Last Year December 5th 2012 Danny Naten actor and filmmaker passed away unexpectedly. My Students were shocked and some couldn't express their feelings of loss to other family members and friends because others did not understand the relationship bonds that existed between the students in my studio.
Jave Griffin wrote this story after hearing of his death to understand his own relationship with Danny and himself . The pact of actors who trust.
The Scene
by
J. Griffin
J. Griffin
(12.5.2012)
Ben Kingsley once said that “Silence and Stillness are my two major currencies...” As an Actor, I've always been taken with that quote. It resonates in me. Over the years I have studied and worked with many Actors of varying levels of expertise and skill and usually Actors tend to drive me crazy by “acting”. They move awkwardly, they “orate” and “emote”, they fiddle, they milk every word of dialogue that they're given, they upstage themselves, they miss nearly every significant beat and moment of dramatic artistry and butcher moments that are obvious. And worst... most actors never learn the art of Listening.
The sad thing is that most audiences have absolutely no idea what Acting is and they usually reward Actors for overacting and blubbering dialogue through tears while chewing every ounce of scenery in sight. Yes, you too, don't have any understanding of real Acting. Oh, you think you do. You'll say things like, “His performance in that film was amazing!” But, in your naivete you don't realize that a film is not one performance, but hundreds of performances captured over weeks and months and then edited together that create “a performance”. And so when I respond, "Awesome! Which performance (of the dozens of shots) did you like?" you just look at me as if I've spoken gibberish. People don't really like to talk about movies with me anymore....
Acting is one of those things that everyone thinks is easy and everyone thinks they can do. Quite often people will tell me, “Oh yeah, I can act.” And as their memory of doing two plays in high school spills out of them, they fail to realize that I am a person who has spent 25 years studying and working as a professional Actor. I've dedicated my life to this art. I eat and sleep Acting. I go on long walks and I think about the scenes in-between the scenes that most people notice. I analyze entrances and “prior life” the way a doctor studies an x-ray. I can bust most actors within 5 seconds of seeing them enter a scene (technically the very moment they enter, but I don't want to sound like I'm showing off). "Acting" is easy. Great Acting is impossibly difficult.
In fact, I love Acting so much I rarely ever tell people I'm an Actor. I hate telling people I'm an Actor because most people think of Actors as perpetually dumb, vain, ego-filled vessels of vapid humanity who should quit playing around and get a real job. And so I usually don't talk about Acting. I rarely ever get to have a great conversation about Acting. About preparation and inner monologues and daydreams and phone exercises and intentions and intimacy and activities and impediments and energy and silence and stillness. And so this great love of mine usually stays inside me. I've been fortunate enough to be interviewed by some fan podcasts about some of my work over the years and the questions are never about the one subject I love more than all others. I'm asked about favorite episodes and favorite Actors and embarrassing moments in the studio, and I try and give the best answers I can and put in a funny quip about "whatever" hoping to get a laugh. But, I never get to truly talk about Acting. Someday, maybe.... So, please forgive me as I meander and espouse on this topic that I love in the memory of my friend.
It was shortly after the birth of my first child when I started working with Andrew Benne. Andrew is the only coach I've had who, even though we no longer actively work together, I still refer to as “my coach”. I studied under Andrew for five years continuously and it was with Andrew that my art really grew by leaps and bounds. I had heard of Andrew long before I met him. I had quit Acting for several years in my early twenties as I was tired of the superficial style of acting that is typically taught in most colleges. This style is still very rooted in the Theater and Stanislavsky methodology which to me felt very antiquated and unnatural. It was during these years of floundering around trying to find some other artistic medium that would fulfill me enough to put Acting out of my mind and move on with my life, that I was brought into a workshop by a former student of Andrew's.
The style of Acting that was being taught immediately struck me. It was something much deeper and more honest than any of the other approaches I had experienced before. This coach continually referenced “Andy” as his mentor. And so, for a couple years, my goal was to find this “Andy” and learn from the Master himself. Eventually, Andrew (as he was now known) and I met and I began to study with him. It was an eye-opening journey rooted in Meisner and Hagen and Adler and Benne theories. Andrew's basic philosophies are truth, authenticity, and preparation. Deep preparation. The kind of preparation that takes a few years to fully comprehend.
The ultimate display of his teaching theories were his Wednesday night Professional Dramatic Improv/Scene Study classes. Let me state clearly that after 25 years of experience in acting, Dramatic Improv is the pinnacle of advanced theory. There are NO scripts. There is NO direction. It is the rawest form of pure Acting that I have ever experienced. These classes are brutal. Because, if you're an actor that has gotten by for many years on looking good and faking it, you will be blasted to pieces in these classes. Most of the students have studied with Andrew for years and everyone has a trained eye and can spot a fake or a phony performance. It's probably one of the toughest audiences in the world, no joke. This is Acting that demands that your character preparation is so solid it can be seen in every part of your body. And woe be unto you if you fall short.
Danny Naten was a regular. He was there at my first class and there five years later at my last. Danny studied with Andrew for almost twenty years and even subbed for him occasionally. Danny was a veteran. When you're a newbie it was always a thrilling moment to get to work with one of Andrew's regulars. Most times new Actors were stuck working with other new actors while they floundered around for a few months trying to understand what was happening. Then Andrew would throw a newbie student to one of the regulars and they'd be chewed to shreds in an eye-opening Improv that would highlight their shortcomings and usually give the Actor a much needed breakthrough. I'd been around long enough that I was a regular by this time and had worked with pretty much everyone that came through the doors in those years.
Danny and I had worked together many, many times and he was one of my favorite actors and people. Danny was in his fifties and carried himself as a man who had raised some hell as a younger man, but had learned the hard way that hard living was something he could no longer indulge. He was proud of his sobriety but never preached it. He wore his age and emotional scars comfortably and was never afraid to show himself or pretend to be that which he wasn't. He was a truly terrific actor who mentored most of us over the years and had a kind and soft heart beneath his gruff exterior. He had a mature, confident presence on stage.
The Scene had been written for Danny.
Andrew was in the habit of writing improvs for actors who were working on characters in film work if they needed to flesh out some character prep. Such was the case this night. Danny had been cast as a prison guard in a feature film and for several months Andrew had been writing Improvs so that Danny could work on his character. I finally had gotten the nod to do one of these “Prison Guard” Improvs with Danny and I took the stage with him at the beginning of class to receive our scene information.
I should explain how a Dramatic Improv works. This is not comedy improv where ten people are on stage riffing jokes on whatever spontaneous things the audience throws at them. This is not Drew Carey's “Whose Line Is It...?”. This is not 20 silly ideas with a funky prop. A Dramatic Improv is usually between two Actors (although sometimes more) who are given a specific set of characters and a common knowledge. Essentially, each Actor is given individual character information (such as you are a prison guard). The other Actor is given his/her character information (you are a prisoner). The two Actors are then given common information. Typically this is relationship based (prison guard is crooked and prisoner is a snitch) and the setting (in prison) and any other historical information critical to the story (prison guard owes a loan shark and desperate for money). One at a time, one partner leaves the stage while the remaining Actor is given personal knowledge. This might be a secret that will affect the other character (I've been sleeping with your wife, I embezzled all the company's money). The two Actors switch and the second Actor is given personal information. This information may or may not come out as the scene plays out. Usually the information does come out and it's a way to keep the scene flowing. An Actor is told to enter. And one is told to start the scene on stage and create the space.
The challenge of this kind of Acting is that it is entirely reliant upon preparation. You can't fake these scenes. You have to know where you're coming from and what prior information has happened to you and this must be charged and stored in your body like a battery (the only way I can explain it). You prepare on inner monologues, daydreams, and personal theories. Does your character not give a damn about the entire world and would not be inclined to care if their scene partner was hurt by a revelation? How does your character defend their actions? All of us have justifications for the things we do in our real lives and when asked about these things many of us spew a litany of words and phrases that we've stored up over the years. In preparation, these inner monologues are crucial and take time to learn how to develop well and do on the spot.
The Scene begins, one Actor is on the stage in the environment and living within their circumstances. At some point (beginners and crappy actors always do this way, way too soon) the second Actor enters. They knock or burst through the door with their prior life (an emergency, a funeral, meeting your racist boss) and the Scene evolves as information is given. There is no script. There is no direction. There are no rehearsals. It takes a while for most new actors to find their footing.
Working with Andrew over the years it became easy to spot the holes in an Actor's preparations. This kind of work demands that each Actor know any other relationships that never appear in the scene (casting people) among other intangibles. The easiest way to watch an Actor get busted in their preparation was when a piece of information was announced or referred to (“I saw your mom today”) and the other Actor has not prepped on such information. It hits their bodies immediately. Words aren't connected to action or inner life and the scenes usually deteriorate quickly. Most Dramatic Improvs rarely live up to their potential. An Actor stumbles, a piece of prep is desperately missing and sabotages the piece, the two Actors keep butting heads and the scene gets stalled out, etc. But as you get comfortable in this process, it gets easier. And when given the opportunity to work with others who are seasoned and experienced, the scenes can be amazing and quite impressive. A scene that has no script and no director will appear as though it had been written and directed by masters. The Actors become alive and become their own script writers and self directors. Most scenes, even with veterans, tend to have flaws and problems in communication. But, that's the nature of the work. You're there to learn how to work on the missing pieces in your preparation habits and skills.
Some Improvs, however, transcend the very art and step into a realm of authenticity that can not be touched in any other artistic medium. It's very rare. Such was The Scene.
I had been toying with the ideas of Ben Kingsley's “Silence and Stillness” for a couple years. Honestly, it took most of my first two years of studying with Andrew to mostly understand the nature of the work. But by year three I was a fairly competent veteran and had been incorporating certain philosophies of my own from time to time. Once you become proficient at Dramatic Improv you start finding ways to challenge yourself, which is encouraged. Again it's what class is for, to try things and fail and learn from mistakes.
Silence and Stillness appealed to me greatly as I got older. I found many of the film performances I was drawn to tended to be the moments in-between the “moments”. For example, most audiences would tend to remember a scene from a film where the hero bursts in on the bad guy and delivers a really awesome monologue right before he blows the bad guy away. I've always been interested in the moments before or after the flashy moments. A shot of a character putting his suit on while knowing he's about to kill the bad guy. Walking to the car after he's killed the bad guy. Eating pizza two days after he killed the bad guy. These moments are all over film work and tend not to be celebrated much. But for me they make or break a film performance. If an actor can't get the in-between moments right it typically ruins a whole film for me (*see why nobody talks about movies with me anymore). These moments are hard to do well. And when you're an Actor filming a project over two months, and the scene of you killing the bad guy is the very first one you shoot, and two weeks and two months later you're filming all the prior and post parts of the event take-after-take, shot setup-after-shot setup, it is a great challenge to wear this silent life in your body consistently.
If done right, an Actor should never have to say a word to convey what they are thinking. Silence. It should be on them. In them. Every movement. Every gesture. It lives in you. And it was this observance and practice of silent acting that led me to the work of Stillness. Namely, if an Actor's body is charged with thorough preparation, then not only should they not have to say anything, the Actor shouldn't need to do anything either. The best example I can give to non-actors is to think of a moment when you were a teenager and came home after curfew... and your parent is awake and sitting in the living room waiting for you to come home... two hours ago! Many of us can remember a parent sitting there filled with anger and disappointment. The energy of the parent's emotions emanating from their body. It's very real. Our bodies have the ability to convey information-- lots and lots of information-- without ever having to do anything at all!
I had been intellectually and artistically stimulated by these kinds of ideas for quite some time. I had played with them a bit-- in a scene I might choose to swallow my dialogue and let my partner rant away... or sit and stew. I tried intentionalizing (made-up word) dialogue in my head to see if I could "throw it". Sometimes (in multi-partner scenes) I would make an early exit wondering if I had created a strong enough character to be present in the scene without even needing to be on stage at all! Yes folks, this stuff is very real and works, I've done it. And the more I played with these ideas the more confident I got. I began to experience that some of my best moments in scene work were when I just let go and lived in the character, stopped trying to “do” anything.
Sometimes when I truly cross over and step into the character fully, let the character just wash over me, I will experience a rush of blood to all of my skin and extremities. I flush, my hands and feet become tingly and then go numb. My breathing and heart rate change. I experience a form of tunnel vision that starts at my eyes and pushes into the back of my head. I'll feel a very clear sense of being disconnected from my body and (after much practice) when I finally surrender to the experience, my entire being changes. I am no longer Jave Griffin. I am X. I love being X.
This is what I live for. There is no sensation that compares to this. Not sex. Not falling in love. Not drugs. Nothing. Losing myself, truly losing myself in a character is the most transcendent feeling I have ever experienced. It's what makes Acting such a unique medium. There is no separation between the Art and the Artist. When done at the highest levels, Acting is the one medium above all others where the Artist actually becomes Art. Living, breathing Art. And this was the world I had been exploring for about three years when I was given The Scene.
I'd like to say that I hit that amazing moment of "X" on a regular basis, but no Actor can. It is very rare even for me and I'd like to think I do it about as well as anybody. More often, our performances are riddled with errors in preparation. But, I was becoming more and more confident as those last couple years stretched on. My preparation techniques were ingraining themselves in my habits and thoughts... I began to see characters in very different ways. No longer the superficial styles that had turned me off from Acting as a young man, instead I was exploring the true Acting that I had always hoped was out there. And I found it with Andrew Benne. Grasshopper, if you ever want to learn and practice the true Art of Acting, look no further than Master Benne. He is the best. Period.
There are many challenges to working in Dramatic Improv. Some Actors get befuddled and can't think of anything good to say. Others won't shut up and blather on and on and chew the scenery. For some Actors this can become a competitive exercise as one continually tries to top the other. Some Actors are stubborn and refuse to let information from the other Actor affect them. Actors upstage each other constantly. Actors butt heads and get stuck in moments. There are millions of possible ways that a Dramatic Improv can get messed up. And when you work long enough you can usually tell whether you will have a decent scene potential with your partner.
Dramatic Improv is risky work. I've seen Actors get in fist fights, almost have sex, one Actor broke his hand by punching a wall in a scene I was in (otherwise he would have punched me), Actors fall in love, and on and on. I don't recommend this kind of work unless you really want to “go there”. So it was in this environment that I began to think of the possibilities of doing an Improv while being Silent and being Still. That may not seem like a big deal, but in the five years that I worked with Andrew I had never seen anyone make a decision to not talk and to move as little as possible while in an Improv. Andrew and I discussed it often in the months leading up to The Scene. It was this thing I would throw out to him and we would spend many long hours contemplating the realities of such a feat. At this point in my Acting education I had become quite confident in my skill and preparation and felt that this concept of Silence and Stillness was the apex of my achievements. It was a brass ring that couldn't be grabbed. It was believing in preparation so much and so thoroughly that I could trust myself to convey an entire conversation and scene without words or action... just let it live on my body.
Silence. And Stillness. Could I speak without words? Could I behave without moving? Some chefs specialize in deconstructing a dish. They take a well known entree and deconstruct all of the elements and rearrange them so that the diner can experience each element in a new and revolutionary way. In a similar way, I felt that this notion of Silence and Stillness could, for me at least, deconstruct all manner of “acting” and allow me to just “be”. Take Acting to it's simplest human experience while completely charged and loaded with preparation. To communicate with a fellow Actor in a completely unscripted and undirected environment and trust-- really trust-- that the preparation could carry me through an entire scene. No flashy improvised dialogue. Nothing. Just be. Silent. Still.
I feel there is one more critical component of Dramatic Improv work to explain before I get to the heart of my message. Listening. The art of Listening is one of the most overlooked tools in an actor's toolbox. It's something that most audiences don't even consider. But the reality is that if a scene partner doesn't Listen to their partner, they can't absorb and react to the information and emotional stimuli. It's a fatal flaw in most performances and in most actors. And one of the key elements in Andrew's Improv style of teaching was developing Listening skills. Usually when a scene craps out it's because one Actor isn't listening to the other. Many rookies tend to wait to say their lines. I worked with an Actor once in a scripted scene study who complained that, because my character had more dialogue than hers, she had “nothing to do”. And I spent many a frustrating hour trying to convince her that my performance was completely dependent on her Listening, absorbing the information, and reacting. It's a sadly overlooked part of acting. But the reality is that the best monologue in the world will not be heard by the audience unless the other actors in the scene are Listening and engaged. The audience will never know why the performance fell flat. It's an overlooked (yes, I use that word three times) part of Acting. A Dramatic Improv can not work unless both partners Listen to each other.
Danny Naten was a wonderfully gifted and trained actor. And he was a great Listener. He had studied with Andrew for years. He wouldn't tolerate a half-assed preparation and would bust you in a second. He was both kind and stern. Loving and angry. He'd open his heart to you in a moment and slam it shut with force if you weren't deserving of it. He was a wonderful scene partner. He was a great Actor. He understood the work, emulated it, supported it, taught it, and truly believed in the essence of it. That's not to say he was perfect or that every improv he did went well. But, with Danny I never worried that my partner would come to the stage unprepared. Danny was reliable.
He had been cast in this film and spent a couple months working through different Improv scenarios that Andrew created for him to explore the character. Pretty much everyone in class at that point had done a “Prison Guard” scene with Danny. While I wasn't planning on Silence and Stillness that night, I had been looking for opportunities to try out this theory of mine in the months leading up to The Scene. It's not something you can force. Or at least I couldn't... I had been waiting for the right opportunity.
“Danny and Jave...” Andrew called out.
We took the stage and Andrew imparted the common knowledge. Danny was a crooked prison guard. I was a convict who was a snitch. The common situation was given and the relationship. I was sent away while Danny got his private information. Then I returned to the stage while Danny went outside and I received the knowledge that my snitching... had led to a brutal assault and that the whole operation was going to be blown wide open. My life was in danger and only Danny could help me! The particulars of The Scene don't actually matter in the least, and to be honest I've forgotten almost all of them now. What is notable, was that when I heard that I had been brutally assaulted I jumped at the idea of Silence and Stillness. What if I've been beaten so bad that I can't talk and I can barely move? This was my chance to put all the things I had learned in the years I had been working at the studio with Andrew. This was the test. I felt it very strongly. An opportunity to put everything into practice and then strip all of the typical Actor's crutches away-- no dialogue, no dramatic gestures. Devolve.
As I have thought over this scene tonight, with the knowledge that Danny just died, I'm trying to remember what my thought process was leading up to The Scene. I remember a fellow Actor putting the makeup on me to make my face look horribly bruised. I remember stuffing one of my cheeks with cotton balls and fashioning a sling. And I remember very clearly deciding that I was going to try this reckless idea of going on stage and doing almost nothing. I remember thinking I must be crazy. What I'm racking my brain trying to remember is if I ever thought for one second that Danny might not appreciate or be able to handle this massive curveball I was about to throw into the scene.
And I think that's the best possible compliment I can ever give about Danny Naten as an Actor. I wasn't worried for one second that I couldn't try this. I felt safe with Danny. That's not to say that he might not take a swing at me in a moment of genuine anger. It means that Danny could handle himself. I wasn't worried about him. I knew I could try this idea out, and spectacularly fail, and Danny wouldn't be bothered a bit. He might be frustrated that he hadn't been able to explore whatever he was trying to explore with his character that night, but I don't remember having the slightest worry that Danny couldn't handle my selfish effort to try and work out some Acting philosophy that was critical to my own personal artistic development. That's a profound trust that was at work that night and it speaks volumes about my opinion of Danny as a person, as an Actor, and as an Artist.
How I wish I could talk to Danny and tell him these things now.
I can't think of any other Actor that I would have felt comfortable trying out some advanced theory like that with. I wasn't worried or nervous for him for one second. And usually I had to consider what scene partner I was with and what they could handle and my best possible compliment to Danny Naten was that I never worried about him. (That's a bad habit of mine actually, most regulars never cared a lick what their scene partners could handle. It's not a rude thing, it's just that most seasoned Actors use the class for personal artistic development and they don't bother to worry about their scene partners. It's a unique character flaw of mine as an Actor that I typically did consider my scene partner, if for no other reason than to make sure that I could avoid some of the traps and errors that someone had been struggling with.)
The decision was made. This was the highest test I could give myself after almost 5 years of study. And I was completely willing to fail. I never thought about the arrogance of trying out this idea in Danny's scene. And it was Danny's scene. I just went for it.
Danny was onstage waiting for me to enter. I entered, barely able to walk and with a battered and bruised face. I carried a pad of paper and pencil (I think-- it may have already been on the table). To be truthful, I remember very little of the actual scene particulars itself. I do remember the first moment when Danny became so frustrated that I wasn't talking, and only writing answers on the paper, that he crossed the stage and yanked the pad of paper from my hand hands and threw it across the stage ordering me to speak. I remember uttering the only two reluctant words I spoke during the whole scene, “I... can't.” I remember the moment when it dawned on Danny what I was doing. He had an Improv scene partner that couldn't talk! He was going to have to carry the entire weight of all the spoken information to the audience... by himself. I don't think that Danny thought or tried to sort out why I wasn't talking. I imagine that he assumed it was a direction that Andrew had given me in the private information.
But there I was... for a moment... completely exposed. What was Danny going to do? I was literally giving him the keys to drive the entire scene however he wanted.
A lesser actor would have panicked. Tried to bluster and cover for all of my missing dialogue. A lesser actor would have read my written responses aloud so that he could then “answer” and react to the little bit of information that I was providing and play both parts. An abusive actor would have taken the opportunity of my silence and stillness to smack me around a bit knowing that by dramatic improv law I couldn't return fire. An egotistical actor would have used this opportunity to upstage me and orate and emote and give a five minute long monologue while my character quickly faded into the background. A competitive actor would use an opportunity like this to score personal points.
Danny Naten... Listened!
He got it. And once he got it he did something I never would have expected... he “gave me the keys back” to drive the scene! He took a beat, thought about it, and just went with it like a Pro. He handed me back the pad. It is an unusual selflessness that an actor like that possesses. The willingness to explore uncharted territory. And this was a whole new ballgame. He had to carry the entire dialogue of the scene. All verbal information would come through him. Any information I had could only come through my limited body and writing on the paper. And as the scene went on I found myself writing less and less. Eventually, I would only need to write one word at a time, or not at all, as the entirety of my emotional life and conversation emanated from my body. It was palpable. I could feel everyone in the theater feeling what my character was thinking, expressing, and feeling. My body went numb. Tunnel vision. The feeling of out-of-body euphoria began to sink in. X had arrived.... And Danny helped me carry the whole thing. There is something remarkable that I feel needs to be emphasized here: it's about Listening. It's about trusting your partner to Listen to you.
Danny was Listening... to a character that wasn't speaking or moving!
He would pose a question to me wanting to know what happened. And all I could give was a look, a moan maybe, a change of breath, and write a word. He would look at the paper and react. He never said what was on the paper (a very veteran move) he just responded! At some point I stopped writing on the paper completely. And it was actually happening.... This theory that I had, that an actor could communicate without spoken dialogue and without physicality, was actually working. My body tingled and my mind vanished and I just lived. I was able to communicate volumes of information with the slightest of moves. A look spoke language that was in my brain and conveyed it to my Listening partner.
For ten minutes I was onstage and stole a scene without speaking a word or moving a muscle. I was X.
It was transcendent. Everything I have ever believed could be possible about the art of Acting was proven to me that night. It was the highest I ever soared as an Actor. And while there is no footage of it, it lives on forever inside of me. I will talk about The Scene until the day I die. I know it's possible.
That night I received an ovation that I hadn't heard before. Everyone knew something special had occurred. This was confirmed when Andrew's first words after the scene to me were, “I think you've invented a new discipline, Jave.” I felt a great sense of satisfaction as an artist and as an Actor. I had done something that no one had ever tried to do in all the years Andrew had taught, and I pulled it off. And it had been Danny's scene.
I have heard that that scene is now referred to as “The Prisoner Scene” and I take great pride in knowing that this little achievement of mine is remembered and will find new life. There have been a few people over the years that, when explaining the scene to them, “get” it. They understand how risky it was to come out on stage during an improv and choose to legitimately not say a word. For me, I believe that it is the finest moment I have ever achieved in my personal journey as an Actor. It confirmed for me every element of what Acting can be and it proved what Andrew teaches. Trusting preparation to affect your body. Trusting your body to communicate. Listening to your partner and reacting. It's NOT about the words. And for whatever accolades I receive in my own mind about the work I did that night, I am humbled now thinking about Danny's death.
I realize in this moment, and in a way I never comprehended before, that Danny made that performance happen. Danny's performance completely and totally supported the performance I was giving. It made my performance possible. Danny, the selfless actor who Listened to a mute character and carried that character to the audience.... Danny, willing to hand a scene to a non-speaking, barely-moving actor. Danny, Listening to Silence and watching Stillness and making it sing and dance.
I wish I could talk to Danny tonight, but that is not a possibility ever again in my lifetime. I wish I could thank him for that moment that he provided in the development of my art. If Danny were here right now and I blubbered all over him for all the personal reasons I didn't mention in this story, I would make a point to tell him what a rare and wonderful Actor he was. I'm an Acting snob. So, when I say that Danny was great-- truly great-- this does not come from the tear stained notions of a grieving man. Rather, this is a fact. Danny was a great Actor. And that's why I'm writing this in my sorrow.
Because the world needs to know about Danny Naten. About selflessness and integrity in Acting. About Truth. About Listening. About being thrown a curve ball and hitting a grand slam... and letting the other guy take all the credit. I will forever be linked to Danny through The Scene. And I'm grateful it was him. It only could have happened with Danny Naten... and he deserves ALL the credit.
I miss you, brother.
Top Picture actors and Andrew Benne Students Danny Naten and April Matson . Below picture actor Jave Griffin also Andrew Benne Alumni.
