Saturday 14 May 2011
Welcome to my blog: Goldberg Street
Hello there. My name is Shteevie and I am a failed actor.
I probably could have been a good actor if I had any common sense when I was a younger man. (I coulda been a contender.) I went to high school in Calgary and I was accepted into Mount Royal College's theatre program when I was 19. I was an okay actor, but a terrible student. I was virtually unteachable. In my heart of hearts, I believed I knew everything and that I was beyond criticism. I made life difficult for my teachers and my heart goes out to them almost 20 years later.
But something very good happened to me in the two years I was at MRC. I discovered David Mamet.
A local director/playwright/actor named Dan Libman had the great idea to direct some of David Mamet's short plays and scenes, which he had published in a collection called Goldberg Street. Mamet, as my readers probably know, won an Obie for American Buffalo and the Pulitzer for Glengarry Glen Ross. said that some of the short plays in Goldberg Street "are the best writing I have ever done, and what in the world are they good for?" Maybe in the course of this rambling hybrid of an essay and a memoir, I can answer Mr. Mamet's question.
I was cast in two short playlets. One was called Two Conversations (Two) and the other was called Yes But So What. My scene partner in the former was Curt McKinstry, who is a successful Calgary actor today. In the latter I was paired with a wonderful actor named Bob Manitopyes, who passed away in 2005.
You have to remember that when I went into Goldberg Street, my theatre experience was limited to high school and a one-year stint at a Bible college/theatre school. So I pretty much had zero acting chops. Whenever I was cast in one of the school plays, I would go to the first page, find out what my character's name was, and read a short description of him. Mamet didn't do that in Goldberg Street. He didn't even provide his characters with names. Thus, in Two Conversations (Two), my character was listed as A. Curt was B.
An example:
A: ...hold on:
B: ...if we...
A: Hold on:
B: If we weren't...
A: Yeah, yeah, yeah... if we weren't wrong...
B: ...if...
A: If we weren't wrong...
B: The sci...
A: Yes. The scientific things. Yes.
B: All the, yes.
That's not a nice thing to subject a crappy 19-year-old actor to.
As an exercise, Dan had us create personas for our characters. I chose a hot dog vendor who plied his trade outside a bar. It didn't help me get into the head of A. Judging from Mr. Mamet's later writings on theatre and rehearsal, he probably wouldn't be too surprised at that revelation.
I stumbled through the rehearsal process. I was pissed off at David Mamet for not giving me, the actor, anything concrete to hold on to. It was just a series of "yeses" and pauses and eff-words. This, of course, was Mametspeak - a strange hybrid of poetry and an imitation of how people talk in everyday life.
The show opened and the show closed and I think Dan gave me a C minus (he was being kind.) He told me that I worked for praise (that was true) and that I thought of acting as speaking in a funny voice (I adopted a Brooklyn accent for one of my characters and Dan never told me to scrap it. Either he liked it or thought it was fruitless to tell me to stop doing it. Probably the latter.)
I resented Dan for a while, but that resent later turned into regret. Now, 20 years later, I'm still mad at myself for not taking Goldberg Street more seriously. I want to apologize to Dan for being such a pain in the ass. I want to apologize to Curt and Bob for being a crappy stage partner. And I want to apologize to David Mamet for not learning my lines exactly.
I will have more to say about Goldberg Street in subsequent posts.
I probably could have been a good actor if I had any common sense when I was a younger man. (I coulda been a contender.) I went to high school in Calgary and I was accepted into Mount Royal College's theatre program when I was 19. I was an okay actor, but a terrible student. I was virtually unteachable. In my heart of hearts, I believed I knew everything and that I was beyond criticism. I made life difficult for my teachers and my heart goes out to them almost 20 years later.
But something very good happened to me in the two years I was at MRC. I discovered David Mamet.
A local director/playwright/actor named Dan Libman had the great idea to direct some of David Mamet's short plays and scenes, which he had published in a collection called Goldberg Street. Mamet, as my readers probably know, won an Obie for American Buffalo and the Pulitzer for Glengarry Glen Ross. said that some of the short plays in Goldberg Street "are the best writing I have ever done, and what in the world are they good for?" Maybe in the course of this rambling hybrid of an essay and a memoir, I can answer Mr. Mamet's question.
I was cast in two short playlets. One was called Two Conversations (Two) and the other was called Yes But So What. My scene partner in the former was Curt McKinstry, who is a successful Calgary actor today. In the latter I was paired with a wonderful actor named Bob Manitopyes, who passed away in 2005.
You have to remember that when I went into Goldberg Street, my theatre experience was limited to high school and a one-year stint at a Bible college/theatre school. So I pretty much had zero acting chops. Whenever I was cast in one of the school plays, I would go to the first page, find out what my character's name was, and read a short description of him. Mamet didn't do that in Goldberg Street. He didn't even provide his characters with names. Thus, in Two Conversations (Two), my character was listed as A. Curt was B.
An example:
A: ...hold on:
B: ...if we...
A: Hold on:
B: If we weren't...
A: Yeah, yeah, yeah... if we weren't wrong...
B: ...if...
A: If we weren't wrong...
B: The sci...
A: Yes. The scientific things. Yes.
B: All the, yes.
That's not a nice thing to subject a crappy 19-year-old actor to.
As an exercise, Dan had us create personas for our characters. I chose a hot dog vendor who plied his trade outside a bar. It didn't help me get into the head of A. Judging from Mr. Mamet's later writings on theatre and rehearsal, he probably wouldn't be too surprised at that revelation.
I stumbled through the rehearsal process. I was pissed off at David Mamet for not giving me, the actor, anything concrete to hold on to. It was just a series of "yeses" and pauses and eff-words. This, of course, was Mametspeak - a strange hybrid of poetry and an imitation of how people talk in everyday life.
The show opened and the show closed and I think Dan gave me a C minus (he was being kind.) He told me that I worked for praise (that was true) and that I thought of acting as speaking in a funny voice (I adopted a Brooklyn accent for one of my characters and Dan never told me to scrap it. Either he liked it or thought it was fruitless to tell me to stop doing it. Probably the latter.)
I resented Dan for a while, but that resent later turned into regret. Now, 20 years later, I'm still mad at myself for not taking Goldberg Street more seriously. I want to apologize to Dan for being such a pain in the ass. I want to apologize to Curt and Bob for being a crappy stage partner. And I want to apologize to David Mamet for not learning my lines exactly.
I will have more to say about Goldberg Street in subsequent posts.
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