I'm a Superstar!

Opening Night Top Five Comments

The Tortoise and his Hair

5.  That's not a real kitty, right?  That's just a costume.

4.  Can I touch your wings?

3.  You're my favorite color!

2.  Why do you have green hair? (I wear a green feather hat.)

1.  My little brother ate an apple today.  He's one.

A Little Off the Top

5.  You're adorable.

4.  Star of the show!

3.  Little miss bombshell up there.

2.  Are you wrapped in cellophane under that dress?

1.  (From the cutest, oldest lady there)  Well you're just a little sexpot aren't you?

The Death and Life of Sherlock Homes along with Oklahoma! had normal comments - like I have great hair and I did a great job and they all enjoyed the show and will be back again for something else, etc.

Things are hellish on the director front though.  He needs to go back on his meds and plain stay away from me.  Seriously.  I have a lot of tolerance for sick people, but when it comes down to attacking me with rudeness and swearing and yelling?  Absolutely not.  I don't need that.  My tiny paycheck and my love of theatre keeps me coming back each day.

Are we having fun yet?

On an unrelated note, my little brother left yesterday for his week-long scouting camp. Before he left we played pictionary with sidewalk chalk.  Since there's just the two of us, and since he's ten years younger than me, we bend the rules a little bit.  It was fun - pretty much the only time that we've both been home at the same time to actually do something together.  He told me when he left not to miss him.  He said to take care of his chickens and if for some reason I did miss him, to pretend that the chickens were him.  He's such a funny little kid.  I love him lots.  Those chickens are pretty wacky too.  But they're a topic for a different day.  Cheers.

here's a sketch of chicken that someone else drew...
  all for your enjoyment

Acting Isn't Easy

I went swimming for the first time this summer.  After about ten minutes on the dock debating which was worse, the mosquitoes or the water below, the water won.  It was freezing even though I had a shorty wet suit on.  Somehow it felt warmer than the Midsummer pool though.  I miss that show.

Our Town, Mugnog, Die Fledermaus, A Midsummer Night's Dream, How I Learned to Drive

 Now I'm exploding with trying to memorize these parts.  And trying to make sure no one goes onstage naked.  We open next week.  Tortoise and Little Off the Top on the 19th, Sherlock on the 20th, OK! on the 22nd.  The murder mystery doesn't open until July 5th.  Music Man opens July 17th.  (My sister will be coming to visit from the 25th until the 9th of July!  Hopefully there will be minimal fighting between us.)

I wish I could redo my summer.  I wish I could have half of the roles I currently have, and half of my original roles.  I wish that the company hadn't left.  I wish they were better people than they were.  They had great talent and if they had better perspectives on theatre, we could have put together great great shows.  Now, with a lot of the community members filling in roles, the shows are suffering.  There's one girl in particular who is really really green.  She has just graduated high school, but she was home-schooled.  And she just turned 17 in May.  She doesn't take risk, she has an awkward cadence to her speech, and even though she's off book on almost all of her small roles, she's a bad actress.  She's going to Saint Olaf in the fall to study theatre.  Now - I didn't start out my acting career with skill.  I was not a good actor.  But I had presence.  And more importantly, I was so eager to learn.    She has... she's just... awkward.  This normally wouldn't be a problem because I could help her learn.  But she's so insecure that she doesn't take any constructive criticism well.  Not even from the director.  She doesn't take acting notes without shutting down  and becoming visibly frustrated and flustered.  How will I ever survive once I graduate from college.  I want to do real work and make real money.

Here are two pictures from DanceWorks.  They are from Reed's piece which was called So Full of Dreams.  (I haven't been able to find photos from the other pieces.  We haven't even gotten the rest of the photos from our photo shoot.)  But anyway, this is the one I did stilts in.  They're a little dark, but if you click on them they'll expand.  It was about Joseph Merrick - The Elephant Man.

I'm downstage right.  So as you're looking at it - I'm on the far left

Stilting.

I miss stilting.  I need to have someone build me my own set of stilts.  I would have to redesign them a bit so that they were more comfortable on my foot.  Because what good is it to put stilting on my resume if I don't have my own stilts?  I'm tired all of a sudden.  I'm going to go memorize some stuff.  Cheers.

Northwoods Nonsense

Well.  This is crazy.  Hey Claire, how's your summer so far?  Well... I'm working in summer stock...

The theatre is rotting, the cast was mutinous and left, and the directors aren't good at their jobs.  I'm doing the work of eight people for a terribly small stipend.  I have not kept one of my six original roles in the shows and am basically carrying the weight of every single female lead.  I am an actor.  I'm costume designer and costume crew.  I'm choreographer.  I am also director when the titled director fails and the poor non-actor community members come begging me to help them.  You know though, it's okay.  It's just really stressful and I worry a lot about memorizing lines and songs and making sure that when we open in TWO WEEKS no one will be going onstage naked.  I wish the resident cast hadn't left.  I liked them.  They had great talent.  Suck-y attitudes, but great talent.  I'm glad they left because I get way better parts in the shows, but it's unfortunate that I got landed with so much extra work.  I've also been left behind to deal with people who mean the best but really have no idea what they're doing.  By the end of this summer, I want to be remembered as the stand out actor in the shows.  I want to be the best.  I might already be the best... who knows.

I need a vacation.

Here are my characters for this summer (I'm building a professional resume - hooray.)

Marian - The Music Man by Meredith Wilson

Ado Annie - Oklahoma! by Rogers and Hammerstein

Mary Doyle/Mary Altamont - The Death and Life of Sherlock Holmes by Suzan L. Zeder

Sammy (the bird who thinks she's a dog) - The Tortoise and His Hair by Rory Behrens

Lisa - A Little Off the Top by Carl Williams

Alice - Death at Dinner (murder mystery) by Mark Batell

I'm going to go be a lightning rod now

Thank you Mr. Walken