What In The Heights and West Side Story ‘21 Mean To Me

In 2007, I was on Broadway.com when I came across an opening night video for a new musical called In The Heights. What struck me immediately was that this was a musical about the Latino community in Washington Heights. And I was especially won over by the comments from original cast member Priscilla Lopez when she said the show avoided portraying the characters as pimps, gang members or drug dealers. From that moment, all I could think to myself was “Ok, when does this show go to Broadway because I’m buying a ticket.” And a year later, that’s just what happened. That Lin-Manuel Miranda can certainly write a tune, he should keep it up.

But seriously, the whole reason this show resonates with me is because I am myself half-Latino. My mother is first generation Colombian. Growing up, I did not see a lot of representation in….much of anything. There was the odd tv show (The Brothers Garcia, Ugly Betty), maybe a movie like Gotta Kick It Up on the Disney Channel, Maria from Sesame Street, I remember reading a play called The Flying Tortilla Man in middle school, I knew who Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin and Shakira were ….see, I’m struggling to think of titles and names.

And nowhere was it more sparse than on the American stage. There was West Side Story and Evita and that was pretty much it (don’t forget, Man of La Mancha takes place in Spain) and even then, both shows have a history of casting Caucasian actors in the main roles. And I love the score to Paul Simon’s The Capeman but that show flopped hard and the performance rights have never been released, not to mention it was a musical about a Puerto Rican gang member who killed two guys, which was a cause of great controversy during its Broadway run. There simply weren’t that many chances to see someone who spoke the same language as my mother on the screen or stage. And then this show came along and everything changed.

Over the years, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I rejected my own heritage in a lot of ways. I’ve really only just tried to make the effort to communicate with my non-English speaking relatives in Español. For the longest time, if my mom ever spoke Spanish, I’d be a little shit about it and groan and be all “Say it in English!” And I was never really open about the fact that my mother was Colombian. And it’s especially crazy because I grew up in a very diverse town, many of whose residents were Latino. ‘S’wrong with me? And because I am very Caucasian-looking in terms of physical appearance and complexion, people tend to be surprised when I say I’m in fact of Latin descent. One person even thought I was joking. And on a more serious note, while I will not make any claims that I’ve been subject to any kind of racial discrimination, knowing full well that others have been through far far worse, I have had to contend with my fair share of micro-aggressions. My “favorite” examples include:

1. My high school history teacher giving a lecture about how Colombia is basically some kind of apocalyptic war-torn hell hole out of Mad Max and advising me to wear a bulletproof vest when I said I was taking a trip there

2. A then-friend of mine asking “Did you bring back any coke” when I got back (spoiler alert: he did not mean the drink…seriously, what is it with you gringos and the drugs).

3. Another then-friend randomly exclaiming “Juan Valdez!” when I told her my aunt and uncle flew down from Colombia for my college graduation.

4. Being told “Greek is still ethnic” to my face when I criticized Constantine Maroulis playing Che in North Shore Music Theater’s controversial production of Evita.

So to see a show about the Latino community, devoid of the stereotypes that are usually prevalent in the media, performed by Latino/poc actors and for it to be as successful as it was was nothing short of a revelation. And it also doesn’t hurt that the show freakin’ slaps.

Which brings us to today. At the time of this writing, three trailers have dropped for the upcoming film adaptation of In The Heights this June. Six months later (if all continues to go well with the vaccine distribution), we will see the release of the second screen adaptation of West Side Story in December. In a pre-Covid world, these movies were to have come out last year, the year I had dubbed “The Year of the Latino Movie Musical”. As you could probably guess, they have rightfully been pushed back. But this goes deeper than two films that will hopefully have audiences dancing in the aisles. It goes back to what I was talking about earlier and that is the issue of representation.

One of the movies I watched at the beginning of lockdown was the original ‘61 West Side Story. It is widely regarded as a classic, to the point that certain individuals have shared some less than enthusiastic reactions regarding the new movie. The most common argument I’ve heard has been “Why would anyone want to remake a classic like West Side Story?” Shoot, I just mentioned the movie to someone and he groaned and said, “Oh God, that’s coming out”…..ouch. Now I want to state for the record that no one is obligated to see this new version. If the ‘61 version is more your jam, that’s fine. I’ll even go as far as to say that it is still a pretty damn good movie. Maybe even a great one. I might end up hating the new movie for all I know. But watching it again in 2020, there were things that didn’t sit right with me. And no, it’s not that no one says “Cracko jacko”. I’m referring to the fact that in a screen adaptation of a musical about a love story that blooms from a violent rivalry between a white gang and a Puerto Rican gang, there are a grand total of five actors of Latino descent in the entire movie…and two of them are not even credited. I refer of course to Rita Moreno as Anita, Jose de Vega as Chino (his mother was Colombian) and ensemble members Rudy del Campo, Maria Jimenez Henley and Olivia Perez. And as was sadly typical of Hollywood in the 60s, almost every Shark and Shark girl, even Rita Moreno, had every visible inch of flesh caked in bronzer to make their skin look brown to the point that it looks like they all went skinny dipping in mud. Also everybody’s accents are preeeeeeeeetty bad. West Side Story ‘21, however, will rectify this. All the Sharks and their girls are played by actors of Latino descent, most notably Rachel Zegler as Maria, who is herself half-Colombian. Needless to say, I was pretty hyped when I found out.

Other people have said this far better than I ever could but ultimately, this is about finally having a mainstream platform to tell two stories about the Latino experience in America and being represented authentically. We have a chance to show the world that our stories are valid, meaningful and also financially successful (or as financially successful as you can be as the world digs its way out of a pandemic). And after four years of an administration that wanted to build a wall to keep immigrants out and characterized Mexicans as all those lovely words that I refuse to repeat here, it feels pretty damn good.

PS: Broadway.com, please reupload that opening night vid of In The Heights when the movie comes out. Please and thank you.

War Stories: The One With Three Tams

In 2007, I booked my first mainstage gig fresh out of high school. It was a production of Miss Saigon, one of my favorite shows of all time. Unlike Aspects, this was a (mostly) positive experience. In addition to this being my first gig that wasn’t a school show or a youth production, it brought about the beginning of several friendships that I fully expect to last for the rest of my life. And it was a welcome distraction from what was a very difficult time in my life, one I will get into in a future post. That being said, this is a “War Stories” post so let’s jump in, shall we?

Before we go any further, we need to get this out of the way for the sake of context. This was one of those productions of Miss Saigon, a musical that takes place almost entirely in Asia, that barely featured any Asians in the cast, a choice I will not even begin to justify. We started rehearsal with one Asian woman in the ensemble who promptly left two days in and honestly, who could blame her? I was 18 years old at the time and didn’t know any better and the theater that produced the production, to this day, still has a huge diversity problem that I hope gets addressed in the future. Moving on.

For those who don’t know, Miss Saigon tells the story of Kim, a Vietnamese girl, and Chris, an American GI who fall in love during the Vietnam War but are separated when Saigon falls. Kim gives birth to a son and names him Tam. And it is Tam who our story ultimately concerns….all three of them.

For the majority of our rehearsal period, we were without a Tam. Our choreographer stood in for him whenever we rehearsed a scene he was in, which was quite the sight to behold. Eventually we were introduced to the little girl who would be playing the role. Her twin sister, older sister (who I’d worked with when we were kids) and mother would basically be nonspeaking extras in the show. They would also basically be the only four Asian actors in the cast. The programs had been printed, we had taken pictures of this kid in the costume, it looked like the show was good to go….or so we thought. We were already getting into tech rehearsals when I came to the theater one day to see a young boy in her place. At first I thought, “Maybe he’s a vacation cover or something.” Turns out the girl’s dad, for whatever reason, had pulled everyone out of the show. “Great timing, bro” is all I can say. The show went from having a whopping four Asians, all in nonspeaking roles, to two Asians (Tam #2’s mother would later take one of the walk-on roles. Yet another story for another time).

The only real snafus we had with our new Tam was that apparently no one on the creative team thought to tell him just how intense the scenes he was in could get. So the poor little guy would start crying and we’d have to stop to calm him down. Who could blame him, his character gets a knife pulled on him in his first scene alone for crap’s sake. But eventually he got through it like a pro, bless his heart. The show opened, audience response was enthusiastic (dunno how enthusiastic it would be now given how whitewashed the thing was), we eventually sold out the rest of the run, basically save for one actor getting a bad sprain and having to modify his track because of it, all was well. And then came….that weekend.

I believe it was roughly our third weekend when I arrived at the theater and was informed that our Tam had come down with a fever and was home sick. The solution…bring in a ringer. But here’s the thing, this kid, now our third Tam, was white and had red hair. The solution was to slap a black wig on him and a small layer of foundation. So for one weekend only, paying audiences were treated to *pause for dramatic effect* THE WHITEST MISS SAIGON EVARRRRRR!!! Thankfully Tam #2 was back on his feet for the remainder of the run but I facepalm every time I think about it.

In the future, my hope is to do a much more inclusive production of Miss Saigon…because man oh man have I got some stories to tell.

And on one final unrelated side note, because this production seemed hellbent on being so utterly cringe in retrospect, everyone who wasn’t playing an American in the show had to wear eyeliner to make their eyes look more pointed…in my case, I looked like a crap Jack Sparrow cosplay. I had to shower to get mine off after every show so my towel was so moist during the run that my bedroom reeked of mildew. So many thanks to the creative team for whitewashing Miss Saigon so hard, you made my room stink.

Till next time.

The One That Got Away, Part 2

So Aspects of Love’s mercifully short run ended and we were all free to go about our lives and finally get haircuts. Seriously, our costume designer was such a perfectionist that you couldn’t alter your appearance from day 1 of rehearsal until closing and that meant no haircuts. Also you couldn’t even wear your own underwear during performances. Yes. Really. But I digress.

Usually when a run ends, I wipe my hands and say, “Well that’s that”. The good ones, I miss like the dickens for a while, the bad ones, not so much. Aspects of Love, however, just kind of dogged me. The show would come up in conversations and the feedback from those who saw it would be less than glowing. The same word would always come up to describe it….weird. Not good, not bad, just weird…ok, it was bad but that’s beside the point. It wasn’t the first time someone said they didn’t like a show I was in but it was the first time I kept hearing it ad nauseam. And it blew. I can still remember this one person I talked to practically laughing about how much she hated the show. But my favorite critique of them all was: “It’s ok, it was just a sucky musical”….this person was trying to make me feel better.

“Sucky musical” or not, that was still a sizable chunk of my spring semester that I dedicated to this show. And it felt like it was all for nothing. Also, I felt like I was the only person who actually liked the show in terms of the material. Everyone else pretty much saw all the flaws in the show off the bat. My guess is, it probably didn’t help that unlike myself, everyone was going into the show cold and without the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia. Keep in mind, no one in the cast had any say in what the show was so essentially they were in a show they didn’t want to do. We’ll go into this in a future post but to put it mildly, it was definitely a confidence shaker.

For far too long than I care to admit, I was more than a little fixated on just what the shit went wrong with this production. It took me a few years to finally let the whole thing go and for that duration…..I was kind of a pain in the ass. I would bring it up in conversation constantly, I’d criticize the direction (or lack thereof) and get the “opera director” defense, I’d attempt to defend the material..oh, have mercy, it was a mess. It’s something I still struggle with to this day. I get fixated on a thing and woe betide you if I bring it up in conversation because I can talk up a blue streak. It’s something I’m still trying to work on. But it also led to anxiety on my part for a few years, which I will address in a later post.

The backlash the show received led to its subsequent disownment by the then-head of the department. Or as near as dammit. There’s an album from our photo call on the department’s Facebook page but if you look on the college website, it’s not even listed as a previous production. And the director has never been rehired for any subsequent productions. Yikessssssssss.

As for the show itself, as I said before, it suffered from problematic writing and a director who was too in love with himself and his “vision” to address any of the flaws or properly stage a scene. The few times I’ve been able to watch parts of the DVD we shot of our final dress rehearsal, it looks less like a show and more like a series of tableaux. I honestly asked someone who saw it “Were we really that boring?”

Would the show have gone over better if we’d had a better director? Possibly. Would a better show have been the solution? Lord yes. But the point is moot. The show has long been over and I’m just stuck in the lovely realm of Coulda Woulda Shoulda. But in a way, it was beneficial. It gave me higher standards in terms of what I seek in a director when I audition for a show, it taught me to criticize a show even if I like it and to like it even if there’s things to criticize and it taught me that not every show you do is gonna be a slam dunk. And maybe there’s other lessons left to learn from this show. I’ll let you know when I figure them out. Aspects of Love, a letdown of an experience but also one from which I grew. And truth be told…I still like that score.

Till next time.

The One That Got Away, Part 1

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a big fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Oh yes, that big.

Ok, maybe not that big.

So imagine my excitement when I found out that in the second semester of my sophomore year of college, the theater department would be producing his ‘89 musical, Aspects of Love, which is, in my book, one of his most underrated scores. Unfortunately I had to find out the hard way that not everyone was on the same page as me.

First, a quick recap of the story for the uninitiated:

*Deep breath*

The show centers around an English dude named Alex who falls in love with a French actress named Rose who eventually hooks up with his uncle George and marries him when she finds out she’s preggers. She gives birth to Jenny who meets Alex when she’s 12 and three years later, she gets the hots for him, meanwhile he may or may not actually be her father, the jury is out on whether or not this was intentionally ambiguous or ALW just couldn’t be bothered to address it, either way it’s still kinda gross. George gets agitated and eventually dies of a heart attack. Alex hooks up with George’s ex, Giulietta at the funeral and lets Jenny down easy, Rose sings a big ol’ ballad and…that’s pretty much it. Also there’s a French producer named Marcel (my role) and Rose’s friend with benefits named Hugo, who kinda pop up every now and then.

*Exhales* Everybody got that?

As you could probably tell from that synopsis, the show is…not without its flaws. But we’ll revisit that later.

At the time I was a student, the college’s theater department had a weird way of selecting shows. Basically you went in for a preliminary audition and then you found out what the show was at a much later date. In short, the director had the final say in what the show was going to be and everyone else…….not so much. It also didn’t help that the department, under its previous administration, produced shows even I had never heard of. A great idea on paper but in practice, it could be pretty alienating for the audience.

Our director was an interesting fellow who had a very high opinion of his approach to the show. He kept going on and on about how this production was the way Andrew Lloyd Webber always envisioned the show, how it was always meant to be seen in an intimate space, basically that this would finally be Aspects of Love’s moment in the sun and people would finally recognize it as the masterpiece it was….or so he thought. His directorial style on the other hand….how do I put this?….he couldn’t stage scenes for crap. You basically entered and stayed rooted in one spot unless told otherwise. In fact, for my number in the show, I had to lowkey change my blocking just so I could move around a little and wouldn’t be stuck in one place for what felt like an eternity even though it was only a minute and 5 seconds (why yes, I did look that up). I kept asking myself, “Ok, he’s going to actually stage these scenes, right?” Most people’s defense, when I would bring it up, would be “Well he’s an opera director, they just tell you to stand there and sing.” Yeah but I’m pretty sure they put in a little bit more effort at La Scala, jessayin’.

The rehearsal process was not a smooth one. At the beginning, cast members were dropping out left and right, the ones who stayed weren’t terribly jazzed about the choice of show, our makeup crew almost walked for reasons that would take too long to explain. It was overwhelming, at times, too overwhelming. But for the most part, I shrugged it all off because we had a great show, right?……..oh my sweet summer child.

Finally the day we had been waiting for all semester was here. Opening night, baby!…my elation would prove to be short-lived. We were well into Act Two and we had reached the part of the show where a paying audience had to watch a minor sing about how she has the hots for her 32 year old cousin. Why did I think this show had legs again? That’s when I started hearing the laughs. It seemed like every line the actress playing Jenny sang was met with guffaws from the audience. I can’t speak for the rest of the cast but I was truly thrown for a loop. And then we got to the bedroom scene where Jenny attempts to seduce Alex but he tells her to go the crap to sleep. Then when she is asleep, he reveals that yes, he does in fact feel an attraction. Meanwhile an agitated George is heading up to the bedroom to pretty much beat the everloving snot out of his nephew but has a heart attack and dies, everyone finds out he’s dead and then we move on to the next scene. The way our director had it blocked was, Alex would be singing about Jenny and start (oh God) slipping into bed with her while she was sleeping. George would enter and start moving towards the room, collapse and die. Alex would emerge from the room and see George dead on the floor, say “This is my fault, all of this is my fault” and then Rose and Hugo would enter and see what happened and then Jenny would also enter and then end of scene. As the scene progressed, the laughs just got louder. This was a fucking death scene and the audience was laughing as if they were watching Noises Off or something. I’ve also been reliably informed that when Alex said “This is my fault”, an audience member was kind enough to yell out “Yeah it is!” Needless to say, this was not the opening night I envisioned at all.

I was shell shocked but I was assured by friends that it was simply an issue of not knowing what the audience’s reaction would be. Right before our next performance, the director assured us that it was simply a combination of nervous laughter and…well…buzzed laughter. I think on some level I knew I didn’t believe him. The fact that they laughed that night as well was a hint for one thing. But we played out the last two performances, partied into the wee hours of the morning after our final show and went about our lives. At least everyone else did. I basically spent the next two years (yes really) unpacking just what the hell went wrong. The short answer was….a lot. The long answer will require a whole separate post because this one is too damn long already.

To Be Continued

War Stories: The One With The Sportsball

So these posts are specifically a way to break up the seriousness of my other posts, which will get pretty serious at points as well as an excuse to share some of my nuttier experiences. So I’ll start us all off easy with 2007’s The Scarlet Letter. Or was it Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter?

This was the year of my high school graduation so it would ultimately be my last teen conservatory production at the theater I used to do shows at. The adaptation was a combination of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as well as three of his other short stories. Our director/adapter was going for a theme, namely that Hawthorne wrote about Puritans a lot. Like a lot a lot.

The way the play was broken up was that you saw our little company act out the three short stories (the names of which escape me even though they’re but a Google search away) and then Act One ended with the opening of The Scarlet Letter. You can probably guess what Act Two was. The dialogue was lifted word for word from the original texts which means we had a bit of a challenge ahead of us making it all sound natural. And speaking selfishly, this was a memorable experience for me because it was actually my first big dramatic role (technically it was my first two dramatic roles because I had a big part in one of the short story bits). Up until that point, I’d mostly done comedic roles. But my main part in The Scarlet Letter was Roger Chillingworth, the jilted husband of Hester Prynne, a physician and an all-around nasty sonovabitch. So naturally I loved playing him.

Now here’s where the story gets weird….I actually joined the cast after the first round of auditions. I initially wasn’t going to do the play but I decided to check if they had finished casting. Worst they could say was no, right? Turns out they were actually planning to ask me to come in because they were short on guys (or at least that’s how I remember it) so I said yes and came in the next day. What I also noticed was this one woman who came in with her two daughters and went right up to the director and asked if they could be in the show. Seemed a little forward to me but the director surprisingly said yes. And….how can I be diplomatic about this….you could tell they were new to doing live theater.

But that’s not where things got crazy. The crazy part happened the day of our very last dress rehearsal right before we opened. I had heard a rumor prior to this day that the older sister was planning to leave rehearsal early that day because she had some kind of sportsball game. At the time I thought, “Well, that’ll never happen! It’s the last dress rehearsal for goodness’ sake.”

We had come to the first of the “short story” segments in Act 1, the one wherein I had a large part (phrasing). My blocking was that I say goodbye to the actress playing my wife (I somehow had three failed marriages in this show, can you believe it?) and then turn around to see the older sister and this other girl walking towards me. We have a few lines of dialogue together ( she actually had the first line) and then they leave. Well that night, as we get to that point in the show, it’s been a pretty chill run through so far even though we’re still only a few minutes in. And as far as I remember, the older sister was still in the building when we started. So I turn around to do my bit with the girls…and there is a blank space where the older sister should be. She did it…she actually did it. This chick ditched our last dress rehearsal to go play sportsball!

I don’t know who stood in for her or read her lines for the rest of the night but in that moment, all we could do was keep going. We soldiered through with the rest of the runthrough and all we could talk about backstage between scenes was that we were down an actor. Thankfully she showed up for the performances and the rest of the run went smoothly. And to date, I haven’t had any experiences as drastic as that (ok, there was that one guy who got food poisoning but that’s another story).

That’s live theater, I guess. Sometimes curve balls will be thrown at you when you least expect it. But as you’ll find if you choose to continue reading, sometimes it makes for a damn good story.

So lesson of the story, kids, don’t ditch the last dress rehearsal because sportsball. Get it? Got it? Good.

Till next time.

Coping With COVID

On March 8th 2020, the production of Beauty and the Beast that I had been rehearsing since September 3rd of 2019 (long story) played its final performance. It had been a helluva ride but through all the obstacles thrown in our way (and there were several), we put on one of if not the best production I’ve ever been a part of. And I finally got to do the first show I ever saw on Broadway. How many people get to say that or have that kind of full circle moment? After strike, we all said our goodbyes, hugging it out like it would be the last time we would ever see each other…but surely it wasn’t, we were all gonna have a big reunion in the summer. And Black Widow was coming out in a few months, I was gonna see a friend of mine in a show, as far as I was concerned, even though we had a election coming up that had me scared shitless, 2020 was going to be an ok year. Right?

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

I knew the coronavirus was a thing as early as December but I thought it would just be a thing that passed like swine flu. When my mother advised me not to hug people at our final performance, I scoffed. Granted, I knew things were getting pushed back or cancelled but I just shrugged it off at the time.

“The new James Bond movie got pushed back.”

Ok, plenty of time for me to bone up on the last ones.

“The St. Patrick’s Day Parade got cancelled.”

Oh darn. I should really buy those tickets to that show soon.

“The NBA cancelled their season.”

Well I’m not a sports guy so…

“Broadway shut down.”

……………what?

That, as my therapist put it, was the record scratch moment.

At the time, I optimistically thought, “Oh I can do this for a few months, big whoop!” By now (or at least at the time of this writing),  it should be obvious that this has lasted more than a few months. But for the longest time, I was in denial. I would see people on bullcrap sites like the BroadwayWorld.com message boards and the Broadway subreddit swear up and down that the prospect of theaters reopening this year, let alone in a few weeks, was too optimistic, that nothing could actually happen without a vaccine, yada yada yada. At first, I brushed it off as hyperbole. I mean the BroadwayWorld message boards are a cesspit of negativity. It’s like Mordor and the Death Star rolled into one. This was just temporary, right? But then more and more news outlets of a significantly more reliable nature kept saying the same thing. No theater till possibly 2021. When it finally became reality, it was easier to accept. Enough stuff had been pushed back by then, it was just a question of when they were finally going to confirm it. But it still hurt. The theater, as you will find if you stick around and keep reading, is, has been, and will continue to be such a huge part of my life. And I am chomping at the bit for it to come back. I’m basically all those people in Monty Python and the Holy Grail screaming, “GET ON WITH IT!!!!!!” only nowhere near as funny.

The thing about living with Asperger’s is, we Aspies don’t always adapt well to change. So let’s unpack all of this, shall we?

  1. Four days after my show closes, I basically get told I can’t see my castmates.
  2. Theaters are closed and can’t reopen even with full blown social distancing. True, it’s the right thing to do but it still sucks.
  3. The show I was going to see got cancelled.
  4. I can’t even go see a damn movie.

As the dumpster fire that was last year raged on, that’s when the annoying neighbors that live in all our brains who go by the names of “anxiety” and “depression” came to visit and damn well overstayed their welcomes. I was “taking breaks” from social media but also cutting myself off from people, save for a select few. I was afraid to speak my mind for fear of someone telling me I was full of crap or being too optimistic (because optimism has basically become something to be ridiculed). There were days it would get so overwhelming, I would just break down crying. All because I was scared shitless that this was life from now on, a world with no theater, at least not the way we used to do it. It also didn’t help that try as I might, I would keep looking for hope in all the wrong places. Comment sections, Reddit, Twitter, interviews with Patti LuPone (seriously, I can’t with her sometimes), it was not healthy. 2020, ladies and gentlemen.

And then there was the event that I would’ve been terrified of, pandemic or no pandemic….the goddamn election. Yes, the polls were extremely promising but that lovely anxiety of mine kept telling me such lovely things as “He’s gonna get re-elected” and “We’ve hit rock bottom“ and my favorite, “,Theaters will never reopen.” I honestly went to bed on election night fearing the worst. So as you can imagine, November 7th was a very good day. There is no doubt in my mind that had The Orange One been re-elected, the vaccine rollout would’ve been screwed up even further than it already is which would’ve complicated reopening….everything. Other more important things too but this is a theater blog so let’s stay focused. 

So The Orange One is out, Biden is in AND two days later, we find out that the vaccine that’ll get us out of this nightmare is miraculously highly effective! All is well and I should be happy as hell, right? And believe you me, I was ecstatic that week! It was the happiest I’d been in months! What happened, you ask? Well let’s unpack that as well.

I trust Dr. Fauci absolutely when he says we’ll get back to normal but for whatever reason, I hear that “75-85%” number when it comes to the vaccine and herd immunity and my brain goes into worst-case scenario mode. It has a tendency to do that on occasion but when normalcy hinges on such a vast number……hoo boy. Not to mention, no thanks to The Orange One (yeah, I’m never using his name on this thing….ever), it feels like getting certain people to put on masks for a couple of hours when they leave the house has been like pulling teeth. Or at least that’s what my dumb brain keeps trying to fool me into thinking. And it’s seriously gotten to a point where every time a new date for a thing gets announced, my reaction is “From your mouth to God’s ears.”

But on the other hand, as my therapist has pointed out, so many people are sick of this crap, myself included, so they will likely get the vaccine. Lord knows I will.

The thing about anxiety is it creeps up on you like a mosqui…what’s that? Big Mouth Season 4 used the same metaphor? Eh, my frickin’ blog, my frickin’ rules. 

Where was I?…oh yeah, anxiety. It just buzzes and flies around inside your head. Sometimes it’s just one little guy , sometimes it’s a swarm of the bastards. And you can either swat ‘em away or you can let ‘em drain you. The latter is definitely the easier option because the former is more work. But it’s not fun, that’s for damn sure. So do me a solid and get to swattin’.

PS: Get the damn vaccine.

Ok, Here We Go

Hello all! You’ve probably gleaned two things from the title of this blog, that the author (yours truly) is two things, an actor and an Aspie. You’re also probably wondering what the sam hill an Aspie is. It means I have Asperger’s Syndrome. Yes, the official term is now “on the autistic spectrum” but screw it, I’m not callin’ it that.

The Asperger’s has been around since birth (so suck it, anti-vaxxers) and the acting has been a thing since about second or third grade. At the moment, until 75 to 85% of the population decides not to be total dinguses and gets vaccinated against Covid-19, the acting is not a thing at present for me and countless others. We’ll talk about how I’ve been coping with all of that later but for now, I just want to prep everyone reading this for what they can expect going forward. I want to talk about the experiences I’ve had in the theater as an actor living with Asperger’s Syndrome as well as the oh so delightful combo of anxiety and depression (yeah, that’s a thing too). I’ve had my share of great experiences, don’t get me wrong, but every actor, union or otherwise, will tell you this profession is no walk in the park. I dunno how you normies get through it but for me, when the shit hits the fan, it can be a lot.

I don’t want this to be a complete bitchfest and make you all think I’m some ungrateful choad who secretly hates being in the theater but the purpose of this blog is honesty and that is what you will get. The names of specific theater companies and directors will remain anonymous out of respect, the names of actual shows I was in….not s’much. So watch this space because I’ve run out of things to say and I am terrible with endings. Till next time.