About the Project

What is this project?

Put simply, this is the concept: create fifty unique characters in fifty weeks.  Each week, I upload a video of said character.  That’s pretty much it.  It is intentionally being left extremely open-ended, so there are very few rules.  That’s half of the project.  The other half is I’ll be blogging about my process (how I create each character, how I’m managing with the project, etc), to shed some light into an actor’s process (which most people don’t know a whole lot about, I think).  A video may consist of a monologue, an improv, a scene with one or more people (written or improvised), an interview, a music video, whatever.  In the creation of characters, again, I’m leaving it wide open (I may even try an impression or two).  There are only three major rules:

1. I am never allowed to half-ass it.
2. I have to fully commit to my choices.
3. I have to do it every week.

The Backstory
Toward the end of 2008 I found myself practically broke, and suddenly splitting with my agent.  Like so many actors in NY in my position, my immediate human needs (food, shelter, girlfriend) suddenly overshadowed the needs of my career (auditioning, finding another agent, running around shouting “Forsooth!”), and so I begrudgingly re-entered the world of 9-to-5ers.  It was that, or leave New York.

In this economy I was lucky that I found a job at all, and so I did my best not to complain, but the fact is, historically, any job that isn’t acting or writing tends to depress the hell out of me, which this one did as well (regardless of how necessary it was).   The question then became, “How do I find a way to do what I love to do, be constantly challenging myself, hold down the job-job, and do it for virtually no money?”  This is what I came up with.  It’s a big experiment.

The Caveat
This experiment is something I am dong for myself.  If I don’t like it, I’m going to stop.  I don’t mean I’m going to stop if it’s hard, or if it’s a pain in the ass, but if it’s a pain in the ass AND it’s not fulfilling or making me happy, then the experiment is over and I’ll move on to another experiment.  I’d like to say that I’m going to go for twenty weeks, and then see how I feel.  I’d like to say that, but I’m not sure if I just did or not.