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I haven’t written about this is in any of my other blogs yet… but I figured it’s something I should write about.

My dad performed at Carolines’ on Broadway this past weekend.

For the better part of over a year now, I’ve seen my dad get more and more upset. He’s had a bad string of luck in the past decade with career choices. His first career, business management, didn’t pan out too much when they moved the majority of his company (Playskool Baby) to Mexico. He switched gears and got a job at a publishing company for a while (I can’t remember — but I think it folded). While there, he attended the Chubb Insitute for Computer Science. Shortly thereafter, he got a job at Nine West, programming computers… which worked out perfectly, until the programming jobs were outsourced to India. He was soon employed at Sony, but his programming job suffered the same fate.

Since then, he’s been unemployed. Not for the lack of trying, mind you. Many companies actually won’t hire him because he’s overqualified… and he’d be too expensive of a hire. So, he worked to get his real estate license, which would’ve been great if the real estate market didn’t hit an overall slump. As a result, my dad has been kind of lost lately. He wants to get back into the workforce, but isn’t sure what direction to move in — everything he tries seems to die shortly thereafter.

My dad has always encouraged me. When I was a nine-year-old who wanted to be a baseball player, he was sure I’d play for the New York Yankees. When I was in high school and professed my desire to wrestle for the WWE, he wasn’t enthralled, but he supported me. And now, as a result of his support, I am pursuing my dream of acting. It was certainly time to return the favor.

I posed the question to my dad — what was his dream? As a child, it was to be a basketball player, but nobody supported that. Instead, he was thrust into the world of football — where he was permanently removed from the world of sports after sustaining a career-ending injury in high school. So, that one was out of the question, obviously. Nowadays, my dad’s also had a vested interest in filmmaking and comedy.

Although there’s not too much that I can do to help, I encouraged him to pursue one or the other. I mean, he’s already tried his hand in a bunch of things that he didn’t really want to do, he might as well try for one of the things he wants. I mean, even if he wasn’t good at it, maybe he’d have some fun on the way.

I opened up a copy of Back Stage I had lying around and showed him some web addresses, specifically those of the New York Film Academy and Stephen Rosenfeld’s American Comedy Institute. My dad seriously considered them both, and earlier this year, decided upon the latter.

Well, this past weekend, it was showtime for my dad.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I mean, my dad didn’t try out any of his routine on me beforehand, nor did he give me any clue of what it would entail.

I was nervous for him when he got up there. Partially so he wouldn’t have to be.

He did great. Way better than the other people in the class — and I’m not just saying that as the son watching his father, but also from the perspective of that jackass who sits back at a comedian and says “Okay, make me laugh!”

I’ll tell you this though…

I’m proud of my dad.

I really really dig Inspector Hound rehearsal. I mean, I’m quite glad that it’s the last impression of school that I have every day. It leaves me with quite the natural high. I feel bad for Cary, though, the man hasn’t had a chance to get up out of his seat for the last two days.

Anyhow, starting from the beginning, the cast of Hound met early today, in room 31. We got to read through the end of the play, which was a good thing. I mean, we haven’t come anywhere close to blocking that part of the show yet, and I admit that I’m more than unfamiliar with the lines, so it was a great opportunity.

After the run, it was time to head to Catholic rehearsal. Now, I checked the board and saw that our rehearsal is in room 41. I head up there, and the room is empty. This is strange, I thought, so I headed downstairs to double-check. Sure enough, we’re assigned to 41. So I headed back upstairs, still perplexed that nobody’s in the room(at this point, it’s 2:08). After repeating this process a couple of times, I run into RJ, who tells me everyone’s down in the Costume Shop getting fitted for costumes. Wonderful. It takes about three minutes to try on the priest shirt they have down there, and then I head back upstairs.

Rehearsal didn’t seem to take quite as long as it normally does. Now that we’re “off-book” it’s quite entertaining to watch again. Unfortunately, I was the least “off-book” of the pack, having to call for line every other line. That’s what I get for studying my lines after inadvertently huffing bleach fumes for an hour. Either way, things went much better (and quicker) today than normal… and for that, I’m thankful.

So I head upstairs for Inspector Hound, and rehearsal starts on quite a different note than it normally does. T Ryder was unusually quiet. We all started warming up, and once the whole cast was there T had us get in our warmup circle. With the lights off and our eyes closed, T went on to say that, basically, Dino had gotten word that he had us using lisps and things of that nature and sent him an angry letter about it. Not cool.

We moved from there to a quick introduction about kissing. He had some of the couples who may have had to kiss during today’s rehearsal (Joel & Steph, Joel & Criss, Adam & Criss, Adam & Steph) get “familiar” with each other. He placed a pack of mint Listerine flash strips on the table, picked the couple out, told everyone else to close their eyes, and let them go at it… to get used to doing it before they had to in the context of the show. I didn’t have to get in there and do it today… so now I’ve got that uncomfortably looming over my head for the future. The funniest part about the kissing stuff, though, was that I don’t even think Adam and Stephanie wind up kissing in the show. It went by practically unnoticed, but I got a good laugh out of it.

With that behind us, we started rehearsal — going through blocking the show slowly, starting at Felicity’s encounter with Simon. We started to add a few comical bits that’ll hopefully end up in the final product, and we already started to clean things up a bit. I think that the show’s going to be a really smooth run, because we’re cleaning at the same time we’re blocking, it’s something I’ve never really experienced before.

Anyhow, we got all the way through my first exit, so my entire first scene in the show is blocked now. I’ve got a couple of great comedic bits (the card game, my laughing “war” with Joel, and now shaking Criss from my wheelchair) that I’m already proud of. I can’t wait to finish this show off… it’s gonna be great.

5 rehearsal days left for Once A Catholic
7 rehearsal days left for The Real Inspector Hound