Aina and I pulled out some old VHS tapes and have started digitizing them. I found two of me in my twenties performing in plays, for those who are curious and have some time to waste.
The first is a great British farce, One for the Pot. I’m the lead, playing three different characters. I was 21 years old. It was a community theatre production at the Walterdale Theatre in Edmonton. As I watch it now I can see plenty of things I should have done differently, but it was pretty funny nonetheless, and it had a good cast overall.
The second is a workshop performance of Othello adapted into Jingxi (Beijing Opera) style, not including the vocal technique – just aspects of the movement and plot devices. It was the output of a summer course at Tufts University in 1994, when I was 26. It was directed and taught by Fan Yisong and Sun Huizhou (William Sun), and it included Balinese performer I Nyoman Catra plus a few people who are now professors of theatre. I played Cassio. I don’t think I was very good, frankly (the Othello and Desdemona were much better). But it’s worth watching at least the beginning (after the introduction by Laurence Senelick) so you can see what I looked like when I was very skinny and had very long hair.
Sesquiotica 