The Bold Acting Podcast

I spent this past week on the road with two dear, longtime friends as they needed some cheap labour for their comedy show they’re touring around Ontario. We improvised from Ottawa to Cornwall to Peterborough and back to Toronto. We stayed in Airbnbs, ate at questionable hours, didn’t sleep enough, and drove for days. We performed on nights there was a world series. We danced like monkeys for drunk...

Somehow with all that’s going on the pressure is off. I’m reminded not to be surprised. Dogs are going to bark, baker’s gonna bake and humans are going to treat each other terribly. What’s important to you? For me, for now, it’s blood. Tonight I made some fake blood. Two tablespoons of chocolate syrup, one cup of corn syrup and some red food colouring. This is for a short film, a Western, I’m maki...

We have shot two episodes of a digital series I have created called Kensington Diner. We have four more to go. I based some of them on some of my favourite films: Cleo de Cinq a Sept, In Bruges, When Harry Met Sally, My Son the Fanatic. I steal from the greats — I do not just let myself be inspired by — and then I put someone else’s ideas or filmic techniques or casting choices or story elements t...

From the Oxford English Dictionary hypocrite, n. From the Middle English by way of Old French: ecclesiastical; and the Greek: One who falsely professes to be virtuously or religiously inclined; one who pretends to have feelings or beliefs of a higher order than his real ones: A pretender, a dissembler, an actor on the stage. It’s all about me, unfortunately. Every prescriptive pearl is aimed at me...

I found a book in a little library called Talk Like Ted. It’s annoying both because I’m easily annoyed and it was written by a finance Chad that’s more successful than me. One suggestion is when you want to engage an audience (like at a Ted Talk) teach them something new. Or at least frame it in a novel way. I’ve been doing this newsletter for a couple years now and I am ready for something new. S...

A pendulum is a weight called a bob suspended from a pivot so it can swing freely. In Math there is a simple gravity pendulum that swings without friction. This is so nerds can measure things like amplitude and bob’s trajectory. In real life there are other forces affecting the period of oscillation, like gravitational pull and friction. The pendulum is within us and without. A starving man overea...

Now more than ever actors have to make their own opportunities. On the first episode we talk about how ACTRA members can make their own stuff and how best to navigate the ACTRA Toronto Co-op agreement. Cohosted by Gord Rand and Jason Bryden. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit boldacting.substack.com/subscribe

How to be a Person is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. In Judith Kerr’s YA novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (based on her escape from Nazi Germany as a child) she writes about how leaving her home and moving to Switzerland, Paris and finally London was a great adventure. It was not, of course, for her parents. They ma...

2009. A party at a house in Silver Lake. A horror movie director, named Tom, in a white button down shirt. A fat man with an architect’s eyewear that knew Jack Kerouac. The living room had a billiards table. The parlour had a wet bar, a wine closet and a stripper’s pole. I had made the hosts bucatini in a red sauce the week before. They served a better version of the same dish tonight. She had a t...

Porn is no longer relegated to sex acts. If the definition of a porn compulsion is an inability to stop using it (and let’s face it, we’re not just passively watching porn) then porn is also the way we interact with social media, dating apps and the biggest streamer in the world, YouTube. If you’re swiping and you’ve thought to yourself, “I’m 30 minutes closer to the grave and I have nothing but s...

27. How To Be A Person — A Second Intention The kids were dressed-up. The parents were sweaty. 14 was graduating from his tiny middle school  — population 58 students — at 1:30PM on a Wednesday in June. The ceremony was held in the gym at Shirley Street P.S. in the Portuguese neighbourhood of Brockton Village. Beside the school is 75 St. Clarens. The very first house we lived in all those years ag...

When I type the title of this newsletter there is always a grammatical negotiation that goes on in my head. Title case isn’t, as previously thought, capitalizing the first letter of every word. It is capitalizing just the major words — which suggests there are minor words. These are articles and pronouns. (Even in 2024 grammar doesn’t really care all that much about your pronouns.) But what of ‘be...

Everybody knows the polls look terrible for Justin. Everyone knows Pierre Poillievre will be our next Prime Minister. But there are three things that Justy Trews could do differently that would afford him a more elegant exit. By virtue of Pierre’s runaway popularity I find myself hoping the lengthy run-up to the next election is just enough rope for the Calgarian. And by the way, he IS a Calgarian...

What stories are you telling yourself? Victimhood is the neighbourhood I used to live in (but I’m not talking about trauma. I’m just talking about how the ego hijacks.) A favourite story I used to tell myself was the one where I absolve myself of all responsibility for bad things happening. It was in 1993 and a friend of mine accused me of hitting on his girl. I would never have done such a thing....

Born in 1970 in Lviv, Ukraine Dmitry Chepovetsky’s family moved to Regina when he was a baby. He began acting in high school before attending theatre school at Ryerson now known as Toronto Metro University. Chepovetsky is best known for his recurring role on ReGenesis as Bob Melnikov, the show’s lead biochemist and a person with autism. The role garnered him two Gemini Award nominations for best a...

Eric Peterson is one of Canada’s most iconic actors. With a career that spans more than 50 years. Best known for his roles in Corner Gas, Street Legal and onstage as the WWI flying ace Billy Bishop in Billy Bishop goes to War which he co-created with writer and composer John Gray. We talk about how at age 77 he doesn’t have any work lined-up. As well as what makes for great performance and what wa...

Thanks to my paid readers. I appreciate you more than you know. I brag about you in social settings. You don’t have to pay for this but you do. The future looks brighter with you in my corner. If you like this newsletter consider upgrading to paid. Doing so gives you license to complain to me about spelling misteakes, grammatical errors, etc. Consider becoming a paid subscriber. Apples to Oranges...

Getting advice from comedians is like getting advice from a funny person that has managed to survive one of the most difficult vocations around. I don’t have to tell you that comedians come out on stage, into what is historically a hostile environment their only weapons a mic and their words. Who better to give survival tips? Jimmy Carr is a British stand-up comedian known for his offensive one-li...

"What I Learned ..." is one of three different streams of podcasts you’ll find under the hospices of The Bold Acting Podcast. The other two are the Bold Interview (upcoming talks include Eric Peterson ) and this newsletter. Find all the episodes wherever the podcasts are for you. Friday, May 3rd, 2024 Advice from a stand-up doesn’t seem so wrong. British comic Jimmy Carr had a boring life, he didn...

Thank you to the paying customers, you golden few that have upgraded to paid. I really appreciate you. Do you pay for other newsletters? If so what makes it worth it? I’ve included a poll here for paid subscribers. I’d love to know what you think and how I can make BOLD better. This is an excerpt from my upcoming book: Be Bold ‘Cause You’re Going to Die. (When it comes out you have only one choice...

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...

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...

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...

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 Com...

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, wi...