Good actors, good friends ...

I'll (probably) write about tonight's Meisner class later, but I wanted to write about something else tonight.

Good friends who are good actors.

I mean, I'm blessed to be surrounded by a lot of them (leaving tonight's class reinforced that), but tonight, I had a go-to guy, who will likely be incredibly embarrassed that I'm recounting this.

Aaron Hallaway.

Dude is a buddy. And a seriously talented actor.

And tonight, driving down to class, I needed him.

For scenes or monologues, I improv scenes that are in the script, and scenes in my backstory, or tertiary relationships, or things I might do as that person -- all outside of the script. And Steve's been great at formalizing a discipline around that.

But -- outside of work with my actual scene partner (Nikki, who is so fun and talented), I've been bad about that with my current class scene.

So driving on the way to class, I called Aaron, and told him he needed to call me right back and improv something with me. It was an odd request (details aren't important), and I didn't get to the "why" before he was interrupted by another call. But I hung up knowing he would call me back and be committed to it.

Then I chose to forget he would call.

And he called, which surprised me. And I felt blindsided by the bombshell he dropped on me. In ten minutes, I went from conversational and jovial to yelling, pleading, bargaining, promising, and finally giving up and hanging up. And then spending the next 20 minutes remorse-ridden and looking for a call or a text message from him. Which never came. Which further cemented the remorse.

Aaron so helped me out, because I asked him too, and without him asking why. And he was on his way to his own audition.

I can't put too fine a point on how cool this is.

Don't do this acting thing alone. Aaron helped make me great tonight.