My performance evolution started at H-B Studio where I signed on for singing class back in 1979. I was playing guitar with a singer songwriter and performing at clubs like Folk City, Kenny’s Castaways, and others up and down Bleecker and MacDougal streets. Within a few months I was taking acting classes, got a headshot (at the urging of one of my scene partners) and started auditioning.
saw Stu (Rudin) and Joe (Maruzzo) do the work in the "Hairy Ape" and I realized this is why I wanted to come to NYC. It made me realize.... because of the work.... it was just brilliant. I didn’t really know about acting except what I learned in high school. At that time, no one in Toronto really knew the possibilities in acting. There was only the National Theater School in Montreal, which i wasn’t comfortable with. My teacher told me “If you don’t stand up straight you won’t be a good actor.” I thought to myself “Pacino slouches...”.
I prefer not to start with an idea that I impose on the actor. I provide the solid historical background of art, fashion, society and politics, my technical skills and artistic sensibility and we go from there...I research, I consult the director, the designers and most importantly the actor ....I share ideas, images, fabrics, colors - they give me their ideas and needs...and from there I begin to watch... watch the actor move. And listen....listen to how they say it, what they are saying. I can only get so much from reading the play. This thing is alive – the only real way for me to design is feeling and seeing and hearing.
My grandfather, Vachel Lindsay, is a poet who is occasionally considered great. More frequently he is considered irrelevant and obscure. He is known for “Higher Vaudeville”, performance poetry that he made his living with, and also for his utopian “gospel of beauty”, his vision for a transformative democratic art in America. The Wall Street Journal described my father, Nick Lindsay Sr., as “Truly the son of Vachel Lindsay, a voice from the cutting edge of the counter culture from before the term was coined."
A Group of Actors – It wasn’t exactly an ensemble. It was a way of working... I’ve been trying to say what I know about art, or at least the art of acting. I keep losing the way when I start tracking my feelings. For one thing, I'm forever cancelling out the last thing I write about acting/directing. My process put simply is this: Just always stop and go, asking questions along the way like children with their first illustrated fairy tale. It takes stamina to go slow and easy, and then get brutal, tearing at what is obtuse, whether in the piece or in our minds.
