There was a time…

… it seems so long ago. When I had the time to blog each day; to share little games with you all, or random thoughts about this and that. I’d talk about the good movies I’d recently seen… ah those were halcyon days.

Nowadays, I’m lucky if I get one entry done per week, with quick updates on Trish and my progress. Like this one.

Not to worry, those mellow yellow days will return once more… sometime in the future (heck, Jingle Spree closes on November 18, and that’ll open up a fair amount of time right here). Meanwhile, here’s what’s been happening:

>> Frequent visitors to the blog will notice that I had to re-set the Buddy Counter… the little bastard got out again on Sunday while Trish and I were both at our respective Matinees (The Witches for Trish Jingle Spree for I), and Trish’s brother Pete was watching my show. I had to rush home after the show to help look for him… which was a pity, since I was supposed to go to a cast member’s house to hang with Jingle Spree playwright Dan Trujillo. After a couple of hours of fruitless searching, he showed up on his own in the front yard – fatter than when he left, as usual.

>> Speaking of Jingle Spree, we got another review. This time in the Willamette Week (the first listing we’ve had in that paper, even after running for two weeks). This review isn’t as complimentary as the Oregonian Review from last week… but the critic’s main complaint was about the script, not the work we were doing on stage. I guess that’s something.

>> Shot a scene in a short film for Noah Stanik on Sunday… it was a bloody good time. "Bloody" because I sliced my thumb with a razor that morning while I was shaving. No big deal, thought I… I’ll just stick a band-aid on my thumb and hit the road. Unfortunately, one of my tasks during the day’s shoot was to put an eviction notice against a plate-glass window (showing the notice to a boy inside a house). This meant that I needed to be band-aid free, because the camera was behind me. No problem, thought I… the cut was all closed up by now.

Nope. After the first shot, we realized that my thumb was leaving bloody streaks on the back of the paper which were VERY visible to the camera. Luckily, they had a second eviction notice prepped. I spent the rest of the morning keeping pressure on my thumb in between takes, and then carefully putting my thumb in the EXACT SAME PLACE on the paper each time to avoid leaving streaks. I was pretty successful for the most part, and Noah seemed very happy with the way the scene turned out. I’ll be looking forward to seeing what it looks like when he’s done with the post-production.

>> I’m not seeing too much of Trish these days because of her shooting schedule for the film The New Scarf (a Late Bloomer Production). She auditioned for this film a couple of months ago, and was pretty disappointed when they cast someone else (she really is perfect for the part, if I do say so myself). Then, this past week, producer Wendy Jo Downing contacted her and told her that the woman they’d cast had dropped out. The film is shooting this weekend, and they were (obviously) in a bind… and the offered the part to Trish.

Well, of course, Trish took it. Unfortunately, this project is making her already full schedule (between day and evening performances of The Witches and evening rehearsals for Inspecting Carol) start to slop over the rim; she’s now got every single moment of the day filled with one of these three projects. Thankfully, the film will be in the can after this weekend, and The Witches closes Sunday so she’ll get some breathing room soon.

So… that’s pretty much what’s been going on in our lives. Things are pretty crazy right now, but they’ll mellow out after this weekend… I’d better sign off and get some sleep – I’ve got an audition in Eugene in the morning.

Hope you’re all doing well…

-Harold

Jingle Spree Reviewed In The Oregonian

Hey everbody

The Oregonian printed a very nice review of Jingle Spree, the play I'm currently performing in at CoHo Productions.

I'm not mentioned by name, but Richard Wattenberg was very complimentary about both the script and the production. You can read the review here (I also posted a PDF version of it in the "Press" section of www.haroldphillips.net).

If you're planning on coming to see the show, this weekend would be a good weekend to do so. Dan Trujillo, the playwright, is going to attend the Friday evening and Sunday matinee shows. I think that a talk-back with him is planned after those two shows, so you can ask him just what he was thinking when he penned this twisted tale :)

Hope I see you in the audience...

-Harold

Geek Humor At It's Finest

Ahhhhh... it's a wonderful thing when you open a show, then have those first couple days of the following week and can savor a return to life's normal routine.

Some of that normal routine isn't all that fun... you have to finally get around to doing all that laundry that's been piling up, clean out the gutters, and get to those other household chores that have been piling up while you've been spending countless hours at the theatre.

Some bits of the routine, though, are quite welcome. Like my morning ritual of sitting with my morning cup of coffee and getting caught up with MySpace and the other web sites I frequent. Some people start their mornings with the paper; I check in the Associated Press (via my Netscape home page), a few blogs, and some select webcomics. To make life easier, I use Changedetection.com to email me when these pages are updated.

I can almost always count on Something Positive to get my day started with a bang. Lately Randall Milholland has been running with a great story line. It started a while back, but picked up here.

Then moved to here.

Took a little breather here.

And the punchline of the whole thing came here (or so I thought).

See, there was still a happy, sick little denoument to be enjoyed... First this and then... wait for it...

The coup de grace.

Genius, I tell ya... sheer freakin' geek-humor genius!

Jingle Opening

Howdy all

Thanks for all your good wishes for the opening of Jingle Spree this past Friday. We had a pretty decent opening night; not a full house, but a respectable-sized audience that was very responsive. It was pretty gratifying to finally do the show for people who weren’t familiar with it, especially since the past week has been a major endurance challenge.

We were at the theatre until at least midnight every night leading up to opening. That was bad enough… but 'round about Wednesday I started to succumb to a cold that Trish has been suffering from for the past couple weeks. I’d been doing a fairly good job of fighting it off until this past week… the long hours and short nights’ sleep conspired to lower my defenses, and by opening night I was sneezing and coughing a deep, rattling cough.

That didn’t dampen the excitement of Opening Night too much, though. As we gathered on the stage before the inaugural show with our director Tony Sonera, there was an electricity in the air that we could all feel. Tony has a little ritual he performs whenever a show he directs opens: he creates a special scent for that show (a small bottle of perfume… don’t know how he does it or where he gets the components), and he anoints everyone in the cast and crew with it. Then, he appoints one person in the cast the custodian of the scent (Bill Barry got that honor this time around); it’s that person’s job to distribute a dab of the scent to everyone in the company every performance. It’s a nice little ritual… one that brings us all together and reminds us that the captain of our ship may not be in the house every performance, but he's there with us in spirit.

The electricity of opening night has dispersed a bit, however, as the weekend has progressed. Unfortunately, publicity for the show has been a bit lacking. We didn’t appear in the Willamette Week’s performance listings, and the Oregonian didn’t put us in the "Openings" section of their weekly "A&E" Arts and Entertainment Insert. Consequently, our audiences have been small. We almost had to cancel today’s show (the general rule is that if the actors on stage outnumber the audience, you call off the show and invite the audience members to come back another night – usually comped.) That would have been a pity, too... today was probably our best show yet. Everyone in the cast is putting out %110 on stage. Those who have seen the show have raved about it; they find Dan’s script to be fresh and interesting, and they absolutely love Deanna Wells and Eric Ried’s work.

We’re hoping that word-of-mouth is going to spread over the course of next week… we should also have a review in the Oregonian sometime next week (hopefully good). Hopefully audiences will improve next week; it’d really be a shame for people to miss this show.

I guess only time will tell… Hope you’re all doing well.

-Harold

Updating On-The-Fly...

...'cause I'm flying hard and fast these days!

Howdy everyone... been quite a while since I updated you on what's been going on in Trish and my lives. Our days - and nights - have been way full, to be sure (like, oh my gawd... TOTALLY!!!).

Before I get started though, I want to thank everyone who showed up to the Sum of the Parts test screening on Saturday, September 23rd. There were some issues with the sound (apparently the Mission Theater sound system couldn't handle all the high-compression digital sound that director Raymond Steers put into the movie), but overall the screening went well and Ray got some good feedback from the audience on ways to make the piece better before it heads to Sundance. Thanks for watching and for all the feedback, guys.

So... here's what's been happening over the past couple of weeks:

>> Theatre: Trish opens The Witches at Northwest Children's Theatre on Friday! She's neck-deep in the tech rehearsal process (the part of the process where they add in all the lights, sound, costumes, etc), so I'm not seeing much of her these days. The show should be a lot of fun; there's lots of special effects, spooky witches, kids being transmogrified, and even... radio controlled mice? It's really worth trying to get in to see this one. Trish plays the young male lead's grandmother, and is in a big chunk of the show. The play runs just about an hour, so it's a good length for the kids (NWCT says that it's "recommended for 6 and up"). It's only up for a month, though, from October 6 - 29. You can click here to buy tickets online from the NWCT web site.

If Trish weren't in tech for the The Witches, I still wouldn't see much of her because of my own rehearsal schedule for the upcoming Jingle Spree at the CoHo Theatre. We've had a bit of a shake-up in the show's personnel, but it's all for the best. Lorraine Bahr, who was directing the show, has had some family issues in Minnesota and wasn't able to come back out for the last couple weeks of rehearsal. Thankfully Antonio Sonera has stepped in to shape the show and get it ready for its world premier (gulp) next Friday. I love working with Tony, and his vision is really helping us to put more depth into the process. We're working intensely, though, as tech week comes at us like a speeding bullet. I'm already out at the theatre until 11pm every night this week... I'm sure next week will see me staggering home at 12 or 12:30. Good times!

So, just as Trish gets to catch her breath after opening her show, I go into tech for mine... but Trish doesn't get much time to relax. She's going right into rehearsals for Inspecting Carol at Artists Repertory Theatre the Monday after her opening weekend. Needless to say, I won't see a lot of her even after MY show opens... but at least with both the shows open, I may be able to get to some of the laundry that's been piling up. Oh, the glamorous life of the actor!

>>Film: As I mentioned above, Raymond Steers is busily re-working Sum of the Parts for its submission to Sundance. He's been working with the 40+ feedback forms and the copious notes taken by others in the audience Saturday-before-last to tighten up the film and try and trim about 30 minutes off of the running time. I'm anxious to see what the final result ends up looking like.

We wrapped shooting on Chris Herman and Screaming Inside Films' L.E.A.D. on September 24th. We were originally scheduled to shoot my last scene in the film Friday the 22nd, but at the last minute the producer lost the location were slated to film at. This left the crew scrambling to find a new location, and a new day that would work for everyone. Thankfully, the folks at the Rake Gallery in Portland's Perl District allowed us to shoot the final scenes in their space after hours. So, I jetted over there on Sunday the 24th at around 8 PM (after a five hour Jingle Spree rehearsal). I was there until about 2:30 am... ah the glamorous life of the actor. I can't complain too much, though... the rest of the actors and crew were there until around 6 am. The film should be shown at the Hollywood Theatre in early December as part of an evening of Art Institute of Portland senior projects. It may very well have a life after that as well... I'll keep you posted.

That's pretty much it for what's going on right now... Trish and I aren't seeing much of each other as our day-jobs have gotten excessively busy, and we're both rehearsing in the evenings. We're really looking forward to getting both our shows open so we can spend an evening together... just for something different.

Time to hit the sack... hope you're all doing well!

-Harold