When first starting out doing live acting, it took me a while to finally get some of the finer points of what makes this art so difficult. Unlike TV or commercials where you can cut and take a look at what it is you may have actually done wrong, theater is such a different ballgame, especially with a role as small as Baylen.

Why I found this role difficult is because it is a semi-important part that stresses the severity of the situation these salesmen are in. Someone robbed the office, and they are all suspects, and not only are they suspects of a crime, but they still have to perform so they don’t get fired. What does that have to do with me? Well, I don’t have a monologue or speeches. I just have a handful of sentences, and all I do is call people’s names.

Baylen is required to be directing the actors on stage, and successfully interject and diffuse the situations that are running off on tangents, while standing his ground and bringing a sense of respect to the characters involved. In my point of view that’s hard to do when you don’t have that monologue to beat someone down with, or express yourself. Yelling all your lines to get the respect is definitely not the option for this role. So the director came up with an interrogation exercise to help me sound more like he imagined this cop to be, instead of just the guy walking in and out saying his lines.

The Interrogation


This was the most entertaining part of rehearsals for me thus far. The director brought in all the actors to sit in while I perform my interrogation. We were all in character; they sat in a chair and I drilled them for the answers to find who had robbed the office.

This was by far the best way I could get into this role. I have to be the jerk cop. The guys all walk out of the office angry as hell, so I had to be humiliating, assertive, and, yes, yell a bit as well. The point is, I had to do it over and over and over, and they had to tell the director, “Nah, he’s too nice, or to respectful, etc etc.” And it wouldn’t stop until they told the director, yeah, he was an ass. To where I even surprised myself with some of the comments or humiliation tactics that just popped into my head after doing it for a little while. If anything I learned that doing an off-book behind the scenes type of role-play isn’t as silly as I had once thought it would be. It drove a point home, to the character and to me.

Do it again! Until I got more questions. And more answers, and every time we were done, I’d be asked. “Did he do it?” And that’s yet another hard part, especially when you know who had done it.

I never thought Baylen would be an interesting character, but definitely after this type of character building, I had a whole new look of what Baylen should be.

Now, I just have to remember my damned lines!