Equilibria

ME! On set of Equilibria by Harley Brown's Cafe

This month I've been privileged and blessed to work with Harley Brown's Cafe on the new film Equilibria in which I play Marcus. Yes. MARCUS. As in, a male character name. As in, I had a beard and wig and a sock in my trousers most of the shoot. Am I transgender? An otherworldly deux ex machina? Triple agent? Who is the man behind the mask and who is pulling the strings - the mafia, the FBI, the church? You'll have to see the film to find out!

Director Norman Siopis, DP Shaun Jones and AD/renaissance woman Sara Gunderson

And let me tell you what, it's going to be a freaking beautiful movie. This cast/crew was a motley assortment of the most creative, loving, warm and fun people I have ever come across. Check out a sneak peak of the rich, gritty look of the film in these photos courtesy of Harley Brown's. It was one of the best weeks of my life - shooting a film all day every day with amazing people, accomplishing one of my life-long acting goals. Portraying a cross-dressed character has been a DREAM of mine since the first time I saw Shakespeare's Twelfth Night as a wee ten year old, and now I can say that I have done it. Check! So much to be thankful for! I am blown away.

FREEZING on set with director Norman Siopis, during his Hitchcock cameo

In the film my character Marcus is a force to be reckoned with, and there is a powerful theme of balance running through the story. Balance is something I have yet to master in real life. This Thanksgiving, I have a long weekend off from work - marking the first time I have a day off other than Superstorm Sandy since August. This week I am thankful of Equilibria's reminder of balance - of how important it is to find freedom in work, to prioritize artistic endeavors along with survival, to rest and eat and sleep as well as pound the pavement. Balance must be restored.

The universe has a way of self-correcting.

On set of Equilibria. The handsome gent with the beard is ME!!

In a season where I am extremely thankful for a moment's pause and reflection after working on a beautiful project with beautiful people,  I am also thankful for the world of entertainment and art that motivates me to keep pressing forward. I am thankful for the people I've been honored to work with along the way, and the new ones I have met this year. I am thankful for the jobs that allow me to stay in New York, and thankful for the reminder that these jobs are supporting a larger purpose. I am thankful to have a specific vision for the future, a clear desire and star to hitch my wagon to. I am thankful for the busyness before the pitch-perfect calm of balance. I am thankful for paying my dues and the perspective it's helping me to develop, even when I want to complain and stamp my feet like a tired toddler. I am thankful for the silly, tired mistakes I make that give me insight and help me learn my own limitations. I am thankful to know once and for all how important it is to find my equilibrium as an artist and a person, and I look forward to seeking that balance in every aspect of my life moving forward.

I love these people. Thanks Equilibria family!!

And you know what? I am looking forward to seeking balance, and to the balancing act itself. Because it is a blessing to be able to juggle along the tightrope. It's a blessing to be alive.

Frankenstorm

So much to be thankful for.

No sharks in my yard.

Plenty of food and water and power.

Good company.

Loving vibes.

A day off!!! (First in two and a half months! Last day off until Christmas...Lord help us...)

Friends, roommates, loved ones, and stranded guests playing spades.

A bottle of vino verde.

 Sherlock! On Netflix!

 Life. Tides changing. Tempests churning. Change. Climax. Turning points.

Like and Love

"If the need to act is so strong it wakes you in the middle of the night, then stay with it."  - Frank Langella

There are things in life that we like. I mean, really really like.

These might be the things that we crave for comfort on a tough day, or hope to get for Christmas. Nectarines, tea, a new dress, a smartphone.

What lights you up?

These things we like might even be people that warm us or cheer us up or speed up our workday. The guy with a joke about everything, the friend who listens to our ideas. We really, really like them. We want them to sit near our cubicle and come to our happy hour. We want to hear what they think. Their presence is like a refreshing bath or breeze.

The things we really really like might even be activities - hiking, reading, writing, swimming. Things that revitalize us and strengthen our health.

Then there are those things that we love.

The distance between the things we love and the things we like is subtle and sometimes confusing, but it is a sudden and shockingly deep precipice nevertheless. One day we might wake up and realize that the thing we thought we only liked we actually love, or vice versa. And then it might turn into one of those sprinting-to-the-airport, buying-the-cheapest-ticket-to-anywhere-just-so-you-can-bolt-through-security-and-race-into-the-gate-and-declare-your-undying-love-over-the-speaker-system-and-embarrass-the-crap-out-of-everyone-but-end-up-passionately-making-out-and-not-caring-anymore movie situations. That crossroads moment when everything is silent around you but the cry of your heart. The "once you know you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start right now" kind of deal. (God I love When Harry Met Sally.)

But until that day, how the heck do you know?

Sometimes I can't tell the difference between the lands of like and love. I squint and scrutinize but blur the line, spill something on my map, and lose track of where the boundaries are. Like is like love, I say to myself. Like is love in a way, I say to myself.

I think myself in circles, spending a lot of silly time trying to understand my feelings about things, and develop feelings for my feelings, and try to feel my way back to knowing whether or not my feelings are feelings of like or feelings of love - or feelings in a different category entirely unrelated to like or love.

Feelings, WTF!

Or whether my feelings are really a factor at all?

The thing about love is you can't think yourself into it, out of it, or around it.

It is, or it isn't. Right?

The thing about love is that it's mysterious and nonsensical. It can appear and disappear sometimes, and sometimes it can be a permanent weight in a small corner of your heart. Sometimes it can easily be mistaken for something else, or not acknowledged at all. It can be the huge writing in the sky that helps us make a choice, or it can be the choice we don't want to make.

King Kong's feelings are clear.

Love makes us alive. Right until it we fall off the Empire State Building.

The reason I know that I love acting - not like it, but love it - is because I just KNOW. No thinking necessary.

Sometimes I toy with the idea of talking myself into liking acting and loving something else more, because loving acting is complicated. I sometimes want to love something that's easier to love. Something that's nicer to me.

But that's just ridiculous. Not to mention impossible. The heart wants what it wants. And what else would I do with my life for goodness' sake, make model planes? Grow a pea garden? Not there's anything wrong with those things. They're just wrong for me.

Tina knows EXACTLY what love has to do, has to do with it.

I remember my making-out-passionately at the crossroads moment with acting, when I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with it and I wanted the rest of my life to start RIGHT NOW. It was when I got the phone call that I was accepted into the Actors Studio Drama School, and felt for the first time that a life as a professional actor was ACTUALLY within my reach. I screamed so loud, and jumped around like such a crazy, I am sure I embarrassed everyone on the block. Or at least my brother. And it was amazing.

Today, Gentle Readers, I trust that you can also know what you love. And that you can have it.

You'll just...know...

Life and Happy Thoughts

I don't know about you guys, but the beginning of August has been a bit rough and tumble for me emotionally, and it's not just the heat-and-humidity-induced smell of the city that's getting to me. Two amazing men in my professional life passed away this month, one of them much too young in the prime of his life. Both spent their time inspiring other people and tirelessly throwing themselves into their passion for this industry. 

Life is funny. Day to day I'm auditioning through the longest dry spell I've had so far in New York, simultaneously struggling to keep some perspective on why I'm still duking it out AND YET knowing with absolute certainty that there is nothing I want more than to act. I'm an actor, dammit. You don't really decide to be one. You just kinda are.

And so, August, I will begin my blogs in you with life filled happy thoughts. Because life is a gift. It can disappear startlingly fast. It can revive and rout the enemy with miraculous chance. It switches on a dime. And you know what? Life is great. Therefore, August, I will revel and rejoice in life. I will fill my brain with good thoughts from great people. Here are some I have commandeered:

"Life is too short to not have fun." - my Dad

"Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." - Gilda Radner

"After each experience, you grow up, you get enriched with something, and you don't know how you're going to be in six months, you don't know what you're going to want, what you're going to need." - Audrey Tatou

"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before." - Mae West

 

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." - Robert Frost

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The world owes you nothing. It was here first." - Mark Twain 

Get Serious

OK self. Let's have a chat.

What are you doing here? Are you hanging out and surviving, or are you living out a dream? Are you just another post-prosperity young American drifting through economic hardship, or are you gaining ground and advancing on our goal of acting in feature length films, TV, and Shakespeare? Are you letting life just happen to you, or are you going to be bright and brave and beautiful and grab the bull by the horns? Are you going to blow the smoke away and DO what you're here to DO?

Why do you live here again?

Let's be real: if you're just going to work a smattering of jobs in an attempt to pay your bills and not put your entire energy every day into your acting goals, you might as well not be in New York City. If I'm just living my life, I might as well live somewhere easier and prettier and wilder, with expanses of sky and water and space. Like Tahoe, Montana, Sicily, or Galway. Remember why you didn't go that route? Remember why you're here? There was a reason. A good one.

There's a good reason you don't live here. Yet.

You are an actor.

Remember the advice given to you by an older, more experienced actor: the beginning is slow, the beginning is hard, the beginning kind of sucks. You watch friends marry and buy houses and earn livable wages. You watch the comforts and pleasure of life that you've postponed going on and thriving in their merry dance around you, and you get jealous. You want things you don't have. You feel you've maybe made a bad trade, that maybe you should take a month off the acting stuff and try to save up for a motorcycle. If you're not careful, you get bitter. You covet. Your focus swings off track and you get bogged down in pursuing contrary purposes.

But there's an easy way to avoid this. Remember the wiser actor's advice: get to the middle. Don't wallow in the beginning. Push through. Push to the middle of your career, the part where you're a well oiled machine and a passionate doer of deeds, where you audition your face off and know who you are and know what you want. 

The middle, where you keep in focus at all times that you ARE doing what you came here to do, that you ARE an actor, that you ARE closing in on parts that are right for you. The middle, where you're making that true. The middle, where your married friends with houses are stuck with mortgages and car payments and office jobs and you are not. The middle, where you are free to go to do an amazing, epic, romantic, steamy film in Brazil with Joseph Gordon Levitt if you want. Heck you could even tell him what a crush you have on him over craft services one day. Just be like, "Hey Joe, it's me the other Joe - what's up? What? What's that you say? You like chewing on matches too? Ok, let's make babies. Or not. You know, we could just hang out and work on a film together and make brilliant acting choices too...if you want...either way..."

"Hey JGL. Looking forward to our movie."

This is the middle, where you will live the rest of your life.

Get serious, self. This isn't a brief experiment. You want this life. You want this topsy turvy acting career. In fact, there is little else you want at present. You are shaping your reality - so don't forget to be intentional. You are the man behind the curtain, so to speak. If your hand sags, the whole puppet stops. Get going. Don't stop. Never quit.

Remember who you are.

Remember why you're here.

Mufasa says: "Remember who you are!!!

One Thing A Day: Rest

They say you should do one thing a day for your career. Some days, I do as many as 10 things. Some days, I am uber productive, focused, relentless, passionate, and cut-throat. I submit resumes, shoot emails, make phone calls, have meetings. Some days, though, I feel like I don't manage to do even one thing. I'm trying to learn how to make every day count.

Today I am pushing through my reflexive guilt and doing something very important for my career, something I hardly ever do, something that Americans generally probably suck at...

REST.

My one thing today is to rest. To take an actual weekend day. To sleep in. To watch a movie. To wear mismatching house clothes and not brush my hair. To have a skype date or talk on the phone with my mom. To hang out somewhere with friends maybe. Or, maybe, not do any of those things. Maybe do nothing. To rest for me means to reclaim space in my mind, declutter my soul, and touch the things that make me myself, dust them off, and let them shine again.

As a New Yorker and an extremely ambitious gal, it's hard for me to justify staying at home all day. The pace of the city and the drive of my heart's desires usually thump and pulse and propel me down my stairs and onto the streets. As much as I love sitting on my couch watching "Waiting for Superman," I feel like I'm missing things when I make myself rest. However, I think it's really important that I learn how to do this now in my 20s, before my film bookings and family things have me flying all over the world or whatever. Perhaps this rest is less for my career and more for my personal pleasure, but you know? I think those two things should intertwine. Resting not only makes me healthy, it makes me strong. It will allow me to hit the ground running.

I'm making rest part of my career strategy.

Making Things

Fiji fixes everything, right?

This week on my rollercoaster ride life as an actor, I've felt like I haven't made it. I've felt frustrated, tired, and discouraged more than once, and somewhere around Thursday night it seemed to me that I hadn't made much progress at all ever. I felt like I hadn't made good use of my year in New York so far. I felt like I hadn't made enough money, enough movies, enough of enough-ness to be enough. There was only one thing to do: move to Fiji and support myself by selling my hand-made shell necklaces.

By Sunday morning, Fiji seemed less lustrous as a feasible solution. Isn't there some saying about when the going gets tough, the tough get...you know...

I may have felt like the going had gotten past me without toughening me up or getting me going. I may have felt like "the tough" probably refers to somebody else, somebody who has made enough things or has simply made "it", clearly unlike my own state of un-made-ness. But, whatever my feelings might feel, the truth is I HAVE been making things: making space, making peace, making time, making art. I make kids learn everything from grammar to soccer in my day jobs. I make gourmet meals for myself and friends at home. I make sides come to life in auditions, and worlds appear out of monologues. I make theater productions from scratch sometimes, and sometimes I make my small contribution to larger, ancienter stories. I make tapes and lists and cards and mailings and contacts and friends. I make choices and merry and connections and magic. I make motion. I make stillness.

Once again this week, I am reminded that the voices in my head and my own swirling emotions aren't always the best way for me to look at my life and my work. Sometimes, it's not helpful to let myself feel my way through slow times or low thoughts. I have to remember objective reality and calm down, breathe, and go on making things. And as long as I'm making things, I have to remember that it is enough. And so am I. It's helpful to notice that what I can make, and what I have yet to make, are on course to intersect beautifully.

So I'd like to share with you something I've made - along with many other talented makers. It reminds me of what I've done, what I'm doing, and what I'm going to do. Go on making things, gentle reader! In our making things, we make the world.