Why do we do what we do

I spent the last week in Rochester NY, which is why I haven't posted (I promise I will get more prolific than once a month... soon). I was performing in a play called "And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank." I have been performing this show with the same cast (3 other marvelous actors), director and costume designer for 6 years now. We are a family, even if it is only for a week. I love them dearly and feel right at home as soon as I walk through the stage door.

As I'm sure you can tell from the name, the show is not a happy one. It tells the story of 2 Holocaust survivors: a woman named Eva Geringer, who ended up being the postmortem step sister to Anne Frank and a man named Ed Silverberg who was friends with Anne before she went into hiding. Eva and Anne were both 15 years old when they were put into the concentration camps. Eva was there for 9 months and lost her older brother, Heinz, and her father. Her and her mother survived and traveled back to their apartment in Holland. Anne's entire family perished except her father, Otto Frank. After the war he also returned to his apartment in Holland - right down the street from where Eva and her mother were living. Her mother and Otto exchanged stories, grew together, and eventually got married. A happy ending in a dark sea of tragedy.

I play Eva Geringer as a 15 year old girl. I portray her from the point where her family went into hiding, all through the time she was in Auschwitz and after when her and her mother returned home. It is not a pleasant thing to be in concentration camp stripes depicting stories of malnutrition and seeing human beings dying left and right. The cast agrees this is not something which we think of as "fun." Yet, we come back every year - why?

There are some roles you take because they will further your career. Others because they are amazing characters which will help you grow as an actor and look great on your resume. You might have the experience to work with a particular director or other performer. And then there are the jobs you do because of how important they are.

We perform this show to schools. We have performed it now to thousands upon thousands of students and teachers and even adults in the 6 years we have been living the lives of these amazing people. And it is because their story needs to be told. Eva Geringer was 15 years old in Auschwitz. She was among the youngest people to escape. She is now 81. In 20 years, there will be no more Holocaust survivors. Their stories are of the utmost importance - for our history, for our civilization, for us to grow and learn as human beings. And we must keep alive the memory of the people who were lost in the devastation - Heinz and Erich Geringer in this particular story.

We learn as actors to use sense-memory and other techniques to "see" what our character sees and "feel" what our character feels. I know that nothing I have ever experienced could ever come close to what the real Eva went through. I just hope that we, as a small group of dedicated people who have met her and love her, can bring her story to life with as much honesty and integrity as possible. Eva, this last week was for you ;)

The Friends or the Fame

Well, this week has been a productive one. 4 successful and productive rehearsals for a new Shakespeare show I'm acting in that will open at the end of March. I shot 2 student films, went to 4 auditions and am currently gearing up to go to Rochester this Sunday to be in this year's RCT production of "And Then They Came for Me."

If you are my friend on Facebook, or follow the few tweets I post (I am still quite Twitter retarded and constantly put it down out of frustration,) you already know these things. I usually keep my friends back home in the know by trying to update when I am doing a show or going to an audition. No one uses the phone these days, so it is the easiest way to tell everyone at once what I'm up to. Now if only my grandparents would get a smart phone I wouldn't ever feel guilty for not getting back home more.

And then today I finally saw "The Social Network" and it got me thinking. Facebook was originally created to meet girls and guys in college and find out if they were single. It was basically an exclusive school dating site. A place to see who was hot and who was not and who had more friends than who. A popularity contest. Like superlatives in high school, "best smile," "worst car." I'm not exactly sure why Twitter was created, but I am guessing it's something close to the same, only this time reduced to 140 characters.

So how important are these sites to one's career? Especially a career in the entertainment business? In a world where Charlie Sheen got over one million Twitter followers in 48 hours because he goes crazy and Snooki ends up on the cover of Rolling Stone, how important is it for someone pursuing a career in acting to focus on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook? Is it a popularity contest or do you still have to have some kind of talent? On top of acting classes, voice lessons, dance practice, going to the gym to stay fit, reading up on the latest plays, seeing the latest movies, being attractive, easy to work with, fun to be around, intelligent and witty and charming and all of the other things that the world insists an actor must be - you also have to have a million Twitter followers and a max on Facebook friends? If this is true, my next question is which comes first; The friends or the fame?