Friday, February 13, 2009

Darik Bernard, as Darik



To answer your first question, no, the character was not originally named Darik. In the screenplay he was first called Brad, named after someone I had a crush on at the time that I wrote it. By the time we were filming, that crush had long since dissipated, and my dear but sometimes annoying friend/big brother/Executive Producer Tom Kyte thought (mistakenly) that I had named the character after my college boyfriend, who was Tom's roommate way back in that day. So, in order not to have Tom give me grief for the rest of my life (at least about that; he finds plenty of ammunition without me handing it to him), I decided to change the name of the character. Plus, Darik just doesn't look like a "Brad" to me. I started thinking about it, and then I started over-thinking about it, and then I was like, screw it, he looks like a Darik, just call him Darik! And Darik was very happy about that, so problem solved.

Darik came to the first round of auditions at Baltimore Theater Project. The actors received a brief description of the characters and I let them choose which they would try out for. Darik tried out for (bi-sexual) Bentley and (gay) David. Something that happened over and over in these auditions - straight men who could not convince me that they were gay - and Darik was one of them. However, in one of the sides he was given he had to act as if he were drunk, and that he did very convincingly! So when I contacted him later to tell him he didn't get a scripted part, I told him I wanted to write him in as a drunk guy, and he was pleased as punch to do that.

(Side note: In the future, if I am directing a scene where a character is supposed to be drunk, most likely I will actually get them drunk, because few sober people are as convincing as Darik was.)

A few weeks later I attended the Stonehenge auditions at the Creative Alliance. Darik was there, and did a very dramatic but subtle monologue. I was surprised and impressed, and started to see him in a new light. I emailed him soon after and asked him to come to the callbacks, to audition for the role of Brad. I was having a hard time filling this role, which was weird because it is one of the less quirky, more straightforward characters.

Darik did a very good job and landed the role. I asked him why hadn't he auditioned as Brad or Tony in the first place? He told me, "I just really wanted to be gay!" He had never played a gay role and thought it would be challenging as an actor. I liked that attitude, because I can't TELL you how many actors dropped out of the auditions because they didn't want to play a gay or bi-sexual man. Isn't that why they call it acting??? It's not like this was porn or anything. Raise your hand if you are secure in your manhood!

Darik is a real sweetheart and easy to work with. During our days of rehearsals, Cheryl Scungio turned everyone on to a little trick called, "hugging it out". If she was in a scene with a person she had never acted with before, she would hug them for a minute so they would quickly establish a connection. Darik really liked this concept and it seemed to help him. He kept campaigning for me to alter the script so they could kiss it out, but I stood my ground.

Anyway, Phil Calvert was not at rehearsals on the first day, so he didn't know about "hugging it out". Thom (Phil) and Darik (Darik) had a scene together and are supposed to be good friends. So Day Two of rehearsals we are going through this scene, and admittedly it was a little flat. Darik stopped in the middle of it, looked at me and asked, "Can we hug it out?", walked up to Phil before I could answer and gave the rather confused Phil a big bear hug. I found the whole thing to be hysterical and I wish to god I had been taping so I would have caught Phil's expression on film! I had to explain "hugging it out" to Phil, we had a laugh about it, and I tell you what, the scene worked a lot better afterwards.

Darik has a big, beautiful smile and can be a warm teddy bear or a jealous, brooding, wanna-be boyfriend. His size and stature made him the perfect adversary for Tony (and remember what I said about trying to find tall, muscular guys? Darik is another one of the very few you'll find in this area). But the thing I love most about Darik is his almost childlike enthusiasm. He just LOVES acting and he gets SO excited about it. I am confident that some day he will realize his dream, and play an amazingly gay gay man.

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