Likeable female protagonists & Patton Oswalt on gamechangers

Must Read #1:
Stealing the Herd by playwright Carolyn Gage over on Howlround is about 'likeability' of protagonists in Broadway musicals, and it's fantastic.


Here's a few quotes:

It would appear that there exists a significant double standard for what is deemed acceptable behavior for male protagonists and female ones.

And:

What they know, and what I am learning, is that “likeable” means feminine. Even if the protagonist is the world’s greatest sharpshooter, she must still throw a match to get her man and take a number that says “I enjoy being a girl.

Fantastic - go read it!

Must Read #2:
Patton Oswalt delivered the keynote at Montreal's Just for Laughs in Montreal a week or so ago.  If you haven't seen this yet, it's got some great thoughts for any creative art maker - just substitute what you do any time he uses the word 'comedian'

He writes 2 letters, one to the 'comedian in 2012', and one to the 'gatekeepers':

I need to decide more career stuff for myself and make it happen for myself, and I need to stop waiting to luck out and be given. I need to unlearn those muscles.

 Our careers don’t hinge on somebody in a plush office deciding to aim a little luck in our direction. There are no gates. They’re gone.

Highly inspiring - check it out 

Roundtables from the Hollywood Reporter

For a while now, the Hollywood Reporter has been putting up group video interviews of actors during awards season.  Since Emmy noms are soon, they've just done a set with tv actors.  There are four interviews, roughly an hour each in length, separated into comedy and drama and men and women. 

I found gems in each of these interviews - ranging from Juliana Margulies' recommendation of an app for script work to Johnny Galecki reminiscing about the Roseanne set to Martha Plimpton and the comedy women talking about the intersection of female and comedy to the overall humility coming off of Kiefer Sutherland.

You can watch them at these links:

Comedy Women Roundtable
Comedy Men Roundtable
Drama Women Roundtable
Drama Men Roundtable

Let me know what you think! (I first found this via the website/blog Daily Actor)

Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf on O'Neill

It's an email exchange turned into an article for the NYTimes - he's playing Hickey in Iceman Cometh in Chicago, she's playing Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey in London.  Full of insight into process, backstage rituals and the challenges of O'Neill's characters.

I love that Lane makes sure to say hi to the two actors backstage who enter before him and talk about having seen Hickey when they enter.  I was fascinated by the facts that Metcalf wears prosthetics on her hands and prefers to be slightly hungry while performing a show.

A quote that resonated for me from Nathan Lane:

"Even after months of preparation you don’t really start to figure something like this out until you’re in front of an audience. You need time. In some ways just to get through the terror of taking this on, I think I had mapped it out too much and needed to let go of everything and let the play happen to me more." 

It's a really great article.  RTWT.