Andrew Hamm: the Bipolar Express

#tweatre

2011-12-06T22:10:00.008-05:00

The Richmond theatre community has been abuzz this week in response to a post on Dave Timberline's blog on the subject of texting/tweeting/etc. (hereafter referred to as "texting") by audience members of live theatre events. I was drawn into a continuation of the discussion into the wee hours of last night on, ironically, Twitter. In fact, long after I had put aside my phone (thus proving that it is, in fact, possible to put your phone down and stop typing on the thing), my mind was churning with thoughts on the subject. Finally I concluded that I would darn well have to write a blog post on the subject.

This is what happens when you text in the theater.

As soon as you turn on or open your phone in a darkened theater, the blue light from the screen is visible to every single member of the audience next to or behind you. If you are in the back row, the light reflects off the back and side walls and is perceived in the peripheral vision of audience members in several rows in front of you. Physiological reflex responses cause virtually everyone who sees the light to look at it, which has two effects: 1) their pupil dilation decreases, which blurs their vision and color perception for the next several beats of the play, and 2) whatever emotions they may be feeling in response to the show they are seeing are immediately subsumed by their irritation with you. So your phone has now created a breach in both the visual and emotional connection between performance and audience.

Even if your phone is on silent and is neither seen nor heard, the fact that it is on has several effects. To begin with, no one is 100% effective at remembering to silence their phone; if you habitually refuse to turn your phone off before curtain, as almost all theatres require, the time will come when yours is the phone that rings in the middle of the play. It's a statistical near-certainty, one that can only be remedied by your following the incredibly simple instruction to turn your phone off before curtain.

Your phone doesn't need to be open, active, or even in your hand to disrupt a theatrical performance. It receives texts, calls, and data constantly while it's on, much of it on radio frequencies overlapping those singers use for their wireless microphones, musicians use for digital electronics, and sound engineers use for signal processors. Stage managers communicate using walkie-talkies, and board operators often use remote controls for lighting and video equipment. Have you ever heard funny sounds come through the system while an actor on a mike was talking or singing? Much of that interference is caused by cellular phone signals.

Theatre artists themselves are also strongly affected by your active cell phone and texting. The wonder of theatre, the thing that makes it different from TV, movies, and internet entertainment is the simple fact that the performers are sharing the same space as the audience. Simply put, the actors are as aware of you as you are of them. Stage actors are not your TV. They are trained to perceive audience response and to alter their actions accordingly. Konstantin Stanislavski, the father of modern acting, coined the phrase "dual consciousness" to describe it: actors are simultaneously aware of their environment as characters and as performers. So when that blue light flashes in the audience, actors have exactly the same automatic reflex response as audience members who see it: their eyes dart to the source of the light and their emotions are automatically engaged--usually with extreme irritation. This immediately pulls part of their attention away from their task at hand, which is to create the most honest and engaging performance possible, and to do it for you, gentle texter. And it doesn't matter if you are texting "zomg this show is sooooo great!!!!!1111oneoneone" because the actors can't possibly know that. All they can see is that you have a higher priority right now than paying attention to the performance they are putting their heart and soul into.

Perhaps more importantly, active phones in an audience are a legitimate safety issue for many performers. Dancers and stage combatants often engage in actions involving spotting, i.e. fixing their gaze on a point, turning swiftly, and re-orienting themselves on the same point. A suddenly-appearing new light source in the midst of an otherwise-darkened audience area within a dancer/combatant's field of vision can be an extremely dangerous distraction. Even non-spotting choreography requires focus for safety, focus which is diverted by the appearance of sudden light sources. This is part of why pre-show announcements also include the admonishment that "No flash photography is permitted." The fact that your cell phone is not as bright or sudden as a camera flash makes it only moderately less hazardous.

Last month I saw a show in Richmond wherein an audience member seated in the front row answered a phone call, stood up, and to my complete befuddlement walked into a dark area next to the stage. She stood directly in front of a curtain which had been used earlier in the show as an entrance for actors and set pieces, and engaged in a hushed but clearly audible and visible phone conversation for a full minute before hanging up and sitting down. The audience was flabbergasted; it was all people talked about during the intermission, and we were still discussing it after the show ended. Please understand me clearly when I say this: An audience member reading or sending a text is only marginally less of a disruption for actors and audience than this woman's actions were.

New standards and paradigms for new technology

An argument can be made that society evolves with new technology, with new standards and mores, and that the fact that 80% of Americans text should cause us to adjust our expectations for audience members. Yes, that argument can be made, but it shouldn't, because it's irrelevant.

First of all, the standards have not, in fact, changed at all. I know of no theaters that don't ask their patrons to turn off all cell phones before shows. The phone being on is required for texting, ergo the standards are already in place. If anything, I would suggest that the language we use should express the reality of the situation more clearly, i.e. replacing "Please turn off all cell phones" with "All patrons are required to power off all electronic devices at this time. Silent or airplane modes are not acceptable. All electronic devices must be turned off at this time." No phones on, no texting. Bazinga.

Secondly, it isn't as if theaters are the only place in the western world where texting is considered inappropriate. Just off the top of my head, churches, synagogues, mosques, libraries, movie theaters, doctor's offices, schools, art galleries, government chambers, police stations, and courtrooms all have strict "no cellphone use" policies. Many of them will kick you out or even jail you for disobedience. A theatrical event is just as disrupted by a phone as church or court, and far more than a movie. The expectation is clear and understood by all but the most recalcitrant or inconsiderate.

We make the rules for new technology, the rules don't just default to the low standards of the laziest or most inconsiderate users. New technology doesn't come with ready-made rules and regulations. When the automobile was invented, there were no laws to govern its use. It took years for such issues as which side of the road to use, how to determine right-of-way, and even how to use lights and horns to be determined. Laws weren't written to suit the whims of what drivers wanted, they were written in order to govern safe, responsible use. Smartphones, even standard cellphones, are still very new technology. Now is not the time to cave to the whims of early adopters, it's time to write and codify the standards and protocols by which such devices will be operated. Rule 1: Do not operate your phone while you drive. Rule 2: Do not operate your phone in an environment wherein its use negatively impacts both the observers of a show and the show's performers.

History and future

An argument can be made that the propriety of audience response has changed over the years. In particular, the example of Elizabethan audiences throwing vegetables and talking to the performers has been cited. This is true, but is again largely an irrelevant argument for several reasons: 1) Theatre had only been professional (paid practitioners, paying audiences) for about two decades when Shakespeare started, so audiences were still figuring out how to behave. The fact that the throwing ceased in the decades after it started is similar to audience texting stopping a few years after it started (which it must). In Shakespeare's day, playhouses and five-act drama were the "new technology." 2) The lighting for both actors and audiences was shared in Elizabethan theatre, so audience disruptions didn't create a large visual aberration for performers and audience. 3) The audience expected yelling and throwing, as did the performers, and the actor training was designed to prepare for it. No one in the audience was offended or distracted by a yeller. Theatre doesn't work that way now, and hasn't for centuries. Current theatregoing audiences don't want to see those blue lights any more than the actors do. 4) In some theatre, the American "Chitlin Circuit" and children's theatre for example, there's plenty of yelling at the stage. These forms are designed and prepared for it. They are a very small minority. And texting is rude there, too.

The argument to which I turn the most sympathetic ear is the economic one. Theatres are losing audience members, the subscriber base is almost gone, and we need to find ways to reach out to more potential patrons. This is the tricky one, because I certainly want to reach more people with theatre, and I desperately want people who never thought they would like theatre to fall in love with it. However, I simply can't understand how allowing people to text and tweet in the theatre is at all a solution to this problem.

Audience members aren't staying away from theatre because they ask you to turn your phone off (else they would also be staying away from movies). No one puts on their coat on a Friday night and says "Where can I go tonight that will both entertain me and allow me to send text messages?" I understand the desire to make the theatre more accessible to a new generation, but I draw the line where this perceived "accessibility" comes at the expense of product quality and interferes with other audience members' ability to enjoy the show. The same argument could be extended to smokers, with one exception: unlike texters, many smokers actually will make their evening plans based on whether or not they will be able to smoke at the venue. You want a box office boost? Add a smoking section. And a cigar lounge. And a section for parents with small children. And a bring-your-own dinner section. And a section with the football game playing on a discreetly-placed TV. And a talk-out-loud-to-your-friend-during-the-show section. At least one of those is a million-dollar idea.

Many theatres, our own Richmond Shakespeare included, have experimented with "tweet seats" or social media nights. This is an intriguing idea, so long as the affected seats are in the very back of the theatre, and so long as all patrons are made fully aware of where the distracting blue light will be centered. I'd like to know when these performances are going to be so I can skip the show that night. And I'd like to know which theatres are going to relax their "phones off" policies so I can stop attending their plays.

Theatre is special

Audiences aren't staying away from theatre because they can't text there. Audience members are staying away from theatre because they prefer other, cheaper, less intellectually and emotionally challenging entertainments. I want them in the theatre, make no mistake. But I want them to sit down knowing that what they are about to experience is different, more immediate, more alive. I don't want them to turn off their phones grudgingly, I want them to turn them off because theatre is special, and it is so much better when you apply your full attention to it. Audiences are staying away from theatre because they haven't fallen in love with it. Yet.

There are pages of personal emotional arguments I can make against texting in the audience, arguments regarding how insulting it is as an actor to work for weeks or months crafting a performance, memorizing lines, rehearsing and engaging all of my skills and crafts to create a reality and a connection with my audience, only to have one or more members whip out their phone to update their Facebook status, or to do any number of other activities that can damn well wait for intermission. But those arguments, valid concerns though they may be, pale in comparison to the triumvirate of irrefutably logical reasons texting is and should remain forbidden in theatrical audiences:

1) It distracts other audience members.
2) It diminishes the artistic product.
3) It is potentially dangerous to the performers.

When the audience activity in question creates a decrease in the quality of product, the quality of experience, and the safety of the workers, there is no reasonable compromise or discussion to be had. This is a black and white issue. We don't text in the theatre.

Arkansas Times: "As You Like It" is "a gracious romp".

2011-07-21T11:23:00.002-04:00

"As You Like It" a lively production
by Bernard Reed
Arkansas Times
July 6, 2011

Shakespeare, for being the untouchable granddaddy of English-speaking arts and culture, can be remarkably lowbrow. For some, his name makes them yawn and think of incomprehensible soliloquies to skulls and a confusing mess of "thees" and "thous," highfalutin drudge much like opera or Russian literature. Of course, back in his day, the bard wasn't thinking about academic immortality or what Harold Bloom would eventually say about him. He was a simple playwright with the rabble of Renaissance London to entertain — no doubt a tough crowd.

Dan Matisa as Jaques.

Therein lies the amusement of "As You Like It," which has remained a crowd-pleaser since 1600 or so. Much like traveling thespians of yore, the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival took its production of this comedy from Conway to the Argenta Community Theater in North Little Rock for its final weekend of shows.

It's a lively, fast-faced production, with a crew of bumbling, romantic characters who are all ironically fated to go head over heels for each other. Orlando (David Huynh), appropriately wide-eyed and optimistic, is a gentleman of the kingdom who is tormented by his older brother. After defeating the court wrestler in an uproarious and anachronistic showdown, Orlando is exiled by Duke Fredrick (Robert Dillon) and must flee his home into the Forest of Arden, but not before falling in love at first sight with Rosalind (Amy Fritsche), the daughter of a usurped duke. Conveniently, and without reason, Rosalind is likewise banished shortly after. She and her cousin, Celia (Christa Whitlow), along with a bouncy court fool, make haste as well to the Forest of Arden. For protection (but really to line up your typical gender-bending, mistaken-identity Shakespearian gags) Rosalind assumes a man's disguise, adopting the name Ganymede.

Superbly acted and directed, the rest of "As You Like It" is the typical lighthearted pastoral romance. "Ganymede" does "his" merry best to unite a pair of lovesick shepherds, one of whom falls in love with "him" instead. Ganymede also runs into Orlando, who unwittingly confesses his love for Rosalind. An assortment of other forest characters, blessed with their author's sharp-tongued wit, amorously pursue each other, while back in the kingdom Duke Fredrick calculates his revenge against all those characters in the play who are having more fun than him. Finally tiring of her charade, Rosalind drops her disguise and works on making sure that everyone ends up coupled and happy. Spoiler alert — everybody gets married in the final scene.

As enjoyable as he can be, Shakespeare is also dauntingly complex — one wrong move can make him boring and impenetrable. Although at times a bit lightning-quick, this is not a trap that the Shakespeare Festival falls into; it's a gracious romp on the playwright's more high-spirited side. Instead of pondering "To be, or not to be," they frolic in the good news that "All the world's a stage"— a monologue that in this production is both melancholy and humorous, not forgetting its comedy with the fame of its lines.

Unless you're an actor, you may hesitate to say that any work of Shakespeare's is fun; most of the time, that doesn't seem quite the word. But this production of "As You Like It" could be described as such. The actors seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, delivering their speeches and asides as much for the audience as for themselves. Scattered with references to the modern day, as well as a live soundtrack of a few eighties pop classics, a purist might not have been amused; but what is Shakespeare if not eternally accessible? It is for the people, the hardscrabble crowds that thronged the Globe Theatre to stand in the mud and get drunk. If Harold Bloom doesn't like it, that's because he was never supposed to.

Here's a link to the original article.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: "Othello" is "a wonderfully vivid and lively experience."

2011-06-27T13:56:00.001-04:00

"Othello" pivots on villainous, camo-clad Iago
by Werner Trieschmann
June 27, 2011

LITTLE ROCK — Good productions should, at the very least, make an audience understand why a play is great. That Shakespeare’s Othello is a great play is beyond question, but the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival production, which opened at the Reynolds Performance Hall in Conway on Saturday, makes the tragedy a wonderfully vivid and lively experience.

It is helped in great measure in this by the performance of David Alford as Iago. Alford, who also happens to be the director, is electric in his malevolence and guile.

With his shaved head and dressed in camouflage, he is utterly believable as a soldier of second rank who can charm at parties (even performing a rap of Shakespeare’s surprisingly suitable verses) while putting together the pieces of his plan and sowing the seeds of doubt for poor Othello (Derrick Parker).

Alford transports this Othello to the modern Middle East, and this kind of setting-shift can be fraught with danger, often drawing unintended conclusions or simply distracting from the play itself. But the impressive set design by Chet Longley - a blasted place with ominous ruins and sandbagged fortresses - and incisive sound design by Matt Choirini make for an ideal setting where love can so easily and so quickly turn sour.

The wild, drunken party where Casio (an excellent Chris Crawford) loses his reputation is expertly staged. After it is done, you understand that this debauchery is part of the bargain in a war-torn land where soldiers are going to blow off steam after battle.

As Othello, Parker makes a convincing case for being a leader only too ready to be led to the madness that is jealousy. Parker, who sometimes speaks too softly in his first scenes, is especially effective in the second act when clutching at his head as if trying to rid himself of the thoughts Iago has planted there.

Paige Reynolds’ Desdemona is a touching figure, a soul who is completely unaware of the darkness that is enveloping her new husband. Likewise Emilia (Heather Dupree), who unwittingly helps her husband, Iago, set the trap for Othello. Adam Mincks as Roderigo has many nice moments where his displays of ignorance come in comic form.

But this Othello pivots on Iago, and Alford makes him so real and alive, you are on the edge of your seat at the end wanting a full explanation for his vile deeds. Shakespeare leaves that question hanging, not unlike a piece of tantalizing but bitter fruit. That the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival makes that question plain is but one measure of its success.

Othello continues as part of the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival through Sunday. Call (501) 450-3265.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: "As You Like It" is "a spirited take on the comedy"

2011-06-17T12:16:00.001-04:00

Setting clicks for spirited "As You Like It"
by Werner Trieschmann
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
June 17, 2011

LITTLE ROCK — Plan to perform "As You Like It" outdoors in June in Arkansas and you can expect to like it hot and steamy. But just when the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival was about to kick off its fifth season at The Village at Hendrix in Conway, what must have been the only black cloud in the state parked itself over the stage as well as the waiting crowd sitting on blankets and chairs in front of it.

The black cloud didn’t produce any rain Thursday. The strong wind that came with it did push some curtains around, but then the weather settled down. The happy result was a cool evening in which the game performers offered a spirited take on the Shakespeare comedy that goes to the forests of Arden to tangle and untangle many romantic knots.

The production, directed by Andrew Hamm, was playful and managed to walk the very fine line of being funny without falling completely over into corny. An early wrestling match between the fearsome Charles (Dan Matisa, wearing a Mexican wrestling mask) and fearful Orlando (David Huynh) was a highlight. The wrestlers even used the old hit-the-opponent-with-a-folding-chair trick.

"As You Like It" is pretty much about the love affair between Rosalind (Amy Fritsche) and Orlando. Fritsche brought a recognizable zeal to the part, especially when disguised as a man and spurning the advances of Phebe (Caroline Mincks). Huynh played the lovesick puppy part to the hilt.

As Orlando’s brother, Oliver, Derrick Parker did some nice double-takes and stares of disbelief in the second act. Matisa, playing in the second act the melancholy Jaques (who delivers the famed “All the world’s a stage” speech), is a natural comedian and offered a fresh spin to his lines throughout.

While the entire company of actors did have to compete with thunder rumbling in the distance and microphones that cut out from time to time, they held the sizable crowd’s attention.

The enjoyable evening was capped by a song about the spring in which the cast incongruously but hilariously danced the macarena. Put that together with the lovely setting of Hendrix Village and cooperative Arkansas weather, and the Shakespeare Festival’s decision to take it outdoors was a smart one.

"As You Like It" continues today and Sunday with pay-what-you can-performances at 7:30 p.m. at The Village at Hendrix on the Hendrix College campus, 1600 Washington Ave., in Conway.

"As You Like It 3: Like with a Vengeance!"

2011-06-08T14:32:00.001-04:00

As You Like It opens next Thursday, inaugurating the green at The Village at Hendrix as a theatre space and launching the 2011 Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre season. Yesterday was a day off, concluding our second week of rehearsal, and it feels like the whole show teeters on a balance point. Behind us lie two weeks of learning blocking, music, combat and dance choreography. In front stand five days for us to play, refine, specify, sharpen, clean up, and shave some time off the show, followed by next week’s tech rehearsals and finally opening night. Throughout the process, the amazing artists I’ve worked with continue to remind me why directing theatre is my deepest and most joyful artistic passion. Every single day leaves me exhausted and thrilled in equal measure.

Theatre is by nature the most collaborative of all art forms. A playwright gives words to speak and life events to perform. A director takes that text and casts it in the context of a vision of performance and meaning. Designers create environment and mood, locating the show in a specific place and time. Actors interpret the words, guided by the director’s idea and the designers’ context, into action. Everybody throws an ingredient or two into the resulting artistic gumbo, and then the audience shows up with a spoon and the spice of their own perspective, the last addition and the one that makes the whole thing, officially, into theatre.

Theatre is collaboration above all else, and the company members of As You Like It have all added their own uniqueness to the show. In several cases, an actor’s or designer’s work has made me completely junk my own ideas about the play in favor of theirs. Touchstone (Adam Mincks) and Audrey (Rachael Small), for example, are so cute together that I couldn’t bear to let Shakespeare’s intimation of an unhappy ending for them stand unchallenged; in this production, they may work out after all.

Over and over, the actors teach me anew what the play is about. In this, my third time directing As You Like It, I feel like I’m just beginning to really understand what the play is about. Different directors and different companies will have different ideas, but for me, this summer’s production is about truly being yourself. Every character who tries to create an identity for themselves end up in trouble at best, miserable at least. Duke Frederick (Rob Dillon) puts on the manner of a conquering lord, and loses his family. Orlando (David Huynh) puts on the trappings of a wrestler and almost gets himself killed. Rosalind (Amy Fritsche) puts on a man’s clothing and wreaks havoc in the Forest of Arden. Oliver’s (Derrick Parker) pretensions at being in charge, Phebe’s (Caroline Mincks) strained shrewishness, Touchstone’s city snobbery; it just goes on and on. And then there’s the melancholy Jaques (Dan Matisa), one of Shakespeare’s most enigmatic characters, who refuses to be happy in the face of four weddings and the very god of marriage herself. It is only when these characters allow themselves to simply be who they are, in the presence of someone who accepts them as such, that they are happy.

And such wonderful happiness it is! As You Like It is full of music, romance, silliness, excitement and reconciliation; the play is full to bursting with the simple joy of simply living. I can’t wait for you to see what the amazing artists of the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre have cooked up for you.

Every one of the four shows at Hendrix Village is pay-what-you can, so bring the whole family. Bring the whole block. Come early to stake out a good seat; live music starts at 7:00 each night.

Auditioning essentials!

2011-04-30T22:24:00.003-04:00

UPDATED 4/30/11!

Among the many things that make me weird, near the top of the list has to be the fact that I love auditions. Auditions are the most compressed, highest-stress part of the craft of acting. I love auditioning as an actor, I love coaching actors to audition, and I love being a casting director more than almost anything in theatre. I love the unique energy of auditions, I love getting to know new actors, and I love imagining the possibilities of the upcoming show.

In January, we three directors for the 2011 Arkansas Shakespeare Festival watched scores of actors audition for us. I originally prepared this document for AST's website for those actors to read, and have since expanded it from notes I wrote during those auditions and suggestions from the other directors. Thank you all for your horrible mistakes. Be assured, several actors were cast who didn't get it all right. There are exceptions to every rule. Well, most rules.

Different directors are looking for different things from actors, so I can only speak for myself. But here are a handful of things I think every actor should know before they audition. It comes down to two major principles:

Control the things you can control.
Completely and totally let go of the things you cannot control.

In more specific terms:

Be yourself. The message of your audition shouldn’t be “I am the best Juliet you will ever see,” it should be “I am the best me you will ever see.” I will either see you as Juliet or I won’t. Sorry about that. Typecasting is both a necessary evil and a powerful tool, and either way you will never make it go away. So don’t worry about it.

Choose monologue and song material that allows the amazingness of you to shine, rather than something that projects which role in the show you want. I don’t want to see you as Juliet, I want to meet you. You can show me Juliet at callbacks. From your slate through your “thank you,” the central message of your audition should be “Hi. This is me. I am very glad to be here. And I will be awesome to work with.”

A related anecdote, though not one applicable to all situations: I once auditioned an actor for Julius Caesar. He came in with an incredibly intense look on his face, performed an incredibly intense monologue from Hamlet, and he was so scary that I almost didn’t call him back. I had just done a show with an actor who was had displayed some borderline psychopathic behaviors behind the scenes, and I was half-convinced that this auditioner was going to be crazy trouble. My artistic director shared my concerns, but after some discussion we called him back with much hesitation. He turned out to be a delightful human being and a fine actor; he was cast as our Antony. But the fact that he was projecting the image of a tragic hero at his audition rather than projecting any of the image of himself nearly sabotaged his audition.

Be awesome. Believe me when I tell you this: we want you to be amazing. Every single person who auditions for me I want to be exactly what I need. We’re on your side. You are entering a friendly environment. In a related item:

Don’t make assumptions based on my behavior. It is a very long day for casting directors, and just because we’re sitting doesn’t make it less exhausting. I may not look at you much. I may not smile. I may not laugh. I am probably focused on taking notes or imagining what to read you as in callbacks.

Don’t look at me. Once your slate (which is totally appropriate to direct at me) is over, find a spot on the back wall of the theatre and look at that. Looking at me does two bad things for you, 1) it makes me sympathetically want to look back, which makes me take fewer notes, resulting in my having a harder time remembering you in seven hours when the directors are all discussing you, and 2) if I do take notes, it distracts you and makes you wonder what I’m writing and why I’m writing it.

Don’t apologize for anything. If you mess up, just fix it and move on. If you have a frog in your throat, work around it and move on. Actors who make excuses in auditions project as actors who will make excuses in rehearsal and performance.

Dress appropriately. No words on your clothes, no holes in your clothes, no distracting logos, no inappropriately exposed skin, no outlandish hairstyles, no enormous jewelry, no six-inch heels. Your clothing should draw attention to you, not away from you. Wear practical shoes, and avoid noisy heels that will drown out your voice. Get your hair out of your face

Dress to move. Assume that I'm going to ask you to roll around on the floor at your callback, and gird your loins appropriately. I don't want you holding back because you don't want to mess up your clothes, and I really don't want to see your underwear up your skirt or above your beltline.

Dress to work. It's business time. No ridiculous cleavage, no foul language on your T-shirt, no words or logos of any kind that might distract me while I'm watching you work. Your audition is a job interview. Dress like a professional.

Dress for your body. This is a delicate subject. Don't wear that form-fitting cocktail dress you had to squeeze yourself into. It is not attractive, it restricts your movement and breath, and it makes you look like you have no body awareness. You may be in the middle of a 20-pound weight-loss diet and workout plan, but this is what your body looks like today. Own your body with pride, fearlessness, and a sense of reality. This is a note for life, not just auditions. I have a belly; everyone in my family has a belly, and I will always have a belly. I'm not squeezing myself into a man-corset vest to conceal it for auditions. I will be much happier if I am cast for who I am. So will you.

Warm up. Don't work cold. Warm your voice up, warm your body up. The tension of adrenaline and emotional pressures will tighten your body and voice; you may not feel like you need to warm up, but you do.

Fill the space with your voice. If I think you can’t project enough to be heard in a large theater, I will not cast you in a production in a large theater. This is an absolute deal-breaker; if I think the audience won't be able to hear you, I can not use you.

Nail every note. Choose a song you know you can knock out of the park. I'm not interested in hearing the highest note of your range, I'm interested in hearing the best notes of your range. Pick a song that hits the sweet spot. If you have any doubt that you can sing the song perfectly every time, you have picked the wrong song.

Leave me wanting more. If the audition notice is asking for a 60-second monologue, prepare a 50-second one. For crying out loud, don't pick that 70-second monologue you love and rush through it to squeeze it in; you look like a fool. Save it for the 90-second audition notices, or cut it. Cutting pieces to make them fit is always appropriate. It is always better to end early than it is to be cut off. Bear in mind that the person timing your audition is often pretty low on the stage management totem pole; they may start the clock when you begin your slate.

Bring everything you might need. A whole group of actors came to audition for us from one school. All of them had musical theatre on their resumes, and none of them prepared a song or brought sheet music. What??? We were doing Joseph that season, for crying out loud. Do you want a job or not? It's one thing to have decided to audition last-minute; that's fine as long as you are a smart, prepared actor who always has four monologues prepared at all times. It's another to have a resume that screams "song-and-dance man" but bring no sheet music or dance shoes. Many of those actors did not get cast for the sole reason that they refused to show us they could sing.

Don't shock me. If you're auditioning for a theatre company with a history of producing Shakespeare, musicals, and Neil Simon, your monologue full of F-bombs and incest references is not likely to win you any fans. Trust me; the shock-value audition is ten times more likely to hurt you than help you. It makes you look like an anti-social twit with no sense of the appropriate. For companies doing more edgy, contemporary work, you can push the envelope a bit, but it's safer to pick something less likely to offend.

Avoid emotional peaks. It's really easy to play anger, and usually feels quite cathartic for the actor. It's also quite boring to watch, and usually comes across as entirely self-indulgent. I simply don't believe that you can sincerely reach that huge emotional peak of screaming or anger in 60 seconds, so don't try. Pick a monologue that reaches a 6 on an emotional scale of 1-10, not a 9.

Show me something new. Do a monologue from a play I've never heard of, or do a monologue I've never seen from a play I know. If you do something I've seen, directed, or acted, you're competing with all my preconceptions. If you show me something new, you get to be the one to which I compare everyone else. "To be or not to be?" Bad. "If we shadows have offended?" Bad. "Think not that I love him?" Bad. Measure for Measure, Henry VI, Richard II, The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski? All excellent sources.

Don't do a piece from the play you're auditioning for. There are two schools of thought on this. My school is right. Don't do it, unless the audition notice REQUIRES it. I have my ideas of what the play is; you're not going to change my mind with your monologue. Save it for callbacks.

Take direction. If I give you adjustments, do what I told you to do. If it doesn’t fit in with your image of the character, convince yourself it does. Ability to take direction is one of the most vital things directors are looking for.

Go too far. If I give you adjustments, take them as far as is possible while still remaining in the realm of plausibility. One of my mentors was fond of the phrase, “Extend to the logical absurdity.” Show me that you will make bold choices. It is MUCH easier for a director to tell an actor to pull it back than it is for us to drag bigger choices out of you.

Respond to your scene partners. Show me that you can actually, you know, act. Lots of people can recite lines in an interesting fashion; it’s your ability to be changed by another person, and to change them back, that makes you an actor instead of just a reciter of memorized lines. Sometimes your scene partner is a block of wood, sometimes they’re a stage hog, and sometimes they smell like salty garbage. Take what they give you, respond in the world of the character, and trust that if YOU can see that your scene partner is a dud that we can see it far more clearly than you can.

Play with me. Have fun, even if what we’re doing isn’t. Show me that you will be pleasant to work with. I will cast a less talented nice person over a surly genius any day of the week. I can coach up acting; I can’t coach up jerk.

Over-prepare. Remember this as a rule: The adrenaline of auditioning plus your nervousness will erase 25-50% of your preparation. That means you need to rehearse, memorize and prepare 125-150% as much for an audition as you think you need to.

You need to know your lines cold. You need to NOT have just memorized your monologue the night before or (shudder) in the car on the way. ESPECIALLY if it’s Shakespeare. I’ve probably directed, acted in, produced, or composed music for the show you’re doing a piece from. I know your monologue as well as you do.

When you blow your lines, I will know. When you are improvising your physicality, I will know. When you don’t know what your character’s goals, obstacles or tactics are, I will know. When you don’t know what the scene or the play are about, I will surely know. And you will not be called back.

Preparation: it’s the number one thing you can do to improve your chances of being cast, and the number one thing actors fail at the most. I can not stress this enough: I can tell the difference between a talented unprepared actor and a less-talented actor who really worked on their audition. And I WILL PICK THE HARD WORKER EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

My not casting you often has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Often, I’m looking for fit, for chemistry, for a certain height, build, or hair color, ethnicity, gender, or for any number of characteristics over which you have no control. My not casting you is in no way a judgment of your character, your future, or even your talent. Honestly, you may look like an ex-girlfriend I had a bad breakup with; I may be rejecting you for reasons of which I’m not even aware. It is not personal. Get back on the horse and audition again. By all means, audition for me again.

And finally, Shake it off. Actors have to be like NFL cornerbacks. Sometimes you get burned, and you have to forget it and move on to the next play with your maximum professionalism. You can’t worry over the could-have-beens; just don’t do again the things you did wrong.

I look forward to seeing your audition. I sincerely hope that every one of you amazes me, and I hope you make our casting decisions impossible.

Be your most awesome you! I can’t wait to see it.

Originally posted on Arkansas Shakespeare's blog.

What is "The Water Principle" about?

2011-04-24T18:43:00.000-04:00

I'm directing a staged reading of an amazing play by Eliza Anderson called The Water Principle, which performs at the Firehouse on Tuesday night at 7:30. (Here's a link to the Facebook event. You're invited!) Jeffrey Cole, Stacie Rearden Hall, Sarah Jamillah Johnson, and Scott Wichmann are the cast, and I'm unbelievably thrilled to be directing them; they are four of my favorite artists and people, and I haven't directed any of them in years. In fact, the last time I directed Sarah, it was for a staged reading of The Water Principle at VCU in 2005, wherein she met her future husband. Neat.

It's a somewhat obscure play by a little-known writer, and the only people I know who are familiar with it are people I've exposed to it. So when I mention that I'm directing the show, people often ask, "What's it about?" I usually come up with some kind of plot synopsis about a woman named Addie defending her property from a real estate developer named Weed when a drifter named Skimmer happens into the area. That's an accurate surface description. But it's not what the play is about.

The Water Principle is about Addie, a woman defending the last vestiges of life in a barren land. She lives in a shack with a pan, an axe, a shovel, a rain barrel, and a few bird traps. Why she is alone there we don't know; why she feels compelled to defend the remains of life in her demesne we are not told. It's about Weed, a man who wants what Addie has, who may be willing to do anything to get it. It's about Skimmer, who walks from place to place with his hand out, spinning whatever story he needs to get a few moments of security--until he gets bored and moves on.

The Water Principle is about faith. It's about Addie, who believes fiercely and unquestioningly, about Weed, who believes only in what he can build, and Skimmer, who doesn't want to believe in anything. It's about betrayal. It's about how we make alliances with whomever can give us what we need this moment, without any thought for what it will mean for our lives in the future.

It's about snow, cheese, and what it means to be a beaver. It's about an axe, a gun, and a single bullet. It may or may not be a post-apocalyptic survival thriller. It's a love story in which the words "I love you" are never spoken.

It's a playground for actors. The text is incredibly open to interpretation, and any number of choices can be justified and committed to. Sarah, Jeff, Scott and Stacie are all making wonderful and bizarre choices with this strange little play as we focus on the text and human interactions rather than blocking and stage pictures. The script reminds me of Sam Shepard and T-Bone Burnett, with a healthy dollop of absurdism.

It's the music of Sam Phillips put on stage, all fragility and betrayal and sensuality and torch songs. If you love Sam, you really have to see this play.

The Water Principle is my favorite play of the past 20 years and it's a privilege to direct a reading of it for a second time. I am incredibly thankful to Eliza Anderson for granting permission, and to Billy Christopher Maupin, Carol Piersol and the Firehouse Theatre for giving us a stage to play on. I hope you'll come see it.

Style Weekly: "This Beautiful City" is "what good theater should be."

2011-01-26T09:22:00.000-05:00

Pious Peak

“This Beautiful City” takes on the gay marriage debate.
by Rich Griset

In 2006 Colorado found itself the ground zero of the national debate on gay marriage. Long a Christian stronghold, Colorado Springs was home to a series of megachurches, including the followers of evangelical firebrand the Rev. Ted Haggard. As in Virginia that year, an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage was on the ballot and passed.

A theater group from New York City called the Civilians descended upon the city before the vote, conducting dozens of interviews with residents. A play that chronicles the lead-up to and aftermath of the amendment (as well as the downfall of Haggard after allegations arose of drug abuse and a gay affair), “This Beautiful City” attempts to give a glimpse at the forces behind the gay marriage debate.

Borrowing an idea from the playbook of “The Laramie Project,” the script was culled from the interviews that the group made while in what is sometimes called the evangelical Vatican. Every word spoken in the play came from the mouth of a real-life person.

Richmond Triangle Players’ staging of this unusual production gives audience members the feel of being one of the interviewers, jumping from New Life Church’s Christian rock services to voodoo-esque visions in Manitou Springs, a nearby town. Triangle’s talented six-person ensemble brings to life dozens of characters. Whether it’s Tarneé Kendell Hudson’s three Baptist church members, Andrew Hamm’s militant Mikey Weinstein or Layana Burnette’s moving portrayals of a transsexual person and a former drug addict, the cast imbues even the smallest roles with dignity and warmth. The portraits are well-crafted, giving voice to both camps. John Knapp’s direction emphasizes the docu-drama tone. The audience never feels as though it’s watching caricatures — these are real people with real opinions.

Triangle’s bare-bones production focuses more on the tale of Colorado Amendment 43 than glitzy stage values. Sometimes a backdrop and PowerPoint slides are all you need to tell an engaging story. Accompanied by piano, drums and guitar, Kim Fox’s musical direction highlights the beautiful voices of her cast. Philip Milone’s multitiered set is functional, but offers little else, and K. Jenna Ferree’s lighting design is as basic as possible.

“This Beautiful City” obviously has an agenda, but presents its viewpoints in an attractive and often humorous way. This is what good theater should be — something that engages the audience in a conversation about issues that remain quite relevant.

“This Beautiful City” shows through Feb. 5 at Richmond Triangle Players, 1300 Altamont Ave. Tickets are $20-$25. Call 346-8113 or visit rtriangle.org for information.

LINK

WCVE's John Porter: "This Beautiful City" is "a testament to the power of theatre."

2011-01-22T14:38:00.000-05:00

This Beautiful City Shines at Triangle Players

It’s taken me a longer time to write a review of THIS BEAUTIFUL CITY, the Acts of Faith entry now playing at the Richmond Triangle Players. I always like to have a few days to think about a piece, formulate my thoughts, and then prepare what I hope will be a well-reasoned story celebrating the magic of theatre; but this piece has taken a week to scribble down, and I’m still nowhere near exhausting my thoughts on this powerful story.

Created by a group called The Civilians much in the manner of The Laramie Project, this group spent time interviewing the citizens of Colorado Springs, Colorado; which has been call “The Evangelical Capital of the World.” The group was examining what it meant to be evangelical and exploring the growth of mega-churches created by James Dobson and Ted Haggard. Yes, that Ted Haggard who was caught in a drug and sex scandal and then tried to lie his way out of it.

This Beautiful City managed to do something that is pretty rare these days – if fooled me with a change of direction as I thought the second act would be dogpile on Ted time, but the playwrights, while touching on the subject, actually developed a parallel story about a pastor who faced a similar crises, admitted he was homosexual, was banished from his church, and who rose again as a more powerful voice within the Christian community.

The ensemble that makes up the cast – each person playing several different roles, is very tight. Each person has more than one standout role, and they are able to create these characters with subtle changes in clothing and props. Andrew Hamm truly makes an impact with his different characters, moving chameleon-like through a Jewish Air Force officer, a balladeer, a writer trying to bring down the evangelicals, and others. Scott Melton is an eerie Ted Haggard, Tarnee Kendell Hudson does fantastic street girls, an Emmanuel Choir Member and Ben Reynolds. Christy Mullins and Lanaya Burnette show up in a variety of roles, and Jason Campbell gives the play its heart and soul in the space of one monologue.

Philip Milone’s set is all space and platforms – elevating positions while still allowing space for movement. K. Jenna Ferree’s lights are dead on – keeping her actors lit for emphasis, Ashley Davis’ costumes serve well as character definers, and Kim Fox does a great job serving as Musical Director and playing the piano during the show.

John Knapp’s direction is crisp, there is little if any lag time between scenes. The pace builds and takes you along on this journey of discovery. Notice too, the way he presents his performers – those that favor one political side enter on the right, others on the left, with some crossing the stage playing both sides. It’s a nice, subtle touch to help further reveal his characters.

THIS BEAUTIFUL CITY is one of those rare plays that are entertaining and still make you think and explore your own feelings. It is a testament to the power of theatre that will cause more debates than solve. The play has a short run, so do not wait to catch it – make the time to see this one.

For WCVE Public Radio, I’m John Porter.

http://mondojohnny.blogspot.com/2011/01/this-beautiful-city-shines-at-triangle.html

Raves for "This Beautiful City"!

2011-01-17T11:17:00.001-05:00

Wow. It's REALLY wonderful to read criticism that appreciates your work, but it's much better when the critics UNDERSTAND it and express it in cogent language.

I said months ago that I thought This Beautiful City is the most important work I've ever done as a theatre artist. We knew we were working on a special project, and we quickly grew to realize that it was a special company of artists putting it together. While I always tell my actors when I direct that "We don't do shows for critics and we don't take notes from them," I have to acknowledge that it is gratifying to have your work understood and appreciated. All three reviewers thus far have really grokked what we are doing. That's really special.

Come out and see the show, y'all. I guarantee that it will make you think long and hard about a lot of your foundational philosophies, but not in a painful or judgmental way. What may surprise you is that this is also one of the funnniest darn shows I've ever been involved with.

This Beautiful City runs through February 5. Adam Mincks will be playing my roles for the final weekend. You should come see me, then come back to see Adam.

Editorial note: I've taken to copying-and-pasting full reviews into my blog because you never know when a publication is going to change their web server and erase years' worth of archives (*cough cough* Style Weekly and the Richmond Times-Dispatch *cough cough*). I hope no one is offended at the pseudo-copyright-infringement, and I have of course linked to each referenced article.

GayRVA: "This Beautiful City" is "A Must See to the start of the 2011 theater season."

2011-01-17T11:04:00.001-05:00

“This Beautiful City” Review

Matthew Miller
Posted January 17, 2011 filed under Arts & Culture, Featured

Richmond Triangle Players “This Beautiful City” examines questions of religion and identity in a provocative but entertaining performance that kicks off the Acts of Faith Festival. A Must See to the start of the 2011 theater season.

The subject matter of religion and identity is harrowingly animated in This Beautiful City, written by Steven Cosson and Jim Lewis from interviews by the company The Civilians, which opened Wednesday night at the Richmond Triangle Players. Not only is this adaptation an inspiriting departure from the holiday season of saccharine pieces, but also sets the bar for dramatic excellence for the remainder of the Acts of Faith Festival.

The subject matter may be controversial, but the artistry on stage at the Richmond Triangle Players is wholly engrossing and cathartic. Simply put, director John Knapp creates a provocative but entertaining performance that is not afraid to unleash the soul of storytelling.

This 2-hour “docu-musical” catalogues a series of interviews conducted in 2006 with the citizens of Colorado Springs, CO, the epicenter of American Christian evangelicalism. Interviewees include members of the New Life Church, a megachurch founded in 1984 by preacher Ted Haggard as well as the liberal citizens who oppose the normative Evangelical lifestyle.

The interplay of documentary and musical elements invites the audience to partake in the conversation on the way religion impacts individual identity, either by free will (embodied by Lanaya Burnette’s affecting performance in “Urban Planning” as T Girl who is empowered by her faith despite the scorn she receives from it as a transgender sexual minority) or by social establishment (Tarneeé Kendell Hudson’s brilliant humor as Teenage Girl in Act I’s “Whatever” shows contradictorily how her imposed faith induces teenage anxiety).

John Knapp seems dutifully aware of the multifaceted and complex nature of the source material. His incisively resuscitated production intelligently executes both the documentary and musical apparatus while neither sacrificing one over the other for simple commercial appeal. This balance provides the framework for the characters to express their individual stories of struggles with identity and faith.

Demonstrating an intelligent awareness of the subjective life experience of each character – from the alternative liberal writer (played powerfully by Andrew Hamm) to self-hating gay evangelical Tem Haggard (portrayed admirably by Scott Melton) – Knapp’s approach leaves each character a protagonist unto himself and it is only each character’s inner conflict with faith as the antagonist. It is each character’s idiosyncratic story told through prose and music that produced the standing ovation on Wednesday’s opening night.

Where one might expect in an LGBT social issues theater the tone to be overly scathing toward Christian conservatism, it appears that it is balanced. Consequently, the moral of the story emerges most insightfully in the consecutive affecting performances of Act II’s “Freedom” and “Urban Planning”: Take ownership of your life whether within or outside your faith.

On a technical note, John Knapp is right to place the set/video design in the adroit capability of Philip Milone. The set mimics a pulpit that is seen at evangelical churches replete with the band on stage and with a slideshow in the background. Milone’s creativity is clever, and invites the audience to literally “witness” the performance and relate with the actors. While some actors trip at some points in the score, musical director Kim Fox nonetheless synthesizes the distinct individual voices of each cast member to unearth lyricist Michael Friedman’s serious social messages that are embedded in the score while maintaining its entertainment appeal. The artistic direction coupled with these technical assets makes this show a truly must see this quarter.

At its greatest depth, This Beautiful City exposes that faith, when abused, is no better than the narcotics people take to cope with (or rather escape) existence. On the other side, however, the narrative shows that faith can be used as a tool for self-empowerment embodied by Hudson and Burnette’s poignant performances of out gay pastor Ben Reynolds and T-Girl, respectively. Knapp admits that in this show “there are no succinct answers”, but his creation accentuates the individual dilemmas that induce genuine reflective thinking. Any theatergoer looking to engage fully in the Acts of Faith Festival will do himself a great favor seeing this RTP performance.

Highly Recommended

LINK

Dave Timberline: "This Beautiful City" is "reflective and thought-provoking, not to mention very entertaining."

2011-01-17T10:58:00.000-05:00

From Dave T's blog:

City Story

I’ve been trying to avoid the phrase “Laramie Project Lite” to describe “This Beautiful City” because it sounds diminutive and not altogether laudatory. But I don’t mean it that way. Compared to the monumental, ambitious, sometimes harrowing “Laramie,” just about anything seems more lightweight. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, “This Beautiful City” is also light as in funny. Sometimes very funny. And that suits the subject given that the true story of Ted Haggard is sort of tragicomic – with big doses of Schadenfreude mixed in – versus the outright tragedy of Matthew Shepard.

Ultimately, I don’t think you can avoid invoking “Laramie” when talking about TBC because of a very good reason: both shows do an exceptional job of developing a sense of place, of presenting the story of a whole community, not just of a handful of characters in a specific setting. That broad-based sociological perspective is one of the things that make TBC a fascinating piece of theater. While essentially a documentary, the show enhances the dialogue lifted directly from interviews by wrapping some of it in song – spare, simply melodic songs by Michael Friedman – that are delivered exceedingly well by the cast in RTP’s production.

Some of the most riveting scenes involve juxtapositions of different viewpoints where the political is rendered dramatically personal. Each cast member plays multiple roles and, among the many exceptional portrayals by Andrew Hamm, the most bracing is of Mikey Weinstein whose stunning rebuke of the “churchification” of the military plays out next to a group of Air Force cadets earnestly declaring their faith as expressed in on-base prayer groups. And while I expect there is a field-day of parody that could be had in the explication of Ted Haggard’s hypocrisy and whack-job denial of his sexuality, TBC is ultimately more effective and intriguing by focusing on people’s reactions, from confusion to anger to glee.

However (did you sense there was a however coming?), the “research project” perspective also contributes to some of the shows problems. While a remarkable majority of the scenes present full-bodied, well-rounded characters, a couple still ended up presenting caricatures. And while that may be unavoidable, it left me feeling like the authors were trying to have their cake and eat it to, at least a little bit. We are clearly meant to empathize with the empowered trans girl (a flawless portrayal by Lanaya Burnette) but laugh at the Revolution House of Prayer zealots. There is reverence and respect in songs like “Freedom” and “Urban Planning” while a teenage girl’s confusion is wrapped up in the joke of a song, “Whatever.” It’s seems like if you are going to present these characters with dignity, don’t they all deserve respect?

But even as I write that, I realize I’m overthinking this a bit, which is also ultimately a good indictor of the value of this show, at least in my opinion. This is a show that could have been largely a joke at Ted Haggard’s expense or an over-obvious put-down of hypocrisy and, instead, ends up being reflective and thought-provoking, not to mention very entertaining.

I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight each member of the cast, since each has at least one moment – usually many moments – where they do great work. I loved the brittleness Christy Mullins gave to the Colorado Springs Economic Development Woman. Scott Melton’s Associate Pastor at Haggard’s church seems genuinely lost when Haggard’s “indiscretions” are exposed. Tarnee Kendell Hudson has many delightful moments but none so powerful as her turn as a New Pastor at the Emmanuel Church. And, in a scene both deceptively simple and insightfully complex, Jason Campbell renders Haggard’s son Marcus with refreshing regular-guy straightforwardness.

As far as its technical aspects, this is not a production I would place among RTP’s best. The set (by Philip Milone) is simply functional with pianist Kim Fox (who does a fine job as musical director) and a percussionist placed neatly in two islands. But having video and slides projected on a loose sheet evokes community theater, as does the somewhat flat and spotty lighting. The costumes (by Ashley Davis) were also fine, though I thought some, like the Emmanuel Choir Member outfit, were a bit cartoonish.

I hadn’t been planning to see TBC and was lucky that last night opened up so I could. If I were you, I wouldn’t count on luck; make plans to see it now or it’ll be gone before you know it.

LINK

Richmond Times-Dispatch: "This Beautiful City" is "a disarmingly fresh and thought-provoking theatrical experience."

2011-01-17T10:55:00.000-05:00

'This Beautiful City' examines faith and values

By SUSAN HAUBENSTOCK

Published: January 15, 2011

I'll predict right now which will be the most interesting Acts of Faith Festival discussions: the ones about "This Beautiful City," Richmond Triangle Players' contribution to the series.

The festival's website says that Acts of Faith fosters "discussion about how faith and values shape our public and private life," and "This Beautiful City" examines just that. Created by The Civilians, a New York-based theater company whose process involves interviews by company members shaped into theater pieces, the play focuses on Colorado Springs, Colo., home to many evangelical Christian organizations.

"The company completed its investigative phase in 2006," according to the website of The Civilians, "compiling hundreds of hours of interviews.… Every leading church in the area participated in the project, as did numerous civic organizations, progressive activists and individuals from all walks of life."

The work Steven Cosson and Jim Lewis fashioned from the interview material, with songs by Michael Friedman, premiered at the Louisville, Ky., Humana Festival in 2008, and it makes for a disarmingly fresh and thought-provoking theatrical experience. It's simply and straightforwardly presented, with six singer-actors portraying a gallery of characters — some individual people, some composites of various Coloradans. And director John Knapp uses the same unadorned style, with able assistance from Kim Fox as musical director, effectively showcasing a multitude of viewpoints with a minimum of cynicism and snark.

The result is fascinating, from Christy Mullins' cheery economic development pro explaining how so many Christian nonprofits came to be in town, to Jason Campbell's energetic youth minister, to Andrew Hamm's angry alternative-newspaper writer. Scott Melton is particularly affecting as Ted Haggard's associate pastor (he plays Haggard, too), and Tarneé Kendall Harrison is especially funny as a teenager singing about Christian youth events. Lanaya Burnette is equally convincing as a former drug user.

Philip Milone provides the stripped-down platform set backed by simple projections, and Ashley Davis the ordinary but precisely right costumes, while K. Jenna Ferree's excellent lighting design handles the changes of scene and mood.

Those post-play discussions will follow the 4 p.m. Sunday matinees on Jan. 23 and Jan. 30.

LINK

Building "This Beautiful City"

2011-01-13T12:48:00.001-05:00

Last night, I had the immense honor of performing in the opening performance of the Richmond Triangle Players' This Beautiful City. A few months ago I wrote about the script, its origins and its incredible importance. Now, with the show on its feet for audiences (through February 5), I want to touch on the experience of putting it up.

One of the key pieces of context for me in this show is that it marks my return to the stage as an actor after two years of teaching and directing. That's been very exciting, but also quite nerve-wracking. I forgot, for example, just how much the addition of new technical elements can mess with my muscle-memory; the first day we rehearsed on the assembled set I blew dozens of lines I had known cold two weeks earlier. I even made an entrance from the wrong side of the stage. Lights and costumes were less of an issue. I'm very much a foot actor; it's my connection to the ground that you can't mess with. Change my footing or adjust my blocking at a late date and I can guarantee trouble will ensue.

It's nice to be back in a multiple-character role, a genre I grew to specialize in during my years with Richmond Shakespeare. (In fact, RS devotees may even recognize the appearance of Moped Man during the second act.) It's an interesting and unique set of challenges for us to be playing real people rather than fictional characters. Two of my roles, military religious freedom activist Michael Weinstein and journalist Noel Black, are published authors, and several of us play people who can be easily found on YouTube and CNN. That said, I have to admit here that I refrained from looking up my characters. It's a bit snooty, but I'm not a fan of impersonation as a foundational acting technique, unless one is playing an exceptionally famous person. Scott Melton, for example, is playing Pastor Ted Haggard, and many of his lines are culled from national television footage; in his case, impersonation was necessary. By eschewing that requirement, I was freed up to create characters using more traditional actor tools.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention here that my Revolution House of Prayer leader has a little bit of Stephen A. Smith in him--mainly because I can't stand Stephen A. Smith.)

It's a fascinating challenge to be speaking the words of real people, people who are still around and who could conceivably show up to see your performance, as Ted Haggard himself did in New York last year. (You've gotta give the man huge respect for that.) Even more interesting is the contrast between Weinstein and an unnamed Catholic priest I play, each of whom has completely opposite perspectives on the issue of separation of church and state. As an actor, you must naturally always find something to love about each character you play, and you must certainly believe in the right of what they believe in. I've certainly played enough villains to have learned that. Playing a real person and speaking their exact words is a whole other level of responsibility. We must have complete respect for each role we play or the integrity of the show is completely lost.

Because the thing about This Beautiful City that makes it unique is its genre. It's a documentary, pure and simple, something almost never seen on stage. Yes, it's full of music (a musical documentary??), it's often moving, frequently hilarious, and occasionally somewhat terrifying. But it's non-fiction from start to finish, and we have to approach the show with a documentarian's eye. It's one thing to pursue the artistic or emotional truth of a script, to honor a playwright's intention and a director's vision. Honoring the personal truth of a city full of real, vital, dynamic, diverse people is an entirely different challenge, and it is one we took very seriously. Complete respect was our responsibility.

This Beautiful City is unlike any other play you will see in Richmond this season. It may be unlike any other play you have ever seen, or that you will ever see. I really hope you come out to see it. It approaches issues of faith and identity in a way that is more frank, more real, and more necessary than any piece of fictional theatre can do. It will make you laugh and it may make you cry. It will make you think and it may make you angry. I am immensely proud to be working with this cast and crew, and to be making my debut with director John Knapp and the ambitious Richmond Triangle Players.

Planting the seeds of "ArkansAs You Like It"

2010-11-22T14:54:00.001-05:00

This post was originally written for the Arkansas Shakespeare website at arkshakes.com.

What an incredible honor it is to be asked to return to Conway in 2011.

I had not even been home a full month from last summer’s amazing Arkansas Shakespeare experience (Shakespearience?) when my phone rang, Matt Chiorini on the other end. And here’s a little inside baseball, a look into how things like contracts and seasons get put together. He asked me if I was interested in returning for a second summer as a director, composer and associate artist, and then asked for my thoughts on what kind of play I might like to direct.

Now let me tell you that this doesn’t happen a lot, a hired director being asked to give input on potential scripts. It’s quite flattering, an honor really, and a huge responsibility. I’ve been on the staff of a Shakespeare company before, so I’ve been part of the process of putting seasons together. I knew that whatever decision we made, it would have to be in the context of the rest of the summer, and it would have to be the best possible choice for the company first.

That said, I wasn’t about to ignore the opportunity to have a say in the matter. If Matt’s going to ask what I want to do, I’m going to tell him. My mind flashed back to my recent directing history:

The Comedy of Errors, Summer 2010. Bigger faster funnier!
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Summer 2009. Bigger faster funnier with fairies! Award-winning five-actor ensemble cast!
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Spring 2009. Indoor first draft of bigger faster funnier with fairies!
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, December 2008. Staged reading that planted the seeds for the above bigger faster funniers.
As You Like It, Summer 2008. Big cast re-mount of hit Spring production; 15 actors’ worth of bigger faster funnier!
As You Like It, Spring 2008. Five-actor production, boys playing girls and girls playing boys and a girl playing a boy playing a girl. Award-nominated bigger faster funnier!
Doctor Faustus, Spring 2007.

Yes, I had to go all the way back to 2007 to find the last time I had directed a serious play. And in all fairness, it was a two-actor reduction of Faustus featuring (you guessed it) a surprising amount of bigger faster funnier. In fact, it genuinely may have been the funniest production of Doctor Faustus ever staged, and I realize that isn’t saying much. In fact, I have to go all the way back to 2006, when I helmed a five-actor Othello for Richmond Shakespeare, my first directing gig for that company, to find a production I’ve put together with an entirely serious intended effect.

So my answer to Matt was, “Well, Matt, I’m kind of comedied out right now. I’m feeling pretty pigeonholed as an artist, and I want to make sure my resume isn’t getting too one-dimensional. What does the 2011 season look like so far? Do you have any plays in mind?”

Matt said, “Well, we keep almost doing As You Like It. It seems like that play is the runner-up for the comedy slot every year. It’s a lovely play for the Natural State, with all the action in the Forest of Arden. And I think you’d be a really good fit with that script, especially coming off of Comedy.”
I thought for a second. “You know what, Matt? I can do some drama in Richmond between now and then. Let’s do it. Let’s do As You Like It.”

Here’s why it was so easy for me say yes to this script: I think As You Like It is to Shakespeare’s comedy what Hamlet is to tragedy. Not only do I think it’s his best comedy, I think it’s his best comedy by a mile. It’s a huge cast of memorable characters, a delight for audiences to enjoy and a feast for actors to sink their teeth into. It’s two pairs of brothers, their relationships broken by jealousy. It’s two women, closer than sisters, bound together in deception in a strange land. It’s two awkward country boys who can’t help but love two awkward country girls even in the face of all rejection. It’s dueling clowns, one mean-spirited and one melancholy. It’s love and romance and country-mouse-versus-city-mouse and music and family and redemption. It’s “All the world’s a stage.” And it’s a girl disguised as a boy pretending to be a girl who actually happens to be herself.

This is my favorite comedy written by anybody, ever, featuring my favorite cast of characters in all of world theatre.

In the meantime, I’m here in my home city of Richmond, Virginia, beginning to work on This Beautiful City with the Richmond Triangle Players, my first acting gig since 2009′s Amadeus. I’m preparing to direct a staged reading of Eliza Anderson’s The Water Principle, and Sycamore Rouge in Petersburg is looking to produce my play Awake in Pennsylvania in March. And I’m beginning to put together a program for artists with mental health issues in conjunction with the Firehouse Theatre Project‘s production of Something Intangible. I figure that’s more than enough drama to satisfy my limited need for seriousness between now and May. If you are so inclined, you can keep up with my local doings, as well as some truly awful NFL picks, on my own blog, Andrew Hamm: the Bipolar Express.

I can’t wait to be able to delight you, fair readers, with word of which wonderful actors will be playing these amazing roles. And as the months go by I’m going to continue to write about the preparation, the foundational ideas, and the process of this show, on which I’ve already begun working. I’ve already begun to talk music with Matt and costumes with Shauna Meador, who has instantly become one of my favorite artists to collaborate with ever. I know this much already: it can’t help but look and sound gorgeous.

The 2011 Arkansas Shakespearience is already beginning!

NFL Picks Week 8

2010-10-31T09:22:00.001-04:00

Tally for week 7:

Peter King: 9-5 (60-44, a .577 win percentage)
Andrew Hamm: 7-7 (54-50, .519)
George Washington: 9-5 (49-55, .471)
Greyson's Dad: 10-4 (63-41, .606)
Rick Olson: 9-5 (55-35, .611)

This week's games, to the tune of Avenged Sevenfold:

Buffalo Bills (0-6) at Kansas City Chiefs (4-2)

Peter: Chiefs. Words I never thought I'd write about a Bills-Chiefs game in 2010: The only game Sunday featuring a matchup between two top-10-rated quarterbacks in the NFL is Buffalo (Ryan Fitzpatrick) versus Kansas City (Matt Cassel). Harvard guy versus the USC benchwarmer. Fitzpatrick is second (102.0), Cassel ninth (91.5).
Andrew: Chiefs. Come on, dude.
George: Chiefs.
Ryan: Chiefs.
Rick: Chiefs. The Bills will keep it close. but the Chiefs will make it to 5-2.

Jacksonville Jaguars (3-4) at Dallas Cowboys (1-5)

Peter: Cowboys. Speaking of coaches who might have a lot of time on their hands in 10 weeks, this game matches two of them. Good-guy Jon Kitna might not have started a game since the Bush Administration, but he'll have enough help from some good receivers to plow under the Jags.
Andrew: Cowboys. The Cowboys will rally around Jon Kitna and start winning games, precisely because it makes absolutely no sense.
George: Cowboys.
Ryan: Jaguars.
Rick: Cowboys. Let the Kitna era reign!

Carolina Panthers (1-5) at St. Louis Rams (3-4)

Peter: Panthers. Two reasons. Matt Moore threw for 308 yards against a bad Niners team last week, showing he can play competently when he doesn't have the weight of the world on his shoulders. And Carolina finally rushed the passer.
Andrew: Rams. Raise your hand if you thought the Rams would be at .500 at mid-season. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
George: Rams.
Ryan: Rams.
Rick: Rams. If Jackson plays for the Rams, they should have no problems here.

Washington Redskins (4-3) at Detroit Lions (1-5)

Peter: Lions. I don't trust Washington to score. I trust Detroit, even though Matthew Stafford hasn't played since Week 1, to score more.
Andrew: Redskins. This is the week. This is the moment the Redskins franchise turns the corner from the misery of the past 15 years and shows that they have learned how to be a functional NFL organization. Not necessarily a "winning" team; I still see them finishing the season 8-8. But they should kill the Lions, and they will. I'm putting my fantasy money where my mouth is, starting Cooley, Gano, and even Anthony Armstrong. Besides, they've had their beat-down-by-a-massively-inferior-team meltown already this season against the Rams.
George: Redskins.
Ryan: Redskins.
Rick: Lions. Let's see what Washington does two weeks in a row. Upset City.

Miami Dolphins (3-3) at Cincinnati Bengals (2-4)

Peter: Dolphins. The strangest streak in the league continues. Miami can't lose on the road, can't win at home. If my call is right, the Fins will be 0-3 home, 4-0 away. If you've got Davone Bess on your fantasy team, I've got a hunch Dan Henning will be calling his number in the fourth quarter, and Chad Henne will find him a couple of times underneath coverage. Doesn't help the Bengals that Pacman Jones just went on IR. He'd have been nettlesome on Bess.
Andrew: Bengals. This is my hunch upset of the week.
George: Dolphins.
Ryan: Dolphins.
Rick: Dolphins. Because I don't know what to think of the Bengals anymore this year.

Denver Broncons (2-5) vs. San Francisco 49ers (1-6)

Peter: Broncons. We've exported to London two teams with a combined 3-11 record. (Wouldn't Vandelay Industries be a better exporter to England right now?) One team is coming off, arguably, the worst performance in franchise history; Denver allowed 59 points to a previously 2-4 team playing lousy on offense. The other team is starting a quarterback, Troy Smith, who just started practicing 49ers plays with his team. Pick the winner out of a hat. I'll take the team with the better quarterback, thank you.
Andrew: Broncons. Oh, London, I am so sorry that this is what we sent you this year. I'm completely done picking the 49ers. The meat thermometer has popped: Mike Singletary has popped.
George: Broncons.
Ryan: Broncons.
Rick: Broncos. I feel bad for all of London for having these two teams as their NFL game for the year.

Green Bay Packers (4-3) at New York Jets (5-1)

Peter: Jets. Jets have 45 takeaways in Rex Ryan's 22 games as coach. The Pack has turned it over 13 times this year, and Mike McCarthy's concerned. "Our giveaways are way too high. Our turnover ratio is minus-1. That's not where we want to be,'' McCarthy said this week. Green Bay is beat-up too, and New York is coming off the bye. Rested.
Andrew: Jets. Green Bay is too beat up to do more than make a fight of it. The NFC North is bedlam.
George: Packers.
Ryan: Jets.
Rick: Jets. This may be the game where the throw at all costs Packers lose Rodgers to injury.

Tennessee Titans (5-2) at San Diego Chargers (2-5)

Peter: Titans. The strangest season in recent years continues. The Chargers can't be first in the NFL in total offense and total defense, and they can't have outscored their opposition in seven games by a combined 28 ... and be 2-5. Can they? They can given their turnovers. They can also be 2-6 if the no-name Tennessee pass-rush bugs Philip Rivers as much as I think it will.
Andrew: Titans. Norv, Norv, Norv.
George: Titans.
Ryan: Chargers.
Rick: Titans. Can the Chargers REALLY be 2-6? Yes.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-2) at Arizona Cardinals (3-3)

Peter: Cardinals. "We're the best team in the NFC,'' Raheem Morris said the other day. "Yeah, I said it.'' I guess that's some sort of motivational thing, but it's hard to make a statement like that when, in the two games against big-time opposition (Steelers, Saints), you lost by 25 points each time. I'm not big fan of these Cards either. Might be time to bench Tim (Fumbleitis) Hightower and give the ball to Beanie Wells 20 times or more.
Andrew: Cardinals. Upset of the week #2.
George: Cardinals.
Ryan: Buccaneers.
Rick: Cardinals. I have no idea why. Just a hunch.

Minnesota Vikings (2-4) at New England Patriots (5-1)

Peter: Patriots. I say Brett Favre plays, and I say Tom Brady plays better.
Andrew: Patriots. Favre starts, Jackson finishes. Brady finishes the Vikings' season.
George: Patriots.
Ryan: Patriots.
Rick: Patriots. Favre will play. When he plays hurt, he forces WAY too much

Seattle Seahawks (4-2) at Oakland Raiders (3-4)

Peter: Raiders. What a beatdown of the Broncos. Totally unexpected, at least to me -- and the Raiders did it with their three top receivers hurt. This is going to come down to one of the league's hottest backs, Darren McFadden, denting a surprisingly strong run defense (Seattle's allowing a Steeler-like 3.3 yards per carry) enough to win. I say he can.
Andrew: Raiders. Raise your hand if you thought the Raiders would be at .500 at mid-season. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
George: Raiders.
Ryan: Raiders.
Rick: Raiders. Was last week in Denver a fluke? Probably at least a little bit, but they should still beat the Hawks.

Pittsburgh Steelers (5-1) at New Orleans Saints (4-3)

Peter: Steelers. Halloween night in New Orleans. National TV. Michaels and Collinsworth. Feisty crowd. Very loud. Steelers without one of their five most valuable players, defensive end Aaron Smith. Saints are reeling and have to have it. Tough one to call. If I thought Reggie Bush were going to play and be near 100 percent healthy, I'd go with the Saints. But he's not and I can't.
Andrew: Saints. The Steelers' D is a fast-zombie nightmare. But I just can't see the Saints at 4-4 midseason. I have to believe that Brees's leadership trumps Rapistberger's.
George: Steelers.
Ryan: Steelers.
Rick: Saints. Drew Brees is going to right the ship in a must-win.

Houston Texans (4-2) at Indianapolis Colts (4-2)

Peter: Colts. This game will provide another reason you can't discuss the first-half MVP of this season without including Peyton Manning.
Andrew: Colts. Bigtime revenge game.
George: Texans.
Ryan: Colts.
Rick: Texans. The Texans show that their Week 1 victory was no fluke.

Posting on Arkansas Shakespeare's Blog

2010-10-23T11:40:00.002-04:00

So Arkansas Shakespeare now has a new website (a long-overdue upgrade), and I've been asked to post on the process of next summer's As You Like It.

Here's my first entry.

NFL Picks Week 7

2010-10-23T11:24:00.002-04:00

The tally:

Peter King: 8-6 in week 6 (51-39, a .567 win percentage)
Andrew Hamm: 6-8 (47-43, .522)
George Washington: 5-9 (40-50, .444)
Greyson's Dad: 9-5 (53-37, .589)
Rick Olson: 7-7 (46-28, .622)

The picks:

Cincinnati Bengals (2-3) at Atlanta Falcons (4-2)

Peter: Falcons. Stat of the Week: Matt Ryan is 15-1 at the Georgia Dome, and Michael Turner rushes for 104 yards per game at the Georgia Dome. Factoid of the Week That Should Interest You: This game is at the Georgia Dome.
Andrew: Falcons. Just the matter of the better overall team winning.
George: Falcons.
Rick: Falcons. Two struggling QB's, two decent D's....I think it'll be about 13-10.....which means it'll really be 35-34
Ryan: Falcons.

Buffalo Bills (0-5) at Baltimore Ravens (4-2)

Peter: Ravens. Poor Bills. I'll tell you the most amazing thing I discovered as I went about my exhaustive research this week making these picks. (I spend at least 45 seconds hours doing my research, you know. Call me the Ron Jaworski of pick research.) These two teams met fairly recently, in 2007, and Buffalo won 19-14. Newbies Joe Flacco, Anquan Boldin and Ray Rice will have something to say about this rematch.
Andrew: Ravens. Puh-lease.
George: Ravens.
Rick: Ravens. This should be a big game for everyone on the Ravens.
Ryan: Ravens.

San Francisco (1-5) at Carolina Panthers (0-5)

Peter: 49ers. Aubrayo Franklin, Isaac Sapoaga, Justin Smith and Patrick Willis will be the big factors in this game, because the Panthers will have to run DeAngelo Williams to win. Glad to see Matt Moore get another chance to quarterback the Panthers and prove I wasn't a total ditz in saying he was going to have a good year. But I don't think he'll be the difference-maker this week.
Andrew: 49ers. Both teams are a mess, but Carolina is much messier.
George: Panthers.
Rick: Panthers...... Next please.
Ryan: 49ers.

Washington Redskins (3-3) at Chicago Bears (4-2)

Peter: Redskins. Donovan McNabb returns to Chicago, where he's had some very good days as a visitor. Four of them, actually, in five career outings at Soldier Field. To win this one, he's going to be very happy to hand the ball 23 times to Ryan Torain.
Andrew: Redskins. I find myself sliding precipitously off the Bears bandwagon, and not just because they're facing my Redskins. A big game for Ryan Torain and a couple game-changing big plays to emerging wideout Anthony Armstrong should ensue. I think Cutler is one hit away from visiting Dr. Gumby with the complaint, "My brain hurts." It will have to come out.
George: Redskins.
Rick: Redskins. The Bears are no good. The Redskins are relatively good.
Ryan: Redskins.

Philadelphia Eagles (4-2) at Tennessee Titans (4-2)

Peter: Titans. Here's a strange one for you: Tennessee is 11-0 against NFC teams in the past 24 months. I say it gets to 12, narrowly, even if Vince Young has to give way to Kerry Collins. In fact, after watching the Monday-nighter, that might be better for Tennessee.
Andrew: Titans. A close one, but I like the Titans' efficiency.
George: Eagles.
Rick: Titans. Total Pick'em game. I'll go with the home team.
Ryan: Eagles.

Pittsburgh Steelers (4-1) at Miami Dolphins (3-2)

Peter: Steelers. Just between us, I think there are about 22 million reasons James Harrison won't retire.
Andrew: Dolphins. Honestly, logic has gone so completely by the wayside this year that I'm just picking a couple upsets each week based on hunch and vibe. And I think James Harrison is going to hit someone hard just to make a point--and might find himself ejected for it to make a better one.
George: Dolphins.
Rick: Dolphins. Just a gut feeling that Miami is better than people think and Pittsburgh isn't as good as people think.
Ryan: Steelers.

St. Louis Rams (3-3) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (3-2)

Peter: Buccaneers. I know this game seems like a clunker -- it is a clunker -- but the one thing about it I really like is that we'll be seeing two quarterbacks (Josh Freeman and Sam Bradford) who'll be among the top 10 in the league in 2017.
Andrew: Rams. One of these teams is going deep into the playoffs--next year.
George: Rams.
Rick: Buccaneers. Two up and coming teams. but I'll take the Bucs in a close one
Ryan: Buccaneers.

Cleveland Browns (1-5) at New Orleans Saints (4-2)

Peter: Saints. Ben Roethlisberger one week, Drew Brees the next, and, after the bye, Tom Brady. Nice way to break into the NFL, Colt McCoy. (And if you're asking me if I think McCoy will still have the job two weeks from now, the answer is yes -- as long as this game against the Saints is not an abject disaster.)
Andrew: Saints. I almost picked this upset. Then I remembered it was the Browns.
George: Browns.
Rick: Saints. Drew Brees should chew up the Browns.
Ryan: Saints.

Jacksonville Jaguars (3-3) at Kansas City Chiefs (3-2)

Peter: Chiefs. The Chiefs are getting good before our eyes. I said this week I think they'll win the AFC West, and after watching the first six weeks of the season, I think it might not be close.
Andrew: Chiefs. Okay, I'm convinced. The Chefs are good. Great googly moogly.
George: Jaguars.
Rick: Chiefs. It's Trent Edwards, it's Matt Cassel. The NFL, where greatness thrives!
Ryan: Chiefs.

Arizona Cardinals (3-2) at Seattle Seahawks (3-2)

Peter: Seahawks. Watch for the dynamic duo of Justin Forsett and Marshawn Lynch (don't laugh; that's a heck of a 1-2 punch) to take over this game. The Cards are allowing 140 rushing yards per game.
Andrew: Cardinals. How about that Max Hall?
George: Cardinals.
Rick: Seahawks. I like the Seahawks at home. Mike Williams for comeback player of the year.
Ryan: Seahawks.

Oakland Raiders (2-4) at Denver Broncons (2-4)

Peter: Broncons. Look at the Broncos' receiving corps. Jabar Gaffney 37 catches, Brandon Lloyd 34, Eddie Royal 32. Wait 'til Demaryius Thomas gets his pro legs under him. Denver's receivers will rival Indy's.
Andrew: Raiders. With all the hype about the amazing Broncons offense, you'd think their win-loss record would be flipped. But no. They're a badly unbalanced team. So is Oakland, but still...
George: Raiders.
Rick: Broncons. Oakland made SF look good last week. I gotta think that Kyle Orton lights them up.
Ryan: Broncons.

New England Patriots (4-1) at San Diego Chargers (2-4)

Peter: Patriots. Tom Brady wins a shootout. Tough call, because the Chargers need this game badly (oh really?), Philip Rivers is on fire, and the Patriots' young secondary is amazingly generous, allowing foes to complete 71 percent of their throws. I'd pick the Chargers if half their offense wasn't on the sidelines at practice Wednesday -- and particularly if I could count on Antonio Gates being the real Gates with his toe injury.
Andrew: Patriots. I just see them getting better and better, and I'm glad the Redskins aren't playing the AFC East this year.
George: Patriots.
Rick: Chargers. This has become a bit of a rivalry. I expect Rivers to chew up the Pats' secondary.
Ryan: Patriots.

Minnesota Vikings (2-3) at Green Bay Packers (3-3)

Peter: Vikings. The Vikes' defensive front will dictate this game. Very odd so far that Minnesota has six sacks in five games, and the dangerous Jared Allen has but one. I think you remember what Allen did to the Packers last year in Sackville: 7.5 in two games. Expect him to be very happy to see the Sunday night national TV audience (he likes the attention) and the Packers offensive line across from him.
Andrew: Vikings. The Packers are a MASH unit, and the Vikings are slowly gelling. This is the week they start coming together.
George: Packers.
Rick: Packers. I don't care if injuries force the Packers to re-sign Tony Mandarich and Eddie Lee Ivory, I'll never pick Favre to beat the Pack.
Ryan: Packers.

New York Giants (4-2) at Dallas Cowboys (1-4)

Peter: Cowboys. At some point, Tony Romo's going to walk into his huddle and say, "This is #%&^*# ridiculous, you bunch of $%%#&@. Let's get our #$%$^ in gear and earn our millions." Or something like that. This is the night.
Andrew: Cowboys. Once or twice a year an NFC East team wins a game against a divisional opponent they have no business beating. This is it.
George: Giants.
Rick: Giants. The D-Line of the G-Men should be on Romo all game long.
Ryan: Cowboys.

What's Next: "This Beautiful City"

2010-10-16T12:23:00.002-04:00

After two years devoted to directing, producing, composing and teaching theatre, I'm finally returning to the stage as an actor. This time, I can honestly say that the project may be the most important piece of theatre with which I have ever been associated.

I will be part of the six-person ensemble creating the population of This Beautiful City at the Richmond Triangle Players as part of the Acts of Faith festival. The script was developed by an exploratory New York theatre company called The Civilians, who are best-known for their 2007 piece, Gone Missing. The Civilians create documentary theatre, usually with music, by interviewing people and building a script out of that material. In the case of TBC, the Civilians wanted to create a piece about the rise of Evangelical Christianity and its influence in American political dialogue, particularly the tension between Chriatianity and the rising tide of gay marriage rights. They chose to examine Colorado Springs (the beautiful city of the title), home of Focus on the Family and the enormous, politically connected New Life Church.

The company traveled to Colorado Springs, began the interview process--and then all hell broke loose. New Life's high-profile pastor, Ted Haggard, was outed as having both a gay affair and a methamphetamine addiction, shining the national spotlight on the community. It was a journalistic bonanza for the Civilians, raising the intensity level of the entire project. The result is a two-act documentary with music, with all the text culled from interviews and emails.

So why is this piece so "important," in my mind? Well, I happen to be both a passionately evangelical Christian and an ardent supporter of gay rights. I find no conflict between the two perspectives in my heart, though I can intellectually appreciate how people on one side or the other could find themselves in honest, conscientious opposition. That said, I did as much research into the script as I could before auditioning, and even after being offered a role I respectfully insisted on reading the script before committing in order to make sure there was no egregious conflict between the play's message and my own faith perspective. I'm sure most people reading this are thinking something like, "Oh, a bunch of theatre people from New York making a play about the Ted Haggard scandal? I'm sure that's a really even-handed portrayal of Christianity [/sarcasm]."

You know what? It is. Chew on this for a moment: Ted Haggard himself attended a performance of this play during its brief New York run. With his wife.

The fact is, and this is what attracts me so much to this script, the Civilians are completely even-handed and respectful of all perspectives depicted in this script. More than any play I have ever attached myself to, I am proud of this project. Opportunities to artistically challenge and question my faith in an honest and incisive, yet still loving and respectful manner are rare.

Arts and faith communities so often find themselves at odds with one another that for those of us who live in both worlds the tension can often be baffling and painful. I've long lived what I've come to describe as an amphibious existence, living half in the world of faith and half in the world of art, never entirely comfortable or accepted in either community. I have left a church because of their stance on artistic representation, and I have rejected excellent theatrical projects because of their representation of Christ. At the risk of revealing too deep a secret, I always internally phrase my work in the theatre in the context of my Christian worldview. Everything I do as a theatre artist is framed by humanity's brokenness, our inability to make the world work without help, our need for unconditional forgiveness, for a Redeemer. The work I've done on Doctor Faustus, Measure for Measure, Amadeus, and even the silliness of A Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer Night's Dream all have had this as core ideas. It is an INCREDIBLE joy and privilege to work on a script that has these ideas at its center without my having to make much of any internal justification.

This Beautiful City allows art and faith to talk to each other. It asks incredibly difficult, essential questions and demands that YOU, dear audience, answer them for yourselves. And it does this in a context of complete respect and love for the people and perspectives presented. A person of faith and art can not possibly ask for more.

I love ensemble-generated theatre. I love theatre that allows me to present my Christian faith, an exceptionally rare thing. I love theatre that challenges the audience's perspectives, and that challenges mine. I love this play, and I think it's the most important thing I've ever done as a theatre artist. I hope you come see it.

This Beautiful City opens January 12 and runs through February 5.

NFL Picks Week 6

2010-10-15T17:50:00.002-04:00

First of all, congratulations to Amber Wiley and Ryan Capps for successfully making Greyson William "Thunder" Capps. I visited them in the hospital to meet little Busta, congratulate Amber, and get Ryan's picks for this week. Rick even wrote commentary, which is nice because I just didn't for several games.

Regarding last week: So much for my looking like I know anything about football. And so much for Peter King being an actual expert; SI's writer got killed. Last week was among the craziest I have ever seen in my years of sports fandom:

Peter King: 5-9 (43-33, a .566 win percentage)
Andrew Hamm: 7-7 (41-35, .539)
George Washington: 7-7 (35-41, .461)
Greyson's Dad: 6-8 (44-32, .579)
Rick Olson: 10-4 (39-21, .650)

To the accompaniment of Transatlantic's The Whirlwind:

Atlanta Falcons (4-1) at Philadelphia Eagles (3-2)

Peter: Eagles. We interrupt this game prediction to bring you this gee-whiz reaction to the Mike Bell-for-Jerome Harrison trade: What?!?! Bell's a guy. Harrison's a comet. Harrison's last three games last season for the Browns: 106 carries, 561 yards, five touchdowns. I don't know how he got so ensconced in Eric Mangini's doghouse, but I do know this: That's one heck of a trade for the Eagles.
Andrew: Falcons. I'm still just not a Kolb believer. The Falcons are the best team in the NFC, which honestly says very very little.
George: Falcons.
Greyson's Dad: Falcons. Fal-con pride ever.
Rick: Falcons. Bill Simmons' said it best. They are going to be the number 1 seed in the NFC. #1's win this game.

Baltimore Ravens (4-1) at New England Patriots (3-1)

Peter: Ravens. Lost in the kerfuffle of the rout of the Dolphins and the Randy Moss trade and the very serious discussion of Tom Brady's hair: New England's defense isn't fixed, and I don't see the Patriots either covering Anquan Boldin or stopping Ray Rice.
Andrew: Ravens.
George: Patriots.
Greyson's Dad: Ravens.
Rick: Ravens. New England's D is bad, Baltimore's is good. Big day for Flacco.

Seattle Seahawks (2-2) at Chicago Bears (4-1)

Peter: Bears. I'd pick the Bears even with Todd Collins playing -- which he's not -- and that's a pretty good indictment of the Seahawks. Look for Matt Forte to get off to a good start.
Andrew: Bears.
George: Seahawks.
Greyson's Dad: Bears.
Rick: Bears. The most over-rated team in football gets another gimme.

Miami Dolphins (2-2) at Green Bay Packers (3-2)

Peter: Packers. I make this prediction thinking Aaron Rodgers is going to play. He might, he might not. But he's going to have to make some serious adjustments to his game without Jermichael Finley and Donald Lee in his sights for the foreseeable future.
Andrew: Packers.
George: Packers.
Greyson's Dad: Packers.
Rick: Dolphins. Call me a fool, but I don't think GB can hold up with their injury situation against a quality team

Kansas City Chiefs (3-1) at Houston Texans (3-2)

Peter: Chiefs. Remember those thrilling days of yesteryear, when the Cleveland Browns were running for more than 300 yards against the Chiefs? Yep, that was all the way back in December. No more. Romeo Crennel's got the run defense fixed, which is bad news for Arian Foster's fantasy football owners.
Andrew: Texans. I still think the 3-1 Chiefs are some piece of NFL fan fiction written by some nerd in his mom's basement wearing an unwashed Elvis Grbac jersey.
George: Chiefs.
Greyson's Dad: Texans.
Rick: Texans. I believe in the Texans this year. and don't think that Cassell is worth anything even against this bad of a pass D.

Detroit Lions (1-4) at New York Giants (3-2)

Peter: Giants. I worry about Eli Manning's interceptions, but not much else Giants-related in the past two weeks. Ahmad Bradshaw is emerging as a top NFL back (unless he keeps fumbling), the offensive line has regained its sea legs, Hakeem Nicks is the latter-day Plaxico Burress in terms of big plays, and the defensive front is approaching 2007 form.
Andrew: Giants. The Lions don't have this one in them.
George: Lions.
Greyson's Dad: Giants.
Rick: Giants. The Lions are not as bad as people think. but with the injuries and the Giants D, New York pulls through

Cleveland Browns (1-4) at Pittsburgh Steelers (3-1)

Peter: Steelers. Can't imagine a tougher career-opener for Colt McCoy, playing the Steelers of 2010 in Ben Roethlisberger's return. Unless it was facing the Steelers of 1976.
Andrew: Steelers. Cry for poor Colt McCoy, who is going to have the worst day ever. By the end of this game, I might be playing quarterback for the Browns. If this happens, I want Busta Capps to inherit all my action figures when he comes of age.
George: Steelers.
Greyson's Dad: Steelers.
Rick: Steelers. But let's all hope Ben gets carted off the field.

San Diego Chargers (2-3) at St. Louis Rams (2-3)

Peter: Chargers. Philip Rivers will hit Antonio Gates for a touchdown for the 10th straight game Sunday. It sounds crazy, but Rivers-to-Gates has a very good chance to go down in Chargers history as a better QB-to-TE combo than Fouts to Winslow.
Andrew: Chargers. The Rams will win a few more this year. Just not this one.
George: Chargers.
Greyson's Dad: Rams.
Rick: Chargers. I think the Chargers are soft. but they will win this game.

New Orleans Saints (3-2) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (3-1)

Peter: Saints. Toughest game of the weekend to call. The Bucs are still playing the aw-shucks-we're-not-very-good card (that's how GM Mark Dominik reacted to me this week about their 3-1 start), but the Saints know better. Tampa Bay is building a dangerous defense with a prize 22-year-old quarterback and a better set of receivers than you think. This game could go either way. I see Drew Brees making two or three plays downfield, and that being the difference.
Andrew: Buccaneers. The Saints are kind of a mess, and the Bucs are a smart, efficient team. They will take advantage.
George: Saints.
Greyson's Dad: Saints.
Rick: Buccaneers. New Orleans hasn't looked good, and Tampa surprises them.

New York Jets (4-1) at Denver Broncons (2-3)

Peter: Jets. Sit, Darrelle, sit. And not just for this week either. The Jets have to bite the bullet and give Revis a minimum of three weeks off. If not, this hammy will flare up throughout the season and they'll be faced with Kyle Wilson covering Reggie Wayne or Mike Wallace in January. That's a losing proposition.
Andrew: Jets. Okay, I'm officially off the "The Jets will be a big disappointment" tip, though beating the Vikings hardly impresses me.
George: Jets.
Greyson's Dad: Jets.
Rick: Jets. I don't like Orton's chances against this D.

Oakland Raiders (2-3) at San Francisco 49ers (0-5)

Peter: 49ers. Best coaching decision of the week, surprisingly, was made by a coach having an awful year. Mike Singletary decided to stick it to the baying hounds calling for him to bench Alex Smith, which is wise. Smith has had some disastrous moments, to be sure. But he's the only quarterback on the roster who has a chance to lead the Niners out of the 0-5 morass. And he's shown in spurts the capability to lead some very good drives. I see the Raiders not pressuring Smith much, and the Niners giving him enough help for an efficient passing day.
Andrew: 49ers. Dammit, I'm picking them until they win.
George: 49ers.
Greyson's Dad: 49ers.
Rick: Raiders. Because anything is better than picking Alex Smith to win a game.

Dallas Cowboys (1-3) at Minnesota Vikings (1-3)

Peter: Vikings. This is a playoff game between two 1-3 lead balloons. Even in a very poor NFC this year, it's hard to imagine a 1-4 team with good division competition rebounding to make the postseason. The Vikings are crippled at cornerback, which could make for a huge Tony Romo day. Minnesota is also disadvantaged at quarterback, with injuries to Brett Favre's elbow and psyche. Randy Moss' emotional return to Minnesota will be enough, I think. Very big day for him, even with Mike Jenkins all over him.
Andrew: The Game of the Season so far, and between two 1-win teams. Amazing. This is the Stupor Bowl, and I really don't know how to pick it. Neither of these teams is making the postseason, but the loser is in real trouble, as in wrecking-the-next-two-season-for-the-franchise trouble. This is a loss you don't recover from without a change at head coach, quarterback, or some other massive adjustment. That said, the Cowboys look slightly less dysfunctional than the Vikings, for two reasons: 1) Romo is twice the quarterback Favre is right now (and I think Romo is massively overrated as well), and 2) because Minnesota's secondary is just awful. One week of hope for Dallas, marred by a 160+yard day for Randy Moss. And I predict that Brett Favre will retire mid-season...then string us along again next summer, only to opt anticlimactically to stay retired.
George: Vikings.
Greyson's Dad: Vikings. (How much is the world upside-down when Ryan is picking against the Cowboys and I am picking for them?)
Rick: Vikings. I see Jared Allen having 4 sacks and the home team coming through.

Indianapolis Colts (3-2) at Washington Redskins (3-2)

Peter: Colts. When I first saw this game on the NBC Sunday night sked, I said: "Four hundred-yard night for Peyton.'' Now I say: "Competitive game for 60 minutes.'' The way Brian Orakpo and LaRon Landry are attacking the line of scrimmage, I'd be surprised if the Redskins didn't have a shot, some shot, to win this game in the fourth quarter.
Andrew: Let me point out here that I was the only one to correctly pick a Redskins upset over the Packers last week, my first accurate pick for Washington all year. That said, the Colts will win this one, but the 'Skins will keep it closer than they have any right to. Indy is down right now, maybe all year, and the Redskins defense is in the unusual position of both giving up the most yards in the NFL while also being one of the most feared in the league. They just hit and hit and hit. I don't care if Washington doesn't win another game this year; the culture change in the organization has me more excited about the team than I have felt since 1991. I still predict an 8-8 finish, but they are going to be a trendy Super Bowl pick for 2011.
George: Redskins.
Greyson's Dad: Colts.
Rick: Colts. Peyton Manning vs. DeAngello Hall. I'll take Manning thanks.

Tennessee Titans (3-2) at Jacksonville Jaguars (3-2)

Peter: Titans. I'm starting to like Tennessee a lot. What's not to like, as long as Vince Young continues to play efficiently.
Andrew: Titans. They aren't exciting, but their workmanlike approach to the game will crush Jacksonville's sloppiness. What an awful Monday Night game.
George: Jaguars.
Greyson's Dad: Titans.
Rick: Titans. This might be a blow out.

Until next time: cheese armor ever!

NFL Picks Week 5

2010-10-09T10:52:00.003-04:00

So in week 4, I finally started looking like someone who knows a little something about football. So did the random coin flip, demonstrating just how useless it is to look like someone who knows a little something about football. In fact, we were all above .500, a nice change from week 3's bloodbath.

Last week's tally:

Peter King: 9-5 (38-24 on the season, a 613 win percentage)
Andrew Hamm: 10-4 (34-28, .548)
George Washington: 8-6 (28-34, .452)
Ryan Capps: 9-5 (38-24, .613)
Rick Olson: 10-4 (29-17, .630)

Ryan handed his picks in on time despite the fact that his wife Amber is overdue to deliver their first-yet-to-be-born. Bravo.

On with the picks, to the tune of Richmond's own Moruza.

Denver Broncons (2-2) at Baltimore Ravens (3-1)

Peter King: Ravens. Great test for the NFL's passing-yards leader, Kyle Orton (1,419), who is on a silly 5,676-yard pace. Baltimore's secondary is playing far, far better than anyone thought it would. I see a good duel here, with Orton getting his yards and Baltimore getting the win.
Andrew: Ravens. They showed me a lot last week against a very confident Steelers team. Orton is going to pass for a quarter-mile, but his running backs may end up with under 30 yards.
George: Ravens.
Ryan: Ravens.
Rick: Ravens.

Jacksonville Jaguars (2-2) at Buffalo Bills (0-4)

Peter King: Jaguars. Not exactly the game of the week. The NFL really was scraping for positive Bills info in the weekly game capsules written by the league's PR staff. Listen to this one: "Seven of WR-KR Roscoe Parrish's 10 receptions have been for first downs.'' Think about that for a second. Parrish is the Bills' speed guy. Seven of 10 receptions for first downs is actually a negative. Not to diss this game or anything.
Andrew: Jaguars. I still think the Bills could challenge for 0-16. I think they might find a way to go 0-17, honestly.
George: Bills.
Ryan: Jaguars.
Rick: Bills.

Switching to Kool Keith's Matthew because it sounds more like football.

Chicago Bears (3-1) at Carolina Panthers (0-4)

Peter King: Bears. Without the concussed Jay Cutler, missing the first game of his pro career due to injury, this one will be much closer than it should be. Todd Collins is going to need a very strong game from Matt Forte to avoid getting pummeled by the Panther rush.
Andrew: Panthers. Upset special of the week. Carolina is 0-4, but they are neither stupid nor soft. Relax, Bears fans. Your team will be just fine. Next week.
George: Panthers.
Ryan: Panthers.
Rick: Panthers.

Switching to Kool Keith's Black Elvis / Lost in Space because Matthew is too angry, scary and homophobic.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-1) at Cincinnati Bengals (2-2)

Peter King: Bengals. Rightfully, Carson Palmer has been targeted for the Bengals' bad start; he had a C-minus first month. But the offensive line and Cedric Benson need to gaze in the mirror Sunday in Cincinnati before this game and take some of the blame, too. Benson, the cornerstone of the Bengals running game, is rushing at a 3.3-yards-per-carry clip, a yard below last year. If that doesn't get fixed, neither will the Cincinnati offense.
Andrew: Bengals. But they are in big trouble.
George: Buccaneers.
Ryan: Bengals.
Rick: Bengals.

Atlanta Falcons (3-1) at Cleveland Browns (1-3)

Peter King: Browns. Eric Mangini on this generation's Norm Bulaich, Browns jumbo back Peyton Hillis: "Even I avoid him in the hallway.'' I say Hillis eats enough of the clock against the Falcons to make this my upset special.
Andrew: Falcons. I'm not buying it, King.
George: Browns. George, however is.
Ryan: Falcons.
Rick: Falcons.

St. Louis Rams (2-2) at Detroit Lions (0-4)

Peter King: Rams. Toughest game to pick this weekend. Don't laugh. It is. I think the Lions shut down Steven Jackson, but Sam Bradford makes enough throws to put the Rams over .500 for the first time in October since the Cro-Magnon walked the earth.
Andrew: The Lions are playing tough; they're a good team for 0-4. But I think the Rams are better. I like Sam Bradford a ton. They're still going to be lucky to finish 6-10, but memories of when they were 3-2 will keep Detroit warm in January, looking forward to a bright 2011.
George: Lions.
Ryan: Rams.
Rick: Lions.

Now listening to Living Colour's Time's Up because Ray and Sera made me think of "Elvis Is Dead."

Kansas City Chiefs (3-0) at Indianapolis Colts (2-2)

Peter King: Colts. I'll bet you a triple latte that the Chiefs win time-of-possession and lose the game. The only way K.C. wins is to pound Thomas Jones and use Jamaal Charles and Dexter McCluster as speed men outside -- and to hope Peyton Manning gets his hands on the ball only six or seven possessions. Of course, that's been the formula of about 70 percent of the teams that have played the Colts, and you see how far that has gotten foes.
Andrew: Colts. I wouldn't take that bet, Pete. As much as the Lions are a good 0-4, the Chiefs are a lucky 3-0. The last unbeaten goes down this Sunday.
George: Chiefs.
Ryan: Colts.
Rick: Colts.

New York Giants (2-2) at Houston Texans (3-1)

Peter King: Texans. We could see 700 yards passing in this game. I can't see the Giants' defensive front embarrassing a good Houston offensive line the way it did Chicago's last week, though.
Andrew: Texans. I would love to watch this game.
George: Giants.
Ryan: Texans.
Rick: Giants.

Green Bay Packers (3-1) at Washington Redskins (2-2)

Peter King: Packers. Never thought after a month of the season I'd see this yards-per-attempt comparison between Donovan McNabb, with a poor wideout corps, and Aaron Rodgers, with a very good one: McNabb 7.92, Rodgers 7.70. Rodgers, in my mind, has to find Greg Jennings.
Andrew: Okay, I have picked every Redskins game wrong all year. They have lost the games I thought they would win and won the games I was sure they would lose. The team I know best in the whole damn league and I have missed every single pick. The logical thing to do would be to pick against them for the rest of the year, thus ensuring a 14-2 season, but that would be intellectually dishonest. Besides, I have sworn to use my powers of inaccurate prognostication for good, not evil. That said, I am picking the Redskins to shock the Packers this week. Green Bay has no running game without Ryan Clark, and they are not nearly as physical a team as Washington. I like Ryan Torain to rush for 85+ yards in this game, with a photo finish dependent on the teams' quarterbacks and secondaries. This will be a nail-biter. It also might be Washington's last win for a while.
George: Packers. Screw you, George.
Ryan: Packers.
Rick: Packers.

New Orleans Saints (3-1) at Arizona Cardinals (2-2)

Peter King: Saints. Max Hall, starting his NFL career, looks across the field in Glendale Sunday and sees the quarterback his coach thinks he has a prayer of becoming: Drew Brees. But on this day, there's only one cool Brees.
Andrew: Saints. I just can't see Max Hall beating the defending champs, even if the Saints are underplaying a bit this season.
George: Saints.
Ryan: Saints.
Rick: Saints.

Tennessee Titans (2-2) at Dallas Cowboys (1-2)

Peter King: Cowboys. For Chris Johnson to get untracked, offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger has to put the fear of Vince Young into defenses. Throw deep to Kenny Britt, Vince.
Andrew: Titans. Boy, I'd like to see this game happen in week 12 or 13. A close, sloppy one.
George: Cowboys.
Ryan: Cowboys.
Rick: Titans.

San Diego Chargers (2-2) at Oakland Raiders (1-3)

Peter King: Chargers. Remember when Jason Campbell was supposed to be the next Jim Plunkett?
Andrew: Chargers. Yeah, Peter, I do. And as long as the Raiders give up on development projects in week 2, they will continue to be the Raiders.
George: Raiders. George just likes the name Gradkowski. It sounds like he should play for the Raiders in the '60s.
Ryan: Chargers.
Rick: Raiders.

Philadelphia Eagles (2-2) at San Francisco 49ers (0-4)

Peter King: 49ers. I am a sucker for those Niners, aren't I? I am falling on the Alex Smith sword this week. I see the good things he does and think, He's going to put it together one of these weeks and shock the world. ... Well, I say he has enough good weapons to shock Kevin Kolb and the Eagles Sunday night.
Andrew: I'm a sucker, too. The 49ers are too good to be 0-5, even if I think Mike Singletery is a bit cray-cray. And I just don't believe in Kevin Kolb.
George: 49ers.
Ryan: Eagles. Well, somebody's got to pick them.
Rick: Eagles.

Minnesota Vikings (1-2) at New York Jets (3-1)

Peter King: Jets. I made this pick for the magazine on Monday morning, before the Randy Moss trade. I'm sticking with it, in part because I think Brett Favre would rather be anywhere but the Meadowlands Monday night, and the Jets are going to pressure him heavily.
Andrew: Jets. How awesome is it that this game is on Monday night? Randy Moss will make an impact early, even if he doesn't catch a pass. But it won't be enough to bring a disjointed Vikings offense past an extremely tough and increasingly unified Jets team. I still think the Jets aren't half as good as they think they are, but they are better than the Vikings this week.
George: Jets.
Ryan: Vikings. Well, somebody's got to pick them.
Rick: Jets.

NFL Picks Week 4

2010-10-02T20:59:00.004-04:00

Last week's tally:

Peter King: 9-7 (29-19 on the season, .604 win percentage)
Andrew Hamm: Once again 8-8 (24-24, .500)
George Washington: 6-10 (20-28, .417)
Ryan Capps: 10-6 (29-19, .604)
Rick Olson: 8-8 (19-13, .594)

To the accompaniment of Bruce Cockburn's World of Wonders:

San Francisco 49ers (0-3) at Atlanta Falcons (2-1)

Peter: Falcons. Closer than you think, right? One reason: Alex Smith. I think he plays a heck of a game with the new freedoms of a new offensive coordinator, Mike Johnson.
Andrew: Falcons. The Niners are a mess. Atlanta is not a team to get good against. Alex Smith has gotten more than enough time to impress.
George: Falcons.
Ryan: Falcons.
Rick: Falcons.

New York Jets (2-1) at Buffalo Bills (0-3)

Peter: Jets. Jets in 2010: Twelve quarters, one turnover. So even though the offense is doing its share of stopping and starting (more to come on this subject in my Friday Game Plan), they're not giving away any easy points. And, by the way, the Jets have allowed three points, total, in three fourth quarters. I don't expect Darrelle Revis to play in Orchard Park, and I don't expect it will matter.
Andrew: Jets. The awful Bills will hand the Jets a win, raising hopes with 12 weeks left to dash them.
George: Bills.
Ryan: Jets.
Rick: Jets.

Cincinnati Bengals (2-1) at Cleveland Browns (0-3)

Peter: Browns. My buddy Ross Tucker and I hosted the Sirius NFL Radio Opening Drive show Wednesday, and uber-bright stats guru Brian Burke (of advancednflstats.com) came on. One of the things he said is something I was thinking coming off last weekend's games, when the Bengals did little right except win (and punt) at Carolina, and Cleveland had a formidable game at Baltimore. (The Browns are rushing for 4.5 yards a carry, by the way, and center Alex Mack is one of the most underrated linemen in football.) Burke said Cleveland's better, and the Browns just might be.
Andrew: Browns. This is just one of those rivalry games that an obvious loser sometimes wins.
George: Browns.
Ryan: Bengals.
Rick: Bengals.

Detroit Lions (0-3) at Green Bay Packers (2-1)

Peter: Packers. One more week (at least) for Matt Stafford to rehab, which is a shame on many levels. The Lions need Stafford to make this a game. Aaron Rodgers was splendid in defeat Monday night, and I'm looking forward to a decade of Rodgers-Stafford NFC North duels.
Andrew: Packers. This will be a tight one, I think, and a Detroit win would not shock me.
George: Packers.
Ryan: Packers.
Rick: Packers.

Carolina Panthers (0-3) at New Orleans Saints (2-1)

Peter: Saints. The final weeks of John Fox are not going to be pretty. The Panthers have the Saints in two of the next five games ... and they close at Pittsburgh, at Atlanta. Let The Cowher Watch begin.
Andrew: Saints. Carolina is just really bad.
George: Saints.
Ryan: Saints.
Rick: Saints.

Baltimore Ravens (2-1) at Pittsburgh Steelers (3-0)

Peter: Ravens. This is now the best rivalry in football, and it's got a particular charm this week with Ben Roethlisberger sitting out the final game of his four-game suspension, and fourth-stringer Charlie Batch making the start, staring down the barrel of Ray Lewis. Funny thing: The Steelers are 4-1 over Baltimore since the start of 2008, with Roethlisberger quarterbacking the four wins and Dennis Dixon the one loss. But it's not just Big Ben missing from the Men of Steel. Santonio Holmes, who tormented Rex Ryan and Greg Mattison over the past few years, is gone, too. The combination of those losses, plus the addition of Anquan Boldin to pep up the Ravens' offense, has everything to do with this pick.
Andrew: Ravens. The Steelers string of impossibility ends at the hands of the Ravens defense.
George: Steelers. Six tails in a row. This is beginning to feel like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Ryan: Ravens.
Rick: Ravens.

Seattle Seahawks (2-1) at St. Louis Rams (1-2)

Peter: Rams. Key stat of the game revolves around St. Loo actually being able to bother the passer and play pass defense. The Rams, believe it or not, are allowing quarterbacks to complete 54.5 percent of their throws. Memo to Rams special teams coordinator Tom McMahon: Might want to squib kick your kickoffs. Leon Washington's pretty good.
Andrew: Rams. St. Louis showed me a lot last week, though it may have been an illusion cast by the Redskins doing their best impression of a duck-billed broncon.
George: Rams.
Ryan: Seahawks.
Rick: Rams.

Denver Broncons (1-2) at Tennessee Titans (2-1)

Peter: Titans. The Broncos are awful running it (2.5 per rush), and that's going to doom them in Nashville. If Laurence Maroney's the answer, my name's Joe Don Looney.
Andrew: Titans. I don't get the reference, Peter.
George: Broncons. Finally, he picks a visiting team.
Ryan: Titans.
Rick: Titans.

Indianapolis Colts (2-1) at Jacksonville Jaguars (1-2)

Peter: Colts. The Colts have won the last three in the series by seven, two and four points. The Jags are in no condition to keep this one close, not coming off consecutive 25-point thrashings.
Andrew: Colts. Cracker, please.
George: Colts.
Ryan: Colts.
Rick: Colts.

Houston Texans (2-1) at Oakland Raiders (1-2)

Peter: Texans. Raiders giving up 4.6 yards per rush. Arian Foster gaining 5.9 per rush. If Houston's secondary weren't so green, this would be a rout.
Andrew: Texans. I've picked the Raiders with nothing but disastrous results this year.
George:Texans.
Ryan: Texans.
Rick: Texans.

Washington Redskins (1-2) at Philadelphia Eagles (2-1)

Peter: Eagles. Nice day for Donovan McNabb; I feel a loud cheer coming when he makes his way onto the Linc field Sunday. Better day for Michael Vick, who will whisper in McNabb's ear after the game: "I owe you so much for helping me get here.''
Andrew: Eagles. I have been wrong about the Redskins every week so far. I have no idea what to expect from this team from one week to the next.
George: Redskins.
Ryan: Eagles.
Rick: Redskins.

Arizona Cardinals (2-1) at San Diego Chargers (1-2)

Peter: Chargers. It's not often a coach can coach 200 NFL games and keep his job while being under .500. But Norv Turner, including playoffs, is 95-104-1, and even though he and A.J. Smith have a very good working relationship, and the Chargers won 13 games last year, Turner can't keep losing to the Kansas Citys and the Seattles if he wants job security.
Andrew: Chargers. I'm with you, Pete. I don't know how Norv Turner still has a job. His primary skill as a coach seems to be giving people the idea that his team is going to be AWESOME next year. Every year.
George: Cardinals.
Ryan: Chargers.
Rick: Chargers.

Chicago Bears (3-0) at New York Giants (1-2)

Peter: Bears. The Giants will be a desperate, angry team Sunday night, but they're not better than the Bears (though sometimes in the NFL that doesn't matter as much as the desperation). If I'd seen the Giants play with any consistency in the first 12 quarters, I'd be inclined to have them win a game they have to have. But I haven't seen the Giants' big players -- Eli Manning, Justin Tuck, Steve Smith -- play big so far, and the first three weeks of the season have been highlight-filled by Chicago's Jay Cutler and Brian Urlacher, among other Bears. If I were Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell, I'd be sending the house at Cutler, trying to force him into errors. But I'm not sure that'll win this game.
Andrew: Bears. I'm a Bear-liever.
George: Bears.
Ryan: Giants.
Rick: Giants.

New England Patriots (2-1) at Miami Dolphins (2-1)

Peter: Dolphins. Until the Patriots improve their pass defense (foes are completing 69 percent of their throws), they're the third-best team in the division.
Andrew: Patriots. I'm pretty shaky about this pick.
George: Dolphins.
Ryan: Patriots.
Rick: Dolphins.

NFL Picks Week 3

2010-09-24T09:29:00.000-04:00

After week two, the tally is as follows:

Peter King: 10-6 (20-12 on the season), looking very much like a professional NFL analyst.
Andrew Hamm: 8-8 (16-16), looking very much like I have no idea what I'm talking about.
George Washington: 8-8 (14-18), looking very much like a random coin toss.
Ryan Capps: 10-6 (19-15), looking very much retro in his Nate Newton jersey.
Rick Olson: 11-5, looking very much like a newcomer to the event.

I was ruminating on the Dallas Cowboys at work today, and I came to an interesting conclusion: take away their early-'90s winning seasons and they're the Washington Redskins. Upper management thinks they know more about football than the wisdom of their choices demonstrates. Quarterback after quarterback fails to impress. Streaky play, just enough to give the fan base hope for next season--every season. Splashy signings yielding limited results. Consistent inconsistency. Stat you probably don't know: The NFC East team with the fewest playoff wins in the past 14 years (1) is the Cowboys.

The difference? In 2010 the Redskins have Bruce Allen and Mike Shanahan. The Cowboys have Jerry Jones and Wade Phillips. Until Jerry Jones has the "Hallelujah I need to hire some football experts and get my ego out of their way" moment Dan Snyder had after the 2009 fiasco, the Cowboys are going nowhere. Trust me; I know from experience.

On with the picks. I'm doing my part early, as I'll be at Sycamore Rouge all day tomorrow directing for the 24-Hour Experience. You should come see it!

Cleveland Browns (0-2) at Baltimore Ravens (1-1)

Peter: Ravens. Ravens have won four straight in the series by an average of 19 points. If the Browns could run the ball even a little bit, they could threaten to make a game of this on the road in Crabcakeville. (I really miss the halftime crab crakes at M&T Bank Stadium.) But they can't.
Me: Ravens. Not a chance.
George: Browns.
Ryan: Ravens.
Rick: Ravens.

Buffalo Bills (0-2) at New England Patriots (1-1)

Peter: Patriots. Stat You'll Get Sick Of Hearing This Weekend Dept.: Patriots have beaten Buffalo 13 times in a row. And the Bills are bad again this year, and they're starting Harvard's Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback, and C.J. Spiller has been swallowed up by the mediocrity (eight carries for nine yards in two games). Western New York optimism level: zero point zero, with apologies to Dean Wormer.
Andrew: Patriots. They might win by 30 points.
George: Bills.
Ryan: Patriots.
Rick: Patriots.

Atlanta Falcons (1-1) at New Orleans Saints (2-0)

Peter: Saints. Tempted to pick the Falcons after New Orleans' short week following an unimpressive performance on Monday night and the loss of Reggie Bush. In the last four meetings between the teams, the score is Saints 110, Falcons 109. But I've picked against the Saints too much already this year. They're pretty good.
Andrew: Saints. As long as New Orleans continues to win games while they're not playing their best, I'm going to keep picking them to repeat.
George: Falcons. George is really into the away teams this week.
Ryan: Falcons.
Rick: Falcons.

Tennessee Titans (1-1) at New York Giants (1-1)

Peter: Titans. Given that Joseph Addai ran like O.J. Simpson against the Giants last week (and I mean the O.J. of 1972), what's Chris Johnson going to do this week? I'm stunned at the papier-mâché effort the Giants' front put up in Indy last week. No other team is getting less production out of more money spent on the defensive line than the Giants.
Andrew: Titans. I am sooooo close to picking the New York upset here...
George: Titans.
Ryan: Giants.
Rick: Giants.

Cincinnati Bengals (1-1) at Carolina Panthers (0-2)

Peter: Bengals. A creditable first NFL start for Jimmy Clausen, but I say he'll be done in by some exotic blitzes from Bengals defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer -- and because the Bengals cover better than Clausen was used to seeing at Notre Dame.
Andrew: Bengals. I'm starting to feel like a weenie for agreeing with King, but there aren't as many ambiguous matchups this week as we've seen so far.
George: Panthers. It's gonna be a long week for George.
Ryan: Bengals.
Rick: Bengals.

Pittsburgh Steelers (2-0) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-0)

Peter: Steelers. Great point by reader and longtime Pittsburgh TV personality John Steigerwald to me this week: "I'm on a new futile crusade," he said. "The goal is the end of the field goal. In the three games involving AFC North teams [Sunday], the winning teams had a total of 12 field goals and NO offensive touchdowns. Boring.'' Sorry, John. Two more field goals by the Steelers this week, but Charlie Batch does enough to get a win and send the Steelers to 3-0.
Andrew: Steelers. Raise your hand if you predicted that Tampa would start the season 2-0 and Dallas 0-2. Anyone?... Anyone?... Bueller?...
George: Buccaneers. George likes pirates.
Ryan: Steelers.
Rick: Steelers.

San Francisco 49ers (0-2) at Kansas City Chiefs (2-0)

Peter: 49ers. I guess you're going to call this an upset, because the Niners are 0-2 and the Chiefs 2-0. But think of this: If two weeks ago you had forecast the winner of San Francisco at Kansas City, who would you have picked? And think of this, too: If the Niners had turned the ball over one fewer time Monday night against New Orleans, there's a very good chance we all would have been talking about San Francisco upsetting the Super Bowl champs.
Andrew: 49ers. See above, re: undefeated and unlikely. It ends here.
George: Chiefs. Man, Washington is the upset capital of the NFL world this week.
Ryan: Chiefs.
Rick: 49ers.

Detroit Lions (0-2) at Minnesota Vikings (0-2)

Peter: Vikings. Nothing comes easy for the Men of Childress this year, but they're fortunate to get the Lions at home when they really need a win. I think if Brett Favre and Bernard Berrian can't get on the same wavelength, Favre has to turn to the next-best weapon -- Greg Camarillo -- and lobby Childress again to get Javon Walker back in the house. For now, I say he should wear the extra-large should pads this week. Ndamukong Suh's coming to town.
Andrew: Vikings. Minnesota has big problems, but losing to Detroit simply won't be one of them.
George: Lions. Jeez; GW is going for 0-16 this week.
Ryan: Vikings.
Rick: Vikings.

Dallas Cowboys (0-2) at Houston Texans (2-0)

Peter: Texans. Toughest game of the week to call, in part because of the suspension of left tackle Duane Brown of the Texans. Imagine you're Rashad Butler, and you're starting your first NFL game at left tackle, and though you're going to get some help, you've got DeMarcus Ware with the fast-twitch movements coming around the corner for three hours. Yikes. But I'm counting on Arian Foster to eat up the clock and make Ware play run defense more than he'd like.
Andrew: Texans. It will be close, but I believe in Wade Phillips' innate ability to wreck this Dallas team despite their imposing, albeit overrated, talent.
George: Texans. Finally, some sense.
Ryan: Texans.
Rick: Cowboys.

Philadelphia Eagles (1-1) at Jacksonville Jaguars (1-1)

Peter: Eagles. The Eagles' offensive line is the worst it's been in a decade, and deep down, that had to play some part in Andy Reid's decision to go to Michael Vick on Tuesday. Vick's never been sacked more than three times a game on average in any previous season. He's gone down nine times in six quarters this year. But the big difference in this game, even if the Jags send the house more often than usual, is that Vick is more accurate than he's been before. Granted it's only a game and a half, but that's a big factor in how well he's playing, and I think it continues in Jacksonville.
Andrew: Jaguars. Finally some dissent. An Eagles win wouldn't surprise me, but Michael Vick stepping right back into 2006 form does. I believe his good play of the past couple weeks is the aberration, and he's due to come down this week. The Jags will play tough and eke it out.
George: Jaguars.
Ryan: Eagles.
Rick: Jaguars.

Washington Redskins (1-1) at St. Louis Rams (0-2)

Peter: Redskins. After this one, the Redskins will be a Schaub-to-Johnson bomb from 3-0. This one's a little scary because injuries start to make the offensive line shaky.
Andrew: Redskins. Yeah, Peter, but the 'Skins are also a fumble return away from being 0-2. I'll take a 2-1 start, though.
George: Rams.
Ryan: Redskins.
Rick: Redskins.

Indianapolis Colts (1-1) at Denver Broncos (1-1)

Peter: Colts. There's no chapter in the Head Coaching Manual about dealing with the suicide of a player, then getting one's emotions in check in time to defend one of the best quarterbacks ever to play. Sorry, Josh McDaniels, but this is a cruel business sometimes.
Andrew: Colts. Even without emotional distraction, the Colts are just better.
George: Broncos.
Ryan: Colts.
Rick: Colts.

Oakland Raiders (1-1) at Arizona Cardinals (1-1)

Peter: Cardinals. Derek Anderson saves his job for a couple of weeks, but he knows Max Hall is in the bullpen, and Ken Whisenhunt won't hesitate to go to his reliever.
Andrew: Raiders. Gradkowski seems to bring a spark to this Raiders team for some reason. Giving up on Jason Campbell after less than two games is typical Raider nonsense. Redskin fans, Cowboy fans: at least our owner isn't Al Davis. Hey-o!
George: Cardinals.
Ryan: Cardinals.
Rick: Raiders.

San Diego Chargers (1-1) at Seattle Seahawks (1-1)

Peter: Chargers. Get the ball to Golden Tate more, Pete Carroll, and you've got a heck of a chance to win this one. Last week, Tate returned a punt for 63 yards and caught a pass for 52. That's why he was drafted. He needs more touches.
Andrew: Chargers. I've been sick all week. I'm entitled to an arbitrary choice.
George: Seahawks.
Ryan: Chargers.
Rick: Chargers.

New York Jets (1-1) at Miami Dolphins (2-0)

Peter: Dolphins. This doesn't have as much to do with the Braylon Edwards distraction and the probable absence of Darrelle Revis as it does recent history. Last season, Miami swept the Jets and put up 61 points on them; Chad Henne played better against the league's top-ranked defense than he did against Buffalo. Some teams just match up well.
Andrew: Jets. All the above reasons are why I think the Jets will bring a good game.
George: Dolphins.
Ryan: Dolphins.
Rick: Dolphins.

Green Bay Packers (2-0) at Chicago Bears (2-0)

Peter: Packers. Closer than you think? That's because Mike Martz is figuring ways to get the ball out of Jay Cutler's right hand faster than the defense can get to Cutler. Smart. Because the line's not going to get fixed this year. I see Aaron Rodgers outdueling Cutler, though.
Andrew: Packers. I totally agree with Peter. This game will be closer than we're accustomed to seeing Pack-Bears games, but Rodgers is too much for the Bears. Chicago's only hope is for the "new" Jay Cutler we've seen the past two weeks to be the oasis, not the mirage. My fantasy football team hopes so, too.
George: Packers.
Ryan: Packers.
Rick: Packers.

We have a ton of unanimity. Looks like a lot of one-sided match-ups. This week will either be very boring or else very very interesting.

NFL Picks Week 2

2010-09-18T10:05:00.000-04:00

Welcome back. Last week's tally was as follows:

Peter King: 10-6
Andrew Hamm: 8-8
George Washington: 6-10
Ryan Capps (joining the party late): 9-7

Week two commences to the sound of Transatlantic's Bridge Across Forever. I'm italicizing King's comments to help them stand out as not-my-writing.

Baltimore Ravens at Cincinnati Bengals

Peter King: Ravens. Two of the starters on the Cincinnati offensive line that was semi-shredded by the Patriots the other day were guard Nate Livings and tackle Dennis Roland. They'll start Sunday against the rush-heavy Ravens. Neither was drafted out of college. Meanwhile, the sixth pick in the 2009 draft, tackle Andre Smith, played 10 snaps in New England. What is wrong with this picture?
Me: Ravens. This will be close, but the Ravens' greater physicality wins the day over Cincy's air attack.
George: Ravens.
Ryan: Ravens.

Chicago Bears at Dallas Cowboys

Peter King: Cowboys. I am no doctor of football, though I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I do know, however, that when you have 71 offensive snaps in a game, as the Cowboys had Sunday night in Washington, and Felix Jones touches the ball on 10 of them, you've made a game-planning error. Free Felix Jones.
Me: Bears. This one is probably going to bite me, but I stand behind my prediction that Dallas will be the most disappointing team in the NFC. I don't believe in their O-line, and I don't believe in their coaching staff. I said that last week, and look where it got them.
George: Cowboys. He likes the star. I swear, sometimes it's like picking fotball games against a nine-year-old girl.
Ryan: Dallas.

Arizona Cardinals at Atlanta Falcons

Peter King: Falcons. Midway through the third quarter, on the Cardinals' sideline, this thought goes through Ken Whisenhunt's head: "How many more Derek Anderson series do I have to watch?''
Me: Falcons. Only as many as you choose to, Ken.
George: Cardinals.
Ryan: Falcons.

Buffalo Bills at Green Bay Packers

Peter King: Packers. I like Ryan Grant as much as the next guy, but he's a great example of the interchangeability of running backs in the NFL right now. Maybe the Packers will go out and get a Marshawn Lynch -- I don't know -- but they probably won't need him to get to where they're going.
Me: Packers. Biggest beat-down of week two.
George: Packers.
Ryan: Packers.

Philadelphia Eagles at Detroit Lions

Peter King: Eagles. Tempting, very tempting, to pick the Lions, and I probably would if Matthew Stafford were playing. But I can't pick Shaun Hill to beat the Philadelphia Eagles when the game really matters.
Me: Okay, I'll yield to the temptation and pick the Lions. As a Redskins fan, I have a lot of history of rooting for a scrappy underdog. Also, they've had all week to prepare for Michael Vick, which Green Bay did not.
George: Eagles. Because of patriotism.
Ryan: Eagles.

Pittsburgh Steelers at Tennessee Titans

Peter King: Titans. The other day, Chris Johnson told me he thinks he can "most definitely'' rush for 2,500 yards in a year, and that he would love to see the Titans acquire Albert Haynesworth from Washington. If he breaks a buck and a quarter against the Steelers in this game -- which I think he'll do -- I'm inclined to make him GM Mike Reinfeldt's assistant and let him broker the deal.
Me: Titans. No problem, Pete. Tennessee can have his sulky-six-year-old fat behind. And I'd like to see that 2,500 yards.
George: Titans.
Ryan: Titans.

Kansas City Chiefs at Cleveland Browns

Peter King: Chiefs. I have no idea why.
Me: Browns. Because it really doesn't matter.
George: Browns.
Ryan: Chiefs.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Carolina Panthers

Peter King: Panthers. I'd make the argument that, with Cincinnati and New Orleans on the schedule in the next two weeks, no 0-1 team with the playoff prayer has a bigger game on the docket this weekend than Carolina. Because if you can't beat Tampa Bay at home, you know you're going absolutely nowhere this year.
Me: Panthers. This could go either way, and may come down to which sloppy team has the sloppy ball sloppy last.
George: Buccaneers.
Ryan: Buccaneers.

Miami Dolphins at Minnesota Vikings

Peter King: Vikings. Visions of Vincent Jackson are dancing in Brett Favre's head. For now, against the Dolphins, he'll have to settle for Greg Camarillo.
Me: Vikings. I really hope the Vikes do get Jackson, so the Redskins don't. We already have enough players (Rex Grossman, Larry Johnson) who I don't like. I'd rather lose without him than win with him.
George: Vikings.
Ryan: Vikings. I love it when we're unanimous. What a great competition.

Seatte Seahawks at Denver Broncons:

Peter King: Broncos. Another one of those I-have-no-clue-who'll-win games. I have a hunch that Robert Ayers will take advantage of the weak edge of the Seattle offensive line to torment Matt Hasselbeck.
Me: Seahawks. I feel like the Broncons are going to be either 11-5 or 5-11 this year. Until I have a sense of which, I'm going to tend to pick against them.
George: Broncons.
Ryan: Seahawks. Broncon pride never.

St. Louis Rams at Oakland Raiders

Peter: Raiders. Al Davis can never complain about the schedule again, not when the league gives the Raiders a season-saving parachute in Week 2 by having the Rams drop into the gloom that is enveloping this team.
Me: Ohhh, it's sooooo tempting to pick the Rams in this matchup. If St. Louis were to beat anyone early in a rebuilding season, it would be Oakland. But I'm really just picking Raiders dysfunction over Ram rebuilding.
George: Raiders.
Ryan: Raiders.

New England Patriots at New York Jets

Peter: Jets. Rex Ryan wants to win the game so bad I swear he'd suit up and put the big-boy pads on and replace Kris Jenkins if the rules would allow. It'd be more valuable, though, if he could channel his intensity into the head of Mark Sanchez.
Me: Patriots. The AFC Disappointment of the Year Jets will be stymied on offense while their defense lets enough big plays through the seams for a 10-point Pats win. I think the worst thing to happen for Mark Sanchez's development as a quarterback was a wide and unfounded public perception that he had a great rookie season.
George: Of course he likes the Patriots.
Ryan: Patriots. I love it when it's all three of us scrubs picking against the expert. Somebody gonna look stupid...

Houston Texans at Washington Redskins

Peter: Texans. Some Hollywood-type with DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket is working weekends at the office, with football on his big-screen ... His ears perk up when Ian Eagle, on the CBS telecast, starts talking about this stunning back from Houston, Arian Foster. He hears snippets like "philosophy major from Tennessee'' and "girlfriend's a singer from Germany who studied depth charts to help him pick an NFL team" and "undrafted, adrift 10 months ago on the Texans practice squad'' and "running away with the NFL rushing race'' and thinks: Could Arian Foster be a movie?
Me: Texans. If the Redskins had lost last week, I'd be picking them to win this week, but I see letdown--and a 140-yard performance by Foster--in the cards. But a Redskins win, unlike last week, would not surprise me much. They really do look like they're one receiver away from being an elite team, and I wasn't expecting that until next year. By the way, Pete, how about writing a little something about the game? Just a little.
George: Redskins. Shameless homer.
Ryan: Texans. Ryan sez: "Sorry, the better team from Texas shows up this week." Hard to argue with him after watching the Redskins' preseason run D.

Jacksonville Jaguars at San Diego Chargers

Peter: Chargers. You're surprised by how close of a game I see? Part of the reason is that David Garrard is going to be able to make some plays, based on the meek Charger pass-rush from Monday night. Against a weak Chiefs offensive line, the Chargers managed one sack and one additional quarterback hit. How long will we in the media continue to misstate how dominant the San Diego defensive front is?
Me: I also like Garrard, enough to have him as my fantasy backup (mainly because my team was autodrafted and I started with one QB and six RBs and it was pretty much him or Jason Campbell). He won't beat the Chargers, though.
George: Chargers.
Ryan: Chargers.

New York Giants at Indianapolis Colts

Peter: Colts. Can't see the Colts starting 0-2, especially at home, especially against a team with a weak intermediate pass defense, especially with Peyton Manning determined not to lose to his little brother.
Me: I really like Manning in this game. I think his team's D will keep consistent enough pressure on Manning to force a late mistake. Meanwhile, Manning's precision attack will control the clock enough to.... Wow, this joke isn't as funny on the screen as it was in my head. Colts.
George: Colts.
Ryan: Colts.

Music change to Spock's Beard's V.

San Francisco 49ers at New Orleans Saints

Peter: 49ers. File this one under "Super Bowl Champs Always Get Best Effort From Mediocre Teams" department. I just know this -- Mike Singletary will spend this week hammering into his players that this is the most important thing they will ever do in their lives, and some of them will actually believe it.
Me: Saints. I agree with Peter that the 49ers will give their best effort of the season. I just don't think it's enough to stop Drew Brees and the best team in the NFL. On the other hand, the Redskins almost beat New Orleans last year...
George: Saints.
Ryan: Saints.

That's all for now. Stay thirsty, my friends. I'm on a horse.

NFL Picks 2010: Me vs an expert and a random coin toss - Week 1

2010-09-11T11:25:00.004-04:00

A few years back (okay, it was 11), I wrote an NFL column for a now-defunct website wherein I argued that the league's parity was such that a random coin flip was as good a prognosticator as any. Over a decade later, with worst-to-first and first-to-worst finishes happening every season, I think it's even more true.

So I thought I'd continue the tradition, at least until I get tired of it. I'm going to pick the winners (no scores or points against the spread, just straight-up winners) and compare my record with that of my favorite NFL writer, SI's Peter King, and a random coin toss, a USA quarter which I will affectionately refer to as George. At the risk of being sued or killed, I'm going to go ahead and copy-and-paste PK's content rather than linking to it. It's copyright SI and all that jazz.

Anyone else want to throw in their hat? I'll keep your stats too. I'm also going to throw in references to whatever music I'm listening to while I write because that's awesome. EDIT: Ryan Capps has added picks. Broncon Pride Ever!

I'm backdating a bit this week because I forgot to do this Wednesday night. Trust me, I picked the Saints before the game was played.

To the tune of Liquid Tension Experiment:

Minnesota Vikings at New Orleans Saints

Peter King: Saints. That this is the first game of the year saddens me. I wish the NFL had saved it until a Sunday night in Sweeps Month (November). But since it's being played now, a couple of thoughts: In the NFC title game eight months ago, Minnesota turned the ball over five times to just once for the Saints, and still New Orleans had to go to overtime to win. So don't tell me that missing Sidney Rice dooms the Vikes. I don't buy it. Thought about this one for a long time, and the difference came down to New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. His schemes led to the Saints so battering Brett Favre last January that even without excellent blitzing Saints safety Darren Sharper in Thurday's game, Williams, I figure, will come up with a few ways to torment Favre.
Me: Saints. I think Brees and company have an excellent chance to repeat, and I think Brett Favre's gunslinging isn't going to work so well this year with a depleted receiving corps. Not to mention his lack of practice with the receivers he does have.
George: Saints. Smart man, considering this coin was flipped 36 hours after the game ended.
Ryan: Saints.

Cleveland Browns at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Peter King: Browns. Jake Delhomme's been to the Pirate Ship a few times, and he starts his season of redemption with a respectable outing against the Rookie League Bucs.
Me: Brownies. This game is a coin toss (stop laughing so hard, Mr. President), but I'm banking on the superior experience of Jake Delhomme. Let the battle for the first pick in the 2011 draft begin.
George: Buccaneers.
Ryan: Browns.

Miami Dolphins at Buffalo Bills

Peter King: Dolphins. A spirited effort by the feisty Bills, with C.J. Spiller topping 100 yards on the ground in his first NFL game. But I see the Dolphins' new bookend rush combination, Cameron Wake and Koa Misi, bothering Trent Edwards enough to force a couple turnovers.
Me:Dolphins. The Buffalo Bills are serious contenders this year. For the worst NFL team ever fielded.
George: Bills. George is a sucker for an underdog.
Ryan: Dolphins.

Cincinnati Bengals at New England Patriots

Peter King: Bengals. I'm not even sure I'd call this an upset. Without Leigh Bodden in the secondary, New England goes with a very young Big East alumni corner tandem -- rookie Devin McCourty (Rutgers) and second-year man Darius Butler (UConn) are likely to start -- and Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens should have some schooling in store for them.
Me: Patriots. How is this amazing game slipping under the radar this week? I really dislike TO, though I have to confess that I love Chad Eightfive's antics like a milkshake. But I think Owens learned some genuine humility in Buffalo last year, and as long as there are enough balls to share they will both be happy and productive. Not this week, though. Watch for a rematch of this game in the playoffs.
George:Bengals. George says that Chad Ochocinco reminds him of a young John Hancock. So bold, so outspoken.
Ryan: Patriots.

Indianapolis Colts at Houston Texans

Peter King: Texans. This is your chance, Texans. Time to throw off the can't-beat-Indy tag. Time to forget the 1-5 division record last year. No team has aimed for the opener the way the Texans have since the schedule came out in April. The difference: Arian Foster will control the clock the way Peyton Manning always does. Feed him, Gary Kubiak.
Me: King, you're out of your mind. Colts.
George: Texans.
Ryan: Colts.

Denver Broncons at Jacksonville Jaguars

Peter King: Jaguars. Yes, Tim Tebow will get in the game. No, he won't be effective enough.
Me: Jaguars. Denver is a mess. Will we see Tebow this week? Will his play be worthy of a highlight reel on its own merits, or just because he's inexplicably the top-selling jersey in the NFL? By the way, I'm misspelling it "BRONCONS" all season long in honor of the error-filled bootleg Boise State cap I bought while wandering the streets around FedEx Field late Monday night. I really should have asked Ryan Capps if he wanted to do this too. EDIT: Obviously Ryan is now doing it. Broncon Pride Ever!
George: Jaguars. We are unanimous.
Ryan: Jaguars.

Atlanta Falcons at Pittsburgh Steelers

Peter King: Steelers. Fascinated about the Dennis Dixon Effect. A few guys in the Steelers locker room didn't think he was getting a fair shot to win the job in camp, behind the now-injured Byron Leftwich, and now that Dixon's the guy, I think the energy boost could pay dividends Sunday. He's going to be fun to watch. Key to the game for Atlanta: Rookie Sean Weatherspoon, in his first NFL game, trying to corral Dixon the way he corralled all those Big 12 mobile quarterbacks.
Me: Falcons. The NFL offseason was an unholy trinity of distraction storylines, with a triune anti-deity composed of Favre, Haynesworth and Roethlisberger. Peter is somehow convinced that the Steelers have a Super Bowl championship waiting at the end of their black-and-gold rainbow. I'd like some of whatever cigar he's smoking. because he can probably afford some really nice cigars.
George: Falcons.
Ryan: Falcons.

Oakland Raiders at Tennessee Titans

Peter King: Titans. So many close games this weekend ... and in Nashville, Chris Johnson takes a tattooing from a physical Raiders D but still gets his 12th straight 100-yard game.
Me: Raiders. Yes, Tennessee is a better team. I just have a feeling about this one. And I suspect Jason Campbell is going to be slinging rainbows in Oakland to Al Davis' senile, drooling, Depends-wearing delight for the next few years. Let's see how many "Al Davis is really quite old" jokes I can make this season! I count three so far.
George: Titans. George is a HUGE Chris Johnson fan.
Ryan: Titans.

Carolina Panthers at New York Giants

Peter King: Giants. I worry about Eli Manning behind an offensive line that enters the season unusually beat up, so much so that a Panthers win wouldn't surprise me. But this is the day the Giants start playing defense the way they played under former coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, and that's bad news for Matt Moore.
Me: Giants. Carolina is a bit of a mystery with so many of the past decade's key faces gone this year, and I just think the NFC East is going to beat the hell out of the rest of the conference all year long.
George: Panthers.
Ryan: Giants.

Detroit Lions at Chicago Bears

Peter King: Bears. Oh, I want to pick the Lions. I think the Suh-Vanden Bosch left side of the defensive front is going to be a 16-game tormentor, and I agree with GM Martin Mayhew, who said this week, "We have the potential to be a pretty decent team." But I think the Bears win a slobberknocker, and Jay Cutler is the key figure in it.
Me: Okay, I'll pick the Lions. King, you wuss.
George: Lions.
Ryan: Lions.

Arizona Cardinals at St. Louis Rams

Peter King: Cardinals. I love how Darnell Dockett says he wants to now outplay his third contract in the desert. Well, this game's a great time to start. He's had sacks in three of his past five games against the Rams, and Sam Bradford will be starting his first NFL game. Better get it out quick, Sam.
Me: Rams. I like Sam Bradford better than any QB on Arizona's roster, even grandfathering in Matt Leinart. This is the Battle of the Rebuilding, and I think the Rams are in for a long long season of sucking, but I think they win this one.
George: Rams. George says that "Samuel Bradford" sounds like the kind of name that should be on the Declaration of Independence. Notice he didn't have any comments on the name "Ndomukong Suh." Is Ndukwe Kalu still in the league? Gosh I love that dude's name.
Ryan: Rams.

Green Bay Packers at Philadelphia Eagles

Peter King: Packers. They last met on opening day 2007, and it was McNabb vs. Favre that day. Now it's Kolb-Rodgers, of course, and as on that day, the Packers QB is more experienced and, as I see it, the winner (Sept. 9, 2007: Pack 16, Eagles 13.) Look for Packers' defensive coordinator Dom Capers to throw lots of looks at Kolb in his opener as the Eagles' quarterback, and look for some of those rushes to hit home.
Me: Packers. Let me state for the record here that I see no practical, logical reason to believe in Kevin Kolb. Yet. The Packers, I believe, are headed to Dallas in February.
George: Eagles. Ah, George, you wooden-toothed contrarian you.
Ryan: Packers.

San Francisco 49ers at Seattle Seahawks

Peter King: 49ers. Before the game, Pete Carroll hustles through the calisthenics line. "Say a Hail Mary! Say a Hail Mary!'' Ooooops. Had him confused with Gerry Faust there for a minute. I like Seattle's effort this summer. I like Carroll starting Justin Forsett. I like a lot about what Carroll and GM John Schneider have done. But I like the San Francisco linebackers a lot more than that. And maybe I've been swayed by impressive August performances during which Alex Smith got the ball out very fast against Minnesota and Oakland, but I think he's going to have a pretty good year, starting this weekend. Plus, no Russell Okung at left tackle for the 'Hawks. Not good.
Me: No idea. I'm just going with whomever George doesn't pick.
George: 49ers.
Me: Okay, Seahawks.
Ryan: Seahawks.

Dallas Cowboys at Washington Redskins

Peter King: Cowboys. Jim Haslett's guys get in six or eight great shots on Tony Romo, who takes a licking but keeps on throwing. As Cris Collinsworth will say in the middle of the third quarter: "Romo's getting hit more than Rocky Balboa! How's he staying upright?!'' That's why they pay him the big money, Cris.
Me: Ah, the weekly Redskins game, where my burgundy-and-gold heart has to take a backseat to my Vulcan football brain. I have to state here that I pick the Cowboys to be one of the most disappointing teams of the season. Their talent is not nearly as good as their hype (with the exception of their deep stable of running backs), and even if it was, one has to remember that their head coach is still Wade Phillips. WADE PHILLIPS. But the Redskins are not a team yet, despite Mike Shanahan doing everything 100% right in the Fat Albert situation. That said, I think the Cowboys' running attack exploits some of the weaknesses I saw in Washington's preseason rush D. They're going to have to, because I don't think Tony Romo is going to finish the game under center. I predict a Cowboys win despite four-plus sacks.
George: Cowboys. George, you bastard. Rooting against the home team of the town named after you. I'd call you a Benedict Arnold except for the fact that you knew Benedict Arnold.
Ryan: Cowboys.

Baltimore Ravens at New York Jets

Peter King: Jets. You mean there's life after "Hard Knocks?'' There is, and his name is Shonn Greene. I think Greene and a fresh LaDainian Tomlinson will win the day in the Meadowlands.
Me: Ravens. The Jets will compete with Dallas all year in the "biggest disappointment in the NFL" category, while Baltimore just miiiiiight be the best team in the league.
George: Ravens.
Ryan: Ravens.

San Diego Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs

Peter King: Chargers. Someone asked me which team to pick this week in the knockout pool, and I said San Diego. There really is not a good one. Even in this one, Dexter McCluster has a chance to wreck this game for the Chargers. I look for the Chiefs to use him in four or five spots and let him be the player Darren Sproles is for San Diego.
Me: Chargers.
George: Chargers.
Ryan: Chargers.

So there you have it. Feel free to chime in with your picks.

Another Review for Arkansas Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors"

2010-06-23T11:01:00.002-04:00

Arkansas Shakespeare Fest: "Comedy of Errors"
from the Arkansas Times
June 21, 2010
by Bernard Reed

There are a lot of things to like about Shakespeare, not least of which is the flexibility of his plays. The Arkansas Shakespeare Festival’s production of "The Comedy of Errors" has certainly taken advantage of this flexibility to come up with a loudly colorful and goofily anachronistic show.

"The Comedy of Errors" is one of Shakespeare’s first plays and has long been considered by scholars to lack academic depth — a quality that any tired English student might find very appealing. It tells the story of Antipholus of Syracuse and his slave Dromeo arriving in Ephesus, the former looking for his long lost brother; the brother turns out to be an identical twin, also named Antipholus, who is accompanied by his own servant, the identical twin of Dromeo. The presence of these two pairs of twins results in a cavalcade of humorous mishaps, replete with mistaken identities and a full serving of slapstick gags.

Which is one of the production’s strong points, at least for those who like slapstick: There’s a lot of theatrically cartoonish beating-up of Dromeo, the show’s punching bag, who flops about on stage as though he was made of rubber (as though they were made of rubber, that is). That’s another part of this show that’s executed very cleverly — rather than use separate actors for each twin, requiring greater suspension of disbelief from the audience, there’s only one actor for both Antipholuses and both Dromeos. The problem of the twins confronting each other in the final scene is craftily resolved in a gag that stays in line with the wackiness of the rest of the show.

And wacky it certainly is. The costumes are brightly colored and don’t adhere to any particular setting or period, and the cast is followed around by a pair of bouncing minstrels who act as a kind of vaudevillian chorus. One feature that might annoy some is the lack of any theme to the setting — Ephesus has been updated to a vaguely Southern small town in the early 20th century, but the characters are so full of anachronism that they seem to exist in some indefinable Shakespearean ether, conforming more to quirky caricatures than the demands of their setting. But Shakespeare is flexible, after all, and this is a play about the farcical committing of errors.

It’s an amusing bit of Shakespeare, to be sure, and if you want to expose your kids to the bard but don’t think that "Henry V," the Festival’s other option, is quite the right entry point to his oeuvre, "The Comedy of Errors" will work just fine. It shows again June 26 at 7 p.m. and July 3 at 2 p.m.

I'll give them this: in Little Rock, your review gets published in THE VERY NEXT PRINTED EDITION of the paper. Just saying...

I'm home in Richmond now, sweating in my hot box of an apartment. Applying for jobs in Arkansas, Iowa, Florida, and Missouri. Updates as they come.

Review is in for Arkansas Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors"

2010-06-17T12:12:00.003-04:00

No error - the Bard is a funny guy
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
June 17, 2010
by Bobby Ampezzan

CONWAY — The Bard would breathe easy at the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival’s Comedy of Errors - provenance is given short shrift.

No, this production is a mixed bag of 17th-century story and 19th-century American Old West set pieces; costumes that range from three-piece suit to busty form-fitting sweater to argyle sweater; a beat cop, a nun, a man in drag?

Director Andrew Hamm threw everything in the old playbook out but the lines and the jocund intent and scored big. Not only is the festival’s Comedy of Errors a salutatory show, it makes a wonderful introduction to Shakespearean theater for those in need of it.

The play itself is a case of mistaken identities, the looptyloop arc of identical twin brothers and their identical twin servants, trying to find one another after many years. The situation is urgent because the brothers’ father faces execution at nightfall.

The production brims with howling slapstick and some surprise camp, then manages to finish on a tender moment. Between, the acting is off-pitch in only a scant place or two, and Josh Rice (the servant Dromio) is uproarious. His rubbery frame and spasmodic reactions are reminiscent of Jerry Lewis.

Shakespeare may be timeless but his comedies depend so much on reaching their audience, and Comedy of Errors, for all the puerile laughs, is a challenging one for its language. Exchanges that lean on “pate” and “sconce” wordplay just don’t sink quickly into our thick ... pates and sconces. So Hamm has encouraged his players to act out many of the lines, and it’s great fun to follow along.

“It’s really an artifact of English classes that we treat Shakespeare like a book instead of a play,” he says. “Trust that we know what we’re doing, and that we’ll get the story across to you, I promise.”

The show can be seen at 7:30 p.m. today at the Reynolds Performance Center at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway ($20 general admission, $10 for students), at 2 p.m. Sunday (a “pay-what-you-can” show) or at 2 p.m. July 3.

LINK

The Goode Olde Dayes

2010-06-12T11:57:00.000-04:00

So apparently there's some big international sporting event going on today...

I always begin a directing process with a couple of script-inspired guiding concepts to shape the show. For Othello it was the dichotomy of Iago and his multiplicity of lies, inspiring the idea of him as an actual shape-changing demonic deceiver. For Doctor Faustus it was the show's prison-in-Hell concept, leading to Mephistophilis' childishly simple illusions and Faustus' own attachment to juvenile things. As You Like It started with the necessity to get four couples married at once with only five actors, with gender-bending and city-versus-country as the, er, touchstones (WOMP!). Last year's Midsummer was spurred by a sense of the faeries as godlike, ancient beings, far above the humans whose lives they so casually toyed with.

In the case of Comedy of Errors, the foundational ideas are "those were the good old days" and buddy comedy.

Comedy comes from a school of British literature following the mainland Renaissance's fascination with classical texts. Everything old was new, and old stories were hitting the bestseller lists again. Comedy of Errors is based on several original sources, primarily Plautus' The Menaechmi (a play that is hilarious in its own right). The idea swiftly became not an actual historical age of yore, but a fantastical one, made of a combination of:

stories your grandfather used to tell about having to walk to school uphill against the wind both ways,
old movies like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, and
Chuck Jones-directed Looney Tunes cartoons.

We wouldn't create a realistic early-twentieth-century port town, we would create a fantasia of one that rings true emotionally without having to work factually. The combination of that idea and a realization of just how much Dromio and Antipholus are a comedy duo leading straight up to Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Reiner and Brooks, and Penn and Teller, formed the basis for the show. The rest proceeded from there.

Douglas Gilpin's beautiful set creates the corner of a town square (with a Civil War memorial statue inspired by Q-Tip Park in front of VCU's performing arts center), complete with all the mansion-style edifices the play requires to keep its Aristotelian unity of place (Comedy is the only one of Shakespeare's plays to do so, yet another acknowledgement of a "good old days" mentality in its writing). The tops of the buildings, however, are set at sightly skewed angles, establishing an environment above reality before the play even begins. My goal is that this will help take the edge off of the audience's perceptions of the violence, which is plentiful in the play; the script's most common stage direction is "Antipholus beats Dromio," and master-beats-servant just isn't so funny any more. We're shooting for slapstick and cartoony.

Here's the model:

The statue has actually moved from DR to DL, and has been replaced by a bench and a crate.

Shauna Meador took the era and idea and came forth with some of the most gorgeous costumes I have ever worked with. In many ways, working with Shauna is similar to working with Becky Cairns and Annie Hoskins, which is a fine compliment to all three ladies. The lines begin with glamorous shapes and textures from '30s cinema, with color temperature turned up high; I even joked early on that the color palate for many of the costumes was a pack of highlighters, and the expression has stuck. Dromio wears massively clashing argyles in fluorescent colors, Antipholus similar patterns but in softer colors.

Here's the duo rapping:

This picture doesn't do justice to the insane energy these two actors, Paul Saylor and Josh Rice, bring to the show.

Signing off for now to get ready for a music and vaudeville rehearsal.

Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre Adventures!

2010-06-10T12:26:00.000-04:00

For the past three weeks, I've been serving as director, musical director and sound designer for the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre's production of The Comedy of Errors. Since we open in six days, it's probably about time I started writing a bit about this, eh?

It started almost a year ago when I got a phone call from Producing Artistic Director Matt Chiorini. He said they were looking to scale back the size of the festival a bit in 2010, and that his research into small-cast Shakespeare had turned up reviews of my recent shows (As You Like It with Richmond Shakespeare). I applied for the job, was told it would be a five-actor As You Like It, then possibly a small-cast Othello. Then came the sad phone call; he rang me to tell me that they had narrowed it down to two candidates, neither one of which was me. Maybe next year. The very next day, he called me back for another interview, then an offer. Apparently, he just got a better vibe about me than the others. Let that be a lesson, young theatre artists: being a NICE PERSON will get you quite far. It's the undefinable something that always comes into play but rarely gets talked about.

AST works in association with the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, a small college-centered city about 30 minutes north of Little Rock. As such, we have full access to the university's theatre facilities. Many of the department's faculty members are involved in the design phase of the show, and that has been one of the biggest eye-openers of the entire process.

I've become accustomed, both at VCU and at Richmond Shakespeare, to having very little in the way of tech and essentially no set or lighting whatsoever. So the need to communicate my ideas to a massive number of designers on a 45-minute conference call from my freezing car on my lunch break last winter was quite intimidating. Similarly, relinquishing production duties to Lizzy, my stage manager, Andi, my production manager, Matt, and the various designers and technicians has been a bizarre feeling. I know, beyond doubt, that they are competent far beyond my abilities; I just simply have no precedent in my career for seeing these tasks done without my having to do them. In a lot of ways, and intending no disrespect to the "poor theatre"-inspired companies I have mostly worked for, this feels in many ways like the first "grown up" directing gig of my career. I could get used to this.

I have to get to rehearsal now, but I'll write more in the next few days. For now, here's an image actors who have worked with me in Richmond will recognize:

Peter Gabriel fails to scratch my itch

2010-02-10T13:37:00.003-05:00

I am increasingly frustrated with the artistic process of Peter Gabriel.

For most of my life, PG has been one of my artistic heroes. His early solo work and the earliest years of Genesis shaped much of my musical aesthetic, both as an artist and a listener. I have appreciated and enjoyed every phase his career has gone through, from bold avant-rock to pure pop to world music and into fusion of all those styles. I have enjoyed it all.

Until now.

Gabriel's latest album, Scratch My Back is one half of an ambitious project: he would release an album of covers, then release an album of the bands he's covered covering him. I enjoy tribute cover albums of all kinds, Shared Vision (Beatles), Two Rooms (Elton John), Tales from Yesterday (Yes), Supper's Ready (Genesis), Strong Hand of Love (Mark Heard), and Different for Girls (Joe Jackson, by all female artists) all have strong places in my iPod playlists. So I'm looking forward to And You Scratch Mine.

But that's just the problem with new Gabriel: looking forward to it. It seems like Peter Gabriel always has a new project percolating, then about to come out, then behind schedule, then years behind schedule. His last album, Up, justified the delay by being the single most impactful moment in his career since (and possibly even eclipsing) 1982's Security. The problem was that it had been ten freaking years since his last album, the hot-and-cold Us.

With Scratch My Back, the delay was only (only!) eight years. Would that the wait had been worth it. The idea of Gabriel covering Bowie, Paul Simon, and Radiohead is interesting as hell, even if the entire rest of the album is a bunch of songs I've never heard of by artists I don't give a crap about. The problem is twofold: 1) the songs are all dismal and depressing as hell, even songs that were originally uptempo, and 2) the instrumentation is all piano and orchestra. No guitars, no synth, no bass, no drums. Look back at those last two omissions. No Tony Levin on bass and Chapman stick, and no Manu Katche, no Jerry Marotta, no drummers of Ekome, no massive thrumming rhythm. In other words, this is a Peter Gabriel album missing the two things most endemic to Peter Gabriel's music: his innovative songwriting and his unparalleled sense of rhythm.

Of course, for an album of covers you don't expect Gabriel's songwriting, but his sense of arrangement should be front and center here. I want to hear "Heroes" played by Peter Gabriel's band, not by some nameless orchestra with a rhythmless and fairly soulless arrangement. Joe Jackson did "Heroes" when I saw him in 2001 and I can still hear the arrangement in my head. I just listened to Gabriel's version 20 minutes ago and I already can't remember it.

Gabriel's albums hold my attention as few artists' do. Songs I've heard hundreds of time still keep me rapt, and I continue to notice new aspects of the arrangement and production. I can't believe I'm saying this about Peter Gabriel, but I just don't care about any of the music on this album as I'm listening to it. The sole exception is "Book of Love," which was released on a movie soundtrack a few years ago. That's a lovely one-off of PG with an orchestra, a charming and stirring little piece of intimacy. The rest is just string washes and bland horns obscuring a bunch of songs I didn't know in the first place. For the first time in his career, Peter Gabriel has had a big musical idea that turned out to be a bad one.

The biggest frustration of it all is that when Up came out in 2002 PG told interviewers that the ten years it had taken to create that album had resulted in so much music that he planned to release a follow-up album just two years later. Where is that elusive disc, for which I have been waiting since 2004? It's got to be better than Scratch My Back. At least I have to assume that it would sound like a Peter Gabriel album.

The Gospel according to Eli

2010-01-23T10:19:00.004-05:00

I couldn't sleep last night for two reasons: 1) my cat was making up for the fact that I haven't seen her much this week by demanding non-stop attention for most of the overnight hours, and 2) I can't stop thinking about "Book of Eli," which I saw last night, and scenes from which will be running through my head for weeks to come. As much as I have loved and been transported by science fiction films from the past couple years ("Avatar," "Iron Man," "District Nine"), this film stirred me to my soul like nothing has since "The Fountain."

Science fiction schmience fiction. This is just the best damn movie I have seen in years. Like all great sci-fi, and unlike science-looking fantasy of the "Star Wars" family, the futuristic setting for "Eli" is just a vehicle to tell a story that couldn't be told in an era that has actually existed. Great science fiction requires a Ringworld, a killer robot from the future, or a ritual of hasta'akala to make its point. "Eli" requires a post-apocalyptic setting so Denzel Washington can carry the last Bible on Earth, and so his eponymous character can paraphrase and simplify Scripture in such an elegant way that one wonders why one never thought of it before. And so he can kill lots of bad guys with a kick-ass machete.

It's hard to talk in detail about the film without giving away plot points; not only do I not want to give away plot points, but I don't even want people to know what kind of plot points there are to give away. The film is unpredictable and strange in its script, its pacing, and its every conflict resolution, and it's best experienced if you don't know what's coming. And it can be viewed from a number of perspectives. To some, it's a post-apocalyptic action movie. To some, it's a survival drama. To me, it's the explicit, agonizing statement of faith and sacrifice that "The Passion of the Christ" should have been but wasn't. It's the simple statement that without faith, the world will fall apart. Without hope, the world will fall apart. Without love, the world will fall apart. With Denzel killing bad guys with a kick-ass machete.

I love Denzel Washington. I think he's the best American screen actor of his generation and each generation since. I love how he embodies suppression of the extremes of emotion, always about to burst, so that when he explodes with a catharsis we feel terrible for him because he can't ever go back to the man he was before. He is always a real, honest man thrust into unbelievable circumstances and forced to believe them. Never have I seen him like this, so calm yet tense, sure yet doubtful. He is the living embodiment of mission and of his character's definition of faith: "Faith is knowing something even if you don't know something." Gary Oldman's performance is one of the best of his storied career as well; in fact, not knowing the cast ahead of time I had to keep watching him for 10 minutes before I was settled it was him. (He has a wonderful "Fifth Element" moment near the end that I found priceless.) And, of all people, Mila Kunis keeps up with the both of them. Mila Kunis. Who knew.

Don't read reviews. Don't talk to friends who have seen it and have a history of blurting out spoilers. Just go see this remarkable movie. Then get back in line and buy another ticket to see it again. Because you're going to want to.

Vaughan on Anonymity

2009-12-10T08:10:00.003-05:00

This passage from the latest story arc of Brian K. Vaughan's Ex Machina, one of my favorite comics, resonated for me based on some of the dialogue we've had about anonymous web posting. New York City Mayor Mitchell Hundred, a former superhero, has decided not to fight a post-9/11 KKK demonstration planned in Central Park. Depuy Mayor Wylie argues the decision. Warning: adult language.

Wylie: You're honestly letting those monsters come here? In their fucking masks? Do you have any idea what the op-eds are going to say?

Hundred (reading from a piece of paper): "Anonymity is a shield from the tyrrany of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the bill of rights: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation at the hand of an intolerant society."

Wylie: What the hell is that?

Hundred: Something I carried with me back in my Great Machine days. It's from an old Supreme Court case that said you don't have to sign your name when attacking a politician. I used to think it also justified me wearing a disguise while I lamely attempted to fight crime.

Wylie: What does that have to do with those bigots? You were a hero!

Hundred: No, I was an idiot. I rationalized hiding my identity as a way to protect the people I loved... but deep down, I was just embarrassed by my own incompetence. If you want to talk unpopular individuals living in intolerant societies, look at Martin Luther King. Did he ever wear a fucking disguise? He risked his career, his family, his life, because he knew that Americans don't give a shit about people who aren't brave enough to stand behind their opinions. So yeah, let's give the Klan the right to put on their stupid dunce caps and hide their hayseed mugs. Let's give spoiled anarchist kids the right to cover their faces with bandanas so mommy and daddy won't recognize them on CNN. Let's give the extremist assholes who protest the peace negotiations outside the UN the right to cower behind their keffiyehs. Anonymity is the fastest, most efficient way to let the rest of us know that you and your beliefs are worthless.

Reviews, reviewers, and different markets.

2009-10-24T01:27:00.003-04:00

Rather than hijack Dave's blog (scroll down to "Other People's Writing" if you want to share the pain), I'm going to make a few remarks in this space. Interestingly, Dave's discussion comes from remarks on yet another blog, so this is a topical three-peat.

It was remarked by a very polite Anonymous (a rare thing) on the subject of negative reviews in Richmond versus New York that "Reviews in the big markets are written by experienced theater critics who have the guts to tell the truth, and not sugar-coat everything."

So is the argument here that experienced critics have a better eye for crap? Or that they have earned the right to call plays "awful," "garbage," or "tripe," or to say that an actor "has no business working as a professional actor" or some such? I'm sorry, but I believe you can be critical of a play, even savage a production, while avoiding language that functions primarily as character attack. You can even do that on a blog. Even anonymously. To my mind, exceptional writers use descriptive language, not simplistic value judgments.

I've read reviews by both knowledgeable and ignorant critics that used nasty, deliberately insulting language. I read it far far far more when I lived in New York and DC than in Richmond or Albany. There are, I'm sure, many reasons for that, but I suspect the fact that artists in Richmond routinely run into critics in Ukrop's has something to do with it. Much like posting anonymously gives some people the freedom to be insulting, writing in a huge city does the same.

This isn't New York. It never will be. There's much less of the "artists waiting for a big break" here; enough persistence and finding the right niche can get you some fairly regular work here. Bad reviews won't force you out of town. Many of the artists in town are lifers. And there are only a half-dozen reviewers in the Circle. How foolish and impolitic would it be for them to use insulting language in reviews? Good luck getting an interview with one of the insulted actor's friends, which is pretty much 90% of the rest of the theatrical community. Honestly, we don't need the reviewers the way they need us.

I'm not going to find fault with a community of reviewers who chose to approach their craft with an eye partly toward building up the arts community in a town that needs building. Especially since there are plenty of voices, many (not all) anonymous, WITHIN the theatre community who have no problem tearing it down in the name of "honesty," an "honesty" that is sometimes embittered by not getting a part they wanted.

And if you think the local critics "sugar-coat everything," you must have only been in a lot of really exceptional shows. I've gotten plenty of tepid reviews in this town. I've read between the lines and knew what they meant. They were mostly right; examples of shows where my idea didn't work the way I'd envisioned or where my work just wasn't at as high a level as the role and company demanded. None of it changed the way I viewed my craft. Never have I gotten a bad review of work that I thought was flawless. I don't do theatre for reviewers. I don't take notes from them and I don't let them influence my artistic choices. I use them as a barometer for some things and I rely on them for promotional materials. And they provide a starting point for discussing the craft of theatre, which I love to do. Also, I've met many of them and they are nice people.

How many actors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 100: 1 to do it and 99 to blog anonymously about how they could have done it better.

"MIDSUMMER" WINS!

2009-10-19T20:07:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to Sandra Clayton, Brandon Crowder, Stacie Rearden Hall, Kerry McGee and Adam Mincks, the cast of A Midsummer Night's Dream, for winning the 2009 Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Ensemble Acting!

This award is the second-greatest honor of my professional career. The greatest was working with these talented artists and beautiful human beings in the first place.

Cheers!

RTCC Awards 2009

2009-10-13T12:29:00.003-04:00

I hate arts awards.

Hate is a strong word. Let me back up a bit.

I am deeply suspicious of labeling one person’s art as being superior to another’s, or in the case of a “Best” award, all the others’. Art is incredibly subjective, both from the perspective of the performer and the audience, and theatre perhaps the most of all. For example, what about the phoned-in performance that critics and audiences love? Is it “good” art because people liked it, or “bad” art because little effort was invested in its creation? And what about the brilliant performance that half of a small audience simply didn’t get? Who’s at fault; the actor, the playwright, the director, the spectator? Everyone or no one?

So I don’t like arts awards. I don’t watch them on TV and I don’t care what the results are. I hate the politics, the sense of entitlement, the atmosphere of egocentric self-congratulation.

So it’s fortunate that this isn’t what the RTCC awards this Sunday are about.

Last year’s awards were one of my favorite memories of all Richmond theatre. Friends and colleagues gathered at the Firehouse to celebrate each other’s craft in an evening of fellowship and congratulation, a night of wine, women and song, and of men who looked so good in tuxedoes it made me wish for the fashions of yesteryear. The Richmond Shakespeare contingent was the bad kids in the back rows, making a ruckus as usual. I had written more than a couple blog treatises about how much I hate arts awards, so it was with more than a little awkwardness that I sat, a nominee. Fortunately, the puck my show won was for costumes, and Becky Cairns got to give a speech instead of whatever unrehearsed horribleness might have spewed from my piehole. For me, events like this are especially odd, because most of my Richmond theatre experience is with one company and I don’t know many of the performers who work elsewhere, simply because we haven’t played together—and because I am often too shy to stick around after shows I see to tell performers I don’t know that I liked their work. (Yes, I am shy; try not to faint.)

This year, I am once again honored to have a show nominated for an “Artsie.” (By the way, let me just publically state here that “Artsie” is the most generic name imaginable for an award. Can’t we find a way to name them after the first recipient of a memorial award, Liz Marks? The “Lizzies,” or the “Marksies?” Even “Ratsies” or “Ritzies” is better. Maybe we could use one of the rejected baseball team names, which are also hideous.) That’s actually what I most wanted to write about today, but I haven’t blogged in forever, so I’ve sort of rambled a bit.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is nominated for “Best Ensemble Acting” this year, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. This is quite a contrast to last year’s noms for As You Like It, which caused me mortal dread at the prospect of winning, dread which was only assuaged by the certain knowledge that there was no way in hell the show would win Best Play or Best Director. Interestingly, when the 2008 nominations were announced, I mentioned that a “Best Ensemble” award, like at the SAG Awards, would be a welcome addition. While I was, indeed, thinking of the experiences of directing Doctor Faustus (an ensemble of two) and As You Like It (another truly remarkable couple of ensembles) at the time, this seems more than a bit self-serving now; ironically so since A) it’s an acting award and therefore not mine to receive, and B) I would be dreading the prospect of winning it were I able to do so. Wrap your head around that mass of contradictions. My ambition of becoming a real-life Joss Whedon character is fulfilled.

But I absolutely have to re-state how immensely proud I am of the Midsummer company: actors Sandra Clayton, Brandon Crowder, Stacie Rearden Hall, Kerry McGee and Adam Mincks, designers and crew members Ray Bullock, Becky Cairns, Will Hankins, Annie Hoskins, Bryan Laubenthal, Emily Rawlings, Caroline Sumner, J. David White and David White (confusing, I know), musicians Jake Allard, Todd Borden, Holly Harris and Holly Lucas (who was also a designer) and everyone at Second Pres and Agecroft Hall whose names aren’t on the tip of my cerebrum, not to mention producers Grant Mudge and Richard Moxley. This is technically an acting award, but all those people are honorees in my book. That’s what ensemble is about, in my book.

When I direct, I try to strike a balance between making it fun and making it a challenge, and these actors rose to the fun of the challenge and the challenge of the fun like none I’ve ever worked with. For a director who prides himself in building ensembles, their nomination is an indescribable honor. Plus, it’s the best of all possible worlds: I can root for them without having the awkwardness of actually having to accept an award if they win. Score!

So regardless of what happens on Sunday evening, I offer my congratulations to the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I look forward to seeing my enormous Richmond Theatre family dressed to the nines for a celebration of our trials and triumphs at the Empire on Sunday night.

Carrying the Flag

2009-09-12T14:35:00.004-04:00

I have been given the honor of carrying the American flag onstage for the opening of CenterStage this weekend.

For tonight's official opening performance, I will be carrying our nation's colors in honor of my friend Scott Wichmann and his tirelessly humble service to our country and our culture.

If you're there tonight, look for my Red Sox red socks in tribute.

God bless you, Scotto. God bless America and all nations under His mercy. And God bless Richmond CenterStage.

Don't Call It a Comeback

2009-08-01T12:36:00.002-04:00

Hey, y'all. Sorry for the long absence. Believe it or not, my life of the past few months has been even crazier than usual. A couple of announcements:

With Midsummer closed, my tenure as Associate Artistic Director for Richmond Shakespeare has come to an end. It was a roller coaster three years on staff plus two before as a contract artist, and I cherish the memories and the resume credits. But it's time to move on to other venues. I'm planning to continue my associations with the excellent artists and friends there, and will still do the occasional special event, such as the Center Stage opening (see below), but my days of doing full productions with Richmond Shakes are, for the time being, at an end. Even had the economy not necessitated the move, it was time to go. The amazing ensemble of Midsummer's cast and crew was the perfect final project, and I am grateful to every one of them for their hard work in the face of four rainouts in ten tries and little or no pay.

So in sports terms, I'm now an unresricted free agent. I'm looking forward to playing with other theatres in town at some point, but for now I'm on a bit of a hiaitus. I'll be teaching acting at John Tyler Community College in the Fall, and that, combined with my Wednesday evening praise band commitments, makes scheduling rehearsals pretty much impossible. Short-rehearsal projects like staged readings, concert musicals, etc. are feasible, of course, and they are also among my favorite kind of theatrical event.

While I'm out, I'm thinking about trying my hand at some theatre criticism. I may phrase my blog responses to plays I see in the form of a review (thanks to my good friend Dave T for giving me some of Style's guidelines) to get another perspective--and, perhaps, to give one.

So the next big thing? Aside from finally REALLY putting my apartment together (I've been here since March 1 and still haven't unpacked many boxes or put much of anything on the wall), I'm looking forward to Richmond Shakespeare's contribution to the grand opening of Center Stage: a ten-minute collection of sonnets and songs concluding in a fully-orchestrated suite of music composed by... me! Yes, the Richmond Symphony is going to be playing the conclusion to A Midsummer Night's Dream, composed by me and orchestrated by my dear friend Keith Tan. I have no frame of reference to figure out how I should feel about this, but I can say without exaggeration that I have never been so terrified by an artistic endeavor in my entire life. As of yesterday, the score is finished, but I haven't seen it or heard the synthesized demo yet. I think that when I see the multi-line conductor's score for "Through the House Give Glimmering Light" I may actually have to sit down. Or I may faint.

So that will be the climax to my Richmond Shakespeare experience. I am incredibly grateful to Grant, and to the people at the Symphony, for the opportunity. I don't expect it to ever come again.

After that? I may have an opportunity to spread the gospel of five-actor Shakespeare to the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival in May. We've talked variously of As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Othello. Doing a show I've already directed seems like cheating...

I'm just building the new Me some more, friends. Questions and comments are always welcome.

Belated Reviews for Midsummer "Midsummer"

2009-07-31T13:18:00.001-04:00

From Style Weekly:

Getting Some Fairy Tail

Richmond Shakespeare’s "Midsummer" adds pop culture to a play that is sexy or innocent, depending on what you’re looking for.
7/8/2009
by Mary Burruss

Five actors populate the "Midsummer" forest with nearly two dozen characters, all more or less excited about getting together.

Sensual is the word that summarizes the Richmond Shakespeare Festival’s version of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," Shakespeare’s ode to love. It is steamy yet playful, capturing the giddiness of young lovers and proving my companion’s point that "Shakespeare is all about hooking up." But this show is not just for grown-ups; several children in the audience thoroughly enjoyed themselves, laughing often while the sexual innuendo sailed harmlessly overhead.
Part of the fun of the play is Shakespeare’s observations of the incompatible behaviors of men and women engaged in timeless entanglements. To emphasize the differences between the sexes, director Andrew Hamm casts three voluptuous goddesses to contrast with his muscular males. The five-player ensemble -- Sandra Clayton, Brandon Crowder, Stacie Rearden Hall, Kerry McGee and Adam Mincks -- displays remarkable versatility and physicality as they play 22 human and mystical characters with Richmond Shakespeare’s trademark modern-day adaptations.
All of them sing, act and move marvelously well, but Crowder amazes with his spiderlike embodiment of Oberon and McGee shines as the mischievous, childlike Puck. Hall sings a mean rendition of "Let’s Hear it for the Boy" during intermission and Egeus will never sound the same again without Clayton’s expert Boston accent. Minks gets high marks for his Bottom (no pun intended).
While Hamm’s use of pop-culture references and music amplifies the fun-loving spirit of the show, an added original song at the close drags out the ending. And although the play-within-a-play is so hilarious it prods shrieks of laughter from the audience, it could use some editing. But aside from that, there is not a better way to spend a midsummer night.

"A Midsummer Night’s Dream" plays through July 12 at Agecroft Hall at 8 p.m. Gates open at 7 p.m. for picnics. Tickets are $25. Visit www.richmondshakespeare.com or call 866-BARD-TIX.

From The Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Irreverent ‘Midsummer’ is so hilarious it hurts

SUSAN HAUBENSTOCK SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Published: July 5, 2009
One-line review: I laughed so hard at Richmond Shakespeare's new production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that I got a headache.
The perennial favorite of Richmond Shakespeare and the Shakespeare canon itself is back for a short run at gorgeous Agecroft Hall. Andrew Hamm directs this time, pushing the comedy and mayhem way past any previous boundaries of taste, propriety, reverence for the Bard and other annoyances.
We have here a cell phone and a drag queen, imitations of William Shatner and Christopher Walken, a Macbeth-worthy Scottish accent and a half-witted Starveling with a stick. It's just nuts.
Hamm uses the company's customary five-actor approach, which guarantees craziness as two men and three women take on 21 roles, switching dizzily from one part to another with just a change of hat or vest.
When you pursue the comedy this strenuously, you get the laughs you want, but there's a cost. The rest of the play -- romances and rivalries among Theseus and Hippolyta, Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, Oberon and Titania -- seem like arid patches that have to be gone through to get to the next guffaw. That's unfortunate, because the actors do admirable work with language, with distinctions among roles and with movement. But subtlety suffers as too many speeches are delivered at top volume.
All five actors expend staggering amounts of energy. Sandra Clayton does a broad Boston accent as Egeus and is hilarious as the wall in the play within the play. Stacie Rearden Hall projects majesty and sensuality as Hippolyta and Titania; she does a nutty foreign-accented Snug and a desperate Helena. Kerry McGee's Hermia is petulant and her Puck unique, more demented and disorganized than crafty. Like her cast-mates, she throws herself into her roles with breathtaking physical abandon.
But the guys dominate the proceedings through sheer forcefulness. Adam Mincks acts largely with his deltoids, doing a callow Demetrius and a relentlessly preening Bottom. When he appears as Pyramus in Julie White's fabulous hardware-store armor, he blows the audience away with mirth. And Brandon Crowder is the prime chameleon here, with four big roles. He's imperious and randy as Theseus, lovelorn as Lysander and mesmerizing as Oberon. But his shameless Flute is beyond hysterical and was the main cause of my laughter headache.
For the first time, the Rebecca Cairns/Ann Hoskins costumes are lackluster, but J. David White's lighting is luscious, especially in the woodland scenes. And the fairy puppets are imaginative but not particularly effective.
Richmond Shakespeare moves its indoor season to Center Stage in the fall. I hope the place is well-built, because this company might bring down the house -- with laughter.

Reviews are in for "A Midsummer Night's Dream!"

2009-04-21T20:39:00.006-04:00

From Style Weekly:

There was a moment during Richmond Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” when I literally could not stop laughing. Near the play’s end, the sheer lunatic brilliance of director Andrew Hamm’s off-kilter rendering of the Shakespeare classic reached such a fever pitch that I found myself lost in the sea of silliness. I would have been more embarrassed about my guffaws if there weren’t several others in the audience doing the same thing.

Possibly the Bard’s most endearingly romantic comedy, “Midsummer’s” plot involves fairies, love potions, a man semitransformed into an ass, and quite a bit of mayhem. As if that were not enough, Hamm’s inspired cast pushes every envelope available. Sensual interludes between lovers stray into serious PG-13 territory. Characters who are supposed to be bad actors are hilariously horrendous. Some of the physical comedy looks downright painful, thanks to fight choreography help by David White.

Ensemble members throw themselves into multiple roles with abandon. Brandon Crowder leads this rowdy band, effecting breakneck changes between the regal Duke of Athens to the almost aggressively swishy Flute and eliciting laughs with as little as a well-placed glance along the way. Adam Mincks chews the scenery ravenously as donkey-eared Bottom, who attracts the affection of Fairy Queen Titania (Stacie Rearden Hall) thanks to the juice of a magical flower administered by Puck (Kerry McGee). Hall’s lusty looks are bracing while McGee is alternately fervent as the love-struck Hermia and delightfully impish as Puck. Sandra Clayton rounds out the crew ably with several small but vital bit parts.

It seems peckish to note that some of Shakespeare’s lyrical language gets lost in modernisms such as “Sweet!” and “Awesome!” But Hamm makes up for it by inserting charming musical interludes into the action with a cast (particularly Hall) in spectacular voice. For a show not billed as a musical, this “Dream” sings. — David Timberline

And from the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Richmond Shakespeare's season finale a fun one

JULINDA LEWIS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Published: April 19, 2009

"A Midsummer Night's Dream," Richmond Shakespeare Theatre's final production of its indoor season under the direction of Andrew Hamm, roars delightfully into its raucous conclusion, which includes a play within a play and a wedding celebration.

There is something old (the play by William Shakespeare), something new (the cast and the indoor location at Second Presbyterian Church), something borrowed (costumes and props from previous "Dream" productions), and something . . . (well, there's got to be something blue in there somewhere).

With costumes and set kept to a bare minimum, the cast of five takes on 21 roles, resulting in effects and situations that might have surprised the Bard himself.

This "Dream" features a tight-knit and lovable ensemble. Some of the casting contrasts are startling and ingenious. Sandra Clayton is the elitist Egeus as well as the simple carpenter; Peter Quince, leader of the local community of actors, also known as the Mechanicals; Brandon Crowder is both the noble Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Francis Flute, the bellows mender who plays the role of Thisbe in the play-within-a-play.

And while it is not unusual for men to play women's roles in Elizabethan theater, Crowder's over-the-top Thisbe, dressed in a contemporary beauty queen evening gown and some killer black stilettos, leaves an indelible impression.

Kerry McGee gives Robin Starveling, the tailor member of the acting troupe, a round-shouldered, slumped posture, slow movements and delayed reactions that suggest poor Starveling may have either mental or chemically induced challenges.

The cast is rounded out by Stacie Rearden Hall, who plays Demetrius's lover Helena as well as three other roles, and Adam Mincks, who plays Demetrius, as well as Nick Bottom, who, as the unfortunate object of Puck's prankishness, ends up with a donkey's head and the magically induced love of the fair (sic) queen, Titania.

Shakespeare's words, juxtaposed against modern-day clothing and props, and in the hands -- and mouths -- of this enthusiastic and zany cast made 2½ hours in uncomfortable chairs in an overheated chapel fly.

(Man, Blogger is annoying. I have no idea how the formatting on this thing is going to look from computer to computer. As soon as you add a damn picture, all the spacing goes to hell with this thing.)

Obviously, I'm very pleased to get two such nice reviews. And far be it from me to complain about the nit-picky details of theatre journalism. That would be downright peckish of me (snicker). But the experience of receiving a pair of pretty silly reviews for my last show (the T-D spending half the column inches recapping a plot most everyone knows from the famous movie, the Style Weekly referring to an actor's underwear twice and her acting never) has me somewhat prickly.

I do wish Style would stop this practice of combining two reviews under one headline. In an environment where print media is bleeding market share to the interwebs, it is odd and inconvenient for them to mash two pieces under one heading, making both reviews baffling for search engines and making it extremely difficult for the second review to be effectively posted on Facebook and other such sites. On my Facebook page, it looks like some kind of a computer glitch: the headline and beginning of the review of the AART production of Steel Magnolias juxtaposed with a picture of the Midsummer cast, which, trust me, couldn't double for their show.

This isn't just a hypothetical complaint. I was contacted earlier this month by a theatre producer who is interested in bringing me in to direct a five-actor As You Like It next year based on the the strength of last spring's reviews. He found them by doing a search for small-cast Shakespeare. I'm not sure he would find Style's review, which would help me very much, very easily, and if he did, a casual glance would not encourage a scroll down to read it.

As for the Times-Dispatch, I suppose one can blame the short staff for the typos (most of which I fixed above, though "fair queen" was too amusing to repair). But it does appear that Kerry only played Starveling, no one in particular played Puck and Titania, and that Oberon did not appear in the play. Actually, both reviews omit Oberon entirely, which disappoints me tremendously. I love my entire ensemble, and cherish how much each of them has brought his or her own personality and joy to the process and the performances. But Brandon's non-realistic movement style as Oberon is absolutely one of the most noteworthy and interesting aspects of the show, and the fact that a dancer-reviewer didn't mention it at all was a big letdown to me. I was so excited that she was going to see these actors (Brandon, Kerry, and Stacie) perform these decidedly non-human movement styles, and not a mention! Seriously, I'm as frustrated by these good reviews omitting this one aspect as I have been from any bad review I've ever gotten. Brandon's work in this show deserves notice. In a company brimming with singular performances, this one merits ink. Or pixels.

That said, it was a blast to watch Julinda and Dave T laugh their butts off Friday night. There is a tendency for people in the theatre critiquing business, either as writers or artists, to go to the theater and demand to be impressed. I had a dear friend come to As You Like It last spring and sit in the back row the entire show, arms crossed, scowling. He never told me what he thought of it, a clear implication that he hated it. Everyone else in the audience, in every audience, smiled and laughed and clapped, but this one guy had had his ability to just enjoy stripped away by years of feeling the need to appear impressive. We all know these people: theatre artists who seem to hate theatre--or at least theatre they aren't in. So it was lovely to see the Reviewers of Record abandoning themselves to the barely-controlled chaos and silliness of our Dream.

Not all of the jokes land. I can't make the Christopher Walken cowbell joke work, so it's getting cut. But a new one, where Bottom calls for a line during the climax of "Pyramus and Thisbe," more than compensates. I don't say this often, but I will here: if you like this play or like this company, I recommend coming to see the show early in the run so you can come again later. The company has a lot of leeway to adlib and grow their performances, so there are going to be a lot of new and different funnies from night to night.

I plan to write my requisite "Making-Of Featurette" post later this week, so look for it in this space. For now, I'm unashamedly basking in the glow of overwhelmingly positive critical and audience response. This company is wonderful; the only thing I can compare it to is last spring's As You Like It group, and they turned out okay.

EDIT: Dave T took justified umbrage at my frustration over the omission of Oberon in both reviews. Frustration is frustration; it makes you say "Awww, MAN!" and type dumb stuff.

Let me clarify that I'm honored and tickled at the positive audience and critical response to this show. (You should have seen the two guys in the front row last night. They are going to be sore for days from laughing.) I had just really hoped that this fantastically physical performance, as well as the relationship between Oberon and Puck, could be squeezed in. 300 words is an awfully tight restriction, but I really want to share the wonder of these actors' work with everyone. I know you can't fit everything in, but Oberon is the play's biggest role, you know?

Trust me, it takes something I'm very passionate about to make me nit-pick rave reviews. Thank goodness for the interwebs, which allow us to talk for as long as we want about these things.

As for the two-review thing, I'm not talking about review length, or even the print edition. I'm talking about separating the reviews into two different URLs with two different headlines and sets of search parameters for purposes of web searching. The internet is a huge information archive, and Style Weekly should be thinking about future accessibility.

A funny thing happened on the way to Vienna...

2009-02-17T12:25:00.000-05:00

Remember back when I talked about how I was going to blog a bunch about the process of doing Amadeus? Well, a funny thing interfered with that plan: the process of doing Amadeus.

Sorry, folks. I simply have never had my ass so thoroughy kicked by a role. That's as it should be, and I still feel as if I'm only just getting my fingers wrapped around the complexity and specificity of the show. But I have spent almost every spare moment of the past four weeks working on physical scoring and, frankly, my voluminous lines. Seriously, on my lunch break, in the car, in the shower, in bed before falling asleep...

So no, I haven't had time to write as extensively as I wanted to. I'll try to make up for that now.

THE SCRIPT

Every time I have worked on a play by Shakespeare, I have been amazed at how the writer's genius reveals itself more clearly the deeper I work on the show. Working on Hamlet and Measure for Measure, in particular, made me a fan of plays I wasn't too fond of to start with. The reverse, in an amusing way, has been true for Amadeus.

Not that it isn't a brilliant script, not at all, and it remains one of my favorite modern plays. But if you ever want to play the Amadeus drinking game, take a shot every time Salieri says something happened "suddenly." It's got to be 20 or more. Don't even get me started on all the interchangeable adjectives beginning with "a" "e" and "i".

This has been an incredibly difficult script to memorize. I gave myself easily three times as much time to learn my lines as I ever have before, only to discover that it was actually going to take ten times as much. Perhaps I'm spoiled by memorizing iambic pentameter, which is actually downright easy in many ways. Perhaps I'm just getting old; Gary Hopper once told me that he quit acting because memorization just got too difficult as he got older. Perhaps it's all the suddenlies. No fooling; this play is filled with repetition, and the repeats almost never have the same intention. The variations on "mercy," "pity" and "forgiveness" in the climactic scene just defied retention for weeks. I've never had such a hard time. The fact that I've never played a role half this size certainly didn't help.

The trickiest thing with the script has been honoring the intent of the punctuation marks while ignoring the timing they imply. Shaffer is inordinately fond of italics...ellipses—long dashes—and, quite suddenly, without warning, exclamation points! Occasionally even ALL CAPS! (Desperately implying an acting direction in the script:) Or all caps—IN ITALICS!

If we honored every punctuation mark, pause, and font emphasis, we'd have a three-and-a-half-hour melodrama largely featuring me yelling at God. (Okay, we kind of have that now.) Shaffer clearly has an idea in his head of exactly how every line should be delivered, which really rankles with me. It reminds me of Eugene O'Neill, who writes so many stage directions one wonders why he didn't just write a damn novel. At some point, I want my playwright to trust that his actors' and directors' ideas about the characters just might possibly be as good as his on occasion.

But Amadeus has, in fact, revealed itself to me as we've worked. It's a very different story than I thought it was, and at the same time it's more of what I thought than I had realized.

THE DIRECTOR

That's where James Bond (as seen on Letterman) comes in. He's had no compunctions about ignoring Shaffer's exotic formatting in the service of moving the action forward and setting up contrast for when the big emotional moments have to escalate. He's also mercilessly shattered many of my ideas about how the character's arc should travel. He always does this with me, and it's always for the best. As usual, I can't always remember where his ideas end and mine begin. It's glorious. The result is a trim two and a half hour production of a script full of melodramatic idioms that should really take about 3:10 if played as written.

Also, he makes me laugh. He sends me poetry in text message form and occasionally just ignores the playwright's intentions flagrantly. My favorite example, from about two weeks ago:

JAMES: Is there a question mark at the end of that "I amuse"?

ANDREW: No, it's a period.

JAMES: Are you sure it's not a question mark?

ANDREW: Yeah. "I amuse."

JAMES: Let's pretend it's a typo. Play it like a question mark.

THE COMPANY

I couldn't be more pleased with the cast and crew, if for no other reason than how much kindness and mercy they have shown a prickly lead actor desperately afraid he wasn't going to be as prepared for the show as he wanted to be. Feeling the pressure as never before (not to mention doing the hugest role I've ever had, while working two other jobs), I've been a bit of a prick the past few weeks, and that's really not the guy I am to work with.

Fortunately, Mike, Liz, Joe, Jamie the actor, Jake, Dave, Katie, Cynde, and Jamie the stage manager have all been fantastic and professional the whole while. One of the tragedies about a play of this sort, which depends so much on a single character's magnetism, is how so many beautifully portrayed characters can fade into the background, especially when so few of them have a memorable exit from the story. There's some really great work being done in this show: Katie's silent Katherina and petulant Strack, Jamie's priceless "gay toad" Rosenberg, the foppish choreography of the Venticelli Dave and Jake, Cynde's imperious, childish Joseph II, Joe's hyper-serious Van Swieten and doddering Bonno. Liz is always wonderful to work with and watch work, and her Constanze is Mozart's equal in cunning and commitment.

Mike Hamilton is my number one guy, a hard-working and risk-taking blur of energy and growing craft. Keep and eye on this young actor, Richmond, and cast him while he's here. His Mozart is a powerful engine in this show, and if my Salieri's scorn, sabotage, and finally pity come across at all honest, it is because Mike gives me so much to work with. He makes it so easy to hate his annoying, arrogant face throughout the first act, then to gloat over his dissolution in the second, but is his utter collapse at the end that destroys me every night.

We're all really working our asses off to make each other look good. It's freaking sweet.

THE COSTUMES

Speaking of looking good, Becky Cairns and Annie Hoskins have outdone themselves this time. I know I always say that (and Becky promises me she has amazing things in store for Midsummer), but this is even more true than usual. James calculated that they were effectively making something along the lines of 35 cents per hour on the costumes for this show (ain't Richmond theatre grand?), for which we have begun referring to them as "the Chinese children." Ah, sweatshop humor... Seriously, the CCs have worked a budgetary miracle this time around in recreating the lines and colors of the late 18th century. I say it every time, but they have outdone themselves. They are nothing short of the costuming MacGyver.

As a side note, it's a bit odd to be propositioning a character played by Liz Blake in the same jacket two years in a row. Next I'll be playing Uncle Peck in it...

AND FINALLY

I want to give a huge shout-out to Jamie Lish, our stage manager, who has come through in so very many ways for this show. Amadeus doesn't feel like it was a tech-heavy show until we're packing up at the end of the night. She keeps everything in order, including us silly players, and lays down the beats as sound board operator DJ Jamie up in the booth every night. And she always does it with a smile and a kind word. Except when she shouldn't.

Thanks to U of R for loaning us their sound design, keeping us from having to reinvent the wheel.

And thanks to Bryan Laubenthal for putting seats on the chairs. Woot.

Amadeus runs through March 8. Go to Richmond Shakespeare's website to order tickets!

Cafferty on the stimulus bill: "What a joke."

2009-02-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

I love Jack Cafferty. Here are a couple excerpts from today's piece on CNN.com:

What a joke. Your Congress has voted to spend almost $790 billion of your money on a stimulus package that not a single member of either chamber has read.

The 1,073-page document wasn't posted on the government's Web site until after 10 p.m. the day before the vote to pass it was taken. I don't care if you're Evelyn Wood, you can't read almost 1,100 pages of the lawyer talk that makes up all legislation in eight or 10 hours.

The criminal part of this boondoggle is divided into two parts. The first is the Democrats promised to post the bill a full 48 hours before the vote was taken to allow members of the public to see what they were getting for their money. Both parties voted unanimously to do this ... and they lied.

And this part is my favorite:

It's really too bad President Obama couldn't figure out a way to jettison these two [Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi] who are poster children for everything that is wrong in Washington. The Associated Press called the birth of the stimulus bill "sausage making" in the best tradition of Washington politics as usual.

There's more good stuff there. And by "good stuff," I mean appallingly predictable nonsense that will hopefully bring some of the change-worshipers down to earth just enough to remember that their job is not to blindly support the new administration as much as it is to hold them accountable for their multitudinous and often irresponsible promises.

Yes, recession is bad. The late '70s were worse. And the stimulus-spendulus-porkulus package President Obama is about to sign gives me no confidence whatsoever. Gone already are promises of bipartisanship, of fiscal responsibility, of transparency, of posting all bills on the White House website for five days before signing them. Ridiculous. At least wait a full month before flagrantly going back on your word, Mister President. And don't even get me started on eliminating corruption in your administration. How many tax cheats so far? Three? And those are just the high-profile ones, the ones we've found out about!

Sorry for the rant, y'all. But I was afraid it was going to be all Obusiness-as-usual, and I've seen nothing yet to disprove that. Grr.

The Onion on President Obama and comics

2009-01-28T08:35:00.002-05:00

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

January 27, 2009

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama expressed frustration Wednesday after members of his cabinet failed to recognize his allusion to the 24th issue of the comic series Savage Sword Of Conan during their first major meeting together.

Enlarge Image

The 44th president settles into the Oval Office.

Obama, whose upcoming challenges include organizing a massive effort to rebuild the nation's infrastructure, was reportedly unprepared for the confused silence he received upon suggesting that his cabinet "team up with Taurus of Nemedia" to secure the necessary funding from Congress.

"If my inner circle of advisers can't even communicate about the most basic issues, how are we going to tackle the massive problems our nation faces?" Obama said during a press conference. "When I tell my cabinet that getting bipartisan support is exactly like the time Conan got Taurus to help him steal Yara's jewel, they need to understand what I mean."

After receiving no reaction from the assembled reporters, Obama added, "Because a giant spider is protecting this chamber full of precious jewels, just like Congress is protecting its…. God, how are you people not seeing this?"

Enlarge Image

The commander in chief's "doubles."

Obama, an avid collector of Conan The Barbarian and Spider-Man comic books since he was a child, was referencing the 1977 story "The Tower Of The Elephant," written by Roy Thomas. According to administration sources, no one in Obama's cabinet was familiar with the magazine-sized comic, though Labor Secretary Hilda Solis claimed to have once seen Conan the Destroyer.

Aides also confirmed that Obama has refused to lend his copy of issue #24 to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, fearing the former Republican congressman will carelessly bend or rip the pages. The commander in chief is reportedly intent on keeping the comics in pristine condition for their eventual inclusion in his presidential library.

"How am I supposed to effectively lead this nation when [attorney general nominee Eric] Holder has to stop the meeting and ask what the story of Taurus using the black lotus powder to kill the five guard lions has to do with increasing broadband Internet connections nationwide?" Obama said while vigorously rubbing his temples.

Added the president, "For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?"

Administration officials said the incident has caused the president to question whether his staff has ever understood any of his Conan references. One such instance he is reportedly reexamining occurred after his loss in the New Hampshire primary, when Obama rallied his staff by reminding them, "There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage."

Although campaign workers smiled and nodded at the time, Obama has begun to seriously doubt that any of them connected the inspiring quotation to the story line in which a Kothian rogue informs Conan that it is impossible to climb to the top of the Elephant Tower because the sides are more slippery than glass

While Obama has not scheduled another meeting with his cabinet this week—a respite the president hopes they will use to brush up on the 235-issue Savage Sword series—he is expected to meet with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Friday to discuss Afghanistan. A holdover from the Bush administration, Gates told reporters he may have gotten off on the wrong foot with the new president, citing an occasion when Obama asked him what he knew about 1984's Secret Wars, a 12-issue limited Marvel release. Gates then handed a visibly confused Obama 1,400 classified pages on covert CIA operations in El Salvador.

Later, the defense secretary attempted to find common ground with Obama by making casual references to the comic book Spawn. But the 44th president reportedly brushed him off with an abrupt laugh, saying, "no one in [his] administration likes Spawn."

Minutes from the first cabinet meeting indicate it lasted just under 35 minutes, coming to a standstill during a discussion of minimizing public waste. When Energy Secretary Steven Chu failed to understand the president's instructions to "be like the barbarian wielding his steel to cleave flesh from bone," Vice President Joe Biden attempted to clarify the president's thoughts.

"I think what the president is trying to say here is that this is just like the time when Barney had to put Fish on restricted duty because of his health exam results," said Biden, a longtime fan of the late-'70s police sitcom Barney Miller. "It's pretty straightforward when you look at it like that."

When asked by the press corps if this week's hiccup has caused him to rethink any of his appointments, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton interrupted the president to assert that she and her colleagues have already begun educating themselves about comic books, and will soon be "an invincible team of Supermen and Wonder Women working to save America."

"Wonder Woman? That's not even Marvel," Obama responded before storming out of the press room. "Who are you people?"

link here

Promises, promises...

2009-01-27T23:18:00.003-05:00

All those promises about posting a bunch about Amadeus, and almost nothing. Sorry. Memorizing all these lines is kicking my ass.

I am really enjoying this process. The cast is marvelous, and James is just James as always. He encourages my discoveries and energy, and never seems to discourage my furniture-chewing.

Gotta go work on lines. Again.

Thank you, Lee Hanchey.

2009-01-24T14:07:00.002-05:00

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Henrico art teacher honored for efforts

By Lisa Crutchfield

Published: January 24, 2009

A new building can be a blank canvas for an academic program.

Henrico County's new visual arts building in the Center for the Arts opened this month already embellished -- with a reputation for producing noted works by teachers, students and alumni.

Center director Lee Hanchey, who guided the program and the construction of the facility, says there is much more to come.

Last week, the School Board voted to name the building at Henrico High School for Hanchey, who has guided the center for the past 12 years.

"Lee Hanchey is an exceptionally gifted and dedicated educator, and her efforts have helped students and the center achieve local, regional and statewide recognitions," said Fred Morton IV, superintendent of schools. "Lee's bright personality is contagious, and her love of students and her profession will live on forever."

The arts program began in 1990 with about 30 students; today it has 228 students preparing for careers as visual artists, dancers and actors. Each year, hundreds audition or submit portfolios for admission to the competitive program.

Hanchey lobbied tirelessly for several years to get a visual arts building and was not above a little politicking.

"We used to do an architectural unit for students," she said. "They would draw plans for arts buildings and think about what kind of space they'd need."

"We'd bring School Board members in to judge," she added.

Eventually, the board agreed to fund the 6,975-square-foot building, which features four studios, a gallery and storage. Designed by Moseley Architects and constructed by Haley Builders, the building features large glass windows, skylights and a gallery. It cost $2.58 million.

The rooms were dedicated and named in honor of Morton, former School Board Chairman Lloyd E. Jackson Jr., former Henrico High School Principal William H. Parker, former visual arts teacher Jeffrey Hall and Henrico County Board of Supervisors member Frank J. Thornton.

Hall, who now is chairman of the fine arts department at Maggie L. Walker Governor's School, credits Hanchey as his mentor. "I often ask myself, 'WWLD?' -- or, 'What would Lee do?'" he said.

Classroom studios are large and airy, but Hanchey's favorite part of the building isn't immediately visible. It's a large closet that runs the length of the building. "We finally have storage," she said. "Holy cow! Who'd have ever thought we'd have storage?"

The arts program students said they appreciate the new facility.

"We have this amazing natural lighting," said 10th-grader Allie Ayers. "I absolutely love it."

In a recent Visual Arts II class, Ayers and classmate Ally Wolf were inking in cartoons.

"Before the new building, we were in the theater room," Wolf said. "We sat on the floor because there were no tables."

During the arts program's history, students often worked in makeshift facilities. Before the auditorium was renovated several years ago, the dance and theater students would overheat because the space did not have air conditioning. "We had to ice the kids down backstage," Hanchey said.

The new Lee Hanchey Visual Arts Building is a culmination of Hanchey's career at Henrico -- which also is her alma mater. "I was in the first graduating class in 1965," she said. "I got a great education here."

She holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University. A musician by training, she returned to the school in 1979 as a choral teacher.

"We're lucky to have this space and this program," she said. "Parents tell me that their child found themselves here. Children tell me they've found friends here.

"We cultivate that," she said. "They have a place to explore their capabilities."

First images from "Amadeus"

2009-01-15T11:30:00.005-05:00

Eric Dobbs and the dazzling Becky Cairns / Annie Hoskins team worked their magic on Tuesday night for Amadeus' initial promotional pictures. Check it out:

Look at the size of Mike's hair! It's like some kind of shrub growing on his head. And wait until you see me in a wig.

Rehearsals are going like lightning. I don't know if I've ever blocked anything so fast; we're almost finished with act one. The cast is just brilliant top-to-bottom, very sharp and quick and simply a pleasure to spend time with, much less act beside. I'm not where I'd like to be, memorization-wise, but then again I never am. After last night's rehearsal I found a quiet seat at Barcode to highlight my key words and eat some pecan-crusted salmon. My waitress was hot. I should ask her out.

I read Amadeus every couple of years, so I'm finding that I already know large chunks of the show very well. It's the new ending, written for the 1999 revival, that is going to give me a hard time.

Blogadeus

2009-01-10T21:24:00.004-05:00

Every actor has a list: a collection of the roles they most want to play. These are the roles that thrill us, that intrigue us, that challenge us, maybe even the roles that we alone know we could play even though no one else thinks we could pull it off. Sometimes they are the roles that got away, or the roles we watched another great actor perform. When we check the audition notices and see that a local company is producing a play with one of our list roles in it, our hearts beat a little faster and we start to dream. We may even decide that we wouldn't accept another role in the show, simply because the heartbreak of missed opportunity could interfere with our work.

My list is long and eclectic, from the classical to the contemporary, straight plays and musicals. The double-H's: Harold Hill in The Music Man and Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Both Freddy and Anatoly in Chess, both Jesus and Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Che in Evita. Edmund in King Lear and Bolingbroke in Richard II. Dysart in Equus, the Stage Manager in Our Town, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Alceste in The Misanthrope. Mark in Rent (for which I was called back in New York in 1998, a pure delight). Both Lee and Austin in True West, preferably alternating night-by-night. Father Flote in Red Noses, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, Rakitin in A Month in the Country. I could go on and on. I dream a lot.

I know I will never get to play all, or likely even a fraction of these roles, though I have been able to check a few off my list in recent years: Romeo and Juliet's Mercutio, Julius Caesar's Cassius, and Twelfth Night's Feste. And my jones to perform in Othello, As You Like It, Doctor Faustus, and A Midsummer Night's Dream has been more than satisfied by directing those shows.

It was a thrill to read Scott Wichmann's blog and talk with the man himself last Fall as he tackled one of the roles on his list, Richard III. His tone of voice, in writing and in person, was different in approaching that particular role. He knew it was a dream come true from the start. I can't help but feel like now it's my turn. This winter, one of my greatest theatrical dreams is coming true as Richmond Shakespeare gives me the opportunity not only to play one of the roles on my list, but the one at the very top: Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus.

Amadeus has been my favorite contemporary play ever since I read it in high school. The drama, the language, the moral fireworks and the musical passion resonate in my soul like a bell, with Mozart's innocent arrogance and Salieri's unfulfillable envy both reflecting aspects of my own character that I am most ashamed of. Each of the two lead roles is a massive undertaking, with Mozart in many ways so close to home that I could almost play the role simply by memorizing the lines and getting on the stage opening night. (Well, not exactly. I don't talk about poop quite as much as Mozart does.) But it is the towering emptiness of Salieri that intrigues me more than any other character I have ever read.

In the next weeks, I intend to write more on the process of Amadeus than I ever have on a show I've blogged, if for no other reason than so I can look back, read it, and remember how I got to play my dream role.

First of all, my deep thanks to Grant Mudge for giving me the opportunity. It was almost three years ago that I broached the subject of Amadeus with Grant, when I had just come on board as Richmond Shakespeare's Director of Training. My suggestion was twofold: first, that the aesthetic of RS's five-actor format would be intriguing in the context of non-Elizabethan scripts, and second, that Amadeus would make a magnificent contribution to the Acts of Faith Festival.

The five-actor format, Richmond Shakespeare's calling card for over a decade, strips away layers of technical elements with the intention of giving theatre a greater immediacy and audience connection. The goal is to streamline the storytelling by relying on the tools of actor, director, and occasionally musician. It isn't that we don't like sets and lights, or that we denigrate their contribution to theatrical storytelling. We simply choose to focus on the actor's body and voice and the text, and to mine every ounce of potential from their skillful engagement. In Amadeus, we have a play that already relies heavily on actors and costumes (our favorite technical element) to mark the passage of time and change of status while eschewing period-specific scenery and lighting. We also have a play with seven principal characters, making doubling those actors with smaller roles very easy.

Beginning with a cast of seven, Director James Alexander Bond (as seen on Letterman) requested that we expand the cast to nine, allowing Salieri's gossip-gathering Venticelli to exist as two separate characters rather than doubles played by the actors portraying Strack and Van Sweiten. (This is a fairly important addition: it is difficult for the gossip gathereres to overhear characters who they can't share the stage with because they share bodies with them.) This puts Amadeus somewhere between the pocket-sized casts of five actors and the large company (for us) of 2 Henry IV's 16. By contrast, last year's Hamlet and 2007's Richard II had casts of 10. Spring's As You Like It was performed with five actors, Summer's with 16.

As for the show's Acts of Faith connection, it may be the most explicitly faith-focused show we have ever performed. Our previous festival offerings of The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Doctor Faustus, and Measure for Measure were of course all strongly faith-focused in their ways, from the anti-Semitic/anti-Christian conflicts of Merchant to Desdemona's Christlike forgiveness in Othello to Faustus' infernal setting and Measure's blatantly sinful hypocrisy. But Amadeus tops them all with an antihero who declares war against God for the divine sin of giving His greatest gift to a man deemed by Salieri as unworthy of it.

In the words of Peter Hall, the play's director both in its original incarnation and its 1999 revival, "Amadeus is probably the most successful serious play of the last half century. It has triumphed everywhere." On top of that, the film won a slew of Academy Awards, and featured iconic performances by Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, and of course F. Murray Abraham, whose nose I am not worthy to blow. In addition to Abraham's flawless performance, Salieri has been played by Paul Scofield, Ian McKellan, Brian Bedford and David Suchet just for starters. (The list of famous Mozarts is pretty impressive, too.) Invariably, when people find out we're doing Amadeus, the first question is "Who's playing Salieri?"

"Me," I answer, trying to keep my grin from splitting my face wide open.

I really thought I would feel intimidated or afraid of this, but I don't. I've wanted to play this part since I was 16 years old, and I've been thinking about it for a very long time. I know the show is in the best possible hands with James Bond (as seen on Letterman) directing it, and the cast is anchored by performers I trust completely and look forward to seeing every night (Liz Blake as Constanze, Cynde Liffick as Emperor Joseph), young talent we know we can rely on for energy and ideas (Katie Ford as Strack, David Janosik and Jake Allard as the Venticelli), and newcomers to Richmond Shakespeare whom I can't wait to introduce our audiences to (Jamie Reese as Rosenberg, Joseph Sultani as Van Sweiten, and of course Mike Hamilton as Mozart). With RTCC Award winner Becky Cairns and Annie Hoskins designing the costumes, I have no fears. I've been waiting two decades for this, and the company matches my wildest expectations.

Amadeus opens on the portentious Friday the 13th of February (preview on the 12th), and runs through March 8th. Stay tuned for more gushing blogs.

Announcing the cast of "Amadeus"

2009-01-08T17:44:00.002-05:00

Antonio Salieri - Andrew Hamm
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mike Hamilton
Constanze Weber - Liz Blake
Emperor Joseph II - Cynde Liffick
Count Johann Killian Von Strack - Katie Ford
Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg - Jamie Reese
Baron Gottfried Van Swieten - Joseph Sultani
Venticelli - Jake Allard and David Janosik

Richmond Shakespeare is proud to announce the cast of our next production, Peter Shaffer's modern masterpiece Amadeus, directed by James Alexander Bond. The company is a mix of veterans and newcomers, continuing our commitment to introducing Richmond's theatre scene to fresh talents and developing the artists we have with challenging pieces and roles.

Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Award nominees Andrew Hamm and Liz Blake share the stage for the fourth time (The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, and Hamlet previously), alongside longtime Richmond Shakes veteran Cynde Liffick (more shows than we can count). Three actors are making their second appearances for the company: Katie Ford (Hamlet), Jake Allard (As You Like It) and David Janosik (The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr, Abridged). Jamie Reese makes his memorized-role debut for the company, having appeared in December's staged reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Mike Hamilton and Joseph Sultani once again remind us of how powerful an influence VCU's theatre department is on our local culture.

James Alexander Bond (as seen on Letterman) is directing his fifth production for Richmond Shakespeare, having orchestrated some of the most compelling work the company has ever produced: Julius Caesar, Henry IV Part 1, Measure for Measure, and Henry IV Part 2. He will be returning in the summer to direct Henry V, a unique opportunity for a director to tackle the entire Henriad. Costumes for the show will be designed and constructed by RTCC award-winning (As You Like It) designer Rebecca Cairns with Anne Hoskins.

Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer, will be performed by Richmond Shakespeare from February 12 - March 8 as part of the "Acts of Faith" Festival.

Stay tuned for updates and blogs!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T21:43:00.001-05:00

to all, and to all a good night.

Andrew saves Christmas

2008-12-20T18:49:00.008-05:00

Friday was a very busy day at work. My morning started with bad news, I was still sick with this stupid sinus infection (Has anyone seen my energy? I seem to have lost it), and we have the pre-Christmas-break rush of people expecting their glasses for the holidays. I was still a bit feverish, very weary, and rather focused on the night's Christmas party at Liz and Dave's (which would be preceded by a nap).

With about an hour to go before closing the office, one of my coworkers poked her head into the lab and said, "Santa needs his glasses fixed."

So I went out to the optical floor, and there was Santa Claus sitting at the dispensing station, his glasses a mess: one eyewire screw gone, bent all out of shape, held together with a twisted paper clip, and nasty old green nose pads.

"Santa!" I exclaimed, "You've been naughty to your glasses."

Santa chuckled and mumbled apologetically.

"Okay," I said, "you need a screw here, and I'm going to replace these old nose pads. I'm making a list of how many ways I'm going to have to fix your glasses."

"It's hard up at the North Pole," he called to me as I went back to the lab. His southern accent was a bit surprising, but I suppose Santa, like Jesus and Johnny Depp, has the ability to be all things to all people.

I straightened the jolly old elf's glasses out as much as I dared; they were pretty bent up, and bending metal back too far can snap it. A new screw held his lens in snugly, and new nose pads made the whole package look newer. I chose silicone nose pads, which grip a little better during abrupt altitude changes with the wind in your beard. After cleaning them off, I brought the glasses back out to him.

"Well, you're pretty hard on your glasses, Santa," I gently scolded. "You better watch out or you're going to have no glasses on Christmas Eve, and if that happens you better not cry to me because I won't have a lot of sympathy."

"I'll be more careful," Santa promised me. "Before I leave, I need to make an appointment for my two-year check-up."

"The ladies at the front desk will help you, Santa," I promised. "Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas!" he called as I returned to the lab.

I'm a Christmas hero. Neil Patrick Harris will be the voice of my claymation character on the TV special, which will be preceded by the big drums-and-horns "SPECIAL" word spinning in a circle.

Santa comes all the way down from the North Pole to get his eyes checked by Dr. Robinson and Dr. Parker in Midlothian. How cool is that?

And as an added bonus: how freaking totally sweet are the presents I'm going to get this year?!

Sammy Baugh: 1914-2008

2008-12-18T10:23:00.008-05:00

There are a few constants that Redskins fans have to deal with.

One is the feast-or-famine principle, the fact that the years of feast (late '30s through early '50s, 1982-1991) will always be followed by an equal or larger era of famine (the '50s and '60s, 1993-doomsday).

One is that the #2 quarterback is always more popular in this town than the #1, as long as #2 hasn't played recently. One thing the Redskins unequivocally do better than any other NFL franchise is quarterback controversy: Jurgensen vs. Kilmer, Williams vs. Schroeder, Schroeder vs. Rypien, Shuler vs. Frerotte, Johnson vs. George, Danny (shudder) Wuerffel vs. a lick of sanity, Brunell vs. Campbell.

One is that only the number 33 will ever be retired. We love our #7, our #44, our #81, our #42 and #43, and most recently our #28 and we understand that we will never see those numbers on any Redskin player's back even though they have not been officially retired. We understand that #33 is special, that there is a reason no other team of even half the Redskins' age only has one retired number.

The other thing we understand is that #33, Sammy Baugh, will live forever.

Forever.

Slingin' Sammy Baugh died Wednesday evening of kidney failure and double pneumonia. It is telling that neither one of those ailments was enough to take him down independently, that both had to consipre to attack simultaneously, while he was in a weakened state of Alzheimer's and dementia. And 94 years old.

Redskins owner George Preston Marshall brought Baugh from Texas Christian University to Washington in 1937 to lead a team that had just moved from Boston and was desperately in need of an identity in their new town. Marshall insisted that Baugh buy a cowboy hat and boots to wear for public appearances, despite the fact that the quarterback was a small-town kid with no connection to ranches whatsoever. Baugh would eventually end up retiring to a ranch in Texas after his playing career; ironically, the greatest Redskin of all time would be turned into a cowboy by the team's owner.

And when I say that Sammy Baugh was the greatest Redskin ever, I really mean that I genuinely believe him to be the greatest football player of all time, who just happened to play for the Redskins.

Consider this: in an era when quarterbacks averaged three passes per game, Baugh won the 1937 NFL Championship game against the Bears by throwing for 335 yards and three touchdowns of 35, 55, and 78 yards. In his rookie season, no less. That's nothing short of a 2007 Tom Brady game, a 1999 Kurt Warner game, a 1983 Dan Marino game. As soon as he hit the league, Baugh was transforming it. He invented the forward passing game almost single-handedly from inside the huddle, on the fly.

Consider also: a three-way player, Baugh led the league one year in passing, punting, and defensive interceptions, the only NFL player to ever lead stats on offense, defense, and special teams in the same season--or ever. As a safety, he is still number three all-time for interceptions as a Redskin (31), despite having played in an era where quarterbacks were just starting to pass.

Consider third: he retired with a whopping 13 NFL records, and still holds two of them 56 years later. The two? Punting records. When pundits complain about Ray Guy not being in the Hall, that there are no punters in the Hall, I have to laugh: Hell yes there's a punter in the Hall of Fame. He just happens to be in there as a quarterback. And he was a fair sight better than Ray Guy.

Sammy Baugh was the last living member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's inaugural class. He was Babe Ruth. He was Michael Jordan. He was Wayne Gretzky.

He grew into an irascible old cuss who would have shared a hearty laugh at being called an irascible old cuss. Holding nothing but good-natured contempt for the modern game and its players, he separated himself from the pomp and circumstance of the modern NFL, but would occasionally allow himself to be interviewed well into his 80s. These films and transcripts are worth seeking out for their insight, unpredictability and sheer hilarity. The phrase "sharp as a tack" was invented to describe Sammy Baugh in his 80s.

Two-way players are almost extinct now, though Brian Mitchell remains one of my favorite players of all time, a threat on special teams and out of the backfield as receiver, running back, or quarterback. And let's not forget the recent three-way glory of Patriots receiver/returner/defensive back Troy Brown. That was freaking awesome.

Any discussion about the greatest football player of all time must begin and possibly end with two-way players, with special consideration given to those who go all three. As much as I respect great players like Unitas, Jim Brown, Rice, Payton, and Montana, I'd like to see any of them punt for a 50+ yard season average. (You think punting's easy? Try it.) I'd like to see them tackle. I'd like to see how fast Rice is if he's playing all the snaps on defense. I'd like to see how accurate Montana is if he has to deliver ball-jarring hits.

Sammy Baugh is the greatest Redskin of all time, and the greatest football player ever. #33, the cowboy Redskin, has moved on to a bigger, more beautiful ranch. We will never see his like again.

Washington Post article: "The First of the Gunslingers."

Rocking the "Midsummer" in December

2008-12-16T18:16:00.004-05:00

Thank you so much to everyone who was involved in Midsummer in December last night. The cast, the crew, the rehearsal understudies, and the fabulous audience who came out all made it a huge success and an unforgettable evening.

It's amazing what happens when actors have little to no time to rehearse. Spontaneity becomes essential, and impulses have to become final choices; in short, creativity blooms when you don't have time to second-guess. That's why I love things like staged readings, improv, and 24-hour projects so very much.

We will have to do more of these, my friends. I am grateful to all of you.

The show was so successful that Richmond Shakespeare has elected to produce A Midsummer Night's Dream for our final show of the 2008-2009 downtown season. I'm directing it! Yay!

Midsummer in December!

2008-12-05T13:26:00.003-05:00

Richmond Shakespeare presents

Midsummer in December

A Midsummer Night's Dream
December 15, 2008
7:00 PM

The weather outside is frightful, but love and fairies are so delightful. Join us for a magical staged reading of the Bard's most beloved comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring some of Richmond's most beloved theatre artists: Scott Wichmann, Jennifer Meharg, Audra Honaker, Joe Carlson, Harry Kollatz, Daryl Clark Phillips, David Janosik, Cynde Liffick, TJ Simmons, Liz Blake, Sarah Jamillah Johnson, Shanea Taylor, Julie Phillips, Frank Creasy and more!

Directed by Andrew Hamm, the show features music by Liz and Andrew, with Jake Allard on percussion. The pre-show music is a mix of Richmond Shakes' greatest hits from Midsummer, Hamlet, and The Tempest, as well as love songs from summer's acclaimed production of As You Like It. Come early or you'll miss it.

Monday, December 15, 2008 at 7:00 PM at Second Presbyterian Church (5 N. 5th Street). $15 Adults, $10 Students and Children. All proceeds benefit the Richmond Shakespeare Annual Fund.

James Bond on Letterman!

2008-11-15T18:08:00.005-05:00

James Alexander Bond, my dear friend and director of many Richmond Shakespeare hits, is going to be on David Letterman on Monday night!

He's reading the top ten list, which is James Bond-themed. Apparently, the producers called James Bonds in New York to audition on Friday, and James lives 10 blocks from the studio. Also his middle name starts with "A," so he was the first one in the phone book.

There exists the possibility that the producers will pull him at the table read, but the gig is currently his. Don't miss it!

Workshop canceled

2008-11-11T11:31:00.003-05:00

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the workshop for this evening has been canceled. We will try to reschedule it for later in the year. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Cheers,

Andrew

Good night, sweet prince

2008-11-09T08:47:00.003-05:00

Hamlet closes this afternoon, and I have mixed feelings.

The company has become very close, like soldiers sharing a foxhole, and it is truly a group of very kind, sweet people. I will miss working with them all very much. Playing opposite Jeff Cole has been a singular joy, and the thought of ending that relationship fills me with sadness. (Here's a little behind-the-scenes tidbit for you: In the blackout after Hamlet's death, Jeff and I either clasp hands, or I kiss him on the head, or we tell each other "I love you" every night. It's the only thing that pulls me out of the moment enough to do a curtain call.)

I will miss little moments onstage like looking for the ghost when Hamlet says "Methinks I see my father," like Marcellus and I being dragged to our knees by the Ghost's voice, like how many times Ophelia has heard her father talk about having played Julius Caesar, and the serene calm before the storm of the Gravedigger scene. My favorite moment in the play is just watching Hamlet with Yorick's skull, soaking in his wonderful complexity and loving him.

I will miss this show.

BUT, I'll be grateful for the small break I have through December. I'm starting a new job the week after next. I'm starting to work on my lines and physical vocabulary for Salieri in Amadeus, the role I feel like I've been waiting my whole life to play. And I have two directing projects (neither of which I can talk about yet) in the works, and I want to get as much preliminary work on them done early so I can focus entirely on Salieri in January.

So good night, Hamlet. Thanks for the memories, and for the growth.

What's next?

Richmond Shakespeare's November Workshop

2008-11-07T11:26:00.002-05:00

Dialects
(French and Scots)
with David Sennett
Tuesday, November 11, 7:00-9:30 PM

Offend men. Romance women. Or romance men. Offend women. Nothing says romance more than speaking with a French accent, and nothing puts people off quite like the Scots dialect. Learn both in just one evening! Come prepared to leave with a new relationship or a new bruise.

David Sennett, instructor for this workshop, has offended nearly everyone in nearly every dialect. Ever since high school, he has failed at romance, but he suspects that has more to do with his behavior than his accents.

20 students maximum, high school age and older. Cost: $20. Call 232-4000 to make your reservation today!

All classes and workshops are held at Second Presbyterian Church (5 N. 5th Street). Participants should bring a bottle of water and dress for moderate physical activity.

A journey toward Barack Obama

2008-10-30T16:56:00.005-04:00

I like to play devil's advocate. It gets me in trouble sometimes--okay, a lot--and it occasionally gives people the wrong idea about what my beliefs and values are. I'm willing to bear that burden; I'm a teacher at heart and I want to shake up people's entrenched ideas.

It has long been my philosophy that a fully realized human being must be able to look in the mirror every day and honestly say "I may be completely wrong about everything I believe in." I don't just look to change others' minds, I strive to be open to having my perspective changed as well.

This brings me to Barack Obama, my vote to be the next President of the United States.

It isn't so much that my views on the issues have changed, though a few have. What happened instead was that I had an abrupt realization of just how important many social issues were to me: gay marriage, funding for education and the arts, pay equity, healthcare, environmental preservation, alternative fuels and power sources, human rights. I realized that I had been voting a small handful of issues, all traditionally conservative, and that my votes had most assuredly not been resulting in candidates on any level who were terribly good at handling them.

I had known for months that I could not in good conscience vote for John McCain. When I looked at the newly-shuffled deck of what I believed and compared it against Senator Obama's platform, I realized that I could vote for Barack Obama with a clear eye and head held high.

I have many reservations. I'm not choking on this vote the way I did for Bush in '00 and '04, but I have doubts. Obama's inexperience is a factor, and you have to be delusional to deny that. I'm very nervous about the kind of revisionist Justices he could appoint to the Supreme Court. I worry about his healthcare program, primarily about the fact that there doesn't seem to be any kind of plan in place to fund it. I'm worried about how much more of a mess the current incompetents in charge of the House and Senate could make with a Democrat in the White House (I swear Pelosi and Reid make Bush look like a freaking Rhodes scholar). And there are socialist overtones to his economic plans that trouble me quite a bit. (This last bit I'm less worried about, because no one knows what the hell to do about the economic crisis, and I don't think anyone's current plans resemble what's actually going to happen. January 20 is a long way down the road.)

I still believe that Islamic war is the defining issue of our time. I believed this years prior to September 11, I gnashed my teeth as President Clinton disemboweled our international intelligence and military capabilities, and I still don't believe we as a nation know or care enough about the threat we face, particularly from Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. I fear it's going to take a radiological or chemical attack to make us realize, and such plans are in the works in at least two dozen locations as I type this.

What I'm most worried about is Obama's total inability to meet or even approach the expectations his supporters have. The first time he fails in some major way, will we have a national hangover, a depression?

However...

I'm convinced. I'm convinced that Obama is actually the man we see, not a media-manufactured messiah. I'm convinced that he has the ability to be the kind of transcendent figure that Ronald Reagan was. I'm convinced that he can bring some unity and understanding in the face of an increasingly fragmented social discussion. And I'm convinced that he has the kind of swift and subtle mind a President needs to deal with changing circumstances.

I'm convinced that Barack Obama can be a great President.

I pray God I'm not wrong.

PHILLES WIN!

2008-10-29T21:59:00.006-04:00

THE PHILLIES ARE THE 2008 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!

I knew this team could do it, I just didn't know if they would, it being a Philadelphia team and all.

First of all: bravo to the Rays. They have much to be proud of and nothing to be ashamed of. I don't see them catching that same kind of lightning in a bottle again in a division containing Boston and New York, but they were a great team from start to finish. Bravo to Joe Maddon, who absolutely must be MLB Manager of the Year.

Cheers to Cole Hamels, Series MVP (he got a new Camaro, and gave it to his wife immediately to celebrate her birthday), and to Brad Lidge, whose perfect season as a closer continued all the way through a series-clinching save. Wow. Record books. And Charlie Manuel: thanks for erasing or justifying years of almost with Tito Francona and Larry Bowa.

This team reminds me a lot of the 2004 Red Sox. Both championships feel less like the result of one season and more like the culmination of a half-decade of drafting, building, struggling, failing and growing. The Phils have been almost there for a decade, broke through last year, and took over tonight. They were no one's World Series favorite at the beginning of the postseason. It doesn't matter.

Boston-Philly next year? We were so close!

The Philles should be a Series contender for years to come. What a feeling!!!! I have had such a terrible week (actually a terrible 2008); it felt good to jump up and down and scream myself hoarse for my boys J Roll, Ryan, Cole, Shane and Lidge.

The only problem is that I left my Cooperstown Collection Mike Schmidt jersey at the Coles'. I may have to make a special trip to Oregon Hill tomorrow just to get it. Not even joking.

The craziest week

2008-10-23T14:05:00.007-04:00

I've been paralyzed by the weight of all the stuff I've had to write about, and it's just putting me further and further behind. I may expound on some of the events of the past seven days more later, but here's what I've got for now:

Hamlet arrives

Hamlet had its preview and opening, and it's going very well. We were still tweaking down to the last minute because, you know, it's freaking Hamlet. The cast is all wonderful, and Jeff and Liz in particular have taken some extremely bold choices and molded them into a unique and authentic Hamlet-Ophelia relationship. And how about Katie "Girldenstern" Ford being on the cover of Style Weekly? Stop it, Marcellus!

Great cast; I love them all. Three more weeks of Hamlet coming. [Andrew takes a breath.] Deep and slow, big guy.

New computer

This is the first blog entry I've typed on my new MacBook. I'm enjoying the heck out of it, climbing a steep learning curve, and certainly appreciating the long battery life (as I did in fact leave my charger at home). What stinks is that I had planned to get a sleeker, sexier, more powerful model, but learned to my dismay that it didn't come with a FireWire port. That's effing ridiculous. Mac is the preferred platform for digital audio and video applications, and they release a model without the high-speed port that camcorders and digital mixers all use?! Given a choice between buying up $500 or buying down $300, I descended. So my standard MacBook delights me despite my dissatisfaction with Apple. I'm still getting my Mac feet under me. And she still needs a name.

So is there a connection between switching from conservatives to Obama and PC to Mac? It seems like there should be.

RTCC Awards

What a thrill and a joy it was to be there on Sunday night! A big chunk of the Richmond Shakespeare contingent sat in the back, being the bad kids. It was quite a challenge chatting with the stupendous Sarah Cole to my left and with the lovely Liz in the row in front of me. I'm still a little sore from all the turning and twisting and leaning.

It's very relaxing to go to an awards show when you know you have absolutely no chance of winning. I truly own the experience of "It's an honor to be nominated." Two of the people I was most rooting for, Stephen Ryan and Becky Cairns, did win, and I was happier for them, I think, than I would have been for myself.

When the names were being announced for "Best Direction," Sarah jumped to her feet and screamed, "THAT'S MY DATE!" I win.

Sarah, mother of two, was wearing her prom dress. It was big on her.

Virginia Center for Architecture

I feel bad that I forgot to make a bigger deal with this, but I was a lecturer at the Virginia Center for Architecture's "Fresh" series on Tuesday night. I was asked to talk about creativity for 40 minutes. Jeez, twist my arm.

I have been working on a book about acting called The Five-Tool Player equating the five physical tools baseball players develop with five improvable tools for actors. This seemed like a good opportunity to kick-start that and begin to put a framework together.

It went very well, and was nicely received by a diverse audience of about 30. It was interesting how much they wanted to ask and talk about queer theatre issues, and where the line is between an edgy performance and selling tickets. I'm hardly an expert on these issues, but I'm pretty sure I bloviated convincingly.

What surprised me was how many audience members talked about how much of the material they could take personally, to apply to their own careers and lives. I didn't expect that, and it will definitely shape the writing of the book. You know, when I get all that free time to do that.

Phillies - Rays

If the Phils don't start getting some hits with runners in scoring position, it's going to be over in five.

December surprise?

Uh, I can't talk about that yet. But it's going to be cool.

Coming Attractions

2008-10-20T14:45:00.002-04:00

Big posts are forthcoming on the subjects of the RTCC Awards (which I think should be called the "Lizzies"), the opening of Hamlet (very satisfactory) and the World Series matchup that almost was (GO PHILLIES!). But I have to spend the next couple days finalizing a lecture on creativity for the Virginia Center for Architecture.

I just didn't want my two loyal readers to think I was neglecting important topics.

McCain and Obama at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner

2008-10-17T14:55:00.002-04:00

Spend 20 minutes with this, fans of politics and comedy.

You will be glad you did.

The Phillies are in the World Series!

2008-10-16T09:55:00.004-04:00

The rebuilding is over. Next year is this year, finally. No more Braves, no more Mets, no more freaking Marlins. We can stop talking about the team of Carlton and Schmidt, or even Krukie and Wild Thing, and enjoy J-Roll, Hamels, Howard, and Lidge.

After 15 years as NL also-rans, all potential never realized, not quite spending enough money, not quite drafting well enough, not getting quite the right free agents, it has all come together in this chance to win the whole thing.

The Series starts Wednesday, and the Phils will be mightily rested. Now if only the Red Sox can come back from 3-1 (it's not like we haven't seen it before), my ultimate sports dream/nightmare will come true.

ESPN's Jayson Stark on the Phillies.

R.I.P., P.C.

2008-10-14T13:25:00.004-04:00

My computer died a quiet, peaceful death overnight. Attempts to resuscitate it this morning were unsuccessful, and it was pronounced dead at 7:14 PM Eastern.

Seeing as how this is my fourth or possibly fifth computer of the past decade, I'm done. I don't want to be a PC any more. I'm ready to be converted to the church of Mac. So bring on the hallelujahs, Mac devotees and converts. I want to be saved, I want to be healed, I want to be born again!

Explain to me why I should spend $1100+ on a MacBook instead of half that much on the familiar confines of a Windows-based laptop, brothers and sisters.

(Watch: I'll go home and the damn PC will work again, and I'll somehow manage to convince myself I can work with it for another few months.)

On small characters and alternative acting choices

2008-10-13T11:27:00.012-04:00

I started to write this post to be published on Richmond Shakespeare's blog, but the content ended up being more focused on my personal process than I had intended, and it just wasn't appropriate for a company website.

As much as Shakespeare was an innovator, he excelled at taking established conventions and mining them for every bit of storytelling he could manage. Compleat Works jokingly refers to him as a formula writer, and there is quite a bit of truth to that statement. In addition to using a few dozen of his era's best story forms, Shakespeare was a master at using character types that his audiences would have recognized: the righteous virgin (Juliet, Desdemona, Miranda, Isabella), the unrepentant villain (Iago, Richard III, Aaron), the hothead (Mercutio, Hotspur) various clowns and heroes, cousins and fathers and brothers (not so many mothers). On paper, a lot of these characters seem interchangeable, which is why it's good that Shakespeare wrote for the stage, for our stage in particular, where personal interpretation is such an integral part of the creation of performance.

The character type that draws my attention today is that of the loyal companion. We see him in the form of Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet, Kent in King Lear, Antonio in Twelfth Night, and to a certain degree in Lear's Edgar, R&J's Nurse, Othello's Cassio, and As You Like It's Adam. The loyal companion is generally male and often a contemporary of the more principal protagonist. In many cases, he seems to have no agenda of his own, existing to support the main character and to serve as a sounding-board for monologues. He is always of a lower status than the friend he follows, establishing a master-servant pattern wherein the servant performs his role out of love and filial obligation to his social superior.

This is probably the detail that we have the hardest time wrapping our heads around in the 21st century. The loyal companion loves, serves and cares for his lord simply because he is his lord. There is no consideration of getting a better gig. It is no exaggeration to say that in the order of the Elizabethan universe Antonio's loving service for the shipwrecked Sebastian is a love that can be described as holy. That can be difficult for modern audiences and theatre practitioners to access.

Which brings me to Hamlet, opening October 17, in which I play the role of Horatio, the prototypical Shakespearean loyal companion. Horatio provides information to Hamlet, tries to protect him from the Ghost, obeys his commands, and basically follows him around like a puppy dog. Only a handful of times does Horatio disagree with Hamlet, notably trying to restrain him from going off with the Ghost and apparently disapproving of the prince's actions regarding Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (spoiler alert: they die). Horatio even goes so far as to attempt to drink poison to follow Hamlet beyond the living world. Hamlet stops him, and Horatio obeys his prince's final command to tell the world his story. All in all, a role that on paper lacks a lot of conflict or contradiction. Actually, it pretty much lacks any contradiction whatsoever.

I was talking with Liz Blake, no stranger to tackling the challenge of a potentially standard role, about the character a few days after we started rehearsal. I shared the thought that a female Horatio would be very interesting, particularly if she had long-standing unrequited affections for Hamlet. This would give an actor a lot of material for both internal and external conflicts, as well as a much richer emotional and strategic palate with which to play.

"You know, Andrew," Liz smiled, "Horatio doesn't have to be a girl to do all those things."

Liz has the uncanny ability to cheerfully make me feel like a blithering idiot at least twice a week.

Well shucks, the thought of Horatio being gay just hadn't crossed my mind. And it should have; there's plenty of textual support for it. Particularly interesting is Hamlet's line, "thou art e'en as just a man as ere my conversation coped withall," in the context that "conversation" and "coped" are common Shakespearean code words for sex. There are multiple references to the two men holding each other in their hearts, and Hamlet signs a letter "He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet." In the text, Hamlet confides with one person only: Horatio, whose affection is such that he can't seem to stop calling Hamlet "my lord," "my good lord," "my dear lord," and once "my sweet lord" slips out. It is only after Hamlet has died that he can speak his own secret name for his love: "sweet prince."

In researching queer Hamlets, I've been surprised to see that this angle, a rich vein for exploration by alternative and university theatres in particular, has not been nearly as frequently explored as I expected. In fact, the Oedipal Hamlet is the much more common interpretation, one I really just can't find a stitch of textual support for.

None of this is to say that this is a "gay Hamlet." There's nothing going on between Hamlet and Horatio; Horatio is simply in love with his prince, and has been for years. It's not even a matter of Horatio having the label "gay" placed on him, it's entirely the personal focus of him being deep in unrequited love. He doesn't love men, he loves Hamlet. There are no overt references to it, it doesn't change the production's theme and staging. It's something for me to play with, and for Jeff (Hamlet) to decide whether or not he knew about. (And how could he not? If Horatio is nearly as emotionally naked as the actor playing him, there's no real hiding it.) But it changes every moment of the play for me, gives me an immediate and accessible goal. It gives me some very powerful substitutions, and juicy double-meanings in my scenes with Hamlet. It provides some unexpected conflict when Ophelia (a perfectly nice girl who obviously makes Hamlet so very happy, damn her eyes) is in the scene. It's a hearty piece of meat for the actor, and it's anything to avoid playing Horatio as what the Washington Blade referred to in a 2007 review as "Hamlet's true and trusted sidekick."

Horatio needs to transcend the loyal follower type for Hamlet to achieve its best success. After all it is Horatio, not any of the larger characters who dominates the play's opening and closing moments, setting up our first and final impressions of the story. (In their defense, all of the principals are dead for the play's denouement.) But that's all just "words, words, words." Really, I just needed an objective to sink my teeth into, something that both transcends and supports the loyal servant role Shakespeare so lovingly wrote.

Horatio is a character who is felt less in the text than in the performance; his often-silent presence in witness to Hamlet's drama speaking louder than lines. It's a lot more interesting to stand silently in the presence of the man you're in love with--who just happens to be your lord.

Hamlet runs from October 17 - November 9. Go to www.richmondshakespeare.com for tickets.

CNN: Experts ponder link between creativity, mood disorders

2008-10-08T10:42:00.004-04:00

I've copied the entire piece here, but you can read it at its source here at CNN.com. Thanks to Wayne Conners for bringing it to my attention.

Experts ponder link between creativity, mood disorders
By Elizabeth Landau
CNN

(CNN) -- The works of David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide September 12, are famous for their obsessively observed detail and emotional nuance.

Certain characteristics of his prose -- hypersensitivity and constant rumination, or persistent contemplation -- reflect a pattern of temperament that some psychology researchers say connects mental illness, especially bipolar disorder and depression, with creativity.

There have been more than 20 studies that suggest an increased rate of bipolar and depressive illnesses in highly creative people, says Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the "An Unquiet Mind," a memoir of living with bipolar disorder.

Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art.

"Unquestionably, I think a major link is to the underlying temperaments of both bipolar illness and depression, of reflectiveness and so forth," Jamison said.

This theory could help explain why eminent artists throughout history, from composer Robert Schumann to poet Sylvia Plath to Wallace -- suffered mood disorders.

"It's pretty clear if you read [Wallace's] books that he was a very obsessive, kind of ruminating guy," said Paul Verhaeghen, associate professor of psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology.

"You can see it in his sentences. ... They're breathless and they need to be annotated, and the annotations need to be annotated again."

The research of Verhaeghen and colleagues shows when people are in a reflective mode, they may become more creative, depressed, or both. Previous research shows that when people are in a ruminating mode, they are more likely to be depressed, he said.

"If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again, and you kind of spiral away in this continuous rumination about what's happening to you and to the world -- people who do that are at risk for depression," he said.

Verhaeghen, who is also a novelist and describes himself as a "somewhat mood disordered person," had a particular interest in the connection between creativity and this ruminating state of mind.

"One of the things I do is think about something over and over and over again, and that's when I start writing," he said.

Sensitivity to one's surroundings is also associated with both creativity and depression, according to some experts.

Creative people in the arts must develop a deep sensitivity to their surroundings -- colors, sounds, and emotions, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Such hypersensitivity can lead people to worry about things that other people don't worry about as much, he said, and can lead to depression.

"The arts are more dangerous [than other professions] because they require sensitivity to a large extent," he said. "If you go too far you can pay a price -- you can be too sensitive to live in this world."

Terence Ketter is professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University.

Ketter and his colleagues compared a healthy control group with bipolar patients, depression patients, and a control group of graduate students in writing and the arts.

They found that people with bipolar disorder scored better -- up to about 50 percent higher -- on creativity tests than the healthy control group. The creative control group had about the same increase in score relative to the healthy control group.

But more research is needed, says Ketter. The study does not explain the connection or show a causal relationship, he said.

Some have pointed out that being engaged in creative pursuits makes a person more open to experience, while others say the pressure of being engaged in the arts causes negative emotion, according to Ketter.

Still, the temperamental characteristics in question are thought to be somewhat inherent.

"It's a little hard to argue that engaging in creative activity could create the temperament, and it may be a little bit more possible that this temperament gives you a creative advantage," he said.

Verhaeghen's theory that rumination contributes to negative emotions generally sounds plausible and in some ways consistent with his own views, said Ketter.

Many hope that this type of research will be helpful in developing better strategies to manage and detect mental illness. These strategies can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.

"Tragically, mood disorders can still present a sudden death in people who have been undiagnosed and untreated, and die from the illness," says Ketter.

More specifically, Ketter says, just as heart disease sometimes presents itself for the first time as a fatal heart attack, mental illness sometimes presents itself for the first time as a suicide.

Colbert: Shakespearean Candidates

2008-10-06T13:28:00.000-04:00

Stop and go

2008-10-06T08:24:00.004-04:00

I've been reading about the Redskins' victory over the Eagles this morning, doing my usual scanning of the major sports websites to read reports and commentary. Everybody is now officially impressed.

But there's a big point being missed, one that no one at ESPN, SI, Sportsline, or anywhere else seems to have caught: In reporting that the Redskins have out-gained the Eagles and Cowboys on the ground 364 yards to 102, everyone is focusing on the Redskins' offensive line and Clinton Portis. That's fine, I love Portis (pictured) and have long been a proponent of the idea that any offense is only as good as its offensive line.

What's being missed is the performance of the Redskins' run defense, and that's going to be a factor this year. Yes, the Cowboys inexplicably stopped handing the ball off, and the Eagles' Brian Westbrook came into the game injured and missed a couple series. But Philly was stopped twice on the 2, and Andre Carter is doing a very good impression of a run-stopper for a dedicated edge pass rusher.

So why no picture of the D-line stopping a Dallas or Philly running back? Shhhhhh. Let's keep this a secret for as long as possible.

My head asplode

2008-10-05T07:57:00.008-04:00

Today is too much sports awesomeness for me to handle..

1:05: Washington Redskins at Philadelphia Eagles.

After last week's upset over the Cowboys, arguably the biggest event of the first quarter of the NFL season, the Redskins unbelievably finish their road division schedule in week five. I was expecting a .500 year from my 'Skins this year, especially after that deuce they dropped at the Giants in week one. But after the way the O-line and D-backs have played the past three weeks, I'm almost believing they are an NFC power. Why almost, when many of America's most knowledgeable NFL pundits are penciling them into the playoffs? Because I'm a Redskins fan, and I'm quite accustomed to the heartbreak of Norv Turner and Steve Spurrier teams, not to mention the perpetual teasing almost of Gibbs II: Electric Boogaloo.

(Gibbs II, at least, made the playoffs twice in four years. And he won a playoff game, something the Redskins have done twice since Dallas last won any. Eat that, Cowboys!)

Everyone's talking about the poise of Jason Campbell (Soup!), the punch of Clinton Portis, and the playmaking of Santana Moss, and rightly so. And don't discount the contributions of O-line coach Joe Bugel, who may have finally forged some new Hogs, and defensive coordinator Greg Blanche, whose scheme made Tony Romo look like Tony Danza last week.

(I do wish the Redskins would stop wearing white-on-white, though. It works for teams who have done it for a long time like the Browns and the Chiefs, but there's championship tradition in the white jerseys and burgundy pants. At least they're not wearing dark-on-dark, a hideous look that makes NFL teams look like AFL teams. I would have liked to see the 'Skins switch to the 70th anniversary retro uniforms full-time, but if they're sticking with the classic look, I wish they would wear it in the classic combination.)

Is this finally the year we stop looking to next year? In Jim Zorn, have we finally found the Next Big Coach instead of the Big Name Who Lets Us Down? It's early, but it sure looks that way. We may have replaced The Last Joe Gibbs with The Next Joe Gibbs.

If we win in Philadelphia, I'm officially going from fan to believer.

Speaking of Philadelphia...

1:07: Philadelphia Phillies at Milwaukee Brewers.

I think the entire City of Brotherly Love's head is asplode today, actually. What do you watch, marquee rivalry football game or series-clinching baseball game?

I was really hoping the Phils would win last night. Any game programmed against the Redskins is going to lose for me. The Phightins are relegated to commercial-break status. It isn't that I don't love the Phillies, it's that I lurve the Redskins. I could give you an allegory from my life, but it would only make sense to about three people. Trust me, those three would say "Ohhhhhh, okay, I get it. Yeah, you have to watch the Redskins game, I understand."

So I'm torn between the desire to see the Phillies win the NLDS and the desire to see the 'Skins win in Philly. What do I do if both games are close in the late innings / fourth quarter? My greatest hope is for either the Phillies or Redskins to have it put away by then so I don't feel bad about the bits I miss. Or I watch a gamecast on my laptop while the other game is on TV. Or I buy another TV and set them up side-by-side, as I did in Albany when I was writing a weekly football column. That was cool.

It still hasn't been announced who's starting for Philadelphia, making sports writers' jobs very hard. All I know is that Jeff Suppan is starting for Milwaukee, and Suppan has a strong postseason record. Jobu wake up bats. Series tied 2-2 is very bad. Is very bad.

I have a feeling about Chase Utley today, and about Pedro Feliz. Hence the picture of Pedro Feliz. Move it on to the NLCS, Phils. Give the home town fans something to cheer them after the Redskins beat the Eagles 27-22.

4:15ish: Andrew Hamm at Elsinore Castle.

This is where Andrew works on his lines hardcore. He also works on music for the show. And apparently he refers to himself in the third person.

7:17: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at Boston Red Sox.

Beckett is pitching. At Fenway.

Nuff.

Said.

Of course, I have to watch all of this with one eye while the other is studying my lines for Hamlet. It's the Angels - Sox game that's most going to suffer. I promise I'll break away for the final three innings at least.

On a non-sports note, I worked on my lines Friday afternoon in Hollywood Cemetery. I spent a lot of time on 1.1, which features the appearance of Hamlet Sr.'s ghost. While working on that scene, a cat leapt out of the bushes, yowling, startled. Even in mid-day it scared the shit out of me. I responded by silently shouting, "Stay, illusion!" and delivering my speech to the ghost directly at a gravestone. I promised I would remember the name of the man I was addressing, but I can't recall it. It made my heart pound unexpectedly. Cemeteries are scarier to me than I thought they would be.

Working a ghost scene in a graveyard is scary, would basically be the point I'm making here.

Bailout bacon. Delicious, delicious bacon.

2008-10-03T11:44:00.005-04:00

In the middle of rushing through legislature intended to halt the supposed greatest economic collapse in America since the Great Depression, our elected heroes on Capitol Hill are proving that the one thing they do best is more of the same.

One wonderful thing has come from the failure to push the bailout package through the first time: it has given us more time to look at it. It has given us a chance to see that the bill began as a three-page measure and has bloated out to 450. Neither of those numbers is a typo.

Notably, it has given us a chance to see the $1.7 billion in pork--bacon, really, hickory-smoked and honey-crusted--in the form of tax cuts designed to woo fence votes. Among my favorites are $192 million for Puerto Rican rum producers, $128 for auto racing tracks, $33 for corporations in American Samoa, $223 for Alaskan fishermen affected by the Exxon Valdez 19 years ago, $10 for television productions, and my personal favorite, a $6 million cut designated thus:

SEC. 503. EXEMPTION FROM EXCISE TAX FOR CERTAIN WOODEN ARROWS DESIGNED FOR USE BY CHILDREN.

(a) In General- Paragraph (2) of section 4161(b) is amended by redesignating subparagraph (B) as subparagraph (C) and by inserting after subparagraph (A) the following new subparagraph:

(B) EXEMPTION FOR CERTAIN WOODEN ARROW SHAFTS- Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means of enhancing the spine of such shaft (whether sold separately or incorporated as part of a finished or unfinished product) of a type used in the manufacture of any arrow which after its assembly–

(i) measures 5/16 of an inch or less in diameter, and

(ii) is not suitable for use with a bow described in paragraph (1)(A)

(b) Effective Date- The amendments made by this section shall apply to shafts first sold after the date of enactment of this Act.

Thank God. We're saved from certain economic ruin. It was the wooden arrows that pushed Lehman Brothers over the edge. :Roll. Freaking. Eyes.:

Look, I know this crap happens all the time. It's how things work in the Capitol Hill Sausage Factory, and it makes The Jungle look like The Jungle Book. I understand that. But is this a crisis, or is it a grab opportunity? This isn't some obscure little bill that first-term Senators need to use to prove to the people in their district that they're working for them. This affects just about everyone in every district. Everyone is watching this one.

Aren't earmarks one of the big issues of the current presidential campaign? Where are Obiden and McPalin now? I want to know who's going to lead the charge and say, "Look. This one is different, guys. Let's get it right the way it's supposed to be gotten right, because it's the correct thing to do and not because we can get some cash for wool research (yes, wool research)." Maybe we can set a precedent of actually doing what Congress is supposed to do.

I don't know how I stand on this bailout. I'm not an economist, I have no assets to speak of, and I'm so deep in Hamlet that I haven't been able to research it as much as I would like. My fiscal conservative side says no, that failures have to be weeded out of the financial gene pool for it to be healthy. But my social-justice-seeking side sees a lot of people in a lot of trouble because of the worst kind of abuses of capitalism. Both sides are now hungry for Bite-Sized Frosted Mini-Wheats.

I don't know what the right thing to do is. But I'm fairly confident that it involves neither rum, wool, or the diameter of children's wooden arrows.

New York Post link.

Redskins 26, Cowboys 24. Ha ha ha.

2008-09-29T15:33:00.000-04:00

Redskins leave Texas Stadium with a fond memory

September 28, 2008 11:34 PM

Posted by ESPN.com's Matt Mosley

IRVING, Texas -- Barring a playoff meeting, the Washington Redskins made their final visit to Texas Stadium on Sunday. And after a 26-24 victory that doesn't even begin to tell the story, they pretty much left the Cowboys' defense in ruin.


	AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
	QB Jason Campbell led the Washington Redskins to a memorable win over the division rival Cowboys.

Make no mistake. Sunday's win bore no resemblance to a fluke. The Redskins didn't steal a game from the team alleged to be the best in football. They walked in the front door and pushed around the Sultans of September in front of their home crowd.

Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell said he ran onto the field after the game in search of his counterpart, Tony Romo. Like most of his teammates, though, Romo had sounded the retreat.

It started in the second quarter and lasted throughout the rest of the game. The Cowboys' frantic comeback attempt only dolled up the final score.

Campbell was characteristically understated after the game, but what he did in the first half suggests that he's on his way to joining the upper echelon of quarterbacks in this league.

Facing a defense that was obsessed with not letting wide receiver Santana Moss catch a deep ball, Campbell calmly took what was given to him. But when Cowboys Pro Bowl cornerback Terence Newman bit on a stop-and-go route late in the first half, Campbell deftly stepped away from trouble and winged a 53-yard completion to Moss.

When I approached his locker after the game, Campbell was actually upset about the play. He felt like he robbed Moss of a record-setting touchdown by not hitting him in stride. Moss, who finished with eight catches for 145 yards, had tied the team record last week with touchdowns in six consecutive games.

"I wanted to get that for him," said a dejected looking Campbell. "That's the first thing I did was go apologize to him."

Redskins coach Jim Zorn said he led three "Redskins cheers" in the locker room before meeting with reporters. The biggest reason Daniel Snyder hired him as coach was his belief that he could take Campbell to a Pro Bowl level. That's why he quickly hired himself as quarterbacks coach.

When the offense looked awful in the season opener against the Giants, Zorn asked Campbell to trust him. That's when Campbell shot back, "You need to trust me too."

After the game, Zorn sounded like a proud teacher.

"He didn't have any of the ups and downs, these sways of emotion," Zorn said of Campbell. "What I always talk to him about is bearing down and what I mean by that is if you grit your teeth to get through difficult situations, you must [get through it]. We were fortunate enough to beat a great football team, but part of that was his concentration level and he just kept it up the whole game."

Zorn felt the sting of criticism after the Giants loss. He thought it was important for his team not to see him "flinch." And even when star running back Clinton Portis complained that week about the offensive line and the play-calling, Zorn didn't take the bait.

Now, he's reaping some of the rewards a lot sooner than most of us thought. And at least for one day, the Redskins looked like the team to beat in the NFC East. Or maybe the Cowboys are simply overrated.

Now, join me for several items that didn't really belong in the previous 700 words:

Did the Cowboys' obsession with T.O. backfire on them?

First of all, let's give the Redskins' secondary its proper due. In the first half, cornerback Shawn Springs jammed Terrell Owens at the line of scrimmage and pretty much took him out of the game. T.O. finished with only two catches for 11 yards, which may have caused offensive coordinator Jason Garrett to overcompensate in the second half.

After all, Patrick Crayton and Jason Witten combined for nine catches, 110 yards and a touchdown in the first half. On the first drive of the second half, Romo completed three passes to T.O., the third going for a 10-yard touchdown. Romo ended up throwing to T.O. six times in the third quarter and five more in the fourth quarter.

The most telling drive came right after the Redskins took a 23-17 lead early in the fourth quarter. The Redskins broke up three consecutive passes to T.O., the last two by Carlos Rogers, who was covering him because Springs left the game with a calf strain.

Of the Cowboys' 58 offensive plays, they either threw or handed the ball to T.O. 19 times. In my mind, that smacks of a team trying too hard to make one player happy. In the first half, he appeared to give up on a few routes when he knew the ball wasn't coming his way. It was pretty obvious that Springs was frustrating him.

After the game, a Cowboys starter on offense said he thought the team tried too hard to involve T.O. in the second half. It's not good when a player senses that coaches are calling plays in order to keep a teammate happy. It's not time to panic if you're a Cowboys fan, but I'd certainly keep your eye on that situation. It's a slap in the face to Witten, Patrick Crayton, Miles Austin -- and especially rookie Felix Jones to freeze them out in order to please T.O.

At least the Cowboys shut down one running back

If there's someone who can make sense of Wade Phillips' justification for not giving rookie running back Felix Jones a single carry Sunday, please contact me immediately.

"He has a specific role that he plays," Phillips said of Jones. "The plays that he works on, they aren't really come-from-behind plays. They are more normal game situation plays. We will be more and more comfortable with him as he learns more."

After Sunday's performance, I'm thinking Wade might want to add a few more "come-from-behind" plays.

Sentimental day for Springs

Playing in Texas Stadium for the final time probably meant more to Shawn Springs than any player on the field. He remembers spending Sundays at the stadium watching his father, Ron, play fullback for the Cowboys.

Springs told me after the game that he opened up the Dallas Morning News today and saw a picture of Roger Staubach being lifted into the air after the Cowboys' 35-34 comeback victory over the Redskins on Dec. 16, 1979.

"You know who was picking him up?" Springs asked. "That was my father."

Ron Springs remains in a coma in a local hospital following complications from a surgery to remove a cyst last year.

Postgame altercation

Redskins running back Rock Cartwright said he and Cowboys defensive tackle Tank Johnson had spent much of the evening jawing back and forth. But as the Redskins were kneeling on the ball at the end of the game, Cartwright said he stood at midfield and gazed through the iconic hole in the roof of Texas Stadium.

Johnson, who's is his second year with the Cowboys, apparently thought Cartwright was attempting to evoke memories of T.O. standing on the star several years ago as a 49er. After the final snap, Johnson raced over and shouted, "Don't disrespect the star."

I'm thinking Johnson may have more important things to deal with after his defense gave up 161 rushing yards. Some of you might recall Phillips saying recently that "no one runs on the Dallas Cowboys."

Well, make that almost no one.