I wish I could fly, and magically appear and disappear

So, FYI, usually I post quotes and/or Broadway song lyrics for my titles. Most of the time they are from amazing songs, so you should look them up. I'm just sayin

Anyways, this will be a shorter one. I was just thinking about this strange phenomenon that occurs during the course of the rehearsal process. Sometimes when cast in a show, we feel like some of the casting choices may have been mistaken. We wonder why a certain person got cast for that part. And even in those beginning few rehearsals, we still question their ability and/or reason for being cast.

However, for me at least, this strange sort of mindset takes over. During a certain point in the rehearsal process, I get really protective of the cast that I am in and overlook any flaws that they might have. I guess I accept their acting and go along with it. I bring this up because it is a strange relationship, especially in comparison to that of the audience watching the show only once. When I'm involved in a show, I usually think really bad actors do ok when they don't. I guess because when you're involved in the process, you see the beginning, middle, and end. So, for me, their performance means a lot more because you know all the work they've done to get there. For an audience, they are judging a single performance for this actor. So, even if they grew an immense amount over the rehearsal process, it pretty much means nothing for an audience. If they are still mediocre when they perform, the audience will think they are mediocre.

I've gone through this experience recently during the semester. I was in a great show with a great cast, but some struggled more than others. There was one actor who grew so much over the rehearsal process, and I felt like gave a really good performance. Mind you, it wasn't amazing, but still good. Another actor was in the same position, but didn't progress as much as the other actor. His performance was kind of blah, and I realize it was bad, but I would have labeled it just ok. Then, going into critiques during my acting class, I discovered that their performances were deemed "awful", "horrible", etc. I was flabbergasted by it, because I didn't think they were that bad. And it made me realize how different the experience is for the actor involved and the actor in the audience.

I don't know if it's necessarily a good or bad thing that I have this jaded view. Who knows, maybe it's only me that goes through this. But I just realized it tonight and thought I'd share it. And actor's view on the cast through the rehearsal process. Yup.

Look Mr. Sondheim, I made a hat...where there never was a hat!

So, here is part deux from the earlier post, plus a little bit more! Woohoo!

We had our first official rehearsals for "The Lone Star Love Potion" yesterday and today. Yesterday we just did a read-through, and I think it went extremely well. As I said before, it's always fascinating to see who is cast as who and how they read for a character. The script reads better than Cabin Fever does, and the possibilities are endless with the blocking. It's such a high energy, fast paced show. And on top of that it's a farce, which is probably my favorite genre of show to act in. I love portraying over the top characters. And in this show that's exactly what I'm doing. My character, Tammy Jo, is the next door neighbor who gets involved in all of the crazy shit that goes down. I see her as a mixture of Dolly Parton and Annie Oakley. It was neat because a fellow cast member told me that I was doing great with the part. She said that I'm taking a part that could be really boring and bringing it alive, which I guess is all you can ask for. I hope to develop a character that doesn't just fall through the cracks.

Today we had our first blocking rehearsal. While we were doing the first couple of scenes, the director and I had a talk about the character. He likes what I'm going for now, but he wants to see how Tammy Jo would be as more of a Texas beauty queen. I'm all for experimenting with the character, especially in the early stages, so we'll see how it goes. I really think the cast for this show is really really great, and I personally love working with our director, so I think this will be a great acting experience.

Now, for the bonus topic. I just watched a PBS documentary about the musical "In the Heights". First off, let me say, the program that does this stuff is called "Great Performances" and if I had a million dollars, I would donate a good chunk of that money to this specific program because the record such great shows! The recorded and distributed "Company", "Into the Woods", "Sweeney Todd", "Cyrano de Bergerac", etc. It's just great because now I get to watch these great performances that I would never have seen. Anyways, to continue on. I watched the documentary that was basically about the couple of weeks from their first broadway rehearsal to opening on broadway and winning the Tony award. It was so inspiring to watch different cast members talk about their past and what led them to where they are today. You could tell each one of them was so invested in their future and basically in love with their art. I was especially moved after watching the lyricist and composer (Lin Manuel Miranda) talk about working on this musical for like 7 years. Watching all of this inspired me so much. I was lying on the couch, basically almost passed out from exhaustion, but watching this woke me up completely.

That documentary made me feel like all my dreams and aspirations for my future could come true. I'll always have time to teach theatre or do some sort of job that will have money coming in. But I only get one life, so I'm going to pursue my dreams no matter how insane or stupid it might be. I will pursue a career in acting in the theatre in Chicago. I don't have to become rich and famous (although that would be a plus) I just want to try for a professional career in theatre. If I don't do this, I don't want to look back on my life and wonder what if.

So, watch this documentary. It will give you hope in the theatre and inspire you, I swear!

It sucks to be broke and unemployed and turning 33...it sucks to be me!

So, I meant to do this sooner, but the toils of summer rep are now getting to me. I'm lucky if I have enough time for a good 7 hour sleep. But I digress...

Blocking rehearsals for "Cabin Fever" are going extremely well. We just did a complete run of the show last night, only having 3 true days of blocking. That's intense! It was a little messy at some points, but overall it went pretty smoothly. She has the blocking rehearsals set up in what is now dubbed "The Dr. Gelber Method". This entails rehearsing scenes out of order, but grouping them together by the characters involved. It's helpful because it helps save time for the actors, but it sometimes causes problems when doing a run-through. You have to string together random scenes and blocking, so last night I had to focus more on what came next than the acting, which bugs me a little. But I guess these first few rehearsals are ok doing this. Another aspect of the blocking rehearsal that I'm not really used to is the directing style. Our director is very organic, and it's strange because I've never dealt with an organic director before. It's nice because I can pretty much do what I feel the character would do and not get completely shot down; however, it is a little bit frustrating when we have so many characters onstage trying to move around with their character, especially in the Lab theatre. I think it would have been nice to have more direction in the bigger group scenes to cause less chaos.

I'm excited though because I get to actually be involved in some fight choreography. I mean, sure, I've slapped people, I've been smothered, and I've thrown people to the ground...but I would call that basic fight choreography. In this show I get to do the big boy fighting. I get choked and everyone gets involved, so it's really fun.

I've noticed with this show that I've been doing a lot of "working outside-in" which is really kind of backwards for me. Usually I like to develop a character internally, get the back story and motivations and such, and then form the physicality of the character from there. In this play I've been doing the opposite, I noticed. I have a basic understanding of the character, but I haven't discovered all of Pidge's eccentricities yet. But I have been sitting like her, kind of in a boyish manner. I've also been playing around with my walk and gestures. I really like this character in the sense that I can get away with more manic gestures because she's waaaaaay out there. I always have problems with gestures: either too much or not enough.

Well, I've got to head off to shop hours (woooo?). I didn't have enough time to talk about "Lonestar" rehearsals, but it officially started yesterday. More on that later...

This is rediculous! What am I doing here? I'm in the wrong story!

First rehearsals are always interesting. There's this anticipation you get walking into the room because you don't know what to expect. How will the director be? What is the rest of the cast like? Will I mesh in with everyone? So many questions.

Our first rehearsal for "Cabin Fever" was promising. The concept of the show is pretty good. Our director wants our characters to be relatable to the audience to where they could relate certain characters to those in their own family. Her idea of Pidge is interesting. She didn't necessarily say that Pidge was crazy or not, but she did bring up an interesting point. She thought that Pidge was extremely disturbed, but she didn't want to make her the stereotypical crazy person. I totally agree with this. If I turn Pidge into the comedic relief because of her off-the-wall personality then I lose any truth in the character. I have to make her a real person who is just very colorful. I think we have different images of Pidge, but I'm excited about starting the process and meshing our two ideas together.

The read through went really well. I think the show is cast (casted? cast? past form of "to cast") very well. Everyone fits their parts beautifully, which is a blessing since there were fewer people to choose from. It is kind of strange that we have one Mexican in the whole family, but we joke that she's the milkman's daughter hehe. But besides that it really does feel like a family. I was thinking about this last night, but I think it helps us that we all know each other (some more than others). I think it's extremely difficult to create a family onstage because every one's version of a family is so different. When people get together and they don't know each other, it takes a lot longer to form that bond and create that connection with each other. Sometimes they never succeed. In our case, we have less time to form this bond, but we're not complete strangers, so it should be a little easier.

I think the biggest flaw with this production will be the script. It's a pretty good script with a nice mixture of comedy and drama. The beginning is a tad slow, and there are a lot of plot stoppers, but overall it's great...until you get to the end. Now, I've done shows with "different" endings. Case in point, "We Won't Pay!" was a show with a very controversial ending. People either loved it or hated it. During my sophomore year of high school we did "And They Danced Real Slow in Jackson" and our ending was basically a mind fuck with a girl in a wheel chair internally imploding (figuratively, not literally). So I've been in my fair share of shows with controversial endings, and most of the time (if they are motivated) I enjoy them. But the ending for this show is awful. It's like the playwright didn't know how to end the show, so he decided that he wanted Pidge to all of a sudden turn into a narrator and finish the show. It's just so cheesy because I'm monologuing about what happened to all the characters....it makes me sick it's so bad.

But, I'm going to try my hardest to make it meaningful and not god awful, we'll see how that goes.

Inspiration is born of hard work. It is not the other way around- Stanislavski

No matter how good you are at it, memorizing lines is probably one of the most difficult aspects of a role (in my opinion). Of course, it's extremely difficult to create a character and learn blocking and stay in character, etc. etc.; but memorizing lines before a show starts is a job within itself when you actually think about it. You are trying to memorize lines that this other person says within this period of time, and you have to make it feel and sound like you (as the character) would say those things. It sounds sort of simple, but it really isn't. Every monologue, every sentence, hell...every word has to be motivated. When you have a conversation with someone (as yourself) you pick and choose each word carefully to get your meaning across. You have feelings toward each word and the meaning of your sentence, and it comes from a spontaneous place. As an actor, we are asked to perform this task with another person's words. It baffles my mind when I think about it.

But, onto what I really wanted to talk about, which is memorizing lines. I've begun working on my lines this week (and made it through Act 1, hoorah!) and was wondering about the different ways people memorize their lines. I've used two methods that have become pretty successful for me. One method I used was recording all my scenes, and I listened to it on my Ipod while walking to class or in the car. This one is relatively new for me as I have only used it once. I was Katherina in "Taming of the Shrew" and I was worried about memorizing Shakespeare for the first time, so I made sure I used every possible method to learn the lines.

My second method is basically picture memorization, where I just memorize one line, go to the next couple, say the whole thing, and move on while I keep starting from a starting point. I say "picture" memorizing because for a while I visualize where the line is on the page and where the words fall. It's hard to explain, but needless to say I am a visual learner when it comes to memorizing lines or studying for tests.

One problem I've come across while memorizing is the issue of blocking. I find it a lot easier to memorize lines with blocking because I feel motivated when I say the line. It feels like it has a purpose. Also, blocking affects the way in which I say a line, but I can't know the specific vocal qualities of that line until we actually start the rehearsal process. It's hard for summer rep because we open in less than a month, so we aren't given a lot of time to mess around. I really want to go in to the rehearsal process prepared; but it's hard when you haven't even done a read-through of the script with the cast. That also has a great affect on my delivery and character development.

Memorizing lines is hard work, but as my professor once said "Once you memorize your lines, you can start at 0%". That's pretty frightening if you think about it. Usually you think you gain a lot from memorizing, but you really don't. Once memorized, you can actually start working on a solid character and doing the important "actory" things that get you into that inspiration mode. And with summer rep having such a short rehearsal period, I need to get going otherwise I won't have time to develop a solid character. I will try my damnedest!

Act well your part, there in all the honor lies.
Christina Jones

Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified.

So today I decided to look for some inspiration for my character, specifically Pidge in "Cabin Fever". She's so interesting because she decides to break out of a group home and kidnap her sister's abusive husband. What I really wanted to focus on is the decision I have to make on whether Pidge is legitimately crazy or just a product of hard times and bad decisions.

The inspiration I found today was in the movie "Girl, Interrupted".

The basic gist of the movie is that Winona Ryder's character tries to commit suicide, so she is placed in a private mental institution that's basically a step up from the state hospital. I wanted to watch this movie because I knew that Winona's character was not really "crazy", yet she was put into an institution where pretty much every patient had some sort of mental deficiency. I also wanted to watch it for Angelina Jolie's performance, which won her an Oscar for best supporting actress. She was very believable playing the sociopath, and as an actor I really noticed and appreciated some of the acting choices she made (vocally and physically). After watching the movie, I really want to make Pidge into a combination of both those characters. I want the back story of the experience Winona went through being a sane person in a mental institution, yet I also want the spunk and eccentricities of Angelina Jolie's character. I think it was a really good movie to get me in the mood to start finding my character. And I recommend it as a good movie in general.

Now, onto the task at hand. I think one of the most important aspects of Pidge as a character is the ongoing question "Is she really crazy/insane/mentally ill? I have to make this decision early on because it will definitely affect how I portray her. Her basic back story, after reading the entire play, is that about a year before the play takes place, her mother was deathly ill. She really wanted to see her, but her father thought that it would be best if she didn't talk to her. His reasoning behind it was that Pidge is very eccentric and would have made her mother all worked up and possibly worse with her illness. Pidge doesn't understand, because her mother is a lot like her and understood her more than her father. So Pidge gets so upset that she tries to commit suicide to get her father's attention. It doesn't say how she tried, but I think it's important that I come up with how because it says something about her personality. After her attempt, they decide to put her in a "group home". When I hear group home, I either think of a house that recovering alcoholics or dug addicts stay at after rehab, or a home where young/old adults with special needs live if they can't live on their own. By the description in the play, I don't think she lives in a home with either of these descriptions.

So, what I'm deciding is that the group home that she lived in is a sort of stepping stone between a mental institution and normal society; probably a lot like what was in "Girl, Interrupted". Pidge describes her fellow patients as "fucking crazy". She also talks about how one of her "friends" has short term memory loss and another hit her with a chair because he thought she was Satan. This does not sound like a normal group home, so I picture it as somewhat of an institution that is more liberal than a state hospital. It must have been very interesting when she first lived there and had to co-exist with people with mental deficiencies. I can't imagine how much it affected her. It probably only encouraged Pidge to act out in weird ways because she was surrounded by it constantly.

I want to be able to come up with how she tried to commit suicide, but I don't think I know her well enough to establish that yet. It's too personal to just come up with one off the top of my head. I'll think about it for later.

So, the big question....

CRAZY or NOT?

Survey says....NOT CRAZY!! And here's why...

Yes, she tries to commit suicide. Yes, she kidnaps her sister's husband and yes, she locks him in a trunk. While under normal circumstances I would say that is pretty substantial evidence to convict Pidge of being crazy, but I don't think it necessarily points to that conclusion. I just think she is a highly passionate individual who is very eccentric and a little bit odd. She knows and understands everything that is going on around her, and she can respond to it with such wit and wisdom. Most importantly, she can clearly identify the purpose to her actions, and she doesn't blame other people for her problems. Crazy people can't identify their problems and usually through the blame on others. She knows why she attempted suicide; she was seeking the attention of her father and dying mother. She kidnaps her brother-in-law because she fears for her sister's life and loves her sister dearly. These actions done by any other person may seem motivated by insane thoughts, but being done by Pidge is something completely different. Because she is highly passionate, she sees normal situations in a different light with more dramatics than necessary. When put in high stress situations, she makes very bold decisions for her future actions that might not be the best choice. She is also an eccentric, so these decision may also be creative yet dangerous.

Another item of interest that I just noticed this afternoon is the fact that Pidge never calls herself "crazy". She does make fun of her institutionalization by calling herself "insane", "mentally ill", and "a mental defective". She even calls her friends in the group home crazy,but she never refers to herself as crazy. I just happened to notice that while reading, and I found it intriguing. I don't know if it was the playwright's intention or not, but I sincerely hope he did it on purpose. It gives so much to work with for my character. To me, it only reiterates that Pidge isn't crazy. Out of all of the daughters, I think Pidge has the most self-confidence, but she's not afraid to point out her own flaws. I think she likes the idea that people thinks she's crazy because she can play around with it and fuck with people's heads. Again, she's weird so she finds enjoyment in messing with people, especially her family. So she'll call herself insane and mentally ill, but the fact that she won't call herself crazy says something about her. It says that she still has some self-pride in her that won't allow her to call herself that specific name, because then it would be true. That word has some meaning for her, whether it's because she had to deal with it in the group home or during her childhood, who knows. I think it's very significant.

Wow, that's a lot for today. This was sort of a two-day entry, so sorry for the length. I discovered a lot about Pidge, and I'm glad that I finally decided that she wasn't crazy. Now I can start diving into her character more for the future days to come.

Act well your part, there all the honor lies
Christina Jones

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start

I really don't know how to start this. You would think I could since this is like the 5th or 6th blog I've had. The very first one I started was in 7th grade, and it was a xanga. Remember xanga? Needless to say those ramblings were not very prolific or visionary for the time. And for all I know these ramblings now won't be anything special, but I figured I would do this for me. Which is all that matters I guess.

So, the purpose of this blog is to be my sort of "Acting Journal". I've tried many a time to start journals in my notebooks for different classes or shows that I'm in, and it always ends up poorly. I'm not much of a real life writer, but I do like to blog once in a while (which sounds very 21st century of me). So I figure I could start anew at another website with this. It will in no way be a diarrhea of the keyboard, listing life stresses and personal problems, unless they deal with acting, theatre, or anything of that nature. So, here goes...


It's been nice to have a small break from the theatre. It got so busy toward the end of the semester. It got to the point where I would look at a script and try to memorize, yet I couldn't do it. WTF?!? I never have problems memorizing a script! I say that with confidence because that is one of my strong suits; I can memorize quickly and pretty efficiently. But when I have issues memorizing a modern scene...then I can tell I need a break.

I think I put too much on my plate. I had people keep coming up to me and ask me "Hey, want to do a reading for my script?" or "Hey, want to be in my directing scene?". I think I figured out that by the end of the semester I did 4 directing scenes and 5 script readings within like 2 months. I need to learn to say no. People keep telling me that I can say no now because I've proven myself, but to me it's not about that as much. I have this mindset that I can learn from every theatrical experience I do, no matter how good or how bad. I always take something away from each experience, so I feel like the more I do the more I will learn. I don't know if it's necessarily true, but I think it's done me well thus far.

I'm ready to get back into the swing of a show. I haven't been in a real show since Jan/Feb (I really don't count RROAPS because it was a mini version of being in a show). I miss the first awkward rehearsals where no one has any idea who their character is. I miss those brilliant moments you have during a rehearsal that brings a scene together. I just miss all of it. I'm excited to get the opportunity to be in 3 shows over the summer. First up is summer rep. I told myself once I got the scripts that I wouldn't look at them until I felt I was ready because I was so stressed and worn-out; so yesterday I finally grabbed the scripts and high lighted my parts. To me that signals that I am ready to start a role and the process that goes along with it. I'm really excited about "Cabin Fever" because my character is so damn interesting! "Lone Star Love Potion" is an easier role, but I want to make sure my character has enough layers to make her real. I'll probably do some character analysis on here, so look forward to it.

I'm excited for the opportunities that await me over the summer. I hope that this journal will give an insight to the process of an awkward actor, or just the process in general.