Actor: A Novel in Three Acts

The red-orange glow of the pizza place across the street stained the printed audition side as I read:

All scenes take place on the same set: a kitchen and adjoining alcove of an older home in a Southern California suburb, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles.

A kitchen and alcove forty miles east of Los Angeles. In reality, I was a thousand miles further in the middle of Chicago with no kitchen to speak of and no alcove...just a window, a kettle, and the glow of a pizza place I could barely afford. Food could wait. This audition was more important. Nail it, then food. Good food. All the best food.

I dropped the side to my hip, turned from the window, and looked around my empty apartment, imagining the stage or audition space that would soon confront me as it does all actors with Stanislavski's "black hole." This void, if I didn't have my figurative box of nails to pick up and organize, would consume me.

Acting is action, Edie told me.

This is why she trained my body to allow for nature-given intuition, based on subconscious feelings, and an actor's instincts. All of that came if I allowed myself to be open in the moment and to it. If not, stale, mechanical, un-true disconnected actions and movement—death.

“There," I said aloud, "is where I'll put a chair if they have one. If they give me a table, it will go...there. If they give me nothing, well, I will have nothing and prepare for that.“

I pointed to a spot beside the chair and then stepped on it. This would be my mark to return to as I made way around and positioned myself to see the reader, the director, and whoever else would be there. That and so they could see my face, hear my voice, and feel my soul if the muse decided to show up.

I dug my heels into the cold of the hardwood through my socks, aware of my tiny kitchenette to the left and to the right, nothingness. If I had a TV and a couch, maybe, but I had neither, so nothing, for now, would have to do. With structure, I could pick one or two moments from the script and work.

Prepare, prepare, prepare, Edie hammered into me. So you can make it look like you've been doing it your whole life without even trying.

Even here, even alone on the other side of the country, she was there, directing.

“Lee," I began, pacing and reading from the side, "is his older brother, early forties, filthy white t-shirt, tattered brown overcoat covered with dust, dark blue baggy suit pants from the Salvation Army, pink suede belt, pointed black forties dress shoes scuffed up, holes in the soles, no socks, no hat, long pronounced sideburns, 'Gene Vincent' hairdo, two days' growth of beard, bad teeth."

I stopped and reread the first line.

“Early forties.”

I was twenty-three, not early forties.

Tim told me the director wanted me for Lee, not Austin. He did, right? Lee was supposed to be weathered and beat down to death by two decades of desert sun, bad decisions, and hard drinking carved into his face and body. The man was broken...so was I, but not that broken. Not yet.

I wanted to play him. I needed to play him, but was it believable?

It's not your job to argue but to trust the vision, I sneered at myself. Find the truth in the gap, and act as if I was under the given circumstances. Age could be suggested and played. Weariness could be performed.

Malkovich was twenty-nine when he gave his infamous performance, and no one questioned whether he belonged on that stage or what he did. Why not me? If they didn’t want me, they wouldn’t have called me in and wasted their time…unless it was just a favor for Tim. No, I told myself. Stop thinking that way. Poison. Death. They saw something else, and that’s what mattered.

I was Lee. Use and transform what you have. Become.

My shoulders rose for no other reason than they wanted to. I listened. My upper weight shifted forward. I felt my eyes squint and the sense that my teeth were suddenly coated in a thick film of grime. My body suddenly got very sore and pained, and that—for reasons still beyond me—told me everything bad that had ever happened to me was unjustified. All of it. Ill-deserved. The world was out to get me and Austin was going to pay for it.

I started to get angry. Vindictive. A bully.

My training was urging me to walk around, wild and restless, in my body; some instinct to prowl unrestrained.

Lee, I thought. There you are.

I continued reading.

NOTE ON SOUND: The Coyote of Southern California has a distinct yapping, dog-like bark, similar to a hyena. This yapping grows more intense and maniacal as the pack grows in numbers, which is usually the case when they lure and kill pets from suburban yards.

The sensation to growl came over me. I yipped, bent my back, went to a squat down to the floor, and looked around the room like a feral dog. By repositioning myself, I gained a completely new perspective. Hunger, violence, desperation, fear—all there within reach. Then I shot up, saw Lee, big and powerful, with no real need to move fast given his size.

Lee, I thought. Hulking around like a werewolf. Big and unapologetic. He sees nothing wrong with anything he does. There is no guilt. There is no shame. There is only what he deems worthy of being important and unimportant.

The impulse to bark rose again, so I barked loud and wild and weird. The vibration of it shook deep in my chest, resonated throughout my body, and then permeated through the rest of my body. I barked again, louder so I could imagine the sound roll out and over the expansive desert, the cold, starlit sand, the dry brush, the night creatures, and the long stretch of big, clumsy footsteps making their way toward that older home in a Southern California suburb, about forty miles east of Los Angeles.

Were those Lee's footsteps?

Yes, I told myself. Make the choice. He's right there. He's coming.

Those were his. He was out there. I was out there in LA, in that desert, just like Lee. That was my before. Find him there and bring him in.

“He's freshly returned, and that's where we start," I said aloud. "That state of mind. That place and there to see Austin after all those years apart."

What's that feel like? How does someone who's touched the soul of nature's indifference react to being brought back into this man-made world? What does someone do to someone else who hasn't lived that way, gone that far, seen those things? What do they want? What do they need?

Connection, an unfamiliar voice whispered.

“Night," I read aloud, the words rolling now. "Sound of crickets in the dark. Candlelight appears in the alcove, illuminating AUSTIN, seated at a glass table hunched over a writing notebook, pen in hand, cigarette burning in an ashtray, cup of coffee, typewriter on table, stacks of paper, candle burning on table."

I imagined who would be my stand-in for Austin sitting in the chair at the table. At the audition, there would be a reader, but they were always sitting in a chair, dead weight, forever speaking in a low, monotone voice. It was terrible, and to compensate, the thing I found I leaned on was to overact and embellish, which had nothing to do with the true emotion of the given scene.

There was an empty pot on the windowsill. I walked toward it like Lee—wide, bullish, needly, mock indifferent—picked it up roughly, as if it owed me milk money, and then placed it an empty chair beside the reading chair. I focused on the pot's curves, its light brown color, and a small crack, and let them all make me angrier and angrier.

See the details. Listen to them. Take them in, leave them there.

I stepped back and saw the outline from before fill out and harden into Edie sitting at our dining room table, her face lit by a single candle flame. The faint smell of burning wax and smoke filled the air. There was a typewriter in front of her, like the one Austin would have had. She turned and looked at me—not smiling, not frowning, simply seeing and recognizing I was there.

There she was again. In Lee and Austin's world. She walked right into it with me.

“Soft moonlight fills the kitchen, illuminating LEE," I continued. "Beer in hand, six-pack on the counter behind him. He's leaning against the sink, mildly drunk; he takes a slug of beer."

There was an empty beer bottle in the sink, left behind by the old tenant. "Looks like they left you a present," the landlord had joked, not once thinking to clean it up. I ran and grabbed it, excited that the scene was organically growing around me. Inspiration, the muse, whatever—it was there with me. I could feel it, and the only way to keep it was to keep working.

I looked at the side, then up at my now imagined Austin and Edie flickering there, watching, waiting.

"So," I said. "Mom took off for Alaska, huh? Sorta' left you in charge. You keepin' the plants watered?"

I knew—Lee knew—Austin was just trying to write, but Lee couldn't give a shit about any of that. Whatever Austin was doing wasn't nearly as important as what I was saying and feeling. Listen to me. I’m brilliant. That's really the way it was. That's the way it’s always been, and now you’re going to know it today. Lee felt betrayed by his mother, and since she wasn't around, Austin was the perfect one to take those feelings out on until he understood.

There was no room for judgment from me. My job was to justify and defend every action. He was like a little kid in an old body, wearing a filthy white T-shirt and dusty, dark-blue, baggy Salvation Army suit pants.

“Guy doesn't care what anyone thinks," I murmured. "Thinking isn't part of what he does. Thinking is for losers. Thinking is for Austin. Lee—I'm—in action: always moving, scheming, and living this thing called life right up to the edge."

My words felt stiff, my tone manufactured. I needed to relax. I wasn't going to become Lee overnight, but I could use tiny details to get there. The last thing I wanted to do was push, but if I leaned on just a few things, I would get myself there.

I poured myself a glass of water, pointed my chin to the ceiling, gargled, then spat it across the floor like it was beer.

"Austin!" I yelled out loud. "Come look at what I did. Come look at what your older brother did and clean it up. That's all you've ever been good for, little brother. Give you a break after all that clickity-clack!"

The air in my lungs, the breath in my mouth and between my teeth—with the sudden rage that was boiling over—like someone else. I looked down at my two hands. They were clenched tight, and when I tried to open them, for a moment, they wouldn’t. It felt like they were listening to someone else.

Edie told me a story once about a young, up-and-coming actor who was convinced the Method was the only way. They believed the only way to express any scene truthfully was with absolute realism in every aspect of the character. So, during a scene where he had to cut himself, the actor really did—he really bled. He ignored the blood packet and let his own paint the stage. It ultimately ended with the actor fainting and ruining the show.

"Dustin Hoffman did the same thing with Olivier," Edie had laughed. "Screaming to make his voice hoarse."

"What did Laurence say?" I remembered asking.

"It's called acting, dear boy. So act."

She was always right there, in some corner of my mind, between the words on the page and the pauses between transitions.

I knew Lee's objective before I touched the text again: to be seen. Not as a drifter. Not as the brother who disappeared into the desert. As someone whose ideas mattered.

But Austin was the obstacle. Austin with his typewriter and his coffee and his candle burning on the table. Austin, with their mother's trust, her house keys, and her plants to water. Austin, who had taken the traditional path and been rewarded for it. Everything Lee wanted, Austin already had—not because he'd earned it, but because he'd stayed.

So what was Lee's action? What did he do to get what he wanted?

I scribbled and highlighted sections of emphasis, repeating each line under my breath. Austin, a beacon of what Lee would never be, became clearer and clearer at their mother's dining room table. I felt Lee's anger, his disgust, his self-loathing.

The real urgency driving Lee, underneath all that anger, was to become Austin.  Lee wanted his ideas to be voiced and made worthy. His brother's middle-class life and education were resented, but underneath, they came from a place of yearning. If Lee could make his ideas legitimate, he'd no longer be disposable to society. He wants acceptance. He wants it desperately. And he'll do whatever to whoever—even his brother—to get it.

"Prove he belongs here," I said looking around the apartment and imagining it was Austin's. "Make this place yours."

I saw myself in Lee. I was trying desperately to detach from the nepotism and privilege of growing up with parents who could have taken away the struggle of the pipeline entirely. I didn't know who would be lost if I didn't go through the fires of anonymity, but I knew it was worth it. It had to be. It had to be.

My objective and Lee's had become the same.

I continued reading and memorizing the side throughout the night, pacing the room for hours until I realized the sun was starting to crack through the clouds. I went to the window and looked at the dawn. In the distance, I thought I heard coyotes howling.

They sounded hungry.

I lay down on the cold floor for a few hours...like Lee would have, out there in all that cold and all that desert.