St. Patrick's Day in the UK

Ah, the luck of the Irish.

St. Patrick's was pretty uneventful, but spent amongst friends and over alcohol, and therefore just right. (Above: Maria and Ronan start the festivities after a beat experiment. Maria had Ronan use his accent to get that hat. Oh, the exploitation of the Irish continues...)

When done with school for the day, I headed over with Caitlin to Filthy MacNasty's, a Scottish bar, where you could get a Guinness and a bowl of Irish stew for 5GBP, and be serenaded by a Pete Doherty look-alike, even if you didn't order that. (Sorry: Pete-R Doherty, now. Apparently the "r" is essential.) We joined Max and Heidi, who had gotten there about an hour before us, and were later joined by Ronan, who was possibly the only actual Irishman in the place (and subsequently got all his Guinnesses served to him in actual glass glasses--the rest of us had to settle for plastic knock-offs). I grabbed a cab and headed home early, and my driver only charged me for half the fare after we had a lovely chat about drama schools--he'll be auditioning for one in a couple months. I didn't see quite the widespread drunkenness that you can usually catch in NYC, but considering the Peter Doherty look-alike had been in the pub since 10AM, I'd say the spirit of the day was most definitely still maintained.

No Guinness-staches here!

"And now we invite you to relax, let us pull up a chair as the dining room proudly presents - your dinner!"

Word on the festival proposals came through yesterday. Out of the three my name had been attached to, the one I was least involved in regarding development and the drawing up of the proposal was of course the one that went through. That's life, eh? Doesn't matter, as the company at hand I'll be working with include the ever fabulous creative producer, Maria, and my friend and fellow performing cohort, Lisa, both of whom went through Stage 2 with me, and both of whom I thoroughly enjoy working with in a devising process and on a personal level. The piece has the distinction being the only site-specific offering at this point (it was the only one pitched as such, though others may develop into site-specific work if space is an issue, or if they head in that direction), and revolves around the dramatic repercussions of what can happen over dinner. What will those repercussions be? What space will we finally end up in? What will we cook up for this less-than metaphorical dinner? Who knows. All of these questions will be discovered in the devising process, and I'll tell you when and what we find (without giving too much away, mind). Some of the personal goals I'm setting for myself for this project are the following:

• To have nothing to do with the actual act of cooking the meal (though I am ready and willing to make cocktails)
• To have an ambient soundtrack, full of jazz standards ranging from the 1930s-1950s in recording
• To have Maria sing a song in a very lounge acty kind of way (she does this often on her own without prompting, and it would be lovely to tap into such a natural gift)
• To create a distinct, interesting, slightly absurdist character for the show. Think Gormenghast.

The last one is a big deal to me, as we haven't really looked at character development and it's something I'm interested in returning to for the sake of my own training and my own sense of what I want my work to be about. Since the course is so focused on teaching us how to work in a devising process with other practitioners with different skill sets, some of our own skill sets get put down or brushed aside for the sake of just creating a "whole" piece of theatre. I feel like I've done a lot of things, but if you flat out asked me if I felt I spent a lot of time actually acting (or at least what I define as "acting") then I'd have to answer you, "No." I understand dramaturgy even more than before I came here, and certain working methodologies have been introduced to me, so that's great. But fine tuning my specific craft? No. No that hasn't happened. So I'm going to try to take this opportunity to make something that really calls on my discipline as an actor AND a deviser. It won't be a French candlestick but it'll be something.

Happy Birthday, my little blog.

I realized today that I had walked over my blog's one year anniversary without so much as an acknowledgement. Whoops. I guess it's still surprising that I started this thing at all, and have tried to keep it up as best I can. In commemoration of the one year aniversary, I have changed the image at the top of the page (you noticed, I'm sure). That little text box describing myself as a "little American girl" growing up and all that--gone. It wasn't sitting with me properly the last few months, and I'm not sure it was even accurate when I first started this thing. The "little girl" part, anyway. Growing up is something I've been doing and will continue to do for a long time. And maybe I'll never get there completely. And I'm kind of alright with that.

Thanks to everyone who's been stopping by and giving this blog a purpose, as small as it may be. Those of you in the states: I miss the lot of you most days, and am happy we can communicate even if it means over this medium. I love you guys!!!

Just a quickie.

Stage 2 presentation went up yesterday (that's me, post showing, covered in lipstick from all the plexi sex). To add to our theme of web based communication, a couple audience members Skyped in and watched via web cam from laptops in the audience. Here's to Jenna and Amy, our fabulous audience members across the sea!!! Huzzah! (Incidentally, Amy was sadly cut off early due to a faulty connection. Don't worry, dear: I am told there will be a DVD.<--That is not a joke.) It went over well, it seems. More importantly than it going over well is it being over, leaving more time for research (which I don't remember how to do, anyway) and other things, like sleep. My sense of bodily maintenance has also gone out the window during this process, and I haven't felt this sluggish and out of shape in months. But spring is starting to take hold of the weather over here, and I have promised myself that I will, for the first time in Y-E-A-R-S, be wearing a bikini this summer, and that I will have the body to feel good about it, damn it! Life is too short to not wear bikinis while one is still young and virile and all that. Perhaps it will even be pink.

Well, let's not push it.

In any case, I plan on spending a lot of the extra time I have on my hands now (and over spring break--w00t!) trying to get back in shape. It's mostly a vanity thing, I won't lie. But by and large, it is important in terms of my chosen profession, and I respect the beast that the thing is and will play by its rules.

Word came in today that I will be involved in the Accidental Festival this year, taking place in late May. I had assisted a fellow Central student with their research regarding how they would address the process they would implement for the piece they were doing for it, and she offered me a place in the project. So I'm looking forward to that.

That, and some sit-ups.

I am lost/In a rainbow/Now the rainbow is gone

Title of this entry comes from lyrics from the band that's currently changing my life, who I'm heading out to see play live in a couple weeks with members of NASH. For a great clip from the Shelly Love (somebody else currently changing my life) film that they scored and the song these lyrics come from, please go here and enjoy. For reals.

I have felt lost lately, but not in any kind of a rainbow. The grind of school has been overwhelming over the last few weeks, and that, compounded with other activities and the lack of Internet in my room (how I survived that, I will truly never know) has obviously infringed on the bloggation of late. My apologies, but there just wasn't the time. I'll have to give a briefbrief overview of my doings, so as to not completely discredit these past few weeks.

Hotel Medea:

Headed out to the Arcola the first weekend in February for some hardcore theatre going, as evidenced by our blazoned fists.

(Photo courtesy of Heidi O'Connell's iPhone.)

The production was a six hour-long extravaganza, with three twenty-minute breaks, and a breakfast spread<--Did I mention the play started at 11:59PM? I couldn't do justice to the show if I tried to give you a synopsis here, but needless to say the sheer stamina of the performers was beyond impressive, particularly Medea who was at least five months pregnant, if not more. Both she and Jason got totally naked at one point--whoa. The production was also really great at creating an all-encompassing experience for the audience. At one point we were all taken in turn, tucked into cots in pairs, read a bedtime story while we held our own stuffed animals and sipped cocoa--we were Medea and Jason's children, overhearing our parents having an argument with our eyes closed. My friend Max died (Not really: they just used him as one of Medea's children at the very end, and we built a funeral memorial around him. His wife Amy was not amused.). We got stranded in the morning because London is not New York, and there were no trains running to the area of the city we were in on Sunday. Ridiculous. WiFi at McDonalds and Heidi's iPhone saved us. We got home around 8AM and were out of commission for the rest of the weekend.

Complicite Workshop:

Complicite is an institution in England, in terms of the top "known" theatre companies in the country. After seeing A Disappearing Number at the Barbican this past fall, I totally jumped on to the Complicite bandwagon (despite the slight over-use of projection in that production). Their last show that ran at the Barbican this past month, Shun-kin, based on a Japanese story, featuring an all Japanese cast and some puppets by Blind Summit Theatre, prompted a short workshop that introduced and instructed on aspects of said production. Basically, it was an auditorium of students, mostly high schoolers, and a handful of Central-ites, that turned up to listen to Simon McBurney (AD of Complicite, and the director of Broadway's latest revival of All My Sons--hence the projections used in said production...) walk us through the first part of the show, and then call some of us up on stage to demonstrate some of the techniques used in rehearsal, both with the actors (none of whom spoke fluent English) and when dealing with the puppets used in the show. Heidi and her iPhone were there, and caught all the action.

(That's Simon McBurney waving his arms.)

The next day Mark Down, one of the founding members of Blind Summit (pictured above in the foreground all the way to the left) came out to CSSD and did an hour lecture on puppetry that was terribly amusing and informative. The day after I caught Shun-kin, and was happy I'd been able to catch Simon McBurney the day before doing his introduction/summary. As the piece was entirely in Japanese, and I was sat all the way to the side on audience left, I:

1. often couldn't see what was going on/being projected onto the stage.
2. was too far back to read any of the translation text that was being projected on the sides of the stage.

Now, as I've said repeatedly before, I need glasses. This evening confirmed this fact yet again. However, there was a lot of dialogue in the show, too much even for the fully optically functional 20/20 viewing audience, and McBurney, in my humble opinion, did not make up for the fact with his staging. If you looked away from the stage, you missed part of the story for the sake of the text. If you missed part of the text, you missed part of the story in terms of the staging. And neither were totally decipherable all on their own. It was a little like a poorly staged opera that way. I will also say that I think there were one too many narrators. But I'll go no further than that. It was in all ways a Complicite production, and therefore good enough to be one of the better productions I've seen while over here.

Valentine's Day with Tom Stoppard

I spent basically all of Valentine's Day at the National at various events that all had one common thread: the playwright Tom Stoppard. First, myself and others caught a production of Stoppard's play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, a play for actors and an orchestra, featuring none other than our very own guest tutor, Toby Jones! My only complaint was that the piece wasn't longer--I could have stayed in the Olivier for hours listening to that music and that text. After that, we sat in on a talk back with the man himself. Stoppard is everything you'd envision in a playwright, right down to the baggy, old man sweater and the slip-on suede shoes that look more like slippers than outerwear. He rolls his r's, probably left over from his Czechoslovakian roots. He reduced Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as just "a play about two courtiers trying to entertain themselves in a boring place." He owns an iPhone, which rang during the talk. He was great. Afterwards, several of us went out to dinner and then returned to the National to watch Shakespeare in Love (co-scribed {or mostly scribed} by Stoppard) from one of the terraces, as it was projected on the side of the fly space of the Lyttleton (one of the spaces in the National). Heidi's iPhone was once again on the scene to catch all the action.


It was a delightful day, full of great art, and a truly unique experience that makes it my top Valentine's Day of all time.<--That statement clearly evidences the fact that I have never had a boyfriend around that date. But no matter. For one day, Top Stoppard was my boyfriend. And I loved him.

Visit from a New Yorker

Right around Valentine's Day, my friend Jen came into town with the transfer of an opera that had just finished it's run at the Met in New York, Doctor Atomic. She had worked on that production and was over here with light plot in hand, and tourist demands. I was happy to oblige her, as I never do anything too too touristy, and it was nice to have the excuse. We spent a lovely day together, watching a busker with a giant unicycle and a chainsaw in Convent Garden, traipsing about the Tower of London, walking along a considerable extent of the Thames, and sharing in a lovely meal. A couple days later, thanks to Jen, I caught Doctor Atomic's dress rehearsal from the best seat I will ever have in that opera house--the stalls, which at this house means orchestra level seating. The design by Improbable's Julian Crouch was great (it always comes back to Improbable, doesn't it?), and baritone Gerald Finley had the most dreamy tone quality. It was far more enjoyable than my last foray at the Coliseum. The final evening I spent with Jen during her visit, we headed over to Gordon's Wine Bar, the oldest wine bar in London. It's largely underground, in catacomb like structures, and you buy a bottle and crouch under brick archways at candlelit tables that are surrounded by mismatched chairs, all the while being dripped on by erosion from above. It was delightful. Moreover, it was wonderful to see a familiar face, and to share part of this experience with someone from home. It gives this journey some context somehow, and is a reminder that there is another world outside this place, and one that's possible to go back to, should I choose to go.

Incidentally...

The evening I caught the dress rehearsal for the opera, I was standing behind a man on the tube who looked staggeringly familiar. I tried my best not to stare or lean into him that much, but I kept glancing to him, trying to catch the side of his face, which he was clearly trying to shield. Suddenly at a stop, he turned his head for a moment and then got off. I instantly recognized his left cheek bone: it was Jamie Bamber, aka Lee "Apollo" Adama, the hottest of the hot, the CAG himself, soon to be president of the twelve colonies, and a cast member of the greatest TV show of the last few years of my life. For days I convinced myself if couldn't have been him (too short), but through Internet snooping I found a picture of him wearing the exact same jacket he was wearing on the tube, and since he's in town shooting Law and Order: UK, I have come to the conclusion that it was none other than the man himself. So close, and still so far...

And yes, I did just say: "Law and Order: UK." To be Dick York right now, I swear...

As far as school is concerned--

Term 2 is winding down in the next couple weeks. Our Stage Two Practice showcases our work Tuesday, for three performances. The piece focuses on web-based culture, activity, and identity. The most compelling part for me as an actor is a sequence where myself and my fellow collaborator Ronan perform a movement piece that's basically meant to simulate cybersex. It's really artfully done, I swear. We intend to film it, but due to intellectual copyrighting, there ain't no way that stuff is going to end up here. Also, my parents and relatives read my blog, so to save them from any possible embarrassment, I will avoid posting it. But for anyone curious (I'm seriously serious when I say it's artfully done, truly), I can figure out a way to show you the footage somehow, promise. Don't expect too much in certain areas--we are fully clothed all the time. But there is a vast amount of lipstick used.

The research group continues to plug along, performing our beat-like experiments (sorry I've still not thrown up any video), and the practice conference is fast approaching. We'll see what comes of that.

Third Term Festival proposals went in today at noon. My name is on three (I think...), and if any of them get selected--there were several submissions, but only ten will be accepted--I'll be a happy duck. Hopefully everything will work out. I will say no more on that topic, as I am a deep believer in the fates, and don't want to jinx anything.

................................

And that's really it from here. It's a lot--I realize that was basically a month's worth of stuff I just kind of threw out there--but in reality, it feels like everything happens so fast that almost nothing has happened at all.

Word keeps coming in from New York, and none of it seems to bode well. Jobs are lost, unavailable, or tightening in terms of hours. Less Equity contracts are being issued for summer seasons (because Equity actors demand a living wage and are therefore more expensive than non-union, and therefore at times unprotected, actors), and arts funding is even less existent than it was before. Everyone keeps plugging and/or struggling along, but the realization that for several life is changing drastically is ever prevalent. It makes me appreciate the somewhat insular environment I've holed up in for the year, despite the occasionally stagnant, claustrophobic, and down right irritating nature it can be at times. Putting up with a little aggravation and being spared wondering where the next meal is coming from is a blessing in it of itself. Even if that meal is disgusting cafeteria food from downstairs.

In the coming weeks I will do my best to be more diligent in my updates. Again, I apologize for having lapsed this long. But hopefully all can and will be forgiven. Take care, my dears.