Jeremy Sortore Enterprises LLC

People always tell you, “If you can do anything other than theater, do that.”

I can do so many things other than theater, and do them well.

I’ve been a college voice instructor. I’ve been an opera translator, a television transcriber, a production assistant, a dialect coach, a yoga teacher, and…yes, a waiter. I’ve considered becoming an arts administrator, a lawyer, or a speech therapist. Each of these perfectly respectable jobs has left me feeling like I was settling for less than my best contribution, and so I’ve moved on.

But I have never left the stage. I can’t walk away from it, because nowhere else do I find the sense of fulfillment that comes from working together with a group of peers to uncover something beautiful or true or transcendent buried on a page and bring it to embodied life. This is ensemble. Ensemble isn’t just teamwork. It’s not the thing you find by working in an office. And it’s not just sharing ideas about art. Ensemble isn’t the same as the relationship between a teacher and a student.

Ensemble is the closest thing to family I’ve felt, and while I know I am smart and ambitious enough to be successful doing a number of things other than theater, and will probably continue to do many things I enjoy outside of the theater, I can no more leave the theater than abandon my family. Since I first discovered the joy of working among equals to create something big or delightful or exquisite or beautiful, ensemble has been one of my core values.

Today, theater may not be my most immediately bankable career path or comprise my most lucrative skill set. It is simply the one job that matters to me, and I want to matter more to every show I am a part of. So it’s my responsibility to make this career bankable and to hone my skills, because, odd jobs aside, it is my life’s work.

Although I’ve been moderately successful as a professional actor in Denver since 2006, my educational background is in music. I never received the kind of focused theatrical training I desired in music school, and now I want to take some time to focus on the craft of acting in order to move forward in my performing career. Although I’ve enjoyed and am grateful for the work I’ve had, I am interested in broadening my theatrical horizons.

An MFA degree in acting is part of that plan. In addition to making it easier to earn a tenured position in higher education later in life, a second master’s degree will fill in the gaps in my artistic education. From an academic standpoint, I’m especially interested in voice work because of my background as a singing-voice pedagogue, and movement because of my background in yoga, but from the standpoint of personal and artistic growth, I anticipate my greatest appreciation will be for the overall collaborative experience of learning to be a better actor with a group of talented colleagues.

I will be the cover for both male roles in Five Course Love at the Garner Galleria Theatre at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, opening February 25, 2011, running through June 19.

Watch here for updates about when I’m going on!

Please come see me as Artie Green in the Arvada Center’s production of Sunset Blvd, playing September 14 – October 10.

Hello and welcome to my blog! I was encouraged to post this by a VASTA colleague to whose query I replied earlier this week. He has a client whose doctor is recommending 24-hour ambulatory pH testing and possible fundoplication surgery as a solution to a persistent case of LPR (laryngo-pharyngeal reflux, or reflux laryngitis.) My emphatic response follows.

I’ve been putting this email off for a few days as I’m traveling, so pardon me if I’m scattered…I’m pretty fatigued! Also, please be advised that I am not a medical professional and my advice stems from personal, anecdotal evidence.

This is a subject close to my heart, as I dealt with a similar issue several years ago. Months of vocal trouble led to a medical diagnosis of laryngitis due to LPR (laryngo-pharyngeal reflux, a subcategory of GERD.) I was put on various proton pump inhibitor medications to decrease the production of digestive acid, and my symptoms only got worse. I underwent various tests, including the implantation of an esophageal probe for 48-hour ambulatory pH monitoring and esophageal motility tests, none of which provided conclusive diagnostic information. Eventually and in desperation, I submitted to an experimental surgical procedure in which they used a sort of “staple gun” to gather the tissue just inferior to the lower esophageal sphincter in order to suture it, making the sphincter tighter. This procedure was very painful and did nothing to alleviate my symptoms.

Two things helped my condition, both from the world of holistic/alternative healing. The first came from a small book I perused in a Whole Foods store. I think it was called something along the lines of “Why Stomach Acid Is Good For You.” This was years ago and I read the book in the store rather than purchase it, but I’ll try to summarize: the author, a GE doctor, began to notice that people appeared very ill after years of acid-reducing drugs. They were malnourished, almost gray in pallor because they were not able to process nutrients correctly, having no stomach acid. Additionally, a lack of stomach acid leaves us vulnerable to various food-borne pathogens. With subsequent reflux patients, this doctor measured acidity not in the esophagus (as in the “gold standard” ambulatory pH test), but in the actual stomach, and found that stomach acidity for heartburn sufferers was nearly always lower than in the general populace. He began treating these patients with low doses of hydrochloric acid taken orally at mealtimes (betaine hydrochloride, available at natural foods stores) and they improved dramatically. His hypothesis is that, since the function of the LES is to keep acid out of the esophagus, if the stomach environment is not adequately acidic, this sphincter becomes lazy, allowing stomach contents (which are still very acidic, just not as acidic as they ought to be) to splash up into the esophagus. Of course, acid-reducing medications are an enormous part of the drug industry and no one is going to pay for a study of a remedy as cheap as betaine hydrochloride, so this hypothesis remains untested from an empirical standpoint.

My results with betaine HCl were good, and I personally know several others who have had good luck with increasing their stomach’s acidity as well. It’s interesting to note that a traditional home remedy is to take a spoonful of apple cider vinegar with meals. I immediately noticed feeling less “heavy” after eating and improved overall digestion in addition to significant reduction in reflux symptoms.

The second factor in my recovery was my yoga practice. Although I couldn’t have explained it to you at the time, through my continued study of yoga and somatics I now understand that mobilizing my spine and loosening constrictions in my abdomen and ribs helped to take habitual muscular pressure off of my stomach and LES, reducing the slight herniation of my LES through the diaphragm (medically diagnosed) and allowing for improved vascular function both to the digestive organs themselves and to the nerve plexi governing these organs’ function (or 3^rd chakra, if you like the Eastern perspective.) One of the ways yoga movements help us is by lessening/loosening the impingement on these nerve bundles, allowing the parasympathetic nervous system (the “rest/digest” counterpart to the sympathetic “fight/flight” system) to work efficiently in counteracting stress. The soft, vulnerable parts of our bodies (throat and belly) lie along the anterior surface of the secondary curves of the spine, where we also typically find more problems on the back side of the body as well: neck and lower back pain. These areas are intimately connected, as any of us with laryngeal reflux have discovered, and are very prone to subliminal muscular holding due to stress and emotional strain regardless of our physical and psychological strength.

Absent any counter-indications, I would recommend daily spinal undulations (gentle and repeated flexion/extension of the spine coordinated with the breath), abdominal twists, and inversions/arm balances (even a simple downward facing dog pose can serve this purpose) under the guidance of a skilled yoga teacher or therapist. All of these actions can be found in a simple beginner’s vinyasa class at nearly any yoga studio on the planet.

I believe that doctors are wonderful human beings who truly mean to do good in the world, but it is my equally firm belief that the medical industry has really missed the mark when it comes to the “big picture” of GERD. Our current diagnostic tools are measuring symptoms, not possible causes, and treating the symptoms without addressing the root of the problem is a “band-aid” fix that leaves many people worse off in the end.

I really hope my two cents is helpful, and I truly wish your client the best, whatever solution he pursues.

Submitted humbly,

–Jeremy Sortore