Actor: A Novel in Three Acts

Peter and I, shoulder to shoulder, were waiting in the shadows of the main stage wings, ready to go on. I felt lucky. Growing up in SF and LA, I was used to being shoved into some cramped office space or somebody’s living room along the lines of a jail cell than a theatre. One small plastic table where the casting director sat, usually bored, as their assistant’s assistant held an iced coffee and various stacks of papers and headshots soon to be shredded after the day was done. Sure, I saw some nice places here and there, but infrequently. The stage at Steppenwolf stage was a welcome change. I didn’t feel worthy, but then again...I was there.

Hushed, quiet, and side by side, Peter and I simmered in the awkwardness of needing to catch up but being unable to. He had been the “it” actor at CalArts. Two years above me, we still crossed paths here and there—mostly at parties, drunk and high, unsure what to talk about other than why we were all there. That was a common problem at conservatory: we spent years studying plays, characters, and subtext; we dived deep into the dramaturgical depths of their time periods and what the playwright was trying to say...but none of us really knew each other. One would assume the opposite to be true. Most, if not all, of our interactions were through the medium of theatre, which created a kind of barrier in the world of worlds we communicated with ourselves.

The first time I met him, I recognized he had this type of pre-fame, "gonna make it wherever he goes" aura that only a few actors in every conservatory have each year. That "it factor," Edie called it. Peter was like Brando in his years at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School: committed, passionate, but still light and playful without the insubordination. He cared, but didn't care. He just was. Things came and went through him as he listened and reacted to the play's given circumstances, as if he were playing tennis. I was jealous of him then, like I was back in conservatory. Extremely jealous. Nothing had changed.

He showed me that vulnerability and openness were the keys to existing in any moment. Peter had this ability to speak and be present for both the other actors onstage and the audience, in control of his whole body. I was too in my head, hearing the lines before saying them, imagining my blocking before moving...on and on. My need to control displaced my responsibility to the moment, and I knew it was holding me back. It still was.

Worse, given my nepotism, Peter started from nothing. He moved from Iowa City to Los Angeles on a scholarship. His dad was a farmer, his mom a schoolteacher—no background in acting, no mother like Edie. He said he started reading plays for free at the library, memorizing and reciting monologues on a tractor, running entire scenes to his animals. He randomly applied because a friend dragged him to the nationwide audition. How do you compete with that? How do you have a better, more natural foundation? You don't...as if the muses plucked him out of the middle of nowhere.