The Bold Acting Podcast

14 and 11 (almost 12) are keeping their cards close to their chest. I am always asking them if they’re masturbating yet in an attempt to normalize it. I am beginning to think I have failed. You know when someone talks so much you can’t hear them anymore? I think that has happened.

I haven’t used porn since September 2022. I wasn’t hooked on it but I did rely on it and I wanted to have my house in order before my children came of age.

I miss it. So convenient. Not like a miss cigarettes. Now those things are addictive. But we already knew that.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) demonstrated that the same genes subserving addiction craving are also associated with salt craving, a natural instinct. In other words, addiction is disordered wanting at a very basic, cellular level.(Dr. Donald Hilton, Culture Reframed, March 13th, 2024).

A couple summers ago I bought my children an online sexual health course to bolster the education they weren’t getting here in regressive Ford Nation. (Read about it in this charming piece called Canada Province Cancels New Sex Ed Curriculum After Protests from the BBC.) 14 and 11 didn’t like the course. They said the jokes were terrible. I watched a little and thought their review was overly kind. The jokes were unspeakably bad. I almost wrote the organization for a refund.

Both of their phones are dumb. Just a phone, text and Spotify on them. And the laptops are on safe-search, which probably doesn’t do much. Abstinence doesn’t work. I should provide them with an alternative. So I’m scouring vintage shops and Facebook Marketplace looking for old porn mags.

I mean, she’s wearing a Christmas tree. Not exactly XXX.

Growing up we had a porno bush. It was a rhododendron tree on the west side of the West Van Ice Arena. It always had porn in it. We called it the Porno Bush.

We also had a vodka stump. But anyway …

I am hoping that old-timey soft core porn is a good idea. Better than them not hearing anything I say. Definitely an improvement over the things they can see online. Besides, there’s interviews with Kurt Vonnegut and Maya Angelou. Plus, all that great advertising.

Zig When Others Zag

Exploring the opposite can unleash a lot of potential. If you’re at least not doing the same thing everyone else is doing you’ll separate yourself from the pack. You’re not being afraid. And fear impacts judgement so you’re making less mistakes. You’re thinking for yourself (I tell myself). Rather than wringing my hands and telling my kids porn will ruin your future sex-life I am recognizing the lay of the land and I am showing them another path forward.

Other People’s Parents

The value of my children being with adults that aren’t me or their mother is also underrated. The importance of having friends isn’t just for companionship, it’s for their companion’s parents and caregivers too. Other adults who have lived a life and learned something from it. And whose voice they can still hear.

In 1994 I got my first email address. In 1995 my cousin built me my first website. Fatlamb.com. (So old it predates the wayback machine.) In 1997 Ontario got a new sexual health curriculum. And that is still the same one that is taught to our children today because Dougy Fresh didn’t want to piss-off the religious. So our kids aren’t being taught by other people’s parents how dangerous the internet can be.

I’m going to do other things to encourage healthy habits for my two male children. I’m going to buy them beer. I’m going to suggest they can party at mine. I’ll help them procure fake IDs. They can have their own Uber accounts. Whatever it takes so they aren’t in their rooms staring at TikTok.

I just hope they don’t come home with cigarettes. I’d be hard-pressed to say no.

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This week on the Bold Acting Podcast I read my notes gleaned from Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. One of the things he talks about is why we get ourselves into trouble: because it’s easier than finishing what has to be done, Pressfield says. Everything from being late to blaring loud rap music, drug addiction, compulsive screwing up and jealousy is resistance (his word for the universal force that is at war with the creative spirit).

Obviously there is a lot wrong with the above statement. Addiction is an illness not a choice. And I would suggest listening to Hip Hop at whatever volume level is more a matter of musical taste than anti-creativity. He has a preponderance towards the angry old-manisms to be sure. Those aside the book for the most part acts as a tome of encouragement. A rarity these days when it comes to the Arts and artists.

But this trouble we get ourselves into is also living a life. To be jealous might not be the best way to spend all of your time but it also means you care about someone that someone else seems to care about too. One man’s screw-up could be another man’s risk taken. What seems bad at the time can end up being excellent. Like the dissolution of my marriage.

That is not how you work an elipses, Esquire. Shame on you.

The working artist harnesses the urge for trouble and puts it in their work, says Pressfield. Sure. Maybe. Not all the time. If you’re out there engaging with other humans there’s gonna be trouble. At least you better hope there is. Without it there is no grist. And then what will you feed your mill?

One of the best things you can do for your performance is to be an actor that gets themselves into trouble. We don’t want to watch polished as much as we want to watch actors deal successfully with a lot of problems. That’s why you see Brad Pitt eating all the time and Sam Rockwell dancing and check out Kyle Maclachlan talking on his CB radio while driving a car and reading his notebook as he enters Twin Peaks.

For your next audition see if you can’t load yourself up with props. Try eating convincingly on-camera. Give yourself a couple marks. Add an eye-line if you can. All this will give your performance a dynamism that others will not.

The responsible actor shows up early with their lines memorized and then they jump into the manure as quickly as possible and see if they can’t come up smelling of roses.

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I’m going to ask you just one favour, if you like reading this thing then sign up your entire contacts list to it, would ya? Just kidding, that would be cheating. Okay, how about just five of your friends. Share this post with them and suggest to them they might like to read it on a weekly basis.

Thanks so much.

For more information go to https://boldacting.com.

Find my podcast The Bold Acting Podcast wherever the podcasts are.

Steven Pressfield is a cheerleader. And we need more of those in this world. There are too many naysayers out there and inside our heads. We don’t need someone else telling us we’re getting it wrong.

What serves me as a teacher? To position myself as rarefied? To conflate experience with wisdom? To profess my way as being the only way?

In separating myself from the pack, I want to remain a student and a cheerleader. We didn't get into this mess because we've been making too much art. We've been focusing on the wrong things.

It's time to play.

“Some things are too important to take seriously.” - Oscar Wilde

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If you like the Bold Acting Podcast talk it up at your next dinner or book club. Word-of-Mouth is the best form of advertising. If you don’t like it maybe just keep that to yourself.

Rating and reviewing the thing is also greatly appreciated. It goes a long way to spreading the word.

To get in touch email me at:  [email protected] on Instagram  @jasonbrydenofcanada

The song used in this podcast is called Sure and it was made by Braak which is electronic and cinematic music made by Øyvind Strand Endal from Norway.Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/braak/sureLicense code: AVTXANAUYZXHSHB0

Rebecca Northan has been improvising and working as an actor since the 1990s. I met her at our illustrious alma mater The University of Calgary. She got her start at the famous Loose Moose Theatre Company in Calgary. There she met founder and improv master Keith Johnstone whose teachings would shape Northan’s career and life.

In 2004 she was nominated for a Gemini Award for "Best Ensemble in a Comedy". Northan is also a five-time Canadian Comedy Award nominee, and one time winner, for "Best Female Improviser". She has made several appearances at the Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in the World Improv Games, and was a member of The Second City Toronto mainstage cast. She has also appeared as a guest host on CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

In 2016, she won the Dora Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female for her popular show Blind Date which has been performed over 1000 times.

With her performing partner Bruce Horak she created their wildly popular interpretation of the Scottish play in mask, Goblin Macbeth which has recently had sold-out runs at the Stratford Festival and Bard on the Beach. In February of 2024 Goblin: Oedipud debuted at One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo in Calgary. You can see the Goblins for yourself at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton in January 2025.

I spoke with Northan over Zoom from her home in Stratford Ontario.

The BOLD Interview is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. That way you’ll know I’m not quietly resenting you.

Gabrielle Zevin wrote in her novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

“The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures … Where white European people only make art about white European people, with only white European references in it. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience not their own.”

The slogan Nothing about us, without us was first used in 1505 as a political motto that helped form and establish  constitutional legislation in the Kingdom of Poland. It was also used in pre-WWII when the Munich Agreement was signed between Nazi Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy effectively giving good chunk of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland to Hitler. Guess who wasn’t there? Czechoslovakia. Thanks a lot Neville Chamberlain.

In the 1990s the term was popularized by South African and then American disability activists. In 2004 the UN used the phrase as the theme for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Which is every year on December 3rd.

A beautiful map showing Nazi settlements in Czechia. Ahhh, settlements. Rarely a sign of geo-political good.

For a long time I was an at-par actor with some comedy chops. Coupled with my look meant I got all the commercials. It was a wonderful life. Until it ended. Now the thing that helped me get work (the colour of my skin) is no longer in demand as it once was.

How to respond to my little struggle? In front of friends, my family and most of all my children my response might more readily take on a philosophical approach than if I were alone.

“What other people think of me is none of my business.”

“I’ll just have to become so good they can’t not hire me.”

“It was a good run. Now it is time to work harder.”

The flame of my anger diminishes under the cooling influence of witnesses.

But what of my white, male children? They never had a good run. Maybe they won’t be actors and so it won’t matter so much?

I was used to a life and now I must get used to another. But if I make stuff with too many white people I might be accused of a thing. And if I make stuff without white people I will be accused of another. And if I make stuff about my people versus other people or vice versa I am still walking in a minefield.

Malcolm Gladwell said on Talk Easy:

You can’t just have stories about Black people written by Black people. You can’t just have stories about white people written by white people. You can’t limit the human imagination. Sometimes the most interesting perspectives on one group come from someone who is not of that group. Their perspective does not have to be congruent with the thing they are describing.

He also said Hollywood got themselves into this mess by having all the stories told by white guys for the last 100 years or so. (I do find it interesting that the majority of those “white guys” were Jewish but that’s another newsletter I think.)

So what is helpful? Joining the brigades of the angry that have weaponized the word woke? Woke, from what I can tell isn’t a bad thing if it just means you’re awake to the struggle of others. I want everyone to have a fair shake. If that is wokeness then that is I.

If I did embrace my angry-guy potential I certainly would not be alone. But the quality of the witness (aka the choir) would not necessarily foster growth or learning in me. Preaching to the choir no longer satisfies.

I would rather be on my bike and afraid for my life than in my car and be angry. So for the most part I stay out of my car. This is my self-imposed binary. I saw a dad with a stroller the other day in a crosswalk try to punch a car that was passing too closely to his mewling charge. I used to be that dad (I used my foot though).

Art is there to push boundaries. Which boundaries? My boundaries? Yours? I don’t know.

What I do know is that art will happen no matter what. And if you join in the making of it eventually, with practice, you’ll worry less about the moving targets of public opinion.

The great art comes from when you’re open and relaxed. You don’t want to clutch your stick too tightly. Or be worried about hurting someone else’s feelings. There are a lot of feelings out there.

One day, many years from now, after much hand-wringing and blood shed, the living will look back and shake their heads at us. We always do.

We chip away, we stay fluid, we write nothing in wet cement. If I err on the side of love and listening, add a dash of my powerful charm/humour offensive, my intentions will be clear.

Remember that scene in This Is 40 where Debbie and Pete are fighting? And Debbie, exasperated, says “Cancel my 40th birthday party I’m not in the mood.” And Pete says “No way, I’ve already booked the caterers and I’m not calling everyone back when in two days you change your mind.” We are Debbie. We’re riding a pendulum. It’s hard not to overcorrect. It’s hard to find the bullseye.

Journalist Saathnam Sanghera author of Empireland (a great read) talks about how the British Empire is still important today even though it’s dead. Even though the ersatz American Empire is in its death throws and taking all the oxygen. What England colonized between the 17th and the 20th centuries informs how we speak, the food we eat, where some of our money comes from, what’s in our museums, our immigration rules and historical, religious and governmental policies.

We can’t not be affected by other cultures. The aim is to do it while giving credit instead of just stealing everything.

Change is the one thing you can count on. And that’s hard. But that is also where the art is. Lucky for us we are in a golden age of adversity. Make art first. Ask questions later. And for god’s sake don’t end up a Czechoslovakia.

I’m going to ask you just one favour, if you like reading this thing then sign up your entire contacts list to it, would ya? Just kidding, that would be cheating. Okay, how about just five of your friends. Share this post with them and suggest to them they might like to read it on a weekly basis.

Thanks so much.

For more information go to https://boldacting.com.

Find my podcast The Bold Acting Podcast wherever the podcasts are.

The song used in this podcast is called Sure and it was made by Braak which is electronic and cinematic music made by Øyvind Strand Endal from Norway.Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/braak/sureLicense code: AVTXANAUYZXHSHB0

Having lost over 90% of his eyesight to a childhood Cancer, artist and actor Bruce Horak has has been making stuff in the world of the fully-sighted for over 25 years. Bilateral Retinoblastoma is a cancer which appears on the retina of the eyes, the treatment of which left Horak completely blind in one eye, with only 9% sight in the remaining eye.

He has performed across Canada, the United States and Europe with Monster Theatre and his own solo shows This is Cancer which won a Betty Mitchell Award 2007 and Assassinating Thompson which explores the unique way he sees the world and the mysterious death of one of Canada’s greatest artists Tom Thomson all while Horak paints a picture of the audience.

Horak also originated the role of Hemmer, the sightless alien on Paramount’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. On stage you can see him regularly perform with Spontaneous Theatre in their two hit shows Blind Date and Goblins Macbeth.

Go to brucehorak.com for more information on his paintings and to sign up for his newsletter. As a longtime fan I know you’ll enjoy it.

I spoke to Bruce from his home in Stratford Ontario where he was surrounded by his paintings and kitchen renovations. I asked him how the renos were going and how important is a new kitchen to a visually impaired person.

How To Be A Person is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

To get in touch email me at:  [email protected] on Instagram  @jasonbrydenofcanada

The song used in this podcast is called Sure and it was made by Braak which is electronic and cinematic music made by Øyvind Strand Endal from Norway.Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/braak/sureLicense code: AVTXANAUYZXHSHB0

As far as cuisine is concerned one must read everything, see everything, hear everything, try everything, observe everything, in order to retain in the end, just a little.” — Fernand Point, father of French Cuisine.

The future is not here yet. Why are we so enamoured with it? And the past? What is so bad about the present?

Do you remember that voice-over in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Read Line?

Who's doin' this? … Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?

What does it mean to take nothing for granted? In performance it means notice everything about your scene partner, about your environment. If you are really listening you’ll see and hear and feel everything. You won’t be worrying about the lines because to be truly present you can’t be worrying about what you’re going to say next. That is in the future. And it does not exist.

"One of the most important things distinguishing man from other animals is that man can take pleasure from drinking without being thirsty" - Fernand Pointe

Many of us suffer from the mental illness called nostalgia. We listen to the same Pink Floyd songs rather than exploring new music. We watch the same Shakespeare plays instead of trying on a new writer that might also have something to say. We would rather watch Love, Actually every Christmas or go see the Nutcracker rather than branching out and trying on Arnaud Desplechin’s Un Conte de Noël (Catherine Deneuve presides over familial seasonal dysfunction) or Mike Bartlett’s play Snowflake (A Brexiteer argues with his daughter and her friend).

But we miss out on so much when our heads are in the clouds of the past or our brows furrowed over a future that may never come. We suffer twice. We loose time. I have maybe thirty good summers left. Maybe. How many do you have? Will we look back and go Ahhh! The times I spent worrying over global heating was some of my most precious memories.

Here’s a photo of me biting my nails!

And look at this entry in my Courage Journal. I spent a whole weekend worrying about a thing I said at a party!

Thank God I posted that black square that time. It made such a difference. And now I can die at peace in the knowledge that I did my best.

People are a huuuuge pain in the ass. But being with people is still the most fulfilling way to pass the time before time runs out. Not that I don’t love being a solitary man … sometimes. Opportunity for growth, intimacy, connection are much harder when it’s just you and the cat.

Who happens to be an evil pear-shaped killer, the colour of an apricot.

In your scene work forget about the lines. Fuck the lines. Those are someone else’s hopes and dreams. The acting happens in the white swaths of paper those same damn lines are written upon. Be with your scene partner and see everything they are doing, hear everything they are saying and not saying. Try everything! And then cross your heart and hope to die that you may just retain a little.

How To Be A Person is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Oscar Wilde said some things are too important to take seriously. And this is Rick Rubin’s stance on creativity.

For me the pragmatic act of making art is the destination. And if we’re wary enough of inspiration we can get down to the business of getting our reps in. Art isn’t about thinking or even about being in a state of mind. It’s about doing it. And most of the time it’s better to be out of your mind and in your body.

Just make art. Quit waiting to be visited by the Great Muse. Like everything it takes practice. If you’re spending too much time reading books by artists on how fucking magical everything is you might be procrastinating.

Just turn off your brain and start making stuff.

But first, listen to this podcast.

How To Be A Person is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

To get in touch email me at:  [email protected] on Instagram  @jasonbrydenofcanada

The song used in this podcast is called Sure and it was made by Braak which is electronic and cinematic music made by Øyvind Strand Endal from Norway.Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/braak/sureLicense code: AVTXANAUYZXHSHB0

A Guyanese-Canadian actor Nicola Correia-Damude is best known for her role as Dr. Lucy Di Silva on Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent.

Nicola came over to my house to talk about how, up until six years ago, she didn’t have a career in Film & TV. Since recent cultural shifts she has never been busier.

In the before times she said she was “too ethnic, too mixed race, too fat, too tall, too this, too that, too everything.” But the birth of her child put that “everything” in perspective. And as she freed herself from the need for other’s approval she was able to step into her own as an artist.

For more information go to boldacting.com/classes

To get in touch email me at:  [email protected] on Instagram  @jasonbrydenofcanada

The song used in this podcast is called Sure and it was made by Braak which is electronic and cinematic music made by Øyvind Strand Endal from Norway.Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/braak/sureLicense code: AVTXANAUYZXHSHB0

The Bold Acting Podcast a listener-supported venture. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

This week I went to the Comedy Bar here in Toronto and I did not get my money’s worth.

We went to see the 9:30 standup show called Point Break Comedy because we didn't have time to go to the 8 o'clock improv show “Nice Time” that has a lot of heavy hitters in it.

The first Comic got up and was the picture of a young stand-up comedian. Odd, bad with eye contact, lots of inappropriate humour. He told jokes. They weren't always great, but they were jokes. That's something that one would expect a standup show you're saying to yourself. Me too. That's what I expected. But I was to discover with the subsequent comedians, there were very few jokes to be had. Instead there was mostly something called crowd work.

Crowd work is when the comedian interviews audience members and then mines the interaction for laughs. Todd Barry is a master at it. My old friend Phil Hanley is really good at it.

Crowd work has become a contentious element in comedy because of how lazy it is. So many comedians rely on it these days. Crowd work is great in the hands of a pro. And when that pro has earned the privilege. You have to earn it.

The second comedian was in dirty clothes. Unwashed jeans, an unwashed baseball cap worn backwards atop an unwashed face. The hoodie he wore he had sweat through so thoroughly his pit stains were almost down to his elbows. He didn't have any jokes, but he did have crowd work. He asked Larry the lawyer in the front row, all about his life. It didn't seem like he had prepared any material for the evening. This is lazy. And when you have a paying audience this is contempt. For people, for comedy. He even mentioned there were only 12 of us, as though it were our fault.

Perhaps he doesn't realize how hard it is to get out of the house these days, to find a sitter these days, to buy tickets, to find parking and to find the energy to take a risk on a bunch of unknown comics.

The second comedian came out with a basketball and handed it to an audience member. There was no joke attached. Just a ball. And then he announced he too would be doing some crowd work. Terrific. This started off as the same interviewing of Larry the lawyer. As though he wasn’t aware of what brilliance his prior compatriot had just perpetrated mere minutes before. Like he was fucking around in the green room with a basketball perhaps.

And then when he moved on to me I said I wasn't interested. I said I was interested in jokes than in more crowd work. This did not go over well. This was not what he was hoping for.

I’m a terrible liar. I have no poker face. I am not to be trifled with by a man-child, half my age that thinks they are above comedy. That put no work in. That feels they are entitled to more.

I clearly rattled the young man and for that I am sorry. It was not my intention to go to a comedy club and speak to the comedians. If I wanted to interact with the performers, I would've saved that for the improv show that had ended an hour earlier. That I had wished I had gotten to in time. Little did I know that there would be so much shitty improv at a stand-up comedy show under the guise of working the crowd.

The third comedian whose name is Abhi Pamnani was charming, funny, with an infectious energy. He spent the whole time trying to gain my approval in spite of himself.

Contempt for the art form you are practicing. How confounding. How can you put in the reps? Contempt for the people that show up for you. How can you serve your audience when you revile them?

I hope I got to that young man in a way where, after he cools down and stops resenting me, he thinks, maybe that asshole has a point. Maybe I should start writing some jokes once in a while. Because as it stands I’m not getting my money’s worth.

How To Be A Person is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.