Space Captain Still Kicking!

Last week my fellow No Tea Productions company members and I all joined together to celebrate one of our own at the New York Innovative Theatre Awards nomination ceremony!

Jeremy Mather was nominated for Outstanding Innovative design for his video production of the multi-media show that NYTheatre.com called "non-stop entertainment from beginning to end."

Jeremy really showed off his incredible skills with a camera for that production, and his nomination is absolutely well-deserved. The IT Awards is one of the only award ceremonies that honors Off-Off-Broadway theatre. It was really amazing to be in a room packed to the brim with people who are incredibly passionate about creating and producing theatre, and yet definitely don't make much money doing it. 

We'd known Jeremy had been nominated for a while, but weren't allowed to talk about it until after the announcement ceremony, so I had no idea who else in the local theatre community would be nominated.

I'm proud to say I recognized three names in the nomination announcement. The biggest surprise was my good friend Harmony Stempel, nominated for Outstanding Solo Performance for her one-woman show, Human Fruit Bowl. 

When her name was announced, The Boyfriend and I jumped up and started screaming, fueled by both enthusiasm and surprise. Her show opens at the NY Fringe in August.

And not only is Harms still rocking hard, Space Captain is still gradually being turned into a movie. We had a shoot the other day at the Lullwater in Prospect Park, and it was awesome to jump back into it! Balancing the movie with other projects, birthdays, weddings, babies and family drama has been rough, but if we shoot one scene every six months, I'll be happy. 

I'm not going anywhere, and for a movie like this, I'd come back.  

Stay tuned for more news about the IT Awards, Human Fruit Bowl, No Tea Productions and Space Captain: Captain of Space!

Fit

An important part of being an actor in this unforgiving city is having actor friends around you to be supportive of you. After all, what good is doing a show if none of your friends come to see it?

I've been lucky enough to have some amazing actor friends, almost all of whom are not douches. And two of the most non-douchey friends I have are Harmony and Lauren.

Harmony (left) is my college roommate's cousin. I'd met her once or twice when she came to a party a the house Cate and I shared in New Paltz, and when she moved to the city, Cate gave her my number and I helped get her a job at The Restaurant (a crime I'll always be seeking redemption for).

Since then she and I have become whatever the female equivalent of "bros" is (my first instinct is "hoes" but that doesn't sound right, so I'm just going to go with "bros"). The multitude of Facebook photos of us hanging out has never ceased to freak Cate out.

Lauren (right) and I both graduated at the same time, me from New Paltz and her from Miami, and we both started working at The Restaurant at the same time. Both of us were kind of alone in the city, with our college besties in different states, so we grabbed onto each other by the arm and decided to be Replacement Best Friends.

Since then our "best friends" have come back into our lives, and Lauren and I have graduated from Replacement Best Friends to Actual Friends.

So... I've had cause to be pretty jealous in the last few weeks, because Harmony and Lauren are in a show together right now. I saw it last night, and I have to say I'm very proud of my lovely lady friends.

The show is called "Fit," and it's part of the NY Fringe Festival. They got just a critic's pick on Backstage, and a lovely review (including a big ol' picture of Lauren talking to her baby).

Both of them are doing Scottish accents, and rocking them! The story is about three generations of women, a grandmother, a mother and a daughter, all of whom are twenty years old when the play takes place. Lauren plays Fiona, the grandmother who at twenty years old is a wife and mother in a tiny flat in Glasgow. Harmony is her daughter Lauren (ha!) who at twenty is rebelling against her mother's conventional lifestyle.

It's an interesting thing when you go see your friends in a meaty role with a lot of drama, and realize that they're really good. Both of them made me cry, and I'm planning on seeing it again next week, and dragging The Boyfriend as well!

Here's a review from nytheatre.com!