Life is Art.

 

Waiting for your roles…

The Psyche Mirror - Morisot (1876)

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I was teaching a lesson the other day to a student working on “Home” from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. I began to demonstrate something in the song to show a certain phrasing, and she exclaimed:

“Oh my gosh, you would be such a perfect Belle.” 

And I responded…

“Thank you, I’ve auditioned for her countless times, and I think I would be a very good Belle. But, I’m really not a Disney mezzo, I’m pretty tall and what I really am is Mrs. Potts in 20 years.” She frowned and I followed up “No, really just think of me with some wrinkles singing “Tale as old as time”, people will WEEP.” 

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And I was surprised by my own response to this. So often, I (and probably the collective WE as actors) tell ourselves that if we keep getting called in for the same role and keep not booking it there’s something WRONG with us or the way we are interpreting the role. And if we could just figure out how to play the role just right, we’d book it. 

But what more likely it means is that, you’re doing good work, the creative team is interested in the work you do, and wants to see you, but right now you’re the age and ‘look’ for Belle. But something about it isn’t quite right. They invite you back because they like you, but you’re not booking the role because it’s not ‘your role’. 

I think about that all the time with the show INTO THE WOODS. I’ve played Rapunzel and Cinderella but really, at my core, I’m the Baker’s Wife. I can’t wait to Maria in the SOUND OF MUSIC, but I will absolutely slay the Mother Abbess one day. Sure, I’d be a cute Clara in LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA, but my lord I’ll be a great Margaret. 

So, time marches on, your talent doesn’t wain, and perhaps the roles that are awaiting me (and you) are yet to come. 

On reading poetry...

I’m currently in an acting class on zoom on Tuesday evenings. Among other things, we are asked to bring a new poem every week to class to read as a monologue aloud as a way to ‘warm up emotional intimacy’. 

When I first found out this was an assignment in the class, I did want any emotionally avoidant student with a heavy bend towards perfectionism might: I dutifully picked out a poem every week that seemed like it was the “right length” and “right amount of emotional vulnerability” and then I’d bring it class and read it in the ‘right way’ - clear, quiet, crisp — with a lilt and a musicality to bring out the artistry of the rhymes and rhythms.

And yet, many weeks, I’d get prompted - admit your faults, expose your deepest fears, be more in love. Week to week, I’d differ on my reactions to those prompts. Most weeks I would feel myself tighten, my speech get more pushed, and I’d do my best to muscle through and go through the motions of what ‘going deeper’ might look like - perhaps softening my diction, quieting my voice, speaking with an irregular speech pattern to show where I was ‘getting emotional’. 

Other weeks, I would “go deeper” and end up being a complete mess and crying through the majority of the poem. I would purposefully scan my brain and conjure images of my most troubling anxieties, some of the darkest moments I can remember, and the poem became clouded with deep sadness and emotion but it wasn’t present, it wasn’t vulnerable, it wasn’t really intimate. It wasn’t touching what the poem was describing, it wasn’t specific. It was just generalized emotion on top of words. 

And then one morning, I was drinking coffee with my husband on our porch and he got up to take a phone call. I decided, now would be a great time to find a poem to read in my acting class this week, so I hop onto instagram and pull up an account “@poetryisnotaluxury”. I found several poems by Ada Limon, the 2022 Poet Laureate of the US. My husband returns to the porch and I ask him if he wants to help me pick a poem from class. So, we begin reading aloud to one another and after one or two poems, I stumble across “The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road”. 

I started off as I typically do reading poems in class — with a natural bounce and one level removed from the emotional the poem is trying to evoke. But, soon, I become drawn into the story of the poem and images from the text conjure so clearly in my mind that I see myself inside of these words, it is so beautifully expressing exact things I have felt. I remember beginning to tear up about half way through the poem and looking at my husband and saying “Oh, this is really getting to me”. 

I then I realize: here I am — admitting my own mistakes, exposing my deepest fears. And I couldn’t be more in love. 

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The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road by Ada Limon

That we might walk out into the woods together,

and afterwards make toast
in our sock feet, still damp from the fern’s
wet grasp, the spiky needles stuck to our
legs, that’s all I wanted, the dog in the mix,
jam sometimes, but not always. But somehow,
I’ve stopped praising you. How the valley
when you first see it—the small roads back
to your youth—is so painfully pretty at first,
then, after a month of black coffee, it’s just
another place your bullish brain exists, bothered
by itself and how hurtful human life can be.
Isn’t that how it is? You wake up some days
full of crow and shine, and then someone
has put engine coolant in the medicine
on another continent and not even crying
helps cure the idea of purposeful poison.
What kind of woman am I? What kind of man?
I’m thinking of the way my stepdad got sober,
how he never told us, just stopped drinking
and sat for a long time in the low folding chair
on the Bermuda grass reading and sometimes
soaking up the sun like he was the story’s only
subject. When he drove me to school, we decided
it would be a good day, if we saw the blue heron
in the algae-covered pond next to the road,
so that if we didn’t see it, I’d be upset. Then,
he began to lie. To tell me he’d seen it when
he hadn’t, or to suppose that it had just
taken off when we rounded the corner in
the gray car that somehow still ran, and I
would lie, too, for him. I’d say I saw it.
Heard the whoosh of wings over us.
That’s the real truth. What we told each other
to help us through the day: the great blue heron
was there, even when the pond dried up,
or froze over; it was there because it had to be.
Just now, I felt like I wanted to be alone
for a long time, in a folding chair on the lawn
with all my private agonies, but then I saw you
and the way you’re hunching over your work
like a puzzle, and I think even if I fail at everything,
I still want to point out the heron like I was taught,
still want to slow the car down to see the thing
that makes it all better, the invisible gift,
what we see when we stare long enough into nothing.

You wonder how these things begin...

Vermont, 2023

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It is rare to find piece of art touches your soul year after year. 

You change, you grow, life marches on. But a poem comes with you. A song. A painting. 

Every time it greets you, you're reminded of all the times that came before. 

The first time you heard it. The first time you shared it with someone you love. A time you visited it when you felt shrouded in darkness. 

It brought levity. It brought beauty. It brought you back to you. 

May you find these pieces forever, and keep them close to your heart. 

This is one of those pieces for me. 

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From 'The Fantasticks' by Tom Jones

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You wonder how these things being

Well, this beings with a glen
It begins with a season which
For want of a better word
We might as well call – September

It begins with a forest where the woodchucks woo
And leaves wax green
And vines entwine like lovers; try to see it
Not with your eyes, for they are wise
But see it with your ears:
The cool green breathing of the leaves
And hear it with the insidе of your hand:
The soundless sound of shadows flicking light
Celеbrate sensation
Recall that secret place
You’ve been there, you remember
That special place where once –
Just once – in your crowded sunlit lifetime
You hid away in shadows from they tyranny of time
That spot beside the clover
Where someone’s hand held your hand
And love was sweeter than the berries
Or the honey
Or the stinging taste of mint

It is September –
Before a rainfall –
A perfect time to be in love

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It's worth listening to the incomparable Jerry Orbach delivery this speech. It might be the best minute of your day. 

Back to Before

Although Ragtime’s epic power ballad my beg to differ, we can indeed go back to before in the blog world. 

When I first started blogging, I was studying abroad at King’s College London, sharing amusing anecdotes and colorful descriptions of my days in jolly ol’ London. 

I picked up again, when I was cast in “Laura Ingall’s Wilder” and set off to tour the country in a 15 passenger van with four other actors, a stage manager and all of our set, costumes, props, and world belongings with us. I continue to blog with each new show - Oklahoma, Sweeney Todd, Secret Garden, South Pacific, this list goes on…

Somewhere along the way, it lost its luster. Was I no longer proud of the work I was doing? Were my stories no longer quite as green, quite as funny, quite as sincere? I felt like blogging about my less than glamorous lifestyle as a freelancer actor with 8 side jobs wasn’t nearly as appealing after the age of 25. 

That sinking feeling, plus a world wide pandemic, morphed this blog again into education materials - quippy and accessible lessons in music theory, helpful repertoire lists, perky strategies on how to practice more effectively. 

I’ve loved all the forms this blog has taken and I watch it grow and change as I do. It is all authentic, it is all me, but I look back on posts from a couple of years ago, and the narrator seems foreigns. Pieces of my that were being cultivated and explored. 

And now we morph again. Back to more of where it began. As stories, musings, anecdotes, from new adventures that usually have to do with music and theatre. 

—

Since last we spoke, I have experienced the highest points of my life thus far and also the lowest. 

In 2021, we got the vaccines - My heart beat with anxious anticipation as I circled around the Six Flags parking lot, row after row like a traffic jam in a game of Mario Kart. I pull up to a table with a woman with smiling eyes, the rest of her face hidden behind a mask. I drop my left arm out the window and get a shot. I pulled forward (seemingly to wait and see if I exploded. And I cried. As so many others did. ‘Normal’ life was going to begin again. But of course we knew our old normal, ceased to exist and our new normal was yet to be discovered. We are still discovering it. 

Personally, my life went from teaching 5 hours on zoom and otherwise occupying my time with apartment projects, voice lessons, gym session, and snuggling with my dog (and fiancé) to in person teaching, the return of in person auditions and six weddings in three months - one being my own. 

When the new year arrived, my fiancé was finished with his dual degree masters and was starting a new full time job, I was jumping into a full time show, my first in two years. 

The day after my wedding I clutched my bouquet and started crying - I turned to my now husband and said “I’ll never be this happy again”. I wept, because I felt that so strongly. I was overjoyed at being married, at celebrating with family, at hugging my loved ones. I was immensely proud, immensely grateful, so full of hope, so full of joy and so full of LIFE. And I began to mourn the lost of the feeling. The newness of everything. The unbridled pleasure I felt nearly 24/7. I knew it wasn’t sustainable. I wished more than anything it was. 

As the excitement began to wear off, and life began to ‘settle’ back into ’normal’, depression and anxiety struck. I plummeted from up on my pedestal of joy right into the depths of despair. And at the same moment, I began rehearsals for my first post-pandemic show - SHE LOVES ME. 

I was aching to work at Signature Theatre. I has always heard what a fantastic place to work it was. Such wonderful people, such high caliber productions, such care, such talent, such an achievement to get a job there. And I had one. And even during my “dark night of the soul” as my husband calls it, I was grateful. 

Usually I would save these more honest thoughts for my written diary that would never be read or seen by another person. But it’s very on trend for 2023 to be authentic, more real and help people see through the instagram perfect lifestyles people so carefully cultivate. 

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Perhaps I’ve set up a rather moody depiction of this time in my life - but I also look back at SHE LOVES ME with so much joy. It is a gem of a show, that is simply a love story of two nerdy, self labeled spinsters finding love. Amalia (the role with I was understudying) was listed as “a bright, beautiful soprano who is a bit frantic”. I thought to myself - I’ve never seen a character description more tailored to me. I had such a blast preparing that audition with my husband (I will save the self-tape forever), and even more fun playing with the material in the room. At one point our heroine Amalia is describing herself to a potential employer hoping to win a job at a parfumerie. She describes herself as “Honest, dependable, dedicated. Dedicated”. A quote that will live in our household for many years to come. We are now not only “dedicated” to something we are “Dedicated. DEDICATED”. I was lucky enough to be covering the beautiful, talented, warm and lovely Ali Ewolt who was fresh off playing Christine in Phantom of the Opera for several years. She taught me so much about being a leading lady. She was always prepared, always kind, always patient, and consistent in both her singing and her storytelling. There was not one night where she was “phoning it in”. And she took care of herself so she could constantly deliver a beautiful show. She knew the name of every stage crew member, went out of her way to get to know every cast member, and as her understudy, she was nothing but poise, grace and kindness to me. 

A friend of mine, who also happened to play Amalia on two different occasions described her as “the quirky side kick type, but tonight, it’s her turn to tell her story.” Zoom in on the weirdo, best friend and make HER the love story. 

The official Amalia waterbottle

Out set was something out of polly pocket and it was such a lovely world to spend many weeks living in. (Not to mention the fact that our costumes were GORGEOUS). 

An example of our beautiful costumes by Alejo Vietti

There were heavy moments in the show, but for the most part, the show was about joy, hope, love and authenticity. These two dorks find love with one another, only after they’ve seen the dark, ugly, awful sides of one another. And they don’t love each other in spite of their flaws, but with their flaws - even because of their flaws. The moment Georg quotes “I am so sorry about last night” back to Amalia and she has the most wonderful realization that it’s “dear friend” is a moment that can make me teary just thinking about it. 

The ladies of Maraczek's

As you might imagine, during a long run the backstage area got into some shenanigans. It was a small cast, and a very prepared and well rehearsed show, so within a couple of weeks we were ready to play some games to freshen up our interpretations, lest we become boring and robotic! 

The cast on opening night

For those who may not realize, in the theatre world, our mic packs (often worn in our bra, tights, wrapped around our bodies in same way on a cloth belt) are covered in condoms to prevent the large amounts of sweat our bodies are bound to make during a show from interfering with our mics. Typically these are your run of the mill condoms, whitish..boring. But for SHE LOVES ME. We had colors. Bright colors and many of them. 

So we decided to make a condom color code that would dictate what “kind of show” you were bond to have that day. Pink = STAR BEST SHOW EVER. TODAY IS YOUR DAY. Purple? Princess track - everyone is here to see you, but you don’t have to work hard. Yellow - she’s on, she’s charming, she’s finding new ways to deliver those lines. Green = solid B show, phone it in but have a great time. And blue - CHALLENGE. Meaning other cast members could challenge you to do something ever so slightly different about your show. This started off as a “just the girls” thing but quickly morphed into the entire cast. 

Favorite “blue” challenges included - a subtext of your pregnant during the show (aka all those perfumes, are NASTY) and also maybe you’re starving all the time, irritable, perhaps? Or more emotional than usual? Singing a line that is typically spoken think “Good morningggggg”. Adding a three step turn and or pax de bouree? You name it. We did it. 

And one night after most of the cast has binge watched BRIDGERTON - there was a “queens diamond” challenge. I was deemed the “queen” of the show and by the end of Act Two I had to ‘crown’ the diamond of the season. Act One began with lots of eye contact, smiles, gentle ways of working extra affection into the show. Then gradually, as the show progressed things started appearing at my dressing room table, and more and more and more. This was a particularly fun evening both on and offstage. 

Bridgerton themed challenge night

SHE LOVES ME, was a gift. 

Our SHE LOVES ME swag!

—

Then we headed into a busy summer of buying a house, a vacation to Canada, and settling into a new rhythm. I gave up many of my jobs when we moved out of DC into suburbia, so I started building up my teaching business again, but this time only virtually with a few in person students that come to our house. I continued teaching at American University and continued to auditions, and as luck would have it - another show came along for the fall - my FOURTH production of GUYS AND DOLLS. 

Even though I had done GUYS AND DOLLS many, many a time, this was my first professional production and I was playing Sarah. And what a dream it was. 

It was one of those not so common times in the musical theatre world where I got an email for a self tape, submitted it, did another tape, submitted that, got called to come to NYC for an in person callback and two days later had an offer for the role. It was very quick and very straight forward - which was very refreshing and such a great reminder of part of the allure of this business. On Monday you could be unemployed with no auditions lined up and by Friday booked for the next three months in a leading role.

Ridgefield in the fall

I headed up to Ridgefield, Connecticut, where much of Broadway’s royalty (think Stephen Schwartz, Judy Collins, Alan Menken) lives just outside of the city. It is lovely, and being there during peak fall foliage was a special perk. 

This cast was one of those special casts, that just got along. Everyone was sweet, no divas, little drama (only on the stage) and just nice, decent people who cared about the show. Often the leads of a show can help set the tone of a cast, and I like to think that I contributed to the easy going, yet passionate vibes this process had. 

Sarah Brown typically isn’t a character that is easy to love. She is often played, director (and frankly written) a bit cold, harsh, walls ALL the way up, judgmental, flippant and even at times just bitchy. But, when you’re playing a character that straight off the page does seem like a person you’d be best friends with, I always find it helpful to dig deep and find the qualities you as the actor love, understand, empathize and relate to. Sarah has the opportunity to have a huge transformation - her entire world view that she’s so carefully crafted in hopes she can avoid mistakes, hurt and failure, come crashing down around her. At first this is terrifying and she pushes it away. But later, she decides to head into the unknown, unstable and uncomfortable to find even more joy, love, life and growth than she dreamed of. And what a remarkable thing for a person to do, and as an actor to explore. I loved every moment of playing Sarah. 

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Through the years, I’ve gotten better enjoying the transitions in and out of a show. Often the schedule goes from intense, exiting, invigorating, inspiring, and then it can feel like it all disappears in a flash. After GUYS AND DOLLS I took time to remember, reflect, re-connect with cast members, tell stories, re-live moments to remind myself they were real, they were a part of my life and not just an escape from ‘reality’. I’m lucky enough that those moments of flow and ectasy are a part of my life and a part of my JOB. And what a beautiful job to have. 

I am headed back into a show in five shorts days - this time something dark - SWEENEY TODD back at Signature Theatre. Perhaps that is what inspired me to blog again. I’m seeing this “in between time” coming to and end and I’m gently allowing myself to go back into ‘show mode’ and learning to love the process in and out of productions, moving forward to faith that I will continue in this phases for my entire career and learning to love parts of each transition. 

The ladies of the mission