This Sunday was the first meeting of my play-reading group. It went really well, although we had so much fun talking to each other (and snacking) that we started late and a few people had to leave before we finished. We read The Clean House by Sara Ruhl, which I chose for the following reasons:
A) She is a contemporary playwright
B) I had never read the play before and was fairly certain that a good portion of the people in the group (if not all) hadn't either
C) I love all of the Sara Ruhl plays that I have seen/read previously- a whole new take on absurdism and magical realism
D) She is female- it is the unfortunate reality that in school we primarily read the works of male playwrights and authors, and I want to read more work written by women
E) Four of the five characters in The Clean House are female- most plays have primarily male casts. It's hard to get a good meaty interesting female part, so I want to find as many of those as possible. The Clean House passes the Bechdel test, which is refreshing.
A great deal of fun was had by all. I'm thinking that next we will read Macbeth as a nod to Halloween, but we might do something else instead. At some point, my friend is going to lead a role-playing game he found where the players are all characters from a Shakespearean tragedy and their goal is to die the most tragic and ignoble death. I am super pumped to play this game as part of the reading group- it isn't a traditional play, but I'm a tabletop gamer, and gaming can be a very fulfilling performative experience if you allow it to be. It'll be different and interesting and fun. Maybe that would be a good choice for the fall/Halloween/Day of the Dead season, since it's playful and involves death.
I went to my first private vocal lesson EVER with Patricia Ivey, and it was great. I felt inspired and relieved and like I have tools in my back pocket now. I highly recommend her as a vocal coach.
This past Friday, we opened Plaza Suite at Lakeside Community Theatre. I'm playing Mimsey. Despite major setbacks (actors backing out, designers backing out, and injuries), it really is a very good, well-put together show. Thank goodness for our dedicated director Katelyn Snader, our tireless set designer Tish Mussey (the set is BEAUTIFUL), and the fabulous cast we ended up with. It's a lot of fun to be a part of.
Intermediate Meisner class has been simultaneously frustrating and enlightening, as usual. It's good for me, I think. But very frustrating and difficult. But also very enlightening. So I'm not sure where that leaves me, but hopefully better off than I started. At the very least, I should be able to take the techniques I'm learning and use them to inspire my performances in combination with other techniques. I hope that eventually I master Meisner, though. I'm not going to give up, and I'm not sure Meisner is necessarily not my thing, but it definitely does not come as easily to me as it does to other people in the class. It's a slow struggle up a very steep mountain with loose footing- every few steps I go up the mountain, I slip and lose my balance and fall back down a step. But I'm going to keep moving upward, even though it's scary, because I want to know what it will feel like when I reach the top.
I visited my friend Matt Tomlanovich in the rehab facility, finally. I kept putting it off. I'm really glad I went, even though he was asleep at the time. I need to go again soon. We've been advised to make every moment count. Matt has been there for so many of us, so many times, and he is a ton of fun to work with on both a creative level and a personal one. I hope that he somehow, miraculously, gets through this. I recognize that that may be asking too much of the universe. I hope that whatever happens he finds peace and knows that we all love him.
I think I've finally decided on all my audition pieces for grad school. I'm starting to feel like I'm over the hump in the application process- I just have a few more things to do before I send my applications in, and then it's just preparing for the auditions. I'm excited and nervous and I really, really hope I get into a program that I like. Obviously, I ideally want to get into one of the top programs I applied directly to (SMU, Brown/Trinity, or ACT, in no particular order), but I will be attending URTA, and honestly I'll be very ecstatically happy if I get in somewhere that's a good fit for me, even if it's somewhere unexpected.
Signing off for now,
Gracee
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