Guys and Dolls – Cast Interview Series – Jack Lynch (Arvide)

This is the first of our series of interviews with the King of Prussia Players’ Guys and Dolls cast!  This first interview is with Jack Lynch who plays Arvide Abernathy.  Jack gives us some great insight into his character and life in this country during the time that this musical was created.  All interviews, plus interesting rehearsal footage can be found on the Guys and Dolls YouTube Channel.  Enjoy!

Jack Lynch (Arvide)

►

The Art of Action

I step out into the cold and crisp air.  The snow blankets everything, causing a stillness on the ground and a calmness in the air.  I’m surrounded by sharp contrasts in color as pristine white meets brilliant sky blue.  

Trying a new approach to enhance the experience, I turn on my Pandora music and concentrated on the task at hand.  I discover quickly that the decision to have music playing while shoveling was a good one and something I will do from that point forth.  As has always been the case with me, shoveling is a therapeutic experience as it represents the power of action and movement.  I always look forward to it and the more snow to contend with the better.  It is a meditation of sorts.  I concentrate on the motion of my muscles as the shovel digs and lifts.  I take a  moment to be grateful that I have a body that can move and become stronger with each lift and that I can take air into my lungs with little effort.    

I stop periodically to snap pictures of the beautiful landscape that surrounds me, and I bask in that beauty.  I catch myself grinning from ear to ear and I notice that the neighbors are wondering what I could possibly be happy about when faced with over a foot of snow to move.  I’m happy to face a task head-on and to work towards its completion and resolution; a good practice for life in general.  I accomplish a goal, I get exercise, and I take solace in my own thoughts. 

This clear mindset evolves into thoughts of my career and what my next goals will be moving forward.  The answers are clearer to me then ever before.  They are becoming as concise as the white snow, the blue sky, and as purposeful as the arch of the shovel carrying its load.

Four weeks to Runyonland

I realized while looking at my rehearsal schedule that Guys and Dolls opens exactly four weeks from tomorrow.  How does time move so fast without our even realizing it?  It seemed like just yesterday when I auditioned for the role, which prompted a reflective post and opened the floodgates of memories for me.  Time flew.  I suppose it is because we were busy having fun with this great production.  Guys and Dolls afforded time to re-visit my past and think seriously about my future while being wrapped up in this grand experience.  I have reunited with Sarah Brown and have taken what I knew of her before, added my experiences through the years and have grown her into a multidimensional character that I will work tirelessly to translate from the stage to the seats and, hopefully, into your hearts.  I will give her and you my very best and my all.

On another note, I am in the midst of conducting a series of interviews with different cast members, which can be found on the King of Prussia Guys and Dolls YouTube Channel.  Each interview, about 5-10 minutes in length give a little insight into the cast members who will be bringing all of these great characters to life.  The first of these interviews can be found here and I will also post them directly on my blog shortly.  Subsequent interviews will follow every week up to opening.  It has been fun hearing other cast members give their interpretation of not only their role but the role of the show in our lives. 

Four weeks to Runyonland.  Grab your guys, your dolls and your dice!

Crossroads

I stand at a crossroads.

The line of certainty is stopped and thrown from course in an instant and without hesitation.  A possibility or an opportunity presents itself proudly and relentlessly in its demands for attention.  A turn on a coin, on a dime, and something so unseen is now as succinct and resolute as a finishing sunset or as knowing as wisdom.  The course is thrown as contemplations of the future are reevaluated.

My life is full of roads taken, paths crossed, paths molded together or torn asunder as my decisions lay the groundwork for the steps into my future.  Finally clear, after so many years of derailment, I had finally found my way back again, to the road that belonged to me.  My decisions reaching back through time for later contemplation.  But now, once again, the road has split with paths leading off towards other lives yet lived and goals yet realized.  These points in life don’t come around often; when a decision can change the course of life so profoundly.  My quest never ceases so these instances are given pause.   

As the paths lay before me, a friend’s advice settles my head , “when you really need a confidant to help give you a clear vision, no one else knows what you are truly going through except yourself.”  With these words, I stand in the powerful silence just before the breath escapes the lips and the next decision is made and a new course is plotted.  Fear has no place here.

I stand at a crossroads on my way to joy.

“Don’t Die with the Music Still Inside You”

Those words, almost sounding like a command, quoted from the book,  “Ten Secrets of Success and Inner Peace,” lingered in my head long after they were said and my pen, just moments before, alive with vigorous writing as I tried to catch every word, became still in my hand.  I closed my eyes as the call continued on without my full attention.  That sentence was the perfect summation of the ultimate prize of my quest.  A culmination of my many months, years even, of soul-searching, work, and now at this place, self-actualization. 

The workshop, in just 60 minutes, summarized three areas of focus that many artists, myself included, have struggled with.  Focused Talk, Focused Action, and one that is a source of constant diligence for me, (and what Dallas Travers calls the missing link), Focused Thoughts/Mindset.  I admit to a slight hesitation when initiating the first of her tasks for Focused Talk.  I was to tell my goal to at least three people a day, while also sharing my goal (to several thousand) on her Facebook wall.  As I wrote the words, however, my hesitation quickly turned to pride and ownership.  This exercise is not only done to illicit those reactions within you but to also screen for their NYPs, in your life or the people who are “Not Your People.”  I, coincidently, had experienced this to such a degree recently that I had written about it.  Focused Actions, her second focus factor had caused major consternation with me in the past.  I hadn’t harnessed the power to say “no” to opportunities that didn’t serve my ultimate goal, thus veering me off my track and confusion my ambitions.    Dallas uses the phrase, “If it isn’t hell yes, it’s hell no.”  She challenged each of us to not take any action that didn’t serve our ultimate goal and to serve our goal every day with actions that do.  This, I know, will be a challenge but I’m willing to take it.  Lastly, the focus factor of Focused Thoughts/Mindset has been the biggest struggle for me throughout my life and the source of needing to take the long road back to myself.  Dallas talks about how your opinions shape your belief system which, in turn, fuel your actions.  If your actions our fueled by doubt.  How far can one expect to ever go?  Reject doubt and know that success is inevitable. 

That is the mindset I must take at all times if I’m to have a chance.  I have thought of this often since that workshop and call up my life’s command to not die with the music inside of me when I don’t feel as strong.  If I’m not careful, instead of inspiring me, those words will serve to haunt me.  In my moments of weakness, I can see the alternative road ahead that ignoring those words would bring; the regret at the end, the darkness.  And it is something I simply will not allow.

Life

The baton slowly but strongly, and with purpose, lowered towards the floor as the barely audible strings pulling over bows entered the air and folded over on itself until there was nothing.  My body, still holding the last ten pages of breaths, sweeping phrases, was almost electric with the force of emotion.   The silence was alive with what had just been booming moments before.  I could hear my own heart pounding in my chest, my skin slightly damp with the exertion.  I heard one low gasp from the seats and a “wow” escape someone’s lips.  Someone, like me, who could hardly contain the experience.  My own chest aching with the knowing that this was a moment in time, one of those moments that will never come again.  I thanked my life in that moment; that I could be part of this.  I felt the audience, some possibly hearing the piece for the first time, silently take stock of what had just transpired.  Sharing the amazement with me.  I brought them to another place, showed them the heroic in man, one that could produce such emotional stratosphere from pencil and paper.  To be able to use my body and voice to bring the work into the air and into them.  How does one feel at that moment but life itself?  To create, the express, to move, to breathe, to sing, to give in and feel.

How could I have even guessed, so many weeks ago, when first opening the Mozart Requiem score, still clean at the time, not yet peppered with my “Type A” markings, what I was in for?  For weeks, David Hayes, our music director, was relentless and unyielding in bringing out the emotional context of the piece through phrasing and diction.  The pages started to darken with my notes in those weeks.  Although, Mozart’s Requiem is written of emotion, for some reason, it seems to not be performed emotionally.  This would turn out to be the key component in the performance that brought this piece to such life, at least for me, and what branded the experience in my heart forever.  By the time we stood before Yannick Nézet-Séguin, our Maestro, we had worked hard to prepare the piece, phrasing in place, yet flexible, as one always must be when meeting the maestro for the first time.  It didn’t take long to realize that Yannick was of emotion and a deep well of energy.  He was unique in his use of emotional context to communicate phrasing or coloring that he wanted, which, for us, made it a logical source from which to tap and give him what he wanted.  After the first conductor’s rehearsal, the piece had become a breathing being to me.  The second layer of markings from my fingers to the pages now included words such as “fear,” “praying,” “haunting” and my favorite, “ruthless.”   Little did I know that this was just the beginning.  The piece, and Yannick with it, continued to evolve and, while a lot of singers can get uncomfortable in the unexpected that a performance brings, when a maestro takes it to another level, I welcomed it because I trusted him and his clear direction no matter what occurred.  The evolution was fitting.  One movement, while we were singing as powerful and ruthlessly as we can, Yannick looked possessed with the emotion of it, and we responded, allowing ourselves to go to that next emotional level, almost to the brink.  It was so alive.  Full of fire.  I almost had to check my voice to be sure I didn’t over sing because I wanted to give it all willingly.  And as full of fire and madness those sections were, the other sections were equal in their contrast, the quiet, the dark color, the heart-breaking and completely internal music of the Ave Verum.  It was like nothing I had ever sung.  I felt alive with it and I know that others watching in the seats felt it too; that their hearts and heads went to those places that we were able to take them, like a love-affair between us and those that opened themselves to it.

The Diva is in the Details

The voice of concern escapes their lips almost the moment the exciting goals leave ours.  We see the predicted tightened mouth of concern and their imagined pain we are sure to endure.  The eyebrows arch in judgement or a hum escapes their lips as they contemplate the endless obstacles that await us.  If they are bold enough, they list them in detail, unsolicited, as if their concern brings forth expertise.  We of big pursuits and dreams are all to familiar with these responses.  We observe them from parents, family, friends or sometimes even complete strangers.  The negative ideals from which these attitudes are born are not only irrelevant to us, but counterproductive. 

While developing my own self-motivating tools to keep my attitude in excellent working condition, I have discovered the power of surrounding myself with people of like attitudes, goals and aspirations.  These people to which we disclose our goals meet us with open arms, open minds, knowledge and encouragement.  The brow and the hum will not fall upon their faces.  

So, it was with great excitement, and uncanny timing that, while waiting for a rehearsal to begin, Maren asked me if I had read her blog post about her get-together with another fellow blogger, Abby, who had also wrote a blog post about the power of the pinky swear, or the accountability factor.  Both women decided to set some audition goals for themselves and then to be accountable to each other for them.  When I heard this, I, with excitement, added my idea of the monthly get-together to the mix and instantly invited myself to the power party.

At that moment, I looked at Maren, thinking about all of the ways in the past year we have set goals for ourselves and have harnessed the power of health, marketing, networking, practicing, auditioning and now, in the creating of a mastermind group of sorts.  I said to her that the Diva is in the details, which I suggested might be a good name for the group.   These types of details, the plans and goals that accompany fiery visions, the use of any and all tools at one’s disposable is what set apart the dreamers from the doers of dreams.