Author: jk151363

Broadway, the theatre hub of New York City and all of the United States, shrieks of money. Screens larger than most buildings in the outer boroughs blast advertisements at anyone within a three hundred yard radius of their glow. Drinks and food, movies, and Broadway productions dominate the ad space. Tourists stare up in awe at the light that reflects off their bodies. “Welcome to New York, Joe. You got a Coca-Cola ad all over your face.”

But the blocks on the periphery of the screens and theaters—the blocks that lock it all in—are quiet and calm. The Broadway machine has yet to reach them. Resting on one of these blocks is William Esper Studio, a studio for training actors. The front door of heavy glass can only be opened from within, keeping the chaos of Time’s Square out, while keeping in the kinetic energy produced by it’s actors toiling away in the basement studios.

Marissa Guinn is one of these actors. Having grown up in Fort Worth, Texas, Guinn has always had a passion for acting and performing. Her first try at acting came at age 12, when she performed in a theatre camp production of The Music Man. “Performing was such an awesome experience,” she says in the living room of her apartment in New York City. “I left the show feeling high. At least, high for a 12 year old.”

Guinn moved to New York City after graduating from Texas-Tech University in 2012 with a BFA in acting. Although she was moving up north to act, her experience at Texas-Tech had been trying and tough. “It was sometimes discouraging to be in a theatre program that lacked the amount of minorities needed for our productions to be considered diverse,” Guinn says. Guinn’s mother is from Mexico and her father is African-American, making her somewhat of an anomaly in a school that is over 60 percent white.

Beyond the limitations of race in shows, Texas-Tech University is in Lubbock, Texas, a conservative town in the North Western region of the state. “My junior year, our department put up a production of Equus where, at one point, the main character is completely naked and having a meltdown on stage. We had a number of people get up and walk out during the show because of the nudity,” says Guinn. Despite the lack of opportunity, Guinn worked diligently on her craft and participated in any and everything that she could so that by the time she graduated she would be well prepared to venture north to New York City, the home of the stage.

After making the move, Guinn walked past William Esper Studio by chance. Having read about it in a book in college, she took the encounter as an act of fate and applied to the studio’s two-year program. She was accepted and began to study in an environment that accepted her ethnicity and provided her with plenty of opportunity. Over the course of the program, Guinn began to foster strong relationships with her colleagues that would soon prove valuable beyond any of their expectations.

Broadway is coming to the close of one of its most successful years in history. According to The Broadway League, the industry grossed $1.3 billion in profits in 2016 and has increased attendance by hundreds of thousands for the fourth year in a row. While Broadway’s most successful show of the season was Hamilton, a show conceived mostly by outsiders, the general trend in the pinnacle of theatre revolves around the recruitment of Hollywood stars. The relationship between Hollywood and Broadway serves both sides well. While the actor enjoys a return to form—just listen to any actor plug their show on late night television—Broadway benefits from the attention that the stars bring and ultimately, the money they bring as well.

While this trend isn’t overtly sinister—after all, Broadway is a business— it does make it difficult for actors at the beginning of their career to envision their names in lights, shinning inside the marquee. “Broadway has changed,” says Marianne Hardart, a colleague of Guinn, “Now you need Hollywood names and I’m not ‘The Name’. I know and understand that.” But she also understands why the model has changed in this way. “The audience wants to get up close with the stars and that makes sense,” she says. “But as an actor, things have become a little less accessible.”

The dream of Broadway has blurred. For many actors, the dream they had as kids and as adults appears to be so far off that it can only be achieved after a lifetime of work. Only after establishing themselves as stars will they finally be able to perform on the stages designated for history. But in a rehearsal space in William Esper Studio on Sunday mornings—starting at the same time  Broadway’s weekend matinees begin—works a group of actors, calling themselves the Share Care Group, with no intention of letting this blurred dream slow them down.

The stage is set. There are two wooden dressers, two beds outfitted in blue sheets and heavy quilts, five tables of various sizes and shapes, a couch in the corner, an office chair, and a bookshelf that holds rows of plates and cups, a microwave, a disconnected telephone, and an empty bottle of tequila and an empty bottle of wine. It is a domestic space that lacks nothing. Around 30 seats sit opposite the space.

The group members, all of whom graduated from William Esper Studio, shuffle in quietly so as not to disturb their colleagues who have already begun their warm-ups. One by one, they shed their heavy coats, puffy and long, and their hats and scarves, and move with soft intention towards the middle of the rehearsal space.

Deep moans, jabs of breath, and pattering lips fill the room. They are funny noises but no one laughs. Despite having gone out drinking together the night before, there is little talk about the day’s hangover. Inside the studio they are professional and respectful of each other’s desire to improve their craft. Once they have all arrived, there are six, and they begin their group warm-up.

“Hoo!” yells one. “Ha!” replies another. “Hee!” two say in unison as they make a chopping motion towards the stomach of the person between them. The object of the game is to follow the pattern. Each ‘hoo’, ‘ha’, or ‘hee’ is sent across the circle and the person receiving must voice the next sound of the pattern. As the game proceeds, the actors practice their projection, and the sounds get louder, deeper, and increasingly more engulfing. Through out the game, each actor has a creeping smile on his or her face and each failure sends the group into a fit of giggles. Their laughs and smiles work their acting muscles better than any game ever could, whether they know it or not.

The object of the next game is count to twenty together as a group. If multiple people say a number at the same time, the group must start again from zero. Their first attempt ends at four. They get to twenty on the second try. On the third round they fail at six. The next time, they reach twenty-five. The group is in sync and the session begins.

The Share Care Group started as a Facebook page designed for its members to share inspirational videos or articles. The group evolved and the actors began to share their successes and their troubles. Upon graduation, the actors were encouraged to stay in touch and make a community that could offer support in times of need. The group moved from online to in person, and they rented out a studio space where they could meet every Sunday.

Each session is structured the same: Warm-ups come first, then each actor has the opportunity to work shop a monologue, a scene, or an exercise for the group to comment on and critique, and to finish, each member shares the progress they made in the past week.

“The group allows us to celebrate in love and to also go through struggle in love,” says Hardart. Her fellow actors echo her sentiment. “It allows me to express myself with no judgment at all,” says Robert Cabrera, an actor in the group who has not only recently been signed by an agent but is also slated to begin acting in a pilot for a television show later this month.

“We have all felt really lonely at some point during our acting journey” says Lea Pfändler, an actor in the group, “but here we can feel lonely, together.” Without the group, Pfändler believes her ability to act may quickly falter. “This amazing studio has saved my artist soul.”

After their warm-ups have finished, Estelle Lee, a Korean actor, volunteers to share first. She recruits the help of Cabrera to act as her scene partner. Lee is practicing a cold read—acting out a script that the actor has not previously read. After the scene, Lee starts the conversation, commenting on what she thought she did well, and also what she believes she could improve on. The group responds and Lee heads back to her seat, her face in deep concentration, dedicated to improvement.

Next, Pfändler and her colleague, and also fiancé, Pavel Shatu, take the stage to improvise a situation the two had crafted together. Before their Sunday session started, Pfändler and Shatu were huddled close together in a couch in the lobby of Esper Studio, but now, in the throws of the scene, they were spewing hateful words back and forth, calling each other names like, “idiot,” “stupid,” and “selfish motherfucking shit.”

After their scene, the group offered their suggestions. Shatu felt that he hadn’t performed his best and went over a few reasons why. And the biggest reason for his scattered performance? “I love you too much.”

Broadway may be fairly inaccessible at this point in their young careers but the Share Care group continues to work diligently to refine their skills and explore the art of acting. Members of the group believe that in the face of the Californication of Broadway, artists are forced to find more creative spaces to share their art. Not all great art has to be performed on Broadway.

Arriving late to the session one day, Lee apologized and joined the group. It wasn’t until they shared their weeks at the end of the session that Lee revealed the reason for tardiness. On her way, a man had stopped her a few blocks away from the studio and asked her for directions to a restaurant she happened to know. They spoke briefly and the man asked if Lee had ever done any voice-over work. She told him, no. The man happened to work for a television show and suggested that Lee come in and audition for a role.

The group applauded and congratulated Lee. All of them are finding success in different ways. Hardart is a month away from debuting a show that she wrote, Cabrera begins acting in a pilot soon, Guinn has started working freelance for an agent, and Lee is getting job offers in the street. Maybe the Broadway lights just around the corner aren’t so far away after all.

On Thursday, October 27, New York City experienced one of the first rains of the fall season. The sky of granite chilled all below, including the icy pellets of rain slapping down on the umbrellas of hurried commuters. Among the people avoiding the chilly barrage was the Republican Nominee for President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

The Donald was headed to Caroline’s on Broadway—a comedy venue— to perform a stand up routine. But he wouldn’t be going at it alone. Also set to take the stage that night was Hillary R. Clinton, the Democratic Nominee, and the sitting President, Barak Obama. The political foes—or at least their slightly more absurd doppelgängers—had been brought together by a comedy duo determined to make audiences laugh at an election that hasn’t been particularly funny to some people.

Brendan Fitzgibbons, 33, and Lance Weiss, also 33, have been MCing their stand-up/mulita-media/impressionist show, “Anyone Can Be President, Even Us”, since July. Joined on stage every Thursday night by impressionists and other comics, Fitzgibbons and Weiss give the show an anchor. Focusing heavily on the 2016 election, the duo has been able to draw from the plethora of election related news slogging its way through the cable news stations and social media sites.

On their second to last show before the election, Fitzgibbons and Weiss took to the stage to warm up the rain soaked crowd. “Does anyone not know that this is a political show?” asked Fitzgibbons. Either everyone in the crowd knew or they were too embarrassed to admit they didn’t because no one spoke a word. “Good,” said Fitzgibbons, “That would be awkward,” said Weiss, and the show began.

Fitzgibbons and Weiss have traveled similar paths towards this wacky election. Both men majored in political science in college, Fitzgibbons at the University of Illinois, and Weiss at Georgetown University. And while both were intrigued by comedy, neither had fully pursued it as a career until moving to New York City.

“I did the political thing,” said Weiss, “I worked for the Department of Justice, I worked for ‘Hardball with Chris Mathews’, I worked for J.P. Morgan,” he paused, “It’s not real.” His pessimism is not fueled by some fundamental misunderstanding of the political system. Rather, he has been inside of several appendages of the political machine and has come away with a profound disappointment in what he has seen. Even in the show, his jokes, although somewhat political, remain fairly secular.

Fitzgibbons originally moved from Illinois to New York City for an internship at Rolling Stone magazine. Soon after his move, he went to an open mic to try his hand at comedy. “My first time on stage was at a lesbian bar called Caddyshack,” he said, adding he didn’t know this before he got on stage. “But it went well enough to keep going so I just kept it going from there.” From the early days of his comedic career, Fitzgibbons has always had a few political jokes in his repertoire, particularly about the absurd criticisms President Barak Obama frequently received. Fitzgibbons doesn’t quite share Weiss’s discontent with politics, but he clearly has some frustrations that he releases through his comedy.

To begin the show, Weiss and Fitzgibbons play a game they call “Porn or Trump”. The rules and objective are simple, both comics take turns reading a quote and the audience has to guess whether the quote is attributable to a porn video or to the Republican Nominee for President. “It’s actually the first idea for the show that we had,” said Fitzgibbons. After hearing a few objectively audacious quotes from Trump, “we asked ourselves, where else do they say the craziest shit?” said Weiss. “Porn!” concluded Fitzgibbons through a light chuckle. The game is harder than one might expect. The audience was divided in applause after a few quotes that could’ve gone either way. Said Fitzgibbons, “It’s funny because I thought those were some of the easier ones.”

While sharing the stage, the physical contrast between the two comics is subtle but important and quite possibly speaks towards their political attitudes. Fitzgibbons wears a clean shave, a grey-buttoned shirt, a grey cotton cardigan sweater, and a pair of blue jeans. Throughout the show, he fidgets with the Chicago Cubs hat on his head. Sometimes the hat sits straight ahead, pulled low over his eyes, and at other times, the hat is completely backward and rested on the tip of the back of his head like a yarmulke. From frontwards to backwards, the hat rests, even if for only a moment, in every position in between.

Weiss, in a plaid button shirt, and a pair of dark jeans, wears stubble on his cheeks. The hat on his head remains untouched throughout the night, save for the few times it was removed to scratch an itch. Fitzgibbons’ humor is quicker—his punch lines jab. Weiss’ humor is smooth—his punch lines float. While not entirely yin and yang, Weiss and Fitzgibbons complement one another in a way that lends itself nicely to this campaign.

Although Fitzgibbons and Weiss anchor the show and bring all the acts together, “Anyone Can Be President, Even Us” is focused on impersonations of the three most discussed political leaders today. Dion Flynn impersonates President Obama and shows the audience what a stoned Obama doing stand-up might look like. Camille Theobald impersonates Hillary Clinton and reveals that her race for the presidency is just an elaborate plot to sleep with an intern, all in the name of revenge. Finally, Bob DiBuono impersonates Donald Trump by throwing together a string of sentences and half sentences in what seems like one elongated breath of ignorance.

During Flynn’s impersonation of Obama, the President called out a small woman sitting in the corner. With her face in a stone scowl, the President pleaded with her to smile. Her response was muffled by the audience’s laughter but her tone was loud and clear. She wasn’t interested in smiling and she was even less interested in being the punch line to the President’s joke. She revealed that she was from Finland and then the President left her alone. After Flynn’s set ended, Weiss and Fitzgibbons took the stage and showed some of their favorite memes generated from the election. Theobald came on stage to do her Clinton impersonation and left without interacting with the frowning Finnish woman.

At this point, the ruthless DiBuono, under the guise of Donald Trump, commanded the stage.

There has been a slurry of Trump impersonations over the course of the election but DiBuono’s is something special. His face is just orange enough, his suit is just baggy enough, his red hat masks his eyes just enough, and his stream of conscious routine is just offensive enough. The impersonation is so good that someone who hasn’t seen the real Donald Trump on television every day—like someone from Finland—might confuse DiBuono for the real thing. When speaking about DiBuono, Weiss said, “It’s crazy because he says a lot of things that Trump has really said.”

Halfway through DiBuono’s routine the Finnish woman began to heckle the comic. It may have been the two-drink minimum that sent her over the edge. Or maybe it was her inability to distinguish real from fake. Regardless, her insults were hurled towards the stage and Trump did not back down. After DiBuono’s gaze went towards another audience member, the Finnish woman got up to leave. “Where are you going, Miss?” belched Trump. She unloaded on him, calling him a phony, a fake, and a rude man. She had to be guided out of the venue by one of the doormen.

“That was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I think she thought he was really Trump,” said Weiss after the show. Fitzgibbons and Weiss laughed and wondered if some tourists who see the show think that major politicians tour comedy clubs around New York City on their off nights. But after a presidential race where almost everything that happens is dubbed “unprecedented”, the line between comedy and reality is becoming more and more blurred. As November 8th becomes imminent, Fitzgibbons and Weiss have seen their crowds become increasingly more anxious. “I just want people to laugh,” said Weiss. “Laughing is more true than politics.”

Adrian Gonzalez, the first baseman of the Los Angeles Dodgers, came lumbering towards home plate in the second inning of the fourth game of the National League Championship Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Dodgers. Never once considered fleet of foot during his 13-year career, Gonzalez was banking on the fact that the Cubs outfielder, Jason Heyward, wouldn’t consider Gonzalez a threat as he rounded third base, attempting to score the first run of the game.

The ball seemed to travel through water, as it sailed from right field towards home plate—Gonzalez, to be fair, appeared to be moving through molasses. Finally the ball arrived in the mitt of Cubs catcher Wilson Contreras at the exact moment Gonzalez ascended into his sloppy dive towards the plate. With his arm extended, the Dodger lunged at the plate while Contreras turned to his left to make the tag. Gonzalez’s hand slapped the bag as Contreras’ glove whacked Gonzalez on the nose. The umpire pumped his fist once with vigor—Gonzalez was out.

Three years ago, this emphatic fist pump from the umpire would be the end of the play—and in this situation, the end of the inning. But in the age of instant replay in baseball, this call at the plate, one that supposedly changed the fate of the Dodgers season for the worse, is one that could be called into question.

And indeed it was. The call was challenged and instant replay reared its ugly head into one of the most crucial games of the season for the two competing championship starved teams. In the time it took to review the play about 900 babies were born and not a single shred of new information was revealed.

Instant replay continues to destroy, with the unwieldy force of a wrecking ball, the pace of a sport many already consider too slow.

The appeal of baseball, for me and for many others, is the methodical pace of the game. Each pitch begins with a few seconds of stillness and reflection, an instance to align oneself with the moment. Then the burst—the ball zips out of the pitchers hand and travels nearly 100 miles per hour, faster than most of us have ever traveled by car. The batter swings, adding ten to twenty miles per hour to the ball. The fielders explode from their crouch and lunge towards the speeding ball of leather. The ball is thrown towards first base. Tenths of a second later, the batter slams his foot against the bag. He is out, the play is over, and now we breathe. Smell the grass and the fall air around you, brush off the dirt, and pull the strings tight on your glove. Prepare. Relax. Focus. Breathe. The pitcher begins his motion and here comes the—wait…the manager is calling for instant replay. The immortal pace, the pace adored by fathers and their sons, mothers and daughters, the pace romanticized by poets, idolatrized in the movies, the pace is dead. All it takes is one offbeat. 

Instant replay became a part of baseball at the beginning of the 2014 season. According to the Major League Baseball rulebook, instant replay is “designed to provide timely review of certain disputed calls in all Championship Season, All-Star, and Post-Season games played in the 30 Major League ballparks.” During a game, each team’s manager has access to one “challenge” if the game occurs in the regular season and two if it occurs in the post-season playoffs. Only certain plays can be challenged—for instance, tags at home plate. Balls and strikes are off limits, despite the fact that most television broadcasts’ super-impose a strike zone graphic that shows it’s viewers just how accurate the umpire’s call really is—as though fans need another reason to yell at their televisions.

How is it that we, the fans, and they, the players, coaches, and baseball executives, trust the umpires to judge the accuracy of a ball zipping towards them at an average of 95 miles per hour, but don’t trust them to judge the bang-bang play of a player tagging a runner. Calling balls and strikes is far more difficult than calling outs at the bases, and still umpires make the “right” call, ball or strike, around 85 percent of the time. Without technology their accuracy has been on a steady increase since 2008, according to fivethrityeight.com.

Since 2014, instant replay has expanded and become more embedded in the strategies manager’s and players employ while playing the game. When Gonzalez popped up from his headfirst slide into home and saw the call, he immediately turned towards his coach and wagged his finger saying, “no, no, no.” His manager, Dave Roberts, agreed and called for the challenge. Three years ago, Gonzalez might have run up to the umpire and belched a few harsh words into the face of the official. The umpire would bark back, fans would cheer, and Roberts would rush out of the dugout to come to his player’s defense. This is how calls were disputed in, you know, the good ole’ days. But now, a player’s instinct is to demand that the umpires make a phone call and force everyone else stare at a screen for five minutes, hoping to see something new.

Once a manager decides to challenge a call, the game gets put on hold. Two of the four umpires working the game walk towards the home team’s dugout and get handed two sets of headphones. A mysterious commission, located inside of Major League Baseball headquarters in New York City, reviews the play from multiple angles and communicates back to the umpires what they see. The members of the commission are completely anonymous and for good reason—I know a few people that would most likely engage these replay watchers in violence if given the chance. A challenged call can be confirmed, reversed, or it can stand, meaning there wasn’t enough evidence to overturn or confirm it. Whatever the commission says, goes.

“Instant replay destroys the humanity of the game,” says Neil J. Sullivan, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College who has written extensively on baseball and it’s history in American society. “It replaces the natural with the chemical.”

Baseball used to have games within the game. Fans watching from the stands or on TV were completely unaware of the little games played between players and umpires. Expanding strike zones, calls made out of spite, or calls made as reparations for a bungled call from the previous inning. Baseball, historically, is a moral game, exemplified by these calls of judgment. But computers have no morals and, in some cases, they even corrupt our own.

Before instant replay and the jumbo-tron, fans would turn to each other between innings to discuss the big moments they just witnessed. Instant replay cheapens these conversations. While the umpires talk to New York, the fans, both at the stadium and at home, watch the replay over and over again from different angles, each one less conclusive than the one before it. On television broadcasts, a split screen is shown— one shows the replay and the other bounces from the player’s reaction and discussion, to the umpires staring idle at the ground while they receive instructions. The broadcasters weigh in on what they think. “Oh yeah, he’s out,” one may say. “Hey, look at that, from that angle he looks like he’s safe,” may say the other. “Good challenge,” says one. “Oh wait, bad challenge.” People at home have an almost identical conversation.

At the stadium, the crowd cheers for their home team. As the jumbo-tron shows the replay, fans cheer if the call made favors the home team and boo if it doesn’t. People see what they want to see, even when what they are seeing is a 200-foot tall baseball player falling towards home plate and clearly getting smacked in the face by a glove with a ball in it. “He’s safe!” they yell. “Please god, no, make it stop, please, oh god no,” I think aloud. The most damning fact about instant replay is that in the end, only half of the challenged calls are overturned, according to Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com.

Baseball has been the slowest sport to utilize technology and move into the 21^st century. The National Football League experimented with instant replay in 1978 but didn’t implement it fully until 1985. Instant replay came to the National Basketball Association in 2002. But beyond instant replay, technology became an integral part of football and basketball with the installation of the jumbo-tron. Before the mammoth television commanded only basketball and football fans to clap or cheer, or, most importantly, buy, buy, buy. In 2015, after a jumbo-sized episode of public outcry, Wrigley Field, the home to the Chicago Cubs, and the last vestige of hold-outs, adapted the jumbo-tron. All 30 MLB stadiums now have them and each one of them exists for the sole purpose of selling and distracting.

The jumbo-tron, like instant replay, distorts the pace of the sport. Innings are broken up by pointless games like “kiss cams”, and mascot races. Commercials are shown between pitches. The tension on the field goes unnoticed to those with their eyes on the massive screen. This is one of the biggest tragedies of technology in baseball.

Baseball has been a fixture in the fabric of this country since before the Civil War. As the world has changed, the game has changed too, but these recent changes in a quickly changing world go too far and in the wrong direction. Sullivan explains that sports fans go through a cycle. When they are young, they like sports in general, baseball being one of them. As they enter their teenage years and fill up with angst and rage, they gravitate towards the quicker and more violent sports like football, basketball, and hockey. But as they grow into their late twenties and their bodies begin to slow for the first time, they soon rediscover the comfort of baseball. The violence and stress of the work day pushes them towards something that will help them relax and uncoil. Something like baseball. But this only works if the pace of the game is the same as it was when you were a child, or when your father was a child, or his father. Alas, instant replay and the jumbo-tron say foo to you and your father’s game too. Oh, the good ole’ days, if only we could rewind and replay you.