R.I.P. Jack Temchin

I have had some sad news about a mentor from my life.

Jack Temchin, a man who went to bat for me at a crucial moment a couple of years ago, I found out last night died of a heart attack. I am very very sad to hear the news. I wish I had known … I wish I had seen him more recently …

This man, in one moment, actually in TWO moments, took my side against the powers-that-be, and got my loyalty forever.

The following is the story of Jack Temchin, in relation to me, and what he did for me. Perhaps a “selfish” way to write in memory of him – but it doesn’t seem that way for me. His belief in me, his standing up for me, has made a huge impact.

I am very sad he is gone. Very sad.

Jack Temchin, RIP

Jack Temchin, after a long career at the Manhattan Theatre Club, as well as publishing a best-selling series of monologue books for actors, was hired by the Actors Studio MFA Program (my graduate program) to produce the 11-week “thesis” season. This was done at the Circle in the Square Downtown Theatre, on Bleecker Street (an amazing space if ever there was one).

Temchin’s job was to be part of the thesis-approval committee – and once all theses were approved and cast – it was Temchin’s job to design the season.

This was an insane job – with actors, directors, and playwrights bombarding his small office with neurotic and not-so-neurotic requests: “I wish that my project was LAST in the night … not in the middle…” “Could you PLEASE talk to so-and-so and tell her that I have no plans on casting her?” “Why did you place my project so late in the season? Nobody will come to see it!!”

The panic was understandable, completely, because the stakes were very high. For all of us. This was what we had been working for, non-stop, for the past 3 years – we all wanted everything to be right for us PERSONALLY.

So Jack had 120 personalities to satisfy. I did not envy him his assignment.

He made quite a few enemies.

He was not always tactful. He would say things to people like, “End of discussion. Your project is going up 3rd and that’s the end of the discussion. Grow up.”

I always appreciated that about him – because it was very practical, it had a whiff of the actual professional world (which I really missed, at times, in the cloister of graduate school).

My thesis project was After the Fall, Arthur Miller’s haunting (and flawed) play about his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. The play as a whole does not work, but we didn’t do the whole play. We picked out two scenes – which are stunning, all on their own. I was very pleased – I got the director I wanted, I got the co-star I wanted – I was happy.

I was also cast in another project, a short play called “Gertrude Down”, an original work by a playwright in the program.

“Gertrude Down” was a Reservoir-Dogs-esque play, except with all women – all these gun-toting women sitting in a big empty warehouse, smoking cigarettes, arguing – talking about nothing – and they are all waiting for … something. You are not sure what. But it’s ominous. And I was the “boss”. All the other women were dressed up in bimbo outfits, sparkley nail polish, stilettos – but I, as the boss, was dressed in a man’s pinstripe suit, black shiny shoes, a tie, and a fedora.

I would take out a cigarette, and all the bimbo girls would fight over who got to light it for me. It was a great part, I loved it. I was tough, no-nonsense.

Anyway:

Temchin decided to launch the entire thesis season with “After the Fall” AND “Gertrude Down”. There were 2 other projects on the docket for the first night – and Temchin made sure that my two pieces weren’t back to back – so that I wouldn’t have to have a quick change or whatever.

One of the incomprehensible things about most of the complaints of the student body was: They didn’t want to be seen in two pieces in the same night, especially if one of them was their thesis project. They wanted to have ALL of their focus directed on their one main project, and not diffuse their concentration.

I literally could not understand that viewpoint. It seemed so … I can’t even find a word for it. It just baffled me.

Perhaps it is because I had been out in the theatrical world BEFORE I went into grad school and I knew in my heart how advantageous it would be to be seen in two completely different pieces in the same night.

I was THRILLED, to tell you the truth.

In “After the Fall” I was playing a tortured sex-bomb nightclub singer poured into a teeny little dress with high heels, used and thrown-out by men, a woman-child with terrible insomnia, and horrible insecurities, constantly drinking to take the edge off. A possible tour-de-force part.

In “Gertrude Down” I was all butch, and tough, wearing a fedora, bossing everyone around, an alpha-Female.

What a great thing for me!

But my fellow students went into an uproar on my behalf, (I still don’t know why they butted into my business – I think they were just using my situation as an example of what they DIDN’T want, assuming that I would feel the same way as they did). So I heard through the graduate-school grapevine that others in my class were complaining to Temchin, “standing up for me” was what they called it, saying to Temchin: “Sheila shouldn’t be in 2 pieces in the same night! That’s unfair!”

I hated that they assumed I had the same views as them. And I hated that they almost sabotaged my chance to show off my diversity as an actress. I was in a panic that Temchin would change the schedule. I had to make things right.

I stormed into Temchin’s office (a man I didn’t know very well yet), and demanded, “Don’t you DARE change the schedule just because the other boneheads in this program feel like THEY couldn’t handle doing two different pieces in one night – Do NOT change the schedule. I didn’t ask them to come to you, and I’m pissed that they did. They’re idiots. As long as you don’t put my two pieces back to back, and as long as you put ‘After the Fall’ FIRST on the program, so I can get it out of the way, I am perfectly fine with appearing in two pieces, and frankly, I am totally baffled at why everybody thinks it would be a bad idea.”

That is not word for word what I said – but I do know that I launched into an impassioned monologue – and the word “boneheads” was used.

Temchin looked up at me – took it all in – took ME in – then leaned back in his chair, threw back his head and ROARED with laughter. He just laughed and laughed and laughed.

I turned around and shut the door on all the nosy “boneheads” out in the hallway. I had been shouting. About all of them. With an open door. While they were sitting right there.

I was too upset to laugh yet – I said, “You’re not gonna change the schedule are you? I have no idea why nobody else wants to appear in 2 pieces in the same night. Don’t they realize how GOOD it would be to show the audience that you can do the contrast? What the f*** is the matter with them??”

Temchin, still laughing, said, “You’re no dummy.”

And that was all he said.

“You’re no dummy.”

So I got him to promise he wouldn’t change the schedule. But in the middle of all of that, he noticed that I was carrying a Richard Ford novel under my arm, and he interrupted the entire conversation and said, “A great writer, isn’t he?”

It was hard for me to segue. I said, “Ford? Yeah. He’s good.”

It was as though Temchin had seen me for the first time. He was staring up at me, looking at me. Not just my surface, I could feel, but at ME. He made me sit down … and then he got me to talking about literature.

We had never had a conversation before I barged into his office and demanded that he do what I ask.

He loved that I was carrying a NOVEL, and not “10 Things to Know if you want to be an actor” or “How to get the casting office to love you” or “Helpful Tips to Actors Who Want To Be In Soap Operas” … or whatever. He thought that was so refreshing. An actor who had interests outside of acting …

Anyway – it was that one conversation that sealed the deal for the two of us.

After that – after he saw how much I gave a shit about my work, also how realistic I was (that I knew, in my heart, that being seen in two pieces was BETTER than only being seen in one), he could not do enough for me.

He satisfied my every demand. He kept checking in with me as the thesis season went on. “How’s it going? Anything you need?”

He was amazing with me. A true mentor.

Another story about this man, who became one of my champions:

I had an idea for “After the Fall” – and I needed help executing it. The character, Maggie, becomes famous, as a singer. Her most famous number is “Little Girl Blue”, a ballad. My idea was this:

Have a haunting echoey recording of me singing that song … and play it over the scene changes, or at appropriate moments during the show … My idea for it was NOT that it should be what the character actually sounded like when the song played on the radio, but that it should be a kind of photo-negative of the same song, to show how troubled she was, how doomed.

I wanted it to sound literally like singing this song was this character’s last gasp for breath. No more energy, no more sexiness left … all feeling drained … she was giving up … she was sinking …

The lyrics fit with that idea:
“Sit there and count your fingers
What can you do?
Old girl, you’re through
Sit there and count your little fingers
Unlucky little girl blue …

No use, old girl – you may as well surrender
Your hopes are getting slender
Why won’t somebody send a tender blue boy
To cheer up little girl blue”

Nina Simone does a great version of this.

You can jazz it up, but my picture for it was of a woman, at 4 am, rain coming down, sliding off into perhaps an overdose … all alone … and this is her last expression.

Great idea, huh?

Well, nobody would help me.

I was told there was no budget, there was nobody set up to record such a thing. (Interesting how LATER in the season when other actors wanted to do special sound-stuff – the school found a way. But I was the test-case, and they gave me a hard time.) Rich Gershberg, the guy chosen to direct my piece, did his best to get me what I wanted – but the school just did not give a crap.

They didn’t count on Jack Temchin.

My brother the musician stepped up – and we recorded me singing the song on his equipment – not very sophisticated – but hey, for me, I was a woman with a mission.

Then, lo and behold, on the night of our Tech-Dress rehearsal, there was a worried conference between all of these upper-level people – about the quality of the recording. It wasn’t good enough, clear enough, it sounded amateurish.

Rich came over to me, with Temchin, and murmured to me, “There are some concerns about the quality of the recording–”

I had fucking had it. I exploded.

“I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR WEEKS AND NOBODY WOULD HELP ME. I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR WEEKS AND NOBODY WOULD HELP ME.”

Rich said, “I know, Sheila, I know, and now they understand that you were right –”

I burst into tears. “Rich! Nobody listened to me!”

“Sheila. They’re listening now.”

Temchin came over, and took me in his spindly little arms. “Okay, sweetheart, we’re gonna fix it. Bill Riley has a state-of-the-art recording studio at home, and you are going to go over there right now, and record exactly what you want – He can make it sound just like what you want, exactly what you have been asking for for 3 weeks now.”

It was midnight. I was exhausted.

“Record it now? We open tomorrow night, Jack!”

I was hysterical. I admit. My nerves were frayed, I felt like I completely had not been taken seriously, and now they were trying to cover their tracks.

I went into Temchin’s office the next day, completely embarrassed that I had been screaming like that, in front of the Dean, in front of the organizing committees – I said, “I’m sorry I threw such a fit.”

Temchin gave me this look. This dead-on look. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to apologize. They fucked up. They know it. And you let them know it. If this program doesn’t invest in YOU, then we have no business being an acting program.”

So Jack made it all better.

He got me into a cab, he gave me money to go up to Bill Riley’s recording studio on the Upper West Side, he had told Bill Riley to give me whatever I wanted – and everything worked out in the end.

The recording that Bill Riley made, of me singing that song, was beyond my wildest dreams.

He created EXACTLY what I asked. He took me seriously as an artist. So did Jack Temchin. I wasn’t just some whimsical idiot making an unreasonable demand. I had a good idea, it was MY thesis… and I just needed some help bringing my idea into reality.

I knew how I wanted to perform the song … soft and whispery … as though … throughout the process of the song, the life ran out of me, the tide pulled back.

I told Riley my idea. I told him I thought a slight echo would be the best … I wanted it to sound like I was at the bottom of a well.

I gave him all my crazy images, by this point it was 2 in the morning, and Riley DID it.

I still have a copy of me singing that song, in the way that I wanted to.

And we used it in the production – Jack Temchin cleared all obstacles out of the way.

He told the sound designer, “This is an actress who knows what she wants. She is not a diva. She needs help. So GIVE her that help.”

And everybody did.

This may sound like a trivial story to tell, on the occasion of the passing of this man.

But, to me, he was a champion.

We used to call such people “spirit warriors” in college. Over the course of those weeks, with my thesis craziness, he went to battle, on the side of my spirit.

He recognized my worth, he recognized ME.

I will never forget him for that. I didn’t even really know him that well. But he will always have a special place in my heart because of how he went to bat for me, during that crazy time.

Jack Temchin: Rest in Peace.