The True Professional Behind Piven, Speed the Plow Debacle

December 31, 2008 by Dennis Baker 

The last big news story for 2008 landed on Broadway a couple of weeks ago when Jeremy Piven quit Speed-the-Plow because it was reported he suffered from mercury poisoning.  The New York Times reported that Norbet Leo Butz was called in to quickly replace Piven with William H. Macy pegged to take over the role as of Jan. 11th.

The theaterosphere lit up as Mike Daisey critiqued Butz for being unprofessional in performing the role without being fully memorized. An unprepared Butz was pegged as a hero when it seems like he could have waited another week as there was an understudy who was quite proficient.  Daisey’s critique was debated by a couple of other bloggers.

An argument that was presented was the producers aided this unprofessionalism for the sake of promoting the show, and the NY Times ate it up.  The producers would rather send a semi-popular actor on stage with a script than a no-name understudy who had his lines memorized and was prepared.  I am impressed Backstage chose to focus the attention on understudy Jordan Lage.  Lage is a 25 year veteran who has seen it all.  As a working actor, his story intrigues me the most.  He spoke honestly about the process to Backstage and took it all in stride.  His perspective is refreshing in light of someone like Piven.  This is  where the true story lies and in fact it would not have been much of a story because Lage is a professional who was ready to do his job when it was called upon.  There is no drama in a man showing up to do the job he is paid for and to do it well.  And unfortunately drama sells tickets. This is an actor who cares about the work and not the drama.

“You cannot open a straight play on Broadway without some kind of a name attached, plain and simple,” Lage said. “I’m not going to rail against the system, because I don’t think that would be very productive. It kind of is the way it is.”  Being a Mamet protégé, Lage isn’t one to sit around and mope. In addition to his acting, he teaches at the Atlantic and New York University. “I tell my students, most of whom are not going to get jobs right after they get their degree: Stop whining, quit being a cry-baby, and create your own goddamn work,” he said. Wednesday night around 10 p.m., after 36 hours of intense preparation and, between rehearsals and performances, six full run-throughs of the play, Lage went to the Atlantic’s black-box theatre to watch his students perform a revue of the sketch-comedy material they had written during the semester.

Filed under: Acting, New York, Theater/Theatre
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Twitter Tools

December 29, 2008 by Dennis Baker 

It seems I am not the only one that to spent the holidays exploring Twitter.  The website has gotten so popular that many affiliate websites have popped up that is meant to help enhance your twitter experience.  To continue the Lindsay Price’s comment regarding if Twitter will last, what about all these other twitter tools. It seems like it will be safe to assume that some will not make it through 2009. Do we really need these separate sites? You make the call, check out the below tools to see what sparks your twit taste and pick which one you thing will last. Or is there one that we did not mention. Let us know about it.

Tweetree – @saadkamal points out the biggest compliant about Twitter is that the conversations are hard to follow.  As you can see by my Tweetree image below, all the conversations are line up so you can keep an easy track of who is responding to who.  It will also upload pictures and video so you don’t have to click the link.

TwellowHood – @problogger mentions a site to find your local twitter peeps. Do you want to gossip about your senator, or want to let everyone in on the best coffee shop in town? One can also update their profile. My twitter profile was already listed and I was able to update my new twellow profile with all my networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg & Stumpleupon. You can also look up people by specific interests. This might be a good way to boost up your follows. If you are active on Twitter, and follow a lot of people within your area of specialty, they will usually follow you back.

TwitArt & MyTweetSpace – Another way to let people know what you are about it a personalized background. This also helps you stand out when people I looking through the list of emails and deciding who they want to follow. If you have any web design experience you can create a simple HTML file, preview it in a browser, save it as a JPG and upload it to your Settings. If you want a customized background and willing to pay for it, TwitArt is for you. If money is tight MyTweetSpace offers free background templates. They are pretty simple three step process: 1. Select your background, 2. Fill in your information and network links to create your badge, 3. Upload the file.

Others Twitter Tools to Explore

Tweetburner – twurl statistics

Brabblr – With Brabblr, you can post to all your micro blogging services including Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Tumblr, Jabber, Frazr, and more.

Autopostr – This service lets your friends in Twitter know when you post a new picture on Flickr.

EmailTwitter – With this service, you can send tweets to Twitter from your cellphone without incurring SMS charges.

GroupTweet – Allows you to post private message to a group of Twitter friends.

Hashtags – You can add tags to your Twitter posts with this service.

HelloTxt – This service enables you to update Twitter, a host of other micro blogging sites, and social networking sites with one click.

LinkBunch – Need to share more than one link in a tweet? LinkBunch puts together all the links and provides you one link that you can share on Twitter. As you might have understood, this can be used not just with Twitter, but also with emails, IMs, SMS, etc.

LiveTwitting – Helps you cover a conference live on Twitter. Similar to liveblogging, only cooler.

MicroRevie – Post reviews on twitter accs and this service will turn them into microformats.

Mobypicture – A service to post to your blog and micro-blogging sites like Twitter through your mobile phone.

OutTwit – A tool for Outlook that will send the latest tweets from your friends as incoming email messages.

SecretTweet – Post to Twitter anonymously. If you really need to.

SnapTweet – Allows you to post your Flickr pictures to Twitter.

Snitter – an Adobe AIR based desktop client for Twitter compatible with Mac and Windows. The Linux version is in testing.

More tools @ Twitter Toolbox

Filed under: Social Media, Web 2.0
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Why I Use Twitter

December 26, 2008 by Dennis Baker 

With some time off from school I have been updating my Web 2.0 life. One thing I have been playing with is twitter. I initially did not get the website enough credit. It has been great to connect to the broader theater world. Through the help of Simon Ogden, @thenextstagemag, he set up a Twitter Group for theater people to share their websites and profiles.

This also correlated with me catching up on this season of Heroes. David Lawrence XVII, who guest stars, is a professional contact as we were in the same networking group at the Actors’ Network a few years back (it was right before I moved to New York, so it was a brief encounter) and we also worked with the same, now defunct, theater company. Once I found David on twitter, @dhlawrencexvii, that led me to see that two actors from Heroes are regular twitters, @greggrunberg & @breagrant. Grant is a tech savy, web 2.0 guest star who is also guest starring and blogs, while Grunberg is a familiar regular.

Laura Fitton sees Twitter as a village, which sounds very appealing. She says in the post, “It takes a village – a critical mass of interesting people – to read and write to. When my brain started to connect with the brains (and hearts) of others, it got really, REALLY cool for me. You may be looking for like minds, or you may want to be totally shaken up by new ideas. Both work. One day I suddenly realized this was, for me, tribe-finding. For arguably the first time in my life I didn’t feel as weird and different.” As a freelancer one who has his hands in many different areas of work, twitter allows me to bring all those people into one place. I can get information about what is going on in the theater world, while reading about the latest twittip from Darren Rowse, @problogger, and keep a beat on the people I met from Cal Shakes in Berkley, @calshakes. Why do you use Twitter?

Filed under: Social Media, Web 2.0
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NYU Educational Theatre Blog

December 24, 2008 by Dennis Baker 

I have worked up a relationship with the marketing department at NYU Steinhardt and they are having me write a blog of my experience in the NYU Educational Theater program that they will feature on their student blog page. I was happy to do this as I found the blogs very helpful when I was applying and waiting to start classes. In the graduate program you are thrown in pretty fast without much preparation. I am sure the administration figures we are graduate students and don’t need help finding the bookstore, classes, etc. While all this is true its good to hear from the students about what they are learning and experiencing in their classes and as a whole being at NYU. So most of my school related educational theater topics will be posted over there, but no worries I will still keep the DENNIS BAKER LLC readers informed of any broader news.

Filed under: Graduate School, NYU Steinhardt, New York, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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Artistic Diversification

December 22, 2008 by Dennis Baker 

There has been a couple of things rolling around in my head and I think they are all connected. It started when I was talking with a fellow NYU Educational Theatre student who works in the office a major theater here in New York. He was telling me that three other major theaters let go of all their teaching artists, some that were hired as recently as September. New York City is getting sacked with major layoffs, with the national numbers reaching 533,000. The arts in general are getting hit pretty hard as it seems theater across the nation are closing on a weekly basis as the National Endowment for the Arts found that the audiences for straight plays are in decline. There are a couple of students I know from the program who are graduating with the disheartening feeling of entering into a field that is not hiring anyone. Then again does the arts really ever have enough jobs and funding?

Which leads me to the idea of diversification. If any one has been listening to the news recently many people, corporations and foundations have lost millions of money from investing with Madoff’s alleged Ponzi Scheme. Some loosing everything as they invested 100% of their savings. This reminded me of the discussion that is taking places over at the post Abolish Undergraduate Art Majors. I think artists have been sold a bill of goods that tells them they must pursue their art at all cost and be one with the starving artist persona. They must have those low paying jobs (waiter, bartender, etc.) so they are flexible for auditions and workshops. Though with those jobs its hard to pay for the actor’s life of headshots, classes, workshops and have any real sort of savings for emergencies and retirement. That’s not to even mention health benefits. So what happened if the students I mentioned above, and all the other BFA and MFA theater students who will be graduating this spring, thought to diversify themselves. What if they also took classes or got a second degree in business, computer graphics, or web design? They could take jobs in another field to build up a savings and afford to pay for all the actor necessities. If you think you can afford to be an actor because you don’t need to take classes as you just graduated with a theater/acting degree, than pause here and go read a great article over at Art of Function about university ego.

Masi Oka, who currently plays Hiro on Heroes, did something similar. Oka decided to take a risk putting his digital effects career on hold as he pursued acting in Los Angeles. “While I was working at ILM [in San Francisco], I also studied acting and I got my SAG card.” Taking a leave of absence from ILM, Oka moved to Los Angeles to immerse himself in auditions. “Six months passed and I ran out of money very quickly,” Oka says. “So when I was looking for a job, ILM told me that they had a LA commercial division, which unfortunately now is defunct, so at the time I worked from there. My intention was never to leave ILM, I just wanted to try acting while I still could. However, I had it in my contract that if I didn’t get a supporting role or recurring role in a pilot in six months I would have to go back to ILM in San Francisco. At that time I was very naive, thinking getting one pilot should be enough to know if I was going to make it as an actor or not. Anyone pursuing a creative career knows that it’s about persevering. It’s a marathon, not just a sprint. So it was a gamble in many ways.” After landing many guest spots, and bit parts in movies, he landed his current role in Heroes.

The key was Oka had diversity and was able to work on digital effects (which I am sure paid better than a waiter) to help sustain his acting career. In computer related jobs many people are capable of working from home. So once you put in the hours of working at the office, and show that you are an asset, some companies will want to keep you and will let you work from home (or give you a more flexible schedule) so that you can still pursue other careers.

So you graduate and are ready to hit the pavement, get those auditions and nail that job you have been training the last four years for at your undergraduate theater program. Instead, maybe you take the next year or two and land a job that pays pretty well and has the potential of being flexible in the future. You might say I could never take a year off to work in a cubicle. Really? The entertainment/theater industry is not going anywhere. And who knows, after that year you might have a good paying job that you can work from home and can afford to go to auditions, classes, workshops and also save money for health benefits and retirement. Believe me in that year most (if not all) your theater classmates will not have gotten so far in their careers that with a little hard work, you would be able to catch up. Remember its a marathon, so set your self up with a firm finical foundation to be able to run that marathon and enjoy the scenery along the way.

Filed under: Acting, Auditioning, Chicago, Film, Graduate School, Los Angeles, NYU Steinhardt, New York, Theater/Theatre
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Shakespeare Handbook

December 20, 2008 by Dennis Baker 

I created a Shakespeare Handbook as part of my final project for my Shakespeare I class. It can be used as an aid for teachers, students and artists. There is a list of group exercises we did with the Youth Ensemble, as well as observations, play analysis and dramaturgy. There is also a journal where I recorded my thoughts observations about each class session and our rehearsal process for our class presentation. I will continue to blog next semester during the Shakespeare II class.

Filed under: Acting, Graduate School, NYU Steinhardt, Shakespeare, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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Twyla Tharp on the Subject of Motivation and Creativity

December 7, 2008 by Dennis Baker 

Filed under: Acting, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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