My Personal Call Board

Upon graduating from Bennington, I found myself constantly wondering how I was going to be an actor.  I would chew my nails, grind my teeth, and lose sleep over all those questions that go with being an actor: Am I good enough?  Will I ever even go to auditions?  Am I good enough?  How do I find said auditions without an agent?  Do I need an agent?  Am I good enough? I can't afford an agent!  Will I ever find the perfect monologue? Am I good enough?  Am I brave enough to go to auditions, and then just continue with my life and my work, regardless of the outcome?

Add to that deluge of insecurities the confusion over how to be a costumer as well, and you've got me in a nutshell.  Is there a way to pursue both?  How do I make sure I don't get locked into one line of work, and then miss opportunities in the other?

(((--- Honesty time -- I was also worried that I'd just be too damn scared to go to any audition. Ever. --)))

Since moving to Boston, I've been to 3 auditions.  Tonight marked my fourth.  When I moved, I set a goal for myself: three auditions by the December.  I didn't know if it was going to be possible.  One sort of fell into my lap, and from then on, with the help of friends with Stagesource accounts, I did it.  Three auditions in three months.  I got my headshots out there, and while no roles have resulted from my auditioning (yet!) I am still very proud of myself.

I now have a Stagesource account of my own and a new goal: 5 auditions between December 1 and June 30, as well as an application to the Sandglass Theater's Summer Puppet intensive.  One down, four and an application more to go!

I still haven't found the perfect monologue, and I think I will always wonder if I'm good enough.  However, I will not fret.  I do have a trick up my sleeve, thanks to a friend.

At that first audition, I was sitting with him, blathering on about how I wasn't Asian enough and that I was too young for the part.  He listened for maybe three words before shushing me, fixing me with a very sincere stage, and said, "You are exactly what they are looking for.  You have to walk in there believing that."  Since then, I walk into an audition with one thought: I am exactly what you are looking for.  One day, I will be.  Until then, I just do my best, have a blast, and come home to a treat.  Tonight, it's chocolate decadence cake from the DPH and a DIY facial.

I love auditioning.

Six months out

On Sunday, I closed my first show as costume designer in Boston: Not-a-Box New Play Festival with GAN-e-meed Theater Project.  It was a very good experience (seriously) and I was proud of the work I did.  I think that's the most important part, that I'm proud of the work I did. I met a whole bunch of wonderful, talented people.  And got another gig out of it.

Yesterday, I had my first production meeting for Stoneham's the young co production of Once Upon a Mattress.  Short and sweet -- I'm excited to delve into that project.

On Monday, I have an audition for Play About the Baby.

I did some thinking on Monday or Tuesday night.  I moved to Boston in September. I've been working consistently (both part-time and in theater) ever since.  By the end of the season, I'll have worked on --as designer or wardrobe-- six shows.  That's six runs.  That's work for an entire season.  I'll have been theatrically employed for the entire first theater season I spent in Boston.

I get breathless just thinking about it.  I don't know if I expected to be hunting for work on my hands and knees, or what... but I can't quite believe it.  The wonderful thing about all this is that I'm proud of the work I have done and excited about the upcoming shows.  I know that I am incredibly lucky to be able to say all this.  In the same breath, I know I've worked incredibly hard to get here.  I like that work pays off.  But I also like that I must continue to work hard in order to ensure more work.

It's funny... at Bennington, we called all of our projects and things to do our "work."  In that sense, I feel like I should be leaving the Dining Hall to go finish my work: MY WORK-- my artistically driven endeavors that, combined, represent my reality.  "My work," usually synonymous with "my blood, sweat, and tears."

I am so thankful and amazed that about six months out of undergrad, my work is now my life.  

Tales of Tech: Play by Play

Twas the night before load-in, and all through the house
Kinch was sewing and making like a crazed little mouse...

Anyways.  Worked for 10 hours and still didn't finish everything: finished enough for the fittings though, which I guess was the important part.  Here's a chronicle of those 10 hours:

Ready for Battle

2:42 PM: Maybe 20% of the way there for Not A Box.  But I’m ready for the ensuing battle.  Loading in tomorrow at 10:30 AM.  There may be very little sleep between points A and B, but I’ll get there. I will.

3:19 PM: Neon pink fabric paint vomited on my hands.  Jaquard Textile Paints were the best and worst discovery I made senior year.  Now, to the tea dying.

4:37 PM: Lovely phone conversation with Oee while making a tiara.  Tiara half done!

6:08 PM: How is it 6:08 PM?!

7:01 PM: Regency bodice, done! Yay! Now, to finish painting, and then skirt-problems.  Always skirt problems.

7:54 PM: Same tasks as before, only to the sweet sounds of Boondock Saints.  Yay guilty pleasure movies! The Departed is totally next.

9:41 PM: Skirt on, ZIPPER TIME! Achilles tendon burning from squatting while painting. Waiting for the paint to dry... still more to do! IT WAS A FIRE FIGHT!!!!!!

10:13 PM: I hate zippers. With a fiery passion. On to Moulin Rouge.  A singing Ewan McGregor will ease my ire.

11:08 PM: Phone call with MEEAH and hat draping.  I’m getting sleepy....

12:51 AM: Hat draping... eh.  Tiara, 90%. Regency Era dress, 80% -- fittable.  Reversible wrap dress, 30%. Need to finish this in the morning.  For now, four hours of sleep?

Overheard in the Nunnery

We call our dining room "The Nunnery."  Or, I do.  It is part one of our two part studio.  Emily works mainly in the Nunnery -- because sometimes she wishes she could just go to a nunnery and work.  My "section" is directly adjacent, and I have decided to call it, "The Asylum."  Take it either as a place for the insane or a safe harbor.

Anyways, EWH and I have had many conversations about how strange some of the things we say to each other are.  It always makes sense in context. This is the first of many attempts at archiving said phrases.  Our most oft-quoted line (to each other) goes as follows:  You can just put the seam allowance in the ass crack.

The gem of tonight:

Please, just don't show me that crotch stain.

Laundry Room Letters: Part Two

WIG WARS

The wig

Her opponent entered the arena, swathed in plastic, cradled in the hand of an attendant, three weeks prior.  She waited in anticipation, praying to the dearest God that it be easily tamed.  Not knowing what to expect, she braced herself as it revealed its frizzed glory.

Synthetic curls. How she loathes thee. How she fears thee.

Her experience with such curls has been mostly self-taught, all her tactics derived intuitively on her trip down Grand Stream.  Only, those curls were feminine, soft, rarely handled.  They acquiesced to her touch, becoming a friendly sparring partner rather than a full-blown enemy.  That hairpiece curled when coaxed, smoothed when sweet talked, and held form when forced.

This wigcap full of synthetic, long, dark ringlets mocks her from its perch.  It throws itself to the floor, over and over, mussing itself beyond recognition.  The curls balloon at the slightest touch or increase in humidity.  And these plastic strands tangle and tangle until they deteeth her only weapon: a comb.

I tamed the beast!

Gentleness is not an option.  The time has come. The wig has reached an atrocious point of frizziness.  Armed with only a comb, an unplugged curling iron (as the only curling apparatus in her artillery), an iron, and a blow dryer.  

Between heat, steam, and lots of pulling and swearing, the beast is tamed.  The curls gleam, and possibly look better than when it entered.  Our heroine might have developed carpal tunnel in the two-hour battle, but that’s another matter altogether.

Moral of the story: sometimes working wardrobe means teaching yourself new skills, such as maintaining synthetic hair.  Learn by doing.  End up with a completely new and useful skill set.

Second moral of the story: get a better comb next time.

Laundry Room Letters: Part 1

RECOLLECTING THE RAFT

On the River

I spent my first six weeks in Boston traveling up and down the Mississippi with the cast of Big River. My travails didn’t quite include runaway slaves and deceptive “dukes” and “kings”; I just found myself trying to steer through a cast of twenty-one’s laundry, tame the fake breast of the Nonesuch, and just make sure that the drier actually dried the clothes. (We were in a permanent tiff, that machine and I. We never resolved our differences.) Now, after four weeks off the raft, I can say that I still miss it – sweaty costumes and all.

I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to both Boston and professional theater. The cast and crew were warm and generous. To them I credit my lack of “I-want-to-go-back-to-college” pangs. Late laundry was met with “Oh, my pants are warm!” instead of impatience. I wasn’t ever craving hugs; and if I wanted one, they were freely given. I was able to pick the brains of the actors to try and build a vague understanding of the inner workings of the theater business. All in all, I learned more than I could have hoped for in the course of working that show. 

Putting on Kami's wig

Being the wardrobe supervisor isn’t the most glamorous job, but it’s a really good entry-level position into a theater. I occupy the grey area between performer and techie, which means I get to know both groups of people. I’ve also found that if you prove yourself to be an efficient and collected worker, people tend to trust you when you declare yourself “good” at something else. I am good at wardrobe. My training as a house chair definitely prepared me for the flurry of activity backstage, the last minute button pop-offs, and suspender breakage.

 I had more suspenders break on this show than – oh, I don’t have anything to compare it too. I just had a lot of broken suspenders. My solution (devised in a 15 lapse of backstage action during the Wilkes funeral scenes): tie-line fasteners. Worked like a charm. Can you tell I was proud of that one?

 This recollection is long overdue, and my heart longs for the cast and crew. Boys, we sure` did elegant.

Window Full of Dusty Tic-Tacs

There is an unopened “Big Pack” of green apple Tic-Tacs on the far-most windowsill in our kitchen, and I’m relatively certain that it has been there since I moved into this apartment over a year ago. I have no idea from whence they appeared, and I have never moved them other than to wonder at how they may have gotten there.

Don’t get me wrong, I like artificial flavoring and sweet-smelling breath as much as the next kid; it’s just that those Tic-Tacs, in their unopened and rather dusty state, have taken on a talisman-like quality in my life. I somehow feel that if they were opened (or GOD FORBID consumed), everything that I have going for me here would collapse into a kajillion pieces.

Now, lest this turn into a blog entry about my neuroses, let me get one thing straight. I’m not someone who is compulsively neat, or needs her things to be in a specific order, or places things, label out, into cabinets. I’m one messy, disorganized, tornado of a tiny person, and the idea of “things in their proper place” has never really sat well with me. HOWEVER. I feel as though those Tic-Tacs, in their spider-webby little window, are somehow important, because there’s no way that things could go this right for a slob like me without the interference of something magical.

That said, I still have a hard time believing that I do what I love every day. And while that might sound like the trite back end of the advice your grandmother gave you as a teenager, it’s true for me. I’m living the proverbial dream. My life of costume design and intermittent retail in the Greater Boston Area is unfailingly invigorating, challenging, and exciting, and I am so very, very, open-handedly grateful to the people and establishments that make that possible.

Because I am so fulfilled, and because I am so constantly working on what makes me happy, I am ultimately suspicious of the world that I live in. There MUST be trolls in the Orange Line, unicorns in the wooded areas of the Public Garden, and talking squirrels in Davis Square, because there’s an enchanted box of Tic-Tacs in my kitchen.

In all seriousness, I wake up most days and feel like a fraud, like someone earlier down the line got it all wrong, and none of this actually belongs to me. In a book I read recently, the author articulated that “the law of dreams [is to] keep moving”. This idea resonated with me because I have been feeling as though all of the opportunities I have been given are somehow unreal, yet in the concise way that dreams can sometimes be. Given that I am not dreaming, I am grateful to the world that lets me live this way. Given that I am, I had best keep moving, keep seeking opportunity, and keep allowing those ridiculously green breath mints to gather dust.

Doubleteaming

This is our life.  "Or," at Lyric Stage Company
Picture by Hannah Husband

Comfort Food

I don't know why, but I find it very soothing to come home and cook dinner, even after a week of tech.  I considered stopping for a burger on the way home, or ordering Chinese food -- but after six days of beige colored fast food eaten even faster than it is prepared, I was ready for 1) some color in my food. 2) some flavor.  So, I set to work in the kitchen.  Luckily, I cleaned all the dishes yesterday morning, so I didn't have to contend with a sink full of dirty dishes.

I rarely work from a recipe.  I know how to make a good deal of things -- it usually involves sauteed vegetables, a sauce of some kind, and a protein.  I've finally mastered white sauces, so I don't have to google it EVERY TIME.  Tonight, I made a dish I invented when I was thirteen.  Saueteed ground turkey with peas, over pasta, drowned in a white sauce.  I would make it every time my parents left me home alone for the night.  I decided to give it a little kick this time: I added Sriracha to the white sauce.

Exactly what I wanted.

I find that cooking with all four burners at once is a little like being backstage on a quick change show.  In fact, that's the show I am now working on: "Or," at The Lyric Stage Company.  I'm running wardrobe, and am in charge of getting all the quick changes to work.   Granted, there aren't as many as in some other plays - say, The Mystery of Irma Vepp.  But there are a couple that make my heart beat like I just finished a sprint.

One thing goes wrong and BAM, you've gotta pray that both you and the actor do the next one like nothing ever happened.  I have to make sure I prep every change.  Forgetting to do so would mean that we lose precious seconds.  I can't check out or walk away.  Kinda like using the entirety of the stove: lapse in judgement, and suddenly, my dinner is burned.

Ok.  It's a weak metaphor.  But I wanted to try.  Good news is, I didn't burn my dinner.  I'm settled into my second theater job.  I even got to eat dinner at the dining room table.  Because, of course, the silk is now in the kitchen.

"You're making a mess, little Gemini..."

If you were to look up into our second-floor apartment from the street right now, you would see a hulking female figure in the window.
My roommate and I are both 5 feet and change, and while I'm the bosoms in said relationship, I have nowhere near the magnificent rack that is now back-lit in my dining room.

...I made a fat-suit this week. And it (she?) is now atop my dressmaker's form in the midst of our dining room, which serves as our studio. I'm dressing this fat-suit in a purple seventeenth-century dress made from JoAnn Fabrics sari fabric (something else I'm in the process of creating). Why, why, you ask, would someone dress a fat-suit in something so ostentatious?
Well, the answer is simple.
THERE WERE FATTIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, TOO, KIDS.
And by that, I clearly mean, "It's for a play".
I am designing "Or,", a zany comedy about Aphra Behn and how she really liked spying and writing plays and having rambunctious, brainy sex with English royalty. And other people.
This fat-suit is for the character of her benefactress, and I think it's on stage for all of approximately 2.5 minutes, or 150 seconds.
But it's comic gold, those 150 seconds. And it's all about the fat-suit.

Elevator Personalities (and the obligatory first post)

What happens when you put two Geminis (born a day apart) in a Boston apartment with two sewing machines, two ironing boards, lots of floor space, and overlapping interests in theater, literature, and life?

A) A lot of projects, sewing and otherwise.
B) Too many stories, catchphrases, and "That's what she saids!" to count
C) A dining room so full of patterns and pretty fabric that we actually end up picnicking on the kitchen floor for about half our meals.
D) Books, books, and more books.

I'm the Gemini/Cancer half of our Gemini pair.  I haven't decided whether I want to be an actor or a designer.  All I do know is that I want to take up tap classes again really soon, and that I couldn't have asked for a better first month in Beantown.

I've been working wardrobe for the Lyric Stage Company's production of Big River.  A Twenty one person cast, with multiple costumes = lots of laundry, and many moment of light headedness from riding up and down in the Lyric elevators.  I should mention that the Lyric shares a building with YWCA and Hotel 140.  We also use the establishment's communal washers and dryers, located on the twelfth and fourteenth floors. I've made some "elevator friends" in my many trips up and down.

There's Smoky, an smarmy looking Italian who always gets on at the 10th floor and rides with me to 14.  His usual greeting is "I should have known it was you!"  He always smells like cigarettes, and I think there must be a balcony on floor 10 that offers easy smoking access.  Then, Sunny.  She lives on fourteen, like Smoky, and is a short, hispanic woman with glasses.  She speaks softly and energetically.  The second time I ran into her, I told her I was doing laundry for twenty one people.  Her response: God bless you.  IShe was holding a shopping bag full of yellow crysanthemums.  She collects them from the surrounding office buildings when the landscaping teams pull them out to change the flower beds.  She saves them, roots and all, and puts them in water.  While Smoky remembers me, I'm not sure that Sunny does.

The third elevator regular I run into must have been a jazz pianist in another life.  He wears Fedoras, white suits, and sunglasses inside.  His voice has a rasp to it both from too many cigarettes and from laughing about life a little too much.  I first met him the day one of the two elevators was down.  Everyone was waiting twice as long as usual, and on the ride down from fourteen, I swear we stopped on every floor.  Jazz Pianist was laughing up a storm, getting to know a little about everyone in the elevator.  When I said I worked in the theater, his big-toothed response was, "You're a star, ain'tcha? Ain't we all stars?"  I see him occasionally, always smiling, always in sunglasses.

These elevator characters are just minor additions to my adventures at the Lyric, which include epic battles with topstick, the ongoing tiff between me and the dryers, dressing the Nonesuch, tar and feathering sports commentary, and all the other everyday absurdities of working at a theater.  Too many stories to recall, but I know there will be more to come.

On the audition front, I have been to one audition for Avenue Q at the Lyric, and on Tuesday, I have an audition for Wild Swans at the A.R.T.   If someone had told me that within a month of being in Boston I would be going to auditions, I would have laughed. Laughed and laughed.  But, being in this city, around these wonderful, talented, people (including my roommate), has been invigorating. Why wait?  I'll never get cast by sitting around my apartment.

My consistent thought before falling asleep: I'm doing it.  I'm actually doing it.

I promised myself I would go to three auditions before December.  By Tuesday, I'll be two down.  One to go.  I'm doing it.  By God, I'm actually doing it.