by David Fairhurst
Well, things haven’t quite worked out the way I’d planned, and I’m not yet able to hand out Cadillacs, Elvis-style, to helpful hotel bellhops and punctual pizza delivery boys. But that’s no excuse not to offer a word of thanks to some of the names on that list. Last year I wrote a column expressing my gratitude to the late Jerry Orbach for being such a nice guy on the set of “Law & Order”—though, sadly, I wrote it a year too late for him to read. I don’t want to make that mistake again, so here are a few people and one organization still living and deserving of a round of applause.
My brother, Steven. We fought like a Shiite and a Sunni locked in a small room without air conditioning, but there was one secret weapon I always had: I knew I could make him laugh. He was my first audience, and my first clue that I might have what it took to be a performer.
The Looking Glass Theatre. Looking Glass is an interactive children’s theatre that tours throughout New England, and when I was in elementary school, my two favorite days of the year were Christmas and the day the Looking Glass Theatre came to school. Actually, Looking Glass was better: Christmas arrives the same day every year, but with Looking Glass you never knew when they’d show up. One minute you’d be sitting at your desk doing spelling drills or math problems—another torturously ordinary day in the slow procession of ordinary days that seemed to stretch infinitely into the future, cruelly separating you from summer vacation—and the next minute, BOOM! There’s a real live pirate in the room! Or a witch! Or a king! And you knew the rest of the day would be spent on the most awesome, most amazingest adventure ever. My whole acting career sprang from the wonder of that moment, my very first experience with live theatre, and I’m still trying to recapture it.
John Joseph and Lew Schneider. Theatre at the University of Pennsylvania was a cliquish affair, and my puny freshman attempts to break in were predictably futile. So the next year I decided to try a different route, by joining the writing staff of the Mask & Wig Club, Penn’s century-old satirical musical-comedy troupe. Having never written anything that I’d dare show to anyone, intimidated about joining such an illustrious group, and worried that they might expect me to be, you know, “funny,” I decided to hedge my bets by showing up at my first writers’ meeting with half a dozen sketches already written. While the other newbies were hoping to impress the upperclass Wiggers with their spontaneous high-school Monty Python–honed wit, I was the only one to arrive with a crisp new three-ring binder of nearly finished material. John and Lew, the undergraduate chair and the head writer, were suitably impressed, and Lew in particular became a mentor of sorts. I haven’t seen him in 20 years and we only occasionally email now, but I still look up to him as a mentor. I don’t think I could have chosen a better one.
Dan Welch. Dan’s was not the first professional acting class I ever took, but it was the first one I didn’t drop out of. Perhaps because it was my first encounter with Meisner and my first hint that “real” acting didn’t have to involve reliving your worst childhood traumas in full Technicolor sensory detail. You could use your imagination, and that usually worked just as well. (It wasn’t until years later that I’d built up sufficient emotional armor to tackle the Method.) But just as important was Dan. I had been away from acting for a long time when I registered for his class. I was so nervous about it—before, during, and even after—that when I came home from the first session, I walked straight into the bathroom and threw up. Trying to go back to acting after nearly 15 years was foolish, I thought, and I decided that sacrificing the registration fee would be a small price to pay if it meant I never had to return to that class. But over the next few days, the memory of Dan’s low-key, low-pressure, reassuring style started giving me second thoughts. “Okay, I’ll give it one more try,” I finally told myself. “But if I throw up after the second class, then I’m definitely giving up acting forever.” Well, I didn’t. Throw up, that is. Or quit acting forever. But if it hadn’t been for Dan, my acting career would have ended right then and there, kneeling on the bathroom floor clutching the toilet bowl.
Hmm. That’s not exactly the image I’d planned to end my Thanksgiving column with. So let’s add one more name to the list:
Gene Lasko. Most of what I was taught at the Actors Studio Drama School simply reinforced lessons I’d already learned in previous classes or through experience. But sometimes those lessons were crystallized in a clever turn of phrase that made them seem altogether new. And when that happened, usually the person doing the talking was Gene Lasko. In my wallet I carry a slip of paper that’s the actor’s equivalent of Mao’s Little Red Book. I call it “10 Simple Rules of Acting,” but really it’s just the wisdom of Gene, and I never go to an audition without it. Here’s one of my favorites (also told to me by teachers Ed Shea and Pat Hegnauer): “No. 3: Make it about the other person.” Sixty years of Method self-indulgence subverted in six little words. Thanks, Gene.
There are many, many more equally deserving names on my list (which I still have, by the way), and in the future, in lieu of a shout-out at the Oscars, I’ll try to mention as many as I can.