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Russ Croley as the Head Nerd Engineer in the 90 second industrial video/commercial/spoof for Lexington's "Big Ass Fans" (seriously--that's the company name; check it out at www.bigassfans.com)

Hello Everyone, and thanks for stopping by! This is the first of my occasional blog posts which will center around my acting and other production oriented pursuits.

The upcoming summer promises to be busy, with five separate gigs lined up for the Veterans Administration (VA), all on the road in Florida and Montana. Now, you ask, what does the VA have to do with acting? Good question!

The VA Hospital in Lexington, KY, started a pilot program to train medical professionals, as well as administrators, how to better handle situations which may be "sensitive", e.g. not only disclosure of mistakes which may have been made medically, but also how to better deal with patients and family whenever there is a tough situation. A series of videos were produced at the Louisville, KY, VA Hospital, and those videos are used at workshops for VA hospitals around the country. But here's the twist: After showing each video, the workshop participants move into live role playing situations which are an extension of each video, often with the very same actors playing the very same roles as they have just watched in the video. 

Of course, the use of role playing in training workshops is nothing new, but the Lexington model, using professional quality mini-movies for the set up, coupled with professional actors to keep the role playing sessions "real" (kind of ironic isn't it?) results in an unparallelled quality learning experience. This type of acting job ("gig") is classified as "industrial", as opposed to TV, film or movie, commercials, etc.  It's a lot of fun, great experience in both camera acting work and live performance--improvisation is the main staple here, an essential skill for a good actor--and the travel nationwide is a bonus. It's also a fantastic opportunity to work with top notch professional actors and medical pros, as well.

Thanks to Lorilynn Rosa's casting agency, The Talent and Crew Network, based in Evansville, I recently shot some commercials, to be periodically released over the summer and into the fall, for a major West Kentucky/Southern Indiana chain of automobile dealerships, had a small role in Michael Rosenbaum's (you'll remember him as Lex Luthor on the TV series "Smallville") comedy feature film "Old Days", shot in and around Evansville, Indiana in the spring; and filmed some for scenes in my (so far!) recurring role as Rod, they guy you love to hate, in the web series Girl/Girl Scene, shot and set in Lexington, KY. All this was in addition to regular appearances in the interactive murder mystery troupe for Todd Fluhr's "The Game Plays You", which regularly challenges the audience to get involved and solve the mystery in performances in the South and Midwest.

In addition to racking up frequent flyer miles traveling to VA hospitals around the country, I'll be playing POTUS (President of the United States) in William X. Lee's "Architect of Chaos", which features Charlie Sheen's uncle and Martin Sheen's brother, Joe Estevez, in the enviable role of God. Architect of Chaos will shoot in Ohio and Kentucky, starting in June.

And last weekend I discovered horse racing isn't the only thing that goes on at Churchill Downs in Louisville.... I had a great afternoon traveling there with good friend and fellow actor Claude D. Miles and his lovely wife Tanya to attend the Bluegrass Movie Experience, which was presented as part of an arts fair in the Churchill Downs infield--while the horses were racing around us on that famous track! A couple of shorts in which I appear were shown there: "Paradise", written and directed by the aforesaid Claude D. Miles, and "The Lynnville Incident", written and directed by Ryan Lincoln McCurdy, a recent film school graduate from the University of Southern Indiana.  Kudos to Jason Crowe and Roni Jonah, two of Louisville outstanding filmmakers and actors, for hosting that event!

And before I sign off for this blog (or maybe "blab" would be more appropriate?), I want to thank all the great actors, agents, directors, cinematographers, writers, producers, and everyone else--all too many to mention individually here--with whom I have and am having the privilege to work in this amazing business. You know who you are!! LOL

Till next time, then, in this irregular series of rants, thanks for dropping in, and please feel free to chime in with your comments! The more, the merrier!

Best,
Russ

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First Entry.... 06/03/2012