10/25/2015 0 Comments Verona Wrap-UpTonight me and these fine folk got together and made a little play. It was pretty cool. What was really great was that afterwards, I saw my longtime friend from childhood (when neither of us could untangle our messy curls), Rebecca. And a brand new friend, Jess, who took the time out of her crazy messy move to come see me. I'm really lucky to have old and new buds and so thankful to get to connect with them in this way. #LoveWhatIDo
LBR PS Becca and I are pros at curly/wavy hair now, btw
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10/22/2015 0 Comments NEWS!!! 12 Ways to Play This Weekend!This Saturday I'm performing in my first official gig in Chicago. It's a little ditty called Verona (A Love Story) and it's being featured in the Public House Theater's 12 Ways to Play One Act Festival!
It's a story about Theresa (this broad with two thumbs) who is working in a toll booth in Verona, upstate New York. She finds herself looking for that perfect someone and looks no further than the stream of cars rolling by her window every day. She's taking stalking to a whole new level, forgoing the internet entirely, targeting one particular 9-5 regular who meets her calculated standards. He eats McDonald's, but at least there's not a wife packing him a lunch. AMIRIGHT???!? Working on this piece has been a refreshing return to comedy for me. It's been a while since I worked on something of a little lighter fare, though it's far from your standard farce, offering some really lovely, honest moments along the way. If you happen to be in the Chicagoland area this Saturday, feel free to stop on by. There will be drinks, a food truck, artist workshops, basically it's going to be a really great weekend, and I'm pumped to be part of it! LBR
And you guys. I'm a winter, so I'll look freaking cute as a fucking button when it gets all "cold" and "miserable." You'll all be like, "whoa, we all told her it would really suck, but she's a GD winter so she CLEARLY showed us!" ...as she floats along in a snow drift slightly hued in the cheeks, her dark tresses curling delicately around her framing hood. All powder blues and rich and deep purples. The envy of all warm blooded creatures... OK, so I'm a little defensive about the weather thing. And terrified. No big deal. Airbnb's in the meantime. The first place I stayed was in Logan Square in this awesome, funky two bedroom apartment with Emy, a sleep technologist who (quite rightly) worked graveyard shifts so we would pass like ships in the night. Very cool lady, all the same. The second place I stayed was with Jim, a musician and father of four kids around my age who've all flown the coop and now he rents out their childhood bedrooms. Mine is a single bed with a headboard etched with flowers, painted choral with the walls painted light teal. It feels very homey, and Old Cat has taken to me and Orsino and sleeps with us every night. What a treasure.
My adventure is only just beginning in this town, and all I ask is that I can open my heart to Chicago and that Chicago opens its heart to me. No small feat, but I'm up for the challenge. LBR This past spring I had the lovely fortune of being cast in The Cake Shop Theater Co.'s production of Chemistry by Jacob Marx Rice. This show came at the tail end of my residency with Cincinnati Playhouse and to be frank, I wasn't sure if I had the energy left to devote to a demanding show like this. In Chemistry, I played the role of Steph, a reeling spitfire of a young woman with Major Depressive Disorder. She meets (and ultimately falls in love with) Jamie, a focused and aspiring Secretary of State suffering from Unipolar Mania. I probably don't need to go on for you to imagine the trials and tribulations that these star-crossed lovers undergo. It's a daring confrontation of a play and takes its audience (and its actors) on a fucking roller coaster that plunges into a black hole. But also. Hope.
Anyway, this project, which was a part of The Cincy Fringe Festival, took me by surprise in every way imaginable. Working on this show with these incredible, fierce, hard-working and devoted artists, I was reminded of the grassroots, gorilla warfare, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of theatre that feeds the soul like a bowl of chicken soup. It's exhausting and thankless and pushes you to that place where you think 'none of this could possibly be worth the pain,' and yet... These are the projects where I find home. This is where my family is. One version of family. And you meet all these wonderful people who are open and enthusiastic and dead tired and down and they're so happy you're there and visa versa and they hold your hand on the damn roller coaster but I mean they actually. hold. your. hand. on the Banshee at King's Island and all of a sudden you know exactly why you do it. Also, we won the Dr. Robert J. Thierauf Producer's Pick of the Fringe. Which was pretty cool. And that, Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about. LBR "You're kidding me." After a delayed moment of silence hang in the air between us, I finally spoke in a measured tone. "You want me to go on in two days?" We were standing alone in the rehearsal green room. Mark, the director of the touring show Bird Brain was smiling at me. It was unlike his usual, knowingly goofy grin, but rather a closed-lipped gesture. It's like he was saying, "I know, I know, but you're going to have to do this, and it would really help me if you didn't freak out right now, but just got on board and were like, 'OK. What a great opportunity! I'm actually really grateful and not at all terrified or in any sort of panic mode at all. Because I'm a professional, dammit! I am a goddamned professional and it's my goddamned time to shine, dammit!'" And so with that smile, (and a few more words that transpired which were not instantly revealing of my sincere excitement and appreciation for the chance to step up), I became a cast member of the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's touring company of Bird Brain, a show geared towards grades 3-5. The original cast member playing The Queen was sick and needed someone to fill in. And, because the show had no understudies, I became 'Plan B' or... 'Plan L.' Plan L stood as follows: Take the show off the road for 24 hours. Use said 24 hours to unload set from van into rehearsal room, rehearse the shit out of play, and get me a costume fitting. Take show back on tour and pray, one day later.
...and also was beginning rehearsals for a two person show which would open in about a month...and understudying another show which was also close to opening. (Funnily enough, I wasn't even the busiest intern working at that time, bless your heart Kelsey). Needless to say, I was stressed. But something else had just happened that would inform how I would proceed with this *devastatingly* EXCITING news. I became a Mother F*cking Actress. That's right, I got my EM EFF AY and I was damn proud of it. Here was the perfect opportunity for me to step up and act like the entitled, double degree bearing, ankle deep in debt owing, qualified up the ying yang ac-TRESS that I had become! And yet, this is how I felt. Completely freaked out.
But I showed up. I took the script home that night and learned the lines as best I could. I was solid until the last third of the play by the time I showed up for my one and only rehearsal the next morning, that fateful Tuesday. I came sleepy-eyed and fired up. I was scared, some'in fierce. This fear became the gasoline in my engine. And I focused as deeply as my MFA would allow, which is pretty deep as it turns out. Thank you, R&S. The next day I was, once again, in front of a sea of eager children, the most honest audience you'll find next to a pub full of drunks on karaoke night. I looked out at all their awe-struck faces, beaming back, dazzled by the textures and colors of the magical set. They had no clue as to how ready I was, and frankly my dear, they didn't give a damn. What they did care about was an intangible desire to be whisked away to wherever this story would take them. And in that moment, that's all I really wanted for myself as well. "Deep...deep in a winter wood..." I performed for about two weeks as The Queen in Bird Brain. I never went on for any of the five mainstage roles I understudied at The Playhouse otherwise. There were often times I joked about this disparagingly, having missed out on the opportunities all us interns had not-so-secretly hoped to get. I watched life happen to the equity actors, and one by one an intern got to stand up. And I groaned at the 'inconvenience' of having to learn an entire role in 24 hours and recommit myself to the notoriously laborious and unromantic tour life. Looking back now, I just think of how funny it is. I had so much fun performing for those little kids. They really, really liked the show. I got to connect with them. And it's just that simple. LBR |
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