News about upcoming opportunities to see, hear, and throw tomatoes at me.

(My good friend, the amazingly and multi-facetedly impressive Sarah Jebian, recently asked some of her colleagues if they’d be willing to write blog posts that Sarah could share with her voice and acting students in her monthly newsletter.  Here’s mine:)

I saw it coming.  I knew a solid 8 bars before the high G# that it wasn’t going to come out.  We had learned the notes and marked the breaths and identified the vowels and done all of those other Things You’re Supposed to Do Before You Sing a Song.  He’d even taken a good, low breath before starting the piece.  But as the key changed into the last refrain and the momentum started to build, I saw the self-consciousness chiseling itself into his forehead: was his soft palate high enough? his tongue low enough? his ribcage maintaining noble posture? his base of support sturdy enough?

The irony, of course, is that all of these things are important to consider as you’re building the muscle memory to get your body through the “money note” moment of the song. But focusing on them in that moment is lethal to the art.  And telling yourself not to think about them is as effective as telling yourself not to think about pink elephants.  So what do you put into your mind when you don’t want to think about how hard it is to be an excellent singer?

Great songs are great songs because they tell great stories.  They’re great because they say something to us, or help us to say something we didn’t know how to say ourselves.  Because great music has power—because the world is a different place after a great song has been sung well.  And that power, I believe, comes from a singer’s immersion in the story—in the world of the song.

I stopped my student during the last phrase before the high G#.  “Wait a minute,” I said.

Then I asked him the six questions I ask just about all of my students at some point about every song, every monologue, and every scene:

1. Who are you?

What is your character’s origin story? What archetypes do they echo? What assumptions, values, “baggage” do they carry? What is their super-objective in the play?

2. Whom are you talking to?

What is their power dynamic with your character? What power do they hold over others that you don’t?

3. What do you want from your partner?

There will usually be a text-specific answer and a more essential, archetypical answer. (At the Alsedek Theatre School we call this latter category your “Essential Action,” an idea our founder gleaned from conversations with William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman, and other students of the Atlantic Theatre Company.)

4. How important is your goal?

What are the stakes if you fail? What is the reward if you succeed?

5. What’s in the way?

What (or who) is making it difficult to achieve your goal? What tactics might you employ to overcome those obstacles?

6. How will you know when you’ve succeeded?

What behavior from your scene partner will let you know you’ve accomplished your goal?

We talked through the answers to these questions for several minutes, and as we talked I saw the furrows in his forehead loosen, his shoulders drop, and his breathing slow.  The desperate attention to technique relaxed away, and in its place I saw a heartfelt need to tell this character’s story.

“Now,” I said.  “Sing.”

When I was 16, I came within a mile of killing myself.

A mile, or roughly two minutes.  At the spot where the impulse struck me, on Route 175 in Columbia, MD, the roadside was all gently sloping grass—no trees or telephone poles or even concrete safety barriers to ram a car against.  A mile further down the road, and I could have found any of those sturdy car-smashing targets—but before I got that far, I’d thought better of it.  But in that instant, in the car alone, after the boy I was in love with told me he wasn’t in love with me, that he thought of me as a good friend but nothing more than that… if the chance had been there, my teen-angst-ful self would have taken it.

Next month, in case you’ve missed any of my earlier from-the-rooftop announcements, I’ll be playing Bruce Bechdel in Fun Home, the musical based upon Alison Bechdel’s autobiographical “tragicomic.”  Bruce was Alison’s father; he was passionate about literature and photography and art and design, and he made sure the home Alison grew up in was pristine and fashionable and full of beauty.  He was also gay.  And four months after Alison came out to him as lesbian, he killed himself.

I’ve been talking a lot with my therapist about this show.  Playing Bruce, I told her, is like riding my bike riiiiiight along the edge of a cliff—trying to match its curves and twists without falling in and crashing.

Some days it’s terrifying.

But unlike 16-year-old me, I’ve learned to think, as I’m teetering on the edge of that cliff, about the people around me—my husband, of course, who is the best friend I’ve ever had; but also my sister and our parents, and a select group of other close friends—who aren’t afraid to see me hurting, or angry, or scared.  These are people who have seen me cry, and have let me cry, and have sat with me without fixing or masking or ignoring what’s wrong.  They’ve been with me in moments when the fact that they were with me was the only good thing I could see, and they stayed there until I could see more good things than that.

These are the people who’ve saved my life over and over again.

And one moment, on Route 150 in Beech Creek, PA, Bruce couldn’t think of anyone like that.

I hope you’ll come see FUN HOME because it is—and I give you my word that this is not an exaggeration—the best-written musical I have ever read.  I hope you’ll come see it because the story is funny and poignant and sweet, and the music is fun and glorious and haunting.  I hope you’ll come see us because the cast includes some of the most insightful, vulnerable, dedicated actors and singers I’ve ever had the privilege of working with.  I hope you’ll come see us because I feel as though playing Bruce at this moment in my life—I’m just 2 years older now than Bruce was when he died—is something that had to happen.

But most of all, I hope you’ll come see us because someday, someone else will need you to be there for them.  And they’ll need you to be able to see their pain and their grief and their shame and their terror, and not be afraid of any of it.  The edge of the cliff can be a horrible place to find yourself, and if you’re not careful, at the wrong moment, you can fall in.  But if you’ve learned the terrain—if you’ve been there before, with someone who knows the way, and who can grab your hand if you start to slip—it’s not quite as scary.

Will you join us?

To buy tickets for the October 7 performance, benefiting the LGBT Center of Central PA, please use this form.  (These sales must be completed by October 1.)

Tickets to all twelve performances are now available on the Open Stage of Harrisburg website and at the door.

If you’d like to learn more about FUN HOME, and maybe be a little less scared of the cliff before you visit, here are a few resources to get you started:

And even if none of those resources seems quite right to you, you’re not alone.  I’m here for you.

FUN HOME poster It’s time it’s time it’s time it’s time!

Y’all.  I am so. Excited.

I don’t have much time today—gotta run to rehearsal—but I wanted to be sure everyone knew that individual ticket sales for FUN HOME (and all other Season 32 shows at Open Stage) are open now!

If you’re not able to join us on October 7 for the UUCV/LGBT Center benefit performance, you can now purchase tickets for any of the other 11 performances at the Open Stage website.

If you have questions, need (even more) encouragement to come see us, or have any trouble ordering your tickets, don’t hesitate to let me know.  I want everyone I know to see this amazing production!

Great news!  The final administrative hurdles have been vaulted, and ticket sales are now officially open for UUCV’s FUN HOME LGBT Center benefit program!  If you missed the original announcement (and my gushing about how excited I am about this project), you can read that here.  Or you could just take my word for it and submit this form today so you don’t miss this amazing production, or this chance to support the Central PA LGBT Center. I’ll hope to see you in the audience on October 7th!

Wow!  I’m thrilled that so many people are excited about purchasing tickets for FUN HOME, and about taking advantage of our benefit for the LGBT Center of Central PA!  I know it can be hard to remember to jump on these sorts of things when tickets actually go on sale—so if you’re interested in tickets for the benefit performance (that’s 7:30 PM on Saturday, October 7), just complete this form and I’ll make sure you’re at the top of the list when we start to process reservations in late July!