Hey all,
It's been a while, i know. When it has been this long i usually go back and read the last post to update whatever i left hanging as a teaser for you all. I am not going to do this this time. I think i will just go ahead and update what ever is going on right now. ok?
ok.
SO we started performances this week for Hijab Tube - the show with Mixed Blood Theater - the one where i play 5 different muslims, make that 4 different muslims and a lutheran feminist valley girl. We have had 2 performances so far in and around teh twin cities, one for a college and one for a higschool. The college was a good trun out a rather quiet audiance i would say but a good first show. Very different from our highschool performance. This was rather large highschool crowd in a very big auditorium theater space (they have a balcony!) . Did i mention the audiance was also lagely mulim immegrants? and may i add quite fundamentalistic.....nothing got out of hand or disrespectuful in anyway but our very liberal point of view being portrayed by our play was chalanged. I have one charachter that says outright " i am muslim, i don't wear the hijab, does that make me a fake muslim?" I had a mini heart attack when an overwhleming amount of the students called "YES!" and that was just the tip. Afterwards we had lots of questions and some students who wanted to find out more about the playwright and had a lot to say about whether what we portrayed was true islam or not. again it was very interesting, and the most important part is that it started questions and conversations, that was the most important part of the day. I do hope the conversations continue in the classrooms, i mean this is what theater is about right?
a good response to experaince second show in i think too.
Tomorrow a middle school performance and then our first real on the road performance is on friday so we are leaving tomrorow night to drive to a hotel so that we can start the morning at a decent time. instead if driving a good few hours early friday morning.
should be fun, its really is a good group of poeple, fun easy going. we get our own rooms at the super 8 motel in St. Cloud Minneapolis. woohoo!!
The Mother Teresa gig is also going well, we started blocking and getting stuff up on its feel this week which is awesome. also a rather contraversal play i think we will find, interesting all this religion challenging going on everwhere i look. And whats super exciting is its looking like i will get to have many poeple i know and love and havn't seen in a long time see this one. My last perforance is June 21st and as it looks now my parents and bros might come out, my grandparenats as well, and.....Guy! It will be the first time he will get to see me really perform. I hope it all works out so that all these poeple i love in my life will all get to see me do something i'm proud of.
I finished my camera class this week, i feel like it was a good refresher course. unfortunatly i was pretty stressed with all these shows and rehearsals going on so i don't know if i was really able to take advantage of it as much as i would have liked too but it was great to get infront of a camera again. The teacher was real great and i think she will be a nice contact to have if i need help with anything out here. she knows the area well as well as the bigger markets so it was nice to have met her.
I also finished my voice over coaching, so tomorrow i am recording my demos!! Very exciteing, i can't wait to here what they sound like when they are all done.
lots of things are finishing up, some things are continuing and something havn't even started yet, i have one audition i'm waiting to hear from, a few coming up this weekend and in the enxt couple of weeks. I look forward to finding a project for july and august.
On another note my other half and i will be reunited this coming weekend!!!!! The one and only Berko man for me will be here on Friday. I look forward to exploring yet another city with this kid, chatting and laughing, and getting to watch tv in bed off a laptop. These are the basics of our relationship and we love and cherish these moements. Can't wait! Unfortunatly it will be rainging all weekend so MN won't be showing its true colors off but maybe we can plant seeds to try and convince him that Minneapolis is better than New York, what do you think guys? (i want you to know you all are next....)
ok off to bed for a 6:00 am rude awakening.
love to you all out there
Yours,
me
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
First Rehearsal!
Rehearsal was great today. We talked a lot about logistics and set and design and aim and goals and all that lovely stuff.
I met my fellow acting mates. Eliza (pronouned with en A instead of the E) who was so surprised to meet another like her. She is our resident muslim so that's great, cause i wasn't quite sure how i was going to really pull that off. And then Ansa who is a large black man from Gahana (we are quite diverse let me tell you) who is just a wild actor with so much energy its great! And then also the stage manager and the sound guy will be on the road with us. I am excited it seems like it will be a nice little family.
The director seems like he's really got everything under control which is great for a two week reherasal period for a 45 min show. But he still seems like he's real into the colaberative imput stuff which i think will be great to work with.
I was given an extra charachter so thats five meaty roles to memorize in 2 weeks, with at least 2 differant dialects, soccer ball juggleing, valley girl perfecting, and of course learning how to put several different hijabs on a bald manquin. whew i'm tired just thinking about it.
Our little set is also just so clever and simple all at the same time, just perfect for the flexability that is necessary for the show.
I wish you alls could be here to see it, i think i'm gonna be real proud of it when it's all ready to go.
Also just wanted to share that i had my camera acting class tonight and the scene i got for next week is from Coupling!! I asked the teacher if i could be steve instead of susan she said no though.
Night night everybody, got to get up early tomorrow so i can figure out how to get to rehearsal without getting lost for ten minutes. (classic)
I met my fellow acting mates. Eliza (pronouned with en A instead of the E) who was so surprised to meet another like her. She is our resident muslim so that's great, cause i wasn't quite sure how i was going to really pull that off. And then Ansa who is a large black man from Gahana (we are quite diverse let me tell you) who is just a wild actor with so much energy its great! And then also the stage manager and the sound guy will be on the road with us. I am excited it seems like it will be a nice little family.
The director seems like he's really got everything under control which is great for a two week reherasal period for a 45 min show. But he still seems like he's real into the colaberative imput stuff which i think will be great to work with.
I was given an extra charachter so thats five meaty roles to memorize in 2 weeks, with at least 2 differant dialects, soccer ball juggleing, valley girl perfecting, and of course learning how to put several different hijabs on a bald manquin. whew i'm tired just thinking about it.
Our little set is also just so clever and simple all at the same time, just perfect for the flexability that is necessary for the show.
I wish you alls could be here to see it, i think i'm gonna be real proud of it when it's all ready to go.
Also just wanted to share that i had my camera acting class tonight and the scene i got for next week is from Coupling!! I asked the teacher if i could be steve instead of susan she said no though.
Night night everybody, got to get up early tomorrow so i can figure out how to get to rehearsal without getting lost for ten minutes. (classic)
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Look Ma I'm a Nun!
So this should be a good post.....
let's make an agenda (this is more for me and less for you but might be fun anyway)
1) Last blogs updates
a) auditions
b) student films
c) whether
2) 24 hour film race
3) Hijab Tube
4) Classes
ooo looks lie we got a long one. well ill try and keep things concise. At least you have this nice outline to help you through.
1a) So as you could read in the title - the nice little Jewish girl has been cast as the saintly nun known as Mother Theresa, this goes to say that i did not get into The Tempest. I was bummed for a bit considering Tempest was the paying more fun sounding, and did i mention paying? job. Trial (The Trial of Mother Theresa, to be exact) will be a good experience also but i just would have liked to play Miranda more i think, that's all. Trial begins rehearsals this month (April 13th) and rehearses in the evenings until May. Shows are (for those interested in knowing specific dates, mom) May29th to June 21st and are Thursday Friday Saturday at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. It will be a great experience to work on a new piece and i look forward to being apart of that aspect. So that is very exciting and now i am signing up for some auditions for projects after that. Let's see if i can keep this going. It feels good to be a working actor, i have to say.
1b) Students films!! Interesting- the first one i thought was pretty cute and this is the girl that stopped me after i left the auditions to tell me that she had to have me as her lead actress. This has been a fine experience i like the director and aside from shooting in the cold its been a nice script to work on. We haven't done too much a few scenes here and there but tomorrow we have a full day of filming so i see a lot getting done in the next week. The film is called "Looking For Love At All The Wrong Bus Stops" which i just thought was an adorable title for a shot film. The only thing is that this story is basically the directors story so even though she says she's over the asshole boyfriend character i can't help feeling its all a little raw still. She's just kind of a funny director. She uses shakily to discribe lines of mine through out the entire script and at each tunring point of the charachters. I once asked her what "cries while smiling" meant exactly and her responce was "well she's sad cuase she knows he's bad for her but she's glad he came and invited her out but she knows he's never going to show up and nothings changed but she still loves him even though she wishes he would just disappear" yes, nice and clear.
The second film is a little more challenging experiance. The director doesn't exactly know what he's doing and i guess that's what you get with a student film maker he is learning how to do this, and i just need to keep reminding myself of this. It's just that at some point early on i thought you learned that jumping back and forth during a conversation happens becuase od editting not moving the camera a hundred times for one scene. maybe its' just me.
But what is great is that this charachter is almost my dream come truw. She's a hardass private detective who's really good at what she does. This means my trentchcoat and buisness casual and a gun holster. I am enjoying being a kind of version of my favorite literal (from liturature???) heroen, Anita Blake. The differences? No vampires, no quite as amazingly sarcastic, and completly based off of someone else entitely. That's ok she's Anita to me no matter what. I can't wait to see this one.
Also two other gals from the class contacted me about being in their film but when i realised starting the 13th i will have morning rehearsals and evening rehearsals plus 2 student films to be shooting and a monday night class all at the same time i realised there wasn't going to be much time for.....well basically anything, let a lone 2 more student films. So i had to turn them down as much as i would have liked to do at least one of them. And that ones director is basiclly the saving grace of the other troubled director. She's been helping him out and boy has he been needing it.
1c) The whether, if you recall, was described as getting better and better last blog.....this was a lie. I spoke too soon. I have filmed in freezing cold, no toes, no fingers, type of cold, snow fluries and have walked in the pouring rain to auditions since then. So really i have no idea what's going on. The sun has come out a bit but its still way too cold to go sit in it so i sit by the window in hopes to get some rays until the whether stop teasing me. Meanwhile i think my face is going to flake off before then. We shall see but this is really the narliest dry skin ive dealt with.
2) Alright, sit back my freinds! So Minneapolis held a 24 hour film race which they do every year i guess. This is when different groups (i heard about 30 signed up this year) get a theme and key element and these things must be used to create a short film (4 min) in 24 hours. When i first got hear i saw something about it and sent an excited little email out to the interweb saying that i was a new actor in town looking for a group to join. A week ago i got this email from a Mr. Fat Cat, now granted that's not his real name, but surprisingly enough this tall skinny man goes by this name for whatever reason. Him and his interesting band of mates were a group doing this race thing and would love to have an actress on board. Little did i know what i was getting into. I wanted to be apart of the expeiance, ive always wanted to do one of these but i probably just should have made up some story and said i couldn't do it anymore after meeting Grizzley the bull ring sporting big guy , the young mom with tattos and pink hair(Paula, looks exactly like T from JMZ except pink hair), the two melvins, and Karna with 6 kids from Now Then (no joke this town is called Now Then, Minnesota). Actaully i have to say that Grizzley and the tattooed chick(Sarah) ended up being my favorite people. Others who came to join the group for the event were micelaniouse roller durbie chicks.
Our Theme: A second chance
Our element: blowing a bubble
Our story (as created by FatCat the head hancho)
A woman walks into a terot reading. as she gets her cards read the reader sees flash backs of her and her lover hatching a plan to steal the terot readers money box. Seeing that this woman has a bad history pulls a gun on her before she can pull her's and suggests she start over. It ends with the woman racing out a changed lady and her boy coming in a blowing the readers head off.
Where are the bubbles you might ask? At the begining, when the terot reader enters. PS. This terot reader, Ms. Zelda, is played by Grizzly, the real Ms. Zelda was his Aunt and he took over the buisness but didn't feel it necessary to change the name.
How it all went down?
at 10pm Friday the 3rd we got notified of the element and theme. Then waited an hour to hear from FatCat with the story and costume/prop assignements. Everyone was there about midnight or so and we began to dress the terot reading room. This took til about 5am (why i have no idea). Then i slept for about an hour and a half and it was up and adam to start filming.
We didn't do much filming due to FatCats inability to articulate himself really. I'm sure he is a visionary genius but that is hard to work with when you havn't had much sleep. and i am not a writer, i take other peoples words and memories them not put into words the moods and feelings of someone else vision. and i am going to stand by that.
filming took us almost the whole rest of the day with a few breaks here and there. a break for an hour to sleep, a break for food, and cogarette breaks. This was the most frusterating, as soon as we would get some momentum or shoot a really good take, it was time for a cigarette.
this brings me to how much this group of poeple smoke. I think i smelled like smoke down to my soul by the time i left this place. ew gross. this man smokes a cigarette like every ten minuted i swear! Also the house was proabbly the grossest house i have ever seen. just thinking about the house makes me want to take a shower again. this is a proabbly in his 50's year old man who lives by himself with his cat, why should he clean? Whatever i am done, and out of the house for good. i even forgot something as i was finally leaving at 8pm tonight and truned around and went back for it becuase i didn't want to have to ever go back again. at some point we stopped filming and mr. visionary genius went to start editing, but decided i couldn't leave becuase he may need to shoot something else, so i went to sleep for a while, i think like maybe 2 hours. I was the only one there who didn't leave the house at all. Everyone else went home for a second to feed animals or children or to take a shower i was there the whole time. yes i got to sleep like 6 hours over the corse of my time wating for things to happen but really? shoot everything you need and move on. so all in all a good story, a good adventure, and hopfully a good copy of some reel worthy work after 20 hours of hanging out with these interesting individuals.
please don't judge me for judgeing, if you had been there you would have judged too (and probably would have ripped me out of there by the ear with a wagging finger)
3) Hijab Tube is my other show, my first audition here and my first paid job. We start rehearsals on Monday. The calendar of shows is filling up and the script has been worked on a little bit and i think i was given another charachter i'm not sure.
We only have 2 weeks of rehearsal and the stage manager called the other day to tell me that i should get started with the memorising...pah! Unfortunatly this happens to be a busy weekend so let's just say i am going to be doing a lot of work next week. I am quite excited about the show and starting up, i look forward to meeting my cast mates and finally understanding all the logisitcs of this stuff. Also elie is coming to visit towards the end of the month and so he may get to see a performance too which would be fun.
4) My classes are going well. My lesson with the voice over guy tomorrow will be my last coaching session and then we schedule studio time to make my demos. He also said that he is going to hook me up with an agent here which is super exciteing. I am excited about exploring this new part of my skill set. and who knows where it may lead. hopfully ------>$$$
My camera actng class is also filled of some great charachters, the mexican chef from texas, the 4th grade school teacher and mom of 3, the mom from wisconsin who left acting to be a fire fighter and is now returning to her roots, the young bohimian who left home at 16 to study in ny and acts on the side because mom and dad wouldn't approve, along with the other young driven individuals with stories similar to mine, or similar enough anyway. We tape our work each week and then watch it back at home and then talk about it in class a little bit but mostly we get one on one working time with Michelle (the teacher, really knows what shes doing, is straight forward and blunt but also nurturing and a good coach so far) so i am deffiently having fun with it all.
upcoming stuff:
i have some fringe auditions that i am trying to get worked out with shcedules between student films Hijab and Trial and then the Guthrie announced their general auditions and 2009-2010 season as well as some other theaters in the area. so i will be looking into that stuff.
You might be asking yourself why am i still auditioning for fringe stuff? Becuase that guy i mentioned last time i blogged was kind of a jerk. I didn't hear from him all week and finally emailed him to be like "hey havn't heard from you just checking in" and replyed with " oh we went with someone else" anoying. lame. unfortunate. and a big bummer. whatever it was probably going to be stupid anyway ;)
alright i'm done now.
real tired and ready for bed.
All i want to do is cuddle up with my big love monkey that came to me all the way from a special someone in budapest and dream of spring sunshine.
love to all
hope you're well, what ever parts of the world you may be in.
let's make an agenda (this is more for me and less for you but might be fun anyway)
1) Last blogs updates
a) auditions
b) student films
c) whether
2) 24 hour film race
3) Hijab Tube
4) Classes
ooo looks lie we got a long one. well ill try and keep things concise. At least you have this nice outline to help you through.
1a) So as you could read in the title - the nice little Jewish girl has been cast as the saintly nun known as Mother Theresa, this goes to say that i did not get into The Tempest. I was bummed for a bit considering Tempest was the paying more fun sounding, and did i mention paying? job. Trial (The Trial of Mother Theresa, to be exact) will be a good experience also but i just would have liked to play Miranda more i think, that's all. Trial begins rehearsals this month (April 13th) and rehearses in the evenings until May. Shows are (for those interested in knowing specific dates, mom) May29th to June 21st and are Thursday Friday Saturday at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. It will be a great experience to work on a new piece and i look forward to being apart of that aspect. So that is very exciting and now i am signing up for some auditions for projects after that. Let's see if i can keep this going. It feels good to be a working actor, i have to say.
1b) Students films!! Interesting- the first one i thought was pretty cute and this is the girl that stopped me after i left the auditions to tell me that she had to have me as her lead actress. This has been a fine experience i like the director and aside from shooting in the cold its been a nice script to work on. We haven't done too much a few scenes here and there but tomorrow we have a full day of filming so i see a lot getting done in the next week. The film is called "Looking For Love At All The Wrong Bus Stops" which i just thought was an adorable title for a shot film. The only thing is that this story is basically the directors story so even though she says she's over the asshole boyfriend character i can't help feeling its all a little raw still. She's just kind of a funny director. She uses shakily to discribe lines of mine through out the entire script and at each tunring point of the charachters. I once asked her what "cries while smiling" meant exactly and her responce was "well she's sad cuase she knows he's bad for her but she's glad he came and invited her out but she knows he's never going to show up and nothings changed but she still loves him even though she wishes he would just disappear" yes, nice and clear.
The second film is a little more challenging experiance. The director doesn't exactly know what he's doing and i guess that's what you get with a student film maker he is learning how to do this, and i just need to keep reminding myself of this. It's just that at some point early on i thought you learned that jumping back and forth during a conversation happens becuase od editting not moving the camera a hundred times for one scene. maybe its' just me.
But what is great is that this charachter is almost my dream come truw. She's a hardass private detective who's really good at what she does. This means my trentchcoat and buisness casual and a gun holster. I am enjoying being a kind of version of my favorite literal (from liturature???) heroen, Anita Blake. The differences? No vampires, no quite as amazingly sarcastic, and completly based off of someone else entitely. That's ok she's Anita to me no matter what. I can't wait to see this one.
Also two other gals from the class contacted me about being in their film but when i realised starting the 13th i will have morning rehearsals and evening rehearsals plus 2 student films to be shooting and a monday night class all at the same time i realised there wasn't going to be much time for.....well basically anything, let a lone 2 more student films. So i had to turn them down as much as i would have liked to do at least one of them. And that ones director is basiclly the saving grace of the other troubled director. She's been helping him out and boy has he been needing it.
1c) The whether, if you recall, was described as getting better and better last blog.....this was a lie. I spoke too soon. I have filmed in freezing cold, no toes, no fingers, type of cold, snow fluries and have walked in the pouring rain to auditions since then. So really i have no idea what's going on. The sun has come out a bit but its still way too cold to go sit in it so i sit by the window in hopes to get some rays until the whether stop teasing me. Meanwhile i think my face is going to flake off before then. We shall see but this is really the narliest dry skin ive dealt with.
2) Alright, sit back my freinds! So Minneapolis held a 24 hour film race which they do every year i guess. This is when different groups (i heard about 30 signed up this year) get a theme and key element and these things must be used to create a short film (4 min) in 24 hours. When i first got hear i saw something about it and sent an excited little email out to the interweb saying that i was a new actor in town looking for a group to join. A week ago i got this email from a Mr. Fat Cat, now granted that's not his real name, but surprisingly enough this tall skinny man goes by this name for whatever reason. Him and his interesting band of mates were a group doing this race thing and would love to have an actress on board. Little did i know what i was getting into. I wanted to be apart of the expeiance, ive always wanted to do one of these but i probably just should have made up some story and said i couldn't do it anymore after meeting Grizzley the bull ring sporting big guy , the young mom with tattos and pink hair(Paula, looks exactly like T from JMZ except pink hair), the two melvins, and Karna with 6 kids from Now Then (no joke this town is called Now Then, Minnesota). Actaully i have to say that Grizzley and the tattooed chick(Sarah) ended up being my favorite people. Others who came to join the group for the event were micelaniouse roller durbie chicks.
Our Theme: A second chance
Our element: blowing a bubble
Our story (as created by FatCat the head hancho)
A woman walks into a terot reading. as she gets her cards read the reader sees flash backs of her and her lover hatching a plan to steal the terot readers money box. Seeing that this woman has a bad history pulls a gun on her before she can pull her's and suggests she start over. It ends with the woman racing out a changed lady and her boy coming in a blowing the readers head off.
Where are the bubbles you might ask? At the begining, when the terot reader enters. PS. This terot reader, Ms. Zelda, is played by Grizzly, the real Ms. Zelda was his Aunt and he took over the buisness but didn't feel it necessary to change the name.
How it all went down?
at 10pm Friday the 3rd we got notified of the element and theme. Then waited an hour to hear from FatCat with the story and costume/prop assignements. Everyone was there about midnight or so and we began to dress the terot reading room. This took til about 5am (why i have no idea). Then i slept for about an hour and a half and it was up and adam to start filming.
We didn't do much filming due to FatCats inability to articulate himself really. I'm sure he is a visionary genius but that is hard to work with when you havn't had much sleep. and i am not a writer, i take other peoples words and memories them not put into words the moods and feelings of someone else vision. and i am going to stand by that.
filming took us almost the whole rest of the day with a few breaks here and there. a break for an hour to sleep, a break for food, and cogarette breaks. This was the most frusterating, as soon as we would get some momentum or shoot a really good take, it was time for a cigarette.
this brings me to how much this group of poeple smoke. I think i smelled like smoke down to my soul by the time i left this place. ew gross. this man smokes a cigarette like every ten minuted i swear! Also the house was proabbly the grossest house i have ever seen. just thinking about the house makes me want to take a shower again. this is a proabbly in his 50's year old man who lives by himself with his cat, why should he clean? Whatever i am done, and out of the house for good. i even forgot something as i was finally leaving at 8pm tonight and truned around and went back for it becuase i didn't want to have to ever go back again. at some point we stopped filming and mr. visionary genius went to start editing, but decided i couldn't leave becuase he may need to shoot something else, so i went to sleep for a while, i think like maybe 2 hours. I was the only one there who didn't leave the house at all. Everyone else went home for a second to feed animals or children or to take a shower i was there the whole time. yes i got to sleep like 6 hours over the corse of my time wating for things to happen but really? shoot everything you need and move on. so all in all a good story, a good adventure, and hopfully a good copy of some reel worthy work after 20 hours of hanging out with these interesting individuals.
please don't judge me for judgeing, if you had been there you would have judged too (and probably would have ripped me out of there by the ear with a wagging finger)
3) Hijab Tube is my other show, my first audition here and my first paid job. We start rehearsals on Monday. The calendar of shows is filling up and the script has been worked on a little bit and i think i was given another charachter i'm not sure.
We only have 2 weeks of rehearsal and the stage manager called the other day to tell me that i should get started with the memorising...pah! Unfortunatly this happens to be a busy weekend so let's just say i am going to be doing a lot of work next week. I am quite excited about the show and starting up, i look forward to meeting my cast mates and finally understanding all the logisitcs of this stuff. Also elie is coming to visit towards the end of the month and so he may get to see a performance too which would be fun.
4) My classes are going well. My lesson with the voice over guy tomorrow will be my last coaching session and then we schedule studio time to make my demos. He also said that he is going to hook me up with an agent here which is super exciteing. I am excited about exploring this new part of my skill set. and who knows where it may lead. hopfully ------>$$$
My camera actng class is also filled of some great charachters, the mexican chef from texas, the 4th grade school teacher and mom of 3, the mom from wisconsin who left acting to be a fire fighter and is now returning to her roots, the young bohimian who left home at 16 to study in ny and acts on the side because mom and dad wouldn't approve, along with the other young driven individuals with stories similar to mine, or similar enough anyway. We tape our work each week and then watch it back at home and then talk about it in class a little bit but mostly we get one on one working time with Michelle (the teacher, really knows what shes doing, is straight forward and blunt but also nurturing and a good coach so far) so i am deffiently having fun with it all.
upcoming stuff:
i have some fringe auditions that i am trying to get worked out with shcedules between student films Hijab and Trial and then the Guthrie announced their general auditions and 2009-2010 season as well as some other theaters in the area. so i will be looking into that stuff.
You might be asking yourself why am i still auditioning for fringe stuff? Becuase that guy i mentioned last time i blogged was kind of a jerk. I didn't hear from him all week and finally emailed him to be like "hey havn't heard from you just checking in" and replyed with " oh we went with someone else" anoying. lame. unfortunate. and a big bummer. whatever it was probably going to be stupid anyway ;)
alright i'm done now.
real tired and ready for bed.
All i want to do is cuddle up with my big love monkey that came to me all the way from a special someone in budapest and dream of spring sunshine.
love to all
hope you're well, what ever parts of the world you may be in.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
