Actor Bows

O'Brien Kevin

Description

A lot of actors think they're good enough to be professionals. And even if they are, they seldom get to the place where they can actually make a living as actors. Kevin O'Brien is the rare exception. But even among successful actors, his achievement is rare. He's done it all on his own, with his own acting company, his own plays, and his own unique niche in the world of theater. He has done it because he knows how to connect with an audience. But along the way, he found that he was playing a much more important role on a much larger stage in a much greater drama. When an actor bows, it is an act of humility. Especially when he bows before God.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Catholic Church

Informations

• Publié par: ACS Books
• Date de parution: 11 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781505112641
• Langue: English

Extrait

Kevin O’Brien
Copyright © 2018 The American Chesterton Society.
Cover photography by Colin and Karen O’Brien
Interior and cover design by T. Schluenderfritz
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in articles and critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, printed or electronic, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-15051-1263-4
ACS Books is an imprint of TAN Books
PO Box 410487
Charlotte, NC 28241
www.TANBooks.com
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Kevin O’Brien
Kevin O’Brien is a great raconteur. A story-teller. A spinner of yarns. He uses this gift, what the Irish call the gift of gab, to weave and spin the story of his own life and his conversion to the Faith. He does so by offering anecdote after anecdote, woven with the wisdom that comes from the marriage of humor and humility. The overall effect is a book which entertains and edifies in equal measure. A delight!
JOSEPH PEARCE
Author
 
O’Brien’s beautiful, hilarious, self-aware memoir of his life as an actor and as a Catholic gives a rare understanding to those of us outside the profession and faith. It is a confessional of deep insight into the desire we all share, to lead a full and loving life while being true to what we believe in.
MARTIN OLSON
Head Writer, Phineas and Ferb
 
Kevin O’Brien tells us that he was an atheist at the age of nine. If that is not acting, nothing is! An actor’s autobiography is a way of looking at life from the outside in. He has taken so many other parts that finding out who is there is always a challenge. When an actor bows, does he bow in his own name? Does he bow for his life or the lives of those whose being he has assumed at one time or another? It is a delight when an actor acts the part of himself and, letting us hear his voice, lets us applaud. This delightful book is itself worth applauding.
JAMES V. SCHALL, S. J.
Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University
 
A great memoir needs two things: a great story and a great storyteller. Anyone who has had the joy of watching Kevin O’Brien on stage knows that he is everything a great storyteller must be: funny, passionate, captivating, enchanting, honest. Who knew that his own journey from atheism to player in God’s own theater company was such a great story? Who knew that O’Brien had the same command of prose as he does of stage craft? Ready to laugh out loud as you learn more about the world, the flesh, and Kevin O’Brien? Pick this book up. But clear the time to get to the end, because it really is one you won’t put down.
CHRISTOPHER CHECK
President, Catholic Answers
 
It’s rare that one book will both make you laugh and cry. It’s rarer still that one paragraph will. But in An Actor Bows , story after story, moment after moment, brings the divine comedy out of earthly tragedy, in a way I’ve never read before. Kevin O’Brien is a master storyteller, whose memoir of show business gets to the core of the human experience. As an actor, I loved this book, and resonated with all Kevin’s stories. But as humans, I think all people will. These stories of one man’s love of his art and the sufferings required to live that out, call to the artist, the creator in all of us, in our longing for communion with God.
KAISER JOHNSON
Actor
 
Kevin and I don’t agree on much, but we both get it that truth and fun serve each other beautifully. I used to want to sit him down over beers and straighten him out. Now I just want to sit him down over beers and hear more stories.
STEVE BAUGHMAN
The Friendly Banjo Atheist
DEDICATION
For my lady, Karen
And Our Lady, Mary
Table of Contents
Prologue
Gorilla Theater
Broken Commodities
Act One, Scene One
An Atheist in Love
The Simpson s and Me
Portrait of the Artist as a Jung Man
Model Behavior
D.O.A. for the D.O.D
Did Noah have that Oceanic Feeling?
President Washington, Mr. Franklin—Come Out with your Hands Up
Life Imitates Art: Attempted Murder at a Murder Mystery
Solving the Mystery: Discovering the Obvious
The Turn of the Head and the Turn of the Heart
Turning and Turning
Famous Last Words
How to Love—including Sex!
Pooping Out
Salt of the Earth and Juggling Midgets
Trust Fall
The Word, Incorporated
By the Way, Did I Mention that Actors are Crazy?
Incarnation—the Initial Descent
The Great Adventure
Shakespeare and Santa Claus
Paradise and the Parking Lot
St. George and the Dragon
Stanford Nutting, who Stands for Nothing
Playing It Out
Epilogue
Prologue
T HE R ENAISSANCE DRAMATISTS in England would use their prologues to beg the indulgence of the audience, that the audience might overlook the flaws of the next “two hours’ business” on the stage. And the flaws in what follows here, on the page (rather than the stage), are many, for it is the story of the life of a flawed man.
And the epilogues in those old plays would often, in a witty and charming way, simply ask for a simple and unmerited grace.
Which is to say, the epilogues would merely ask for applause.
Indulgence first, applause to follow. That is all we actors seek.
Gorilla Theater
I WAS DRESSED IN A SUIT AND TIE . “Mrs. Jones will see you now,” the receptionist told me and led me in to Mrs. Jones’ office. She stood up and welcomed me. We shook hands and she invited me to sit down in a chair opposite her desk.
“So tell me why you’re interested in this job,” she said.
“Well, I just feel that my qualifications are an exact match for the position that’s available,” I replied.
“Tell me about your qualifications,” Mrs. Jones invited me.
I squirmed a bit in the chair and tugged at my tie, loosening it. “It’s hot in here, isn’t it?” I remarked.
“Just a bit, I suppose,” the interviewer conceded.
“As to my qualifications,” I continued, “—um, do you mind if I take my jacket off?”
Mrs. Jones was pleasant, but a bit concerned. “Well -” she said as I stood up, and removed both my jacket and tie.
“As to my qualifications, I’m really over-qualified, or super-qualified as some would say.”
“Super qualified?” asked Mrs. Jones, a rather perplexed look on her face. A group of coworkers began to gather at the open door of Mrs. Jones’ office, peering in.
“Yeah, Super!” I exclaimed. “I think I’m Super, Mrs. Jones.” I began tugging at my pants. “And I think you’re Super, especially today—on your birthday!”
Grabbing the top of my pants and the bottom of my shirt, I suddenly yanked them forward. The velcro gave way and my slacks and shirt came off instantly in my hand—revealing a bright blue and red super-hero costume underneath.
Jones was stunned. Her coworkers were in hysterics.
“Mrs. Jones, your friends here at the office wanted to celebrate your birthday in a Super way! So they sent me to deliver to you—a super singing telegram!”

Lather, rinse, repeat—2,000 times. I did this, or something like it, literally about 2,000 times.
I began to make a living as a performer in 1981, at the height of the singing telegram craze. For two years with Eastern Onion, and for three years with my own company, Krazy Tunes, I would drive around the St. Louis metro area performing singing telegrams, either in a red tuxedo, or in a gorilla costume, or dressed as a super-hero, or in pink tights with a tutu as the “birthday fairy”.
This was indeed guerilla theater—or if I had the monkey suit on, “gorilla theater”. I learned to perform in every setting imaginable, from restaurants to bowling alleys to offices—and once in the lobby of a whore house (prostitution actually plays a large role in this story, but more on that later). The key to being effective as a singing telegram performer was going in, being loud, being funny, being fast, telling some jokes, singing a song, getting the check, and getting out. I might have had as many as seven telegrams to perform on a typical Saturday night, between 6:00 pm and midnight, with a half-hour drive between each.
If you learn anything under these conditions, you learn how to get and hold an audience’s attention—for these are audiences who have no idea they’re about to be subjected to any kind of show—and it’s your job to make them stop whatever it is they’re doing, and watch and be entertained for five or ten minutes without throwing you out or turning away and ignoring you. (Or killing you.) And if you can be loud enough to get everyone in a bowling alley to stop bowling and listen to you (as I did many times), you discover that just about anything in show business is easier than that. You also learn how to read an audience, how to tell when they’re with you, how to tell when they’re not, how to tell if they’re really listening or just being polite and waiting for you to shut up—how to tell if security is being called and is getting ready to throw you out—how to tell if they’re way too drunk and things are about to get ugly, how to tell if a bar fight is about to break out.
But I was making a living in show business, and I loved it.
Speaking of love, I met my future wife Karen at a singing telegram on October 1, 1982. She had hired a “strip-o-gram” to be sent to her friend Sheila, who was getting a new job. The act was to take place at a bar in North St. Louis County, where Karen, Sheila, and all of their coworkers had gathered after work. The male stripper and I showed up about five minutes late. We walked into the entranceway of the bar—and there was this redhead on the pay phone in the hall, about to dial Eastern Onion and find out where we were. She was nervous, and I knew immediately that she was our contact person, Karen Robertson, the gal who had ordered the “strip-o-gram”. But, apparently, she wasn’t sure who we were. She looked at the stripper and me. He was dressed as Zorro, wearing a black shirt and pants, a broad-brimmed hat and a black mask, sporting black leather boots and carrying a “boom box” and a whip. I was in a red tuxedo tha