• “Laugh and cry with Over the River and Through the Woods by the Madison Theatre Guild” – Isthmus Daily Page
• “‘Over the River’ is worth the trip” – 77 Square

Jordan Peterson, playing primarily Jon’s best friend Michael, [...lends] his pleasant baritone to songs like “Real Life” and “Johnny Can’t Decide.” Peterson is animated in the entertaining “No More,” a song about his new apartment and the bohemian life he left behind, and believable as a successful executive who travels to escape his loneliness.

Props are given to the excellent band: Chris (keyboard & director), Mark (bass), Rocky (guitar), and Sean (drums), as well as Paul’s excellent lighting design and Meghan’s staging and costume design. It was a good opening weekend, and it’ll be over in a flash…only two more performances: Friday and Saturday. Our first rehearsal was just over 3 weeks ago; I’d say it’s going pretty well.

Talk about “happily ever after”! Following a difficult year rebuilding its business side, Madison Theatre Guild closed the 2007-08 season with a giddy, charming, near-professional production of “Into the Woods.”
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It’s hard to know who to praise most in Guild’s wickedly funny production, and there are too many fine performances to name. The cast is huge and absolutely solid, right across the board.
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If “Into the Woods” is any indication, the reborn Theater Guild is a powerhouse that is going to significantly raise the standard for community theater in Madison.

I had a great time doing this show with a cast and crew without equal in my theatre experience so far.

What an experience…my first lead role in a musical, Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls. It was definitely the greatest challenge I’ve faced as an actor to date, but it was a lot of fun stretching to portray this character. The last two months certainly haven’t been easy. The social component of this show has been both the most rewarding and the most difficult I’ve ever had… new friends, stronger friendships, some friendships left on uncertain ground.

My resolve is now even stronger to keep acting. It’s not just that performing is fun. During each show I learn a bit more about myself and people in general by focusing on a character with which I can’t always immediately identify. There’s always something to be found to latch onto; we’re all human… any good character needs to include that humanity and it’s up to the actor to bring that out. We’re not caricatures up on stage; we’re people, and without the audience being able to see that, we’re not providing the emotional catharsis that attracts audiences in the first place. The most thrilling part of acting for me is when I can get into a completely different head space and explore what it’s like to be someone else, if only for a few minutes at a time over the course of a couple months.

I’m going to miss this show: the music, the cast and crew, the whole process. I already do, and we just struck yesterday. Time to start preparing for the next audition…

Ever since I started the pushup program in May I’ve been taking these measurements once per week. Today I finally put them into a spreadsheet and confirmed what my growing “spare tire” had suggested: my lean (muscle) mass has stayed the same, and over the last 2 months I’ve put on 3 or 4 pounds — all of it fat.

I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve gone months without practicing kung fu, and that’s obviously what had been keeping my body composition in check. I didn’t change my diet and I dropped the exercise, so I’ve just been adding blubber to my gut since then.

I remember when I first got that scale in 2004, when I was going gung-ho with kung fu before any of the theatre-induced hiatuses. I weighed about 150 and was at about 16% body fat. Since then I’ve put on about 3 pounds of muscle and about 12 pounds of fat. Sheesh.

Since I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing theatre on a regular basis, I need to find a way to keep up my fitness during the 2-month stretches when I don’t have time for kung fu. This slow transition into becoming a tub of goo isn’t going to cut it.

I’m going to continue on with bodyweight exercises at home, which seem to be the only thing to which I can commit. Along with the pushups I’ve been doing bilateral (2-legged) free-standing bodyweight squats at the same count, but I can tell from the relative effort of each exericse that the squats aren’t doing much for me. I’m going to give one-legged squats — “pistols” — a try in order to build some functional strength and hopefully turn my body composition around a bit.

I started picking apart the process. It’s what I’ve always done with everything…try to take it apart to understand to transmute the mysterious inner workings into something tangible. The productions I’ve been in haven’t necessarily been high art, but I’ve tried to approach them with some precision just the same.

Over the last 9 months the craft of acting and dramatic production in general has intrigued me more and more. I had never really looked at movies and theatre as anything more than banal entertainment until I stepped on a stage myself. Witnessing a great production is now a rich and inspiring event.

I just finished watching the special features on the Gosford Park DVD, and I’m taking note of how grateful I am that the DVD media format allows for glances behind the scenes: director’s commentary, The Making Of… special features, and so on — the people that make these things believable speaking frankly about their craft.

I’ve been out of the movie “loop” for a few years now, so my Netflix queue is packed with all of the best stuff that I never got around to seeing when people were still buzzing about it. It’s really pretty exciting to have the opportunity to see so much great material with what amounts to new eyes. And as for theatre…the more I do, the more I want to do. Casting directors willing, I have a feeling that I’ll be doing it and enjoying it for a long time.