Saturday, March 12

Unplugged Festival
The press release for the upcoming Unplugged Festival hit the internet today, so I think that means I am now allowed to announce my casting. The festival is to workshop new plays, culminating in readings.

I will be in Some of the People, All of the Time by Jamie Pachino. It will be directed by Artistic Director (he is also directing Las Meninas that I'm in, which opens this coming week).

The description in the press release is:
A priceless collection of Japanese art surfaces and two rival art dealers struggle to find out the truth about the collection's history. Nothing is quite as it appears in this compelling story of passion, art and double dealing.

The performance of this one will be Thursday, April 14 at 2:00pm.


Las Meninas
We had a rehearsal on stage with our set earlier this week (it's unusual to have that happen before tech here, because there are other shows in performing in repertory on the same stage). And as a result of that rehearsal, I'm pretty sure that this is going to be one of the craziest tech periods I've ever had.

The set is mechanized (which is REALLY COOL, by the way), so it might take some time to get the cues down. Also, the actors are moving the set, and several of the entrances onto the set are more narrow than we had been anticipating. Also, some of the wider entrances open up from hidden double doors to the set, and so each time we move large furniture (like beds) through them, there have to be two people holding the doors open so that they are FULLY open, or else the beds won't fit. Not to mention that we're doing all of this in period costumes and platform shoes (one of the main characters is supposed to be a little person, so the rest of us are in platforms to help make him look smaller).



Boeing Boeing
We were sold out for Boeing Boeing earlier this week. We've done it on Wednesday and Thursday, and we're doing it again on Saturday. After that (as a result of Las Meninas tech/opening week), we won't do it again for a long stretch of time.

Monday, February 21

Las Meninas
The rehearsals for Las Meninas are going well. We have blocked the entire show, and run each act separately... and we don't open for another month.

I've been going on as an understudy for all or part of most rehearsals. I'm understudying Acting Professoressa in her two roles as The Queen Mother & The Mother Superior. Because of her teaching schedule, when we rehearse from 11-4 or 12-5, she has to leave at 1:30, and I'm her for the rest of the day. Also, she's been off on recruitment (auditioning students for the incoming class of 2014... oh my!), so I've been playing her roles while she was out of town. At this point, I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that I've been in her roles more than she has.

On the one hand, that's great: understudies don't generally get this much rehearsal, and I'm further along in learning the lines/blocking than I would be otherwise. But on the other hand, it's tough: because I'm playing my own character AND her two characters, I get confused a lot. I keep missing one entrance as the Mother Superior because I'm already on stage as my own role, a Lady-in-Waiting. (My understudy can't attend most rehearsals because she's in classes). I feel like I'm letting everyone down.

Wifey, Thrill, and Two-Shots-Up all have HUGE roles in this show, and they're rocking them. As the Artistic Director (who is directing this show) said, Las Meninas is the show this season where there are students in the main roles, and the Equity cast is supporting the students. It's neat to see. I'm super proud of them.


Boeing Boeing
The show has been a lot of fun. We only perform it about once a week, which is tough (quite a memory exercise). But I love it when we do perform it. Our audiences have been terrific, and we've been sold out or close to it for every performance we've had, which is awesome.

I have 5 assisted changes during the show, which I am making with the assistance of two lovely ladies named Deborah and Michelle. Deborah is our costume crew, and Michelle is wigs/hair/makeup. All of my changes involves hats/headpieces/wigs getting put on or taken off, so Michelle does that while Deborah helps me with costume pieces/accessories/shoes/props. It's kind of crazy. But the funny thing is, when I tell people who have seen the show that I have 5 assisted changes, they can't think of any of them! A couple of those changes are SUPER FAST, but the stuff happening on stage is so dynamic that the audience doesn't realize that I just changed out of my (incredibly complex) air hostess uniform and into a nightgown in 20 seconds.


Donor Brunch
The 3rd-Years had our annual brunch with donors this past weekend. It was lovely. It's amazing to be in a room with that many people who love and support you.

I mentioned to them that I'm working on moving to London, and I need a way to do it and be legally able to work. If anyone reading this has any suggestions or ideas, please let me know.


Showcase
We have chosen our scenes for our New York Showcase in April, and have started rehearsing them. I'm doing a scene with Two-Shots-Up and a scene with Thrill, both of which are comedic. I'm happy with what I ended up with.


The Thrill of the Chase
We did a free staged reading of a play my boyfriend wrote while he was visiting me from London. We had a great turn-out, especially considering that we did mostly word-of-mouth advertising. The reading was fantastic (and I'm not just saying that because I was in it). People seemed to be really affected by the piece (which is dark and twisted), and I'm STILL getting comments from them about it, and how glad they were that we did it. I'm glad we did it, too. :)


The Love Late Night
The 4th Annual Love Late Night was a huge success. I did a monologue that I wrote myself. D-Train and 1st-Year SB did a scene that my boyfriend wrote. We had a great time.

Tuesday, April 6

VOICE
We went over our Irish scenes more.

Currently, the sound that troubles me the most is the vowel of words like "hut" that switches to the vowel of "wood". Luckily, Iceman and Killer are doing well, and they're my scene partners, so that helps me a lot.

The other hard shift sucks because of how often it comes up. The word "it" shifts to sounds like "ut". It comes up a lot more often than I thought it would. (As evidenced by the three instances in this paragraph.)

In my car when I'm listening to the radio, I try to recite the lyrics of pop songs making all the shifts of the Irish dialect. I have particularly enjoyed doing this to the song "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha (apparently the $ is pronounced like an S... I won't go into how much that bothers me). It helps me a lot, and makes me feel like I have a good handle on the dialect shifts.


MOVEMENT
We lifted weights at the top of class. I started this year with 3-pound weights. Then I started using both 3-pound weights in one hand for certain lifts (so, really 6-pounds). I recently switched to 5-pound weights, but they're not hard for me, since I was essentially working with 6-pounds before. So now I grab a 3 and a 5 with each hand, to give me make-shift 8-pound weights. :) It makes me feel strong.

We worked on our Commedia characters in small groups. My group is me (Vittoria), All-The-Way (Pedrolino), and Wifey (Columbina). Our homework is to come up with scenarios that involve those characters.


ACTING
Newbie and I met with Acting Professoressa over our lunch break to work on Twelfth Night. We're adding an element into the scene: Newbie desperately wants to touch me, and I desperately want to avoid her touching me..., while still appearing polite.

So the big things I have to work on are:
- be polite, so that Olivia won't report to Orsino that I've been rude in any way.
- stop the touching... in a polite way
- be a BOY (I'm playing a character who is pretending to be a boy... and I have to get away with it.)


During class, I worked with D-Train on our All's Well That Ends Well scene. I think it's going pretty well. It's kind of a silly scene, but it's fun to work on.


KING JOHN
We had our final performance of King John, and it went exceptionally well. I'm proud to have worked on this show. I wish we could do it again. :)

Tuesday, March 30

KING JOHN
Last night was our first performance of the King John late night, directed by 3rd-Year KS. We had a great crowd! And it was a lot of fun to tell that story. It's been a long time since I was in a Shakespeare play (not just a reading, or a scene, or an understudy role... but IN one. The last one was in 2006), and it was nice to get another chance to be in one.

If you missed it, we're having another performance! It will be Tuesday, April 6th @8pm in the Cook Theatre. Hope you can make it!

FIZZ
Over the weekend, I saw a staged reading of Fizz by Rogelio Martinez, which is part of the Unplugged Festival of new works. It's about the president of Coca Cola in the 1980's, and it was awesome. So, so, so funny, but also poignant. And the 3rd-years who were in it were fantastic. It was wonderful to see.

VOICE
Today Voice class was optional, for anyone who hadn't finished their Irish transcriptions, or who wanted extra help. So I went. Because Irish? It's super tough for me. As I may have mentioned.

There are tons of shifts, and they're all super specific. And, unfortunately, the text we're converting has the dialect written in, which just makes transcription harder. (Why do playwrights do that? WHY?)


MOVEMENT
We started off by walking around as our Commedia characters. Then we got out the mats, and started moving as the animals that are connected to our Commedia types. (My character Vittoria, is connected to both pink flamingoes and love birds.) Then, we had to "evolve", from the animal into the character, keeping some of the animal characteristics in tact. It was really funny to watch.

Then, we were put into groups of 3-4 characters that often work together (my group was me, Wifey, Iceman, and Two-Shots-Up... aka Vittoria, Columbina, Harlequin, and Harlequinetta), and had 2 minutes to come up with a scenario to play out. Then we played them out, using Grammelot.

Grammelot is a way of speaking gibberish that is based off of the sounds of another language. Some people find it's easier to create Grammelot based off a language they know. Some people find it's easier to do Grammelot based off of a language that they DON'T know. I'm in the latter category. I've studied German and Italian, so I'm going to do French Grammelot. All-The-Way is already really good at her Italian Grammelot. I was impressed.

If you want a good idea of Grammelot, watch this video. It's a bunch of Italians singing a song in "English Grammelot" (aka, what they think English sounds like, including a couple of actual words, and mostly gibberish ones).



ACTING
We moved our set pieces down to the theatre, where we'll be doing our Acting Showing at the end of this semester. Acting Showings are usually done in a classroom, but we requested the stage and got approved.

We began staging the "Comedy of Errors" scene (All-The-Way & Killer) and the "Two Nobel Kinsmen" scene (O.D., Thrill, Newbie, & Two-Shots-Up).

Monday, March 22

Hello world! Long time, no blog.

So things have been hopping around here on Spring Break. What, you ask? Let's see...

- The run of Machinal closed on March 21st. It was a great show, and I'm sad to see it go. I'm proud of the work that I did in it, both as the Matron and as the Nurse. And I will miss the Matron's unibrow. (Um, yeah... I might have not mentioned this, but I gave the Matron a unibrow. It was intense.)

- I've been rehearsing for a Late Night production of Shakespeare's King John. We have a performance on Monday, March 29 at 8:00pm, for anyone reading who is local. It's free. (Yes, we know that it's on the first night of Passover... We're looking into the possibility of having a second performance for the people who won't be able to make it on the 29th. I'll let you know if that happens). I'm playing Queen Eleanor and Lord Salisbury.

- The New Play Festival has started up. I've only been able to attend two of the readings: How to Pray by Michelle Carter, and The Innocents by Steven Drukman. Both readings were excellent. If you're in town, I highly recommend trying to see some of these. I think tickets are about $5 per show, and it will totally be worth your while, I promise.

- My parents came down to visit. Which was awesome. And I already miss them.

- I've finished blocking my "Stuffed Turkey" monologue for Movement class

- I e-mailed the incoming Class of 2013. (WOWZA! I feel old.)

- My classmates and I have started brainstorming ways to do fundraising for our Showcase trip next year. If you have ideas for us, please let me know.


Spring Break (break? what break?) has ended. Let the games begin!

Wednesday, October 28

OH MY WORD! WE OPENED! THE MYSTERY PLAYS IS OPEN!!!

And you only have a window of 3 weeks to see it, so go buy your tickets NOW.

It was exhilarating. I'm so proud of my company. And people were incredibly complimentary and supportive. Yay hooray!

Congratulations to All-The-Way, D-Train, Iceman, Big Show, Newbie, O.D., and Wifey! I love you guys!

And now, I'm off to bed.

Tuesday, October 27

VOICE
We got our scoring exams back today. I actually did shockingly well on mine, considering how confused I was right before I turned it in. We spent most of the class period discussing questions that individuals had on their tests.

Here are a few more notes on our scoring rules:
- You cannot have a full sentence without operatives.
- You cannot use a trochee in the 5th foot. (although I feel like I've seen a line that was entirely trochaic once... I wonder if that would be okay...)
- You cannot use a pyrrhic in the 5th foot.


JAZZ
Movement Professor is out of town (she was asked to perform at Merce Cunningham's memorial), so Dance Instructor (who taught us waltz last year and will be teaching tap later this year) is doing a jazz workshop with us for a couple of days.

I really like jazz stuff. It's very fluid, which is fun, but simultaneously seems to use what Michael Chekhov would call a "molding" quality. And I dig that. I have to say, though, I don't remember the last time I've sweat as much as I did today.


MYSTERY PLAYS
In the afternoon we had a run-through and notes session. Head of Program stressed how important it is to keep everything sharp, clean, energized, and weighted. We need to know what we are responsible for communicating in order to move the story forward.

At night, we had a preview performance. Rumor has it that there were 58 people in the audience (which is, strangely, a number that is significant in the show). It went really well. I'm excited for our official opening tomorrow night. It's a great show, and I'm glad that we're finally getting to share it with people.

I'm especially excited because I think the show has some really positive messages in it.
- Everything happens for a reason.
- God is in everything, even if you don't see him there.
- Forgiveness is easier than you think, and saves a lot of pain.

I'm glad to be telling these stories. I hope that we can tell them well enough so that audiences get as much out of them as I have.

Here are some photos taken at a dress rehearsal on Sunday (unfortunately, I don't have any of me):

(All-The-Way, D-Train, Wifey, and O.D.)

(Big Show and D-Train)

(Newbie, All-The-Way, and O.D.)

(Iceman, O.D., and Newbie)

(O.D. and Newbie)

Friday, October 16

THE GREEKS
To say I am proud of my class would be an understatement. I adore my class. I am in awe of my class. And I feel honored to be able to be on stage with these people and work alongside them. They inspire me. I love them.

We had a pretty full house, which was exciting and invigorating. And after weeks of delivering lines to empty seats where the areopagites supposedly sat, we had actual PEOPLE to talk to. It was AMAZING. I think it pushed everyone to the next level in their work. It's incredible just how much it helps to have an audience.

Everyone stepped up their game. It was great to watch, and even better to work with.

And it was such a high! It felt so great to perform (even though technically The Greeks is a "showing" and not a "performance"). I felt good about the work that I did. Of course, I wasn't perfect (like the point when I went into glottal fry while yelling "Kill me -- come on I'm ready -- but leave my son alone!"), but I never will be. Acting is not about perfection; it's about trying to be truthful under any circumstances (including extreme ones, like The Greeks). I think I found some of that truth. And it felt right.

Thank you to everyone out there who came to support us!!!


~A~

Playwrights Festival

First, a note... It's not too late to enter my Three Postcards Food Contest! Come on, you might as well enter. Just for fun. I know you want to. :)

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The week after classes ended in April, all the 1st-year actors participated in the Playwrights Festival.

The main campus of our university has a graduate program in "Professional Writing" (which is part playwriting, part screenwriting). The 6 students in that program had just come back from London where they'd written 10-minute plays. We were their workshop casts.

I was cast in two of the plays. In the first, I played a 50-year-old preacher. In the second, I played a 60-year-old crippled Taiwanese-American woman. Clearly, type-casting was not a factor for this festival.

Rehearsals were in rotation on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. The festival performances were on Wednesday.

After each rehearsal, as the playwrights saw how we were working with their texts, they often went home and rewrote things. So the next day, we'd have new scripts (sometimes the draft changes were more slight than others). We weren't supposed to memorize the texts in order to better facilitate the re-writes. I think that both of the plays I worked on were far stronger by the end of the workshop than they were when we started.

The readings were really interesting to watch. They weren't fully staged productions, of course (and I'm hardly Taiwanese... and neither are Wifey or Newbie, who played my family members in that one), but I do think that they helped the playwrights to see what they'd written (in comparison to what they THOUGHT they'd written... it's not always easy to recognize until you see it).

Sadly, I don't think I have any pictures from it... If I find any, I'll post them.

Saturday, May 23

The Edge of Peace Workshop

This week, I worked with playwright Suzan Zeder on a workshop of the play she's currently finishing up: The Edge of Peace. It's the final play in a trilogy that she's been working on since 1982 (the first two plays were Mother Hicks and The Taste of Sunrise, but it stands on its own as well.

It's a beautiful play that involves a deaf character (who, it is specified, must be played by a deaf actor). I had to learn a bit of sign language for my role.

I played the role of "Girl", who is born in The Taste of Sunrise and is the main character of Mother Hicks. She's a sassy 23-year-old who is a Women's Air Service Pilot in World War II. It was a fun new type of role for me, and I loved it.

D-Train and Newbie were in the reading as well. D-Train read the role of an 11-year-old boy named Buddy (and he did a wonderful job providing most of the comedic moments of the play). Newbie played June Ricks, a war-wife whose husband is M.I.A.

D-Train, me, and Newbie before the reading

We had a final reading of it yesterday, and actually had a pretty good turn out. We did a talk-back afterward, and the audience had some very insightful feedback. It was great being able to share that work with people.

It felt great being on stage again, even though it was only a reading. Aside from understudy runs and open-classes, I haven't performed in ages. It feels so right. I know this is what I was born to do.

Also really exciting? During the rehearsal process, they made us mugs! In the Repertory company, each actor has a mug in the rehearsal room labeled with their name that they can use throughout the rehearsal period. And for this, I got a mug! I was so stoked!