the birth

This Site No Longer Valid

nathanrouse — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 04:42:02 +0000

TheBirth.net has been relaunched with a blog. Any and all future communications regarding The Birth can be found over there.

Again, this is it, folks, consider the lights off.

The 12 Days of BirthMas: Day 8, Miss Me?

nathanrouse — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:47:38 +0000

I wanted to spend some time leading up to the 2009 iteration of The Birth reflecting. Reflecting on staging a production, reflecting on staging this production, reflecting on the season, reflecting on literature, reflecting on acting.

This is a crazy time of year for me and I thought this would be a helpful way to pull back the curtain a bit and let you see what goes into this sort of process.

Thus I present to you, the 12 Days of BirthMas! (Technically the first performance is the 13th, but you get the idea).

Day Three: Miss Me?

So we’re just going to ignore the fact that days 4-7 were skipped. Were I able to hop in a time machine and revisit each of the last 4 days and carve out some time to write a post, I would. As it stands, we are where we are. And where we are is 5 days away from the opening of The Birth 2009!

Today’s post is actual a reproduction of an article I wrote for Ransom, a new web effort started by my friend Jeremy Hunt for BGEA.

Enjoy!

________

“All your life you wait for your own true love.” – The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner

Four years ago I began a journey of discovery. I didn’t really intend to; I really just wanted to make some theater. But the plans we have for ourselves and the plans that often emerge can sometimes be quite disparate.

A friend had recommended Pulitzer-nominated author Frederick Buechner to me and with little more intention than to have something to read on a family beach trip, I picked up his book The Magnificent Defeat. It’s a simple book, really: a collection of Buechner’s sermons from over the years and collected and published in 1965. He’s had many books published in the ensuing 40 years but I picked up this one.

You see, about midway through the novel is a sermon titled “The Birth.” It’s a series of three monologues depicting different characters from the Christmas narrative; namely the Innkeeper, a Wise Man and a Shepherd.

I’m an actor and it’s often difficult to find work you really believe in and my initial reading of this chapter in this book on this beach struck me so that I knew I had to perform these pieces for an audience.

Four years later and with a fourth year of production on the original theatrical production The Birth beginning this month, I find that portraying these three characters on a stage night after night has afforded me a perspective I might not have otherwise had. The reason I was so moved by Buechner’s treatment of these characters is, simply put, their flaws, their humanity, their 3-dimensionality.

In particular I find the character of the Innkeeper to be of startling resonance. In his speech he recounts “the evening they arrived” with no real hint of charity or celebration. His words ring with a defeat, a brokenness, an irrevocable loss at his culpability in driving this expectant couple from his establishment.

Where Buechner’s writing sings is not in how he takes these characters and, relying on tradition, turns them into ciphers for his own enjoyment of the Christmas season – but in how he evokes what it might have been like that night, in that inn, with nothing but that innkeeper and those hopeful parents. In the Innkeeper’s words are the regret and despair of revelation. He speaks of the ‘forest of a million trees’ that is his life and work; always a thing to be done, a task to be accomplished, a box to check off. “Do you know what it is like to run a business,” he asks, “to run an inn, to run anything in this world for that matter? Even your own life?”

His words are accusing, but they are our words. Our desire to meet all the perceived needs of ourselves and those around us leaves us often with the inability to see the miracle right in front of us; a miracle so mundane and unassuming that we drive it from our sight without so much as a second thought.

The Innkeeper ends his cautionary tale with words that break the hardest of hearts and yet, they could be our own.

“All your life you wait for your own true love – we all of us do – our destiny, our joy, our heart’s desire. So how am I to say it, gentlemen? When he came I missed him.”

For four years I’ve had those words ringing in my ears: “When he came I missed him.” May we not end up like the Innkeeper, but may we also never lose sympathy for him – or his words may end up our own.

By Nathan Rouse

Nathan is a husband, father, pet-owner and actor living in Charlotte, NC. The Birth can be seen December 13, 14, 20 and 21 at 6:30 and 8:30 pm in Charlotte at Actor’s Theater of Charlotte. More information and tickets can be purchased at www.thebirth.net.

The 12 Days of BirthMas: Day 3, Acting is Hard

nathanrouse — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:32:56 +0000

This is a crazy time of year for me and I thought this would be a helpful way to pull back the curtain a bit and let you see what goes into this sort of process.

Thus I present to you, the 12 Days of BirthMas! (Technically the first performance is the 13th, but you get the idea).

Day Three: Acting is Hard.

When I was in college I was in a play called J.B. by Archibald MacLeish. It’s a modern adaptation/retelling of the book of Job. It has as it’s framework the motif of a circus and there are two characters, Nickles and Zuss, who are our God and Satan proxies but who in the play are literally two actors who observe the goings-on of J.B.’s misfortune and comment on it. Sort of an existential Statler and Waldorf. At a certain point in the play my character, Zuss, during a heated exchange with Nickles, shouts the line, “You’re NO actor!”

It’s a line that cuts deep. It’s a line I want to yell at many a self-styled ‘actor’ that currently populate your local movieplex. Don’t get me wrong, I do think there are a number of Hollywood stars earning a very good living doing their trade who I would, in fact, consider bonafide actors. However, there’s also a staggering number of folks who, due to good looks, due to being in the right place at the right time, due to any number of factors have achieved a high measure of success that I would never on any day accuse of actually being actors. Do they get paid for showing up in a movie every now and then where their name in front of the camera is different than their given name? Yes. But do they display any measure of skill and talent at creating the illusion that they are other than who they are? Not really.

Here’s the thing. In film, we have created every element possible to afford one the ability to not actually have to Live Real in Imaginary Circumstances (or, the definition of acting). Most film sets are rife with every possible detail one would need to not actually have to ‘work’ at the art of pretend.

Now, it is not my interest to blast the film industry (especially as one who’d like to be a part of said industry) or to ridicule certain celebrities (too easy); it is my desire, however, to express that the art of acting is a difficult one.

This will be the fourth iteration of The Birth being performed this year and while I’ve always felt I delivered a serviceable performance I always, without fail, felt I could do better. But making sure all the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted in the service of staging a beast like The Birth as well as self-marketing the whole thing, I always felt I let my performance sag a little bit in the final analysis.

This year I’m aiming to change that. Hopefully all the work being done behind the scenes in rehearsals will pay off in a more nuanced, layered delivery, but even if to the average viewer there’s no discernable change, I’ll know that the work still stands. In effort to better Live Real in Imaginary Circumstances, I entreated my friend and MFA-in-acting-holder Joe Rux to direct me. We have met several times already and will meet another couple before we first perform on the 13th and the work being done is thrilling and challenging. I come in with my patterned, I’ve-performed-these-pieces-for-3-years muscle memory working against the real need to throw it all out and start these characters from scratch. Who is the Innkeeper? What does he want? Why is he so down? What happened immediately before he starts talking to the audience? These are all acting 101 questions, but we – myself included – often aren’t willing to do the work necessary to deliver competent, resonant performances.

When the Innkeeper ‘sees’ the man and the woman enter his inn, the audience needs to ‘see’ him ‘see’ them. I remember performing a touring production of Romeo and Juliet several years ago and, as Romeo rehearsing the catacomb-seeing-Juliet-dead scene, the director kept stopping us, drilling into me that Romeo had to see her and we had to see him see her. It’s a huge undertaking for an actor onstage to have to construct an entire world in his head that may or may not be visible to the eyes of the audience but has to be visible to their minds. That, my friends, is acting. Creating something from nothing. Lighting a proverbial candle onstage for the briefest of moments for an audience to ‘go there’ with you.

I had a 20-something guy in my life a couple of years ago who, based on knowing I’d done a couple of commercials, decided he wanted to be an actor too and he started asking me how to get into it. Now, far be it for me to quash someone’s dream, but that’s not what this was and it took every ounce of my being to not chastise him for reducing my 10 years of acting experience and training down to a mere desire to be on camera.

Who doesn’t want to be on camera? Who doesn’t, at least, think that they want 15 minutes of fame? Who doesn’t want to be recognized by their peers and strangers for some fun work they did?

But if there’s anything I’ve learned by having to inhabit these characters these last few years and even more concentratedly these last few weeks, it’s that the art of acting, of taking words on a page and speaking them as though for the first time every time, of not letting the poetic nature of the words being said get in the way of the gritty, heartbroken thoughts being expressed … well, to the person who can do that, that’s real acting.

It is my hope to do just that.

_____

The Birth runs December 13, 14, 20 and 21 at 6:30 and 8:30 pm at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte. Visit thebirth.net for more information and to buy tickets.

The 12 Days of BirthMas! Day 2: Embrace the Chaos

nathanrouse — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:30:07 +0000

This is a crazy time of year for me and I thought this would be a helpful way to pull back the curtain a bit and let you see what goes into this sort of process.

Thus I present to you, the 12 Days of BirthMas! (Technically the first performance is the 13th, but you get the idea).

Day Two: Embrace the Chaos.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

It’s the most stressful time of the year.

I am not an organized person. I didn’t learn the Time Management Skills my high school alma mater tried so desperately to instill in me. So when Christmas rolls around the last few years my life ramps up into stress mode. Especially this year.

Having produced The Birth for three years prior, you’d think I’d know by now what all goes into it and what sort of timetable I’m working with to make it all happen in the appropriate amount of time. You’d think that. Though I shouldn’t sell myself too short as, in general, I’m not too shabby at putting the ducks in their row when they need to be. The problem comes when the ducks pulsate and mutate and grow from manageable, cute little yellow-fuzz chicks into monstrous, hulking, avian behemoths. These fowl beasts surround me and work their darndest to drive up my blood pressure and anxiety.

This year is no different and, if anything, is proving rather daunting considering a few new elements we’re adding to the mix. We’ve made a big change to our presentation this year by way of venue. The last three years we have housed our little production at the small black box space at Carolina Actor’s Studio Theater. It was a space I grew to enjoy very much; it’s intimacy suited our show well and in some ways I’m sad to part with it. However this year I have developed a good relationship with local outfit Actor’s Theater of Charlotte, a very well run group of theater professionals doing their best to put on some provocative theater and wanted to try our hand at performing The Birth in their space. It affords us more seating and a great venue in downtown Charlotte.

The catch is that they don’t have a static in-the-round performance space. This doesn’t seem like that big of a deal but when you’re taking a performance space of one type and trying to turn it into a performance space of another type, there are headaches involved.

I have faith that ultimately this hurdle will prove surmountable, but in the meantime between a day job, a night job, a need to execute a relatively large production in The Birth; oh, and a wife and child to be attentive towards, things are starting to get a little crazy.

So over the next couple of days if, in cleaning your house or car out, you happen to stumble on a few extra hours in the day, please pass them my way. I could really use them.

For now, I’ll just embrace the chaos.

The 12 Days of BirthMas: Day 1, Alma Mater

nathanrouse — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:36:55 +0000

This is a crazy time of year for me and I thought this would be a helpful way to pull back the curtain a bit and let you see what goes into this sort of process.

Thus I present to you, the 12 Days of BirthMas! (Technically the first performance is the 13th, but you get the idea).

Day One: Alma Mater

Astonishingly, it has now been more than 10 years since I started college at Gardner-Webb University here in North Carolina. 10 years is a long time. I can remember being dropped off by my parents at my new academic environment and, moreover, my new home. They dropped me off, my mother in tears, only to have to return moments later due to some item I left in the car.

Then they left again.

From that moment a journey began that has lead me here. My ‘here’ currently is in reference not just to my geography (Charlotte) but also to my artistry. It’s weird to consider oneself an ‘artist’. It feels pretentious to say. It’s easier for me to say “I’m a waiter who wants to be an actor” than it is to simply say “I’m an actor”. Either way, my time and experience at Gardner-Webb stoked the already glowing embers of my skills and craft as a young actor. Under the tutelage of the inimitable Keith Cassidy, former theater professor and current friend, I came to understand the power of story-telling and the importance of truth in performance.

While at GWU I had the opportunity to adopt many personas in my pursuit of honing my craft, whether it was as Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the main stage or recreating scenes from Good Will Hunting in acting class. Under the direction of Keith and in the company of peers, we pushed and challenged ourselves in the pursuit of artistic integrity. “It was good, I liked it,” no longer worked in expressing appreciation for a thing – anything. Why was it good? Why did you like it?

And now here I am, 10 years later, having been invited by my former home to return. Out of the blue, to me at least, I received an email back in May to be the guest speaker at GWU’s Dimensions program. Dimensions is the school’s weekly campus-wide convocation. It’s an odd feeling being on the receiving end of such an invitation I have only been back to GWU a handful of times since I left and certainly never in any official capacity. But today, December 1, 2009, I return not as student but as performer. From the same stage where I put on so many other skins, I get to, at least one more time, Live Real in Imaginary Circumstances as The Innkeeper, Wise Man and Shepherd. Not only that, it’s in service of a play – a piece of art – I created. That’s a weird feeling. Though to be fair, The Birth has grown into much more of a collaborative experience than a single person’s presentation. From the words of author Frederick Buechner to the music created by some incredibly talented friends of mine to the hushed, enrapt attention of an audience that is as much a part of the performance as those they’re watching – all form a moment in time that could not have existed had my parents not tearfully deposited me onto that campus those years ago.

Today I get to share The Birth with a new audience. It will be a truncated version (I mean, you gotta get them to come to the actual show somehow, right), but it will be real and it will be home.

_____

The Birth runs December 13, 14, 20 and 21 at 6:30 and 8:30 pm at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte. Visit thebirth.net for more information and to buy tickets.

The 12 Days of BirthMas starts tomorrow!

nathanrouse — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:10:10 +0000

Tomorrow starts our countdown to the first performances of The Birth 2009.

This is a crazy time of year for me and I thought this would be a helpful way to pull back the curtain a bit and let you see what goes into this sort of process.

Come back each day for a new post leading up to the much anticipated production.

_____

The Birth runs December 13, 14, 20 and 21 at 6:30 and 8:30 pm at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte. Visit thebirth.net for more information and to buy tickets.

TO 12/2009 AND BEYOND!

nathanrouse — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:29:20 +0000

All posts below this are from 2008′s production. I wanted to keep them up for posterity and, you know, for fun.

But let the 2009 fun begin, ladies and gentlemen, as the 2009 production gets underway (or at least publicly underway, as it’s been quite unpublicly underway for some time now).

Round 2 of The Birth 2008 begins soon! Review and article in here!

nathanrouse — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:01:04 +0000

This past weekend saw the first 4 shows of The Birth 2008. They went excellently and audience response has been amazing. Many saying it’s the “best Christmas show they’ve ever seen”.

So what are you waiting for? Time to get your tickets.

Check out a review of the show from Arts ala Mode at this link: http://artsalamode.com/AALM_TheatreReviews.html

Also, the Gaston Gazette ran the GWU article and that can be found here: http://www.gastongazette.com/articles/rouse_28116___article.html/four_actor.html

iWeb, iWeb, how do i hate thee

nathanrouse — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:28:35 +0000

For the last, I don’t know, 3 months or so I’ve been working on a website for The Birth in Apple’s iWeb on my MacBook. There’s a whole heckload of tedious minutae that goes into an intentional design.

Well, tonight at about 11:30 when I was trying to do some updating of the old website in the old iWeb, old iWebby decided he was going to, well, I don’t know what really…but in the moment, that merest fraction of a second that he did whatever it was he did, it TOTALLY screwed the background and some of the layout of The Birth website.

I thought I was going to cry. I may have shed a tear. Or two.

But I brushed myself off, rolled up my sleeves and salvaged what I could with my sanity still intact.

By the time you read this the updated though slightly backpedaled Birth website should have a chunk of new material on it.

Music to My Ears

nathanrouse — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:24:01 +0000

Words and music by the lovely Mrs. Sarah DeShields.