Merry Christmas!

I do desire that we shall become better carolers!

Happy birthday, Lawdawg!

The giving of thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to all from Diagnostic and Pirate-Face!

LA Times review of 'Doctor Faustus' at ISC

No hay palabras.

Happy Halloween

It's all one ghetto man, giant gutter in outer space.

Short Hauntings

Short Hauntings

by Matt Callahan

1.

The morning of the garage sale, the family took in more than four grand. They took that to a motel from which they shopped for new houses.

2.

They sold their old house to the Coopers, a newlywed couple whom just bought their first home on the cheap. The first night of their stay, a third presence made itself known.

3.

It took all of their electrical appliances into what can only be described as a spectral void before they suddenly reappeared in the house's bathtubs the following evening. The next morning the table settings were suspended in mid-air, where the children could not reach their breakfast. They went to school hungry and terrified.

4.

The house's original owners appeared in a newspaper article, chronicling their deaths in an auto accident caused by a falling tree just off their property. The tree has since been removed, flagged as a hazard, and the property has remained vacant.

5.

Fiona O'Shea was always rumored to be a witch, this often happens to small town recluses. But it was nearly confirmed the night the town's young people inexplicably rose from their beds to put their parents to the knife. Amnesia set in at a very convenient time for Ms. O'Shea, the town's only surviving adult.

6.

The young man was very concerned with the size of the spider that he caught out of the corner of his eye. If he hadn't seen it, it would've doubtless been on his forearm the following millisecond. Swatting at it, it scoots away and he loses it. He concerns himself with the arachnid's whereabouts for the next hour or so before finding it and killing it, but the German Shepherd-sized queen lay in wait just under the apartment balcony where he smoked. And this spider business is stressful work.

7.

She used to hate the full moon. It always seemed to bear some sort of lunacy. She wasn't fond of the way the moonlight lit her pale skin, but she's much happier now with the way it falls on her hair. The rabbit squealed slightly on impact but was quickly muted my her maw. The kill measured in innumerable joules. And the howling was victorious.

8.

The theatre's managers had never seen the place so full! Go figure, some accidents happen, you start a rumor about a ghost, and the morbidly curious pile in in droves! What was once a performance space was now a macabre museum of crimes without proof. Old props had been made to look more worn, and were claimed to be evidence found in the cases. The managers were last heard laughing very loudly on the Loge before their bodies were discovered in the orchestra pit.

9.

Satan followed a boy home from school one day, but the boy did not recognize him. The Dark One took this to his advantage by offering the boy any wish in the world. The boy asked Satan that the bullies at school would stop harassing him. So Satan stopped the bullies, but the boy was never heard from again.

10.

Death row is no place for a priest. Well it is, but in the function of offering Last Rites, not waiting to be hung by the neck until dead. The desperate monk wrote out a prayer on his last scrap of toilet paper and rolled it up under his mattress. When the guards came to take him to their charge, he resisted a little and then soon quit. This did not stop the guards from clubbing him in the head, and after, he saw only blood.

Happy 30th Anniversary, Mom & Dad!

 

And thank you for always supporting me. 

Palmdale Now in 3 International Film Festivals

United LA Film Festival

Cincinnati International Film Festival and the 

Temecula Valley International Film & Music Festival

Trailer:

Happy birthday, little sis~

 

 Forever my favorite little "orphan", Sara Jane. This is she and I in "Oliver!" circa 1998. Happy birthday, Sara Beara! I love you!! 

Happy Birthday, Dr. Clevins!

 

Happiest of birthdays to my oldest friend in the world, here known affectionately at Diagnostic as Dr. Clevins. He's a doctor of driving if you have to ask. Clevins performs and records pretty regularly in multiple acts affiliated with Diagnostic, including Day of the Tentacle, which should begin work soon on a new recording. I'm proud to have known him for over twenty years, and we've been making art together for over twelve. I look forward to making lots more noise with this asshole. Happy birthday, Andrew!

Rest in Peace, Robin Williams

In fourth grade I turned in a word problem I'd written without my name on it. My teacher knew to immediately hand it back to me because the two characters in my submission were named Mork and Mindy. Rest in peace, Robin Williams.

'Palmdale' playing in United Film Festival LA

United Film Festival submission entry.

Buy tickets here.

Trailer:

Might be time for new work gloves, Callahan...

Did I not instruct that Box 5 was to be kept empty?!

True Blood

 

Had HBO decided to not cut the footage of the Confederate soldiers walking by as Bill Compton was helping smuggle his friends off the plantation, this would have been one of the faces you might have seen. Kind of a disappointment, but there's more in the pipeline! 

Happy World Theatre Day

Richard III Audition: Edgar served up with a side of Caligula

I was in rehearsal yesterday for Modern Minstrelsy when I got an email from Independent Shakespeare Company, asking me to come in today and audition for our guest director for Richard III. I spent that evening looking at a monologue that I had been preparing for my audition for Long Beach Shakespeare's production of King Lear coming up at the end of the month. I accelerated my study of the piece a bit and took it into the audition this morning on my way to rehearsal at Rogue Machine. I got three quarters through the monologue before I blanked and broke. I picked it back up from where I left off and finished. Not wanting to conclude my audition on that note, I told him that I also had my Romeo audition still in my back pocket, as well as a piece from Albert Camus' Caligula. (Truth be told, I hadn't performed the Camus piece since November.) He asked the see the Caligula piece. I love doing that monologue, as nerdy as that is to fucking say, that's what this blog is all about! It's one I've worked for hours and it's never left my brain I guess because I could just do it on the spot, as I did it before for Theatre Banshee. It seemed to leave an impression anyway, and I felt great leaving the room after that. Fingers crossed on this one.

Beware the Ides of March

King Lear audition

That's right, I have an audition for the roles of both Edgar and Edmund in Long Beach Shakespeare's production of King Lear! It will be quite the commute if I get the part, but it's a paid gig and a great speaking part. Oh, theatre, you kill me.

Modern Minstrelsy by Kermit Frazier, a new play

Modern Minstrelsy by Kermit Frazier

Sunday, March 23rd at 6PM

Beverly Hills Playhouse

254 S. Robertson Blvd

Bevery Hills, CA 90211

Theatre company logo drafts and a new play

I suppose I could use these interchangeably, I can't decide at the moment between the black and the white. I'm also drafting a new play that I think might be longer in form then I've attempted before. There's no title yet, I'm trying not to preemptively title things anymore so it doesn't inform how or what I write. But I can say that it's a touch autobiographical. More to come, stay tuned.

Bat Paper's Audition EP (dAR 93)

Stream it here: http://soundcloud.com/diagnostic-1/sets/bat-paper-audition-ep-dar-93-1

Download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/un3dh0pi1j277gc/Audition_EP_(dAR_93).rar

FPM

Valentine's at the theatre.

The Moscow Ballet brought their productions of Giselle and Romeo and Juliet to the VPAC this Valentines weekend, and I had the pleasure of running spot for them. I found it to be a very appropriate and cathartic way to spend Valentine's Day, both as a single man, and a theatre maker, as it were.

No dice.

Never heard back on that gum commercial, which filmed today while I was loading in for the Moscow Ballet at the VPAC. It's just as well though, I made money backstage today and it was my first callback after all. It would've been dumb luck to have booked it this time around. 2014 is off to a strong start, all in all. Tiny victories and all that.

Callback.

I had my first commercial callback today. It went really well and I got to read with a really cute girl. There's always a plus when giving up your entire day for a shot at a national commercial. And then there's that few thousand dollars you get paid for two days work. It was for a Swedish gum brand I probably shouldn't mention for fear of being blacklisted from commercials forever. If I get the part it's going to throw a huge wrench into my work schedule at the theatres, but hi diddly dee, an actor's life for me. Fingers crossed.

Three Minutes

The past few nights I did about three or four minutes of nice, clean stand up for the students, parents, and faculty at our school's little talent show fundraiser. The first night went the best, but all I used were clean jokes that I found online, public domain kinda shit. The second night I cut that stuff by half, and did some original Star Wars material that the kids really enjoyed but left the adults wanting. I closed with the scarecrow joke both nights to cover my ass on my exit. I got applause, it was a nice, safe place to try that shit for the first time. But now it's time to aim for some open mics.

Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. During his acceptance speech he said, "This job ain't for everyone. But hay, it's in my jeans."