If you’re an actor, being a chameleon won’t make you a star — unless you make that versatility part of your mystique. That seems to be what actor Brent Rose is banking on.
Rose is no stranger to new media, having co-created and starred in his own web series as well as made several appearances on Wallstrip. But he’s also a classically trained actor with a strong theatrical background, and in an apparent effort to satisfy his more highbrow aspirations, he’s begun the 50 in 50 Project, a personal challenge to create videos depicting 50 characters over 50 weeks. It’s a bold goal, one that will demand close to a year’s commitment and an unlimited store of creativity.
Five weeks in, it also sounds like it might kill him.
The first 50 in 50 installments are sharply edited pieces that essentially boil down to well-produced video monologues. Currently residing in New York, Rose makes great use of the city as a location, while also using opportunities like a weekend visit to see his father in DC as a chance to film all around his nation’s capital (his father stands in as cameraman for that installment, Mr. Taravour Goes to Washington). The range of characters he’s able to create in a short time frame is pretty astounding — occasionally his accents push to the point of parody, but given the limited time he has to refine each persona he can be forgiven for those slips.
And in the accompanying blog entries for each video, Rose gives a brutally honest accounting of his process behind creating each character — how he uses invented backstory and wardrobe and hair to make the individual come alive within him. (Apparently “hair acting” is an actual subject of training at the Natural National Theater Conservatory, where Rose studied.)
In said blog, Rose admitted after four episodes that, due to his 45-hour-a-week day job and personal commitments on top of a brutal editing schedule, he’d gotten sick and was going to have to scale back the production. Episode 5, Geoff Boyle’s Apology, is much simpler in scope, featuring Rose in a bathrobe, clearly sick and congested, monologuing from various locations in his apartment. However, even when he’s trying to take it easy, he still manages to excel — unrepentant narcissist Geoff Boyle might be Rose’s most compelling character to date.
Acting may look easy on the surface — stand where the director tells you, say some lines in a funny voice — until you truly get to hear about it from an actor’s perspective. The amount of preparation and detail that might be put into creating even a character like Frightened Inmate #2 has to be respected, and can often be fascinating. That’s the best thing to come of the 50 in 50 project: By putting his process in the public eye, Rose has found a unique way to celebrate the craft of acting. I just hope he survives it.
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