Actor Greg Bryan follows a circuitous road for his dream, accustomed to both the euphoria and the disappointment of the career, yet through it all still imagining the best of all possible worlds in his dream scenario where is the producer.   ’I’d call all my friends and I’d say ‘I have a role for you, and I can pay you more than you need.”   Bryan’s fantasy reveals the complex orbit of passion, imagination, bonhomie and limitless confidence that defines a complete actor. He is also an actor who over the course of years has developed an expansive group of friends’actors, directors and writers who survive on the inexplicable magic of the stage.   A native Palisadian, Bryan recently returned to the Mark Taper Forum for the second time in an understudy role for two actors in the production of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore.’ While he didn’t make it on stage, he said he loved the experience and thinks McDonagh’s play is the ‘greatest play of the 21st century.’   Securing the understudy role with a Taper production added another valuable credit to Bryan’s resume, which also includes roles with L.A. Theatre, Deaf West Theatre, Theatre @ Boston Court, plus three seasons with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and four seasons with the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival.   Every actor has a creation story. Bryan’s must have been gestating throughout a childhood of exposure to the arts. His parents took his sister Wendy and him to theater, musicals and opera. ‘I remember seeing the play version of ‘The Wrong Box,’ and being entertained, but not inspired to be an actor,’ he recalls.   It was in high school at Crossroads that the spark was ignited. ‘My friend, Max, was in ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle,’ and he dragged me to an audition, getting the word from the director that they needed more people.   ’It was fun. I remember thinking, This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’   The hurdles were yet to be surmounted, beginning with the ‘discussion’ with his parents, Nancy and Ed Bryan.   ’The family has been supportive, but not in a blind way,’ he says. ‘Having arguments with them really solidified it. To be an actor, you have to have a diehard belief in yourself. Belief is critical’self-love and a strong ego.’   Bryan, 38, is not unusual in his dogged pursuit of his craft. After graduating from Pitzer College in 1994, the choice for him was graphic design or acting. He moved to San Francisco and his decision was made. He landed jobs with Bay Area companies, including the San Jose Repertory, San Francisco Shakespeare Company and the Marin State Company.   ’My plan was to see how much I could learn before going to grad school. When my career hit a plateau, I enrolled in the post-graduate acting program at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 2001.’   Acquiring technical skills was key, but more important, Bryan says, was to acknowledge the brilliance of Shakespeare while remembering that the language is not highfaluting. Diction training was critical, and he learned through Shakespeare what would work and wouldn’t work.   ’I learned to keep Shakespeare down to earth. To be true when reciting that language, recognize he was great, but not a god. He’s just a guy telling a cool story.’   One of Bryan’s favorite roles is Leontes, the king in ‘The Winter’s Tale,’ who became obsessed with the belief that his wife had been unfaithful, only to learn, after tragic consequences, that he was mistaken.   ’I loved playing this role because you watch a man falling apart in front of you. His emotional life is so raw.’   Understanding which roles are right for you is another valuable asset when navigating an acting career, Bryan says.   He believes that he’s not quite ready for ‘Lear,’ because of age and life experience but he is ready for ‘Macbeth.’   ’I love the idea of bringing a little bit of comedy through to dramatic roles. I think that anybody who focuses entirely on the grim aspect of the role is boring. Macbeth was a complex man.’   Bryan auditions for stage, commercial and film roles in Los Angeles, and admits that he is getting better at being more realistic about the whole audition process.   ’Rejection makes you stronger,’ he says, somewhat wanly. ‘A regular ‘no’ is whatever, but a close ‘no’ is unbearable because it’s a part you almost got.   ’You know, in your heart and in your body when you nailed it,’ Bryan continues. ‘And, if I don’t get the part, I am comforted by the knowledge that it was the best me I could be.’   Bryan admits that he is often typecast for TV commercials as the ‘Home Depot Guy,’ or the ‘Funny Cop.’ He recently scored with a commercial for the ESPN awards that was aired during the World Cup. But for theatrical auditions, Bryan knows his strengths and pursues his roles with clear eyes.   ’A director friend of mine was auditioning roles in ‘Henry IV, and I thought, ‘I’m the right age, I’ll go for Prince Hal.’ My friend said, ‘Greg, you’re not the fantasy.’ That was the most honest thing anyone could have said. Be honest with yourself.’   Interested in all aspects of acting, why not? Bryan has recently begun writing his own material for TV.   He and his college friend, Carl Strecker, have written a modern take on ‘Barney Miller’ (the 1970’s comedy series set in a New York City police station) set in West Hollywood. The team has developed a compatible working style, Bryan says, referring to himself as a ‘pacer’ and Strecker as a ‘sitter-downer.’ Bryan is great at dialogue, but too much Aaron Sorkin, he admits and the two edit one another’s copy. With his ego intact, endless enthusiasm and delight in life at all levels, Bryan supplements his income analyzing desktop ads for Google. But, he remains good-natured about the capriciousness of the industry. ‘San Francisco and New York are not great towns to be unemployed in,’ he says. ‘Here, it’s a great town to be unemployed in because I have my family and friends.’

By RANDY YOUNG Special to the Palisadian-Post While working on chronicling the history of Santa Monica Canyon, I always was aware of this great scholar of California Cool, Martin ‘Marty’ Sugarman. His H2O Magazine has set the standard for highlighting the state’s beach culture and spotlighting the surfer lifestyle. For the past two decades, he has also painted his beloved Pacific Ocean from the vantage point of a man who has lived most of his life close to the beach, including in Santa Monica Canyon and on a sailboat in Marina del Rey. Many of these paintings are on display in Sugarman’s current show, ‘Between the Tides: War and Peace’ at g169 on West Channel Road, an exhibition that showcases yet another side of the man: documenting war-torn areas around the world through his photography. The photos are classic documentary-style stills, referential to the work of W. Eugene Smith and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The entire frame of the 35mm camera is used, and the feel of the images is right out of Life magazine. The journey began in the early 1990s when Sugarman traveled to Mexico and took pictures to illuminate the plight of the rural poor. This set off a whirlwind of adventure including a stint in Cuba photographing the effects of communism and the American embargo. This trip culminated in ‘Storm Over Cuba,’ a book published in 1995. In 1992, Sugarman joined the ranks of war photographer when he shot the huge battle raging in Bosnia and Croatia. This series, published in 1993 as ‘God Be with You: War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina,’ led to his covering the conflict in Kashmir, resulting in the publication ‘Kashmir: Paradise Lost.’ Later, he landed in Pakistan, where he documented the battle in the Hindu Kush Mountains at 23,000 feet and produced ‘War Above the Clouds: Saichen Glacier.’ ‘Speak Palestine, Speak Again’ is yet another volume of Sugarman’s photo essays. Sugarman’s life reads like a Graham Greene spy novel, the title of which could be ‘Surfer Dude, Man of Mystery.’ One of the photos in Sugarman’s current exhibition features an old decrepit structure in Mexico with streams of dark stains flowing down the whitewashed walls. The frame creates an Escher-esque type illusion, looking as though it is actually an artist’s rendering. The Cuban series presents the Cuban people, stuck in a time warp of the 1950s. Sugarman has captured the families and particularly the children as full of life. There’s a compelling portrait of five kids, all lined up and so excited about being photographed, along with the picture of a proud gentleman driving his friends around in a shiny restored 1950’s classic. Another image is of two soldiers in Bosnia smoking a cigarette at a checkpoint. The camera angle is low, giving the guns an odd graphic composition. This print is juxtaposed with happy images of kids playing and laughing. These untouched photos honestly mirror the everydayness of the community. There are no shells exploding, just the populace picking up the pieces after the battle. Sugarman is a wonderful Santa Monica Canyon eccentric whom I now respect not just for his surfing prowess, but also for his humanity. Contact: g169 Gallery, (310) 459-4481, or visit www.gallery169.com.

New research points to rat poison as a culprit in the animals’ decline

By RENNIE CHAMBERLAIN Special to the Palisadian-Post For the past dozen years, the National Park Service has been tracking mountain lions, coyotes and bobcats in the Santa Monica Mountains to study how these animals are adapting to the urban environment, gathering data on genetics, diet, movement patterns, number of kittens, size of home ranges, and mortality rates.   Laurel Klein, a wildlife biologist and UCLA graduate student, is at the forefront helping the Park Service with its study of bobcats.   In 1997 the bobcat survival rate was about 84 percent.’ In 2002, there was a sharp decline, and by 2003 the survival rate had dropped to 28 percent.   Klein wants to know why the bobcat population is declining and why the cats are behaving so erratically, wandering onto freeways and into backyards in broad daylight.   Klein and the Park Service believe the culprit is a special kind of mange, an ectoparasitic disease called notoedric mange. Oddly, notoedric mange does not usually attack wild cats. And mange alone does not kill normal animals.   Heading out to Thousand Oaks where the NPS has trapped a bobcat, my friend Terry Matkins and I listen as Klein discusses the recent decline in bobcat numbers. On our way we pass a dead coyote on the road, and Laurel hopes it will be there when we return. Not only can she use the coyote fur in her traps, but she will also check the coyote’s liver for anticoagulants.’   Anticoagulants, a main component in rat poison, have become a big problem in the area, especially for carnivores. The substance is everywhere, around homes, public parks, public buildings, golf courses, landfills, farms and gardens.’   Since 1996 the Park Service has gathered blood and tissue samples from more than 190 cats that have died.   Before 2000, there were no bobcat deaths due to mange, and the population was holding steady.’ Then in 2001, one bobcat was found dead from mange. In 2002 it was eight, and in 2003 it was 10.’ The Park Service began doing necropsies on the dead cats and found that in 90 percent of the cats with mange, there were also high levels of anticoagulants in the liver. This was also true for coyotes and mountain lions.   But why this sudden increase in anticoagulants?’   The answer is simple. By 2002, a new generation of rat poisons was on the market.’ Before that, Warfarin was the main ingredient in rat poisons, but eventually the rats developed a genetic resistance to it. Companies then began creating compounds known as second-generation anticoagulants that were longer lasting and more potent.’   These new anticoagulants have become a problem for wildlife because the poisons are stronger. Unfortunately, they are advertised as safe to use outside the home and people use them and they do the job.   Although there are few studies to document how non-target wildlife is affected by the anticoagulants, it is known that the poison moves up the food chain: the bobcat eats the poisoned rat, or the mountain lion eats the dead coyote that has eaten the poisoned rats. ‘   One might think that as the poison travels from one animal to the next it would become diluted, but the opposite is true.’ The potency of the poison increases because the poison doesn’t act immediately. The first dose is lethal, but because it takes several days to act, the rat has plenty of time to ingest more poison. It’s the same with the coyotes and bobcats.’ The more rats they eat, the weaker they become, thus the more rats they continue to eat because the poisoned rats are easy prey for a weakened carnivore.’   On the whole, bobcats appear to be quite tolerant of anticoagulants. Necropsies performed on dead bobcats show that the cats have been exposed multiple times to multiple anticoagulants before they end up dying from a secondary cause, usually mange.   These multiple exposures mean the cats are getting one brand of poison from around a home and a different brand of poison from a golf course. And because the animals are now living in an urban environment where their home range has become extremely restricted, they continue to hunt in a very small area, typically a golf course or along edges of wilderness between housing developments, where they continue to ingest the poisons.’ But what do all these new anticoagulants have to do with bobcats dying of notoedric mange?   Of the 19 bobcats that died of mange between 2001 and 2003, all of them were exposed to anticoagulants and 17 of them were exposed to levels as low as .05 parts per million. This small amount is all it takes to compromise a bobcat’s immune system, making it weak and susceptible to mange, as well as affecting its behavior.   One cat that was strong and had lived in the area for a long time, three or four years, became exposed to anticoagulants and began changing his activity patterns. Ultimately, he became so disoriented he wandered onto the 101 Freeway and was killed.’ By that time he was emaciated and had a severe case of notoedric mange. ‘   Although there’s still much to learn, scientists have pinpointed many contributing factors to the bobcat population decline: loss of habitat; the fragmentation of home ranges; increasing urban developments; and shrinking genetic pools. As for the mountain lions and coyotes, the anticoagulants have been a direct source of mortality instead of a secondary source such as mange.   As Klein drops us back at Topanga Park and heads off to take her samples to UCLA for processing, I find myself wondering what is it going to take to make people realize that their desire for the cheap, easy fix can have devastating results? The irony, of course, is that in our insistence on using convenient poisons we are killing the very predators that help keep the rodent population in check, as well as endangering our own health and the health of our pets.’   Bobcats are solitary animals and their dying happens in secret. Few of us even know it is happening.’ But if we need a clearer picture of what our desire for the cheap, easy fix is doing to our wildlife and our environment, we need look no further than the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.   For more information, visit urbancarnivores.com (Rennie Chamberlain serves on the advisory board and Terry Matkins is the wildlife photographer for The Nature of Wildworks, a Wildlife Care and Education Center in Topanga. Both are Pacific Palisades residents.)