Curtain Up. Light the Lights.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged.  Before and while I was in New York I always had so much to say because I was so excited about the experience.  Now I’m facing real life and that’s always scary.  On Thursday I sent my headshot and resume to the Shakespeare Theatre Company and to Actor’s Express, which is in Atlanta, GA.  I haven’t yet heard anything from Wells in Norfolk, so I’m moving on.  There are a couple of other applications and mailings I need to get out, so I’m really hoping something will turn up… I’m not sure what I’m going to do if nothing does.  Oh, I have been talking to Kim, the executive director of Lime Kiln, and she said there were a lot of things I could do down there, so if nothing else I could do that.  Leagues aren’t happening this year, something about changing them up to make them better.  I may take Christy Faber’s advice and check out the seasons of the DC theatres and just do some mailings to the theatres, and see if any of them are having open calls like the Shakespeare Theatre is right now.

I’ve also been thinking about my digital project. There are a few people up in DC I’d love to talk to, just to flesh things out a little bit more.  Kate Norris is working up there right now, who I met briefly last year when she came down to speak to a couple of classes, and she seemed very nice.  Whether or not I’ll be able to contact her is up in the air, but it doesn’t hurt to try, right?

We’ve now been back in Fredericksburg for just about a week, and it’s been strangely hard getting back into the groove of school.  Instead of being able to walk anywhere, now I have to get in my car and drive where I want to go.  It’s so quiet here!  I miss going to a show every night and then walking through Times Square to get back to the hotel where we would all have a really interesting discussion about what we just saw.  However, there are some good side to be back here.  I’m really enjoying being back in rehearsal so I can try to apply what I learned when I was in NYC.  The show, by the way, is coming along very well.  I have a ridiculous amount of motivation after that trip to get all of my applications and mailings out to all the theatres I’ve been looking at so that I can really start this new phase of my life.  Now I am 100% sure that this is what I want to do, and I’m so thankful to every single person who helped me in New York, both the people with whom I had one-on-one time, and also the actors and other people on stage.  Many of them told me things I didn’t want to hear, like the pay isn’t always great, sometimes you have to get a job you don’t particularly like so you are able to do the work, and sometimes it just doesn’t work out, for one reason or another.  Those are just some examples, but their passion for theatre, even those all of those things and more were pushing against them, really touched me.  I can’t even express how thankful I am that this trip happened.

Currently, we are sitting on the side of 95 in a bus hopefully having the flat tire fixed.  We’ve now been sitting for about an hour.  It’s been interesting, something totally new to me.  We always seem to get into these pickles on buses, don’t we?  There was the Kennedy Center incident, of course…

Leaving New York was bittersweet.  As ready as I am to get back to Fredericksburg and start working my way back to New York to live, I had the crazy idea in the back of my head to just stay and start doing things up there.  Then, of course, I came to my senses and realized that that was simply not going to work.  So, here I am, hopefully getting back on the road here soon.  I have class in about 11 hours, so hopefully we’ll get back before then. 

My last couple of days in the city were fantastic.  I finally was comfortable navigating the streets and subways alone, so I was able to enjoy myself more.  On Friday I finally met up with Jason Vail; we’d been playing phone tag all week.  We met in the pouring rain and proceeded to a little coffee shop and talked for almost two hours about anything and everything.  He does more TV and film than theatre now, but did theatre for a long time in college and then in his career, so he was a great resource for a slightly different angle.  Then we saw November which was super funny, and Nathan Lane was hilarious.  Okay, so the entire cast was wonderful.  Saturday morning Donna and I went out to find some thrift stores, but found that we didn’t have enough time, so we got lunch and chatted before Sunday in the Park with George, which I mostly enjoyed.  We did end up finding the stores between that show and Paradise Park which was later that evening.  That was a weird play.  Today was our last day in the city, and Gregg was nice enough to take us all to lunch at John’s Pizzeria just off of Times Square.  After that we had a little bit of time to wander around for one last look before the last show, Is He Dead? at the Lyceum Theatre. It was hilarious and it was an awesome note to end on.  We finally boarded the bus at 730pm and were on our way just after 8pm.  Things were fine until around 10pm when a huge THUD was heard by everyone.  We knew in an instant that something was terribly wrong; and we were right.  The bus had gotten a flat tire.  Now I think we’re about to start up again… I sure hope so anyway.

This city just gets better with each passing day.  Probably because I finally have started to figure out the way the city works - the streets, the avenues, the buses, the subway… it’s wonderful.  Today I met with Sybille Bruun, who has had an amazing journey to New York City.  She was born in Denmark, decided not to be a doctor after seeing a chicken killed at age 9, and decided to be an actor on a boat in Turkey when asked what she wanted to do when she grew up.  After almost flunking out of high school because she was working in a theatre, she went to England to study.  She finished college, applied to Stella Adler, and went from there.  How cool is that?  We had a lovely conversation over coffee in the East Village, and also talked to a nice Turkish man named Attila about politics.

After lunch, I headed way uptown to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and it was absolutely incredible.  The cornerstone was laid in 1892, and the building itself is only 1/3 done.  There are several chapels, and each one is dedicated to a different people who immigrated to the US.  One is dedicated to Irish immigrants, one to Spanish ones, and so on.    It’s absolutely beautiful, and my favorite part was the choir stalls.  They had statues carved into them of people who were associate with sacred music, like Bach, Saint Gregory, and King David, just to name a few.  Also, the have menorahs on either side of the altar as a visual reminder to everyone that enters that the church’s mission is to be a house of prayer for everyone.  They also stand for the fact that Christianity’s roots are in Judaism.  After that adventure, I went off to the Met, where I greatly enjoyed the landscapes.  Then after that we went to the Lincoln Center and saw South Pacific, which I’d never seen before.  Some of the music was fairly familiar, but I barely knew the story, so I really enjoyed it.

I can’t believe the week is almost over.  It doesn’t feel like we’ve been here for as long as we have.  I’ll be glad to get back, but I also don’t want to leave this incredible city.  Hopefully it won’t be too long before I come back!

I have had a great couple of days.  On Tuesday I met with Matt Sincell, who has had an amazing journey to where he is now.  We got lunch a little Italian place called Don Giovanni’s.  Hearing about how he’s gotten to New York was so cool; he was working in New York City, and heard about an international acting program at the Globe in London, where he met Giles Block, a director over there.  Matt asked Giles if there were any Shakespeare programs like that one in the States, and that’s how he heard about Blackfriars.  After a couple of seasons there, he moved back to New York City, and now picks and chooses where he wants to work and on what he wants to work.  He has a part time job which allows him to do that.  He was really great to talk to, because he had such a different story than most of the others I’d talked to.

That afternoon I went downtown with Steven, Helena and Latera to meet Shannon Kerr, and that was really fun too.  She brought a friend with her, Emily, and it was cool to have two different perspectives at the same time.  They also had very different stories as to how they came to be in this city.  I’ve found that there’s no one way to get into this, it’s just how you feel is the right way for you to go about getting into this crazy industry.

Today I went and saw I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at the Westside Theatre.  It was really good!  I knew nothing about it when I went in, and it was very different than I expected.  It had a lot of really great songs, and there was a little something for everyone.  The audience interested me greatly; I was the youngest person in the audience by at least 40 years, except for about 4 other girls around my age.  I liked it a lot, because the older people had a great time, too.  Afterward, I met Christy in the lobby, and walked with her for a couple of blocks.  I love that everyone has been so welcoming and friendly!  She even told me to keep in touch, and to let her know if and when I move to the city.

This really has been the best Spring Break ever.  Yay!

I’m trying to write often so I don’t get any gargantuan posts.

Today, I was rather busy.  At about 1015am, I took the 1 train uptown and got off at W 72nd and Broadway.  Christine lives on E 74th Street, so I thought, “Hey, if I walk towards 5th Avenue, I’ll be on the east side.”  Thank goodness for Gregg’s research questions!  If you know the city at all, you know that I actually hit Central Park.  So after walking a few blocks north to catch the 79th Street crosstown bus, got off at 5th Ave and walked down to 74th.  I’d never been to Lennox Hill, so that was really cool.  You might wonder why I went all the way up there.  My aunt by marriage, Christine Jones lives up there, and it was amazing to talk to her.  On top of her advice, she had some amazing stories about before Hell’s Kitchen and Williamsburg were gentrified.  She’s been living here for 25 years, and has participated in this business in film, TV, and theatre.

At 1pm, I went back across and downtown to 38th Street to meet with Lucy McMichael at Primary Stages.  The theatre is in its 24th season, and Lucy has been with the company since its inception.  I also got to meet two of the board members, one of whom was a director for the Today Show for a long time.  Lucy was also really great to talk to, since she’s been doing this for so long.  She had some great advice, and was so happy to talk to me, which was wonderful.

After that meeting, I went over to the Drama Bookshop and hung out there for a while, and during that time I got a call from Christy Faber, who’s currently doing I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change off-Broadway.  We met at the Majestic Deli and talked for a long time about her work and how she got here and her advice for me.  I have been happily surprised with how friendly people are here, and how willing they are to help me out with what I’m doing.  They’ve all had fabulous advice that is going to be invaluable to me.

I spent most of the day by myself, and spent quite a lot of it in Times Square, just exploring and seeing what I could find.  Sephora was fun, as were all the crazy NYC gift shops.  And finding many of theatres at which we’ll be seeing shows was interesting, but the most fun I had was just people watching.  There are so many different types of people that live here, and I think that’s why the city has so much personality.  Just one more incredible day in New York City!!

    I was just thinking about our discussion of Next to Normal, when Reggie said that the show was saying that if we all got off of medication everything would be fine.  That struck a chord with me because I’m on medication for a mental disorder, and not being on it gets very, very bad.  Like, convincing myself I’m going to die bad if I don’t use the right towel.  Medication basically saved my life.  For a while last year I weaned myself off of it, but things just got bad again.  There’s a good chance that I’ll be on it forever.

Today I spent a lot of time by myself today, which was really cool.  After Grace, I was supposed to meet Jason Vail, but we had to reschedule because he got caught up in errands, so I went down to the river and walked around.  I got some really beautiful pictures of the sunset behind the skyline.  Then I managed to get all the way back uptown and to the Palace all on my own, which I was really excited about.  Bobby and I went to Canal Street earlier today where I got all kinds of fun knock off stuff.  I also had my first interview this morning, with Susan Heyward, who recently moved here to the city.  Talking with her was so fun!  She was absolutely frank with me about everything in the business, whether it was good or bad and I really appreciated it.  Tomorrow I have 3 different interviews, and I’m super excited. 

    Today was our first day of really exploring the city.  Bobby and I decided to go all the way downtown to catch the Staten Island ferry, mostly because I’d never seen the Statue of Liberty before.  It was smaller than I expected, to be honest.  The ferry was a lot of fun though; I hadn’t been on one since I was in Stockholm, Sweden, since that’s mostly how they get around there.  Seeing the city from that kind of vantage point was really incredible.  It was absolutely freezing, and the wind was really intense, but we rode outside on the way back to Manhattan.  After that, we went to this cute little place for lunch called Fraunces Tavern.  Definitely check it out if you’re down in Battery Park, the food was quite good.  Around 1230, we realized that we should get going to make it to the show on time, so we started walking north.  After walking through Chinatown - which was actually really cool - , Little Italy, and some of the East Village, we found that we were running out of time.  Fortunately, we got a cab with a totally awesome cabbie who got us to the theatre with 10 minutes to spare.  Classic Stage Company is a great space, and the show was phenomenal.  After the show, a few of us hung around to meet Alan Cumming and Dianne Wiest.  We got their autographs, and pictures, which was really cool.  Then we happened to be outside where Ryan O’Nan was waiting, and we started talking to him and he was so great!  It was nice to find that these actors really are people and love that you come to see their shows.  All of the actors we spoke to were that way, which I find to a big relief.  After dinner at Spanky’s just off Times Square, we headed over to Second Stage Theatre for our second show of the day, “Next to Normal,” a musical.  I really enjoyed the show, and the last half hour or so made me cry like a little girl.  It was great.

I did a lot of thinking on the ferry today.  Mostly about how it must have felt to the immigrants as they came into New York, the statue being the first thing they saw, and what it really meant to them.  To us today, it stands for liberty and freedom, but we’re used to having those things.  These immigrants were coming from terrible situations where they were oppressed and other bad things, and that statue was the beacon of hope for them.  It meant so much more to them than we can ever really understand.   I tried to do a little research on my family online, but all the family tree sites make you pay for them.  However, I’m fairly certain that my mom’s dad’s parents immigrated here from Ireland, and I can only imagine how they felt when they saw the Statue of Liberty.  A whole new life lay ahead for them… I didn’t know seeing it would make me think so much, but I’m glad it did.

Well well, New York City you say?  We made it!  We really made it!  The drive up was fun, though I really should’ve gone over my lines for She Stoops, but that can be done while we’re here.  Sorry Sommer!  We hit a little bit of traffic outside of the Lincoln Tunnel, but once we got past it we were on our way!  The hotel is really nice, I’m super happy about it.  It’s right near Times Square, and there’s a great little store around the corner for all our random needs.

Tonight we saw Spring Awakening, and I absolutely loved it.  I have the soundtrack, and adore it, but hearing it within the play made it that much better.  The story held me so captive that I was actually upset about intermission.  I read a little bit of the play, but I definitely want to go back and read it again.  My favorite character was Melchior, because so much happened to him and he didn’t succumb to anyone else’s opinions.  I totally respected that.  I liked Moritz’s character, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the actor himself.  While I understand that he needed to be the same as the actor that he replaced, I think that Gregg was right that he hadn’t made the other actor’s choices his own.   Everything was awesome.  The movement and the choreography was fantastic and really gave it something extra.

I’m incredibly excited about meeting people soon!  It’s gonna be really fun.  There’s also the fact that I get to run around the city and see all the amazing stuff that this place has to offer.  Tomorrow I’ll be calling a couple of people to confirm appointments.  Here we go!