Austin Pendletonize

Did I tell you about the wonderful actor who booked a massive job pretty much out of nowhere? Bradley Stryker is his name. He works consistently in film and tv but he is often faced with the struggle of diminishing rates for actors. Moreover, he had only been in one play in the last seven years and had never even done a play off-Broadway (only off-off Broadway)! Nevertheless, he just booked a HUUUUUUUUGE Broadway show, written by a phenomenal writer with an amaaazing director and extremely well-known co-stars. 

Miraculous, right?  

Nope.

The other night we were in class rehearsing the character he’d booked, but he’d brought in scenes that weren’t working from the PLAY he’d booked. We were doing material from another play that the character was ALSO in, written by the same playwright; kind of a prequel. Why on earth, a few weeks shy of flying to NYC to start rehearsal for ONE play, was he working on the SAME character in a DIFFERENT play?!

Because of the LIGHT he knew that OTHER play would shed on his character in HIS play.

Bradley’s audition was apparently SO extraordinary that he was booked on the job just three hours after his callback. He’d been asked to come to NY for a callback and then a chemistry read, but the director and producers cancelled the chem reads for his character after they saw his audish.

Clearly, he didn’t need to rehearse the crap out of the same character in another play! He was already SO GREAT that he’d booked it and was going to New York for rehearsal! Why was he working on it at all???? 

The reason Bradley Stryker booked the job to BEGIN with was because of something our teacher @TylerPoelle [pls check @] says all the time : “The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”

Everything Bradley does is superb. Even under duress (e.g., 18 hours of flying because the cost of a direct flight was prohibitive; he got hit in the face while playing with his son two days before he flew out — insert painful black eye for the audition here; and then to cap it all off, he stayed in a “hotel” that had hourly rates listed at the front desk… suffice it to say it was NOT four stars). Even under those insane circumstances his work was so exceptional that they discharged all the other actors up for the role and cast HIM.  

His classmates hadn’t read the other play so, in an effort to be helpful, they rushed through their cold reads in an effort to keep the focus on Bradley.

After a few lines, I stopped them. “Could y’all please Austin Pendletonize it?” I requested. (Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Pendleton.)

I learned about Austin Pendleton when I was in the Second Company at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 19-waybeforeyouwereborn. He was a legend there. The story goes that when Austin showed up to do a table read, no matter how long the play was, it would last at least six hours. Why? Because Austin wouldn’t open his mouth to say a line until he understood why he was going to say it. Even if the line was, “Yes.” Or, “Tomorrow.” He just sat there in front of all the other actors, and the director and the audience and thought and thought and thought until he was ready to say that line. It took foooooooreeeeeeeeveeeeeeeeer.

But the proof was in the pudding – his work was incredible. Certainly the performance improved with rehearsal and direction, but at no point was he so busy worrying about, e.g., anyone else’s experience while cold reading that he rushed or just read the words aloud without understanding why he was saying them to the best of his ability. He was never NOT doing his work. 

He was always great.