...
So.
I was in my dressing room one night in late October, wondering how on earth I ended up at the Public Theatre doing a Brecht play. Meanwhile, I was in hot contention for the Broadway revival of Les Miserables. (The classic actor joke is "it's between me and the guy who's gonna get it". The other guy got it. And that, in a nutshell, has been the story of my 2013. Twenty-Thirteen will go down as The Year of The Other Guy Getting the Big Job. That's just how it goes sometimes. Fuck.)
During this existential pseudo-crisis I did what most young'uns do these days when life becomes too strange and unbearable to cope with: I checked my smart phone. I mean it had been like 113 seconds since I last checked it. I was dying.
Lo and behold, there's this offer for Kung Fu sitting in my inbox, for the role of "James Coburn". No, I didn't audition again--mofos was just like "yo, here's a job".
Honestly, I didn't even know who Jimmy Coburn was. Real talk.
Onward.
So, two days after my time as an attractive and animate prop at The Public ended, I was in a small studio, sweating profusely under the glare of Sonya Tayeh, who I'm sure wondered the same thing that I did: what the hell is this guy doing in a show that requires DANCERS??? To make matters worse, I easily stood at about 4 to 6 inches taller than anyone else that would ever be on stage with me in this show, EVER. Add to that my horrible inflexibility and diminished agility, from previous injuries as well as doing too much weight-lifting and having too much mass, and it was pretty much pre-ordained that I'd be placed at or near the very back in every single dance sequence I was involved in. There was just no getting around my Big-Slowiness. It was a force to be reckoned with.
More real talk, I was also bitter as hell that I had to have three days of intense PRE-rehearsals in early December before we started rehearsals proper in January. I was tired and drained, it was cold as hell outside (though the worst was yet to come...I need to move out west), and I figured I had almost 4 weeks to whip myself into something resembling an agile, fit, fighting machine, but NOPE!!!! Just spent hours and hours watching fuckin' incredible 5'7" ACROBATS do a bunch of crazy shit and then have to somehow repeat whatever the fuck they just did.
Yeah. I was pissed. I mean I was stoked to be working on the show--and I'd dreamed about the possibility of going from one high-profile gig to another...but...yo...a negro was TIRED.
I will say that since I live with two gorgeous and extraordinary dancers, and watching them in varying degrees of physical pain, I've learned to not complain when dealing with fatigue and bodily stress. Dancers are warriors, man. Nothing but respect for them.
Anyways...I managed to make it through those three days of feeling like a loser because it took me forever to learn the choreography and even when I learned it it didn't look too hot wonderfully challenging pre-rehearsal. Sonya and I exchanged about a sentence apiece over that time. I think it was when we greeted each other on the first day. When I was late. Fuck.
I still didn't know why Leigh offered me this job. Much later on, I'd find my stride, but it took a long damn time. And as I said...Leigh is very, very smart. Maybe a LITTLE smarter than myself.
Rehearsals proper would begin in the new year, which at this point was several weeks away. I had no idea how I'd make it through the whole process.
Next: Rehearsals, Or The Story of How Sonya Tayeh Learned to Tolerate My Inability to Do Most of What She Asked of Me
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