My Time In 'Eden'

I was thrilled to be asked by Lindsay Taylor at the Prague Film & Theater Center to participate in a staged reading of "The Eden Game," a play about Vaclav Havel by California-based playwright Jock Doubleday.

Doubleday wrote the first act of "The Eden Game" in 1989, inspired after reading Havel's "Letters to Olga." The second act was written in 1997, after learning of Havel's second marriage to actress Dagmar Veškrnová. As Doubleday said in the playbill:

"Unfortunately, no one had any interest in a play about Vaclav Havel. Perhaps his real-life drama was enough. Today's staged reading, 22 years after the play's inception, is a great gift to me. I have written 39 plays, but "The Eden Game" was my first, and it holds a special place in my heart."

The staged reading is a chance for the playwright to see and hear his words come to life for the first time on a stage and to get constructive feedback from the audience and the performers. The performance was filmed and the audience was asked to fill out feedback cards. Sadly, Doubleday couldn't be in Prague for the reading.

I was asked to read the part of the Prison Warden in Act I. I had a fantastic time meeting and working with the other actors. It was the first time I had been on a stage in front of a live audience since 1990 or so, when I was a stand-up comic for a night for a Plimpton-esque first-person newspaper story. (That's another story.)

(Read a review of our performance here.)

The actors sat on stage in a horseshoe around an old bench, where most of the "action" took place. When it was our turn, we entered the acting space to engage with the other performers (mostly with Scott Williams, who played Havel). We were all reading from the script; we hadn't had time to memorize our lines. And while we weren't in costume, we did act the parts as best we could given the limited parameters.

What did I think?

There is much to recommend in "The Eden Game." The dialogue is smart and chewy, and the subject matter is right for the stage. It's an ambitious play, and Doubleday obviously knows his history. But I think it is too long, its structure overly complicated and a tad gimmicky (a play within a play) which, in my opinion, detracts from the power of Havel's story, which needs no embellishment.

I hope our performance helps Doubleday hone "The Eden Game" and that it gets produced somewhere.

Who knows? Maybe even Prague.

My Acting Demo Reel

Grant Podelco (Demo Reel) from Grant Podelco on Vimeo.

"I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it." -- Anthony Hopkins

Here's a demo reel of some of my acting efforts so far, mostly appearing in films written and directed by the talented students at the Prague Film School. (I wrote about my fledgling acting efforts in a previous post here.)

On May 3, I'll be appearing in a small speaking role in episode of ABC's "Missing," starring Ashley Judd, Sean Bean, and Keith Carradine, which was filmed in Prague last autumn. I'm pretty excited about that. I'll add that clip to this show reel after it airs.

I've been going to a few auditions and took an intensive acting class from Nancy Bishop a few weeks ago. I was pretty nervous about committing to it, but figured that if I was nervous, it's something I should probably do. And I'm so glad I did. I met some wonderful actors from Prague, Berlin, and Vienna, and really challenged myself. Nancy's a great teacher. She really knows the biz. Heck, she wrote the book on it.

Because of that acting class, I was asked by the Prague Film & Theater Center to read the part of the Warden in a staged reading on March 23 of "The Eden Game," a new play based on the life of Vaclav Havel by Jock Doubleday.

Come out and see us. It starts at 6 p.m. at Male Vinohradske Divadlo. Tickets cost 150 CZK for adults and 100 CZK for students. You can e-mail info@pftc.cz for more information.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the demo reel. Make sure the kids are out of the room first before you hit Play.

Acting The Part

Checkmate from Umer Durrani on Vimeo.

When I was a younger man, I used to dream of being a filmmaker and an actor. A good friend and I used to write, direct and star in some pretty awful amateur 8mm horror movies. (I wrote about them and posted them previously here.) I was also in my drama club in high school.

I even had a small speaking role in a low-budget drama that was filmed in Syracuse, New York, back in the late 1980s. (You can see a clip of that film, "Worst of Enemies," here.)

Living in Prague got me to thinking about getting back into the game, at least from an acting standpoint. Prague's illustrious Barrandov studios has long drawn big-budget films from all over the world ("Mission Impossible IV" being the latest Hollywood blockbuster filmed partially in Prague), and both the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) and the Prague Film School (PFS) attract talented young actors and directors from all over the world.


The director of "Checkmate," Umer Durrani, and the wonderful Sarah Brown, who plays my put-upon wife.

I was also inspired by the success of my good friend, Stewart Mooore, who threw himself into the acting game a few years back, with excellent results (including roles in "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" and "Solomon Kane.")

So, I mustered up my courage, registered with some casting agents here in Prague, and put my name, photo, and details into the database at the PFS.

I don't know if I'm any good, but I'm having a lot of fun. It's amazing how close you end up feeling to the cast and crew of each film, despite having spent only a couple of days together. But I guess they are days of intense emotion and hard work, so the bond develops.

Monogamous Man from Doron Tempert on Vimeo.

So far, I've had roles in seven PFS films (one of which, "Dream House," directed by Eirini Karamanoli, has been officially selected for the 2012 Angeleno Film Festival in L.A.). I also nabbed a small speaking role as "Embassy Official" in one episode of the upcoming ABC-TV series "Missing," starring Ashley Judd, Sean Bean, and Keith Carradine. It debuts in the U.S. at 8 p.m. on March 15.

For some reason, I keep getting cast as either the abusive husband or cruel father, or, in my latest film, a cop who loses his cool. Weird.


Two scenes from "Dream House," in which the main character, played by Nicole Gay Grisco, is buying a house where each of the rooms reveals a snippet of a bleak future. Of course, I play an abusive husband. The film also stars the great Peter Hosking as the creepy real estate agent.


I will admit, it's hard to hold down a full-time job and fit in these acting gigs. I may be forced to take my name out of the PFS database and simply hope for a few more major jobs, like "Missing," to come along. If they ever do.

In the meantime, I'm eagerly awaiting the final cuts of three PFS films I've been working on. If I'm allowed, I'll post them here when I get copies. Many times, the students can't enter the films into festivals if they're available online somewhere already.


In the PFS film "Checkmate," I play a chess master who becomes obsessed with the game at the expense of his wife. In the end, he gets his comeuppance. Interestingly, that's a real gun, and we had to have a gun handler on set from Barrandov to supervise while we filmed.

I hope you enjoy the surreal "Monogamous Man" by Doron Tempert, in which I co-star with the incomparable David Worden. That film was supposed to be an entirely different script, and filmed outside, but since it was raining quite hard on the day of the shoot, Doron and his PFS pal Raam Reddy rewrote the script in one day and we filmed inside from about 6 p.m. until 2:30 a.m.


In the PFS film "Blue Lines," directed by Zach Nanus, I play an overly aggressive cop who is filmed abusing an Occupy Wall Street protester.


A scene from an as-yet-untitled PFS film directed by Sarthak Johar, in which I play a father who heaps abuse on his dying son in an effort to get him to come to grips with his life.