Naked

Dangit. Just missed a Wednesday update by two minutes. You'll all just have to make do with Thursday for your thrilling, Adia-related news.

I cried a lot in HPC rehearsal today. That's not a bad thing. (Sometimes I cry in rehearsal and it is a bad thing: I tend to get frustrated easily.) Today was very productive as far as the emotional life of my character goes, but it was exhausting. Ron (my director) and I had had a conversation earlier in this rehearsal process about how, in order to truthfully portray a character, one has to be figuratively naked on stage. It's hard, and it's terrifying, and I've been avoiding it for a while. Today I decided not to. It was exciting, but I was close to tears for most of the afternoon. I don't know how I'm going to do four shows a day like that.

It's hard for me to believe that I'm a Union actor now. It doesn't feel any different, and it shouldn't. But there were so many people at the run-through this afternoon, and it made me realize how many more resources the larger Equity houses have than Twin Cities Small Theatre. It's mind-boggling.

It's midnight, and I have rehearsal in nine hours. The disordered state of my apartment is making me crazy, but I need to sleep now. The apartment can wait until next week when I'll have an hour free when I'm not doing anything else.

Merry Christmas and all that jazz

My sister is harassing me to update my blog, so I'm updating. She's home for the holidays from Honolulu, HI, and because we haven't seen too much of each other yet, it's been really pleasant and we haven't had any major fights. On Christmas Eve we had our extended (adopted) family over to celebrate the holiday and the (almost) completion of my parent's new addition (which is awesome, by the way), and some of them asked us if we ever fought. They were surprised to learn that we did and sometimes spectacularly. I don't know why it would be such a shock that adult sisters still fight like they did when they were kids. It just goes to show that we still care about each other enough to push each other's buttons.

We haven't officially had Christmas yet. Some members of my immediate family still needed to do some shopping today, so they did that and I rehearsed my lines for tomorrow. Yep, it's right back into the school show grind for me. 10 am to 4 pm rehearsal and then People's Temple whenever I get there until 6:30 pm. Whee! And it's the same all week. I need a vacation.

PS - I was going to put up a picture of the kitchen, but everyone thought the kitchen was too messy. It's really not. But anyway.

Addiction is bad for you, kids.

I need coffee. Bad. My head aches like nobody's business. Alas, my coffee maker is still broken, and I haven't gone out to get any yet. Soon, though.

This will have to be short because I need to leave in like, two minutes. So, Christmas is really soon, and I have a few things yet to pick up. I will attempt to accomplish said things later tonight, but I'm not sure whether that will happen.

Ok, that was it. Time to go.

I don't care if it sounds like bragging.

I have a Guthrie keycard lanyard around my neck and I LOVE it.

Long Weekend

I performed with my ballet class in the Zenon scholarship show. It was fun, but I'm exhausted and my legs are sore.

Tomorrow I go into People's Temple rehearsals two weeks early. Eek.

I cracked during my song at my audition for the Mixed Blood show. I hate when stuff like that happens, because it's embarrassing and it replays in my mind for pretty much the rest of my life. I'm trying to tell myself that I couldn't do the show anyway according to their rehearsal schedule. Sour grapes, sour grapes.

My computer is still messed up. I pretty much need to move all my important files to the external hard drive, wipe the disk and start over. Can't do that, though, until the OS X Tiger disk is found somewhere in my dad's disassembled office (they're still remodeling).

The Small Theatre holiday party was super fun. I had a fantabulous time. That's probably why my voice cracked during my audition. :D

Aaaand there it is.

Life just got more complicated.

There's really not enough time for everything that needs to be accomplished in the next two weeks, and I have no idea what's going to happen. No idea.

Crap.

So. Angry.

My computer is imploding.

I've been getting error messages saying that my "startup disk is almost full." So I searched the Apple website for programs to help clean things up. Downloaded one that cleaned out the caches, ran it, and now every single program has reverted to its original settings. I've lost all my unsaved mail, all my bookmarks, and goodness knows what else. Not to mention that this supposed clean-up hasn't created ANY MORE SPACE on my hard drive.

I haven't lost everything, but dude...all my internet bookmarks have been wiped out. I had a lot of sites pegged so I could go back to them later as a reference, and they're all gone.

I don't want to rebuild. I'm getting a new computer.

Oh crap. I just realized that the sides I needed for tonight's callback were in a message that was wiped off both my computer and the original server.

Not lighthearted at all

I thought this needed a wider audience.

Let's summarize: Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn't named in the warrant, and wasn't a suspect. The man, frightened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door's been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town's police chief. He's later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.

But just in case you hadn't heard, racism is dead. [/sarcasm]

I played hooky from the blog last week.

Sorry it's been a while. I had rehearsal from 8-4 on Monday and Tuesday and 9-4 on Wednesday, and it was totally like having a real job, y'all. I was tired at the end of the day and all I wanted to do was sit on my bum. And I did.

This week, however, I have one more morning of Wilma shows, and then I'm done with Wilma Rudolph. It doesn't really feel like anything special, though, because I'll be doing a show on Harriet Tubman in a few weeks anyway. So, no celebration.

I feel I should explain. I love hearing that kids are learning about and being touched by the shows that I do. They're so enthusiastic that I can't help but smile when they come up and ask questions afterward. And after I've been doing the show a while I find new moments that I never saw or experienced before. That's a cool feeling. Nonetheless, I've been doing this show since last October. That's over a year, and I did A LOT of shows in that year. And before that I did a year of Mary McLeod Bethune. This is my third year with the same job. Most of the time I don't stick with any job for more than six to nine months. Granted I have the summer off, but doing the school shows is the longest I've stuck with any one thing in my life, other than formal education. (I have no idea how people work the same job for five, ten, or twenty years. Weird.)

So I'm looking for more work (when am I not?). I had two auditions, one yesterday and one today. The audition yesterday? Eh. Not great, not terrible. The audition today was fun. It was the kind where you felt so good doing it that you don't really care if you get cast or not because you did the best you could at that moment and you had fun. Those auditions are few and far between, and I cherish them. I have no idea whether either will lead to anything, but I refuse to worry about it.

Ballet was wonky again today. Granted, it's Advanced. I shouldn't be in an advanced ballet class after only a year of training, but whatever: I take what fits my schedule. I just felt off and confused most of the time. I should get used to it, I suppose, because my advanced dancer friends tell me that it never really gets any better, that there's always something more you need to work on. I wouldn't want it any other way. What do you do when you've surpassed every other person and you are a master of your craft and no one in the world has anything more to teach you? You quit, because to go on would be redundant and boring. So, no, I'd rather always have something to learn, even if I feel like the clumsiest lout on the planet.

New linkies over there. Shundreya is in Ghana indefinitely. Read about her adventures.

Cold hands (and feet), warm heart

I should have done this early this morning, but I was sleeping.

I went to the Fearless Filmmakers Festival on Wednesday and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of short presented. There are some very talented filmmakers here, and I want to work with them. And they need to work with me. There was a noticeable lack of color up on the screen there. I'm going to assume that it's just because they don't know that I'm here. :)

My favorites were the first and last presented: Paper Hearts and Fear of Girls. So, so funny, and they both starred my friend Tom Lommel. I've only worked with him on commercials and industrials, so I had no idea he was living comedy gold. Yay for Tom!

Now I must head back downtown to retrieve my hat (if it's still there :() and buy a book.

Ciao.