Brick Shithouse

Brick Shithouse / “House”

Class: Physical Conditioning & Recovery I
Role: Recurring Supporting Character / TCSA Faculty

Brick Shithouse, usually called House by the other faculty, teaches Physical Conditioning & Recovery I at TCSA. Students generally begin with “Mr. Shithouse,” but anyone who spends enough time around him quickly realizes that almost everyone who actually knows him simply calls him House.

He is a recently retired professional hero whose career lasted long enough for him to accumulate the injuries, habits, experience, and exhaustion that come with years of Expressionist work. House did not retire because he became incapable of doing the job. He retired after Atlantis died, and that loss finally pushed him to a point where he could no longer convince himself to keep going back into the field. His retirement is still recent enough that teaching sometimes feels less like a new career and more like the place he ended up after realizing he could not keep doing the old one.

House is physically imposing, blunt, practical, and considerably more observant than his rough exterior first suggests. He has spent years watching Expressionists neglect their bodies because they believed their abilities could compensate for poor conditioning, bad recovery habits, or injuries they should have taken seriously. His class exists largely to make sure the next generation does not repeat those mistakes.

Physical Conditioning & Recovery I focuses on the parts of hero work that Expressions do not magically solve. Students train strength, endurance, mobility, balance, cardiovascular conditioning, injury prevention, recovery, nutrition, sleep, and the physical consequences of repeatedly pushing an Expressionist body beyond normal limits. House treats recovery as seriously as training because, in his experience, young Expressionists are often eager to learn how to hit harder and remarkably uninterested in learning when they should stop.

He has very little patience for the idea that collapsing after every session proves dedication. To House, there is a difference between productive strain and simply destroying your body because you think suffering makes you tougher. A student who injures themselves every week is not more committed than everyone else; they are becoming unreliable.

That attitude comes directly from his years in the field. House has seen what happens when people ignore pain because there is always another emergency, another deployment, another person who needs saving, or another agency telling them they can recover later. He knows how quickly minor injuries become permanent ones and how easily exhaustion becomes something a hero starts treating as normal.

Because of that, his class can be brutally difficult without being careless. He will push students until they are exhausted, make them repeat exercises they hate, and refuse to accept half-effort simply because someone has an Expression powerful enough to compensate for poor conditioning. At the same time, he watches them closely and has no hesitation about ending a session when someone crosses from useful discomfort into genuine danger.

His teaching style is straightforward and highly practical. He explains what matters, demonstrates it when necessary, and expects students to do the work. If someone says something hurts, House wants to know what kind of pain they mean. Muscle fatigue is one thing, joint pain is another, and sharp pain means the exercise stops. Dizziness, loss of coordination, or anything that suggests the body is no longer responding correctly is treated seriously whether the student wants to continue or not.

House also understands that recovery is not only physical. Years of hero work taught him that someone can be medically cleared and still be nowhere near ready to return to the field. Fear after an injury, hesitation after nearly dying, and needing time after watching someone else get hurt are all normal reactions, even if many professional heroes are reluctant to admit it.

He is not especially comfortable talking about emotions, but that does not mean he dismisses them. In fact, House has less patience than most people for the idea that someone should simply ignore what happened to them and keep moving because that is what heroes are supposed to do.

His own retirement is the clearest example of that.

Atlantis’s death affected him deeply enough that the life he had built around hero work suddenly became impossible to continue. He does not like turning that loss into a lesson or inspirational story, and he does not want people treating it like some dramatic piece of hero history. To House, it was personal. Someone he cared about died, and afterward he reached a point where putting the suit back on stopped feeling possible.

Teaching gives him somewhere to put the experience he accumulated before retiring. He may no longer believe he can keep being the person who runs toward every disaster, but he can make sure the people who eventually do are stronger, healthier, and less likely to destroy themselves trying.

That places House in an interesting position among the faculty. He is still close enough to active hero work to understand its reality intimately, but far enough removed from it that he has begun questioning many of the habits he once accepted without thinking. He knows agencies will push people, heroes will push themselves even harder, and students entering the profession often imagine their greatest danger will be whichever villain they eventually fight.

House knows that sometimes the thing that ruins a hero is simply doing the job for too long without ever allowing themselves to stop.

Performance Direction

House should sound rough, grounded, and practical without becoming a caricature of a grizzled veteran. He can be intimidating during training, but he should not constantly yell. Most of the time, his authority comes from experience and the obvious fact that he knows exactly what he is looking at.

His humor is dry, blunt, and occasionally crude, especially when students are being dramatic about ordinary training discomfort. At the same time, the actor should make it clear that House is always paying attention. He may sound unimpressed while immediately noticing that someone is favoring one leg, breathing incorrectly, or pushing past the point where fatigue is useful.

His scenes involving Atlantis or his retirement should become noticeably quieter and more restrained. House is not someone who naturally explains his grief in long speeches, so those moments should feel reluctant and personal rather than theatrical.

Voice

There is no strict accent requirement.

We are looking for an adult male voice with weight, maturity, and a naturally grounded quality. A low or medium-low register would suit House well, although performance matters more than exact pitch.

His delivery can be rough around the edges, but he should still sound intelligent and experienced. House is blunt because he prefers direct communication, not because he lacks the ability to express himself.

The actor should be capable of sounding authoritative, tired, dryly amused, irritated, protective, understatedly encouraging, and quietly emotional when his past comes up.

The role should avoid turning him into a stereotypical drill sergeant. House can raise his voice when necessary, but constant shouting would flatten the character.

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for an actor who can make House feel like someone who has genuinely spent years doing dangerous work. His expertise should sound lived-in rather than academic, especially when he discusses injuries, recovery, exhaustion, and the physical realities of field work.

The strongest performance will balance physical authority with the quieter exhaustion underneath it. House is still capable, still strong, and still knowledgeable. His retirement did not happen because he suddenly became weak; it happened because continuing had begun to cost more than he was willing to give.

Compensation

Brick Shithouse is classified as a Recurring Supporting Cast role and is compensated through the production's Supporting / Additional Voice Cast revenue pool, which is allocated 2% of total distributable project revenue.

Because House is a recurring faculty member with regular instructional and character-focused appearances, he will receive a defined individual portion of that supporting cast pool.

His exact individual revenue-share percentage will be established in his contract based on expected episode involvement, dialogue workload, and the number of other recurring supporting performers participating in the pool.

Full royalty, accounting, payment, and contract terms are available in the project's Payment & Contract Details section.

All selected contributors will be required to sign a written agreement before beginning official production work.