Okay, who stole spring? I object. Strenuously.

Acting class continues to be Of The Awesome. Pre-class chitchat revealed an unusually high geek quotient in the room, which I always appreciate. There are never as many fannish types in theatre as you (or at least I) think there should be. Also, I appear to have been permanently dubbed "Red" by our coach, which is fine but amusing. Last week I was Red for the first hour and Victoria a couple of times, then he settled into Valerie for the rest of the evening, so I know he does in fact know my name.

Scenework is proving to be a great push for figurative muscles I haven't been working nearly enough lately. Once my scene partner got hold of the out-of-print play we were assigned a scene from, that is. Some things really aren't just getting in your own way! %-} It's A Cry of Players, which, now that I've read it, I'm kind of amazed I'd never heard of. There are thoughts formulating in my head that I want to blog about in addition to the stuff going directly into the scenework itself, but I'm not sure yet what form that'll take. Except a glancing amusement that I would be given Anne Hathaway Shakespeare as my first assignment, after my recent babble touching on the playing-a-historical-person thing. Scene partner is awesome and open to pushing himself and risking. Not to mention willing to alternate coming out to the burbs on Metra with me going into the city to get together and work.

In the area where Actor Val intersects with Fannish Val, beginnings of an interesting discussion this morning on melancholydanes. (Spoilers galore for all three seasons of Slings and Arrows.) I really need to rewatch that whole series. Y'know, in my copious free time...

First class at Chicago Actors Studio last night. Like the coach, like the atmosphere, like the other members, and think it will be just the right kick in my slightly stagnant pants for this moment in time.

It's a good sign that I didn't realize until I was in my car that the ostensibly 7:00 - 10:30 class had run past midnight. Really it is. Getting up this morning, however... *YAAAAAAAWN*

If they continue to have 17 people attending the Monday night class, it's going to be an interesting 10 weeks.

Or mostly, anyway. There's still a little puffiness around my jaw, but I only notice it because I know my face. Also, hooray for being able to open my mouth all the way! Should make it a heckuva lot easier to have a voice lesson tomorrow. Also means I can see where the wisdom teeth came out from, and man was I right about there not being enough room in my jaw! I don't know where the heck four more teeth were anchored! Am both apprehensive and excited about seeing an orthodontist once it's all healed. I've had this traffic jam in my mouth for so long, it's going to be strange not to have them so crowded that I slice through dental floss at least three times before I get them all.

Meanwhile, I have a completely irrational craving for a chili cheese dog. *facepalm*

Curiously, hurting more today than it has the last couple. Mostly stitches pulling, I think. Which makes me very glad the Vicodin doesn't loop me out to speak of, because I have stuff to get done, darnit. Have been itching to sing, and planning to give it a shot for a while tonight. The poor voice is like "Okay, cold and then sinus infection and then wisdom teeth... Are we DONE with all this stuff now? Can we get on with business plzkthx?" I really wanted to be in solid vocal shape before we started Suor Angelica, darnit, but that just wasn't in the cards. Ah, well.

Also need to start sketching for Shrew. And must go over to Chicago Actors Studio and get registered early next week. But those are for after BigBabyBrother's wedding this weekend, which, yay!

Next week. *deep breath * Next week will be NORMAL craziness. ;-D

Dude. I dunno if it's just a seasonal cycle thing or what, but the preponderance of reality shows on the casting breakdowns the last couple weeks is downright creepy.

...are at least not snowy days. But still Mondays.

I've been meaning to hit the Midwest Independent Film Festival some first Tuesday or other. Networking yay! Was too sick last month, but am totally going to haul my finally-getting-better butt into the city tomorrow night. (Yay, Zithromax! Yay, sinuses no longer attempting to secede through the front of my skull!) The offering scheduled happens to be one that others might also be interested in, a docu about women's body image called America the Beautiful. Tickets are $10. Chicago peeps, if you end up planning to go, let me know!

In opera news, apparently we're doing Tosca next year. Went to Solange's bel canto recital yesterday afternoon, and she did "Vissi d'arte" (of all things...fach shift much?) as her encore and mentioned that. First I've heard. And actually, this time last year she was talking about The Merry Widow, which ended up morphing into Elisir, so we'll see. I did a bit of a doubletake at the public mention, tho.

Also, now that the former Café Magdalena is officially launched as the newest location of Villa Verone, our cabaret nights there are coming back! Looks like they will now be Sunday nights, and early word is that they'll be Sundays in May and July. I'll keep you posted as details become available.

Last night we attended Sarah Vowell's reading/talk, which was all kinds of cool. Really must read her books. Though I don't think it will be quite as fun as her reading them aloud. :-)

She chose a Lincoln-assassination-related passage for the first reading, prefaced by an entertaining tangent about how dumb it was from a PR standpoint for Booth to pull the trigger on Good Friday. Something to the effect of "thus ensuring that a President half the country hated on Friday would, by Sunday morning, be eulogized in every Easter sermon." Which is a really, really good point, and one I don't remember if I ever thought about before.

If I did, it would have been while I was devouring research getting ready for These Honorable Men, and that was 1995, so it's a little fuzzy. I read about the whole topic, of course, but mostly I was focussing on any mentions I could find of my character, Booth's "secret fiancée," Lucy Hale. (The linked article just happened to be the first Google hit I got this morning, and is really cool, but has the same oddity from my perspective as the one I'm about to explain...)

( This is me, therefore it's kinda long. )

It's a curious thing, that people seem to find it essential to characterize such a person as a beauty, even if she wasn't. Which feeds tangentially into the Lizzie project, as one of the threads I'm playing with is how she started out being perceived as quite plain and/or odd-looking, but became defined as the Pre-Raphaelite stunner. Complete with a certain amount of revisionism going into the story of her "discovery" by Walter Deverell, who was looking for red hair and a girl who could be convincing as a boy (i.e. Viola-as-Cesario). All pretty much because Rossetti said so, and saw her that way, and painted her that way.

Funny all the things popping up lately that resonate with that watershed year. Maybe just me, or maybe the Universe trying to tell me something. :-)

( In which Val and cameras continue to have an uneasy relationship )

I'm not a model; I have no expectation that posing for still photos is ever going to be a large part of my work. But it is always going to be a part, and it is usually going to be what people see first. For better or for worse, things are structured such that I'm being assessed out of the gate on something that is a weak point for me. So sometime in the next year or so, however long it takes to get my teeth closer to where I want them, I need to learn how to be better at it.

In my "get this damn career thing together already" mode, various thoughts that have been whirling through my little diva brain, gathered here for some semblance of order and to have them in one place as a reminder:

( Divababble du jour )

So. Plan of attack for this weekend:

1. Check out classes in Chicago (there are a couple I know a bit about), get registered, and get back in training.
2. Start getting mailings out to agents. Was going to wait until my new headshots and reel were ready, but both of those are taking longer than I'd hoped, and my current headshot and resume could be enough for now. I can get in the door now, and give them more and updated material soon.
3. Strategize the hunt for a day job that will keep me alive without eating my life.

Yay, plan!

Thirteen years ago today, Much Ado About Nothing opened in a small black-box theatre in Columbus, Ohio. Yours truly, complete with flittery fidgets and Minnie Mouse voice, was playing Beatrice.

( I'm still not entirely sure how that happened, but I'm eternally grateful that it did. )

For whatever reason, certainly not for any reason as concrete as this one, I've been feeling lately like anything is possible in 2008, in a way I maybe haven't since I was that clueless 25-year-old. So when you see me driving and reaching and muttering that it's not enough, you know why. I know what I'm trying to capture. It's going to be mine.

Pass the Gatorade.

New Divababble blog post here.

Great Big Ball of Operatic Fluff opens TONIGHT.

And there's a bubblebath calling my name.

Happy Saturday, all!

...with a new post on the Divababble blog.

Other than that, life is Office of Doom and Great Big Ball of Operatic Fluff. And snow. Lots of snow. :: eyes window ::

Dunno, but after much hemming and hawing, I've finally set up blog just for my acting/theatre stuff. Most if not all of what I put there will still be posted here, so it won't affect you lot much (unless you're only here for the acting/theatre stuff, in which case I won't be at all offended if you unfriend this madhouse and read the blog instead), but I figured I'd point it out anyway.

It is dubbed, of course, Divababble, and has been launched with old divababbles from this very LJ.

But hey, the day I don't overthink an audition, none of you will recognize me!

( My puzzlement, let me show you it )

*sigh* I generally think of myself as a levelheaded person who defies the stereotype of the neurotic actor. Too bad that can't be 100% without losing the perfectionism, without which there's not much point...

This is performing, kidlets. You turn your entire life to crap so that you can create something better than life for a few hours. Then you take a bow and go back to scrounging in the fridge and wondering if you have one single clean towel left.

For the record, I do not thank brainiacfive NEARLY often enough for putting up with the crazy.

Theatre meme, last seen with samazon13. Longer than I usually like to do, but what the hey.

( My divababble, let me show you it )

Dunno. My sense right now is kinda that I bombed it, but my sense of these things is notoriously inconsistent. *shrug*

I do feel like my straight acting chops, and particularly my straight-acting-in-intimate-space chops, are more atrophied than my fight skills after what I've been doing the last couple years. The last straight play I did was Night of the Living Dead in fall 2005, and Barbara was almost more of a two-hour exercise in dissociation than a character anyway. Last storefront show was 1984, three years ago. Which probably makes my sense that much less trustworthy. But I just had trouble connecting to what I was reading and the people I was reading with. Maybe just an off night. *shrug again*

More stuff coming up if this doesn't happen. The chops will be put back in order as I go.

No, that's not a plea for a job. (Although if you happen to have one lying around...) Rather, it's a plea for material.

One thing I really need in Chicago -- and which has always been a weak point for me -- is a selection of two or three good contemporary monologues. I have practically no contemporary monologues for the very simple reason that I've done precious few contemporary plays. I've been doing Kevin's thumbnail sketch of her last relationship from To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday for-freakin-EVER, and I love it as pie, but at this point I think everyone in town has heard me do it twice. I really ought to take a good audition class one of these days for just this reason, but there's always the time and the money and the blahblahblah.

So, for those who pay attention to newer plays, and who know me (hopefully there's some intersection there), what should I be reading? Who can you see me as?

Thus the tuneup of the self-marketing machine continues apace. Glacial is a pace...

Recital went well yesterday, although I still kinda wish I could have substituted Thursday's rehearsal with the accompanist. :-} Which of course I also forgot to record, but ah, well.

Pitch control (the bane of my existence for the last few months) is back at about 90%, but of course my ear is still much better, so there are a couple slight wince points for me, especially in "The Finer Things." I keep wanting my Minnie-Mouse-coloratura agility back, dammit! It's like trying to turn a frakkin cruise ship instead of a speedboat. O_o But all in all I'll take the tradeoff to sound like a grownup (and keep working on OMGPITCH, which I never had to really think about before the fach shift, arg!), and for the first solo outing in front of an audience since I started studying with Solange last year, I'm generally pleased.

The Finer Things (1.3 MB mp3)

My True Love (1.1 MB mp3)

The first is sung by Blanche Ingram in Jane Eyre, and the second by Christine in Phantom (the Maury Yeston version), in case you're curious.

Marriott audition went pretty smoothly, although it ended up involving more waiting than I anticipated because I got down there so early. I expected it to take less time to get into the Loop in the earlyish afternoon. I didn't expect to leave Office of Doom (in Villa Park) at 2, be at Congress and Clark by 2:30, and be parked by 2:45. O_o Next time, I'm taking an earlier slot, so that I'm not then leaving the Loop in rush hour!

( Obligatory neurotic actorly navel-gazing and babbling )

Drove home in the aforementioned rush hour traffic, which is great fun when it's 85 degrees and we no longer own a car with working AC. Must get new car. *wilt* Then grabbed dinner and went off to voice lesson to sing some more. %-} Including starting working on "Sull'aria," a Countess/Susanna duet from Le nozze di Figaro, which is now a possibility for inclusion in the summer concert program. Either way, between that and starting "Dove sono" a couple months ago, I'm starting to think I should just learn the Countess. Hey, if I don't get cast in anything for this summer, there's a project for me. It's starting to seem like it would sit in my voice really well, so why not? :-)

As many/most of you know, I'm currently studying voice with the founder/artistic director of my hometown's (not quite fledgling, but definitely still building) opera company. She is one of the more adorable human beings on the planet, still unmistakably French-Canadian after fifteen years in Chicago, and blessed with an abundant ability to laugh at herself. In the last year, she's helped me rebuild my classical technique from the ground up after identifying that my voice had gone and matured into something I never really expected. I'm finally starting to feel like I own it, that it belongs in my body, and starting to actually nail a song or three again.

We've been talking about a need for comic numbers in my rep, and tonight I started working with her on "This Place Is Mine." If you are familiar with the Kopit/Yeston Phantom, and have any idea what it takes to be in charge of a not-quite-fledgling-but-definitely-still-building opera company, you've probably already guessed where this is going.

If you're not, suffice it to say that in that version, Carlotta owns the opera house, and is a few candles short of a chandelier. And if you don't, well, I'm sure you can guess that it's a lot.

So when I sang this particular number at the holiday party, I introduced it as "This is what we don't want to happen to Solange!" I hammed it up within an inch of my life, and everyone roared. Except Solange, who was in the kitchen and missed it. She had never heard it until tonight.

I'll probably be doing it in our summer concert.

As an over-the-top parody of Solange.

At her request.

Sometimes I love my life. :-D