I'm in a play and it's a blast! How King Kong hooked me up with some awesome LA artists.

For whatever bizarre reason, I have yet to get around to posting on my acting blog that I have, in fact, been acting this last month or so.

Kong: A Goddamn Thirty Foot Gorilla is playing at the SkyPilot Theater until Nov. 25th. (8pm on Sat. 7pm on Sun.)

Upon arriving back in Los Angeles from Kentucky, I got to experience the smug satisfaction of having a director ask me to be in his play without having to audition.  And not just any director! This is none other than Jaime Robledo, a director I know through Sacred Fools whose imaginative staging and physical comedy has lately started to attract a lot of attention in the Los Angeles theatrical community. His work on the Buster Keaton show Stoneface (starring French Stewart) extended several times and sold out almost every night.

Long story short, I quickly found myself acting as an ensemble member in the World Premiere of Kong: A Goddamn Thirty Foot Gorilla at SkyPilot Theater. A teaser of the show can be viewed here.

The show itself (written by Adam Hahn) is a genre-bending cocktail of wacky physical humor, intellectual analysis, satire, and outright recreation of iconic scenes from the classic King Kong. Telling such an epic story is a huge undertaking for a tiny theater based in North Hollywood, and these challenges have spawned a show that has creativity bursting out of every scene. But don't take my word for it, check out our 100% Bitterlemons rating.

Playing an ensemble member has proven to be a fun challenge. I play everything from a simpleton sailor to an enraged New Yorker to a flying prehistoric moth. That means, of course, that I get to find different physicality and dialects for each and every character. Jaime's pretty much given me free reign to inject whatever personality I'd like into all of them, and the rehearsal process functioned as a creative sandbox to play around with how I wanted the characters to fit into the world of the play. It's been a fun ride.

We've basically taken source material that is impossible to adapt for the stage... and then adapted it for the stage. It's been great to work with people who say "How?" instead of "Can't." There's a boldness to the mentality of everyone involved with this project that I associate with real artists, and this young whippersnapper sure has learned a lot from all of them. Can't wait for tomorrow so I can do it all over again.

Come check us out!