  And when I started stealing the show, he'd cut bits, lines, and sometimes scenes I was in just because he had told the board that nobody in the MFA program was as good as the NY actors.  Everybody saw it.  Those NY actors would pull me aside and tell me that they saw what was going on and how much they enjoyed my work.  I will admit that I nearly left halfway through the final year.  Although I loved the training I received from the brilliant staff, the continued abuse and disrespect at the hands of this man almost denied me my MFA.  I won't speak ill of the dead, so I won't attack his character.  He had a lovely wife and daughter who loved him, so I'm sure he wasn't evil.  But it felt that way.  I was an inconvenience for him, and he scuttled my basic plans of working there or at least making connections to work in similar places.  At least until now.

It's taken me fifteen years to get to where I planned on being when I was 40.  Now, a lot of my years during that time were spent being a stay-at-home dad, and I did locally at night as much as I could.  But it wasn't exactly a career.  Contract jobs have been rare but appreciated.  Now I have a five-month contract with an amazing company!  So, I am so grateful for this opportunity which I started to think might never come along.  

I've loved my summers with Shakespeare by the Sea, until last year when I was held at gunpoint and beaten in the parking lot of Pt. Fermin Park after a rehearsal.  That was the moment I knew it was time to move on.  Like many people, I became complacent with what I had, without really thinking about what I wanted.  I'm incredibly proud of the work I did with SBTS, and what we built together nightly for the better part of two decades.  I met some my best friends there and had the joy of playing some of the greatest roles ever written.  Ironically, one of the few contacts I did make at ASF, stage manager Tanya Searle messaged me right after my attack asking about the possibility of taking over for an actor at USF who quit last year. But the fact that she remembered me and reached out all these years later made me think that maybe I could get back on the path I started over a decade ago.  I couldn't do it, because I wouldn't leave SBTS in the middle of the season (although I didn't do the final two performances which were back at Pt. Fermin because my mental health was not great).  But I soldiered on through the season and the endless panic attacks and constant state of fight or flight.  I reached out to Tanya this year and she had me send a tape and it worked out.  A good reason to stick out things no matter how hard they are.  I stayed at ASF, I never gave up acting, I stayed through my trauma filled shows last year.  I guess the theatre gods decided to reward me for my sheer stubbornness.