How Sweet It Is

The thrill of victory, like cotton candy flavored ice cream covered in sprinkles with pieces of gum drops in a sugar cone on a hot summer's day, tastes oh so sweet!

This week, I've been made two offers for acting work and I have to say that although I'm not a fan of ice cream, this tastes and feels just as sweet as the above mentioned treat. When you give your all to something, the fruits of your labor aren't always immediately sweet.  At times they are bitter because things didn't turn out the way you planned and therefore you go back to work, this time making sure to do that little extra to make the fruit ripe and perfectly sweet.

As an actor in New York City, I have been blessed to be a working artist.  There are tens of thousands of actors in this great city and only hundreds of roles.  Yes, someone is always left on the outside looking in and believe me, I've stood there plenty of times uneasily watching another actor play a role for which I felt I was perfect.  I've kicked myself, and second guessed choices made in an audition room while watching a guy onstage saying words I should have been saying.  I've even made myself, and I don't like to be forced to do a damn thing, go up to him and congratulate him for his work onstage after the show.  You could say I'm a sore loser, but that's not the case.  This isn't really about winning and losing, it's about wanting something so badly that you work your ass off day and night despite distractions and temptations to be the best you can be at what you believe you do best.  It's about having that drive and passion to not just book the role but to breathe new life into words on the page making them rise, walk and talk, laugh and cry, sing and dance with joy, fear, love and uninhibited courage.  This week, the 17 years of keeping my nose to the grindstone and plugging away at my dream produced sweet, succulent fruit.

The first role is a role I have played over a 100 times, each time presenting new challenges.  The next time I grace the boards and speak the words of John and Pete, two Marines who love what they do so much that at times they are feared and misunderstood, the challenge will be once again new.  I have to find a way to say the words for the very first time while being as familiar with them as my name or my Mom's voice.  I don't think I have ever performed in Philadelphia and that, makes this experience new.  I have one more year of priceless life experience under my belt to help me on my journey with these characters that I didn't have the last time I spoke their words.  I have more faith in my work than I had the last time I brought these characters to life in an attempt to tell their stories.  How so very sweet it is to get another chance!

Semeerah Luqmaan-Harris and Brandon Jones in Round House Thatre’s production of 'ReEntry.' Credit: Photo by Danisha Crosby.

The next role is one that, according to the playwright and director, is perfect for me.  Now, I've been told that a role was in my wheelhouse or that I'm the right type for a role, but not once have I been told that I was perfect for one.  In this role I will not only get to act, I will also get to sing and play guitar.  Do you understand how exciting that is for me, who lives to do all three of those things?  It's being told that you get to have the desires of your heart every single day for 3 months and get paid for it!  I get paid to do my passion y'all!!!  That was a little Kentucky that came out, but I want you to understand how huge this is to me.

I'm a man who grew up in a town with a population of less than 10,000 people, only has two school systems, everyone knows your business, doesn't have a movie theater, mall or public transportation and when I tell people where I'm from their response is usually the question: "France or Texas?"  I'm from Paris, Kentucky located in Bourbon County.  Like most small towns in America and all over the world, if you don't leave you never will.  Well, I left because I had a dream.  A dream that was born at the age of 14 years old in Mrs. Marlene Norvell's Drama I class in Bourbon County High School in the one act play Help by David G. Grote.  I played the fireman.  I didn't have many lines and I wasn't the star.  The lines I did have I spoke so fast I made the guy on the MicroMachines commercial sound like he was standing in molasses talking in slow motion after 3 shots of Knob Creek.

It may sound corny but at that moment I knew that I wanted and needed to do this for the rest of my life.  The next year when I played the role of Albert Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie, the school's first musical in twenty years, I knew I loved to act AND sing.  I didn't have much confidence in my voice and to this day still struggle with it but I love to sing.  If American Idol were a singing in the shower competition, I'm sorry Kelly who?  Ruben...the sandwich?  Carrie Under...what?  Fantasia... the movie?

I always loved music as a kid.  I had a Smurfs drum set and an organ at age 3, I got my first guitar from my babysitter, Gladys (who loved Elvis and had porcelain figurines of The King all around her house, some wound up and played his songs).  I didn't know how to play it and never took lessons but I loved the guitar.  It wasn't until after going through my childhood playing sports (karate, baseball, football, basketball),then going away to college at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music (BFA Acting '03), that I even tried to learn how to really play the instrument.  When I came home looking for it one weekend my Dad informed me that he didn't think I wanted it so he got rid of it.

In the basement of my Grandparents' house in Carlisle, KY for my third birthday.

I know, shame on you Doug Jones.  Shame. On. You.

So, a college classmate and buddy of mine named Alec taught me three chords: G, C and D one afternoon at his apartment while we listened to Jimi and he smoked a bowl.  Alec was and probably still is an amazing guitar player.  We'd sit and listen to Jimi, SRV, Zepplin, AC/DC, Shuggy Otis and more and Alec would play along.  There have been rumors that once on a date, he brought a girl back to his place, picked up the guitar turned on some music, strapped up and played with his back to the girl for so long she got up and left without him knowing.  He never did that when we jammed but I'd try to keep up but all I knew were G, C and D but I was in love with the guitar and devoted my whole Christmas break of my freshman year to learning those chords so that I could one day play like Alec.

There have been times that I have fallen asleep holding my guitar.  I've bled and sacrificed skin on the fingerboard, I've taken my guitar all over the country.  When I play, everything that I feel inside wants to come out through the strumming and my fingers nimbly moving from fret to fret on the steel strings.  I love and trust my guitar more than anyone or anything on this planet.  She allows me to express myself uncut and raw 100% every time I touch her and has never left me.  She knows my deepest darkest secrets, my unconquered fears, my desires and dreams.  People, if we (my guitar and I), get to do a show together in which I act, sing and make music for 3 months, I very well might fly off of the stage into the house hovering over the audience with euphoric jubilation...

I didn't mean to make you sit through such a long post tonight.  I'm just so full with joy and excitement brought on by the sweet fruits of my labor.  Oh how sweet it is!