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.