Actors On Their Work

[The backstory of “Brief But Spectacular,” a weekly series that premièred on NewsHour in 2015, begins with creator Steve Goldbloom, the creator and host of the original comedy news show for PBS, “Everything But the News,” and his longtime producing partner Zach Land-Miller who conduct every interview off-camera and off-screen.  (The segments are all two to four minutes long and there are no cutaways to reporters or interjections of questions.)  Each Thursday, “Brief But Spectacular” introduces NewsHour viewers to original profiles; these short segments feature some of the most original contemporary figures, offering passionate takes on topics they know well.  These have included household names like actors Alec Baldwin and Carl Reiner, artist Marina Abramović,  and activist Bryan Stevenson.  Topics have included comedian, writer, and director Jill Soloway (Amazon’s original series Transparent) on gatekeepers in Hollywood, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates on police reform in America, Abramović on the art of performance, author Michael Lewis on finding disruptive characters, performers Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer on the rise of their hit Comedy Central series Broad City, engineer Jason Dunn on creating the first 3-D printer in space, and many more.]

“BRYAN CRANSTON ON BEING READY FOR LUCK”
by Bryan Cranston

[Actor Bryan Cranston delivered this “Brief But Spectacular” essay on the PBS NewsHour on 1 November 2018.]

Oscar-nominated actor Bryan Cranston, best known for his role as Walter White in “Breaking Bad” [2008-13 on American Movie Classics (AMC)], didn’t get his big break until age 40, when he was cast in the family TV sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle” [2000-06 on the Fox Network] Now, he’ll be playing the role of Howard Beale in the upcoming Broadway production of “Network” [Belasco Theatre, 6 December 2018-8 June 2019, for a limited run; 2019 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play]. He shares his brief but spectacular take on an unusual career trajectory and the role of luck.

Judy Woodruff: Oscar-nominated [2016, for playing Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo] actor Bryan Cranston is best known for his Emmy-winning role as Walter White in the TV series “Breaking Bad.”

But, as he explains in tonight’s Brief But Spectacular episode, it took him some luck to get there.

Starting next Saturday, Cranston will be playing the role of Howard Beale in the Broadway production of “Network,” based on the famous [1976] film.

Bryan Cranston: The first thing I look for when I read a script is, does the story move me?

What I truly love about this, and when I talk to audiences about anything I have done or any other movie or stage piece, is that the audience is always right. However you felt, however you reacted to something is always right. That’s how you felt.

And it’s remarkable how you can sit next to someone and watch a movie. I could be weeping, and they’re like, eh. It’s like, really? They say, yes, it missed me.

The only failure is if you move an audience to nothing, to boredom. If they are indifferent about what they just experienced, whether it’s a painting or a recital or a singer or a dancer or a play, if they are, I feel nothing throughout, then we failed. Then we failed.

Actors come to town, to New York or Los Angeles or London, and they say, you know, I’m going to give it a shot. I’m going to give it a year and see if I can become successful.

And to those, I want to say, I can save you a year of your time. If you think that this is something that you can carve out some arbitrary amount of time to achieve certain things, this is not for you. This is a lifetime.

When you first start out as an actor, your answer to any question is yes. Do you want to? Yes, I want to do that.

I started out in 1979 doing background work as an extra. Angry mob. Drunken frat boy. Reckless driver. And then, when you first get that break where you actually have a name, Steve, wow, I actually have a name, I’m Steve, you feel like you have progressed to some degree.

There’s no career that has ever been achieved in entertainment — I truly believe this — without a healthy dose of luck. Someone said, OK, kid, I will read your script, or, all right, you want to audition? Come in. Do it right now.

And then you got to be ready. Celebrity is a byproduct of what I do and what I like to do. It’s not what I was after. I was a working actor. Things were fine. I was paying my bills, leading a very middle-class economic life. And then I got a lucky break at age 40 and was cast in “Malcolm in the Middle.”

At 50, I got an even bigger break when I was cast as Walter White on “Breaking Bad.”

That was my trajectory. It came when it was supposed to come. And that’s the interesting thing about luck. It doesn’t work on your timetable. It works on its own.

My name is Bryan Cranston, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on being an actor.

[After appearing in this “Brief But Spectacular” segment, Bryan Cranston starred in the TV miniseries Your Honor in 2020-21 on the Showtime cable network.  For his performance, he received a 2021 Golden Globes nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television.  Cranston also starred as President Lyndon Johnson in All The Way on Broadway from 6 March to 29 June 2014.  He later performed the play on HBO as a TV movie in 2016.]

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“ADRIENNE C. MOORE’S BRIEF BUT SPECTACULAR TAKE ON THE CHARACTERS IN HER LIFE”
by Adrienne C. Moore 

[Actress Adrienne C. Moore’s “Brief But Spectacular” appearance on the PBS NewsHour was on 27 November 2019.] 

Adrienne C. Moore is an actress best known for her role in the Netflix TV series “Orange is the New Black.” [The series streamed on Netflix from 2013 to 2019.] During her first theater performance, she immediately noticed the way the show affected the audience emotionally. Moore opens up about drawing inspiration from her upbringing in Atlanta, the impact her father had on her and her Brief But Spectacular take on the characters of her life.

Judy Woodruff:  Tonight’s Brief But Spectacular features performer Adrienne C. Moore, an actress best known for her role in “Orange Is the New Black.”

She opens up here about pulling characters from her upbringing in Atlanta and the impact her father had on her.

This is part of Canvas, our continuing covering of arts and culture.

Adrienne C. Moore:  What I love about acting and being in front of people is, honestly, seeing their expressions.

My first production that I can remember was “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” in Nashville, Tennessee. [Moore is referring to a stage adaption by the author of Barbara Robinson’s 1971 novel of the same title.  Moore was six when she appeared in the production.]  I had no lines, just the little chorus parts. But that gave me a chance to look at every single person in the audience during the show and seeing them smile, and laugh, and have feelings and emotions.

And from that moment on, I said, I want to do this for the rest of my life.

“Orange Is the New Black” came about just like any other audition. They called me in for Black Cindy. Immediately, when I read it, I said, oh, my gosh, I know this girl. To me, she represented a lot of girls that I had run across when I’d moved to Atlanta, just very fiery and speak their minds, and pop their fingers, and roll their eyes, and roll their heads, and just tell their truth.

And so, when I read her, I said, I think I could embody her pretty well.

[A scene from the show:] Of course she ain’t smiling. She got screwed by me, by — by everybody. Suzanne, everything is broken and life is unfair. When are you going to learn that?

The play that I did in Shakespeare in the Park was called “Taming of the Shrew.” [The Public Theater production, in which Moore played Tranio, was in June-July 2016.] I got to work with Phyllida Lloyd, who is a phenomenal director. And I was always afraid of Shakespeare, iambic pentameter, and just going up on a line and all that kind of stuff.

But she really taught me how to own the language and, in that ownership, how to own the character. And once I got past that fear, I had the most amazing time.

What was so revolutionary about that experience was that I lost my dad literally in the same time that I was doing that show. And so I was experiencing incredible highs and incredible lows at the same time.

But one of the things that my dad taught me and told me before he passed was happiness. And so that’s the thing that I always try to embody in my work and in my life and in who I am.

I feel like, when I’m in the pocket with something, I will sometimes hear this little chime or this a little ding somewhere off in the distance, and I feel like it’s my dad being like, you got it. You’re on the point, girl.

My dad was very proud of me, of his children, because one of the things he always said was, do what makes you happy. And a lot of times, when I get in very confusing places in my life, and I don’t know what choice to make, I always think about what he said, which is, do what makes you happy.

And so that’s how I make my decisions. I don’t question. I just go inside of myself. And I say, well, what will make me happy in this moment? Because that’s what my dad taught me.

My name is Adrienne C. Moore, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on all the characters of my life.

Judy Woodruff:  And you can watch additional Brief But Spectacular episodes on our Web site, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/brief/.

[Adrienne C. Moore appeared in Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf at the Public Theater in October-December 2019, which won the 2020 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival, Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play, and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play.]

Science, Curiosity, and God

[I've watched the PBS NewsHour, as it’s now called, pretty much every night since it was the McNeil/Lehrer Report.  In the last several years, the program’s introduced two regular features that are essentially oral essays by guest contributors.  They’re generally opinion pieces on subjects of particular interest to the essayist, but they cover a wide range of topics and presentation styles.  Recently there have been several of these segments that especially caught my attention, and two of them, one from “Brief but Spectacular” and one from “In My Humble Opinion,” seemed somewhat related.  So I’ve decided to post them together and let them play off one another for the benefit of readers of Rick On Theater.  ~Rick]

“WHY NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON WANTS TO FIX THE ADULT CURIOSITY PROBLEM”

by Niel deGrasse Tyson

[This essay, part of NewsHour’s “Brief but Spectacular” feature, was originally aired on Thursday, 24 May 2018.]

Neil deGrasse Tyson says he is like a “smorgasbord of science food” – he’s recognized hundreds of times every day and people are always hungry for more knowledge. DeGrasse Tyson, who spends much of his professional life encouraging science literacy in adults, gives his Brief but Spectacular take on bringing the universe down to Earth.

Judy Woodruff:  Finally, we turn to another installment of our weekly “Brief but Spectacular” series. Tonight, author and astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

For more than two decades, he has served as director of the Hayden Planetarium in his home town of New York City. Tyson’s latest book, “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry,” is available now.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson:  What I think actually happened, was that the universe chose me. I know that’s not a very scientific sentence, but that’s what it felt like. The universe said, come, Neil, join us. And yes, I never looked back, back at earth. I kept looking up.

I was star struck at age nine. A visit to my local planetarium. Having been born in the Bronx, I thought I knew how many stars there were in the night sky, about a dozen.

Then you go into the dome of the planetarium and then thousands of stars come out. I just thought it was a hoax.

By age 11, I had an answer to that annoying question adults always ask children, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said, astrophysicist.

That usually just shut them up right there. Nobody knew anybody who was an astrophysicist and then I’d get back to the telescope.

So, deniers are people who wish the world were a way that does not agree with the operations of nature.

Believe what you want. I’m not going to even stop you. I would just hope you don’t rise to power over legislation and laws that then affect other people who do understand how science works. That’s dangerous.

Skepticisms is I will only believe what you believe what you tell me in proportion to the weight of the evidence you present. If you start speaking in ways where no known law of physics supports it, then I’m going to be all over you with my skepticism.

I’m recognized basically several hundred times a day. I wish I could put on a mustache and not be noticed but, of course, I have a mustache. They don’t care about me, tell me about that black hole you mentioned a program I saw the other day. Or, will we ever travel through space?

It’s like, I’m just this, this smorgasbord of science food and I got them hungry from something I did before and they’re still hungry and they want more. Most of my professional effort is trying to get adults scientifically literate. I think kids are born curious and if you fix the adult problem, the kids problem gets fixed overnight.

Part of my confidence is I see this generation who’s been born since 1995, teens, low 20s. That generation has only ever known the Internet as a source of access to knowledge. I have very high hope and expectations for what world they will create when they actually assume the mantles of power.

It’s the gap between when they do and what’s going on now that concerns me. It’s the adults that may have once been curious and forgot or there’s a flame that has been tamped down and you want to fan that flame and reawaken a sense of wonder about this world that we so often take for granted.

When I see eyes light up because that moment was reached, I’m done.

I’m Neil DeGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is my “Brief But Spectacular” take on bringing the universe down to earth.

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“A SCIENTIST STARES INTO INFINITY AND FINDS SPACE FOR SPIRITUALITY”

by Alan Lightman

[This comment from “In My Humble Opinion,” essays by thinkers, writers and artists, was broadcast on PBS NewsHour on 4 June 2018.]

Amna Nawaz:  One conflict in the ongoing culture wars seems to suggest that science and religion cannot coexist peacefully.

Alan Lightman is a distinguished physicist and a novelist who teaches at MIT. Tonight, he shares his Humble Opinion on how to make space for both facts and spirituality.

Alan Lightman:  I have worked as a physicist for many years. And I have always held a purely scientific view of the world.

And by that, I mean that the universe is made of matter and nothing more, that the universe is governed by a small number of laws, and that everything in the world eventually disintegrates and passes away.

And then, one summer night, I was out in the ocean in a small boat. It was a dark, clear night, and the sky vibrated with stars. I laid down in the boat and looked up. After a few minutes, I found myself falling into infinity.

I lost all track of myself, and the vast expanse of time extending from the far distant past to the far distant future seemed compressed to a dot. I felt connected to something eternal and ethereal, something beyond the material world.

In recent years, some scientists have attempted to use scientific arguments to question the existence of God. I think these people are missing the point. God, as conceived by most religions, lies outside time and space. You can’t use scientific arguments to either disprove or prove God.

And for the same reason, you can’t use scientific arguments to analyze or understand the feeling I had that summer night when I lay down in the boat and looked up and felt part of something far larger than myself.

I’m still a scientist. I still believe that the world is made of atoms and molecules and nothing more. But I also believe in the power and validity of the spiritual experience.

Is it possible to be committed to both without feeling a contradiction? I think so. We understand that everything in the physical world is material, fated to pass away. Yet we also long for the permanent, some grand and eternal unity.

We’re idealists and we’re realists. We’re dreamers and we’re builders. We experience and we do experiments. We long for certainties, and yet we ourselves are full of the ambiguities of the Mona Lisa and the I Ching.

We ourselves are part of the yin-yang of the world.

"Anna Deavere Smith Puts Herself Into Other People’s Words"

by Anna Deavere Smith

[Last week, I posted a report from PBS’s NewsHour on Washington, D.C.’s Women’s Voices Theater Festival, a region-wide collaboration of 25 theaters producing plays by women playwrights.  One of this country’s strongest and most prominent exemplars of women in theater, both as a writer and a performer, is Anna Deavere Smith, whose one-women plays have been unique and powerful theater for several decades.  

[Smith’s work is really a form of documentary theater, but instead of digging out records and hearing transcripts of long-past events, she creates her own documents of current issues by interviewing the participants, witnesses, and those affected—and then, channeling them from the stage in some of American theater’s most remarkable performances.  

[On 5 April, Smith presented her “Brief But Spectacular” essay on PBS NewsHour, an explanation of her perspective on how and why she does what she does.  Here is the transcript of that presentation.]

Anna Deavere Smith, actor, playwright and activist, says she has been trying to become America, word for word. By conducting interviews and creating a narrative, she aims to make a current problem come alive. Deavere Smith offers her Brief but Spectacular take on listening to people.

John Yang:  Finally, we turn to another installment of our series Brief But Spectacular, where we ask people about their passions.

Tonight, actor, playwright and activist Anna Deavere Smith, widely known for her roles on “The West Wing” and “Nurse Jackie.” She has also earned critical acclaim for her one-woman shows. The latest, “Notes From the Field,” recently aired on HBO.

Smith shares her unique process for getting into character.

Anna Deavere Smith:  When I was a girl, my grandfather said that if you say a word often enough, it becomes you.

And I have been trying to become America word for word. In the way that you would think about putting yourself in other people shoes, I’m putting myself in other people’s words.

I interview people, and I learn what they say and try to put together a lot of disparate parts of interviews in one whole, in order to make a current problem come alive.

There are certain points in any interview that I do that people start to speak in a way where the rhythm, you know, leads me to believe that there’s emotions stored in there. And so, as an actor, emotions are my fuel, and those are the types of moments that I want to reenact on stage.

Drinking malt liquor. This is not the time for us to be playing the lottery or to be at the Horseshoe Casino. This is not the time for us to be walking around.

I was a mimic as a child. And, you know, I guess you could say that what I’m doing now is a more respectable version of that, which was — you know, inevitably, mimicry is a little bit subversive. I don’t mean to be subversive. I’m not an impressionist.

I’m delighted if audiences think something’s funny, but I’m not making fun of a person.

My most recent play, “Notes From the Field” was based on my having done 250 interviews around the United States on the subject of what we call the school-to-prison pipeline.

I’m interested in complicating the narrative and revealing to the people in my audience that there are many narratives. The more roots you have going off in different directions and grabbing the ground, you’re probably going to be a stronger tree. And that would be my objective.

All of my works of art is a form of activism. I don’t have answers. I don’t indict people. I can let the judges do that. I can let the media do that. I’m a dramatist.

A drama is always a constructive journey, where something is lost and then it’s going to be regained.

I went to New Orleans right after Katrina. And to watch people looking around at everything they lost and trying to make some sense and making an impromptu plan is really important to me in how I view the world.

You know, you could say, oh, my goodness, isn’t that so hard? Doesn’t that make you sad? For me, it’s the opposite. It shows me just how inventive people are.

I believe that the theater and other art forms are an opportunity to convene people around these issues and ask them while they’re sitting together to do something.

My name is Anna Deavere Smith, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on listening to people.

[The backstory of “Brief but Spectacular,” a weekly series that premièred on NewsHour in 2015, begins with creator Steve Goldbloom, the creator and host of the original comedy news show for PBS, “Everything But the News,” and his longtime producing partner Zach Land-Miller who conduct every interview off-camera and off-screen.  (The segments are all two to four minutes long and there are no cutaways to reporters or interjections of questions.)  Each Thursday, “Brief but Spectacular” introduces NewsHour viewers to original profiles; these short segments feature some of the most original contemporary figures, offering passionate takes on topics they know well.  These have included household names like actors Alec Baldwin and Carl Reiner, artist Marina Abramović,  and activist Bryan Stevenson.  Topics have included comedian, writer, and director Jill Soloway (Amazon’s original series Transparent) on gatekeepers in Hollywood, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates on police reform in America, Abramović on the art of performance, author Michael Lewis on finding disruptive characters, performers Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer on the rise of their hit Comedy Central series Broad City, engineer Jason Dunn on creating the first 3-D printer in space, and many more.]