I sometimes wonder if there is one single thing that most strongly marks the difference between a Shakespearean character’s and a contemporary person’s experience of the world, other than one of them being, you know, fiction. It’s important to me, because I think my responsibility to the character is to make choices from within that gap, to take certain things and make them legible, or leave them alienated, and to care about what those decisions mean. Because I auditioned with him yesterday, I’m thinking of Edmund, from King Lear. His emotions are recognizable, his speech is my speech in so many ways, his social and political associations are of so much of the same stuff as mine—I don’t live in a kingly court, sure, but I know what power means, and inheritance, and desire. You want to know about capricious institutions, lives crushed under the idle curiosity of nations? Welcome to the border, baby.

The border is a zone of exception in modern life in a lot of ways, not least in its special ability to illustrate the role violence is granted in maintaining the state. There, at any moment, with the wrong word or the wrong piece of paper, the whole wonderful tower of ideas and stories that we call civilization tumbles away, revealing the bloody machinery.

Now, it was nothing crazy, but I’ve seen some violence. I’ve done some violence. I’ve cleaned up after violence. Accidental, intentional, necessary, arbitrary; whatever. It doesn’t really matter, because the sharp point of action carries meaning that words do not and cannot. In that way, violence is always stupid, and severely limited. It can’t speak, really, in any language other than itself. There’s no shortage of ideas for how to deploy violence toward intelligible ends, to write a sentence which violence then punctuates: foreign policy, the sovereignty of the state, personal self-defence, gambling, content. But we recognize that these things are not the thing itself, which is unique.

When Edmund invokes nature, he’s not really invoking nature. Hi, welcome to metaphor. What he’s trying to do is imagine a system other than the one he’s stuck within, because he feels quite rightly that the way things are ordered just isn’t working out. He feels the need to fix that, but can’t make the moves he wants to. So he tries to change the rules, to carve out an exception in exceptional times to take exceptional action. And you know what? Good for him. I get it, man.

Audio Version Here

Noise. What a great word. It feels good to say and it’s metaphorically potent, technical and esoteric and material and grounded all at once. Noise is sensory, evoking a subject, an experience. It’s also elemental, baked into the objective fabric of the universe—the inevitable byproduct of every signal, the anti-matter of all information. Like the ocean, noise moves in waves. Sometimes it crests. Sometimes it crashes, terribly, upon the shores of our lives, of our ears. Of my life, of my ears.

There are noises that obliterate meaning, that make a mockery of sense. There is, for example, a pile driver outside my window, and has been for a while. If you’ve spoken to me in the last six months, I’ve probably complained to you about it. It’s bad. It’s so bad. That impossibly resonant peal of steel on steel, a knell rending the Earth (and my mind) steadily, rhythmically, for hours and days and weeks unending! O, God! Prithee, peace! I yield!

Yesterday, it stopped. Never has silence to me been so rich. John Cage could never.

So One Battle After Another is a really good movie and I’d suggest seeing it if you like seeing good movies. If anybody were wondering my position on this important topic, there it is.

What I’ve Been Up To

First of all, literally a day after I got my work authorization renewed (after a totally chill and cool and chill delay), I joined my first Equity contract, which also happened to be my first gig at an Off-Broadway Theatre—in this case, New York Theatre Workshop.¹

Okay folks, big stuff first. I am extremely thrilled to announce that I’ve signed with Rodney Swain at Swain-Thomas Agency for across-the-board representation in NYC and the Northeast. It’s going to be a busy autumn, I can feel it already. And now, back to your regularly scheduled newsletter/blog/thing.

*Static sound*

I’m back in New York after some time abroad that was socially, artistically, politically, and personally very educational. It’s been a long time since I was in another colonial metropole and if you’ll forgive me saying, London’s got juice. For example: the longest I waited for a subway over there was four minutes, which was itself the longest wait by roughly three minutes. Now, is that worth a few centuries of global pillage? Who can say. But coming back to New York which has all the pillage and none of the trains sure makes for a ~weird~ brain feeling!

Speaking of major cities with Muslim mayors: thank you, voters of the New York City Democratic primary, for believing in Zohran. You know how I say shit like “a better world is possible” and it’s really annoying and maybe even a lie I tell myself to fend off despair? It turns out it’s true! It’s actually true! I wasn’t lying! My god, it feels good to be on the winning side, for once, even a month and a half later. Onward to the general election!

If it were up to to me, which it isn’t, but if it were, I’d make a rule that when the mid-point of the year arrives unbidden and with a threatening attitude, it’d be possible to ask for an extra month, free of charge. But here we are. June. Yeesh!

At least I booked something fun to mark the occasion. Also, and more than ever, happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

Alrighty, work stuff

It really Grinds My Gears™ whenever I encounter the common claim that Hamlet’s speech to the Players expresses Shakespeare’s own theatrical sensibility. It’s not bad acting advice, if a little bit stale, but attributing those views to the man himself feels to me like bad reading.

Hamlet is not trying to put on a good show, he’s trying to fuck with Claudius. That’s the literal purpose of his instructions. On a higher order (death to literalism!), why are we affording pure authorial voice, so rare in Shakespeare’s work and so at odds with the rest of the play, to this particular passage? That’s my real issue, and I’ve never actually heard the view argued, only sagely asserted; a mode to which I am, alas, allergic. Like, if Shakespeare is speaking through Hamlet here, what do we then do with the notion that “the purpose of playing […] is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature,” when our boy has been very prominently conversing with a downright spooktacular ghostie?

Thank you in advance for agreeing that I’m right, and for challenging this claim whenever it appears. Acting teachers the world over quake in fear at our power!

Alert! Controversial claim incoming! Poetry is nice, I think. Here’s some. “Good Bones,” by Maggie Smith:

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Anyway, I’m home from shooting that movie I mentioned, Dying Alone. Acting is fun. I’ll report more fully on the experience when I’ve had a second to breathe, but in the meantime…

I walk from the counter. The bag is warm in my hand. Behind me, the thump of dough as it’s cut and rolled into shape, the hiss of a batch of bagels sliding from peel to oven, the orders, “sésame, une douzaine.” The door jingles, I’m outside. The air is brisk. Mount Royal slopes into view, leafless trees of early spring like down on a young bird, not quite fledgling, a promise. I walk, reach into the bag, take a bagel. Seeds fall from my hand, cascading. I bite. The delicate give of the crust. The sweetness. The smell. The smell! Gold. Warmth. Home.

I can go back to Montreal any time I want.

Shoot Report: Wet Specimen

Well, here we all still are. I’m finding it difficult to embrace the blithe tone that characterized this project’s early style, so I think it might be appropriate to evolve with the times. Something like a hard-nosed noir might be right for me, especially after my brief turn to the earnestly political.

*Ahem*

Night. Rain. The air, heavy. The streets, slick with neon and hate. An acrid taste in the mouth, blood. Fog rises from a reeking grate, and a dim figure steps forward, cloaked in shadow. A sudden movement, a flash of light, and… what’s that? A job offer? For me? Oh, okay!

Hey. Different newsletter than usual because the times are unusual. Much more unusual than they usually are, even.

I’ll dispense with the professional updates quickly, just to respect the purpose of the newsletter: I got three off-Broadway callbacks last month, booked none of them, and am doing some short films. The plan proceeds as intended, at least until I need to renew my work permit this summer, at which point who can say what will happen because will there be a government to renew it with, even? That’s up to you.

A rambling pep-talk for my American colleagues who might need the encouragement: get in the street, please!

My gift to you for the holidays is an email newsletter that isn’t asking for money. Unless you owe me money, in which case, no biggie, pay me back when you can.

Alternate intro: my New Year’s resolution is 240p. Lo-fi for life!

Actor’s Equity Association: now featuring me.

There’s a lot for us to get into, so this one time I’m not going to bandy about with any introductory flim-flam, no sir, I will dispense with such trifles and address the matter at hand, which is of grave import, and must be discussed at your earliest convenience, if not sooner!

Seriously though I do have some big news.

Big News #1: The Cast Album

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the compulsion to begin a newsletter edition with an unexpected concept to hook the reader and make them eager to receive and read what is essentially an advertisement as: “The Carl” (OED.5.4.B.2998). It also notes that: “Using the ‘Oxford English Dictionary defines…’ trope ought to be a capital offence” (OED.5.4.B.2999). Those erudite rapscallions across the pond might be onto something with that.

Rhinoceros Tickets Available Now

Classic text, good time, thought-provoking: These are the Letterboxd tags you might use if this production of Rhinoceros were a movie. It’s not, though. It’s a play; in a cabaret-style theatre, no less, so tickets are variably priced by, like, table. Bring a group! We’ve got four performances at The Slipper Room, all matinee, click the links for details:

In big news for all the legal employment enjoyers out there, my work permit has been successfully renewed! Which means I can once again do the thing I’m in these United States to do: act! Or rather, be a non-resident-alien spousal dependent, but let’s not split hairs.

Here are some projects I’m working on now that I’m allowed to. Come see them?

Call me Jacques Tati, ‘cause it’s play time.

Here they are, as promised, the first two episodes of Art Workers: The Independent Artists’ Forum. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t be mad if you gave them a listen. I would actually, you could say, be thrilled.

We are go for launch.

That’s right, listen to the sound of my voice. You are getting very sleepy. You are feeling the desire to see art. You are feeling the desire to laugh and be outside with friends. You are filled with the powerful urge to continue reading and to decide which date this week you’ll come to see me perform in The Winter’s Tale in Central Park. When I snap my fingers, you’ll follow that urge. Snap!

Remember, the tickets are free, so the show is for thee!

Right yes it’s The Winter’s Tale directed by Emily Gallagher with Barefoot Shakespeare Company and it’s at Summit Rock in Central Park and it’s free so just show up, eh! It’s good, too, by the way, I should mention.

I’ve heard people are upset at the idea of The Winter’s Tale going up in the summer. All I have to say to those people is just pretend we’re in the southern hemisphere. I will not be taking further questions, thank you.

Five-minute call for Bear; Bear, this is your five-minute call

Yup, I’m doing The Winter’s Tale this summer! Barefoot Shakespeare Company is putting ‘er up, and let me tell you, it’s a real treat to be joining this group again.

Thou'rt invited, worthy friend, to a performance of theatre most subtle and rare. The great poets of old would hardly dare to — but hark, dost thou hear't? 'Tis the stately tolling of yonder bell, announcing the arrival of our URL!

Leo's Requiem: Tickets

Link! Here! Click! Wow!

But maybe one day I'll try something else.

Work updates

Since we last spoke, I booked and then shot a short film out in New Haven: "Roundabout," by Aris Katafygiotis. The footage I've seen looks très good, and I can't wait to share it with everyone, not least because then I'll finally get to brag about shooting in the cold until 3 a.m. four nights in a row. What a trooper. I won't mention until it's out, though, how it was four consecutive overnight shoots (in a row! Outdoors! Four! Cold! Rain!). If you can believe it, I didn't complain about being cold or sleepy, not even once, not even during any of the four overnight cold sleepy wet outdoor shoots.

If only there were a shorter way to say that.

You Can Guess The News

I'm in another show! Leo's Requiem by Darius M. Buckley is the piece, presenting as part of a new works festival featuring the graduating Columbia playwright MFAs. Friend Brennan Urbi directing.