Jonathan Sale Forges a Career in NYC

Posted by Bruce Miller
Back in the mid-90s when Theatre IV was still in the theatre-for-adult-audiences business, we produced what I thought was a wonderful production of a play called Stand Up Tragedy (pictured below). John Moon directed. Rusty Wilson, Ben Hersey, Rick Brandt, Richard Travis, Tye Heckman and others co-starred with several talented young teens who played New York gangbangers. One of the teens (maybe he was in his early 20s by then) was a young Richmonder named Jonathan Sale (pictured as he looks today above and to the right). Although he was a clean cut student at the University of Richmond, he had a great urban vibe that served him well in the show.

After graduating from U of R with a double major in theatre and Spanish, Jonathan toured for a year or so with Theatre IV, and then headed to San Francisco where he earned his MFA in acting from the prestigious professional theatre grad program at American Conservatory Theatre. He moved to NYC, married in 2003, and for the last several years has been building an impressive career Off Broadway and in television and film, finding work both as an actor and director.

Recently Jonathan made a fun national spot for Holiday Inn Express, using the rap skills he first honed as a street punk in our fondly remembered production of Stand Up Tragedy. You can catch his commerical star turn at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlCLuIwuVgQ. Jonathan's the white guy, and this credit sits proudly on his resume alongside several gigs on Law and Order, Ed, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, a growing list of independent films, some Off Broadway plays, and numerous other TV commercials.

Most recently, Jonathan directed and produced the short film Sovereignty (http://www.sovereigntymovie.com/), written by Rolin Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and producer of Showtime's Weeds. Sovereignty began its life as a short play in the Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, starring Jonathan’s wife, Heather Dilly (pictured to the right, and below and to the left). Sovereignty the film just won Best Short Film at the 2008 Artivist Film Festival, the 2008 Peace on Earth Film Festival, and the 2008 Non Violence International Film Festival. Heather Dilly, star of the film as well as the play, won Best Actress for her work in Sovereignty at the 2008 Long Island International Film Festival.

As Jonathan’s career becomes more impressive year by year, it was interesting to find on the www this interesting coverage of an acting project a few years back. Prior to devoting his time to becoming an award-winning filmmaker, Jonathan made his mark on the world of video games. He was the “motion-capture” actor for the main character of Tommy Vercetti, the antihero of the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The character's snarling voice is provided by well known film actor Ray Liotta, but the body and movement are all computer generated on top of the actual movement provided by Jonathan Sale.

When asked by a video game reporter to describe the experience, Jonathan said, “I wore a Spandex/Velcro body suit that included hats and shoe wraps with 33 balls covering the suit. Each of the white spheres was a little smaller than a ping-pong ball. About 20 feet off the ground there was a grid of 14 cameras that read only the light reflected back to them from the balls. The cameras compiled this info in the computer and made a moving model that they later put the skins over for the game. They also filmed all of the scenes with two digital video cameras and later cut that footage together for the voice actors to work with. Ray Liotta spent a week in the booth matching my performance. I always thought that was pretty cool.

We filmed the project six to eight hours a day, five days a week, with two weeks of rehearsal and one week shooting . After rehearsing for two weeks we all knew each other pretty well. We were in this terrific studio in Brooklyn in which every room is decorated as a different set. And I don't mean the rooms that we shot in; I mean every room. The room where the staff would meet looked like a spaceship boardroom. The hallway looked like the inside of an Egyptian tomb; the lunchroom looked like a tropical forest. It was really cool.

The studio where we shot was a huge concrete room with a big square taped off on the floor. That was the playing area. Outside of the taped area, some of the cameras couldn't see us and therefore the computer couldn't calculate us fully and we would disappear.

When we showed up and donned the spandex for the first time, we were all a bit shy, but it wasn't nearly as embarrassing as we thought it would be. We kind of looked like blue/black or red/black superheroes. Everyone was creative and great to work with.”

Asked for any advice he could offer to future motion capture actors, Jonathan wisely offered this: “The more I treated it like a regular acting job, the better. When I was really acting well, it showed through the motion capture. Also, stuff your Spandex mo-cap suit. That's the key.”

There you have it, my friends. And all this time we thought cod pieces were only for Shakespeare.

--Bruce Miller

Reacquainting Myself w/ Frankie's Meatloaf

Posted by Bruce Miller
About 15 years ago I was privileged to direct Terrence McNally’s lovely two-hander Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune in the Little Theatre at Theatre IV. It starred Irene Ziegler and John Moon, and boy were they great.

People remember it as a Theatre Gym production, but it wasn’t. It was back in the days when Theatre IV staged full fledged adult seasons of its own in the Little Theatre. Frankie and Johnny was a part of these seasons, as were our productions remembered with equal fondness: Crimes of the Heart, A Shayna Maidel, our first Shirley Valentine, Gary Hopper's Hamlet, and Stand Up Tragedy.

One of the many fun aspects of Frankie and Johnny is the cooking that happens onstage. Just as in Shirley Valentine, every night the actress playing Frankie makes a Western omelet, and the actor playing Johnny makes a meatloaf sandwich. One of my jobs was to make the meatloaf that emerged each night from the fridge and was sliced for the sandwich and devoured on-stage.

I relied on the old tried and true meatloaf recipe that my dad gave me when I went off to college. It’s quick and easy to make, it’s relatively cheap, it freezes well so you can make a large batch and save some for later, and it tastes wonderful.

Roy Proctor apparently had a Pavlovian response while watching John Moon slice the meatloaf, slather it with ketchup, slap it between two slabs of bread, and then slowly slide it down his gullet. With saliva flowing, Roy asked me for the recipe. He later ran it in the T-D using the name my father gave the entree when he first presented me with the recipe card. My father had passed several years earlier, so I let the slightly embarrassing name stand in his memory.

Miller’s Mighty Meatloaf

2.25 lbs ground beef—as lean as you can get
4 slices whole-grain bread
1 large sweet onion, minced
1 green pepper, minced
2 medium carrots, minced
2 stalks celery, minced
1 egg
½ cup 2% milk
1 can condensed tomato soup
2 tsp salt
½ tsp oregano or Italian Seasoning
¼ tsp pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced

Cube the bread slices (the older the bread the better) and dry them for about 10 minutes in a warm oven (100°). Mince the onion, pepper, carrots and celery. Remove the bread and preheat the oven to 350°. Crush the dried bread cubes into crumbs. Mince the cloves of garlic. In a medium-large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and kneed them until they are thoroughly mixed. Lightly coat the interiors of two 5” x 9” glass loaf pans with vegetable oil spray. Press the mixed ingredients into the two pans. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes. Remove from oven. Insert a knife between the sides of each loaf and the pan. Allow to cool for 5 minutes. Remove each loaf using two pancake turners, and place the loaves on paper towels to drain. Each loaf serves 4 hearty appetites, and can be cut in half and frozen if desired.

Now that times are lean again and Barksdale is facing some significant recession-driven cutbacks (including my salary), I pulled out the old recipe card today and whipped up a pair of meatloaves for the two omnivores in my family. At least it made me feel like I was being proactive. We're eating half a loaf tonight and freezing the other three halves for later. At a cost of about $1.25 per hearty serving, it’s still a great deal.

And now when I cook it and eat it, I remember not only my dad but also that delicious production of Frankie and Johnny. Meatloaf by the light of the moon. What could be better?

--Bruce Miller

In Memoriam: Millie Jones

Posted by Bruce Miller

Our great friend Millie Jones died last weekend at age 64 after a long illness. If any single person is responsible for the turnaround of our Empire Theatre neighborhood, Millie Jones may well be that person.

From 1983 until 2003, Millie owned 322 W. Broad Street, a couple blocks west of the Empire. During most of those 20 years, the small business she founded and managed, Festival Flags, was one of the few thriving enterprises in what was otherwise a seemingly derelict commercial corridor. We joined her as urban pioneers in 1986 when Theatre IV purchased the historic Empire Theatre. Phil and I acquired and renovated the Marshall Street office building that houses most of our staff in 1990.

Today, the Empire Theatre District (or Arts District or President’s Row, depending on which moniker you prefer) is one of Richmond’s hottest neighborhoods, home to First Fridays and ten dazzling restaurants and hundreds of apartments within a two-block radius of our marquee. I know Millie must have been thrilled.

Millie was an accomplished seamstress and graphic designer. In 1971, she bought a piece of Scandinavian cloth, made it into a flag and flew it at her Fan District home to direct guests to a party. When friends and neighbors requested custom-made flags of their own, she started a small cottage industry in her basement. In 1975, she created an “It’s a Boy” flag to mark the birth of her son, Jonathan. When she did, she earned near-celebrity status as the national press from The Wall Street Journal to "Good Morning America" descended on Richmond to interview the “flag lady.”

It seems hard to believe now, but before Millie, no one hung commemorative or decorative flags beside their doorways. Her original idea soon developed a national following, and for decades, Festival Flags flourished. In recognition of her creating this national trend, Millie’s passing was covered this week by the Seattle Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and ABC News.

But it was Millie’s excitement about and dedication to downtown revitalization that made her our steadfast friend. She LOVED IT when we bought and restored the Empire. For years we’d see her three or four times a week. She was constantly walking up and down Broad—creating, leading and building the Old and Historic Broad Street Association, organizing us neighbors to lobby for the city’s attention, and doing whatever it took to get people interested in our little corner of downtown.

When her “It’s a Boy” son Jonathan came of age, Millie signed him up with us for a summer internship. Whenever graffiti scumbags defaced our historic buildings, Millie came running. She made sure that we removed the graffiti immediately, that the police investigated the crime with vigor, and that prosecutors sought serious punishment for the vandals if and when they were caught.

When we produced Stand-Up Tragedy in the Little Theatre, we hired a VCU art student to simulate graffiti all over the theatre’s interior walls, helping to set the scene for this urban drama. When Millie stopped by to see how everything was going, she stepped into the Little Theatre and immediately went ballistic. She swore she recognized the style of several of the “tags” that were spray-painted on our walls, and demanded to know the name of the person we had hired so that she could turn him over to the police.

We panicked. There was no way we were going to give up the name of the art student if doing so would get him into trouble. Prior to Millie’s recognition of his work, it had never occurred to us that he might be one of the ones who actually was vandalizing the neighborhood—much less a ring leader. So we met with Millie and the police, and they gave us permission to talk with the scenic artist personally without their involvement.

When we did, we soon found out that Millie was right. After learning that his work had been recognized, the art student confessed. We outlined for him all the costs that we and our downtown neighbors absorbed each month to remove the graffiti that he and his friends were creating. After hearing everything, he vowed never to deface a building again. He promised to talk with the other graffiti vandals, many of whom were his friends. In return, we pledged never to release his name—not even in the playbill. Not even in this blog.

For the next couple years, graffiti in our neighborhood decreased significantly. And it was all because of Millie Jones.

For her friendliness, her creativity, her passion and her care, we loved Millie. With affection and respect, we will be dedicating our summer production of Guys and Dolls to her memory. We will never forget her many contributions to our theatre and downtown Richmond.

--Bruce Miller