I saw a new musical at the Ahmanson Theatre last night, “Leap of Faith,” based on the Steve Martin movie.  The music is by Alan Menken, lyrics by Glenn Slater, both of them lovely (though a lot of the lyrics are lost in the sound balance), with direction and choreography by Rob Ashford (direction excellent, choreography well done but often misguided in some sequences), and book by Janus Cercone and Glenn Slater, and that’s where the show goes wrong.

It wasn’t as much of a train wreck as “Nine to Five” that was here a year or two ago, but there are some big flaws in it.  Most of them have to do with the focus of the action, and they start right at the beginning.

The show opens with a very bold move: the curtain rises in silence on the townpeople of Sweetwater and as the music begins, we are treated to a long, subtle ballet in which we are introduced to their longing for something from the sky.  Turns out to be a drought in town, though there’s a strong suggestion that they (and especially Marva, the beautiful waitress, played by a rather appealing Brooke Shields, who they trust to do some dancing but are little more fearful of letting actually sing full out) want more than physical sustenance from up there.

Thing is, this becomes a recurring theme throughout the show.  They are lovely people (and it’s nice that they let the old guy dance with them), and the choreography is very pretty, but this ensemble keeps reappearing, dancing and lifting and twirling and annoying all throughout the show.  Is there a production of “Oklahoma” across the alleyway that they keep wandering in from?  And the women are all in floaty farm/sundresses with slips and underwear underneath.  The skirts keep getting caught in the dancing, revealing a good deal of what lies beneath quite regularly.  It isn’t quite in tune with the vision of decent, hardworking farm folk that I believe they are going for.

It’s not that this display is obscene, it’s just disconcerting to see so much conventional underwear in lyrical moments.  And after awhile, I started to dread one more appearance by the “white people ballet.”  The worst moment might be when they are dancing as Marva’s porch slides onstage, and she suddenly has a troupe of dancers cavorting through her front yard.  Don’t these people have dusty fields to plow?

Eventually (though nowhere soon enough), they are dispersed by the arrival of Jonas Nightingale  and his choir, who finally manage to get things going.  Problem is, this is Jonas’s story, and introducing Marva and the townspeople first throws the balance off from the beginning.

From what I remember of the movie, Jonas’s bus has broken down and, when he takes refuge in the diner, he decides to stay for a few days and do his tent show there mostly because he’s intrigued by the challenge of the one woman who doesn’t fall for his charms immediately.  Here, however, he hasn’t met her yet (though we have), and he decides to stay, well, just because he decides to stay.  His sister Sam (marvelous character, marvelously played by Kendra Kassebaum–everything about her is spot-on, including her wardrobe) tries to convince him to get the bus fixed and move on, but he wants to rise to the challenge of the nothing-town.  Why?

As I said, this is Jonas’s story, and they try too hard to make him likable and decent from the get-go.  Raul Esparza is really terrific in the role, but he could be even better if they weren’t so worried about what we think of him early in the game.

They would do well, in fact, to steal from a very good source.  Although this has elements of “The Rainmaker” (which may be why they have us meet Marva first), their real inspiration should be “The Music Man.”  There, we have a charming, smarter-than-the-yokels con man who is out to get what he can from the locals before pushing on to the next hick town, who meets the smartest (and most attractive) woman in town and sort of stubs his toe.  She, unlike those around her, sees him for exactly what he is, and he recognizes both a kindred spirit and the first real challenge he’s faced in a long time.  Ultimately, he is unmasked for what he is, but he’s already been changed by the experience, and she has, as well.

If they followed this model, we could be charmed and amused by Jonas and yet also see from the get-go that he’s deeply cynical and not just without any faith but painfully empty, resentful and contemptuous of anyone who does believe in anything.  Because this is his journey, we can know perfectly well that he will find his faith by the end, but as it is, the script doesn’t help the actor make the trip.  He does, actually, manage the second half of the transformation rather well, but he does it in spite of elements in the script (including early sequences where he’s just too decent and normal).

The biggest problem is, Marva has this kid….

Now, I quite like the fact that Jonas gets to know the kid rather well before he realizes there’s something wrong.  But we don’t get enough firsthand information about Boyd’s situation in time for the act-ending to pack the wallop it needs to.  Marva fills in the backstory, but she does it kind of quickly, and so the stakes are nowhere near high enough in the big revival scene that ends to act.  Things happen that aren’t very clear and also aren’t very powerful emotionally.

And then in the second act, we start to really dislike the kid.  I mean, he sings well enough, but the actor here isn’t strong enough to overcome what the script doesn’t really give him.  It becomes painful to watch, frankly.  It isn’t helped by the fact that he’s a bit too tall to be carried around like that.  I’m trying not to give anything away here, but by the time we get to the central moment, it’s not moving so much as embarrassing.

Esparza almost redeems it with the passion of his reactions once he’s left alone on stage, but then the director has his turn upstage (after chasing some spotlights around in the darkness, also a peculiar bit of blocking), almost to protect us from the force of his fury and despair.  Instead, it kicks us back out of what was starting to work.

I buy the relationship between Jonas and Marva, but there are a couple others (besides the son) that don’t work.  There is a young preacher named Ricky, son of the leader of the choir, who shows up to provide a couple of plot devices and some fun dancing.  But because we have to find out what’s going on with him, we lose time we could have been spending getting better invested in the central story.

And there’s the sheriff.  He’s a very odd duck (he was odd in the movie, too–does the vow to uphold the law mean you have to try to do it literally?).  He pops in and out, making threats but not really following up on them.  And it’s a small town, true, but why is he also the guy in charge of the water drill?  The worst moment is when he has the evidence to bring up something like eleven counts of racketeering and drops them because a miracle seems to have occurred (but not a miracle that appears to have moved him in any way, just a general miracle–he doesn’t even wait to be presented with the bag of money before he doesn’t bother arresting Jonas).  Nothing against the actors playing them, but both of these roles don’t present very much of a threat.

I am moved to go into this much detail because there are a lot of things I really liked about the show, including the central character and the central relationship, and I think the show could work.  But it ain’t there yet, not by a long shot.  And I wanted it to be.

My newest theatrical reel is up on YouTube.  It’s just four clips:  my recent appearance on “Glee” (as the woman auditioning for a community theatre production of “Les Miz,” singing a completely inappropriate song), the nurse at the front desk of the psychiatric hospital in Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” (proving that madhouses and nurse’s caps were always a bit horrifying), the nurse manning the desk for those “Desperate Housewives” (breaking up some girl-on-girl action–sorry, guys!), and a casting director from the bowels of hell in a strange and intriguing film called “LA Twister” (a dragon lady with a mean right hook).  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji9yi1Y2AqQ

My first short play, “Company Policy,” was announced as a finalist in the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s National 10-Minute Play Contest. One of 1,300 entries, the winners (including the $1,000 Heideman Award winner) will be announced in January.

*The Heideman Award was established in 1979. Made possible by the late Ted Heideman, a Louisvillian, the $1,000 cash prize is bestowed annually upon the winners of the National Ten-Minute Play Contest (1990 – present). The contest receives more than 1,400 short plays annually and is co-sponsored by Actors Theatre of Louisville and City Theatre in Miami.

Just four clips, but I think they show some range:
- “Glee” directed by Joss Whedon, in which I play a woman auditioning for a community theatre production of “Les Miz,” whose unfortunate song choice is interrupted by the arrival of Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and Bryan Ryan (Neil Patrick Harris, who won an Emmy for this episode).
- “Changeling” directed by Clint Eastwood, as the front desk nurse at the mental hospital where Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is first admitted and later returns with Reverend Briegleb (John Malkovich) and S.S. Hahn (Geoff Pierson).
- “Desperate Housewives” directed by David Warren, as Nurse Parker, who gets between Susan (Teri Hatcher) and Edie (Nicollette Sheridan) in a hospital tug-of-war.
- “LA Twister” directed by Sven Pape, as Marilyn, a casting director whose handling of Lenny (Zach Ward) soon requires a firm hand.

Click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji9yi1Y2AqQ

http://fuckyeahgleesecrets.tumblr.com/post/660987716

Check out this fun link (and ignore the silly name).

Wendy Does Stand-Up

Wendy made her stand-up debut on Rebecca O’Brien’s Stage at Elderberries Restaurant in Hollywood in February.  The evening featured headliner Taylor Negron.  (Wendy appeared with Taylor in eight episodes of “So Little Time,” starring the Olsen Twins.)  Look for more appearances to come.

As I don’t write anything stronger than PG-13 (for an occasional round of violence in some longer pieces), I can confess that I write fan fiction.  I haven’t been doing a lot of it lately, but I am honored whenever work I’ve posted online is read, reviewed, and acknowledged by readers.  It’s great to hear feedback–that’s the way a writer gets “paid” for this kind of writing.

I’ve been nominated a number of times for my work online, and I’ve just received SIX more nominations for four pieces I’ve written under my pen name, Elise Wanderer (Elise is my middle name, and Wendy means “wanderer” in some baby books–maybe not wildly original, but I needed something to go by when I started writing online).

I’m also going to confess that everything I’ve written online has been part of one fandom, the Harry Potter universe created by JK Rowling.  (There was a time, long ago, before the internet, when I wrote Star Trek fiction, but I’m not admitting to that now.  Forget you read this part of my confession, in fact.)

Within the “Potterverse,” I only write about one character, Severus Snape.  And I am one of those weird-os who believe that there is one true match for Professor Snape in the canon of the seven books, though it took me awhile to come ‘round to that way of thinking.  It might be a problem that she spends all seven books as his student (a hindrance to any romance right there) and then dies at the end (sorry, is that still a spoiler? he may not really be dead!), but we fans of this particular pairing don’t let that get in our way.  We simply plunge ahead with finding ways to get Severus together with the smartest, sharpest, most available female in the books who isn’t insane, evil, dead, or really old.

So if you’re curious about it, you might want to start with the first one, which is just a little piece written for Severus Snape’s birthday (which is January 9, in case you didn’t know, and he just turned 50, by the way).  I’ll point you in the right direction, and you should be able to find more if you’re intrigued.

“Letter to My Son” received two nominations.  It’s archived at the Online Wizarding Library (OWL) at this address:
http://owl.tauri.org/stories.php?psid=8395

I haven’t been writing fan fiction for about a year now, because I’ve been concentrating instead on writing original murder mysteries.  My ambition is to become the Dick Francis of the entertainment industry.  I was very sad to read of his death the other day.  For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of reading his work, he was a championship steeplechase jockey in the UK who turned to writing mystery thrillers when he retired.  All his books (more than 40 of them) have something to do with horse racing; he made very good use of the environment he knew.

So I have been following his lead, using my own writing to take readers behind the scenes at movie studios and TV shows, the world I know from a long career as an actor.  I’ve finished the first book and am working now on finding the right literary agent to get it published.  The second book is in the works, and it all started with Severus Snape.  Thank you, Professor!  I’m glad you have such wonderful fans.

(ferporcel made this lovely banner.  Those aren’t my legs.  Wish they were.)

It was the summer of 2007.  The recession hadn’t quite gotten started, and the 100-day-long writers’ strike that marked the beginning of a cataclysmic downturn in Hollywood was still just a threat.  I didn’t know it yet, but something else was about to happen to change my life in a significant way.  I overdosed, and things have never been the same since.  I ingested too much Harry Potter all at once, and it launched a writing career.

There was this weekend in July.  I could look up which one it was exactly, but it the precise date isn’t that important.  It was the weekend that “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was released.

I’d been reading the books and seeing the films as they came out, and I had been enjoying JK Rowling’s imaginative and complex world.  I wasn’t a rabid fan by any means, but I know a classic when I see one, and I liked being around for the arrival of something with a measurable cultural impact.  Her basic concept, and the intricacy with which she had constructed it, had that kind of “duh, why didn’t I think of that?” feel to them, and I am still impressed.

I decided to purchase the book from an independent bookstore, but I did not intend to join one of the midnight vigils and snag one of the first copies to be sold.  By happenstance, I was also seeing the film of the fifth book, “Order of the Phoenix” that same weekend.  I purchased the book and started to read.  By page 200, I knew I was in trouble.

It had been too long since I’d read Book 6 (“Half-Blood Prince”).  I couldn’t remember a lot of what had happened before the final book, much less what took place in “OtP,” so I set it aside until the screening.  As soon as I’d watched the film (always a much-abridged version of the books, by necessity), I dug out “HBP” and read it through at once.  I then read the final book.

I laughed that Monday night as I watched “The Colbert Report,” because while watching it I was doing exactly what he had his audience doing: reading the final, just-released Harry Potter book.  I had it balanced on my knees with the TV on, unable to go to sleep.  “Just one more chapter….”

By the end of the day on Tuesday, I had finished.  In the space of three days, I had swallowed the last 60% of the saga in huge chunks.

And now I was REALLY in trouble.

I had come to the end of Rowling’s journey.  It was over.  Voldemort was dead, Harry had been reanimated, Ron and Hermione were married, and all was right with the wizarding world.  But now I needed a Potter “fix.”

I confessed as much to a friend in an email, and she suggested that there was a lot online that I might find interesting.  I Googled “Harry Potter,” and the floodgates opened wide.

As one of the original “Trekkers” in the early 1970s, I had been in touch with other fans of the original “Star Trek” series.  There was no internet then, of course, so being “in touch” took legwork and the cooperation of the United States Postal Service.  There was some fan fiction out there, original writing that used Gene Roddenberry’s characters and the universe he had created to continue and expand the fascination the creator had established.

Getting to it was another matter indeed.  The individual writers were isolated, though some were also (pardon the expression) very enterprising.  Those with access to mimeograph machines–remember those?–created what were called “fanzines,” their own limited-edition publications of collected writings.  If you found out about someone who published a fanzine, you could order your own copy–send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, a check to cover printing costs and maybe a little extra for the work involved, and a letter requesting a copy.  Weeks later, your treasure would arrive in the mail.

I used to own a few examples.  I still have two, though I’m a little embarrassed to share them with anyone.  While I never did order some of the most notorious material, the two pieces I still have are quite shocking in their own right.  They both center on writings about Sarek and Amanda, Spock’s parents.  I’m not going to say anything else (I’m blushing too hard).  I’m just going to show you the frontpiece from one of them: beautiful artwork and excellent writing.  Explicit, but excellent.

Next: Discovering the Potterverse

I am a member of a number of online communities on LiveJournal, my social-networking-site-of-choice.  One of them is called “5_for_five.” Those of us in it have committed to writing a minimum of 500 words a day, five days a week.  We report in every Monday on how we’ve done.  I am very proud to say that I’ve achieved my goal every week since June 2, 2009 (110,445 words as of yesterday!).  It sounds easy, until you try to do it, but it’s the reason I can now call myself a “real” writer.

Five hundred words isn’t a lot.  It is roughly what I’m aiming for in this entry (which will count as my 500 words for Saturday, November 14, 2009).  It’s enough to get across some basic concepts, to start a scene in a novel, to begin a short story.  It’s also just enough to convince yourself that you don’t know squat about putting words together in a coherent way.  It’s enough to stop you from writing, if you let it.  It’s also enough to make you finish a book, remember why you love writing, and gain a sense of satisfaction in manageable increments.

There are two concepts that make it such a great tool.  First, it’s doable.  I can write 500 words in less than half an hour (considerably less if I’m inspired, but I don’t rely on inspiration–I’d never get anything down in print by waiting).  I don’t count editing in my daily goal.  I can’t figure out an easy way to keep track of it or believe me I would!  But if I write a whole new section for something, I’m certainly going to count that.  However, 500 new words is a great daily goal, and it doesn’t have to be all on a single project or one set topic.

It also doesn’t have to be brilliant.  I can change those 500 words later, delete every last one of them if I want to, but not the same day I write them.  That day, I have to save at least 500 words.

Emailing doesn’t count.  That’s my own rule, however.  My online colleagues trust me to be honest on my word count.

The second reason it’s a great tool is that it’s five days a week, not seven.  Two days a week, I’m free to write absolutely nothing.  There have been many days when I’ve decided this was going to be one of those days and then have gone on to write some not-half-bad prose.  I think that’s my inner child throwing a hissy fit and then doing it anyway, just to spite me.  But I can take a day off without having to explain anything, and that frees me to stick to the overall goal.  If I could get that mentality to work when I’m trying to diet, I’d be as skinny as I think I am sometimes!

Committing to writing 500 words a day means that I have to find time to write, even a little bit, just about every day.  Taking two days off means that I can consciously choose not to write today.  This past Thursday, I wrote 55 words.  That’s all I could manage.  I don’t even remember what they were, but I recorded them, because that was my day off.  However, today I wrote 565 words, and you just read them.  Now, what shall I write tomorrow?

Ah, those pesky little opportunities to get work!  I’ve been updating the records I’ve been keeping over the past 13 years of all the auditions I’ve gone on and all the acting jobs that have come from them.

Many jobs have not come directly from auditions but have been laid neatly in my lap.  I was blessed with a job on the last season of The Drew Carey Show once.  They called my agent, told him they wanted me for an episode that would be filmed in two or three weeks.  They didn’t know yet what the role would be.  It turned out that the episode was about Mimi forming her own all-girl rock band, and I would be one of the members.

When the script arrived, I was a man-hating lesbian with two good solid scenes and a lot of snappy dialogue.  After the first day, the script was rewritten.  I was now a man-hungry straight woman with two decent scenes and some snappy dialogue.  After the second day, they had recast two roles, and I was now a disgruntled band member of indeterminate sexual orientation who was in two scenes and had two lines of dialogue.  Oh, and we were now a free-form jazz ensemble.

Drew gave me an orchid on the day we filmed.

Anyway, I was talking about auditions.  I can chart the changes in the business through these statistics.   First, the number of TV auditions I’ve been on over the years has dropped noticeably.  As reality shows have increased and scripted television (on network TV, anyway) has dropped off, opportunities for guest spots on TV have dipped.  Over the years, I’ve averaged 22 TV auditions per year.  In 2007 and 2008, I had just 15 apiece.  This year so far, I’ve only had 10–and one was for a webseries.  I realize as well that I should start to keep track of which ones are for network shows and which are for other kinds of programming.  Cable TV has become one of the nest places for good dramatic work, but it doesn’t always pay as well (especially in reruns).

Film has dropped of, too, though I’ve been lucky there in getting a lot of chances to work with top directors.  I’ve played with Clint Eastwood (Changeling), Steven Spielberg (Catch Me If You Can), Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away), Paul Haggis (In the Valley of Elah), Judd Apatow (Walk Hard), and I got my SAG card doing Philadelphia with Jonathan Demme.  And while in three of those cases, my stellar work ended up on the cutting room floor, I still had the chance to do the work.  But although I’ve averaged 14 film auditions a year, I haven’t hit that average since 2002.

(left) Not the greatest quality shot, but still one you won’t get to see otherwise; Wendy as the high school receptionist, Lenore, in a scene that was cut from Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah. The character was described in the script as “cheerful, helpful, and dumb as a stump.”

Commercials have been a real kick in the pants.  I was lucky enough to sign with the best team of commercial agents a person could have right after I arrived in Los Angeles.  (How I met them is a story for another time, but they are truly terrific.)  They stuck with me for four and a half years before I started making them any money.

I’ve never struck it that big in commercials, but I have lucked out a few times.  I did a spot for Chex Party Mix once that ran for eight Christmases and was huge fun to see every holiday for all that time.  I did two spots for Jack in the Box, and those of you who live east of the Mississippi and didn’t ever see any of these have been missing out on one of the wittiest ongoing ad campaigns ever designed.  I liked one of the spots so much (one in which I played a rather forceful Russian masseuse) that I put it on my “reel,” the collection of clips of my work that I keep around to show potential employers.

Over the years, I averaged 23 commercial auditions a year.  I’ve had nine this year.  Fortunately, one of them was a promo spot for HBO, which still seems to be going strong, but the opportunities to keep supporting my commercial agents have dwindled significantly.

However, I am always hopeful.  The next great job could be just an audition away.  Every time the phone rings, it signals possibility….