Rand Unwrapped (5 page)

After the live
Ultra 7
shows at the Waikiki Shell, I auditioned for and was asked to join an improvisation group called
The Construction Crew
produced by the Hawaii Performing Arts Company (HPAC). The director, Lewis Stout, was an extremely creative guy and worked hard to get all of the actors in this project to totally commit to the characters they created. He wanted real characters in real situation rather than just one liner situations that get a laugh then fade away. The
Construction Crew
was as much about creating a real story than performing funny characters. This was a great opportunity to hone my improvisational skills and yes, another paying acting job in Hawaii. As I recall the,
Construction Crew
was actually a project funded by a grant to take the performing arts into public and private schools in Hawaii. It was a small group of five or six actors that toured the schools throughout the island of Oahu. We literally went school to school, using the student audience to help us create stories from scratch. We would open by setting the ground rules and defined what a character was, a place, a time and a situation. For younger audiences, we would set it up with a narrator starting with, “Once upon a time in the land of? At that point the audience would provide the place. Then the narrator would follow up with, “And in the land of whatever they called it, who do you think came along? Then the audience would shout out a character. Using audience suggestion, we created a place, characters and situation that we then played out upon the stage for the audience. It was a tremendously successful program and provided me with an opportunity to get intensive improvisational training. I was able to create stories from
a word or phrase at the drop of a hat for any age group or situation. We also got to play at many diverse locations throughout the island from small little villages to large military bases. But I wasn't done working on animated projects. I think all voice actors must possess a talent to improvise within the characters they create. Not every action in animation can be scripted. Sometimes, the actor is in the situation within the animated sequence and must rely on their moment-to-moment skills to create the reality of what will ultimately end up on the screen. When playing Rand, I often found myself in certain situations that required moment-to-moment reactions to the situation at hand. This could have all to do with a particular line reading that was before or after the existing animation, the situation or mine Rand found himself within the story.

After
Ultra 7
, and while still basking in the Hawaiian sun and graduate school, I was cast in two new animated series. These two projects were my first crack at doing animated characters in a series. The first series was called
Mazinger Z
, which was about a gigantic super robot made of super alloy metal called Super – Alloy Z. This super alloy that could only be found at a very secret location within Japan's Mount Fuji made this secret weapon virtually indestructible. This was my first experience using a mecha to fight evil. My character was the shy grandson of the robot's designer Professor Juzo Kabuto. At the start of the series, the professor is murdered in cold blood by evil forces of Dr. Hell. As the good professor takes his dying breath, he tells his grandson Kouji about the robot and its immense power to fight evil. Kouji, my character, became Mazinger Z's pilot, and for the rest of the series was locked in a continual battle with the evil mecha and sinister villains sent by Doctor Hell. The voice I used for the character was for all intents and purposes my own. I think I voiced him a little higher than my normal voice to make him sound younger. But it was really just my voice and, if heard today, might sound like Rand would have sounded when he was a young boy. Kouji was not in any way a scrappy fighter like Rand but they young boy did have a slight undertone of a New York street character. I tried to stay away from this, but it was there underneath. Once again, I found myself voicing a character that was a rather reserved in one aspect and then a super hero who through no special calling finds themselves in the role of saving the world from evil.

After,
Mazinger Z
, I went in an entirely different direction playing the lead role in a very sentimental animated series called
Haichi Bee the Orphan Bumble Bee
. I voiced the title character, using a very high “cartoon type” voice. He was a cute little bumblebee who, through misfortune, had become separated from his bumblebee parents. The entire series was a quest, following the little bumblebee's journey to find his true mother and father. I had a great time doing this production, and would have never believed you if you told me I would in the future get to do the entire series again. Yes, it's true. Many years later, the series was given a new title, re-recorded and redistributed by Saban Entertainment under the name of
Honey Bee Hutch
. In
Honey Bee Hutch
, the original Haichi Bee was renamed Hutch. In this new version, I played Hutch's evil twin brother. The animation for both bees was exactly the same, except that the evil twin brother (which I voiced) had a black stinger. During the series, my character the evil twin did all sorts of terrible things to everyone that in turn were blamed on poor innocent Hutch. It was the classic case of mistaken identity. The suspense was kept going until the very last episode of the series in which the two bees are revealed to one another. Back to Hawaii.
Haichi Bee the Orphan Bumble Bee
was my last show in Hawaii. After that, I graduated from the University of
Hawaii and moved to Los Angeles. At that point in my life, I stopped doing animation for almost eight years. But once you do it, it's something you never forget. It's part of you and it comes to you in the most unusual places.

Almost eight years after I had performed in any kind of animated project, I was at a barbeque on a Sunday afternoon with at my wife's best friend Barbara's house. It was kind of a group thing, where there were several gatherings of people having drinks and eating all sorts of unhealthy food. I was in an out of several conversations when there sitting on this swing chair piece of patio furniture was this sort of disheveled artistic looking fellow named Greg Snegoff. He introduced himself as the nephew of Barbara's then boyfriend George Duchin. That Sunday afternoon, we talked a bit about theatre and acting. He told me he was in a play. I think it was a Russian play. We chatted a bit more and then he had to leave to perform in the show. I wished him well and thought he was a nice guy and that was that. Little did I know that he would become one of my best friends.

Several weeks or months later, I saw a casting call for a new animated series called
Robotech
in the casting newspaper, called
The Dramalogue.
Dramalogue was a weekly casting paper and the forerunner of what today is called Backstage. It contained all the casting notices for plays, movies and television. I decided to submit myself for the project and was called in for an audition. When I got there, Greg Snegoff (we now know him as Khyron) was there as part of the group handling the audition. I'm not even sure if he remembered that we had met before but I read and about a week later I was called to work on the series. As I stated earlier, there is no school you can go to or degree you can earn that will even begin to prepare you for what you will encounter in a recording session. You just learn as you go and you hope you have the best and most patient creative people to work with. I did and I am thankful for that. By the time I arrived at
Robotech
as a voice actor, I had a fair amount of experience in dubbing and writing animated and live action characters. However, with that said,
Robotech
, was not just another animated show. It was something quite different than anything I had ever done before. What made it different was that the creative force behind the production was not someone far off in Japan who just sent written notes.
Robotech
was created within a very unique framework under the creative vision of Carl Macek.

Carl Macek was the creative engine behind
Robotech
. He knew more about what mattered in the show to the fans (the stories, the characters, the idea) than any of us. In many ways, he put together a creative box for all of us to play. We could be as wild and innovative as we wanted but he always kept us true to what the series was about. Carl had the unique talent of being able to see the big picture and remember all the details as well. At the drop of a hat, he would be able to tell you the backstory of any character, where they were in the present and where they would be at the end of their journey. Because of the abbreviated nature of film writing and the constraints of run time, the backstory of many characters is reduced to a few lines of description. It's up to the writers and actors, to take that brief description and create a full bodied flesh and blood character. This will seem glib, but animated characters are people too. They have hopes, aspirations, grievances with the world and fears. When characters are voiced, not every quality must be exhibited, but it is important that these qualities be known and drawn upon when necessary. That's were Carl was a master, he knew these characters inside out and could
tell you anything about them at a moment's notice. He really proved his creative genius when he combined three previously existing animated series into one continuous program called
Robotech
. He did it again when he combined
Captain Harlock
with another series called
Queen of a Thousand Years
. As I recall, it wasn't the most exciting animated footage to start with and Carl used his masterful ability to make something out of nothing to weave the two separate productions into one series. Many of the Robotech crew including myself wrote several of those Harlock episodes. I think Greg or Bob Barren used to called the show
“Captain Harschlock…”
But as bad as the animation was, Carl Macek made it work masterfully. It was amazing how it all fit together. But really, only Carl Macek could make something like that happen. So, there I was cast in a new series called
Robotech
and for me, the journey was just about to begin.

“Hey would somebody pinch me so I know I haven't died and gone to heaven”

- Episode 19 – Frost Bite

By the time I attended the first audition for the
Robotech
series, I hadn't done an animated project in over eight years. That meant I hadn't been in front of a microphone, in a darkened studio or been asked to sync to a character's movements in a very long time. After graduate school, I had moved from Hawaii and settled in Los Angeles. As an actor, I was cast in several small roles on television and performed lots of live theatre. My acting career was just sputtering along at best. But that didn't mean I wasn't busy. During the interval after getting a masters degree in Drama from the University of Hawaii, moving to Los Angeles and
Robotech,
I was accepted in the Doctoral Drama program at the University of Southern California. As a PHD candidate, I was required to teach theatre classes and started out teaching a very cool class called
Theatre on Film
. Its scope was to compare and analyze a significant play or musical that was produced as a motion picture. I liked teaching very much but hated academic research. After several semesters as a PHD, I learned that USC was phasing out the degree and I decided to get a second masters degree in writing. I truly loved the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC. It was and still is everything you would ever want to learn about writing taught by working professional in the industry. In addition, I started to use some of my writing skills to write grants in the arts. I became one of the founders and the Executive Director of
Southern California Center for the Arts
. This was a multi faceted organization that had an annual budget of over four million dollars per year; produced theatre productions, visual arts exhibitions, festivals and had an artist employment program. During that period, I produced and directed many live theatrical productions, visual arts presentations and festivals. SCCA had several theatres and galleries and was housed in four redwood green houses adjacent to the Pasadena Rose Bowl. The job as Executive Director of this large monster with a staff of over a hundred artists and administrators was all consuming.

Several years later, I moved the organization main offices to Hollywood on Melrose Avenue. At that time this was creative hub within the City of Los Angeles that housed an array of antique stores, small theatres and galleries. Personally, I wanted to focus my energies as a writer and a performer and began taking acting classes with Milton Katselas at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. I also produced plays out of my own small theatre space, which was part of the Melrose Avenue
Theatre Row
. My space was called the
Front Row Theatre
because it was so small that there was only one row on each of the four sides of the stage. My goal was to create a simple space that could produce a wide variety of productions inexpensively in a small space. The idea was just like a Volkswagen “Think small…” I did several shows out of that space which had mediocre success until I produced a production of Jules Feiffer's
Hold Me!
(with the help of my extremely talented friend Mary Olsen) whom I knew from University of Hawaii). She studied puppetry at the University and was then and still is a marvelous director, actor and writer. When I was first pitched about the show, I really didn't want to do it. I didn't think it would play well in such a small space. However, what made this production different was that it had life size puppets! Goes to show you what I knew? The show was a tremendous
hit and ran for almost two years at that space. With
Hold Me!
At the Front Row, I found myself needing another space. I went on to produce several other shows at nearby theatres including
Six Rooms Riv Vu
and an original play that I wrote called
Saturday Nights
at the Zephyr Theatre and the musical
Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
at the Matrix theatre. Both theatres were a block away on either side of the Front Row. During the same period, at the Pasadena Arts Center Theatre I produced and directed award winning productions of Jean Genet's
The Maids
with a male and female cast and produced
Fefu and Her Friends
(Padua Writer's workshop) and a bilingual production of Garcia Lorca's
Butterfly's Evil Spell
(
El maleficio de la mariposa
) that was funded by I grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. That was the fun part of the job, but being the Executive Director of SCCA was also an administrative one. As the organization struggled for funding in the early nineteen eighties (I also wrote all the grants) there were constant audits by the funding sources and more and more administrative requirements needed for the organization function. The grind of maintaining a funding, administering over one hundred employees and have a personal life started to get to me. By 1982, I wanted to try to get back to a more creative less administrative role and left SCCA and started to teach acting.