Progress

“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.” – Marie Curie

I want to start this post with a trigger warning. This is one of the most personal posts I’ve ever written. This post is about weight, weight loss, body image issues and some mental health discussion, including how I perceive myself, and I know those are things that can trigger strong feelings for some people. If you need to not read this post, I completely understand. I’m also probably going be using some choice language…🤷🏻

If you go back into the archives of this blog, you will see that I have been using this site to write about my struggles with my weight (sporadically) for the last ten years. And this is not my first weight loss blog. I used to blog about my weight on Myspace, and I had a blog on the Blogspot platform that had writings on the subject. I’ve struggled with my weight my entire adult life. Having been an extremely skinny kid and teen, when I got into my twenties, my metabolism halted, and a lifetime of negative habits caused me to gain weight for the first time in my life. I’ve had varying levels of success losing weight over the years, even keeping it off for relatively decent periods of time. However, it has always come back. Somehow, I always convince myself to get back on the horse.

In 2020, I started a medical weight loss program, which really worked. I ended up going from 250 lbs to around 185 in a little less than a year. For a few reasons, the program ended and I started to falter. I no longer had the accountability calls with my doctor. I didn’t have the monthly in-office weigh ins anymore. And for various other reasons, I ended up regaining the weight and then some. When I had my annual exam in August of 2023, I weighed approximately 275 lbs. As I write this in October of 2024, I’m currently hovering around 230. Not only do I consider that really solid progress, it also feels like it’s happening on a better (if slower) timetable.

So…why, after losing 45 pounds in the last 15 months, why do I look in the mirror and get discouraged?

Alas, I am a “gym selfie” guy, and here are two that I’ve taken 15 months apart. When I look at these two pictures, I can definitely see differences: I can see that I’ve definitely lost weight in my face. The width of my chest is smaller. My stomach is smaller. But when I look in a mirror, that’s not what I see. I see that my belly is still “too round”. My chest is still larger than what I’d like it to be. When I look in the mirror, my brain still sees August 2023. Body image issues are a mother fucker.

I have to remind myself constantly of the Marie Curie quote above. While this hasn’t been a fast process, and it certainly hasn’t been easy, the progress is happening. I can see it in multiple ways. It’s not just the side by side pictures. It’s not just the scale going down.

This is a graph of my max squat weight over the last three and a half months. On August 19th, which is when I really started getting back in the gym the most I could squat for multiple sets and reps was 125 pounds. I have squatted as much as 210 pounds, although that was a single short set. My regular squat over the last couple of weeks has been 3 sets of six at 185 pounds. That takes me to failure, which is what I’m trying to achieve. That’s progress. I can see it in other exercises as well.

And that’s the point. Even if I can’t necessarily see it in the mirror, there are so many other ways that I remind myself that I am indeed making slow, steady progress.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I hope that whatever you’re going through, you can also find ways to see that you are making slow, steady progress.

Motivation

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – Les Brown

While I was on the treadmill this morning, I was thinking about motivation. Why do I get up early in the morning to go to the gym? Why have I been lifting weights? Why am I trying to get as strong as possible?

 Of course, I could give the lofty answers:

• “I want to be healthy, and have a good quality of life.” 
• “I want to be able to take care of those around me.”
• “I want to watch my grandchildren grow up.”

And those are all true. But, if I burrow all the way down to the back of my psyche, I find the vanity reasons:

• “I want to be able to buy clothes that look good.”
• “I want to look better in a suit.”
• “I don’t want to be embarrassed when the costumer for a show takes my measurements.”
• “I want to not embarrass myself at a dance call.”

Again, those are all true as well. But there’s one very specific reason beyond all of those. I’m 47 years old, and I think I’ve still got a window to play Jean Valjean. When I get that chance, I want to make sure that there are no questions about whether or not I will be able to carry Marius from the barricade.

For that reason, I’ve been trying to progress my squat weight. Yesterday (10/7/2024), I hit a personal best of 215 pounds for 4 reps. I figure that’s in the top range of what an actor cast as Marius would weigh, so I think I’m in a good spot. 

But maybe I’ll imagine a heavier Marius just to keep that motivation up.

Opening Next Week

“Life is not a dress rehearsal – every day is opening night.” – Peter J. Daniels

While Peter J. Daniels’ above statement is true, for actors there are actual opening nights that are different from every other day of rehearsal or performance, and they only come around occasionally. And, right now, I’m staring down the barrel of one.

For the last month, I have been in rehearsals for Jersey Boys, the musical telling of the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I’m playing Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, who acted as a benefactor of sorts to the band in their early days. We open on September 6, and I’m really excited. I love opening nights, and it feels good to be back on the stage of the Town Hall Arts Center in Littleton, CO, a stage I haven’t been on since 2007.

If you’re in the Littleton, Colorado area, come check it out. Get tickets at this link: Jersey Boys Tickets

Halfway There?

I had to stop going to auditions thinking, ‘Oh, I hope they like me.’ I had to go in thinking I was the answer to their problem. – George Clooney

Last weekend, I had an audition for a local production of the musical Jersey Boys. For those who aren’t aware, Jersey Boys is the story of The Four Seasons, an American pop group from the 1960s. I wish the show had come around earlier, as a younger version of me (with a wig, of course) would’ve been able to play Frankie Valli, no problem. However, I know who I am in 2024. I know what I look like. I know what my type is. So I went into that audition knowing that my best shot at a role was Angelo “Gyp” Decarlo, a mobster who had an influence in the lives of the members of the group.

Like the George Clooney quote above, when I go into an audition, I want the production staff to think that I am the answer to a problem, or the person that can fill a need. I also want them to think that I, in the modern parlance, understood the assignment. In this particular case, what that means was that I wanted to prepare a monologue that had some kind of gangster ties.

I don’t like doing film monologues for stage auditions. I don’t think the same things that work on film necessarily work live, and vice versa. And, unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of plays about gangsters. Movies? Oh…there are a lot of movies, as we all know. But not a lot of plays. Fortunately, one of my favorite gangster movies was a play first. A one man play, which, when you think about it, might be the best source for a monologue. The whole thing’s a monologue. That movie/play is Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale. This was an especially good choice for Jersey Boys, because a lot of that show is written as audience addressed narration.

I walked into the audition room confident. There were five people in the audition room, 3 of whom I didn’t know at all. One who I worked with once almost 20 years ago, and one who I am very good friends with. I sang “Pleasant Valley Sunday” by The Monkees (the audition had specifically asked for a pop song from the 60s or 70s), and then launched into my monologue. I felt like I had knocked it out of the park. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Just because I felt good about the audition doesn’t mean it was good. I’ve known a lot of actors over the years with “irrational confidence”. And even if the audition was actually good, it doesn’t mean that I was the answer to their problem. However, in this case, they saw enough in me to call me back.

So, hopefully, when I go into the callback on Saturday, I’ll be able to further answer their problem, and I’ll have a show to do at the end of the summer and into fall.

Small Victories

“Happiness is all about celebrating small wins.” – Abdul Jawad Khattak

As previously mentioned, on Sunday, I had a unified audition. That basically means that there were a bunch of theatre companies from around the state all coming together to offer actors an opportunity to be seen by producers and other theatre professionals that they may not normally get in front of. Well, it has already paid some small dividends. Yesterday, I received two emails: one was from a local casting director who encouraged me to submit an audition tape for an out of town audition. The second was from a theatre producer who was interested in seeing me audition for their 2024/2025 season.

Small wins are still wins, and they need to be celebrated.

A Learning Experience

I wasn’t sure I was going to write about this, especially in the immediate aftermath of it happening, but I had a bad audition last week. It was a fairly important audition, in that it was for the resident theatre company for the largest theatre production company in the Denver metro area. Going into the audition, I thought I was completely prepared. I was wrong.

A little background for those who have never auditioned for a play or a musical. An audition call will usually spell out what an actor needs to prepare for the audition. It could be one monologue, it could be two contrasting monologues, or, if you’re auditioning for a musical, it could be a monologue and 16-32 bars of a song. In this particular case, the audition was for the company’s entire season, which includes one Shakespearean play, a couple of musicals, and several modern plays. They asked for two contrasting pieces, with one of them being a song if you wanted to be considered for the musicals, with the entire time of the audition not exceeding three minutes.

I prepared a Shakespearean monologue and a song. I was told by the audition monitor, who handles the check-in process, that I could decide whether I wanted to sing the song first or do my monologue first. When given the choice, I prefer to sing first. I am a better singer than an actor, so I think my best chance to wow producers and directors is with that portion of my talent. It also means that I can confer with the accompanist (giving them a tempo, pointing out the markings in the sheet music to begin and end, and discussing how we’d like to get into the beginning of the section of the song I’m singing), and then go directly into the song without them needing to wait for sixty seconds while I do my monologue.

I want to say right now that I have all the love in the world for audition pianists. They have a really hard job, as they have to spend a full work day playing absolutely any song that someone brings them, sometimes reading it completely cold, since singing actors have often been told that we need to try to find songs that other people aren’t singing. Some of my favorite moments in auditions have been that moment of conference with the accompanist, as they are intrigued or delighted by the song I’m singing. They are also usually an ally in the room. I’ve had a number of accompanists give me a thumbs up as I’m collecting my music when the audition is over, or a calming word beforehand.

Unfortunately, when I prepared my music, I neglected to mark a key change about halfway through the section of the song I was singing (the bridge and final stanza of “Stay” from Do I Hear a Waltz by Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim), and the pianist missed it when playing the song. It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools, and it is a poor performer who blames other people for their shortcomings in an audition. If I had marked the key change (as I have now done in a re-printed version of my sheet music), I most likely would not have found myself trying to sing a minor key melody against major key intervals. As I collected my music, he did quietly apologize, and I told him not to worry about it. If he somehow reads this, I want to reiterate that it was not his fault in the least. I did not prepare my music fully, and I did not set either one of us up for success.

But now I know for the future. In fact, I’m going to go through all of the songs in my book to make sure that all key changes are marked, so that I won’t be caught out like that again. As I said in a post on Blue Sky, there’s always the next one, and the next one was three days after the bad audition…and it went very well. I also have another audition next weekend, so it’s been a very busy time, which I’m happy about. I look forward to figuring out the next show I’ll be appearing in. Hopefully, I’ll have at least an idea fairly soon.