Work: A Play

The above is one of the video segments from Work: A Play, which just wrapped up its fist weekend, and has three more performances coming up this Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8pm.

And we've gotten some pretty good reviews as well:

"Poignant and hilarious... a fun show with lots of strange characters and lots of action... Get down there and check this one out." -NYTheatre.com

"A fantastically talented cast... fun stuff... if you're in a job that feels 'Powerpointless,' escape the fluorescent lights and retreat into the comforting darkness of UNDER St. Marks." - Show Business Weekly


So don't miss you last three chances to come and see this awesome show! You can get tickets right here!

And visit No Tea Productions for more information!

Theatre is my religion...

My third show with No Tea Productions, "Work: A Play" opens up on April 28th, and so the Sunday before Opening Night is our Tech Rehearsal.

For those of you who do not know what a Tech Rehearsal is, see below. If you already do, you may scroll down:

10:00 am Sunday Morning
You arrive at the theatre in which you will be doing your show. Often, this is the first time you will be in that theatre, as opposed to a rehearsal studio.

You have coffee and possibly donuts with the other members of your cast, and talk about how tired you are.

10:30am-11:00am
You get into your costume, and do your hair, and spend the next few minutes ooh-ing and ah-ing at everybody's funny costumes.

11:00am-2:00pm
You start to "Tech" the show. Meaning, you begin to run the scenes with lighting, sound, and any other technical elements. For the meat of the scenes, where the lighting doesn't change or there are no sound of lighting effects, you skip the dialogue.

In Tech, you take a backseat to the technical elements of the show. You spend a lot of time standing around, talking in hushed tones while your director and stage manager talk to the designers, and try to fix the lighting. Then they tell you to stand slightly to the left, or to the right, to get the brightest light on your face.

2:00pm
Lunch

3:00pm-8:00pm
You keep doing the same thing until eventually you've gotten through the whole show. And then, hopefully you have enough time to run the show with lighting and sound.

8:00pm (or perhaps later if things have not gone well)
You emerge, blinking into the night, remembering that at one point, the sun had been out, but your lunch break seems like a pretty distant memory. You gather your junk, and head straight to the bar.

10:00pm
Tequila.

1:00am
Sleep.

In a show like Work, with video segments covering most of the transitions between scenes, Tech is no doubt going to be a huge flaming ball of complications and short tempers.

I love Tech. You come out of it like you've been in a fox-hole with the people in your show.


THEATRE PEOPLE WHO ALREADY KNOW OF THE RIGORS OF TECH, YOU MAY SKIP TO HERE!

So obviously, the Sunday before we open is our Tech rehearsal. It's in two weeks, on April 24th. I work lunch shifts on Sundays, but I got my rehearsal schedule in all good time, so I set about getting someone to switch a shift with me and cover the 24th. There's only one problem:

That's Easter Sunday.

Find me someone who will be willing to work at Angelo's* on Easter Sunday when they don't have to, and I'll show you someone who doesn't know what day of the week Easter Sunday is, but is probably going to try and get out of it as soon as they figure it out. They do those Italian Easter breads for the tables with the Easter Egg in the middle. It's cute for about five seconds, until whatever kids sitting at the table get a hold of it and pry the egg out, smashing it all over the table cloth.

The entire restaurant smells like egg.

Which kind of smells like farts.

Teching on Easter doesn't bother me. I'm not a religious person, and honestly the show means more to me than the holiday. I'm just worried I won't be able to find coverage, and will have to miss the first half of tech.

Someday, someday, someday I will not have to work in a restaurant.

In the meantime, though: Egg Bread.



*This is not the actual name of the restaurant I work in. But this is the internet, and I don't want anyone reading where I work and showing up at my job to stab me in the face.

The L-Bomb

In May I'm going to be shooting a pilot with Josh Apter and Pete Olsen, two very talented filmmakers (these are the guys who gave me beer at the audition- awesome).

I'm going to get to work with Peter Grosz, writer for the Colbert Report and winner of two Primetime Emmys, and my character is a total bitch, so I'm very excited.

But in the meantime, we decided to put together a little short film, to stretch our legs, try out some lenses and give us an excuse to hang out. It's done, and on Funny or Die.

Here's the YouTube video:

Give us all your money.

The IndieGoGo campaign for "Provocation" has raised over $1300 towards our $2000 goal, but we're not quite there yet!

Donations can be as little as $10

And while you've got your checkbook out, let me tell you about someone else who really needs your money.

My good friend Harmony Stempel is another struggling New York actress. In addition to the hustling bustling world of acting, she'd also spent the past few years working as an artist's model. And from her experiences she's collaborated on a show with playwright Andrea Kuchlewska. They're going to be bringing the show to Prague, to be performed in the Prague Fringe, directed by their good friend, Liam Billingham.

They can only go to Prague if they reach their fund-raising goal, so it's very important that people help if they can.

Visit their fund-raising site on Kickstarter.com to watch a video about the project. You can donate as little as a dollar to help them bring their show to Prague.

Think about how much you spend on fancy Starbucks coffee.

That reminds me, I want a latte.

If nothing else, I got a Clementine...

About a month ago I had an audition for a parody news show that I had to miss. I'd woken up that morning feeling really sick, but I was bummed that I missed it.

I sent them an email and told them to let me know if they were going to have any additional auditions, but I didn't think it was very likely.

Well, as it turns out, they did have a second round, and I had an audition for them this morning.

Went in with a pretty chill attitude, but when I sat down and actually started talking about the project with the two guys, I started to get a little nervous. It was starting to sound like a really exciting opportunity.

So I got nervous right before reading the script, and so I think my read was a little... amateur. It just felt a little Drama Class to me. But they had me read twice, and the second time was better. They gave me some good feedback, and I got an orange.

This comes on the heels of receiving a phone call last night informing me that I unfortunately did not make the second round of the National Anthem search, but oh well.

Rehearsals for the next No Tea show begin next Monday, and then I'm shooting a pilot in May. More info on that is forthcoming.