We're wrapping it up, folks. By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)
Hello my sweet little angel beagles.
Since the last time I updated you, I have been to Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, Eureka, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Ang gurrrrrl...I'm tired. But I look cute driving that bus. Let me tell you!!
That's me with the rest of the crew.
But alas, we are in our last week on The Brave Enough Tour.
Like all awesome things, this tour has flown by way too fast. It feels like only yesterday I was boarding the bus in beautiful Trenton, New Jersey, thinking to myself, "What the hell am I doing?"
I was scared - scared to do something I had never done before, scared to spend a month living on a bus with strangers, scared to leave my life in NY, scared I would fail.
But I went for it.
And, if I may say so, I'm really damn proud of myself.
I've met all sorts of people:
Hippies in Portland
Brides-to-be in Milwaukee
Doctors in Boston
Fathers with their daughters in Philadelphia
All of these folks showed up to experience and be moved by Sara's music. I feel fortunate to have been able to witness, firsthand, the power of great art.
I'm living the rockstar life. I literally cannot count the number of hotel rooms I've destroyed, nor the number of psychotropic drugs I've been taking. Actually... By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)
I'm actually writing this on Wednesday and you're reading this on Friday. The likelihood is that I'm on a bus somewhere on the West Coast right now.
Or the bus has been captured by Somali pirates - both are equally probable.
But the point is that I'm half way through Sara Bareilles' Brave Enough Tour.
I've been living on a big old tour bus for two weeks now, having a great adventure.
The experience hasn't been without its challenges, but for the most part I'm thrilled to be out on the road. I'm a regular Jack Kerouac - minus the cool car, beatnick clothes and Kristen Stewart's scowl.
Well, the funny thing is that I fell asleep in New York last night and woke up in Washington DC.
How'd I do that, you ask.
I'M ON A BUS!!
I'm living on it for the next month.
Jealous?
I am officially on the road with Sara Bareilles on her solo acoustic tour, The Brave Enough Tour. I'm working as her merch guy - selling all sorts of excellent Sara Bareilles goodies which you can purchase here!
We're running around the country for the next thirty days bringing joy to the people of America.
All of them.
Well, all the ones that got a ticket to the show.
The others will have to consult YouTube.
Anyway, so far so good. We boarded the bus....which you will see below...last night and we're gearing up for the first show tonight at The 9:30 Club in DC.
I always dreamt of living in a double-wide.
(Secret: I don't know what I'm doing. Like...literally...no idea. But the theme of this tour is bravery, and I plan on living by that motto for the next month.)
And while I've only been on this bus for about twleve hours, I have already learned some valuable tour life lessons:
No number two on the bus. Number on is perfectly acceptable, but number two is forbidden.
Be nice to the bus driver. He holds your life in his hands. Ferrrr Rull.
Don't drink the bus tap water. I don't know...maybe it has malaria in it or something. I don't know. Either way, I'm not drinking it.
So I'll keep you all updated with our adventures. We leave today and hit the road to play a bunch of shows in New England.
Be brave today.
Namaste
AND NOW...THE WEEK IN WHITNEY HOUSTON!!!
I adore this performance. Mary J. Blige singing Aretha Franklin's, Ain't No Way. Don't worry. Mary is fine. She just looks like she's been attacked by a rag doll. Enjoy.
I'm hitting the road for five weeks to work for Sara Bareilles and I'm terrified...which is exactly why I have to do it. By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)
I'm afraid of a lot of things a lot of the time.
I always have been.
I'll admit that some of these fears are irrational - namely, my two greatest fears:
Outerspace
Dinosaurs
I'm with it enough to know that a bunch of spaceship-driving triceratops are probably not going to fly to my little Washington Heights neighborhood and wreak havoc, but still, those two things - as seperate entities - scare the hell out of me.
The other fears I've been wearing like a thick wool coat for most of my life are less irrational. Although, one might argue that all fear is by definition irrational. But we don't need to get into all of that right now.
You see, all of my life I've been scared of new people and new situations. The idea of walking into a room of people I don't know or having to do something I've never done before freaks me out in a major way.
(This makes dance auditions just the worst. You're telling me I've got to show up to a room full of dancers whose collecive body fat percentage is like six, learn a combination I have never seen, to music I've probably never heard and then give you performance level work? #Nightmare)
But if there's one thing I know from my years in therapy - and there have been many - it's that the only way to conquer one's fear is to face it - to be brave.
It makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me'...or...don't look a gift horse in mouth. Fuck. I can't get my cliches down right. Screw it. Just don't compare yourself to other people. It's not a good look. (But seriously though, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.) What...? By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)
Can I be honest for a moment?
Thanks.
I've got a problem. It's a serious problem characterized by a need to examine my own life, accomplishments and artistic endeavors in comparison to those of my fellow artists.
Some of the symptoms of this condition include a fiercely acute feeling of jealousy, a desire to binge on entire boxes of Godiva chocolate, a tendency to diminish my own successes, oh...and an overwhelming feeling of despair - to name a few.
My instinct here - and you may correct me if I'm wrong (which I'm not and rarely am) - is that you have also experienced these symptoms.
Fear not! Broadway is not dead. It lives!!! I witnessed Fiona Shaw perform lifesaving, Broadway CPR just yesterday! By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)
I'm not gonna be cute about this.
I'm going to get right to the point.
You must go see Fiona Shaw (AKA Harry Potter's mean old auntie) in The Testament of Mary at the Walter Kerr Theatre.
I went on Wednesday night and had the most thrilling, transfixing experience.
Without giving too much away, I'll tell you that the show is a 90 minute monologue in which Miss Shaw, portraying Mary, the mother of Jesus, tells the story of the last days of her son's life.
Let me state that first part again in simple, easy to swallow bits:
90 minutes
Fiona Shaw on a stage by herself
Mary, the mother of Jesus
I swear to you for an hour and a half I barely breathed.
She moves about the stage with such an impressively fearsome and fearless command. Each word she utters, she infuses with a vitality I have not witnessed on a stage since I saw Amy Morton and the cast of August: Osage County.
To even attempt to describe her performance would be to belittle it, and so, rather than walking down that fruitless path, I'll just share a few clips of her I found online so you can see some of her work for yourself.
Here she is speaking about her performance as Mother Courage in Mother Courage and Her Children from The National Theatre.
And here she is doing a monologue from T.S. Eliot's, The Wasteland:
My lifelong, elusive quest to finally meet, fall in love with and marry a professional female bodybuilder By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)
Aaaaaah! Look how beautiful:
One day. One day.
I'M KIDDING!
Take it easy. You know full well I've always wanted to marry a carny with eleven fingers.
The real topic I'd like to address today is the new Broadway show, Hands On A Hardbody, which I saw this past Wednesday night.
I'm not here to review it. I'm not a great critic and I kind of hate most contemporary critics anyway. I'm not that interested in joining that circle.
What I do want to share with you is the fact that, while the show is not perfect, it is full of some fabulously talented performers, one of whom GAVE IT TO ME LAST NIGHT!!!!
Her name is Keala Settle. Maybe you've heard of her? I never had because I'm not as cool as you. But SHIT! This woman knows how to get it done!!
Miss Settle plays Norma Valverde, one of the contestants at a Texas car dealership's annual, Hands On A Hardbody Contest, in which contestants are challenged to stand with their hands on a Nissan pickup truck. Whoever lasts the longest drives the truck off the lot.
Every character possesses some quirk, some strategy to employ in order to win that damn truck.
Nina's strategy seems to be her deep faith in God...well, that and belting. Lots of belting.
And holy Hell. This woman can belt.
Here she is in the press footage for the show screlting away on the tune, "Joy To The Lord."
Do you ever feel like you must not be doing enough?
That's how I've been feeling this week.
(Truth time: That's how I've been feeling for about thirty years.)
A good friend of mine often says to me that life is about finding comfort in three major areas:
Family
Love Life
Career
Most of the time, they don't all line up just right. Maybe for a few years, a person's love life is really firing on all cylinders while his career is D.O.A and his family situation is struggling. Or maybe he's got the best job and a supportive family but can't get anyone on OKCupid to bite.
It's all a matter of balance.
But just lately, I've been thinking to myself, "Am I doing something wrong?"
Because - confession - my career is not where I'd like it to be.
(Whose career is, right?)
I mean, on my best days I realize that I'm doing the work. I'm at the gym five days a week making sure I'm staying in shape. I'm taking class. I'm going to auditions. I recently finished my work in The Artist's Way and I feel like my creative muscles are getting stronger.
And yet...
I'm still waiting for that big break.
I suppose I'm faced with a pretty major question:
Am I really doing all that I can?
Well, the answer to that big one depends on the day, but on days that the answer is yes then the only thing I can do is twofold:
Be patient and dwell in hope.
The problem is that my thoughts on patience can be summed up in the following cartoon starring two chickens.
UGH.
I don't want to be patient! I'm following the Veruca Salt school of thought at the moment. I want it all and I want it now!
I know what you're thinking. I've got to just believe. I've got to hang in there, keep doing what I do and believe.
But damn if it isn't hard sometimes...
Am I right?
Ya. I'm right.
But you know what it's not? Impossible. It's not impossible to have the career you want as an artist. People do it. Your friends do it. You're doing it. And so am I.
Forgive the little pep talk. I needed it today. Maybe you did too.
Hang in there.
Namaste
AND NOW...THE WEEK IN WHITNEY HOUSTON!!!!
You know who knew how to believe in herself? Miss Houston. Here she is singing about the importance of believing in oneself on the Oprah Show.
How I faced my fear of the camera. By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)
You know how I'm always telling you people how great you are, how you should pursue your dreams, how a life spent in the pursuit of a passion is better than a life spent doing something because it feels safe and how you should face your fears and in doing so, show them who's boss?
Right...well...
I don't always do that myself.
In fact, sometimes when I'm scared of doing something I think, "Well, I'll just start that up next week." And then I don't actually ever start it.
So friends, I stand before you today (actually I'm sitting...in my pajamas...at 12:42 pm on a Thursday...whoops) to tell you that I am not always the brave fear-coquering superhero I make myself out to be.
Case in point: I had been wanting to get into tv/film acting for like...hm...my entire career, but had avoided it on account of my bowl-twisting fear of being on camera and my weak jawline.
But on Wednesday night, I faced the dragon and came out on top...my favorite position. (Sorry for that one, mom.)
To be completey real, I was absolutely terrified.
I had been anxious about the class inthe days leading up to it but not overly so. I printed out the sides I had been given to learn and set about memorizing them. They were from an episode of Law and Order in which I played the owner of a hipster toy store in Brooklyn. Type casting.
The scene was super short, maybe a page, and every time I worked on it, I'd finish and think to myself, "I feel like I'm not doing anything."
So the big day comes. I show up in class and I'm more nervous than I can even explain. Actually, wait, I can explain:
Remember that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and her pals are first going to meet the Wizard? Well, the lion gets really scared, runs away and jumps out the window.
That...
Compounded with the fact that I was so scared I thought I might get sick was my deep suspicion that I would get up there on camera and the teacher would say to me something like, "You're too big. Stop being so theatrey."
There's power in not taking everything so seriously. I promise. By Geoffrey Kidwell (actor)
When I moved to New York five years ago, I promised myself that I would do my level best to find a community of artists working on new and exciting projects. I'd join their ranks and call myself a member of the New York theatre family.
That was the idea.
It has not always been easy to make good on this promise. I've had a difficult time finding my way into the mysterious world of theatre here in the city, but there have been a few moments where I thought to myself, "Okay, you did it. You're here."
This past Wednesday night was one such moment for me.
I had the great fortune of being asked to sing at the CD release concert for an artist whose work I admire and respect in equally large amounts.
His name is Bobby Cronin and he's a an absolute beast. So. Talented.
Anyway, the concert was at a great new venue called The Cutting Room. Check it out.
Cool, right?
So I show up to sound check and I'm immediately overwhelmed by the talent of the other singers in the concert - only a few of whom I had heard singing in our rehearsals in the weeks leading up to the show.
Here's where I had a choice:
Immediately become intimidated by everyone else's talent, put my tale between my legs and hide.
Take a deep breath, remind myself that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be and that I've found that community I so desperately wanted to find when I first arrived in New York.
Guess which option I chose...
(Hint: It's probably not the one you think I chose if you've read my blog in the past.)
