stepping into the stream that becomes a river.
04/20/2009 03:50 a.m.
in the next few weeks, months, and three years, I will be embarking on a journey.


I will be attending grad school at the dell'arte school of physical theatre in california. it is the only specifically dell'arte/physical theatre in the world (dell'arte being an old form of performance dating back to the italian Renaissance. and physical theatre being in line, with, as example, cirque du soleil) as well as according to the pamphlet only accepts like 12 people a year into the program.


i am from grand forks, North dakota. While I have been to New York, minneapolis, washington DC, and other places culturally far different than my own within the US, moving permanently to a coast is freaking me out.


I know i will do fine. the work is going to be exciting, and exhausting. but i have always thrived on my ability to work hard.

but for the first time in my life, i am at a point where i will be entering a road where i do not know where i will end up at the end of the journey. I am planning, mostly,
that with an MFA i could teach at a university while doing local theatre, and that will make me life long happy.

but the wife and i (she is going to be starting law school at the same time and finishing at the same time) could just as easily end up slipping into our respective fields and finding great success and then the possibilities are endless.




sigh. i love potential, and right now there is so much potential in my future i'm bursting at the seams.


but it is also like stepping out on stage with another actor whom you can trust enough that you can both give up everything you've "planned" in rehearsals, and just live on stage, and great things will happen that you could never plan for. and that is the most wonderful feeling, but the most nerve wrecking thing as well.

Comments (0)

a fascinating study in me
06/08/2008 02:37 a.m.
so here's a quick update:


after four years of highs and lows of college life, I have graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in performance (essentially acting).

This is what I ultimately learned in my four years:


1. there is an energy between good actors, a very intangible energy in terms of describing, but it is teachable to harness this energy, I discovered with my final thesis for my Honors degree. I basically wrote over 50 pages figuring this all out and will spend the rest of my life developing a teaching process to teach this because too often in my education my teachers simply said "some actors just have this quality and it isn't teachable".

2. Life isn't fair, but if you persevere, no one can deny you your goals (it sounds a bit cliche, I know, but I worked real hard, and I eventually achieved every goal i set for myself in college, much like I did in high school. The Real World can't be much different.

3. I am just as good as anybody else, regardless of what any "qualified" person says, because I have begun to doubt all qualified people (much to the complaining of "qualified" people).



It hasn't even been a month yet, and I am using my degree in the following way:

1. I am directing my old high school's summer theatre musical. I have assistant directed every show since graduating, and this year I was offered the head director job after the head director retired from the position. After directing stuff in college (for classes) I have realized just how tough directing high school is. But teaching students and seeing them grow as artists is far more worth the success of working with professionals at times (and other times its frustrating as hell. Ying/Yang I suppose).

2. I am preparing to open my own theatre company this fall. I have a season picked out. And I think I can do it. Maybe I'm idealistic, but I think I can.

3. One of the teachers at my university asked me to audition for a show next year. I probably will. She basically hinted at which role I would get, and I think I would do a good job at the role.





and here's some recent events or things coming up for me:

my mother's appendix burst over memorial day weekend. she had surgery and is doing fine, it was just an intense night.

my father is seemingly falling into a paranoid, alcoholic crazed out downward spiral, but with the work of my mother and his therapist, it is possible that he may be getting help soon.

my wedding is exactly three weeks from today, and i can't wait.

my future in-laws are remodeling their house, i've been helping, and it's starting to get to the point where things are getting finished, rather than still needing to get started, so that's exciting.

I'm starting to draw again, which I haven't really done at all except doodling in notebooks during "textbook" classes.



Hmm. I think that's about it.

so many doors are closing in my life lately, and a billion more are opening. it's just a matter of closing my eyes and blindly walking through a door and seeing where it takes me.

Comments (0)

actor thoughts.
04/11/2008 07:57 p.m.
i create lions out of nothing
feel the air move between our eyes
i slap you without lifting a finger
and when you speak to me
we communicate through our souls.

i know what i'm doing in every second
yet i do not know what the next moment will bring
the only thing that grounds me
is what you do to upset me.

the inspiration for my character is
that i'm trapped by a circle of eternal flames in hell,
and I am a panther stuck inside these flames looking for a moment to escape.

but it never comes.

yet there is a heart inside me beating so hard
that every moment I feel like I need to cry.


Comments (0)

rounding third, heading for home plate
08/03/2007 03:47 a.m.
I don't write in here much, but I've got thoughts at the moment, so I'm going to dispense of them into this journal like a memory into a pensieve (for you Harry Potter fans out there)...


I've been thinking alot lately about my grandmother was died. Not really about her before her death, but as she died and directly after her death.

Now, I know religion requires faith, and I have faith, but death still scares me. I sit here and think. I'm 21. already. I was five yesterday. Time used to stretch on forever. Summer vacations used to last an eternity. Now I realize that a few months of vacation from school is just a small inhalation in the breathing process.

Essentially: time is moving against me. Optimistically, I have roughly 50-60 years left in my body, in optimal conditions. Maybe more, maybe less. But with how fast time moves now, that 60 years will be like 60 minutes. This scares me.

I have one more year of school, and part of me doesn't want to waste that year. Some people are afraid of graduating from college and facing the real world. Ha. "the real world". But I want to crash into it at full speed. I want to make some great, new theatre. I want to dabble in film and television to leave some sort of recorded archive of my work. I want to teach as many others as I can about this crazy craft called acting because it's an amazing experience, connecting to a large audience, holding them in your hand, and guiding them through a dramatic situation. I want to add to the dialogue of acting theorists my two cents, and have it mean something.

I read a small book that was, in reality, an advertisement for a religious magazine. but in this book, the mantra was "Expect miracles, get a miracle". I have to expect great things will happen to me if I'm to have any chance of it. and i believe that.

but that stupid time, it's going against me. Sigh. One more year of school left. I can make it.
I am currently Brooding

Comments (2)

life in a still picture
11/12/2006 07:42 a.m.
My life is mucho calmed down compared to the past few months. My kitty is being cute right now and trying to get my attention, which I shall grant her. Now she's off playing with a clown wind up doll that plays music. She's intrigued by it.


Anyhow.

A play I directed at the high school I graduated from did quite well in competition, and we're going to the state competition now because of it. This makes me happy.

Sometimes I wonder. Well, alot of times, I wonder, if I am just a better director/teacher of acting than I am an actor.


I've lost a lot of confidence this year. Sad. It's not that I think I'm a bad actor. I just feel like no one appreciates me, at least as far as the faculty of my school is concerned.

My poetry is so selfish. Ha. It's so about me. It's not enough about other things.

I wish I could back, sometimes, before I had an acting teacher who completely disagreed with me on everything.
I am currently Empty

Comments (2)

I'm Steppin' Out.
08/06/2006 06:45 a.m.
I don't know why I'm still up. it's too late at night, and it's not even that late at all. Bleh.


I am an artist. I can admit that.

I am an actor/writer/director. In no particular order.

Someday you may hear of me.


I am currently Tired

Comments (1)

time's man of the year
07/22/2006 02:35 p.m.
I'm upset by my work.

It's not near what I want it to be. It's still too defined by structure and rules and such. I wish I could look beyond sentences.



have you ever gotten to the point where your poetry just seems to be making fun of your previous work? That's what I feel my work becomes. I have a habit of when I do start writing, to write all the time so that my work becomes so enterwined with one another that it's almost like they mock each other. This emotional poem is a response to this beat poem which is a response to this quirky lil' number which is a response to an emotional poem and it all goes in cycles but I'm trying to strive beyond the cycle. I want something deeper.

This is why the artist keeps creating. Because he can never be satisfied by his own work.
I am currently Frustrated

Comments (0)

acting and poetry can be related
07/03/2006 05:45 p.m.
I feel like I need a journal entry to explain myself.

I feel like the current poems i've posted are so cynical.

My name is Jared, and I'm an actor. Most of my poetry, whether it appears so or not, is based on my thoughts in theatre.
Someday I shall write my own acting book, and it will be mediocre at best.
I'm struggling between the things I know, the things I feel, and the things that I want to be, but like a bad gambler, I'm praying for luck that what I want will be so.
It's not that I'm lazy. On the contrary, I am a very hard worker. I am still "in training" at a university to become an actor. I hate academia with a passion in my work, yet I am very very good at articulating my personal process and such of that nature.
Hence the struggle between intuition and knowledge.
Acting is one field where knowledge can be very very bad. An actor but be completely impulsive, yet they have to have the instinct to know when an impulse, once played out, was bad, and when was good. They need analytical skills to serve as a compass through their work, yet they cannot judge their work in the process.
In the end, acting is like throwing together a poem, or a painting, fairly quickly (perhaps making a few sketches before hand to judge what they would LIKE from a performance), and not judging it, but then throwing it out for the world to see, still unjudging even while the rest of the world is judging you, and then, finally, when the curtain is closed for the last time, you spend a good five months analyzing what went wrong in that performance.

I do not want to seem arrogant, but I have been in shows that have CHANGED people. Even if it was only for a few days, a week, or even 15 minutes. And I have been in shows that are, as we call it around my circle of friends, "emotional masturbation."

I wish more people would be excited about theatre, but theatre itself is a joke at times. Too many times have I seen selfish actors.
That's another thing about me. I am selfish yet completely unselfish at the same time. When I am working, in a role, I am completely and utterly open to making the other actor the best they could ever be. You are only as good as your partner in a scene, and I have been in small scenes where we were golden.

I've also been in a scene where my partner and I are talking to each other, but neither of us has taken anything in that the other said.

It's the bitter bitter struggle of an actor. It wouldn't seem difficult to REALLY do something, but it is.

My poetry is like my acting. I write on impulse, I do not judge it until it's finished (usually within five to ten minutes) ... I change anything I really disliked, again, very impulsively, listening to my instinct rather than my head, and then I am done. I do not touch it again.

I know as a writer (I am a playwright as well), that writing is rewriting is rewriting, to use the old cliche, but I do not enjoy analyzing my own work. If something hits me wrong, I will change it, but if not, I refuse to analyze my work for particular value or knowing what I did or did not do correctly. That is up to the critics and the readers. That is the actor in me.


I am currently Bothered

Comments (1)