Our Noble Mission is Almost Complete

Tis the closing night of ROCKY HORROR! I'll have two shows (an 8pm and a midnight), some strike duties tomorrow, and then run lickety split back to the city for a rehearsal at 6pm. I'm doing another reading of SCAM, by Blair MacKenzie, playing the brash and sarcastic Cassie at New York Theatre Workshop on Monday night. Whew! I will be sleeping all day Monday so that I'm alive for the reading!

I am nerdily loving this book I picked up last week at McNally Jackson, my favorite NYC bookstore (and not simply because it is my namesake)! It's called My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, and it's a collection of fairy tales written by contemporary writers. As they're based on real fairy tales, they are DARK, and all SO good. I tend to read a lot of classics, so I'm thrilled to now have a bunch of new (to me, anyway) writers to check out.

A quick dinner, then off to don the feathery eyelashes and excessive purple eyeshadow of Magenta once more! By the way, the title of this post is one of Riff Raff's to Magenta in their final scene, before they belt epic notes and the spaceship blasts off. Y'know. The usual.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Oh, la la, it was my birthday today! I had my first rehearsal for The Baker's Wife in INTO THE WOODS this morning (ironically, Joanna Gleason, who won the Tony for this role, shares a birthday with lil' ol' ME), then hung out with my brother and Michael for the rest of the day! I went down to their restaurant near the Seaport, and we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and back again! Believe it or not, it was my first time walking across said bridge! Immediately after that, we hopped on the Z train - another first for me. Five years in New York, and nary a Z train have I taken! This is a woman who has taken the G train multiple times! Anywhoo, we went to Babycakes so that I could have something delicious and yet free of refined sugar (which I choose not to eat, for the most part), and took some delightful photos while on the Lower East Side. We then came back to my apartment, had tasty dinner (compliments of Mikey), and watched NOTES ON A SCANDAL - my first foray into that film as well! Huzzah! What a splendid birthday! Below, please see some silly photos:







I'm so behind. My birthday party this weekend - Crocus Pocus: the magic of Spring - was a delight! As ever, a marvelous group of marvelous people. Hoorah for a Lady Jo soiree! In addition to mere frivolity, I did two readings last week that I'm simply dying to discuss (short version - one took place on the second floor of the Random House bldg, which is GORGEOUS, and akin to stepping into heaven for those of us that have problems with buying way too many books. The second one was at The Flea - a new play by AR Gurney, who was there working on it with Jim and all of us Bats the entire day), but it's LATE, and I must to bed! Gotta put on the commentary to NOTES ON A SCANDAL (I am a sucker for a commentary track) and drift off into sweet slumber.

By the way, I'm not being coy, I just didn't think to mention it - I am now twenty-seven!

Sandino!

I've been a busy bee!

ROMEO & HAMLET went fantastically - audiences of Shakespeare nerds and homosexuals alike seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly! The cast was absolutely delightful. Occasionally, it occurs that you find yourself infatuated with everyone you're sharing the stage with, and vice-versa. You want to spend all of your time with these people, even though you're already forced to spend all of your time with these people. There's an alchemy between the personalities. I felt that way about my castmates for R&H. Disappointing to do such a short run with such a marvelous group of folk! Oh, to try to keep it together every night, as certain scenes got more and more outlandishly hilarious...Not an easy task. Anyway, the fact that we all seemed to be enjoying ourselves on stage, and had great rapport were consistent audience comments, which is a good sign in a piece like that.

I've been working a great deal this week, as well as auditioning and preparing for the readings I have next week - one on Monday, and the other Friday. The first one is a play that was written by a friend of one of my R&H castmates (his name is Blair MacKenzie), and the one on Friday is a new AR Gurney play we'll be reading at The Flea. Exciting! I will be taking my computer with me to work today so that I can get some good work done on those (and hopefully my cabaret show) in between work and a play I'll be seeing tonight.

The biggest news from this week is that I FINALLY got to see my brother perform on Harold Night!!! Okay, I admit that I am biased, but I'm also an intelligent person with the ability to discriminate. He was freaking funny. His troupe, Sandino, gels really well together - they play well with one another. Oh, it was so fun! We had a huge posse there for him, including our friend Chris Ruth, who went to BoCo, but who we also knew from high school in Colorado. Chris and Aaron took improv class together, I believe. Was Chris on the improv team I put together in high school? You know, I honestly cannot recall...Chaos Theatre was what we called it. There was a joke that you had to be a sibling to be on it. Ten members, six of us half of a sibling pair. The Wyatt Brothers (both of whom live in NYC now, Paul & Alex), the Stacey sisters, and The Jackson Duo. That's how we billed ourselves. So many funny brothers and sisters. Anyway, ANYWAY, the point is that it was thrilling to see him up there, rocking it out and getting huge laughs from the UCB crowd. Some guys were going up to him afterwards to ask him about how long he'd been at UCB, his background, etc - he's cultivating a FAN base! Isn't that cute? Here is his UCB performer profile! They're performing three times in June, which is a sign that the artistic director thought they performed well last month. Come check out Sandino!

Off to work go I!

Who's Afraid of Vanessa Bell?

Quickie here, as I'm meant to be packing for Krakow (going for only about two days, but I do have to wake up at the disgusting hour of 6am). I may be on vacation, but I still managed to get a spot of acting in! A couple of my friends here wrote a screenplay called BILLY & NESSA, based on the relationship between Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell in their youth and early careers/marriages. They wanted to hear it aloud and in its entirety for the first time, so they recruited a few actor friends (among them, Yours Truly) to do a reading. I got to read Vanessa, along with the occasional nurse and such. So incredibly fun! As I've been doing a lot of readings in the past year, it's only fitting I should do one even when I'm away. :) It was quite good, and as Sarah and Fi stayed with me in New York while they were doing a lot of their research (reading the sisters' letters and the like), it was fitting I should be there the first time they shared it with a group of people.

This morning was also my turning point. Every time I come over to visit, there is an official turning point. What I mean by that is, there is a definite day when I start sounding less American, I can feel my speech rounding out, and musicality swooping in with tremendous force. I start phrasing things differently, and my inflection just goes all kinds of crazy. I love it. Especially since I genuinely don't force it - this transformation occurs because my ear automatically starts adjusting and adapting to what I'm hearing. I just sit back and listen for enjoyment's sake more than anything. A much more delightful and less dramatic version of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.