Tag: Acting

Day 2 / Reason 2 for Going Back to the Theatre: My Sister

December 2, 2021
Against all better judgement I have begun a 12-part blog series enumerating my reasons for going back to the theatre, specifically to see ACT’s production of A Christmas Carol on December 12. This is day two of my virtual half-advent calendar.
I have never really fully explained why I left the theatre back in 2013. My reasons were personal, even if my retirement was painfully public. Maybe I’ll get to sharing those reasons someday, but before I can do that, I should state for the record who is to blame for me becoming involved in the art form in the first place. That would by my sister, Margaret, or “Maggie” as those of us closest to her know her these days.
Maggie first fully electrified my theatrical imagination playing Puck in her junior high school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was maybe six or seven, but I followed the Elizabethan text better than one might expect. Still, a lot of the language lofted over my head. Except when Maggie spoke, transformed as she was into a mischievous hobgoblin, seemingly in charge of all of the chaos reigning on the stage.

Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover’s fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

I already had it mostly memorized, because I had listened to her memorizing it in her room over the weeks before.
The following year, when my sister played Gollum in the school’s production of The Hobbit, the gas really hit the spark plug.
“Bless us and splesh us my precious. Gol-LUM!”
She would practice her lines over and over in her room with the door shut, but she was loud enough for me to hear everything in the room Eddie and I shared next door.
“What’s it got in its pockets, my precious? Gol-LUM!”
These eponymous punctuations “Gol-LUM!” burst forth from her as seemingly uncontrollable, autonomic eructations welling up from the pit of her gut. Or rather, Gollum’s gut, for she had, indeed, become the twisted little monster.
“We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses. Wicked, tricksy, false!”
Looking back now, she was so unlike other girls her age, in the mid-70s: so obsessed with hair and fashion and looks. Oh, Maggie cared about those things too, obsessed about them at times, but she threw them all aside when she came to inhabit Gollum. Once him, she didn’t care one bit about looking feminine, even though the director had squeezed her blossoming body into a green and brown painted body suit. She gave herself over completely to the character. It was really, for me, the first time I had ever witnessed such a transformation.
Now you may say, wait a minute. She was doing theatre, pretending. This wasn’t real. But when your oldest sister by six years is becoming an avariciously murderous monster in the room next door to yours, it’s real all right.
Keep in mind this is decades before the magic of Peter Jackson’s digital capture of Andy Cirkus’ pliable, gamut-running, psychologically insightful portrayal in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. It was even prior to the animated version of The Hobbit released in 1977. As far as I know my sister had never seen a performance of Gollum, and I’m not even sure she read the book. My sister had nothing from which to construct her portrayal but the text of the stage adaption and her own imagination. In other words, she did the quintessential actor’s job, and took fresh text (fresh to her anyways) and molded from it a character whom she then inhabited. Her portrayal of Gollum encapsulated everything about the theatrical process that would get and keep me stoked for the next three decades. As an artist, my sister set me on fire. With Puck and Gollum she showed me how weirdness and audacity could be leveraged into a gift you could offer other people in performance.
The key to my origin story as a theatre artist—which I never put together consciously throughout all those decades of doing it, and only just fully realized writing this—is that I started acting, and then went on to playwriting, because of my sister Maggie. She touched the match to my fuse as an artist, and I’ve been burning ever since.
Every one of my siblings has some experience with the theatre, but I was the only one who went professional. I got my Actors’ Equity card at the age of 19 playing Young Scrooge at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. I never used my union card again.
My Christmas present from Maggie that year was a beautiful, hardbound illustrated copy of A Christmas Carol. Here’s how she inscribed it.

1/11/88

Dear Paul,

I saw this book a week or so after we saw your show & I had to get it for you. I know that the show caused some inner turbulence for you but it is a timeless story that touches everyone’s heart. Your show was an excellent adaptation of the story. After buying this book I started thinking about what it is that makes this story so special. What did I come up with? We can identify with Scrooge’s past, present and future “personas”, and we can relate to the loss of Christmas spirit that seems to occur as we get older. We become so caught up in the ways of the world, that we lose touch with the ways of the soul. I’d like to believe that in this story Dickens isn’t merely encouraging the celebration of Christmas, he’s demanding that we celebrate life. The ghosts are merely showing us how we have allowed the control of our lives to be taken out of our hands. To you, dear brother, I wis a full, rewarding, happy, sad, thoughtful, action-packed, glorious and challenging life. I hope that you will enjoy this book & celebrate Christmas every day of your life.

Lots of Love,

MCM [Margaret Cecilia Mullin]

There’s so much I could tell you about everything my sister has taught me over the years, but if I had to boil it all down to highlights it would be these:
- Life is long, but ultimately short.
- Be weird when you want.
- Be loud in your love.
- Celebrate light in the darkness.
Posted at 11:40 AM in Art, Books, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: A Christmas Carol, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Acting, Ford's Theatre, Gollum, Margaret Mullin, Puck, The Hobbit, Theatre
The Macallan Talks – Side Two

January 14, 2011

A few days ago I shared a transcript I recently found from the first half of a cassette tape recording that William Salyers and I made one evening in 1997 while consuming a bottle of Macallan scotch, each. As promised, I share the second half of the full transcript at the end of this post.
We are clearly getting drunker on side two. Alas, this does not increase the insightfulness of our comments. Just the opposite, I’m afraid. I sure don’t like myself very much as the discussion wears on. It feels to me, thirteen years later, like I am trying to badger Bill into believing he will be a better artist once he admits he’s an artist and opens himself up to– what?—the “wider universe”; the “heroism of art”, or whatever woo-woo crap 30-year old-Paul was spouting. At one point, I literally say to him: “I think you need to start reading folktales.” Can you even get more excruciatingly Left-Coast Joseph Campbellish condescending than that?
In the intervening time since I gave him this advice Bill Salyers has gone on to world premiere the title role in Louis Slotin Sonata in Los Angeles and then off-Broadway, winning himself several awards and enormous critical acclaim for his efforts. He also world-premiered my play An American Book Of The Dead – The Game Show, directed the world premiere of The Good Ship Manhattan, world premiered The Sequence playing future Nobel Laureate, Francis Collins, and these are just the examples from my scripts. The quality of his work as an actor in an even broader panoply of plays —classic, modern or brand new (mine and others) — is legend. And I think it is safe to say that Bill never really changed his point of view from the one he espouses in these recordings. In other words, for all my high holy exhortation to become a better artist by first admitting he is one, Bill remained a great artist, and became an even greater one, simply by being Bill. Lesson learned: not all heroes and artists want to be heroes and artists— some don’t even believe in such things— and yet, somehow, art and heroism still happen.
So, with that, here’s some highlights, then the whole thing at the end if you’re interested:
Blowing smoke up Salyers’ shorts while simultaneously patronizing him
PAUL: I consider you to be as great an artist as I’ve ever met. I consider you… to…I consider that I need to learn things about my craft that you’ve already learned about yours. I’ve also– yeah! And I’m starting to, because you’ve worked at your craft. You’ve been pragmatic hands-on with your craft in a lot of different ways that I’m just starting to: I’m starting to write for television, you know. I’m starting to… write for hire.
BILL: Right.
PAUL: You know?
BILL: Right.
PAUL: Which you’ve been doing for a while. In fact, in some ways, you… that’s what you do is act for hire…. Except on projects like TUESDAY where you chose to do it because of– of whatever feelings you have for the work. Um… but I– but I think the one thing that I’ve always kind of instinctively known, whether it was because of my religions upbringing, or because of my attraction to art.
BILL: Mm-hm
PAUL: Because my attraction to art was one of a knight in shining armor. And we can talk about that too. Uh…I have revised my vision– but not completely on that. Um… I do think that artists are true heroes.
BILL: Hmm? (Maybe this is sort of a verbal shrug?)
PAUL: True heroes. That true artists are those people who um…. and I include that person who can make the exquisite phad tai, or… or the exquisite scotch, or, or can uh… well, we can talk about that maybe later, but– I feel like one of the things that– that you refuse to admit is that that which you do is beyond your control–
BILL: Mmm-hmm.
PAUL: To a certain extent. And you’re uncomfortable with that.
Devolving into faux-Jesse Jacksonism
PAUL: For many people– for the born-again Christians of the world– I would nothing but heartily convince them that there is nothing outside themselves.
(Bill laughs.)
PAUL: That that world which they have created is their own fucking fucked-up… vision of the world.
BILL: Yeah.
PAUL: And that that which they hate is themselves. And that which they love is a… sweetened aspect of themselves and that they have not left themselves.
BILL: Right.
PAUL: You… you I would encourage you to see the other aspect of the universe, and that is that you are constantly connected in a thousand million different ways to that which you feel unconnected to. And that that the– that the satellite– you’re either a satellite revolving around the sun or you are the revolution. You know?
BILL: Mmm.
PAUL: You know?
BILL: Mmm-hmm.
PAUL: And uh… not to sound like Jesse Jackson. Although that would be– Fuck, man. I should write for Jesse Jackson ‘cuz that’s great!
(Bill laughs.)
PAUL: That’s better than anything Jesse’s said in a long mother-fucking time.
(Bill laughs.)
PAUL: You’re either that which revolves around the sun, or (Jesse Voice) you are the revolution!
BILL: You’re right. That does sound like Jesse.
PAUL: Umm. Except it doesn’t rhyme. But it’s– it’s a little too sublime for Jesse. We’ll have to find some other demagogue for it. But– although I love– my heart goes out to Jesse. I can’t hate, Jesse. He’s fab– Did you hear his speech the last convention? It rocked.
Mullin lays an Irish curse on Salyers
PAUL: There’s– There’s this great Zen koan that I love. Says– the young monk comes to the master, and says, you know, “I’m meditating but I’m too cold.” And the Zen master says, “Well, you know when cold go to that place where you are so cold that it kills you and when you are hot go to that place where you are so hot that it kills you.” And I lay this Irish curse on you: “Live in that universe where there is no art. Be that universe where there is no art.”
BILL: Well, I think I’ve tried to. I mean, I–
PAUL: No, I mean it.
(Paul laughs.)
PAUL: NO, I MEAN IT!
(Paul laughs hysterically.)
BILL (drunken voice mockery of Paul): You don’t understand!
On whether an actor should ever argue a director down
BILL: This stuff about– this stuff about uh– nobody stops to think about the fact that there was a director involved in that show. It wasn’t just about what Steven wrote. It wasn’t just about what I did, you know? What I– when I’m– when I’m rending my hair, my fake hair, at an incredible point and I go, “RENFIELD!” That’s not necessarily my choice.
PAUL: Right.
BILL: That’s me doing what I was told the best way I could. And I’m–
PAUL: Right.
BILL: And I’m presented with the challenge of trying to find truth in that. Now a lot of actors would have argued Eddie down…. That’s not my job. It’s not my– it’s not my job to uh– promote myself–
PAUL: Is there ever a time when it’s right to argue a director down?
BILL: Yeah, when you’re the other director.
(Paul begins to groan very lowly. )
BILL: If you’re an actor your job is to do what you’re told as best as you possibly can.
PAUL: Wow! Okay! We come to the truth of it.
BILL: I’ve– I’ve long said that. If you want to direct a play go fucking direct a play.
PAUL: Well, wait a second. Wa-wa-wa-waaaiiit a second
BILL: Okay.
PAUL: Because I think it’s not as facile as that.
BILL: I think it should be. I think if you’re a craftsman it is.
PAUL: Ah well.
BILL: –And that’s why I’m not an artist.
PAUL: Hmmm.
BILL: I– I don’t have any patience for that crap. I mean, it’s another– it’s another– it’s another way that the film world has invaded what we do.
PAUL (overlapping): Well, here we go. Well, here we go is what I’m saying is like, yes, as the novice, rookie, bullshit actor who’s got a little taste of Stanislavsky, a bad taste via Mr. Uh– Strasberg.
BILL: Strasberg, yeah.
PAUL: Uh…. That’s the last thing they need to be doing is telling the director what their choices are. But let me tell you something about Mr. (slurry) Mr. Eddie Levi Lee, is that you know more about theatre in your fucking, you know, nose–
BILL: Then I, then I–
PAUL: Hair clippings than Eddie Levi Lee knows.
BILL: Okay, then if I– if I believe that going into it, I’m a hypocrite when I sign the contract. And I’m not a hypocrite… so I sign the contract.
PAUL: I– augh!
On whether an actor should ever refuse a line change from a director
PAUL: Billy, you’re saying– you’re saying to me that in no circumstances would it be right for you as one of the best actors that I know uh… to– to call bullshit on a director. That
BILL: I’m saying it’s not my job.
PAUL (overlapping): That fucking frightens me. No, it is your fucking job!
BILL: No, it’s not.
PAUL: Yes, it is your fucking jo–
BILL: I don’t agree with you.
PAUL (overlapping): I went to– John Sylvain came to me and said– I had a line that said, “I threw that pass–” now obviously this is an actor/playwright, a whole ‘nother issue.
BILL: I know the line you’re talking about, too.
PAUL: Yeah, said, “That fucking nigger dropped it.”
BILL (simultaneously): “That fucking nigger dropped it.”
PAUL: And Johnny said, “You need to cut that.” And I said, “You need to go fuck yourself, because one, it’s the night before opening, and two, it’s the fucking script, and THREE, it’s the way we rehearsed it.
BILL: Well, let me– let me tell you something. I’m not saying– don’t misunderstand me. In that same situation I would have asked John to keep the line. I wouldn’t have told John to go fuck himself, because John’s the director.
PAUL: No! No! No!. But see that’s where I digress with you, because John’s fucking with my shit there and he has no business doing it.
BILL: Brother, it’s not–
PAUL: And he deserves–
BILL: It isn’t your shit!
PAUL: Yes!
BILL: It’s our shit.
To follow is the full transcript of the second side of the cassette.
(more…)

Posted at 11:40 AM in Art, Books, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: A Christmas Carol, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Acting, Ford's Theatre, Gollum, Margaret Mullin, Puck, The Hobbit, Theatre
The Macallan Talks – Side One

January 10, 2011

Giving my demons the year off has left me time to take care of some housecleaning, like backing up my old files to the cloud before my next hard drive crashes. About a week ago I ran across a couple of old Word files that I thought were lost forever: transcripts from something called “the Macallan Talks”. The premise was simple: two full fifths of Macallan 12-year-old scotch, a cassette tape recorder, William Salyers and myself. We would talk about what we always talked about, but capture it on tape finally so that I could transcribe it and then possibly either publish or stage it. Or at least that’s what I recall the plan was. This was over thirteen years ago, so I’m not really sure what I was thinking. All I know is that this conversation has never seen the light of day until now.
Mostly you get an ardent exchange between two friends who love talking, especially to each other. Bill and I still blather like this, whether on the phone, since we no longer live in the city, or into the wee hours over scotch and illicit cigarettes, on the now ever rarer occasions when we do manage to get together in person. What strikes me most clearly now looking over these transcripts is how little our positions have changed in the intervening years. Bill still ardently defends his “craft” against any woo-woo incursions of higher powers or purposes. I still maintain that what we do, when we do it well, matters in sublime and fundamental ways we can only barely glimpse in fleeting, incomplete flashes.
Had I made these discussions public at the time, I am convinced that they would have been dismissed as the pompous rantings of a pair of third-tier theatre artists who thought way too highly of themselves and each other. Now? Well, nothing’s changed. All of that is essentially still true (sorry Bill, at least you have a television career), but somehow I imagine (hope?) that the intervening near decade and a half gives our arguments some resonance beyond the moment. Of course, the final analysis is up to you. I publish the full first cassette side transcript at the end of this post. I will publish the second side in another upcoming post. In the meantime, some highlights from the first half:
On lying and acting . . .
(I try to start the tape without Bill knowing but he can tell something’s different about my face. I’m a horrible liar…. )
PAUL:   So let’s talk about lying. Is a good actor a liar or not a liar.
BILL: Well you know what Plato thought about that?
PAUL: What?
BILL: He literally thought–
PAUL: Micky Mouse’s dog?
(beat)
BILL: I was about to imitate him and then I realized I couldn’t.
(He laughs.)
    ‘Cause he doesn’t–
BILL & PAUL (together): Say anything!
. . . .
BILL: From what I remember reading in college, Plato said that actors should be killed because they lie.
PAUL: See I consider myself a pretty good actor and I cannot lie to save my life.
BILL: Well, I can lie but I consider them to be two separate things. I don’t… I don’t lie unless I absolutely have to, and I hold that to a pretty high standard. It’s not about my convenience. I’ll take a lot of shit before I’ll tell a lie. Because of that thing we were talking about. About how it’s an allowance. How responsibility comes with the power.
PAUL: Right.
BILL: And the only way I can tell a lie is to buy into myself.
PAUL: Yeah, so you involve yourself in the Dark magic.
On art versus craft . . .
BILL: . . . I think the word “art” is pretty useless. It is so subjective as to be pointless–
PAUL: Like “love” or something like that?
BILL: Exactly.
PAUL: Well, what would you replace it with? Or would you?
BILL: I’m not sure that you need the word. It’s almost used to describe that which people don’t have the capacity to describe another way. When someone says “art” they’re either collectors talking about something that’s worth a lot of money, or they are people who are moved beyond the ability to express… that.
PAUL: What about when somebody says, “The way that guy does phad thai is a frickin’ art?”
BILL: he’s talking about a transcendent experience     that goes beyond what he understands as being the execution of… the act.
PAUL: Well, what about that? Is there something to that? I mean this “transcendent experience”– if we don’t have a name for it beyond “art” shall we not call it that?
BILL: I think it’s the height of craft. When I approach a role there are a whole lot of givens. I think particularly in acting, and particular among young actors, there’s a need to over romanticize what we do.
PAUL: Well, yeah… and then you get into that nastiness of Method and that whole “I-must-go-through-that-which-my-character-has-go-through” nonsense.
BILL: Yes. That’s right. And actors saying things like– in all seriousness– “I don’t like to like to take about the craft ’cause I don’t like to over analyze it. And if I over analyze it, I’ll kill it.”
PAUL: Which– yeah– sounds like somebody who…
BILL: Doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing. that’s exactly right.
On going the dangers and responsibilities of playing a dark role
PAUL: … Ok, I’m gonna go on the record about TUESDAY. I think that the reason why TUESDAY was hard was because you had met the wall with your “craft”, and with TUESDAY you had to be an artist. And you were an artist, but it hurt because you were entering a realm where– to use those fantastic mytho-terms– you entered the realm where you were naked and raw. It’s like the total hero’s journey. At the beginning we see the hero and he’s kick-ass, but he finally meets the challenge that is capable of kicking his ass. And then it becomes interesting. That’s where the heart becomes involved. And that’s why I argue this art-versus-craft argument over and over again. And that’s why I’d like to try and get to the meat of it.
BILL: So you’re a masochist, because art has to hurt.
PAUL: No…   No… It’s an old Buddhist thing. You see Westerners misunderstand Buddhism because they think it’s nihilism. Because they say, “Well what a Zen Buddhist does is he sits in a room for eight hours, and that’s torture!”
BILL: Mmm-hmm.
PAUL: And it is torture, and I do kinda share the opinion that the people that are attracted to Zen are masochists, but I do it, and I’ve sat in a room for 8 hours and I’ll probably do it again. See the problem is most Westerners misinterpret Buddhism as saying “You must suffer.” And I would interpret it slightly differently. I would say true Buddhism is: “You will suffer.” But ultimately the suffering is as unimportant, if not more unimportant than the pleasure.
BILL: So you don’t glorify the suffering.
PAUL: No. Not all. The suffering is a message. And there’s something to be said for computer metaphors– the suffering is like an error message, saying, “Ok, error in sector B. You’re suffering. Why? Why are you hurting?” Like, why does it hurt to do TUESDAY?… And you’re looking for reasons like your technique wasn’t quite right, and I’m saying no. You’re doing everything right. You just refuse to admit that that which you are doing is more important than you think it is. And that that which you are doing is more connected and more vital and more rooted in who you are than you feel comfortable with as a craftsman.
BILL: Well my reaction to that is first of all is that… if we go that way for a moment, if we accept that as a truism, I have absolutely no problem in saying I’m not interested in that. I’m not interested in self-flagellation in public. That has no–
PAUL: Well, first off that’s not what I’m talking about. And second off, if you were to say that to a Zen master, he’d probably give you a whack on the head, but then he’d say, “Who cares what you’re interested in?” No one cares what you’re interested in.
BILL: But remember I act for selfish reasons.
PAUL: Well, maybe it’s time to wake up. . . .
To follow is the full transcript of the first side of the cassette.
(more…)

Posted at 11:40 AM in Art, Books, Seattle, Theatre | Comments (0)

Tags: A Christmas Carol, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Acting, Ford's Theatre, Gollum, Margaret Mullin, Puck, The Hobbit, Theatre

Tag: Acting

Day 2 / Reason 2 for Going Back to the Theatre: My Sister

The Macallan Talks – Side Two

The Macallan Talks – Side One