The Actor Prepares as he Goes Full Force Ahead

I started my one man show, just me standing blankly in front of 15 magical people, the human beings willing to come to see me, after my emailing and posting on Instagram, yes, I could have done more, gone on POD casts, hired a PR team, but what I was able to do was a lot for me. Then having people say they had tickets to see Waiting for Godot, a cooking class, some not responding to my personal notes, others saying they were coming but not showing up, don’t take it personally!!! here I am holding my Keith Letters like a baton for a relay race and I am the only one running...

The show had started but I was still in greeting my guests mode. A woman who I hadn’t personally invited, who’s more friends with my wife says, “Your first line will come to you.”

Humiliating! It was an unbelievably bad start, but all my instincts from being in acting class for 26 years kick in, and I say “I’m going behind this door.”

I walk behind the side door and close it. I take a moment, in the limbo, between the small box theater that used to be a classroom where I took years of acting class, and a rehearsal studio where there were props, I take three long seconds of quiet in the darkness slash limbo, a tiny passage way, to refocus!

This is your moment.

My daughter told me to write more and let people get to know where I’m at so I am going to condense my acting class career two hundred and sixty three scenes and five hundred and twenty two exercises to a few ramblings: I see you, I am myself, it’s horrible, but I am going to be myself if it kills me, because it will make me more alive. For the love of god, do something, go for it. React off your partner. Off the audience.

Acting is like filling up a room with sand. The actor Alfred Molina said this at an at a talk about his career. You have to cherish each small victory, and remember them to build on so you are building something more than a room filled with sand.

I come out behind the door and my 15 people cheer for me and it feels like a wild Greek chorus. It feels me up. All of my words and premises and thoughts land. My throat is parched like I was walking across the Sahara Desert, but the air is flowing. I have a moment opening up the accordion of instructional DVDs and everyone laughs.

I will get better at this. I will know my lines for the rest of the fifty minutes. But I created this moment. This grain of sand.

This is me with the 30 DVDs and the special Urban cloth.