"Superheroes! I love em. I'm 34 years old, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. But despite what you may have just seen, I myself am not a superhero. No, I'm an actor..."
Those words began my one-man show, Secret Origin. It ran June 27 and 28 at Don't Tell Mama in NYC. And not to brag...
But it went great. And hey, I did it all by myself!
As you may already know from my two most recent columns (if you haven't read them yet, what are you waiting for? Here's column one and column two), I'd spent months working on the show. After multiple drafts, several readings, and countless hours of creative energy expended, I finally had a script I was happy with. So the final step of actually performing it would be a piece of cake, right? I mean, up until then I'd done everything else on my own.
For instance, during the first reading—a real low-budget affair—I'd handled everything myself. And true, the second time around I'd enlisted my girlfriend to run the slides and music. But still, both readings had a home-grown, DIY feel to them.
But now, when planning the fully-realized performances, I wanted to give the audience something more—a genuine theatrical experience. So okay, for that maybe I'd need a little help. One person. A director.
I hired my friend Mary, a director who generously offered her services for free. At first, I was a bit leery of having anyone else guide the show; it seemed too personal to involve outside opinions. I feared that when we were done, it wouldn't really be "my" show anymore—it'd be some strange amalgam of our sensibilities.
But that turned out to be no problem. Mary's ideas and opinions were right in line with what I was already thinking. And some things she brought to the table that I hadn't considered seemed so obvious, I wondered where my head was at before.
Mary got me to really move around and open up the show to the audience. We set specific areas of the stage as different "worlds"—my father's garage, my high school, Penn Station, etc. All the scenes regarding my girlfriend Lindsay took place in an area we designated "Lindsay-land." The few times Mary suggested things that didn't jibe with my concept, she graciously withdrew the suggestion, and we moved on.
It was a truly joyous collaboration.
After our first planning session, we decided that we'd also need a stage manager. Someone to be on book during the rehearsal process, to acquire various objects, and to be our liaison with the technical director at Don't Tell Mama, who would run the lights and sound cues but couldn't handle the slides too. So this stage manager would run the slides during the show.
Okay, two people to help me. Fine. I couldn't expect to be onstage and run the slides at the same time, right?
So I turned to my friend Kathryn, who I'd worked with on A Flea in Her Ear last fall, to fill the position. I knew she was professional, punctual, and would be able to handle all the tech stuff, so I could concentrate on the grunt work of learning the lines.
Speaking of which, have you ever tried to memorize a 75-minute monologue, including ten piano pieces? It's a lot. I didn't realize what a monster I'd written until I started trying to get off-book. Obviously I knew the gist of the story, but many of the non-sequitur transitions were giving me trouble, as well as some specific phrases. It took a lot of drilling to finally get it all lodged in my head.
Mary, Kathryn, and I created a workable schedule. I rehearsed plenty on my own time, but soon realized that the official rehearsals—with my "staff" there with me—made the show seem more and more like a professional production, and not just something I wrote for my own amusement.
So I decided I'd also want a quality video of the show, for archival purposes. Obviously, I couldn't just hand the camera to someone in the audience. So I realized I'd need yet another helping hand, someone who would be there specifically to get it all on tape, who had some experience behind a camera.
I wound up asking my friend Emma to help out. Emma had gone to NYU film school. We'd met while shooting a student film called The Big Sleepy. I knew she could be counted on to show up and handle the camera well. (Although I did have to bribe her with promises of free Starbucks.)
Hmm... so maybe I wasn't going to do this all by myself. I now had a director, stage manager, and videographer. But it was still my one-man show, right?
Oh wait. I also needed to hire a graphic designer. See, I wanted a postcard for the show that I could physically hand out—something with all of the pertinent information, with a dynamic graphic image that would instantly convey the show's themes. So I took out a pen and sketched this:
Then (my Photoshop skills being non-existent), I set about looking for someone who could bring this to life. But how to find such a person? I'd come across everyone else in my acting jobs, but I'd never met a graphic designer. So I started clicking around on Craigslist.
Turns out? There are a lot of freelance graphic designers in the NYC area.
It became a matter of narrowing down the ones who were within my shoestring budget. For example, I saw one guy whose stuff was amazing, but even a discount, it was still more than I could afford. Finally I met a woman named Valerie whose stuff looked great and prices were reasonable, so we were able to work something out. Because the show was in less than a month, I was in a rush. So we worked on the design together, emails and phone calls back and forth for a few days, until we got to this:
Yeah! Okay, so now show was all set, right? Oh wait. I needed still one more person: the sound designer!
With less than a week left before the show, Kathryn and I journeyed out to New Jersey to her friend Mark's house. Mark worked in the adult video industry and owned a lot of professional sound equipment. He generously donated his time to help us record the voice-overs and sound effects that wind their way through the show.
This was a lot of fun, as I hadn't done much V/O work before, and I was thrilled with how easy Mark made it. The recordings sounded fantastic, he played around with them to give them the booming, cosmic feel I wanted. He even downloaded a few musical cues I needed for the show. For free!
Okay, so I guess to be honest, this wasn't quite the one-man affair I'd envisioned. But there you go, just that small group of helpers. The rest was totally me!
Wait, I just lied. There was also the staff at Don't Tell Mama who facilitated everything: Sidney the booking agent who helped me secure the dates I wanted; Bob and Patrick the Technical Directors; and Randi and Eric, the waiters who served the drinks and collected the money.
Not to mention my website guy Mark who kept adding updates without asking when he'd get paid. And the helpful guy from the postcard printers who shipped them to me on a Saturday even though they generally don't do that.
So who was I kidding? Secret Origin was a total group effort! Now all I had to do was not screw it up!
Luckily enough, it was a hit. The audiences roared with laughter, and really got involved in the story. The Friday performance was full, and Saturday was completely sold out. This was a big thrill for me, since I'd originally hoped to just get enough people to cover the room charge!
I'm now planning to do it again this fall, for the friends and family who couldn't make it the first time, and also for industry people who, in all the hoopla, I never got around to inviting! I guess it wouldn't hurt to have someone in the audience who could give me a job, right?
In the end, I was thrilled with the show—it went far beyond my expectations. But all my hard work to write and create the performance turned out to be just the first step in making it happen. Secret Origin wouldn't have been nearly as successful without the help of all those people who gave their time and support. So thank you to all of them, and to everyone who came to see it!
And if you didn't see it, keep an eye out this fall...!