No witness, no weakness, and no regrets

Learning a part for a play is hard. You have to learn lines, blocking, cues, etc. and at the same time create this real and viable character. Some people succeed where most do not. To me, it's 50/50 chance of acheiving this. It not only depends on the work you put in, but a lot of it is just the situation at hand. Chance plays a big role, direction, fellow actors, sets, costumes, timing...there are so many other factors that play into the other 50%. So, needless to say, creating a role for a show is a huge undertaking.

Now imagine having to do all of that in a completely different language.

Thus is "Children of a Lesser God".

We basically have to learn a completely different language in 6 weeks and perform a show with the same character development and truth and honesty while still worrying about all the other outside factors. It's a difficult task that many have told us (to our faces) was impossible. Yet we are crazy enough to try and attempt it. I think we are doing fairly well right now. Thankfully the second language I'm learning is ASL because that was my foreign language in high school, so I came in knowing quite a bit more than the average person. I'm getting it down pretty well. I know 87% of Act 1 and am learning Act 2 right now. We finished learning all of the signing for the show, so now we are at the next step up which is implementing them while developing our characters.

So needless to say I'm very stressed. "A Night with Beaver" is opening tomorrow too, which I'm not really stressed about but I will be thankful when I have one less thing to worry about. They are turning out a lot better than I thought. And I'm sooooooo glad I got bumped up to The Old Woman in "the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" because that is a character actress's dream part. I've gone way over the top with roles before, but this takes the cake, and I absolutely love that. I get to basically lose my mind onstage. I'm not satisfied with my performance unless I walk backstage after the scene and am gasping for breath. Then I'll accept it.

Well, back to the grind. A mental breakdown may be coming soon, we shall see.

Anything you do let it come from, give us more to see

I have some free time, so I figure instead of doing homework I'll update!

Things have gotten incredibly busy, which surprises the hell out of me. When I didn't get cast in the main season I figured I would be ridden with waaaaaay too much free time. Now I'm lucky if I can find time to eat a meal. I absolutely love it though. I'm getting so many different types of experiences and not only acting experience. That's right! I'm finally dabbling in the world of directing! I have to do some directing scenes for my class and right now I'm working on my dramatic scene. I'm directing "Dog Sees God" by Bert V. Royal. The script is a dramedy I guess you could say and the scene I'm doing isn't all drama. There's some comedy stuck in there. But the overall mood is dramatic. I really like directing. I dabbled in it a little bit during high school, but my knowledge about it was very limited. Now I have an arsenal of information that I can pull from. And one of the best feelings is giving direction and not only seeing them successful with it but doing even better than you hoped for! It's such a mama bear feeling when I talk about directing. Even when we directed open scenes during class I felt that way. We were given scripts with no setting or description and we had to create everything ourselves. My scene went so incredibly well, and I think it was one of the best of the entire class. I sat there in awe and wonder thinking if I couldn't act this would be the second best thing to do. I was so proud!

I never really considered directing to be in my future, but now that I think about it it's more of a viable option. I first and foremost want to act of course, but directing would still be fun to do. I hope I can find a voice for myself as a director. Maybe I'll try for more directing positions in the future. Who knows.

On the acting side things are going well. "Children of a Lesser God" is going....just going, lol. It's sooooo incredibly difficult because I have to learn the signing a little bit at a time, and that wouldn't be a big issue if I didn't have to sign the entire show! Those are my lines! So I feel fake and awkward trying to make up signs when I don't know them. I know almost all of the signs for Act 1 so it's coming along. I just don't want character thrown to the side because the signing is so important to learn. Argggg! haha. But I'm working my ass off on it, so I'm confident that the product will be good.

I've also got Planned Parenthood scenes and clusterfuck one acts going on too. I love it that I seem to be given the huge multiple page monologues in almost every show I do. I don't mind at all because for me it's easier to learn long monologues than just normal dialogue. But I absolutely love it.

More on my future acting escapades later...