IF YOU SEE THIS MAN, KICK HIM IN THE BALLS.
This is Christopher Borgman. Chris was in the my show Niagara Falls!, but he decided suddenly that he HAD to move to New York this week. I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned, proper actors don't drop out of a show in the middle of a run no matter what the reason. It's just not cricket. Besides, I lived in New York for twelve years. I can assure you, there are already plenty of douchebags in New York. They don't need another one.
By the way. My mother is NOT dead. Nor is my father. Our good friend Victor Lopez has recently lost both his parents, his mother just in the past week. Many people mistakenly believe that Victor is a member of our family. Although he may be like family, he is not actually the offspring of Gerald and Patricia Lopez. It seems that some people are under the imperssion that it is they who have been ill and have passed on. Gerald and Patricia are fine. Our prayrs are with Victor in his time of grief.
posted by Dominic @ 11:10 PM
13 Comments:
Your blog rocks!!!
oh, please. how petty can you get?
it's not like i am the first person to leave the show, i'm the THIRD. veronica and victor both left the show before i did early in rehearsals.
and exactly what is the point of passing on a free move to new york so i can stick around odessa and perform to an audience of 10 or less for a whole month? we had to cancel a show because the cast of 4 outnumbered the audience of 3 on a friday night. 4 weeks of performances and we didn't even break a cumulative 200 in a theatre that seats 400.
this show has been teeting on collapse since it opened. and if you would actually pay attention to your cast members, you might find that none of the other 3 of us are happy with the show. i was told by one of them that they were glad i was leaving because they hope it will cause the show to close so they could be free of it.
your ego has blinded you to reality. grow up, dominic, you're almost 40...
Victor and Veronica left before rehersals really got started. That's not at all the same thing as leaving in the middle of a run and you know it.
I don't know what Bill or Stephanie might have told you, but they are both willing to work all week to put up a new show if that's what we have to do. They may not be thrilled about it, but they will do it because they are troopers.
I don't think anyone else is unhappy with the show. We are all unhappy with the low turn out, but not the show itself.
Yes, the show has had trouble, but we've all worked very hard on it. You've decided that everyone else's hard work doesn't matter. Only you matter.
We just sent out a huge mailing to the membership of the playhouse. How's it going to look if some of them show up and there is no show. It's not going to make them likely to renew thier memberships is it?
But, you do whatever you want, Chris. You're just an selfish prick who doesn't care what effect your actions have on others. I guess that's why you shaved your head, so you'd look more like a prick.
Thank you, Bullseye, whoever you are.
Chris,
You ask what is the point of passing up a free move to New York to stay in a show in Odessa? The point is being a stand up guy and living up to your commitment, rather than screwing over your collegues for a little short term gain. I read this blog because I am one of Dominic's brothers , but I am responding to you because I care about theater, and I have a hard time watching someone shoot themselves in the foot with out a least a cursory word of warning. I would hope that just an appeal to the ethics of the theater would have stopped you from such a selfish action, but you appear to have little scrupples about such matters. Let me appeal to your self-interest, obviously your major motivating factor. I want to assure you that the professional theater world is very small, and acquiring a reputation for unreliability will harm you a great deal. No matter how talented you may be, there is a glut of actors as talented or more so, and directors and producers will shun you like the plague if they know you can't be relied on or are unprofessional, both of which you have demonstrated by your recent action.
Further, Dominic's anger is not petty. Theater is an inherently collaborative art form, in which everyone is dependent on everyone else. Your action has tarnished Dominic's reputation, and that of the Playhouse, both of which you owe a debt of gratitude for allowing you to perform in this show. You have repaid that debt poorly.
dominic:
i am truly sorry to hear the playhouse pulled the plug on the show, and i think yours, bills and stephs determination to plug on is the right thing to do.
i am sorry that you can not see the logic behind my choice. i knew that the playhouse was likely to pull the plug, as the show was supposed to be a fundraiser for the playhouse, and audience turnout, unfortunatly, was so low that instead of raising money for they playhouse, the show was costing them because the turnout was often not even covering the cost of the electricity for the lights.
i truly, truly, truly would loved to have finished it out, and it was INCREDIBLY sweet fo your mother to offer to buy the plane ticket so that i could finish it out and still go to new york, but i think it would be ridiculous to do so. if the show had been making enough that on the profit share thing i could have made enough to buy the ticket myself, or if the playhouse was making enough that they could pay for it, i most definately would have finished the run.
but if i do not go back with my friends, i can not afford to stick around and wait for a month spending tons of money on gas to drive from midland and back to a show no one is going to see, and i am making no money on. i mean, driving 60 miles a day to perform for 3-15 people in a 400 seat auditorium with gas so insanely high and my not having a job is just... crazy.
i don't know how to make you see that this was really my only choice. it sucks, i am not happy it came to this, especially because i kinda liked the show, aside from a few sketches that you were about to replace, i like the material, and like the ensemble.
as far as the hair thing, i don't understand the problem since i asked you during rehearsals if you cared if i cut my hair off and you told me you didn't care. had i known that it would bother you so much, i would have waited, but you told me you didn't care, so i kinda assumed that was true.
i should also apologize again for putting you in the situation, as i have done several times, and i should apologize for being rude in my earlier comment, but it is a bit frusterating when i approach you and apologize again and try to thank you and you scream at me, insult me, try to pick a physical fight with me, and try to act as if my leaving kills the show and the playhouse. i understand you are angry, but reacting in such a juvenile manner as trying to pick a fistfight and then posting my picture on your blog and telling people they should kick me in the balls and all this other stuff is just petty.
something i guess i am guilty of as well, since i reacted to it and got as rude, and for that again, i apologize.
i sincerely wish you the best of luck.
delano:
i know you are dominic's brother, i actually met you before.
i understand what you are saying, and thank you for being polite and adult about it. when i said that dominic was being petty, i meant more the posting of my picture and telling people they should kick me in the balls and calling me a douchebag and all this other juvenile petty kind of stuff. i understand his anger, and he has every right to be angry, i just think the means by which he is channeling is a bit on the petty side, especially the screaming and trying to start a fistfight in the parking lot of the theater.
but, here's my story. i am HIV positive and living in a small town with no health care and no clinic that can provide help. because of my condition i can not get health insurance of any decent kind, and while rehearsing the show, i was laid off from my job, which continually told me i was the best in the office, until they found out about my sexuality and condition. i have no job, and was basically relying on my roomate's small amount of rent i charge him to get me by. i continued to rehearse and had a lot of trouble finding a decent job where i felt safe, and was driving about 30 miles a day to the theatre and back, buying gas continually that i can not afford. dominic set up a wonderful profit share program for the show, which had people come to the show, would have been very nice, and gotten me money. but unfortunately, very few people came. in 8 performances, we had probably around 100 people come, and that is by a fairly generous guess. no one was making any money, the theatre was losing money, which knowing the show was supposed to be a fundaiser for the theatre, i could see a cancellation likely to happen.
along came my friends who very generously offered to take me back with them for basically free, aside from my food, and that i could stay with them until i get back on my feet, and the biggest motivation of which being that there are HIV clinics in new york that are specifically set up to help people like me on low income by giving us the medications, therapy, assistance, ect, that we need at low or no cost. but my friends are on a very strict time schedule, and will be driving back this week. it was basically a now or never thing. i called dominic as soon as i made the decision, within hours of the proposal, him being the second person i called, right after my mother, knowing this would be a problem. i offered to try and find a replacement, work with the replacement as much as possible to get them ready. i called friends that i know in the area who are quicklearners, and good comedians, but everyone is unavailable, because they are already cast in something else, mostly the globe's festival.
dominic seemed to be taking care of it by reworking the show for three people, so it should have gone on, but as i knew would happen at some point, unfortuantely, the playhouse pulled the plug on it, because they were losing money on it. there was never a single performance that we had enough people to even fill the front row. not to mention, the show was getting progressively technically worse and worse, because we couldn't keep tech crew members, and had a revolving crew that would often find themselves running lights for a show they had never even had a tech rehearsal for. the first two weeks we dealt with the lights randomly turning on and off during the show, leaving us performing in darkness and then light and then dark and then light, before anyone realized the lights were overheating because no one bothered to tell us about the door you have to leave open to air out the breakers so the lights don't overheat.
it was either be stuck in poor health in midland, driving to show no one is coming to see and spending a fortune in gas with money i don't have, or move. your parents apparently offered to buy my plane ticket so i could stay and finish the show, which was very sweet. dominic told them no, and i would have said the same. i can not have your family spending several hundred dollars to fly me at a later point for a show that was about to be cancelled anyway. if the theatre had been making any money, i would have been more than happy to let them buy a ticket, or if i had been making any money, i would have bought it myself. but those choices aren't available, sadly.
i had rather hoped the show would go on, without me. i am sorry that it came to this, but what else can i do?
You keep saying the Playhouse was losing money. No one ever said anything to me about losing money or not being able to pay the lights. In fact they never even gave me an estimate for lighting costs because they didn't have one. This was something I had discussed with the board at the begining. So, if they didn't know what the lights were costing they wouldn't even know if they were losing money on that. The Playhouse's expenses and my expenses were covered the first week. You don't know what you're talking about.
I'm not going to address the HIV issue, because I think you already know my thoughts on that. I'm not interested in getting sidetracked by a discussion of that. Anyone who cares can see what I'm talking about here- http://www.duesberg.com/
I wasn't trying to pick a fist fight. I was trying to avoid one. If I wanted a fight I wouldn't have told you how angry I was. I would have just hit you. However, I stand by my statement. You should be kicked in the balls, often.
I believe I said I didn't mind if you colored your hair. Shaving your head bald is quite a different thing and not at all the same as meerly cutting you hair in any event. You seriously didn't think that you and Bill sitting next to each other with shaved heads and gotees might look a little silly, and not in a good way? But we can all see that your judgement and foresight are limited.
It comes down to this- the show was canceled because you quit. You've let everyone down. My mother is very disapointed in you.
For my part, I will continue to advocate ball-kicking. Perhaps I'll develop a website devoted to it- www.kickchrisintheballs.com. There could be a little flash animation thing where people could kick a little animated Chris in the balls over and over. I bet I could sell t-shirts too.
Chris,
Your latest post changes nothing, sadly. You are trying to argue that you had no choice by arguing that the choice you made was in your best interest. Moreover, Dominic had nothing to do with your health or money issues, it is not justified for you to use them as excuses for screwing him over. You knew these things where issues when you agreed to do the show. You did have a choice to make, which was to be honorable or not. Anyone can stick by their word when it benefits them. It is only when it is against your interest that it is difficult, and thus honorable, to keep your word. Did you ever read Horton Hatches an Egg? "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one hundred percent."
You, sir, are no elephant.
Chris, one last thing-
If someone at the Playhouse told you that they weren't covering the cost of the lights, they either lied to you or did not know what they were talking about. The only way to know for sure would be for the dimmer racks to be on a seperate electrical meter from the rest of the building. However, one can estimate. Assuming that fifty stage lights using 575 w. lamps (the industry standard) are on full blast for an hour- that means all fifty are always on at a full potentiometer rating ( which would be a terrible lighting design) no blackouts, fades, etc. This would consume 28.75 kwh of electricty. Assuming the average comercial rate of 7.9 cents per kwh, this would cost two dollars and twenty-seven cents. One ticket sold more than pays for the electricity.
Thanks, Chad. I think a lot of people were waiting til Aug. We'll let you know if we set up anything else.
By the way, Chad, check out my other blog if you think "Vampire Clubs" are amusing. Actually it's kind of the opposite of a vampire club.
http://vamphunter.blogspot.com/
I'm a trooper.
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