Deviation Actions
WEEK 2 has been amazing and well… HOLLYWOOD FRINGE has CHANGED MY LIFE!
(We’ll come back to that!)
MY show ran three times this week… Thursday, Friday and Saturday 19, 20 & 21. You’d think that it’s easy and stress free at this point since we have great reviews, but I’m just as nervous nightly as I was on Preview night! Not because I don’t believe in my actors and my staff, but because… you just never know what curve ball the mighty theatre gods are gonna throw you in a festival.
The usual problems arise, like actors forgetting lines or blowing blocking, but that’s normal. It’s the other whacky stuff that can knock you for a loop! Honestly, nothing like that happened… this week. I did have one actor do something miraculous during a moment when he totally lost his lines and “dried” on stage in front of everyone. He got lost, forgot the line and couldn’t recover. He was sitting on the edge of the stage, eye to eye with audience members and said the line he stopped on once, then again and then again and then said “This really sucks” and he felt bad about it all you could tell. I was in the back of the theater with my hands over my ears, standing up, hunched in a fetal position and praying “GOD LET HIM REMEMBER SOMETHING, ANYTHING!” The actor then started to tear up on stage and instead of freaking out and throwing it all away… he welcomed it, relaxed and used it as the lines came back into his mouth and instead of being funny; he was extremely sad and touching.
This blew me away! I’ve seen Broadway actors dry like that and choke so bad that they just looked at the audience like a deer in headlights and then walked off the stage. Not this guy… he hung in there and although it felt like an eternity, it probably was just a minute or two.
Audience members later said “I knew something wasn’t right, but then I thought it was part of the monologue” either way… he did an amazing job.
He wasn’t the only one that did that, the next night another actor did the same, but got back into it faster. You know it’s not really because they forgot the line… it’s really because they were in a freefall! They were so connected to the material that it becomes almost second nature! They were doing that good, I mean EXTREMELY GOOD and it’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes Fable… he’s thinking he’s wearing something beautiful until you tell him “HEY YOU”RE NAKED!” then he wakes up and realizes he’s naked and runs off. WELL, it’s kinda the same with good acting… once you connect… if you check in and break in concentration… you might blow yourself out of something good… they were both a freefall and well… it worked out.
After the shows are over, most of the festival heads to Fringe Central and partakes of food and drink as other shows perform in cabaret! It’s a huge party atmosphere with a full bar and food from a different food truck nightly.
My friends show BRONIES - THE MUSICAL... support & Fringeship!
Most of the time I’m there, I’m unwinding with my cast, buying my guests drinks, but the majority of the time I am schmoozing with a lot of theatre and film professionals. A lot of the time I am also trying to sell the show… drum up ticket business because my actors deserve an audience!
Since we’ve opened we have had great crowd, but as I said before “Hollywood Fringe is changing my life”
I’ve lived here 10 years and have mailed in scripts to every open submission, knocked on doors to get theatres to read my scripts and did everything just short of tying the script to a rock and throwing it over the wall of the movie studios… since the show opened…
I had my first development meeting with a theatre rep.
Got my first offer to be a writer with a very reputable theatre company.
Got a meeting for development with a major film exec.
Have my manager and a theatre rep meeting to talk about getting me produced in the next year!
These are DREAMS COME TRUE FOR ME!
BUT, the best thing about the whole Hollywood Fringe Experience has been… the people I’ve met and the feeling of falling in love with show business all over again! There’s this total sense of community with this festival that I haven’t felt since high school and grad school. We’re all in this together and I’m making friends with talented people from other shows and none of us are competing against each other, we’re just trying to do good work and support each other… unlike the rest of the city of Los Angeles.
ABOVE Fringe Central... a Food Truck and a Bar... life is good!
I mean…. I was sitting at the table with my 2 new friends BEAU & AERO, plus another guitar playing actor. We're all sitting in Fringe Central when this other actor/ circus performer walks in, sits down in the tent with us and explains, “I have to leave early and cancel my show. I got a gig as RING MASTER with a traveling pro circus!” I’m telling you it was something like out of an old vaudeville movie… someone got their big break and even though me the writer, the clown kids and another actor musician all had shows going on that night, one of us got the break he was looking for and he was leaving immediately… I’m telling you all we needed was Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe and Donald O’ Connor and by the end of the night we’d all be singing “THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS”!
Things like this don’t happen all the time in Hollywood, but they should!
Anyhow… that’s only one thing… the other thing is that for 3 years I’ve probably been clinically depressed since a girl I loved deeply died and then 2 and half months later my mother suddenly died. I mean I was functioning, but like I would tell people “I don’t have my spark anymore and I don’t really want to be around people. I’m not good company” BUT since Fringe took off… and we’re doing great… I’m so loving life again and was reminded that this is what life is about and like my cousin Anne told me, “Your production has a lot of angels on its shoulders!” well… it does… and some of them are actors and staff of my show and other shows and THE HOLLYWOOD FRINGE FESTIVAL STAFF ITSELF! They’ve been honest, supporting and responsive in ways that I didn’t think would happen.
My utmost fave people through this whole thing other than my staff and cast… are the staff of THE COMPLEX, a string of small theatres on L.A.’s Theatre Row or Santa Monica Blvd. Monica Martin is a Fringe Angel that has been guiding me through since day one… and she’s still right alongside all her Fringe shows daily! I’ve never met a theater manager as supportive as she is and… it’s wonderful!
Me Backstage Alley HAPPY!
So.. I can’t vouch for other cities Fringe festivals, but if you’re considering the Hollywood Fringe in 2015… DO IT!
Set a goal of doing good work and expect to probably lose some money if not break even….. but try it once because it truly is the only acting/writing/directing/clowning/singing/juggling/music playing community in Los Angeles…. Especially in Hollywood… remember that great quote…. “Hollywood is the only place you can get STABBED in the BACK as you’re CLIMBING UP A LADDER” well… THAT AIN’T TRUE AT HOLLYWOOD FRINGE!
Always,
Tom
For more info go to
www.hollywoodfringe.org/projec…
