Full Circle: A Tribute to Doug Marr

Last night, Omaha lost a talented playwright, a genuine wit, and an all around great human being.

I lost a good friend.

When I think of Doug I think of a genuinely good man with a phenomenal sense of humor and a truly giving and supportive heart.  Doug was responsible for giving my theatre career one of its biggest boosts and for keeping it alive when it was on life support.

I first met Doug back in 2003 when I auditioned for the Circle Theatre’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  I had high hopes that I would be able to net the role of Billy Bibbit, but received a surprise when I got a letter notifying me that the whole production was being postponed due to the theatre being unable to fill the key role of Chief Bromden, but Doug hoped to mount the show later that summer.

As summer closed in I asked him if Cuckoo was going to be mounted and he wrote back and said Circle would be doing Our Town and immediately offered me the role of Doc Gibbs.

I was stunned by his generosity as I was relatively an untested talent as I only had 4 small roles under my belt and this would be the first time I had something with a bit of meat.  Though he didn’t direct the production, he was present every day at his trusted post at the light and sound board.  He often regaled the cast with his off the cuff jokes and we would spend quite a bit of time talking about our mutual love for classic rock, Sherlock Holmes, and he would share with me ideas he had for future plays and stories.

I experienced a bit more of his generosity when he handed me a small check at the end of the run.  Doug always believed in paying a tiny stipend to the performers and I’m proud to have had my first paying gig under his watchful eye.

It would be nearly a decade before I crossed paths with Doug again.  At that point, I had been going through a dry spell and then he announced auditions for An Inspector Calls.  After my audition, Doug offered me the choice of either of the two young men.  Now one was a decent, level headed sort close to my real personality and the other was a drunken lout.  I opted for the lout.  Doug agreed to that as he thought that was the better of the two reads.

Doug often said that he wasn’t a director, but I think he underestimated his talents in that realm..  For starters, he was a gifted writer with an instinct for beats so he knew what points in a story needed to be hit to get maximum effect.  More importantly, he had an incredible eye for talent.  Doug intuitively understood a performer’s strengths and weaknesses and not only knew where to slot them, but also trusted their instincts so he’d only have to give slight notes to smooth out the rough edges.

I was always grateful that he let me test my range with Eric Birling and it still ranks as one of my favorite roles.

Shortly after that show, my dry spell became an arid desert.  I had grown so disheartened with the constant rejections that I made the decision to step away from theatre for a while.

Trust Doug to get me back into the swing of things.

Six months into my hiatus, Doug sent word through a mutual friend of ours asking if I would consider doing the Circle’s annual Christmas show.  I was a little hesitant because my confidence had been so battered, but he was a really hard guy to say no to so I agreed.

With his trust and support, I began to remember the things I loved so much about theatre and managed to breathe life into his creation of Gunar, the hippie elf which would become another of my favorite roles.  His kindness gave me the shot in the arm I needed and I would bag my biggest role later that season thanks to him restoring my heart.

Many in our community have shared their stories about Doug.  He was a treasure and he will be missed.  I’ll always remember him for his warmth, his good humor, his gift for wordplay, and his goodness.  Most of all, I’ll remember him for being my friend.

Rest in peace, my friend.

 

What Do I See?

A short while ago, I wrote an article on the power of perception which discussed the idea that how actors are seen dictates if and how they are cast.  I’ve said that an actor exerts very little control over this aspect of the business and that is certainly true.  But how an actor perceives himself or herself certainly dictates the types of roles she or he pursues.

 

Some actors only see themselves as leading characters and will only accept a role of that type.  Others may prefer the sidekick/second banana role.  Still more may be willing to accept a role of any kind.

 

When it comes to me, I always seek out the most challenging role.  In my experience, that role is usually something other than the leading role.  So, in a sense, I am probably a character actor, though I think what I pursue is something more than that and somewhat defies a description.

 

If I were to put it into words, I would call myself a storyteller.  This is why I prefer John Merrick to Frederick Treves, Billy Bibbit to Randall McMurphy, and Renfield to Count Dracula.  I really don’t have a particular taste as I will always look for the role that intrigues me, though I do seem to have a predilection for characters that exhibit great strength of spirit.

 

Since I view myself as a storyteller, the size of my part does not matter.  I just want the challenge.  If I thought the leading role in a play was the most difficult one, then that is what I would pursue.  If I thought a character with no lines was the most challenging role, then that is the role that I would want.  With the pursuit of the challenge, a wide plethora of roles is available to me.

 

Not that I will do any role that comes my way.  I have refused roles in the past because I didn’t think they had the difficulty which I seek or just didn’t think myself well suited to the role.  As my abilities as an actor have grown and evolved, I have become a little choosier in what I will do.  For example, at this point in my avocation, the odds of me taking a supernumerary role aren’t particularly high.  Just like in climbing the corporate ladder where you have to work from the bottom up, I believe a role like that needs to go to an inexperienced, untested performer to give her or him a chance to show some grace and aplomb. 

 

As to my style. . .well, I’d like to consider myself a naturalistic actor.  I try to imagine what I would do if I were to find myself in the same situation that that character does and react accordingly.  Sometimes I think I’m too realistic as I need to work a little harder at being over the top when it comes to farce since my instinct is to play things as believably as I can even when my character may be in the midst of an unbelievable situation.

 

My perception of how I’m often cast is that directors tend to cast me in characters that seem to reflect my real personality.  Though, over the past few years, I’ve managed to start obtaining roles different to myself such as the loutish drunkard, Eric Birling, in An Inspector Calls and the adult version of Don Browning in Leaving Iowa.  Rest assured, child Don was very much me and probably the most fun I’ve had being me on stage.

 

And it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed playing the characters who reflect the real me.  I’ve loved them all.  But I’m me every day so I already know I can do that.  In order to continue my growth as an actor, I have to show the sides of me that aren’t seen very much.  This is why I’ll often try a different take on a “me” character to make it a little less “me” when I’m playing that type of role.

 

When I first got started in this business, I didn’t understand what acting was all about.  I felt I had to feel like I was doing something in order to be acting and this road, unquestionably, led to being perceived as a poor performer.

 

Along the road I met those who helped me understand that I didn’t have to feel like I was doing something, I just had to do it.  That is what helped me to become a stronger actor over the years.  Learning to trust my instinct and be in the moment also helped me to achieve that truly rare feat of altering perceptions of me as a bad actor.  Mind you, I didn’t consciously set out to do this.  I just did it because I kept trying, working, practicing, and learning.  My conscious goal was simply to get roles.

 

The theatre season is fully cast and, for the first time in years, I didn’t do a show.  It wasn’t that long ago that I would consider that a failure and the frustration would be weighing on my shoulders like a ton of bricks.  But my perception of me has changed and I now accept myself as a good, capable actor. 

 

There’ll always be another show.  And I’ll be offering directors all of me which is the only thing I can give.  My instinct.  My effort.  My imagination.  My interpretation.  When it comes to casting me, directors may not always agree with me, but they will know that they got the best me.

Drought, Part 2

I must admit things were starting to get very bleak for me in theatre.  For those of you who have read my anecdotes from the beginning, you know that I spent my first 4 years in theatre just trying to get cast once and that the difficulties and frustrations of that time often weighed on me.  Let me assure you that the period I have dubbed “the drought” made those first 4 years seem like a trip to the amusement park.

I auditioned 10 times during my first 4 years in theatre and failed to get called back or cast.  During the nearly 3 ½ year drought, I auditioned nearly 20 times without getting cast and was only called back twice.  During the first bad period, I didn’t know if I could act or not.  Now I was giving some of the best auditions of my life and I still couldn’t get cast.  The flurry of rejections I had received truly became an unbearable burden.

Becky’s New Car was my first audition for the new theatre season and the first since The Odd Couple that I was able to apply the skills that Doug had taught me.  Again, I had a really great audition.  I found the beats and gave a seamless performance.  However, this time, I was up against a guy (Matthew Pyle) who gave an even better audition for the role I wanted.  It was amazing.  When he finished reading, I wanted to stand up and say, “We have a winner.”

Unsurprisingly, I was neither cast nor called back and Matthew did eventually win the role I wanted.  That audition did not bother me because I have never minded losing a fair fight.  It was all the auditions that I seemed to lose based on factors separate from my performances that sapped my vitality.

Then I finally caught a break of a kind.  The Circle Theatre was having auditions for An Inspector Calls and I decided to show up to them.  As soon as I finished reading, Doug Marr asked me which of the two young men I wanted to play and I immediately picked Eric Birling, the loutish, drunkard son.  And that’s why I really cannot count this play as an end to my streak.  I knew I’d be in the play just be showing up because that theatre likes to use me a lot. 

This is a very political business and I’ve benefitted from it and suffered because of it.  I don’t mind being pre-cast once in a while, but it’s not the same as the thrill I get from winning a role.  Still, Eric Birling did temporarily boost my waning confidence in myself as an actor.

I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to get cast in roles that reflect my real personality.  But I usually aim for roles that are different from my real personality or at least emphasize aspects of my personality that aren’t always seen.  With Eric, I finally got the chance to really do that.  Aside from being a drunk, Eric was rude, arrogant, lazy, and insulting.  And I enjoyed every moment of doing that.  However, by the end of the play, Eric actually becomes penitent for the sins he’s committed, so it’s a good role for versatility.  The difficulty lies in the fact that the transformation occurs offstage.  Eric leaves as a lout in Act I and enters as remorseful in Act II.

Using Doug’s lessons, I created a story behind the scenes for Eric to explain his transformation and I ran through it each and every time to make the change.  Eric is well dressed in a tuxedo when he leaves, but when I came back on, I had lost the jacket and tie and had loosened my collar.  I also dipped into my emotional wells, so I could enter Act II crying.  The first time I tried this, one of the actresses, Erin Moran, thought I was genuinely upset about something.

In many ways, the show was a great personal triumph as I showed I could handle some very complex acting.  A friend of mine, Don Harris, said it was the best thing he had ever seen me do.  My crowning moment was that my best friend drove 3 ½ hours to see me act for the very first time.  After the show, he said, “You know, you were a real a$$hole.”  My other friend, Reed, said, “Yeah, that was my favorite part.”

In the midst of rehearsing for An Inspector Calls, I found myself auditioning for the Blue Barn Christmas show once again.  This time around it was Every Christmas Story Ever Told. . .And Then Some.  Once more it was a truly funny script and I knew there was a lot I could do with it.  One role in particular was right up my alley as the characterization was of a clueless, naïve, but sweet, man-child. 

I arrived at the theatre and wound up having a huge shock when I was the one and only person who showed up at the audition.

With no other actors to work with, I ended up reading with Susan Clement-Toberer and had what I like to call a “sound bite” audition.  I read a brief scene that just didn’t feel like it had enough length to really demonstrate the character’s personality.  Enough to give one a taste, but that’s about it. 

When I finished, Susan looked at the script, cocked her head back and forth a couple of times, and said, “I think that’s all I need for now.  I’m planning to call in some actors to read for this and I may call you in to read with them.  On the other hand, I also know what you can do.”  And that was the end.

I found out a few weeks later via Facebook that I had not been cast when one member of the cast talked about looking forward to starting a grand adventure with two of the best performers he knew.  Really, it’s not the best way to find out you’ve lost.

Again, it was a pretty bitter pill to swallow.  And that was because previous experience has taught me that most people come to the first night of auditions which is when I attended.  That means there was a very strong possibility that I was the only person who showed up either night.  If true, this means that I lost, quite literally, to nobody.

Does this mean that my audition was truly that foul?  No.  I think it was just the reverse lesson of my audition for the previous year’s Christmas show at the Blue Barn.  If someone can show up and be deemed perfect for a role from the word go, then the opposite must also be true.  Someone can show up and give a good audition, but just be perceived as not having the right qualities for the director’s vision from the word go.

I ended up being asked to do the Circle Theatre’s Christmas show as well which was an original play by Doug Marr called The Yuletide Phantom.  This show was a bit of a mixed bag as the script was rushed a bit.  I thought the story lacked a needed centrality and changes were made to it up until the night before we opened which slightly frustrated me.  On the other hand, it did allow me a wonderful pantomime moment when the nearly vegetative soldier I was playing gets possessed and gets forced into writing a message.

Several months would pass before I attempted another audition and it was for Lend Me a Tenor at the Omaha Playhouse.  This would be my first audition for Carl Beck in six years as he had primarily been directing musicals which is a genre I stay away from due to my limited singing range.  And I was ready to show him just how much stronger I’d become.

Once more, I had another fabulous audition.  Without question, it was the strongest I’d ever had with Carl and it showed as he asked me to read three times.  Given that only 2 other men were accorded the same honor, I think it is safe to say that we were the cream of that night’s crop.

I was gleefully looking forward to the callback which I thought was sure to come.  Then I got a rather rude awakening a few days later.  For the first time in my experience, Carl did not hold callbacks.  He cast the show based on the original auditions.  I ended up getting a rejection slip, but Carl did write, “Very nice read, Chris” on the bottom of it.  So I did find a small measure of comfort in the defeat.

By this point, it had been nearly 3 years since I had earned my way into a show by virtue of an audition and my spirits were paying a heavy toll.  What good had it done me to have struggled so hard to become a good performer if nobody wanted to use me?  It seemed as if I had enjoyed more success when I was weaker and less experienced.

The axe finally fell when I auditioned for the season premiere of last year’s Playhouse season.  The show was called August:  Osage County and would be directed by Amy Lane.  This show had actually been done as part of a new Playhouse series called the 21 and Over Alternative series.  The one night only performance had been a huge success and I was more than a bit surprised that open auditions were occurring as it seemed to make more sense just to utilize the people who had been in the original production.  Ultimately, that’s what happened for the most part.

For the first time in a long while, I was in an auditioning frame of mind.  Even better, I was the strongest young actor on the night I had gone to audition.  I didn’t quite know what was going to happen next as I knew I could not attend a callback due to my being out of town when they were held.  I had to hope that I had been strong enough to merit consideration based on my one bite of the apple or hope that Amy would want me for an extra read after I returned.

It was another defeat.  I returned home to a rejection slip.  In an unusual reversal, more people must have gone to the second night of auditions instead of the first because I heard that the callbacks had been the most talent laden affair in Omaha history.  Of course, that meant I would have had to have been in town for a callback to have had a chance, assuming I would have received one.

It was too much for me.  I finally realized that I had lost the one thing that differentiates me from other actors and that was my heart.  My unconquerable heart had finally been conquered.  Theatre no longer made me happy.  It made me miserable.  Even with a weakened heart, I had managed good auditions and performances.  How much mightier might they have been if my heart had been fully into them?

That Saturday morning, I made the fateful decision to step away from theatre for a while.  I felt so strongly about it that I actually posted the announcement on Facebook in one of my (at the time) rare, serious posts.

How long I would stay away was anybody’s guess.