Living the Dream 22

The play opened Off-Broadway to some pretty good reviews. Some of the cast received great reviews with the critic going into detail praising the dynamic comedic performances of some and saying about me that I  "evoked laughter". That's good enough for me, actors from Jimmy Ray's thought I had the best review as evoking laughter is as good as "scintillating" or" exquisitely charming".

This was a great time for me, making a living at something that I had been doing for nothing and getting some notoriety around New York. I would take a date to Studio 54 and the security ,at the door, let me in before the long line waiting out side because , hey, I was in a hit Off Broadway show.

Around this time I made some serious mistakes concerning my over all career. I still had no agent but I didn't care because as far as I was concerned , I had made it. Instead of seeking out agents or asking for recommendations from working actors that I was in contact with, I acted like a sailor who has been out to sea too long. But I was lighting up the audience every night that consisted of film directors and producers. I felt it was just a matter of time, let them come too me.

After a couple of months into the run it became apparent to me that this strategy was not working. The other cast members would be getting auditions for Tv and film and I would get nothing. It became a revolving door with actors coming and going as the original cast left to do other acting jobs in film and Tv and their parts were filled by graduates of the famous and expensive acting schools, especially Yale Drama.

The play ran for 6 months. All during that time I did 195 straight performances without missing one. I went on whether even if I was sick. In fact I had caught salmonella poisening from bad chicken during the run which lasted 2 weeks. I was afraid to miss a show, what if my Yale graduate understudy was good, they would replace me, some guy off the street.

Some thing happened thousands of miles away from the Public that affected my standing at the Public for future productions. The Iranian Hostage crisis developed during the run of the show. I'm not going to go into detail what was happening on the global stage but I felt that America was the victim.

The conflict I was having was that everyone and I mean everyone, actors, crew, directors and writers at the Public sided with Iran. I would argue with them because I felt the US was in peril and would suffer for Carter's weak response for years to came . I have been proven right .

These were the ones that had benefited the most from being American. I was all over the world when I was in the Navy and felt fortunate that my grandparents took the risk to come to America.I didn't care if they went to Harvard or Yale, they were uneducated in the ways of the world.
This gave me a some kind of a rebel reputation which I did my best to live up to.

Into the Run 21

After this initial performance and my encounter with the security guard, I noticed a different attitude from the other artist working at the Public. When I went to the theater the next day some of the other actors in the other shows at the public, there were 3 other shows going at the same time as ours,smiled when they saw me and one actually said that they should fire me because I make the other actors look unreal opposite my character. I took this as a joke at the time.

The audiences were picking up on the play's light humor and I was getting good feedback, mainly from the audience, which on the whole, gave good hearty laughs during my scenes.I had a great character. Like I said, he was a hapless street person with aspirations of being a writer. I had three really good scenes and at the end I come out all dressed up in a brand new loud suite and run into the character from the first scene, when my character was homeless. I tell him that someone bought my writings and that now I was rich. So, my character goes through a major change during the play which is always makes for a interesting character for the actor and the audience.

I did notice  resentment from some of the people who worked backstage or in the offices. I can't blame them too much. After all , these people have been kissing ass for years to get the opportunity I was getting without having to pay thousands of dollars to  CONSERVATORIES of the performing arts.

After a couple of weeks into the run, The Public Theater announced that"Sorrows of Stephen" would be moved to a larger space with a full Off-Broadway contract and a open ended run. That means a raise in pay and now a much wider exposure with all the big shot reviewers from the New York Times etc.

I felt great, this was what I wanted all along, to just act for a living. I thought I had made it, which turned out to be a big mistake on my part. This was not the pinnacle of the ladder to success but the first step on the ladder.

Another door opens 19

  I returned from the O'Neil with renewed confidence. I had more than held my own on stage with some of the best actors from New York and Los Angeles. Even though I still had no agent, I was called in for a interview for a major film.

I was given no script but I had an interview with the casting director that went very well and the proof of that was a callback to meet with the lead actor that I had a lot of respect. Again the interview went well as I was able to talk about acting with the star and again I was callbacked to meet with the director.

With three interviews and no script , I had no idea what they were looking for except the character was from a tough neighborhood in the Bronx. That can mean anything and when I went into the interview with the big director, in a condo on 57 st and Park Avenue. I reacted like anyone from that kind of neighborhood and commented how beautiful the condo was and the spectacular view out the window. The director was sort of condescending and remarked that he had a even better place in Malibu.

I didn't get the role and when I went to see the film a couple of years later I got angry. The characters were fighters and wise guys which I could play if I got up 4 in the morning with a hangover. I know that the persona, of a ordinary working man, I showed to the director was not what they wanted and if I knew what they wanted I could have done it with ease. Everybody says just be yourself on a interview but I am many different people, I am a chameleon and can change to whatever is needed.

I didn't get the big film,it would have been a great shot but that kind of luck is not my destiny. So, I had to slug it out off-off Broadway some more and I started to get calls from some of the better off-off Broadway theaters.

 I accepted a role at the IRT theater for a new play "Windfall Apples" a period 1940's original play. I bring this play up because it was the first time I worked with an actor that would intentionally try to upstage me. During our scenes together he would break the blocking, that we had worked on, and walk upstage as far as he could. When I caught on to what he was doing, I would turn my back to him and just talk to him over my shoulder. If I got a laugh on a certain line, the next night he would slam a door or fake cough on my line.

Why an actor would do this is beyond me. It certainly doesn't make the scene better . The thought would  intrude in my mind while I'm onstage with him,"look what this asshole is doing".Thankfully, these kind of actors don't last long and are weeded out because no project can be successful with such a selfish pos.99% of the time, I have had great experiences with actors and the trust we developed with each other on stage would last for years offstage. 

An acting teacher I had at HB Studios recommended me for a play at the Jewish Rep Theater. It was an old play "The Gentle People" by Irwin Shaw originally done on Broadway in the 1930's. The character I was to play was Goff, the main antagonist in the play.

Goff was a gangster that worked alone and also a romantic. This guy was extorting this poor fisherman and the same time seducing the fisherman's daughter. You gotta love this guy. He was totally evil but I didn't approach him that way. There was a piece of dialogue between him and the fisherman that was the key to the character. The fisherman asks Goff "What do you got inside you" Goff answers " I got what I learned on the brake rods,poolrooms, food lines and dive bars all across this country, I got rock inside me old man" .

That was the only way he knew to survive in 1930's depression America. Goff worked alone and in the play it is indicated that Goff uses a gun but I decided to use a flip open knife that with practice, I was able to flip it open instantly with a flick of my wrist.

I received one of my greatest compliments from the audience. At the end of the play, the fishermen, that Goff is terrorizing, decide to kill him as this is the only way they can get him out of their lives. They take Goff out on their boat and mange to throw him overboard and he drowns. Every night when I was thrown over the side of the boat, The audience cheered and applauded.

I received a call from a director that I met up at the O'Neil. He said he was doing a reading for a new play for Joe Papp, the producer of The New York Shakespeare Festival or Public Theater, the foremost equity theater in New York. Many successful Broadway plays have come out of there such as: Chorus Line and many others.

He didn't ask me to do the reading but would I mind reading one of the parts for rehearsal as the actor doing the part couldn't make it that day. Of coarse I said I would do it.

The day of the rehearsal came and there were 10 people in the cast, all on the fast track of acting signed with some of the best agents in town.

The play was a comedy "Sorrows of Stephen"and the part I was reading was very funny and when I read with the lead actor J, a yuppie to his bones, I got a lot of laughs from the other actors watching.

When rehearsal was over, the writer P asked me how I liked the play. I told him, and it was the truth, that I really liked it. The director S, asked me if I was available to do the reading for Papp. Well, I didn't have to look in my appointment book when I said yes. The other actor that was supposed to do the reading was never mentioned again and I was set to do it.

So, this was some kind of sneaky audition in that if they didn't want me, there would be no hard feelings.

The day of the reading came and we were brought into Joe Papp's huge office.My character was a homeless guy who asks some guy for  a quarter and sees that he went to school with this obvious successful person. The reading went very well and the cast and I waited outside the theater as the director was talking with Joe. S came out finally and said it looks very good.

Four days later I received a call from the director saying that Joe Papp wanted to try the play out as a workshop and it was alright for me to do the part and that I would soon receive a call from the casting director. Now, I have been trying to get an audition for years with this casting director to no avail. She called me, in a very cold voice, and asked who my agent was.  I said I didn't have one at the moment and she said I am being offered the part and do I accept. Of coarse I said yes and I do believe from her cold and unfriendly voice that she hoped I would say no. I am sure that wasn't the way she would talk to a big agent or one of the elite, pampered upper class actors that she was accustomed.

I would encounter many people like her and L from the O'Neil and no matter how good I was, to them I was just some street person that wondered off the street into their world.

I didn't care,I would show them, they are no better than me, they just had better parents.