omg

I'm totally updating my blog on my blackberry. On the bus from six flags. After going on Nitro three times.

I know this has nothing to do with my professional life. But its awesome.

Submission-Fest '09

Okay. My show has been pushed to August. It is currently May 12th. I have two and a half months to do basically whatever I want, as long as it doesn't conflict with Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. So i basically have free reign to do a whole mess of low-commitment stuff.

And given that my episode of Rescue Me has just aired, I'm remembering the convenience of background work. It's one day out of life, it's a decent chunk of money, and it's a credit on the resume and a chance to be seen. That, and the NYFA films I've done recently have struck me as the perfect kind of stuff to be doing for the next few months. And if I can pick up a little money on the way, even better.

And so begins...

Submission-Fest '09

I've got my new issue of Backstage, my NYCastings, my Actor's Access and my copy of Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rein" on vinyl.

I am ready to rock.

Career milestone...

I saw myself on TV the other day!

I did background for "Rescue Me" last year, and have been waiting patiently for the new season to begin, delayed by strikes and such. But on Friday night while I was at work my mom sent me a text message. They'd been DVRing the show in hopes of seeing me and last Tuesday it finally aired.

If you happen to catch episode five of this season of Rescue Me, entitled "Sheila," I'm in the first two minutes. A fire truck pulls up, and just before Dennis Leary gets out, a girl with short brown hair in a black skirt and gray jacket walks by talking on her cellphone. And THAT, my friends, is ME!

This is a transcript of the text message conversation between me and my mom:

Mom: What were you wearing during Rescue Me?
Me: Black skirt, gray jacket
Mom: Short sleeves?
Me: Yes. Do you see me?
Mom: If it is you, you look STACKED
Me: Well, the camera does add ten pounds.

I then came home, bought it on iTunes, and yes. I look like I have enormous breasts. But it was a year ago, and I was slightly fatter.

So exciting. I can't wait till it's on hulu so I can post it! Lord, when I am older and jaded and have personal assistants who bring me water, and I have a recurring role in several Primetime dramas, and billboards of me in Subway stations, let me always remember this feeling of seeing myself on television for the first time. Because it's awesome.

And I'm over it...

Okay.

So Ian dropped out of the show. Apparently he has some big audition for Ugly Betty and his agent advised him not to do Danny because the production team still hasn't heard back about the rights.

I can understand that on a professional level. Ian is an apprentice with the LAByrinth Theatre Company, of which John Patrick Shanley is a member. So if something goes wrong with the rights and there's some kind of a problem, it might hurt him to be involved with the show.

But in my show's defense, the rights were applied for in a timely fashion, and it's not John's fault that there's still no word. If I were him I would do the exact same thing and go ahead and rehearse. Because you don't want to NOT rehearse and then have the rights come through like a week before you wanted to do the show.

So... I'm over it. Even though I think it was really messed up that he dropped out VIA TEXT and didn't even INFORM ME when we're supposed to be like, scene buddies.

But whatever.

I will not miss feeling as though I'm going to die in a horrible car crash every time he gives me a ride to rehearsal.

That being said, I took the bus to rehearsal for the first time last night (which sucked, but I think I've got it down now). I took the train to Rego Park and went to catch the Q38 at 63rd Drive, but I got on it the wrong way, so i got off and walked back to catch it in the other direction, but I got lost. So by the time I'd found the right bus stop and after waiting 20 minutes for the bus, I get on and I realize I'm on the exact same bus with the exact same driver. It's just reached the end of the route and turned around to start again. Nice.

So I met with John and Mike and Kelly, who are the understudy/Cast B sort of people. And we discussed our options.
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I would be performing with Mike. He and I haven't rehearsed together at all, but with all the rehearsals Ian missed, we would probably be at the same place. (I'm still kind of mad. I'm allowing myself three back-handed comments about Ian being a chode. That was One.) And Ian also had a couple of very important and hard to find props, since he had done the show already. In addition to the Ian Problem, Shetler Studios fell through. John contacted the people at Roy Arias Studios and got a space there, but they required a deposit that we didn't really have. So we had two options: Put up our own money and then begin a rehearsal process so frantic that it could be a pretty bitchin' reality show. OR, postpone the show.

Kelly's going to Greece in June, so we agreed to shoot for August. So for now we can relax, take a little break, concentrate on raising more money so that we can market the shit out of this, and come back to it later ready to roll.

I think it's a solid plan.

Well, I do now. I was demoralized yesterday that when John suggested postponing the show all I could think about was the daunting concept of being involved in this project until August. I've been so frustrated with Jimmy Shits as my partner (Two) that I just wanted to get the damn thing over with. And if I could figure out some way to pants him during one of the scenes, so much the better (and thank you Sean for that suggestion). I mean this whole time I've been reading this play over and over again thinking to myself: If I Only Had The Time/Rehearsal/Morale/What Have You. I would read that third scene and think I could do that, but there's no way I was going to be able to do it in this situation.

So when John first suggested that we postpone it, I wasn't sure I wanted to stay with the production.

I mean, I try not to be a snob. I understand that as artists, we do not always have the money for fancy rehearsal spaces and designers and all the stuff we had in college. John is basically paying for this thing himself, out of pocket, so I don't mind that we rehearse at his apartment, and we have to bring in props and costumes and all that. Whatever. It's about the play. But I was so down that I just wanted to go home and cry and watch 90210 and forget the whole thing every happened.

And then Kelly and Mike did scene one.

I've known Mike since we were in first grade. Not the whole time, mind you. When I was last in school with him, he had this whole Boy Band thing going for him. We used to have Battles of the Bands during the last fifteen minutes of English class in 7th grade. And then all of a sudden I was volunteering at the American College Theatre Festival when we had it at my school, and there he was, studying Theatre and competing at the Irene Ryans.

He's at Queens College now, so I've had the pleasure of seeing him in Playboy of the West Indes, in which he had one line ("Bagpipes") but I've never really seen him act.

And by the time scene one was over, he'd flipped a fucking table over, and he was crouched on the floor crying, and I was like, "I MUST BE A PART OF THIS."

So now my initial excitement about this show is completely renewed! And I'm really happy that with all the time we have, we can make sure it's the kind of production we want it to be. And we can really advertize and get it together for an industry mailing. Maybe we can even shoot the trailer, which is an idea that never really came off the ground.

August is a long way off, it's true. But it does alleviate the pressure. And for now my friend Pierce, who has a lovely film company called Nice Dissolve, has a movie he wants me to be a part of. So I'll do that, and then return to Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. And in the meantime, I can slow down my obsessive working out, because I think I almost gave myself a hernia the other day.

Resisting the urge to throw something out a window...

So...I think Ian just dropped out of the show. Hard to tell, because he did it via text message. But John just called me and the jist of the text he got leads him to believe that Ian's agent has advised him not to do the show.

Which is great to hear less than a month away from opening night.

But I have resolved not to panic.

Just like I resolved not to panic about the fact that we still hadn't actually blocked the show, that Ian backed out of the last two rehearsals we tried to schedule, that neither of us seemed to know our lines yet, that I was never going to learn my lines unless I actually rehearsed more, that the venue kept changing OR that I didn't think I'd be able to do justice to the intense emotional circumstances of the third scene unless I was so absolutely comfortable with thing like blocking and lines that I didn't have to worry about them at all.

Nope. Still not panicking.

Even though I've told all my friends and some of my former teachers and let's not forget CELEBRITIES at BARS about this show, and it's just for the grace of the theatre changing that I haven't had the chance to send out any mailings to industry people.

I Will Not Panic.

.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I Am So Angry.