My hair wouldn't do that of it's own accord. The odd, deer-in-headlights look on my face is because an audience member just flashed me. No, no, just poor freeze technique.
Many thanks to Sarah and Jackie for checking out performances!!
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
It's a Wig
My hair wouldn't do that of it's own accord. The odd, deer-in-headlights look on my face is because an audience member just flashed me. No, no, just poor freeze technique.
Many thanks to Sarah and Jackie for checking out performances!!
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Nearing the end
The last few weeks have been packed with all sorts of events and emotions. Guys and Dolls ended, and we lost all the people who had to go back to school in one big, depressing sweep. There are a good many people left, but it's much quieter and very weird without the rest of "us". I got to move dressing rooms, which has been great, but has made me dwell on the weird position of not belonging that I was both forced into and created this summer. I was in the "principal" dressing room for the rest of the summer, and everyone else in there had been at this theatre before, and I always felt I didn't belong, as a "first-year" and I think the old-timers meant for me to feel that way. It wouldn't be "tadition" if I was made to feel welcome. These girls have created a caste system, and I was of another caste.
In the meantime, time was passing in the other dressing room and a certain camraderie was developed that I wasn't a part of either. I've moved in there now, and it is a great relief because I can feel I belong there, but I'm still not part of the world they created. I probably won't get to be in the last two weeks. I wish I didn't feel it - I wish I was impervious. Instead I feel isolated, and I wonder what mistakes I made to foster that isolation. How much of it is me, and how much is the situation?
So I abandoned the bike and I'm hitching rides instead, and I've been drinking and staying up with folks more. There's a nice camaraderie of the left behind - we have to stick together because we're the only ones left. I'm trying to enjoy the time we have left.
Gigi opens today. I do very little in the show. I have more scene changes than scenes. Really - I'm in four scenes, I change the scenery 11 times. But I feel like this is what everyone else did for me when I was in South Pacific, and I'm enjoying paying my dues a bit. After Cats, I just am happy to be IN the show, not sitting on the sidelines.
All right, I'm off to sweep and mop the theatre....
In the meantime, time was passing in the other dressing room and a certain camraderie was developed that I wasn't a part of either. I've moved in there now, and it is a great relief because I can feel I belong there, but I'm still not part of the world they created. I probably won't get to be in the last two weeks. I wish I didn't feel it - I wish I was impervious. Instead I feel isolated, and I wonder what mistakes I made to foster that isolation. How much of it is me, and how much is the situation?
So I abandoned the bike and I'm hitching rides instead, and I've been drinking and staying up with folks more. There's a nice camaraderie of the left behind - we have to stick together because we're the only ones left. I'm trying to enjoy the time we have left.
Gigi opens today. I do very little in the show. I have more scene changes than scenes. Really - I'm in four scenes, I change the scenery 11 times. But I feel like this is what everyone else did for me when I was in South Pacific, and I'm enjoying paying my dues a bit. After Cats, I just am happy to be IN the show, not sitting on the sidelines.
All right, I'm off to sweep and mop the theatre....
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Echoes of Sleeping Beauty
We open Sleeping Beauty on Friday morning, and as of today I've had three rehearsals. Ha! All the kid's shows get shoved in as time permits, and it hasn't really permitted at all, so we are scrambling to learn everything, which means all night I've been hearing people frantically practicing their lines all around the house. It's funny - in the living room one of the fairies is creaking out her lines in a fake British accent, and upstairs I can hear the bad fairy ranting and raving.
It makes me sigh a little, the fake British accent - not because I'm a snob, no, but because I had one myself, and now I think two in one show might be too much. The other fairy isn't entirely aware how she's producing said accent - she just spits the words out in this voice, which to be fair is funny, and would be classic if she could hold on to the fake accent at all times.
I'm sure the same can be said for mine, but since I do know how I'm making it, I can remove it, which makes me sad. I guess if I'm honest: I thought it sounded funny, but hers sounds odd, and since I have to admit I'm trying the same tactic (a funny fussy voice), there's nothing to convince me my own accent isn't equally inexplicable and spotty.
I'm sucking my teeth at her a bit because she keeps complaining about doing a kid's show, although this is her first, and MY SECOND. Yeah, it's a bummer, because almost all the rehearsal comes during dinner and all your free time disappears. But we've all had to do it, and some of us more than once (and one poor girl more than twice).
Guys and Dolls continues. I clocked it - I spend 16 and a half minutes on stage during a 2 hour 50 minute show. It's restful, and that has advantages - when else do I have time to learn my kid's show lines? Every so often I have a twinge of ego, because it is disheartening to get good parts for three shows in a row and then get nothing for the last three shows. I don't mind, overall, and politically I'm thrilled to fade into the woodwork, but of course underneath there are those niggling doubts: did they decide I wasn't that good?
Case in point: I am barely in Gigi at all, the final show. I think it may be that I do not sing a single note in the show, which I find funny. I love the director and I don't resent being there, and I am happy to watch other people have a chance to shine. The only role I could feasibly have been cast in was the 50 year old grandmother, and since I have already done a series of older women this season, I don't feel I lost out. But there are regrets, and I do wonder on occasion what politics or just plain judgment of my talent there might have been.
On the other hand, I can pretty much drink for the next three weeks, since I don't need to memorize more than a handful of lines.
It's much easier to be here knowing the end is in sight. I have gotten calls to audition for theatres and commercial gigs in the last month or so, and that reminds me I have something to go back to, and in many ways, something better. This is not the apex of my career. Knowing that, perhaps I should get some sleep.
It makes me sigh a little, the fake British accent - not because I'm a snob, no, but because I had one myself, and now I think two in one show might be too much. The other fairy isn't entirely aware how she's producing said accent - she just spits the words out in this voice, which to be fair is funny, and would be classic if she could hold on to the fake accent at all times.
I'm sure the same can be said for mine, but since I do know how I'm making it, I can remove it, which makes me sad. I guess if I'm honest: I thought it sounded funny, but hers sounds odd, and since I have to admit I'm trying the same tactic (a funny fussy voice), there's nothing to convince me my own accent isn't equally inexplicable and spotty.
I'm sucking my teeth at her a bit because she keeps complaining about doing a kid's show, although this is her first, and MY SECOND. Yeah, it's a bummer, because almost all the rehearsal comes during dinner and all your free time disappears. But we've all had to do it, and some of us more than once (and one poor girl more than twice).
Guys and Dolls continues. I clocked it - I spend 16 and a half minutes on stage during a 2 hour 50 minute show. It's restful, and that has advantages - when else do I have time to learn my kid's show lines? Every so often I have a twinge of ego, because it is disheartening to get good parts for three shows in a row and then get nothing for the last three shows. I don't mind, overall, and politically I'm thrilled to fade into the woodwork, but of course underneath there are those niggling doubts: did they decide I wasn't that good?
Case in point: I am barely in Gigi at all, the final show. I think it may be that I do not sing a single note in the show, which I find funny. I love the director and I don't resent being there, and I am happy to watch other people have a chance to shine. The only role I could feasibly have been cast in was the 50 year old grandmother, and since I have already done a series of older women this season, I don't feel I lost out. But there are regrets, and I do wonder on occasion what politics or just plain judgment of my talent there might have been.
On the other hand, I can pretty much drink for the next three weeks, since I don't need to memorize more than a handful of lines.
It's much easier to be here knowing the end is in sight. I have gotten calls to audition for theatres and commercial gigs in the last month or so, and that reminds me I have something to go back to, and in many ways, something better. This is not the apex of my career. Knowing that, perhaps I should get some sleep.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Long Ride Home
Long days. I'm having more fun, in between times where I get really tired of being here and a little depressed at the politics. More on that next time, I'm too fretful about it today, and have talked about it enough in other parts of my life.
A little healthy melancholy creeps across me, as I'm listening to Patty Griffin's Long Ride Home, a beautiful folk song that I sang in snatches to myself for years without realizing it is about a funeral.
The lovely boyfriend comes to visit tomorrow. It is worrisome. I tend to be a very out-of-sight, out-of-mind person (much like a two-year-old, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist), and we've been apart for nearly two months, so the relationship feels very fuzzy right this moment. The last two weeks of phone conversations have felt very distant and odd, and I have great hopes that being physically together will magically fix all of that, though of course "magically" is always a dangerous word if you want to live a life based in reality.
Being away from a partner is tricky, certainly. I can't pretend to know what Hollywood life is really like, but I suspect the mere fact of living away from your partner contributes to most Hollywood breakups. How do actors go on tour? How on earth did sailors go away to sea these last hundred years? How do military spouses do it?
(now I'm listening to Aretha Franklin's "Dr. Feelgood", which disperses any gloom)
It's getting towards the end of my own tour of duty - We're opening our next to last show. I play General Cartwright in Guys and Dolls, which plays for two weeks, and then we do Gigi for two weeks, and then I skedaddle for the Midwest and sanity again.
Guys and Dolls is....well, it's partly fun, mostly idle, and somewhat dreadful. In a three hour show (ANOTHER ONE??!) I think I clock in ten minutes of time onstage. That's it. But then again, I am enjoying all ten minutes - it's very liesurely, and I know what I'm doing with them. I can be freer and less worried about this bit part than something larger. And it's nice to be IN the show again, after Cats. I feel useful again.
We lose all the college people after this show, and a few others as well, which makes me sad. I do bitch about these people, but I like them, and have that sort of soldierly comradeship you find among fellow battlers. It's hard to lose some. A lot of them live in NYC as well, and they will be seeing each other in the coming year, whereas I head elsewhere and lose out a bit. I don't know that I would go to weekly reunions, but there are people I hate to lose track of.
It's getting late -we teched Guys and Dolls more quickly than any other show, but it is much more boring and more poorly performed than any of our other shows. Politics have given the 4 lead roles away to two sheerly bad actors, one fairly good actor poorly cast, and one very fun actor who just can't do the work of all four, no matter how hard he tries. It's a little hard to watch some of the scenes - even the costume people just want to sleep through the runthroughs. Our director is a dancer, and yet the choreography is boring. So actors sleepwalk through the scenes, and dancers meander through the songs, and the whole thing is a waste of a really fun play.
I do have an amazing costume, which I wear for probably a minute thirty seconds onstage (one minute in the opening, and thirty seconds in the end - I promise I am not exaggerating), and then an fairly hideous costume for the other 8 1/2 minutes of my time. The amazing costume includes sunglasses, slinky black dress, a turban, and long black gloves. The hideous costume involves an elastic waistband. I don't mind it, really.
I'll see if I can get photos. You'll see...
A little healthy melancholy creeps across me, as I'm listening to Patty Griffin's Long Ride Home, a beautiful folk song that I sang in snatches to myself for years without realizing it is about a funeral.
The lovely boyfriend comes to visit tomorrow. It is worrisome. I tend to be a very out-of-sight, out-of-mind person (much like a two-year-old, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist), and we've been apart for nearly two months, so the relationship feels very fuzzy right this moment. The last two weeks of phone conversations have felt very distant and odd, and I have great hopes that being physically together will magically fix all of that, though of course "magically" is always a dangerous word if you want to live a life based in reality.
Being away from a partner is tricky, certainly. I can't pretend to know what Hollywood life is really like, but I suspect the mere fact of living away from your partner contributes to most Hollywood breakups. How do actors go on tour? How on earth did sailors go away to sea these last hundred years? How do military spouses do it?
(now I'm listening to Aretha Franklin's "Dr. Feelgood", which disperses any gloom)
It's getting towards the end of my own tour of duty - We're opening our next to last show. I play General Cartwright in Guys and Dolls, which plays for two weeks, and then we do Gigi for two weeks, and then I skedaddle for the Midwest and sanity again.
Guys and Dolls is....well, it's partly fun, mostly idle, and somewhat dreadful. In a three hour show (ANOTHER ONE??!) I think I clock in ten minutes of time onstage. That's it. But then again, I am enjoying all ten minutes - it's very liesurely, and I know what I'm doing with them. I can be freer and less worried about this bit part than something larger. And it's nice to be IN the show again, after Cats. I feel useful again.
We lose all the college people after this show, and a few others as well, which makes me sad. I do bitch about these people, but I like them, and have that sort of soldierly comradeship you find among fellow battlers. It's hard to lose some. A lot of them live in NYC as well, and they will be seeing each other in the coming year, whereas I head elsewhere and lose out a bit. I don't know that I would go to weekly reunions, but there are people I hate to lose track of.
It's getting late -we teched Guys and Dolls more quickly than any other show, but it is much more boring and more poorly performed than any of our other shows. Politics have given the 4 lead roles away to two sheerly bad actors, one fairly good actor poorly cast, and one very fun actor who just can't do the work of all four, no matter how hard he tries. It's a little hard to watch some of the scenes - even the costume people just want to sleep through the runthroughs. Our director is a dancer, and yet the choreography is boring. So actors sleepwalk through the scenes, and dancers meander through the songs, and the whole thing is a waste of a really fun play.
I do have an amazing costume, which I wear for probably a minute thirty seconds onstage (one minute in the opening, and thirty seconds in the end - I promise I am not exaggerating), and then an fairly hideous costume for the other 8 1/2 minutes of my time. The amazing costume includes sunglasses, slinky black dress, a turban, and long black gloves. The hideous costume involves an elastic waistband. I don't mind it, really.
I'll see if I can get photos. You'll see...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)