Yoga

  If one goes to a play, all they will see are actors portraying characters.  They will see a nice stage presentation.  They won't see the preparation.  I wasn't very good in building sets.  There are people that do it for a living and are great at it.  I admire them.  Just like when I took shop in junior high, I was always off 1/16th of an inch.  Actors generally don't have to build sets.  That is a blessing.

 Actors need to exercise before coming out on stage. I learned many techniques to relax my muscles, as well as to get my adrenaline up before a performance.  Despite my great stage fright, I found that exercise helps ease the doubt of doing good on stage. 

 Two of the techniques I have used involved rolling my shoulders and shaking my hands. One was for releasing tension, while the other was for releasing nervousness.  Another technique I learned through meditation.  Tense muscles and then relax them.  Start at your feet and work your way up to your neck.  It takes a while to go through that process, but it is good to prepare your body for what comes next.  Sometimes, I would jump up and down to get my blood flowing and build up my energy.  It may look strange to some, but it helped me get ready, especially if I had to do something physical on stage.  In one play, I was playing a thief being chased by a policeman.  The chase was offstage, so we both ran around backstage until we were out of breath.  Then, we came onstage to make the chase look believable.

 When I was a senior at Presbyterian College, the wife of my drama teacher was into yoga.  She taught us relaxation techniques to loosen our muscles and joints.  I hadn't done yoga before, but I found it very helpful in preparing for the physicality of acting. Much of it was an add-on to my meditation work.  

 The last thing I would do, before going on stage, would be to find a dark room backstage away from everyone else.  I would sit in there for a few minutes and think about what I needed to do.  Then, I would say a prayer.  God gave me my talent for acting.  I would thank Him and ask for courage and clarity of thought.  I would then pray that the audience would receive what I was about to give them.  That prayer would calm me down, and then I would be ready to face the audience.  

 A lot goes on backstage.  It can be very chaotic.  There are people to make sure you enter the stage at the appropriate time.  There are make-up people to make sure you look good.  There are costumers to make sure you are dressed properly for your character.  Wardrobe changes may have to be made quickly.  There are prop people to make sure things are placed onstage for the actors to use.  All the while, there is the actor getting ready to present a good performance with the help of others who don't often get the praise they deserve.  

    

Actor

  One of my regrets in life is not being able to do what I really wanted to do:  teach acting in a college setting.  I wanted others to learn what I had learned on how to be a good actor.  I have to say though, in all humility, I am a great actor.  Anybody can be a good actor, but a great actor is developed from the inside.  Some say that one is born to be a great actor.  You can learn the basics to be a good actor.  You can learn how to sit and how to stand.  You can learn an accent or even bits of a foreign language.  You can memorize lines and repeat them in a scene.  One thing a good actor can't do is separate himself from a character. 

 A character has to be developed to be believable.  You have to know what the character likes to eat; who were his parents; what was his childhood like; who were his friends growing up; what was his education like; did he finish high school; did he go to college; where does he live; does he live in a house or an apartment; does he work; what kind of job does he have; does he like his job; does he like the people around him; does he have any bad habits; what kind of car does he drive; is he married; has he been divorced; does he have any children.  The list is endless in developing a character.  Some of these questions can be answered from the script.  Others might have to be answered in your own imagination.

 I can count on one hand the number of great actors I have seen in my lifetime, either in person or on the screen.  They are a rare breed.  The key to telling the good actor from the great actor is if you forget that you are watching the actor, whose name you might know, and you see the character he is portraying.  If you just see the actor, he is just being good.  If you forget about the actor's name and dwell on the character, he is being great.  Not all great actors are always great.  Most will tell you that sometime in their careers that they have just done a mediocre performance.  

 I am super-critical in my work.  I have to be to get better.  What an audience member might see is not what the actor sees about himself.  That's kind of why I don't like seeing myself on a TV show or in a movie.  I am always seeing something I could have improved upon to make it better.  The director might have thought it was all right, but I didn't necessarily see it to be all right.  I take the acting experience very seriously.  That's why I am a great actor.  

Melty

  When I first started working at Belk in Columbia Mall, I was put in charge of the Books and Candy departments.  I loved to work in Books.  I had a lot of experience selling books.  Candy was a different story.  Despite wanting to sell books, I found that the majority of my time was spent selling candy.  Of course, I had to sample the candy to know what I was selling.  At least, that was my excuse.  

 One item we sold a lot of was something called "Smooth N Melty Mints".  They were flat and came in several bright colors.  They came in a cellophane bag.  Most of our sales came from folks planning weddings, because they served them at receptions.  They were $3.99 per bag.  

 A man came into the store on a Saturday in the summer to buy several bags of the mints.  He was getting them for his son's wedding that evening.  There was a warning on the bag that said not to leave the mints in a hot car.  After all, they would melt.  He bought the bags and left.  A few hours later, he stormed into our store and laid these blobs of melted mints on my counter still in the bags.  He said he had driven over to Dutch Square and had left the mints in his car.  When he came back out, they had melted in the bags.  I showed him the warning on the bag about not leaving them in a hot car, but he was furious and wanted to sue the store for selling a faulty product.  He wanted to see my supervisor.

 I called her to come out and talk to this angry man.  When she heard what had happened, she had to stifle her laughter.  I was trying to do the same.  I wanted to suggest to the man that he take some scissors and cut the mints, but I knew that would just throw gasoline on a fire.  He wanted to exchange the mints for good ones.  My supervisor showed him the warning label on the bag, but he wasn't satisfied.  He threatened to cut up his Belk charge card and told us he would tell others to do the same, because we sold defective merchandise.  My supervisor told me to give him an exchange for new bags, which I did.  

 My supervisor told me to throw them away.  I kept one bag to show customers what would happen if they left the mints in a hot car.  It never happened again on my watch.

Streaking

  Back in 1974, I was a junior at Presbyterian College.  There was a fad on campuses all over America called Streaking.  Students would run nude across campus and try not to get caught by the police.  We were warned a head of time that the PC students were not allowed to streak.  It would mean that the police would arrest whoever they caught, and the school would take appropriate disciplinary action including expulsion.  

 There was a rumor around campus that some students were going to streak on an upcoming night.  The police were ready, as were the administration officials.  No girls showed up for the event, but a few guys did.  They had bags over their heads to avoid being recognized, and there was alcohol involved.  One of my Theatre friends went running across campus, but his bag turned sideways, and he couldn't see out of the eye holes of the bag.  He ran right into a police car and was stopped.  He was fined for indecent exposure and let go.  The school didn't do anything except tell him not to do it again.

 I got caught up in the streaking fever that night, but I wasn't going to run across campus.  I stripped down in the restroom of the Student Center and ran ten feet to the next building over which was a classroom building.  I don't think anybody saw me, because all of the attention was on the students across campus.  Just as well.

 Some of the girls did expose their butts from the windows of a dorm to the adoring boys down below.  We cheered for more, but that was all they were willing to do.  

 It was a wild night at PC.  It was supposed to be a religious school.  It was in name only.