Executing (as in carrying out) Your plan, While Executing (as in killing) the path to get there.
Did that title work? Who knows. Enjoy this piece about expectations v. reality.
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I love plans! They are important, effective and FUN. When you have a plan, then you can have a goal and a clear path to achieve that goal. When you know the end point of your plan you can have the foresight and fortitude needed reach your destination and nothing can stand in your way or knock you off that path.
All I wanted to do when I got to New York was act. I never considered writing, I never considered stand up comedy, I just wanted to act in plays and films. I understood how difficult that was because a lot of people want to act but that is what I moved to New York City to do. ACT.
In 8th grade I was on the basketball team and I spent most of my time sitting on the bench. I was not bad but I was not good enough for the coach to put me on the court anymore than the schools required 8 minutes per student athlete. At my mom’s suggestion I auditioned for the school play You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown. I told her my dilemma.
‘Mom, if I get this I won't be able to play on the b-ball team.’
‘Oh no Kevin, let’s just hope the team can continue on without you. And let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’
I got the role of Charlie Brown (an insecure, prematurely balding, adolescent: It was destiny) and since then I have never looked back. I am not rewriting history if I say the first time I stepped on stage I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I have a journal I kept from around that time where I say that very thing.
‘This is what I want to do with my life. Act.’ I was a very dramatic kid, who loved the Dramatic Arts.
Now it has hard for me to even imagine the pre Charlie Brown mindset I had.
‘If I am not on the basketball team…who even am I? What will my life be like?’
Well, thanks to Mom, my detour from basketball actually revealed the thing I would become most passionate about.
When it came time to look at colleges I only looked at theater schools in New York. NYU, Marymount Manhattan and Fordham University (because I read Denzel Washington went there and I loved Training Day). My mom made me look at a school in Pittsburgh called Point Park University because it was closer to home and more affordable. I hated that she made me audition there.
‘I want to go to school in New York, Mom!’
I remember coming home from another boring day of high school (I was already checked out because I knew my life’s next steps. THEATER!!!!) and my parents were crying. They had my acceptance letter and informed me that I had received a scholarship. Great but to what school? To the only school I ended up being accepted to, Point Park University in Pittsburgh. I was upset, but that wasn’t the worst part…I had received a scholarship, if and only if, I major in Musical Theater. Now, I was the one crying. I didn’t want to go to school for musicals, I wanted to go for plays! Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Not Andrew Lloyd Webber. I told them I wasn’t going to college to study musicals. I was going to ACT! They then explained the concept of money and student loans and it was then I understood their tears. It wasn't until I was 25 that I truly understood how much of a mistake it would have been to go to NYU and owe $300,000 in exchange for 4 years of rolling on the floor pretending you are an animal to get into character so you can recite a sonnet. Believe me when I say, that is valuable, just not worth the cost of a 3 bedroom household. Mom for the win again.
I got to Pittsburgh and my entire freshman year, Monday through Thursday, started at 8am, in tights, for ballet. This was never, EVER part of the plan. The next 4 years I was required to take private voice lessons, tap dance, jazz dance and study the history of musical theatre. I was assigned Hammerstein to sing in class and cast in a Sondheim musical on stage . I ALSO got to study acting and act in many plays, which was always the goal and always part of the plan. The education of dance and singing was all extra. It ended up being an added bonus that I actively despised, until I found myself stretching in ballet, embarrassed, uncomfortable in my dance belt but understanding how my body works at the barre. Or doing vocal warm ups with Mary Catherine Dykehouse at piano telling me she knows I can hit a G if I learn to sing from my belly and not from my throat. That scholarship opened my mind in ways I would never have chosen. I still prefer a great play to a musical but I am thankful to have the extra tools in my pocket to be able to sing and to be able to move (I am no Baryshnikov but if you buy me a beer I will show you my double pirouette).
I moved to New York in 2008 and within 2 weeks got cast as Sherlock Holmes in the national tour of Nate The Great, a children’s musical about a child detective. I traveled to 25 states going town to town performing everywhere from 2000 seat theatres to school cafeterias for 6 months. When I got back to New York I had my equity card (the actors union), which would allow me to audition for all kinds of plays, all over New York and the country. This was my chance. I buckled down and got all my monologues ready and began auditioning for everything I could. I would start each week furiously looking at Backstage for any and everything to audition for. That year I auditioned for hundreds of projects, Shakespeare, broadway, off broadway, off off broadway, readings, new works, classic works. No jobs. No callbacks. No sign of life anywhere. It’s a tale as old as time, you’ve seen it shown in tv, movies and interviews with future academy award winners. The nightmarish actor auditioning tales.
I remember these auditions were not moments of discouragement, they were moments of clarity. They showed me how I wanted to spend my time. I spent a year without being creative, zero acting, just showing up to a room asking for a chance to act. It was after this year of failed auditions that I remembered a show I saw the first week I moved to New York. My roommate Adam gave me tickets to see an off broadway play called Sleepwalk with Me and it ended up not being a 'play’ it was a stand up comedian, Mike Birbiglia doing his first solo show off broadway. I was transfixed and inspired, but never had an inkling to attempt to do what he was doing because I wanted to Act. Not write, not make jokes, not sing, not dance, Act. It wasn't until after that year of auditions I thought, fuck it, I’ll do what that guy is doing. Now at the time, I estimated it would take a year or two to figure out how to do a show like Sleepwalk With Me. My plan, I’ll take a year or two do some of that stand up story stuff do a show and then by then I’ll return to acting after I mastered comedy.
Hahahahahahhahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
-Current Day Kevin
Well, my first stand up show was 12.5 years ago on June 17, 2010 and I listened to Sleepwalk with Me last year to remember that first show that got me into comedy and holy shit is it good. God bless that little delusional 23 year old who thought it would take a year or 2 to make something that great.
I remember a particular conversation with my mom about my new plan. The plan was to stop auditioning because it is soul sucking and miserable and to do stand up at least 3 times a week for one year.
‘Can’t you do both? Stand up and audition?’ Mom asked.
‘No, I hate auditioning. I am doing stand up now and I will start acting again later.’
When I first started doing stand up I was scared I was abandoning my life's path, I was changing my course away from my calling which could force me to forsake my destiny. Oh it sounds dramatic? Well guess what, my calling was DRAMA bitch. Now buckle up for some theatre nerdness, I comforted myself by saying:
‘Stand up is theatre.’ I said this out loud.
The ancient Greeks told stories to the audience in an amphitheater. The Elizabethans didn't always have a fourth wall. The Italians of Comedia del Arte interacted with the crowd. Stand up may not be acting but you aren’t changing your path because stand up IS theater.
Well, I could have spent the past decade auditioning for theatre, for films and submitting on Backstage. It didn’t have to be auditioning or stand up. I quit auditioning because it made me feel horrible. I remember having the fantasy of going into an audition for a Shakespeare Festival and handing the casting directors my headshot. Taking my place in the audition room and saying ‘This next piece is from The Temptest Act 6 Scene 13 by Falstaff'‘ and then just squatting down and a making a fart noise for 20 seconds. ‘Thank you for your time.’ Now I am no psychologist but I do detect some anger, insecurity and frustration in that fantasy. It would also be so funny and one day I will do it in real life or put it in a script I write. But, now I am 37 and I can admit that Mom was right, I could have done both. I should have done both, I gave up on a lot of opportunities to act because of my rigid anti-auditioning philosophy. Thankfully, the other opportunities that have arisen along the way, far outweigh any regret I have about what I left on the table due to the insecurity caused by standing in front of casting directors.
My Mom has a Bible verse she has told me many times. Now listen, don’t get all scared I am quoting the Bible, fucking chill out. I am not trying to convert you, it’s just a proverb, so just relax, you might learn something.
‘In their hearts, humans plan their course But the Lord determines their steps’ Proverbs 16:9
And if you are a still a little put off by the word ‘Lord’ just, reread the verse exchanging it with ‘The Universe’ ya damn hippy.
I still have the same desire to act that I discovered in 8th grade in Charlie Brown and yet it was the diversions from that path that have brought the most joy into my life. First it was ballet, singing, not being a quarter million dollars in debt. Then it was the friends and professors I met in Pittsburgh. Then it was loving the art of stand up and storytelling. And most of all it has been writing, acting, producing and filming theatre that just happens to be comedic, autobiographical plays that break the forth wall or as some people call them Comedy Specials.
So make plans, they give you goals. Then make a strategy to achieve those goals. And don’t ever let anything dissuade you from giving up on those goals. Just make sure you let it be a really windy path that bends and curves in the most non sensical ways. Imagine you are taking a road trip from New York to the Grand Canyon but you have to make a quick stop in Argentina along the way.
The Moral of the Story: I would say listen to your mom but maybe your mom sucks. Hmm, listen to my mom ‘Make your plans but remember you don’t determine the steps.’