Growing Pains

With Jake's play opening tomorrow, it signals a change for Jake. New challenges and more into a different part of his career.

 After career defining highs and less that critical success, Jake found himself in an uneasy place.

 “I wasn’t really listening to myself about the kinds of projects I wanted to do,” he said in a recent interview, reflecting on the past decade. “I had to figure out what kind of an actor I wanted to be and feel confident going for that.”

 And what we have been seeing this past year is Jake working on being the kind of actor he wants to be.

 "Nominated for a supporting actor Oscar for 'Brokeback,' said he still revels in experimenting with his take on characters from scene to scene and performance to performance. But acting rigor is increasingly his goal, and perhaps the respect that comes with it. “Early in your career it’s hard to know everything for yourself, and asking questions isn’t always a welcome thing in Hollywood, where everyone seems like they know what they’re doing,” he said during an interview over tofu salad and squid sashimi at a Japanese restaurant in the West Village.

 “Around the time I hit 30, I asked myself if I was respecting acting as a craft,” ...."and if I was doing the right projects that deserved my attention and where I’m learning in a way that you might not feel at 15. So now it’s like I look at acting more as building little delicate cricket cages, with care and more thought.” In the past 18 months Mr. Gyllenhaal parted ways with his longtime manager, signed with a new agency and began devoting more time to selecting and preparing for projects."

 Projects like EoW, The Enemy and the play are part of Jake's journey. Even Berlinale.  And there seems to be a paradigm shift from acting and the celebrity, to acting and the craft that it is, and with that maturity, commitment, and challenge.

Why did we see Jake up at Columbia so much last spring? He was contact his professors for advice about his role in The Enemy.

On EoW Jake got so involved giving feed back, watching dailies and things like him checking out the camera technology and showed so much commitment that "John Lesher, one of its producers, decided after filming to make Mr. Gyllenhaal an executive producer."

And he's tackling the play the same way. Taking on the challenge that is stretching him and make him give everything and more. He went out and sought the play, pursuing it and it writer and director.

 "It was Terry’s capacity for cruelty that appealed to Mr. Gyllenhaal most of all. 'The intentions of Terry are very different from anything I’ve played before, especially his vicious side,” he said. 'It intrigued me so much, and that was the sign. I want to come home at the end of the day and be wiped out and feel I’ve torn my heart out from acting and feel fulfilled. At this point I don’t have the desire to do anything other than projects that make me feel that way.'"

 It looks like Jake is growing, we will just have wait and see where he ends up.

 And Jake, Break A Leg!!

Quote Source - NY Times.

Classmate/Castmates

Plays and school have a lot in common.

You almost always all are new and don't know each other in the beginning.

You figure out who you are going to hang with at lunch.

Someone is going to be the jokester.

You break into small groups for reading out loud.

 And of course picture day.

Here's Jake with his new castmates from If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet

Jake with fellow castmates (l to r) Michelle Gomez, Annie Funke, and Brian F. O'Byrne.

A cast of just 4 it's going to be a lot of work for Jake to take on as a study load.

Those aren't the teachers, that's director Michael Longhurst and writer Nick Payne.

If There is....centers around a "bullied 15-year-old Anna, whose unexpected friendship with her estranged uncle Terry (Jake) sends her parents' rocky marriage into a tailspin."

All the B's a buzz

With rehearsals beginning tomorrow was it was bikes and beaches for Jake this past weekend.

Getting  a little fun and sun in, and maybe with the small and tall too.  And a little memory making.

That was after Jake took to the streets. He is riding a touring bike around Brooklyn on to the set of his mom's film.

Look how thin and narrow those wheels are.  You are going to feel bump and bounce from the street.  And forget about potholes hit one and you will bend that rim up but good.

But no more cruising on past.  The real work begins. Tomorrow is back to business and a new challenge for Jake. The American stage.  And Jake is ready for it.  It's a whole new chapter and no one knows where this could lead for him. 

Tickets went on sale today for the American premiere of Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, featuring Annie Funke, Michelle Gomez, Tony Award winner Brían F. O’Byrne and Jake. Previews begin August 24th at Off- Broadway’s Laura Pels Theatre. Opening Night is Sept. 20 and runs for 13 weeks through Nov. 25.

Whew....That was close....

Sometimes it's good when things don't work out....

Like when Jake's name was floated out there for Rock of Ages and it didn't work out.  

or  Austin not getting the part for Adam Sandler's That's My Boy which looks his USO pal Milo

Sometimes looking at things in the present  they don't make a lot of sense, but it the long run it all fits.

We might not know why things are they way the are right now... but it will make sense in time.

That could even describe this past weekend. ...Austin in TX and Jake....in airports?

Now some more information about Jake upcoming US stage debut.

Two more actors have been named to the cast of If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet  Michelle Gomez and Tony Award winner Brían F. O'Byrne, will join the previously announced Jake Gyllenhaal in the American premiere of Nick Payne's If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet later this summer at Off-Broadway's Laura Pels Theatre.

There is only one cast member left to announce and that is main character Anna, the bullied teen who the play is focused around.

 Michael Longhurst (making his New York debut) will direct the Roundabout Theatre Company production with previews beginning Aug. 24 toward an opening of Sept. 20 in a limited engagement of 13 weeks through Nov. 25.

Teen Seen

While Jake is getting ready to start working on Enemy in Toronto, and in parts unknown, (or are they?) others are thinking ahead and trying to find the perfect girl him.

But it's not what you think. It's for 'If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet’.

SEEKING 1 teenage girl to play ANNA.
ANNA IS AN OVERWEIGHT 15 YEAR OLD GIRL. SHE IS
BULLIED AT SCHOOL AND TENDS TO KEEP TO HERSELF AT
HOME. SHE IS A LONER STRUGGLING TO NAVIGATE THE
PERILS OF ADOLESCENCE. SHE LIKES TERRY VERY MUCH
AND OFTEN CONFIDES THINGS IN HIM SHE WON’T TELL HER
PARENTS. SEEKING AN EXCEPTIONAL ACTRESS WITH A
STRONG ENGLISH ACCENT. SEEKING AN ACTUAL TEENAGER.
NO ONE OVER 18 PLEASE.

Please submit headshot and resume by 5/12 to:
IfThereIsCasting@gmail.com

Actual teenager, so all the WB "teenagers" need not apply. Not sure where they will find their Anna. But it sounds like an unknown or up and coming actress might get a chance of a life time.

Can't go without a trip to the way back machine, they might have been a little bit older than 18 but still teenagers.

And Jake was working the backpack way back in 1999.

Playing Around

 A little background more information about If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet.

The play debut at the Bush Theater in London  from October 17-November 21, 2009, and won rave reviews.  The play won Nick Payne the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright 2009.

 School's tough enough, and harder when you're overweight.  Add your mom's a teacher, it's hell.  Then your Dad's obsessed with saving the world and your  uncle camping out on the couch. 

So when Anna hits back at the bullies, she finds herself suspended from school and stuck at home with  her hapless uncle trying to save her. But he needs saving himself, and as the bond between the two deepens, Anna finds herself swept up in a friendship she can't live without.

With the play to coming to the US it looks like there will be a few revisions for American audiences.  But will be Jake be hanging out on the couch in his boxers like the original?

Nick and the cast went to a road trip to get a feel for the play during rehearsals and little insight on a guy like Uncle Terry.



And here is a little peek of the technical rehearsals from the play's debut run.

Double Dutch

Speaking of doubles, it isn't just Jake.

Is Austin doing some doubling in his latest tweet?
Is he talking about the verb? Or the adverb?

Oh those English majors and their fancy dictionaries! ; )

And you know the neon lights are bright on Broadway... and Off Broadway too.

Happy Austin Friday!

24 (not so)Little Hours

“Reminds you why you fell in love with theater in the first place” –Kevin Spacey on “The 24 Hour Plays”

Back in April Urban Arts Partnership announce they were bringing their successful 24 Hour Plays program to Los Angeles to benefit the arts program in the LA Unified School District in 2012.

Urban Arts Partnership has been benefit the New York school system for 19 years advancing "the intellectual, social, and artistic development of underserved public school students through arts-integrated programs to close the achievement gap." Actress Rose Perez has been with Urban Art Partnership since its inception. Over the year some of the participants of the "Plays" have included Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Chris Rock, Kyra Sedgwick, Brooke Shields, Sarah Silverman and Elijah Wood in the Broadway fundraiser.

Back in April the tentative line up was Jen Aniston, Leslie Bibb, Zachery Live, Eva Mendes, Kathy Najimy,Sam Rockwell, Nia Vardalos, and Rosie Perez and others. It looked like it was back then when Austin might have made the commitment then.

On June 17, each cast member brainstormed ideas before the writers began drafting the scripts at 10 pm Friday night that had to be finished by 6 am the next morning. The actors then got to rehearse with the directors for the next 12 hours and then, in front of a live audience, performed the plays for the first and only time on Saturday night.
When it the stage the line up was Eva Mendes, Saffron Burrows, Leslie Bibb, Jack McBrayer, David Eigenberg, Yvette Nicole Brown, Rosie Perez, Jenna Elfman, Adam Brody, Zachery Levi, Austin, Sophia and several others.
And the plays? They were each about 10 minutes long and included such themes as a Batman autopsy, a sex addict meeting gone wrong, a Chewbacca-like bear falling in love with a woman with an abusive boyfriend, and lots of Shake Weight references.Now we know Austin was working with a bear and I don't think he was the girlfriend, so the guess is he played the bad boyfriend.And the bear? It looks like it was Adam Brody.

Was Austin's unicycle and Edgar Allen Poe a part of the play? Not sure it made the cut.

The most poignant moment of the night was when a former student who received a scholarship through the program, who recited her poem “Why I Write,”. It reminded everyone there that the evening "wasn’t about the celebrities on stage, but about the future of arts in education and the future of the kids involved."