Endgame is a new TV series airing on Showcase here in Canada. It stars many wonderful actors. In the image below, from left to right: Katharine Isabelle, Melanie Papalia, Patrick Gallagher, Shawn Doyle, Carmen Aguirre, and Torrance Coombs.

A chess grandmaster becomes a master detective in Showcase’s new original drama Endgame. Premiering Monday, March 14th at 10pm ET/PT, Endgame stars Shawn Doyle (Big Love, Lost), as the former World Chess Champion Arkady Balagan. After witnessing the murder of his fiancée, Balagan develops a debilitating case of agoraphobia. Unable to leave his hotel and running out of money, the arrogant and charismatic Russian inadvertently becomes a detective – using his fierce analytical skills to solve the crimes that baffle others.

Balagan relies on friends and hotel employees to do his legwork; from conducting interviews and trailing suspects to bringing back clues. Balagan then uses his strategic thinking to stage imaginative, and often amusing, reenactments in his own mind-until he finds the solution.

I had the great opportunity to work on this show’s second episode, entitled Turkish Hold’em (originally aired March 21 2011), working alongside some great actors.  My character, Chi Tang, is a math genius who gets involved with a high stakes poker game in one of the hotel suites.

Thus far I’ve seen the first two episodes and I truly feel that it’s a beautifully shot show and I really like the characters and how the story is told.  I’ll continue watching for sure.

Will my character ever come back in future episodes? Fingers crossed.

Check out their IMDB page for more details about this show and episode. Endgame also has a great website where you can stream the episodes online and check out their online interactive episode.

Other great poker playing actors I had the privilege of working with in our scene were:
April Telek (Twitter | IMDB), Zachary Throne (IMDB), Edward Foy (IMDB), and Harvey Gold (IMDB).

Wicked! I just found the Kohl’s Department commercial I did back in 2003.

It was one of the first commercials I shot and it was short and sweet. We filmed at a house just off of Cambie & 49th in Vancouver. It was during the summer so it was interesting to see Christmas lights fill the lawn of the house we were using as well as the neighbours across the street.

The song used in the commercial is “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Grammy Award winning duo Captain and Tennille. Much like the famous variety show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour which aired in the early 1970s, Captain and Tennille also had a variety show on the ABC network during the 1976-77 season.

Watch the commercial below. You’ll see me at the 17 second mark, standing right next to the real life Captain and Tennille. Granted, I didn’t really know who they were when I met them, but they were super nice.

Back in September of this year I had filmed two episodes of the show, Untold Stories of the ER which airs on The Learning Channel (TLC), a subsidiary of Discovery Channel.  We were filming the 5th season of the show here in Vancouver (specifically in Coquitlam’s Riverview Hospital, a BC Mental Health & Addiction facility.) The first four seasons were filmed in the USA and the last of the fourth season aired at the end of 2006.

Here’s some brief information about the show taken from Wikipedia:

Untold Stories of the ER is a docudrama television series where real-life emergency room doctors tell about their most bizarre and puzzling cases. Typically these involve medical sabotage, violently or strangely acting patients, life-threatening injuries, or even situations in which the E.R. physician is too overwhelmed to handle the caseload and can’t transfer responsibility for the patient to someone else.

Often the doctors play themselves, and whenever possible the patients themselves take part in the reenactment as well. If they don’t appear as themselves during their medical emergency, they are often shown in brief interviews to show the public how they turned out.

Each episode includes three different scenarios. One of the stories that I’m in is when I play a medical student, along side the real doctor which the story is based on, Dr Benjamin Killey in the scenario entitled “Grinning Mom.” In that episode, a woman is in labour giving birth to her first child. The birth of her new born baby goes well but then we realize that the new mom is acting strange – grinning with a blank stare for no apparent reason. All of a sudden she…

Of course I’m not going to give away the rest of the scene.  You’re going to have to watch for that.

The second episode I’m in, I play the part of the senior resident doctor along side the real life doctor Dr Kristen Nordenholz, entitled “Exploding Aorta.” In this episode a patient is brought in from an apartment fire and is suffering from smoke inhalation. She is in pain and we’re trying to figure out why.  A cool thing about this episode is that I learned how to intubate a patient – something I never hope to have done to me.

Below are some pictures from on-set:

Here are some of the upcoming episodes which include some local actors I know of (with their twitter links):

November 10 – Brad Harder (the groom)
November 17 – Jeff Gladstone
November 24 – Michele Cummins
December 8 “Exploding Aorta” – Kenji Maeda (chief resident doctor), Brad Harder (fire fighter), Simon Raymond.
December 22 “Grinning Mom” – Kenji Maeda (medical student), Ricki Prosper (nurse), Ben Killey (himself), Brandon Hart (doctor)

Episode list above is what I’ve been told but they are subject to change. Case in point: my Dec 22 episode was initially scheduled for Nov 17.

Check out the TLC website for full listings of episodes, dates, and times. The episodes repeat so if you miss the original air date I suspect you’ll be able to catch the episode again later.

Over the past couple months I’ve been busy working with Boca del Lupo, a theatre company here in Vancouver. It’s been a great experience meeting new people – artsy and creative people. I had the distinct pleasure to meet Jay Dodge and Sherry J Yoon, Artistic Producer and Artistic Director, respectively, of Boca back on April 30 2009. I was attending a Canada Council for the Arts luncheon along with my Neworld Theatre family. (More on my connection with Neworld Theatre later.) So I sit down at a table and Jay and Sherry end up at the same table. “Pleasant folks,” I thought to myself.

Fast forward eight months to mid-December and I get a call from Jay. They needed someone to help on the production-side with their upcoming show, Dance Marathon. I knew the Olympics was coming up and auditions would be down a bit and figured it would be a great use of my time. The biggest reason why I decided to take on the opportunity was because when Jay had described the show to me, I was instantly excited. The show was not just your typical sit-down-and-watch type of show. It was participatory – highly participatory – and it was dance and music and competition.

Hello?! I’m big on the participatory theatre aspect and adding those extra things was just icing on the cake. Not just any icing and not just any cake. It’s like the cake I only find in Japan when visiting family which is not too sweet but just perfect.

But I digress.

Dance Marathon was a huge success. It definitely kept me busy. I even had a chance to work with and get to know Kim Barsanti in a different light since I only knew her through her work as a Talent Agent.

One of the highlights was heading downtown to do some “on the street” interviews with people to drum up some buzz for the show. I’ve embeded the video below for your viewing pleasure.

and here’s a 4 minute montage of what the show was about

This video has been viewed just under 4.5 million times as I just checked and it’s definitely one of my favourite videos lately. DJ Earworm does a mashup of the Billboard Top 25 hits of 2009 and I enjoy it immensely.

For those of you who don’t know what a Mashup is, essentially when you have existing audio and visual clips from various sources and combine them to create a new piece of work. Last year, at DOXA, we screened a documentary film called RiP: A remix manifesto.

The film explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

You can view the film’s trailer and description on a previous post on my company blog.

In the meantime, check out this awesome music video below.

Welcome to the new KenjiMaeda.com website. It’s been, I think about 5 or 6 years since this site has shown anything but the “under construction” page. I knew I couldn’t put my previous site up even though I loved (and still do) the design but my needs and the purpose has changed.

So here I am at the start of 2010. I was able to take some time over the holiday to sit and design the page. It’s going to be an ongoing process of what I include on this site but this blog is definitely one of the highlights.  As some of you may know, I have my Production Heads blog but I have more interests than simply the production industry and acting. I plan on including content on this page that relate to many different topics, including business, sexual health, facilitation, technology, film industry, my projects, and anything else that comes to mind. I wanted the flexibility to include a variety of topics and themes.

As of right now, not all the pages have been completed and more pages will be added to showcase who I am, what I do, and what I can do… for you.

To keep updated on my blog you can subscribe via RSS feed by clicking the RSS button at the top of my page, right beside my face.

In the meantime if you have any questions or would like to contact me, you can send me an email at info [at] kenjimaeda.com

Kenji Maeda