AN IMPORTANT CORRECTION

Actually, having finally caught up with my comments, there's an important correction I should make, having read what Mark writes here. Mark's point reminded me of something I said in the interview I did for NYTE:

While I ultimately wish we lived in a world where huge theater companies were fighting over Nervous-Boy or Dan Trujillo's Talk of the Walkup, in that world I wouldn't get to be in them 'cause I'd be competing with cream-of-the-crop professionals.

When I said that, and when I said what Mark is objecting to in the Theatre Is Territory interview, I was only thinking about myself, and about my own career and choices, and it completely didn't occur to me that those sorts of statements could be considered rightly offensive to my colleagues in those productions. My thinking was, if Dan and Isaac had a full budget for Talk of the Walkup, they could have huge auditions and get some amazing genuine nineteen-year-old from some conservatory to play Teafoot, and if Nosedive had the same, they could get Wes Bentley to play Nervous-Boy.

(Although, after I saw Karl Miller in Dream of a Ridiculous Man I leaned over to Pete Boivert and said, "If I die in a horrible fire, I'll allow you to cast him as Nervous-Boy.")

And while that is true, it's also worth noting that whenever I do an Off-Off play, I'm working alongside talents who are obviously and fully competitive in the professional world of acting. I've tended to feel that I personally am not - that I happen to be an exact fit for a certain very narrow spectrum of roles, and that I come cheap - and that's why I sometimes score roles that are otherwise difficult to cast without an expensive casting budget.

Also I have, on several occasions, been told by friends who make their living as actors tell me that they'd like to act in a play of mine, but that they can't afford to not be available for a paying gig - which I completely understand, and don't have a problem with.

I guess that's created this sense in my head of defining "professional" actors as those who base their choices around only taking work that pays a living wage, and not accepting roles that don't (and if there are no paying roles at a given time, working some sort of temporary job that they can abandon at a moment's notice). And that's been my definition, one which doesn't automatically equate "professional" with "quality" - every week I see unpaid or nearly unpaid actors who are equal to or better than the actors I'll see on TV that same week - but rather as an attitude and criteria toward making choices. This may reflect more than anything else my lack of knowledge about the theater industry, which I'll readily acknowledge.

The overall point is, in trying to make an honest assessment of my place and my choices as an actor, I may have inadvertently insulted quite a number of the people with whom I've shared the stage, and I'm sorry for that. I wasn't even thinking along those lines, and that doesn't reflect my actual opinion of my colleagues. So my bad on that, totally.

--SlowLearner

Comments

[isaac]

hey mac,

I wasn't offended, but I also appreciate the follow up explanation!

[Mark]

Thanks Mac. I hope it's clear that I wasn't offended either -- well, except maybe on your behalf, if that makes sense.

[freeman]

You're right! Karl was great in that show!

I'd put the talent I work with and know up against just about anything that's being universally hailed by Playwrights Horizons lately.