Latest Reel

Here is my latest acting reel:

Jon Farley Acting Reel from Jon Farley on Vimeo.

Thanks to Bryan Hiltner for editing!
For additional video performances, please visit the "Just the Videos" page on this site.

New sLipPage Trailer

Post production work is proceeding on the feature film sLipPage.  Here is a newly produced trailer for the project:


sLipPage - Teaser 3 from Bryan Hiltner on Vimeo.

Hey, Hey, Hey

I have always found it rewarding to work with Jon Meyer.  I've appeared in several of his projects.  He is great to work with, and the results are always fantastic.  In this music video for the band The Quick and Easy Boys, I play a mysterious man in a parking garage handing off an equally mysterious package to the lead character.  I love the images in this one!  This video premiered on The Huffington Post on June 17th.

Beaux Arts Club at Imago Theatre

In February, I went to the general audition at Portland's Imago Theatre.  From this I was invited to audition for Carol Triffle's latest play "Beaux Arts Club," and after several call-backs, was cast as the character Humphrey.  The rehearsals for this show also served as a script development workshop, and the character of Humphrey changed a LOT before we opened.  There were several weeks when I would have new lines at every rehearsal.  Eventually, Humphrey transformed into a mob enforcer who brought an element of realistic danger into a story that was mostly absurdist farce.  It was sometimes nerve-wracking to keep up with the changes coming at me, but in the end, it was a very rewarding project, and I feel quite lucky to have had a part in it.

Learning the Long Monologue

After the run of For The Time Being, I decided to write a magazine article about the memorization process I had used in learning Herod's 1600 word monologue.  I submitted the article to Dramatics Magazine, and to my great surprise and delight, they published it in the May 2013 issue under the title "Learning the Long Monologue."  I am very pleased to have been able to make this contribution to the acting craft.

Premier of Let's Bury the Hatchet!

Sunday, April 21, 2013 Bryan Hiltner's latest film "Let's Bury the Hatchet! (Deep in Your Face)" will have its premier at the Clinton Street Theatre in Portland.  The show starts at 1:30PM and includes two of Bryan's short films, followed by the premier, followed by a Q&A with the cast and crew.  I'm really excited about this.  I play a lead in this film, and this will be the first time I've had a theatrical premier of one of my projects.  The cast includes an ensemble of many of Portland's finest actors.  It's great company to be in.  You can scroll down a couple of entries in this blog to view the trailer.  If you are in Portland, I hope I will see you at the theatre!

*Clinton Street Theatre trivia:  This theatre has had the longest continuous run of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (probably in the world).  It has been shown here every weekend since 1978!

C'mon Doll Wins!

Last weekend, the music video "C'mon Doll" won Best Music Video at the Northwest Short Film Festival.

The website for the festival is here:  http://www.nwshortfilmfestival.com/2013-winners.html
You can see my earlier entry about this project here: http://jonfar.blogspot.com/2012/04/cmon-doll.html

And a huge thank you to Jon Meyer and Rachel Sharkeye of Vanjam Productions for asking me to be part of this project!  You guys rock!  https://www.facebook.com/VanjamProductions

Let's Bury the Hatchet

Coming up this spring will be the release of a mini-feature I did with Bryan Hiltner and Michelle Vincig called "Let's Bury the Hatchet! (Deep in Your Face)."  This is a revenge comedy.  In it I am Amil Portraine, a small-time theatre director with big ideas who is facing the wrath of a "stage dad" whose daughter didn't get cast in my latest production.  Bryan and Michelle put together a great cast of Pacific Northwest actors for this, which even includes the Keep Portland Weird super anti-hero Frogman.  The snippets of footage that I've seen so far look really good.  Here is the trailer:


Trailer for LET'S BURY THE HATCHET! (DEEP IN YOUR FACE) from Bryan Hiltner on Vimeo.

For the Time Being

I worked with Claire Willett a few years ago on a reading of her play "How the Light Gets In."  I was newly returning to acting at the time, and was very happy to have the opportunity to be on stage.  When I saw her casting announcement this year for a staging of W.H. Auden's Christmas oratorio "For the Time Being," I sent her a note asking to audition.  She wrote an enthusiastic reply saying that if I hadn't contacted her, she was going to contact me.  It turns out that she had had me in mind to play Herod ever since that previous project we did together.

Herod is a challenging part.  He doesn't appear until late in the piece, then his entire contribution is a 1600 word monologue in which he rationalizes his decision to order the Massacre of the Innocents.  Herod's scene causes a huge shift in tone within the poem, and is there to place the overly familiar and sentimentalized scenes of the Nativity into a modern context.

Herod

I spent two months learning the monologue.  I knew I had to have it completely in my bones.  It took a lot of work, but along the way, I learned quite a bit about how to do memorization.  I was very happy with the results.

24 Hour Play Festival

This past December, I participated in my first 24 hour play festival.  These events are marathons of dramatic effort.  A group of actors and playwrights convene at 10:00PM on a Friday, and by 10:00PM Saturday, they have written, rehearsed, staged, and performed an evening of one-act plays, complete with costumes, lighting, props, and completely off-book.

I played Wesley, a deceased secret agent returning from the other side, in a piece called "Across the Veil" written by Logan Loughmiller.  As seems to be my fate these days, I had several monologues to learn.

Mikki Lipsey, Summer Olsson, Jon Farley, William Wilson, & Logan Loughmiller

The whole evening came off wonderfully well.  The scripts were surprisingly strong, and all of the actors were up to the demands of the utterly relentless schedule.  Nick James of Jamestown Theatre Productions and his crew made everything run flawlessly.  It was a great experience all around.

Throng: It's a Lie!

A few months ago, I was invited to audition for a film.  I was assured that it had a part for me, and that I would be perfect for it.  Being fundamentally vain, as I suppose most actors are, I felt flattered to be asked.  From the script fragment I received, it looked as though the film was a science fiction / fantasy story.  There would be motion capture involved.  I was asked to wear all black to the audition.

Well, I did get the part.  It didn't turn out to be quite what I expected, but I've mostly recovered from the trauma...

Legacy of Oden

This is a basketball highlights video produced by Bryan Hiltner.  In it, I narrate the triumph and tragedy of Greg Oden's ill-fated career with the Portland Trail Blazers.  Michelle Vincig photographed my sections.


LEGACY OF ODEN from Bryan Hiltner on Vimeo.


Bryan posted this on several Blazers fan sites, and it had over 2000 viewings in the first two days it was on line.

C'mon Doll

Earlier this month I performed in a music video for the Seattle band My Goodness.  This video was conceived, directed, photographed, and edited by the amazing Jon Meyer.  It turned out wonderfully well, and has been released on the U.K. music magazine web site NME.com to promote the band's upcoming U.K. tour.



Last fall, Jon Meyer had asked me to perform in a music video he was planning because he wanted an actor who could handle some aerial work.  I enthusiastically agreed.  Unfortunately, the project never received funding.  Eventually, that project evolved into the one you see here, and luckily for me, Jon decided to keep me as the lead character.  Working with Jon is always rewarding because he is willing to take risks and exploit the synergies that develop between his actors and the material.  Yet even when we were improvising, he maintained a very clear sense of what was working and what was not.  This allowed a great amount of freedom in developing the performance.  The other aspect of this project that was unexpectedly interesting is that since we had no live sound, Jon was able to direct us from behind the camera as we were shooting.  It was not unlike the way the way silent films were directed in the 1920's.

Update:
Since its initial release, the "C'mon Doll" video has made it onto a number of music web sites.
Here is a short "behind the scenes" video about making the video:

Fertile Ground 2012

Portland's Fertile Ground is a 10-day festival of new plays that takes place in January each year.  This year there were over 100 productions on the boards, ranging in scope from staged readings up to fully staged productions.  I was fortunate to be cast in three projects this year:  "Triptych Americana" written and directed by Karen Alexander-Brown, "Fully Loaded Russian Roulette" a collection of six one acts produced by Edward Lyons Jr. and Dug Martel, and "Jerusalem Story" written by Sharon Sassone and directed by Jeremy Benjamin.

"Triptych Americana" is composed of three short vignettes of American life. In "Precipice", I played Benny, a man whose marriage and life are on the verge of falling apart after the onset of medical problems.  In "Transparent" I played Rich, a businessman who is too busy and self absorbed to notice the things around him.  In both of these pieces, Pat Janowski played my wife.  Two very different relationships, same actress.

Jack Wells, Tom Stutzman, Gordon Romei, Karen Alexander-Brown, Pat Janowski, Jon Farley, Angela Freeman

"Fully Loaded Russian Roulette" was a collection of six one-acts, each by a different author.  I was in two of them.  One of these was "Breakfast Knives" by Wally Jones.  I played "Dream Jillian", the dream counterpart to the character Jillian in the story.  The main story and a dream were enacted on stage simultaneously, then eventually merged into a single crazy finale.  The other one-act was "The Good News" by Dyami Clement.  The play is a farce which concerns two young men and the mother of one of them who is lying dead on the floor.  What exactly caused her death and was it murder?  I played a police detective who investigates briefly, then decides to get out quick.  Karen Farley played the deceased mother, who talks to the other characters from beyond the grave.

Me as the noir'ish police detective in "The Good News."

Karen Farley as Martha,  Jon Farley as the cop

"Jerusalem Story" is a re-setting of the Romeo and Juliette story into modern-day Israel.  I played Rabbi Lawrence, a prominent figure working to bridge the Isreali-Palestinian divide.  Though effective in winning many considerations, he ultimately is unable to prevent the demise of the young lovers.  Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of this production.

The Fever

Recently, Barbara Kite of Barbara Kite Studio produced a reel to promoter her acting studio and her students.  As part of this project, I performed a short monologue from Wallace Shawn's play "The Fever."  Here is the complete monologue:


Jon Farley performs excerpt from THE FEVER from Bryan Hiltner on Vimeo.

Barbara has been a wonderful acting coach for me.  I've studied with her since 2007.  You can go to http://www.barbarakite.com/acting-classes/acting-class-showcase/ to see the fully produced showcase reel.

The Red Carnation

This film is atypical for me, but I thought the script was good, and that it would be a good way to push out the boundaries on my work. No words; just inner monologue. We filmed on the steps of the downtown public library with the camera well back from the action. All of the "extras" you see are just people who happened to be walking by. Working this way blurs the distinction between acting and life. We were just out in a public space, playing out our story without the artifice of a stage or studio to frame the work. Not surprising, then, that the actress didn't want to give back the prop money after we were done shooting!

Bryan Hiltner Shorts

In the summer of 2011, Bryan Hiltner, the writer/director of "sLipPage", decided to write and produce a series of short films in rapid succession.  I was fortunate enough to be asked to act in two of them.

In "Engage-Fail" I play a private investigator who has been posing as a young man's future father-in-law.  The moment of the film is the point when the young man discovers that no one around him is quite who they say they are.  The filming schedule was very compressed on this project, and there was little opportunity for re-takes.  Never the less, the finished film turned out nicely.  This film won First Place at the July 2011 edition of the "Suck My Flick" monthly film festival.


Engage-Fail REDUX from Bryan Hiltner on Vimeo.


"For the Benefit of Others" is a Faustian vignette in which a young woman arranges to make things better for her family by offering up her "friends" for sacrifice.  I play Mephistopheles, and once again, Bryan paired me with Emily Galash.  This is an atypical role for me, and it required me to enact a murder scene with spurting blood, etc.  It took a bit of work to find the place where this character could live in me.


For the Benefit of Others: DIRECTOR'S CUT from Bryan Hiltner on Vimeo.

Tooth of Crime (Second Dance)

Meera

When I saw the audition notice for this show, I knew I wanted to be in it.  I mean Sam Shepard, right?  I had seen a production back in graduate school, and remember liking it.  So, I sent away for a copy of the script, bought a CD of the music, and quickly decided that I was perfect for the role of Meera.  Fortunately Dug Martel and Edward Lyons, the producers of the show, agreed with me on this point, and I got the part!  We did eight performances in the middle of summer in a theatre without air conditioning.  Regardless, the show was quite good.  It was a great group of people to work with, and I had a blast! (Photos by Travis Becker)

 Entire Cast (L-R)

Jon Farley,  Sam Hediger,  Paul Susi,  Zach Koeller,  Sara Lynn Herman,  Dug Martel,  Edward Lyons,  Micah Loiselle

The Shared Dream

This was a very satisfying little project that Michelle Vincig and Bryan Hiltner put together for "48 Go Green", part of the 48 Hour Film Festival.  If you are not familiar with the 48 hour film festival, it is an annual competition for filmmakers in which you have exactly 48 hours to write, cast, photograph, and edit a short film.  The topic is assigned at the start of the 48 hour time period, so very little can be done to prep.  Regardless, people do as much ahead as they can.  Michelle and Bryan asked me a week or so ahead of time if I would do the project, and of course I said "Yes."  I showed up at their house early on a Saturday morning and was given a script that had been written overnight.  While I was madly cramming my lines they were gathering up all the production equipment that was going out to our location.  I was to play a recently-deceased environmentalist speaking to his daughter from beyond the grave as she visits a wet-lands area he fought to preserve.  Emily Galash did a nice turn as my daughter.  There were so many ways this could have gone off the rails.  It could have been corny or sappy or it could have been raining that day, but instead it was sweet and to the point, and beautifully photographed.


The Shared Dream from Michelle Vincig on Vimeo.

sLipPage

This is the second feature film in which I've had a major role.  The film is currently in post production, with ADR and VO scheduled for February 2012.  Release is scheduled for late 2012.  It is really difficult to summarize what "sLipPage" is about.  It has elements of psychological drama, science fiction, and dream fantasy.  The central character, Sanders, is a young man who may be grieving for his recently deceased mother, or who may be under the influence of aliens.  I play Dr. Eton, an unscrupulous hypno-therapist (and religious obsessive) who believes that aliens are angels, and who uses Sanders (his patient) to make contact with them!  I know.  Wild, huh?  It's a great role and I am really looking forward to the finished result.  Bryan Hiltner wrote and directed this film, and he plays the lead character "Sanders".  Emily Galash plays his girlfriend "Champ".


sLipPage Trailer from Bryan Hiltner on Vimeo.