This Bar Is Our Bar

The first week of November 2013 marked my return to the "stage" at Our Bar, the monthly sketch thing of which I am now a part. Big thanks to my two real friends, Jen and Christina who managed to make it out.
For the rest of you, I totally understand how hard it is to get the Midtown Manhattan. I completely get that there probably weren't any buses, trains, cabs or you-have-fucking-legs-and-could-have-walked-there-if-needed-be.
I rully do.
Rully.
You guys.
Rully.

Anyway, I've come to terms with my disappointment and with the fact that no one does anything any more if it requires more than clicking "Like" or "Favorite" or "Smile".
Sort of.

Man. I am just a sack of bitter squenchface today, isn't I?
Next time I'll just list the media I've been interacting with and my thoughts on it.
Promise.

Than you can click "Like".

JESUS!

FOCUS!

Okay.
The original reason for this was to delve into how it feels to be stage acting and writing (one of the three sketches I wrote for the November show was chosen and performed at the show, same with the December show) again. At least, in this particular format. I'm always writing something.
Usually scathing.
Usually directed at my friends.
Sorry.
This is a totally different place. I'm now writing with people in mind. I'm writing stuff that actual people who don't know me and don't get my charmingly poisonous sense of humor or perspective on life will see. And sometimes there's collaboration.
I like to think that I haven't really given a shit about what people have thought about me since I was 16 or so, and, on the whole, it's been a very helpful tool. When you take other people out of the equation that is your life, things get a lot less complicated.
I'm not talking about disregarding the rules of society, but more along the lines of spending time hoping that people will like me and trying to get them to do so by...I don't know...doing things to impress them.
It's a waste of time and energy.
But.
With Our Bar, I'm finding that feeling resurfacing.
When I write something, I now have to think: are these people who, for the most part, I find funny and intelligent, going to like this? Just because it's funny for me is it going to be funny for them?
If they don't laugh, is it because it wasn't funny? Or because they "didn't get what I was going for"? Or because their heads are not in a funny place on that particular day?
Or because it was so funny and I'm so talented that they're all threatened by my talent and are trying to make me feel bad?
Am I paranoid or just fucking gorgeous?
Writing with a particular audience in mind is nuts.
Then, and this might be the worst part, when I do write something that I think is funny and they do laugh, the first thing my brain asks me, in that subtle, knifelike voice is: are they just trying to make you feel welcome? Are they just coddling you? What do they get out of it?
And so on.
This has been my last ten years as an actor in New York City.
Every victory is almost immediately tainted with questions like that.
And, even if everything is just 100% diamond aces, there's always that awful question that every professional actor has to ask themselves...when's my next paying gig?
How long do I consider myself a professional actor until I don't anymore?
A month?
Six months?
A year?
And, if I'm a professional actor who hasn't worked in a year, doesn't that, technically make me unemployed?
That.
That is the downside to making six months rent in one, two hour VO session.

But, back to Our Bar.
When it comes to creating content, I've always found myself best in a sound board capacity.
Someone has a seed but that's it.
I like imagining what that seed will grow into. Is it a tree? What if this? What if that?
I do create my own stuff, but I always love the bouncing back and forth of ideas, and that's something else I've gotten from Our Bar, to a point.
At the handful of writer's retreats I've been to, it's, usually, all about seeds, although sometimes, someone will have a full scene that needs a little something. The beginning doesn't work, the ending is a bit abrupt, something seems to be missing, whatever.
Sometimes I get something out of the retreat and run off to write my own thing, sometimes not.
I don't like to force creativity, as you can usually tell when it's been forced.
Then, there's the submission and the readthrough and the jury and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes me feel like a teenager, desperately yearning for that same approval I yearned for before I evolved into someone who just doesn't need that as a source of sustenance.

I'm still rambling.

Okay....on the whole, the experience has been great but nervewracking.
And that's all my fault as these are some of the most warm and wonderful and fucking whip-smart and funny people I've ever had the pleasure of working with.
My friends Becca and Jesi brought me into this place and, despite the problems with my fucking eyes and everything I might say or do to myself to try and convince me otherwise, I'm loving it here.

The next show is Wednesday the 5th of February.
Pretty sure you won't be there.