Episode 224. Just ‘Showing Up’

Published by austin on March 22, 2011March 22, 2011

“Actor James Morrison talks about the movie he’s directed, an homage to the working-class actor called “Showing Up: A Conversation About The Actor’s Audition”. Featuring revelations about what actors go through, why actors are like baseball players (no, not because of the steroids), how actors can wield what power they have, a surprisingly spiritual detour, and where everyone (not just actors) can present their true authentic selves. (Spoiler alert: Everywhere.) (MP3. Length 19:59)

Podcast: Download (18.4MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS | More

Categories: Reduced Shakespeare Company Podcast

Tags: ActingAuditionJack O'BrienJames MorrisonShowing Up

4 Comments

austin · March 28, 2011 at 2:02 pm

Speaking of Vancouver character actors, Human IMDb, I worked with Malcolm “Virgon Delegate on the Quorum of Twelve” Stewart back in my summer stock days.

Robin · March 28, 2011 at 1:50 pm

I love playing “Who Was That?” As an avid sci-fi fan, I often find myself playing a variation called “Spot the Vancouver Character Actor”, and I make a conscious effort to learn the names of favorite itinerant thespians. It’s gotten to the point that my friends sort of think of me as a human IMDB and will ask me about actors in things we watch before resorting to the internet. :-]

(By the way, I recognize Mr. Morrison primarily from a short-lived show called Point Pleasant. He was really good.)

austin · March 28, 2011 at 12:30 pm

I sit around all day just waiting to approve comments like that. Thanks, Kurt! You were a standout, for sure.

Kurt Quinn · March 28, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Austin,
Thanks so much for the “Just Showing Up” podcast, I can’t wait to see Mr. Morrison’s film. Especially home-hitting was the concept of thinking of the audition as the gig itself, allowing you to leave it behind and move onto the next project.

Audition Story:
I was doing a show with the wonderfully talented Michael Faulkner at A Noise Within in Glendale. Having been a huge RSC fan for years and years and years, I felt it was my duty to badger Michael incessantly about any possibility of upcoming auditions. I couldn’t believe my luck when Michael told me that RSC”s required Equity auditions were happening soon.

I badgered, Michael gave me the info., I showed up – 80% in the bag!

The remaining 20% of the audition was possibly the funnest “gig” I’ve ever done. I told a bad joke, did a monologue, played my banjo, and got to chat with two of my idols.

You came to see Michael in the show a week or two later, recognized me in the lobby, and even remembered my name!

Thanks so much for that, and here’s hoping for an opportunity to “show up” again.

Kurt

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern

For his final production as thirty-year artistic director of Chicago's Tony-winning Court Theatre, Charles Newell transforms Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead into an unexpectedly joyful celebration of legacy and theater. Newell reveals his lengthy relationship with not only Stoppard's plays but with the man himself, and shares how he cast two halves of a whole; how he chose to respond instinctively to what was happening in rehearsal rather than adhere to an intricate plan; and how he embraced the counterintuitive and seemingly-oxymoronic phrase “joyful requiem.” (PICTURED: Erik Hellman and Nate Burger as Guildenstern and Rosencrantz in the Court Theatre production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, directed by Charles Newell. Photo by Michael Brosilow.) (Length 20:20)

Michelle’s ‘Green World’

Michelle Ephraim – a Professor of English and (with Caroline Bicks), the cohost of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast and the co-author of Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas – joins us this week to talk about her frank and funny new book, Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare. Michelle reveals she discovered Shakespeare surprisingly late; how “fun” is a a perfectly fine description of her sometimes fraught memoir; the shared curse of meeting hero Stephens; how Shakespeare became a source of both pain and solace in the wake of a parent’s death; how her relatively cushy job became surprisingly hazardous; and, finally, how Shakespeare – a dead European white man – became a very relatable force for inclusion. (Length 19:31)

Visiting ‘Shakespeare’s House’

Richard Schoch discusses Shakespeare’s House: A Window Onto His Life and Legacy, his wonderful new history of not only the building in Stratford-upon-Avon that William Shakespeare was born in, but how that building survived and became ground zero in the Shakespeare tourism industry. Schoch reveals how he discovered the dual focus of his book; how it took almost 200 years for people to realize the treasure that still stood in their midst; the shenanigans played by people who first depicted Shakespeare’s birthplace; the important distinctions between restoring a house and remaking it; the trick of hitting that sweet spot between writing an academic history and a popular one; and how the most important person in Shakespeare’s birthplace is not Shakespeare but the visitor. (Length 18:52)