Thursday, May 24, 2012

From the Reading



My new Facebook picture from now until the end of time

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

The Reading

Sunday was the trek up to Poughkeepsie for Best Friend Cate's play reading.

The Event was called Bertha's Funeral, named for a sculpture in a sculpture park off of Main St. The town of Poughkeepsie has recently decided to remove the sculptures, which have fallen into disrepair. Some of them are covered in poison oak, all the benches have most of their wooden slats missing, and there's a mural that's become covered in ivy. The grass is long and uncut, and it looks very much like a forgotten space.

Cate, along with Sovereign Nation and the Dutchess County Arts Council put together a farewell event, to honor the sculptures, to show the city that the park is a great, versatile space that can be used for more than just cutting across to get to the ice cream store faster, and to help establish the strong artistic presence in the town.

When Best Friend Cate first moved to Poughkeepsie (just across the river from our college town of New Paltz- weird in a never-thought-this-would-happen sort of way) she told me that while she was there she wanted to be instrumental in making P-Town more of an arts town. I'm super proud of her for kicking so much ass already.

We headed up Road-Trip style in my mother's car on Sunday morning and emerged starving (there are no rest stops on the Taconic State Parkway, I know that now) into the waiting arms of Cate and her partner Aaron who thankfully always have fresh fruit in their apartment. We ate, filled up some water bottles and then headed to the park to rehearse.

At high noon.

Cate earns my eternal gratitude for bringing sunscreen, and lending me a shirt to change into after rehearsal while mine dried out. Holy balls it was hot.

We figured out some blocking for the two short plays, identified all the poison oak, ran through a few times, and then Best Friend Cate, Best Friend Jen, The Boyfriend and I headed back to Cate and Aaron's apartment where Jen's Fiance Jared was working on a set design, had lunch, and promptly fell asleep wherever we fell.

We awoke just before 5 and headed down to practice transitions with the other performers who would be reading fiction and poetry. Cate's pieces were the only plays, and were the first and last performances of the evening. Each performance took place at a different sculpture in the park, so at the end of each piece, the audience had to pick up their chairs and go to the next space. Since we knew where that would be, it was our job to kind of lead the way. It helped that we had Aaron and Jared in the audience as plants.

The turnout was fantastic, better than Cate had expected. When we were setting up the folding chairs for the audience, we walked past an apartment where two young men sat on the stoop drinking beers, and one asked us what we were doing. Cate struck up a conversation with him (an amateur filmmaker) and invited him to come. He showed up about halfway through with a camera. Cate was over the moon.

Cate's pieces were so beautiful, and it was great to act with Best Friend Jen again, though we didn't really interact much. In Cate's first play, Jen and I played the same girl at different ages.

The second play was an emotional roller-coaster alongside The Boyfriend, which ended in a kiss that we got a few compliments on until people realized we were an actual couple. I fully intend to use a monologue from it as my new contemporary dramatic audition piece.

After the performance, as the sun was going down, we headed back to Cate's apartment building, which had a pop-up gallery exhibit set up throughout the hallways. We drank wine and ate veggies and dip and looked at some great local art (including some Best Friend Cate originals, in the same style as the mural she'd done for me at my old apartment:)

All in all, it was an amazing day and everyone involved should be very proud of themselves!

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

First Shakespeare Class...

Went quite well despite the fact that I was suffering from a migraine for the entire second half. The first class was just prepared monologues, to get a sense of our abilities and personalities.

Highlight of the night was when one guy (whose name I forgot) was doing his monologue, containing the words "Draw your sword," and the instructor (Seth) asked him to physically draw a sword. To which he replied, "Do you want me to get a sword? I brought some."

Seth: "Seriously?"

Yep. He had three.

Seth: "Do you carry these with you all the time?"

Guy: "Well I always have one in my car."

Seth: "Amazing."

He was also wearing a Monty Python T-shirt, and throughout the course of the evening there was at least one Hitchhiker's Guide reference.

I don't know why I didn't realize that a class containing both Shakespeare and sword fighting would attract total dorks. And I thought to myself, "Do I really belong with these people?"

And then I took a long hard look at myself watching my Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs and surfing the web for the pirated Les Mis trailer and I realized:

Yes. Yes I do.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Coming Up...

So far, the results of my "Musical Mission: A Quest to be Cast in a Musical in the Next Year" has yielded equal parts good and super awkward auditions, leaving me with the conclusion that I should look into some voice lessons in the future, because I am seriously out of practice.

However, my musical mission must be put on hold for a while, but it's for a very good reason: I am working like a dawg.

The Play:
I am thrilled to announce that I have been cast in No Tea Productions' next show, "Space Captain: Captain of Space"!

The show is written by Jeff, co-artistic director of No Tea, and it is a Flash-Gordon-esque, 1930s space serial. This marks my fourth full production with No Tea and I couldn't be more thrilled to work with them again! I've been sporadically attending No Tea's writer's meetings since finishing Work: A Play, and I even wrote a short piece for the most recent Reading Series that we did in March. So I've been lucky enough to read the play as it was being developed and it is going to ROCK.

I play Princess Astra, daughter of the Evil King Xayno.

The show is multi-media, so it doesn't actually go up until August-September. Our first read-through is tonight, but we won't actually start rehearsals for the live-action stuff for at least a month. The majority of May and June are going to be used for filming all the video segments.

I am so FREAKING excited.

The Webseries:
Recently I was contacted by a fellow graduate of SUNY New Paltz, who was working on a webseries called, "Sherwood." It's based on the Robin Hood myths, and he wanted me to play Maid Marian. 



After a very successful IndieGoGo campaign during which we raised over $3,000 to fund the first season, we filmed the pilot in Upstate New York a couple of weeks ago. 

I get to work with a couple of guys that I haven't seen since school, as well as some very talented new blood, and one of my former professors. And I get to use a kick-ass British accent.

The Boyfriend drove up with me, along with Best Friend Jen and Fiance Jared, who were getting their engagement photos taken in New Paltz. We all stayed the night in Poughkeepsie with Best Friend Cate and her Bearded Man, and the next morning we went into New Paltz, had brunch at the Bistro (across the street from the apartment I lived in with Cate senior year) and then we all went to New Paltz to see the closing performance of Cabaret.

I got to show The Boyfriend the campus, bought some $1 LPs at Rhino Records, and caught up with my Voice and Speech teacher, Nancy.

It was nice to go back up to school and be able to answer the "What are you up to" question with something other than, "Oh... auditioning, waiting tables, you know, making money..."

Suck it New Paltz, I'm working!

The Reading
Next weekend I am taking the train up to Poughkeepsie to be in an outdoor reading of two plays written by Best Friend Cate as part of her ongoing mission to make P-Town into more of an artist community.

The Short Film
Though I know I'm booked for the next couple of months, I still happened to come across an audition for a short film on Actor's Access.

We held auditions for Space Captain at Shetler Studios on a Sunday morning, and I came in to read with the actors. The audition for the film, "Broken Identity" was the next day, in the same studio and in the same room.

And after sitting on the other side of auditions for the first time since college, I was filled with a new level of confidence, mainly because my headshots actually LOOK LIKE ME. I couldn't believe how many people walked into the room looking NOTHING like the photo they submitted.

Also, it is never a good idea to send a naked picture out for an audition. You'd think that wouldn't need to be said. You'd THINK.

So I went to the audition feeling quietly confident. I was the first to arrive, and the first to audition. The role is small, and the script is still being developed, so in addition to my monologue, they only had one line for me to read. So I read the line, took an adjustment and read it again, and then I went home and cooked my Boyfriend dinner.

And two days later I found out that I booked the role.

Booyah.

So hopefully there shall be much more to blog about in the coming months than awkward musical theatre auditions.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Glorying in the Success of My Friends

It has been a very exciting month.

Best Friend Cate and I met at undergrad, in the Theatre Department at New Paltz, but during our four years at school she decided that Theatre wasn't for her. She started focusing on writing, went off to grad school, and now she's a fantastic writer with a blog that will make you laugh, and make you think. Mostly it makes you think "Fuck, I need to read more," because she's so intelligent it makes me want to throw up.

Recently she wrote a review of the novel, "Deathless" by Catherynne Valente that was retweeted by the author on Twitter. And if that wasn't exciting enough, I'm thrilled to announce that Best Friend Cate is having her first story published! Her short story, "Fox and Girl: A Bestial Romance" has won the 2012 Wabash Prize for Fiction! The second place winner is a published author. Suck it, guy.

(*Actor With a Business Card would like to note that the guy who won second place is probably also a really good author, and he should be really proud of his accomplishment, but she's just really happy for her friend so he can suck it.)

Guest Judge Aimee Bender, author of "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt" said, "First off, this story charmed me completely, gloriously. The author has a beautiful sense of the visual; each time I could picture perfectly the scene described, as if it were an illustration by an artist of a children’s book that is really not at all a children’s book.  But the writing is sly, like a fox, because yes, it’s full of wonder and charm and delight, but underneath there’s real depth here, and a genuine exploration of a relationship and the two struggling characters in it.  Both Fox and Girl, iconic as they are, feel real, dimensional, sympathetic, flawed.  So it’s utterly freshly told, but never sacrifices substance.  What a pleasure to read!”

HOORAY FOR CATE!!!

And in the Theatre world, one of my other friends is kicking ass and taking names! The lovely Harmony Stempel, one of my good friends and colleagues (and coincidentally Best Friend Cate's cousin) has been working on a solo show for the past couple of years called Human Fruit Bowl. It's an experimental show that examines the relationships between artists and their models.

Last year it went to the Prague Fringe Festival, where it won the Kreativni cena (Creative Award), and was dubbed "Best of the Prague Fringe" by the Amsterdam Fringe. She was even invited to perform at the Amsterdam Fringe and the Hong Kong Microfest. And finally, FINALLY it is getting produced in New York:

SO I GET TO SEE IT!

They have a kickstarter campaign if you'd like to give them your money.

But most importantly, you should take note of the performance dates, June 8th- 17th at the SoloNOVA Arts Festival, presented by TerraNOVA Collective.

I am SO SO proud and excited for my friends!