Author
I could not agree with this statement more. The deeper and deeper I get in to my growth as an actor I realize that “success” to me doesn’t involve recognition on a large scale – but significance does. I want my legacy to be as a leader who chose performing as a profession as opposed to a performer who occasionally led people. I see so many successfully broken people in the entertainment industries as I continue on my journey, but to me the people I consistently find myself interested in are the people who don’t milk success for it’s egotistical/economical rewards but rather find a significant purpose with which to direct success. I want to be one of those people – all of you out there, continue to hold me accountable to that goal and I will continue to make it my number one priority.
This little nugget of thought I had today is brought to you by one of my favorite people these days, Russell Wilson. Enjoy this video and this is the mentality I take towards my career; and anyone can in whatever career they participate in. Every day, no matter your level of expertise, you HAVE to actively uncover knowledge that continues your growth.
“Here we are, and there is was… that Basin Street Station, The Delta Express!!! Stand back and watch the people come to Storyville!!”
Now that Storyville is done, and I finally have a free day to sit down and write a little bit, I can just say in reflection of the Storyville experience – I really am extremely lucky to have such supportive friends and family. It is always an absolute pleasure to see familiar faces in the audience and after the show. Someone asked me one time if I’m the kind of actor who doesn’t want to know when someone is in the audience to see me, and I responded, “absolutely not.” I make it a challenge to see if I can make that particular show something uniquely special for whoever is there to see it. So that when people compare stories to different shows they’ve seen, they find that they aren’t sharing any redundancy. As per the cast, creative team, and York Theatre tech personnel – what an amazing little core we set up in our short time together. It was a very rocky ride to opening night (we didn’t get nearly as much rehearsal in as we wanted, and thusly were forced to make additions, subtractions, and adjustments during preview week, pretty much on the fly), but every one stayed focused despite shaky composures and netted a great New York Times review, which is never an easy accomplishment. Every week the show got more and more vibrant, and as Jim (our producer) would always say to donors who asked what the future of the show will be, “your donation of a mere 6 million dollars will find this show on a Broadway stage.”… While that is a distant future in a land of money sprouting from oak trees, the only rumor I’m happy to spread is that word got to the Mayor of New Orleans that our show was inspiring and he called our producer personally to discuss the possibilities of a New Orleans show. What those discussions yield is for time to tell… For me, it’s back to auditions and “che sará, sará.”
Well hello everyone!!! I know it has been quite a while, a few months, in fact. To start, I’m still alive and breathing oxygen and managing to pay my rent and eating decently healthy food. I’d call that doing pretty damn well in the book of life, lol… And therein lies my inspiration for today’s post. This isn’t an uncommon question, but for anyone out there who may want a little more clarity on the topic, WHAT IS AN ACTOR WHEN THEY’RE NOT ACTING?… and I don’t mean that in the mega-Hollywood actor sense, but the every day actor whose just trying to book a professional gig.
Hey everyone!!
So over the last two weeks I had the wonderful opportunity to play Roberto Clemente in a developing musical called 21 by Alki Steriopolous. It was an absolute whirlwind of an experience that left me so exhausted when I was finally done, that I got home and could barely move, hahaha. It was only a reading of the musical which I’ll explain more about in a minute, but I really hope that I made a good enough impression to be considered again if the musical finds more monetary backing.
Hey everyone!
So as promised on my Facebook page, I am going to attempt to express the “interesting”-ness that was this Robert Wilson audition I had about two weeks ago… But first, quick update… Lombardi has been a really fun show to be a part of. It’s simple, quick, to the point, and I feel it’s been perfect for our market in Smithtown because most of the audience members were actually alive during that time period and the jokes are really resonating with them. Rehearsal for Charlie Brown started last week, which means that I’m now on the train for three hours total EVERY DAY. I’m getting real tired of it, but then I remember that my mom (and thousands of other Northern Virginians) make the trip from Woodbridge and beyond to DC everyday for decades, so then I stop complaining like a whiny actor, hahaha. Last but not least, I get to play Roberto Clemente in the upcoming workshop presentation of a new musical called “21” in November. This job has more potential than even In The Heights did, only because we’ll be presenting the show to new investors in NYC (as opposed to Heights where, yea we were on tour, but noone in NYC could’ve given a crap, lol). As long as I make sure to put my A game out there, it will lead to this being a wonderful marketing opportunity for me. This being my first workshop, I’ll share whatever I’m legally allowed to share to fill everyone in on how this process operates; it’ll be a learning experience for all of us!!
Ok, so this audition…
Hey everybody!!… First off, if you are the type of person, just have a tiny moment of silence in reflection for everyone battling cancer, we lost my best friend’s mom this week and most everyone knows someone these days who is battling this ever-evolving disease… (moment)…
Alright, It’s been a while since I wrote anything, and that’s because I have literally been working my butt off, trying to play catch up with the competition that’s in New York.
Since moving to NYC on July 1st, the most important thing I can say is… This IS NOT LA. I had myself mentally prepared for the move, but now that I’m here, I see just how much more competitive, not just the acting world is, but the entire city itself. In Los Angeles, everyone is hustling, but with the understanding of.. “oh, hey, if it doesn’t work out today, it’ll work out tomorrow… I’m late 5 minutes to my meeting? it’s all good, the other person’s probably late too, traffic on the 101 is real bad today.”… In NYC, it’s straight Darwin! Survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten; and it’s not just the other actors your jockeying for position with, it’s everywhere… on the subway, in line at Starbucks, playing pick-up bball in the park, crossing the street… everyone is trying to fit 36 hours into a 24 hour day, and if you’re not moving that fast, you WILL get left behind!!
I LOVE IT!!! I’ll take that challenge NYC, lol
Well ladies and gentleman, the tour has been over for a week now and I’m finally starting to wake up in the morning and remember that I don’t have a show to do, hahaha
In reflecting on the tour experience, I have to thank the University of Notre Dame with providing me every tool I’ve needed thus far in my short career to navigate the rough seas of the theater world. If you don’t know anything about Notre Dame, it’s a private-catholic-liberal arts university and when speaking to all my freinds that went to other schools; it is a truly unique experience. It’s a school that takes extreme pride in its dedication to Catholicism, but allows you complete freedom in shaping your educational experience. If you never want to see the inside of a church at Notre Dame, or take a class with a priest or nun, you don’t have to. If you want your experience to further your understanding of the Catholic faith and want to immerse yourself in its history, you’ve also chose the right place. And if you’re like me and want to learn about every possible thing you can, they support you too, and because of that I’ve never found myself in a position where lack of experience puts me at a disadvantage. It is in fact an advantage for me because my education showed me how to apply the principles of every other industry to what I’m doing now, and it makes me look more intelligent and I comprehend challenges faster than my competition. That right there, is quite a valuable asset to have.
Enough of promoting Notre Dame (but seriously, if you have a teenager, truly have them consider applying to Notre Dame, and if they get a scholarship, then hell you’ve saved money anyway)… Now, I want you to choose your favorite reality TV show and then combine it with your workplace, and come up with the craziest possible TV show hilarity combination, and I’m not exaggerating… we went through it.
Power outages – check… broken down in the middle of nowhere – check… so lost you in the middle of Texas that you end up at George H.W. Bush’s future resting place in the woods – check… broken relationships – check… poor management decisions from your boss – definitely check… hirings, firings, quittings, cheating, leaving in the middle of the show, cat fights, crying, being so loud you’re asked to leave, considering going on strike, complaining, rejoicing, grand theft, and even murder and mayhem (remember the time our crew got stuck because some one was murdered outside the stage door, cuz I do!!!)
Hey everyone!!!
With 156 shows under our belt now, we’re down to our last 18!!! I’m finally taking an hour or two since this last leg started in Yakima, WA to sit down and write a little bit and it feels wonderful (considering we don’t always have the best internet at some of these hotels so I have to get things done on my comp quickly, lol). We’re chillin in Kansas City, MO on our way to Wichita, KS and I have no idea what hotel we’re at but it is soooooo nice.
We have had some hilarious happenings this last leg for sure. Things I can remember off the top of my head –
1. I lost my right contact lens during the middle of Act 1 last week and it was crazy to do When You’re Home all the way to the end of the Act feeling cross-eyed and queasy. I kept grabbing for props and realizing they were much farther away from me than I thought, hahaha… That same show, I think, was when one of the ensemble dancers went to move one of the prop chairs on one of the balconies and it literally fell apart. That had to have looked hilarious to whatever random audience members actually saw it.
2. We flew from San Jose, CA to Tucson, AZ… when we landed at the Tucson airport, our Company Manager called the hotel to see if our rooms were ready. She was told that the Hotel Arizona we were staying at… went out of business that day, hahaha. How do you shut down your hotel and not call the group of 50 staying there for a week that they should probably find another place to stay!!! We ended up staying at a really nice Motel Inn called the Riverpark, but it took a while to get everyone’s room ready considering we had to relocate the entire group, lol.
3. Fly from Tucson, AZ to Denver, CO, drive an hour to Greeley, CO… get to the hotel and luckily my room was perfect, but other people, not so much. One of the sound engineers put her card in the door, it unlocked, and she walked in to find people already in the room. It happened to about six other people as well. What is goin on with these hotel folk, how you gonna give some body a key to a room that’s already occupied… What if you walked in and someone had just gotten out of the shower, or worse… use your imagination, hahaha. C’mon people, let’s get it together!!!
4. The AC/Heat valve on our bus is broken… ugh, so the bus is either 60 degrees or 90 degrees. NO FUN, lol… the we blew a tire a couple days ago. Traveling is not this tour’s forte, which makes no sense, right???
So this blog’s title refers to the Rihanna song as it has become the theme song for our tour group of friends. Literally every where we go, it is always playing, and one random day in the guys dressing room we had an impromptu a capella rave to it. Basically, one person was randomly playing a beat on the counter, then another joined in with a matching beatbox, then I started humming the notes to the build up of the song, and then every one joined in at the crazy club part, and right then another person ran over to the light switch and started the strobe light… it was hilarious and awesome!
Since the last time I wrote, we had an AMAZING two weeks in Dallas, TX. The Winspear Opera House in Dallas is an amazing venue and if you ever get the chance to see a show there, I recommend it. I had the opportunity to go out to a couple of the local public schools to talk to students about the show and answer questions and loved every second of it. It was very inspiring to go to the same types of over crowded public schools we have in the DC area, and talk to classes about how I grew up and the challenges my family and friends have overcome together for me to be where I am today. I could tell just how grateful the students were to see us (me, Virginia, and Dom went as a group) at their school and sharing how their hard work and struggle in school will pay off for them, as it has all of us. Aaaaaaaand, on my day off my cousin let me borrow her car, so we went to Cowboys Stadium. I will tell you right now… it is the most extravagant place (not just stadium) I have been to in the United States, it is a football mansion. World Records it possesses – the world’s longest spanning arches (1/4 mile long), the worlds largest domed stadium, the world’s largest HD TV, and the most HD TVs in one structure (32,000)… The crazy huge HD TV jumbo tron weighs 700 tons, and made the 1/4 mile long steel arches bend 3 inches when they hung it (P.S. – the steel was purchased out of Luxembourg, so as to not have an ounce of Pittsburgh steel on the premises). I found out it costs $200,000 to put a 20 year lease down on one of the 92 suites in the stadium and over 75 of them have already been booked, so Jerry Jones – save me a spot!!!!
Ok, enough about the greatest football team ever (hahaha, directed at all of my Redskins friends)… next stop was College Station, TX, aka Texas A&M… it was gorgeous, if you have a kid looking to get into a state school, I recommend it. Campus was huge and gorgeous and the spring time weather was amazing… so amazing that I went for a run, got completely lost, ended up running/walking 10 miles before I found my way back and loved every exhausting minute of it!!!
Then we got a wonderful 2 days off (a blessing because my voice was starting to get tired, lol) and flew out to sunny California for our last 5 shows in Palm Desert, CA… This week off from the tour has been wonderful. Getting an opportunity to sit down and relax, clear the mind, rest the voice, get some non-tour work done… but now it’s time to get back, leaving at 6am tomorrow for Seattle and then it’s right back to a 10 show week through Washington state.
Adios Amigos!!!
Kyle
