Life Lessons

It has been a pretty interesting couple of weeks. I went and tried out for a show down at a new theater in Provo, an old roommate of mine that I lived with last year opened a new theater with his wife. They had done a few shows in the last few months since they had been opened but they kept casting within the people that had helped open the place. From what I read the shows were pretty great. So I was interested in getting involved with the theater, hopefully with a show soon. I had just gotten done with The Wizard of Oz, which was a great show. I was looking for something else to do that would be a last party show before I had to buckle down and start preparing for the wedding. Not much that was going on that I was available for. Mainly because the two shows that I had wanted to do, South Pacific at the Hale and Little Shop of Horrors at the Scera were getting done at times close to our wedding. South Pacific starts the day of our wedding, and Little Shop ends the day after our wedding. So I was pretty much stuck in a show rut so to speak because there wasn't anything going on that I would be able to do, until the wedding was over.

I was looking around on Facebook one day and a friend of mine posted an audition for The Echo Theater that was going on Wednesday. It was for what they were calling the Echo Ten Festival. Basically it was a bunch of shows that were short 10-15 minute plays that were written by all sorts of directors from all sorts of places. I guess they originally had 69 people submit shows and came down to just 17. They needed us actors to come down, cold read for a few shows and then if the directors wanted to get more out of us they could ask us to read their pieces after. The show was also opening in a week and a half and only running for that Thursday and Friday unless the audience liked your show so much that they voted you through to the Saturday showing of the best shows. So I decided to talk to my fiance and make sure that it was ok to audition and went down and tried out. I'm not the best cold reader nor do I think that I'm very good at straight plays. Which are non musicals, you have to rely on your emotions in the scenes and being able to portray the message with words and movement rather then music and dance. Which I don't think I have ever been very good at. But I figured what's to lose? It's a fairly new theater that hasn't gotten quite that much exposure yet and could use the actors. I went and auditioned for my friend Critters show. He was directing Adam and Eve.  There wasn't many people at the audition and I was kinda worried how things would pan out. Reading was fun though, I read with some young lady that I don't think got called back to be in any of the shows because I didn't see her at the first meeting. Everyone seemed to like my read and I was asked by a couple of the other directors to read their plays as well. I was kinda really hoping for Adam and Eve, but I read the others just as best I could. We waiting around for other people to show up and another guy walked in and read one of the plays that was more of an angry one. I got worried though because the moment after he got done reading, 3 of the directors that were there wanted him to read for their show, including Critter for Adam and Eve. So I got up and left before he read that, cause I didn't want to hear or see him read it better than me. Also the woman that I worked with in Christmas Carol that made it such a horrible experience was there, and she tried to be all nice and full of crap towards me but oh well. I was hopeful that I wouldn't be cast in the same show as her. They had another day of auditions that weekend, which worried me again, cause it sounded like they had a lot more people lined up for that day. So I kinda just sat around and waited over the weekend to see what was going to happen with the show. I got a text from one of the directors that asked me to read after I read Critters play. She wanted me to play a medic in her show called Trenchman. I didn't really have any intention of doing that show, and actually did the cold read bad on purpose so she wouldn't want me...but she did anyways. lol So I waited for a couple more days and then I got a text from Critter. He wanted me to be Adam in Adam and Eve! I was so stoked! We started rehearsing the next day and I was going to get to meet the person playing Eve.


We had a read thru for trenchman and don't get me wrong it seemed like it was going to be a fun show, but I wasn't that excited about it as I was for Adam and Eve. They guys that I was going to be in trenchman with all seemed pretty fun and we got along great together. It was just a matter of memorizing lines and getting the show to work. Our performances went well but it for sure wasn't the strongest of the shows that were done.

We had planned to have rehearsals for Adam and Eve after trenchman. So I usually just ended up waiting. So that Monday I was waiting around and about 20 minutes after my other rehearsal was over this Red Head walked in. She came up to me asked if my name was Mont and introduced herself as Paige. She was going to be playing Eve and apparently was a good friend of Critters that he just called up and asked if she wanted to play the part. Critter got there and we got into it. Let me tell you something about this kid. Living with him I always knew that he was a great actor and had studied it in school and it was pretty much his love. I had never worked with him before except for 2 nights were I was an extra in a film that he was in. I had remembered him telling me that he had studied acting in Russia and a few other places besides school as well, but man did he put us to work. Lets just say that I have never worked so hard in my life for a show. Especially one that had only a week and a half of rehearsals. He took that hour and a half that we had and did all sorts of great things. Warm ups that are the best ever, running scenes over and over until both he and us felt they were right. We were 2 days from opening and we hadn't finished the running the whole show yet because of it ha. No I've never been in any acting classes or done any kind of special training besides my vocal training that I started last year.  So I felt a little inadequate because everyone that seemed to be a part of this festival had some sort of experience. A lot of the things seemed really weird to me at first and I think critter could tell. So we just kept running things until they felt right.

One night sticks in my mind and is kinda where the title of this post comes from. There is 2 scenes in the show were Adam and Eve each have their final straw moment. The moment where the other says something or does something that just pushes the other over the edge. Eve's was because Adam wasn't understanding what was wrong with her and kept pushing to the point where she yells at him to leave her alone for a moment. She starts crying but tries to not show too much to Adam. I guess I should probably give some back ground on the show. It takes place after Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden and are starting to realize what they got into and how they feel. Also how they start realizing that they do like each other, and how to deal with starting a family and being the father and mother of all nations. Adam's "angry moment" I guess we can call it comes after Eve asks him if she wasn't the only girl on earth would he still want her. He being the typical guy and wanting to think about it, says "that's a good question" Eve gets obviously hurt and while Adam tries to explain his reasoning for that question she storms away from him. He yells off at her about how he is happy that she ate the apple and how she really is beautiful to him, he just never realized it until after...after meaning the moment they were kicked out. The play takes place literally 30 minutes after they were thrown out.

Now Paige was a natural at getting mad and being upset with someone else. She has been in theater forever and has taken some classes..It's also just acting so it's pretty easy at times for some people. I on the other hand had a really hard time when my time came to get angry. I'm not an angry kind of person. Especially when it comes to the opposite sex. I hate seeing them cry or feel sad or anything of that nature. Especially if it was my fault. Both Paige and Critter could see I was having an issue and what he did next kinda changed my perspective on acting and what I have been doing for the last 4 years. You see whenever I get a lead part in a show, I kinda would just go through the motions. Memorize my lines and my blocking what and where I'm supposed to be going and doing. I've never really just let the character take me over and make it my own. Critter wanted me basically to just sit and yell at Paige, and even thought it was just in an acting sense I couldn't do it. Mainly because I knew what the next lines were and how it kinda tears us apart for a moment. So he sat us down right in front of each other and had us just look into each others eyes. Not saying a single word until we felt it just naturally flow out of us. He didn't want us to yell at each other, just kinda look into each others eyes until we felt connected.To be honest with you I have never done anything like this in my life. The closest thing to something like this that I ever did was when I was in The Princess Bride and we did mirroring. Kinda the same thing but instead of just sitting there holding hands motionless and quiet until one of us decided to talk, one person does a movement and then the other one follows. Well we kinda joked for a bit, but Critter was pretty adamant that we just sit there looking into each others eyes until we felt each other is what he said.

I really had to think hard about this one. He wanted us to basically become one of those married couples that I always thought were so weird. They finish each others sentences, they can look at one another without saying a word and just know what the other is thinking, feeling, wanting. I also just felt kinda silly, mostly because this once again is something that I have never done before. So there I sat across from a woman I have only known for a a few days trying my hardest to just connect with her, in what I can only describe as pure love for a person. Now yes this is a theater project and yes I am engaged and very much in love with my future wife, but and theater people will probably understand more than non theater people, I had to find a little bit of that love for my partner Paige. She was a great actor and I felt like she was way better then me. So there we sat, holding hands and looking into each others eyes. Probably for a good 5 minutes before anything was said, and it all seemed really really weird to me for those few minutes. I'm guessing she had no issues with it whatsoever because she has done things like this her whole life, but it was probably awkward for her because I was making it that way. Then after a few minutes of her awkwardly staring into my probably looking back at her awkwardly odds things just seemed to click in my mind. I instantly calmed down and the words just kinda flowed out of me. It kinda seemed like I was having a conversation with my future wife after we had known each other for a really long time. We went through the scene and Critter was so happy that we finally had gotten to that point. We were only an hour into our 3 hour scheduled rehearsal but he said he was so blown away with how smoothly that went he just said go home. So I went home that night and kinda thought about what had happened. I think for the first time in a long time I actually saw myself as my character instead of a person pretending to be something they weren't for others entertainment. The rest of the rehearsal process went pretty good and we felt ready for the opening night. We ran over our lines every night before we went on stage, just to help us work on consistency and flow of the show and we got it down pretty dang good. We performed the show only 3 times and with our total rehearsal schedule the whole process was less the 3 weeks. It felt like it had been something we had been working on for so long though. Our show was selected to be in the final performance, which we thought was pretty awesome because only 5 shows were picked out of the 15 shows that were done through out the two different showings. We didn't win any awards but come to find out that we were nominated for best show and I was nominated for best actor. Something I never thought would happen. It made me feel pretty good about myself. But it also taught me an important lesson that I think I can use throughout my acting and my marriage. It is one that I am so thankful that I spent the two and a half weeks working for and I look forward to getting better and better.