My Brother, Joey by Michael Shine

As Joey’s brother, ten years older, I remember fairly well his big steps with little feet into the art of acting. He did countless smaller gigs in the beginning that my siblings and on a few rare occasions I too were involved in. While I did my best to steer clear of the anxiety of performing in front of people during my awkward teenage years, Joey took to the stage like a light bulb in a dark room at ages as early as five and six. Joey seemed resistant to the crowd—carefree. I assumed that he was too young to fully realize what he was doing. But even today, Joey is at ease in front of people and cameras.

Before I knew it, Joey was booking shows at the dinner theater La Comedia in Dayton—and this place was no joke. The actors performed dozens of shows in front of 400 – 500 people, so many that the roles of kids Joey’s age were divided in half and played by two kids so that they had time to do things like eating and homework. It was a mere 35 shows, although Joey did do all 72 shows for several productions. This was professional acting. And from there, it wasn’t a huge surprise to see Joey flying out to LA for auditions and then eventually moving with our parents to be closer to the action.

Joey has had a good deal of success and gained an incredible amount of experience. He is, for the time being, living back in Dayton (so I get to see him more often!) and now  at age 13, spends a lot of his free time teaching himself parkour and making movies. If I was impressed by Joey’s acting ability in the past, then I have to say I am blown away by his ability to make movies; they don’t even have to be about anything in particular! His skill in finding camera angles that work, filming himself, and editing is obvious. I was especially impressed to learn that he’d done the videos on his own, setting the camera up on a tripod and then cutting the film to make it seem almost as if there were five cameras following him around.

And now he is also devoting some time to filming a BlogTV show with our sister Elise where they crack jokes and have friends of theirs who are up-and-coming actors call in to be interviewed in a kind of Skype- Live talk show. It’s very enjoyable, especially if you know Joey. Be sure to check it out.

 

written by Joey's Big Bro,

Michael Shine    The Joey & Elise Show on BlogTV