70 degrees in December

It's a constant shock to me to go outside and find that I don't need a coat... in December! But that's what you get for living in Texas, I suppose. Four months into my life here, and I'm still loving it, and not least the (lack of inclement) weather! At this point I feel about the New England winter about the same way I imagine it feels to be a grandparent: I'm happy that I get to go visit for a few weeks, but then I get to leave, and that's a wonderful thing! And visit we will, very soon in fact. I'm very much looking forward to seeing our east coast friends and relatives, and it's nice not to have to cross an ocean to get to them.

I'm still working at Austin Market Research, and for now it's really the perfect job for me. (The Christmas Tree lights job fell through, and the haunted house ended when October did.) I have never once dreaded going in to work, and that means a lot, I think. My co-workers are definitely the reason it's so wonderful. There's an unspoken but always observed rule that no-one is allowed to be down and grumpy, which is great: commiseration is offered and then cheering-up administered, and the general atmosphere is one of camaraderie and laid back-ness. One of my co-workers calls AMR "the island of misfits": everyone is their own special brand of bizarre, which is, I think, why I fit in so well there. :)

In terms of creative work, I'm lucky enough to be currently involved in two fabulous projects. The Penis Vagina dialogues fell through, but I'm still directing The Blackwell Family Funeral in January. I found five wonderful actors, and have been working with them over the past few weeks to create a short piece that will be, I hope, simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking. The piece will be entered in the short fringe part of Fronterafest, a yearly showcase for new work in Austin. There's a guarantee of one performance, with the possibilities of others if the show is well-liked. While of course I'm hoping to get more than one performance, I'm also just happy to be making theater. It's very different to work with non-LISPA actors, and doing this show has made me realize just how valuable the LISPA training is, and how much I miss working with other Lispians. But ultimately I think the Austin actors bring their own brand of awesome to the work, and I'm sure we'll end up with something fun and interesting.

The other show I'm in is entitled "Air," and I was cast as a dancer/aerialist, which is really exciting. We're still workshopping it at the moment, but it looks like it's going to be a pretty spectacular show. The character I'm exploring at the moment is a Harpy, and I'll most likely get to do a lot of dancing, hopefully some aerials, and perhaps some juggling. It's a really fun cast and great director, and it runs from February through to April (phew!), so if anyone wants to come on out here and see it let me know! I'll buy you a breakfast taco. ;)

Torment

For those of you who are wondering what the heck it means when I say I work at a haunted house, here's your answer!

http://abcnews.go.com/OnCampus/video/peek-inside-house-torment-11851752

I'm the bent-over one with the bonnet. :D

Scariness

In the tradition of blogging about the bizarre things I do, here's a bit of a more in-depth look at House of Torment!

There's two parts to House of Torment, and I work in what I consider to be the cooler part. The actual House of Torment is basically a series of rooms where you walk through and people wearing strange and disturbing costumes (convict clown, anyone?) run up to you and yell "boo" (I mean, it's better than that, but that's the concept). The part I'm in, which is called "Nightmare Mansion," is more of a theatrical show, with characters and a plot (sort of). It's still a traditional haunted house that you walk through while people scare you, but there are various characters ranging from the Doctor himself to "transformations," actors spray painted in white and wearing feathers, horns, etc. who are supposed to be the disgusting and pitiable results of the doctor's experiments. The "haunt" itself is exquisitely done: think any haunted house you've been to, then multiply by about 100. There's a room you walk through on a raised platform while the room itself rocks back and forth, thrusting rotted corpses in your face, the aforementioned claustrophobia tunnel, a room built on about a 30-degree angle that you walk around with the help of handrails, a mirror maze... it's a really amazing construction. Our costumes help too: mine is an old-fashioned nursemaid's uniform, complete with bonnet, that's been ripped, spattered with latex and stones (to simulate vomit/guts) and blood, and generally made into a horrifying thing to look at. And wear, for that matter... it's friggin' hot in there, and the bonnet acts just like a set of blinkers. There's a vomit-spattered child, her twin brother, the transformations with their feathers and white body paint, and my favorite, the "uncle," who wears a diaper and a top hat, both smeared with various unnameable substances. We also wear pretty terrifying make-up. Most of the other actors use on their faces and bodies the same mixture of latex and stones spattered with theatrical blood that is used on the costumes, this time to simulate rotting wounds. My make-up is your typical creepy old-lady get-up, and I'm getting pretty good at putting it on myself. Some of us also wear contacts, the kind that make your eyes all weird. The best belong to Fiona, who's the director of Nightmare Mansion: she has these huge black ones that make her look like she has insect eyes. I wear one white contact over the contacts I use to see, both as a creepy fashion statement and because I lost the other one the second day I had them.

And after all that, all that's lacking are the people, and boy do they not lack on the weekends. We get thousands on a busy night, all looking for a good scare, some drunk or high on various substances, most just scared out of their brains. It's great fun, everyone seems to enjoy it, and overall it's one of the most exhausting and interesting jobs I've ever had. Muahahahahaha......

Plenty to do in Austin, TX

By my calculations, it's been about two months since I arrived in Austin, and a busy and fruitful two months it has been! I've found so much to do that I will have to break it down by categories somehow... here goes!

Past theatrical glory: Raped Clarity, the play I mentioned in my last post, was a great experience, well-received by the relatively small audiences, very powerful and lots of fun. I met some wonderful folks who I hope to work with again in the future, got to wear lots of fun hippie clothes, and got a really great play under my belt to start me off on a dazzling theatrical and film career in Austin! (knock on wood, of course)

Ongoing exercise in rejection: I've been auditioning for lots of student project at UT Austin, which is a great way to build a reel (without getting paid of course). Unfortunately I haven't been cast in any yet, but I'll keep trying and something will probably turn up sooner or later.

Present lucrative opportunities: I now have three (yes, three!) part time flexible/seasonal jobs, which I'll list in order of ridiculosity. Least ridiculous is a job my cast-mate got me at Austin Market Research. It's very much like the job I had at Synovate, except better: less phone-abuse, friendlier co-workers, more flexible hours. Not too shabby. Slightly more ridiculous job is working for a company that installs Christmas tree lights on people's houses. My job is basically to go to the house of a potential customer, find out what they want to do, tell them how many hundreds of dollars it's going to take, and get the check (10 percent of which comes to me!). That should occupy most of November. And the most ridiculous job is working at one of the most acclaimed haunted houses in the country, House of Torment. I'm in the theatrical part of the "haunt," as they call it, and I get to play a creepy old nursemaid who ushers you into a terrifying tunnel made of inflated air bags that you have to push your way through, kind of like a giant vagina. Perks of the job include half-price creepy white contacts (Marilyn Manson style), breaks on the roof, and awesome co-workers. Apparently in mid to late October we'll be getting 5-7,000 visitors a night, so I'm bracing myself for a tough couple of weeks. Fun fun fun!

Future directing opportunities: I'm entering a show in Fronterafest, Austin's fringe theater festival, in January, so that will be an adventure starting in November or so. It'll be a spin-off/continuation of the Two Cardboard Boxes saga, currently entitled The Blackwell Family Funeral. I'm excited/extremely scared about it, should be awesome. I've also been chosen to co-direct a show called The Penis Vagina Dialogues, which has its first round of auditions tonight. The main director is a mellow Californian by the name of Damiian with lots of theatrical experience and an open mind, I think I have a lot to learn from him. It should be a great process, with lots of interesting stories, needless to say.

And that's about it! Roger and I are happily engaged in being domestic, fostering an addiction to Chipotle, commuting together occasionally, and other cute coupley things. My current personal addictions include Dr. Who and cooking things like homemade roasted-pepper salsa and nut-free pesto. So basically, to sum it all up, life is very good right now, Austin rocks, and I hope you come visit us sometime! :)

Settling in Austin

Ahhhh, finally settling down in Austin! After many happy farewells in London and a very long plane ride, I disembarked in Austin on the 5th of August, only to set out four days later with Roger on a whirlwind trip to Boston, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and Wilkes-Barre. Highlights included celebrating the lives of our predecessors with the Wright clan, salt water taffy on the boardwalk with the Mausner clan, chillin' with the iguanas and their humans in Philly, and the best pizza on earth and waaaay too much Wii in Wilkes-Barre. And now here I am, back in Austin and getting things going!

I was worried about not finding things to do in Austin, but thankfully that worry had no basis: after a frantic day in which I sent out about 20 e-mails applying for jobs, auditions, etc, I find myself cast in a play that goes up the second week of September and runs for two weekends, and I have auditions for two more plays this coming weekend as well as "Unified Auditions," which people from most of the big theater and film companies in Austin will audit. The play I'm currently in rehearsal for is a drama about a woman who gets raped. I'm the "unconventional therapist" who falls in love with her patient. I was brought in this past Sunday to replace an actress who dropped out, so I've definitely been thrown into the deep end. Thankfully, I'm good at learning lines quickly. It's a really fun, well-written play, the cast and crew are a hoot, and it's a really great introduction to the Austin theater scene.

And now what you've all been waiting for... my final project at LISPA, or gosh, you could even call it my Masters Thesis! I'm keeping the youtube link unlisted at the request of the actors, and therefore won't be posting the actual link here (public forum and all), but I'm going to send the link in an e-mail to everyone I can think of who might be reading this/interested. If I forget you, just shoot me an e-mail and I'll send it right along (with my sincerest apologies, of course). Love to you all, have a happy fall!

A treat for you all

Check out one of the fruits of my labors at LISPA, now on youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFDEZFjgGb8

Mistress of Fine Arts at last!

Here I am, writing from my discombobulated room, my MFA safe in a suitcase, clown nose ready to be packed up, two nights before leaving London. And... where did those two years go?

We had a beautiful graduation ceremony on Friday, lots of crying and laughing and memories, a wonderful ritual concocted by the first-years (no, they're second years now... what???), and 16 whole chickens purchased from Tesco by the teachers for our international smorgasbord potluck send-off feast. It was a very intense day following a very intense term, and therefore I was (and still am) pretty much exhausted. It's been very nice to get some rest at last.

Working backwards... the last thing we did this term was our personal projects, which meant that all 34 of us got space and time (about 18 hours of it) to put together our own projects. The provocation was "Anything is possible." The projects were incredibly diverse, ranging from solo pieces to one that briefly included the entire class. There was dance, theater, and everything in between, and it was very inspiring to see the individual voices of my beloved classmates emerge. I acted/danced in two pieces, and did the sound for five others, plus coordinated the sound for the whole class, which got to be quite stressful near the end, needless to say. And on top of this was, of course, my own project, which was a dark comedy/gestural dance entitled Two Cardboard Boxes. Basically, there are parents who are obsessed with each other (to the exclusion of everything else, including their children). Said children find themselves some years later with lots of resentment and their parents' cremains in cardboard boxes, and are faced with the dilemma of what to do with them. It went over very well, and I'm very pleased to have begun to explore the strange universe that opened up first with my goth girl character, and now this piece. It's nothing like what I thought my interest would be when I started: so much the better!

Still working backwards, I got an amazing opportunity about a month ago to go to the BE festival in Birmingham, which is a fledgling physical theater festival run by the friends of a classmate of mine. I went as a musician for the Spanish melodrama (which meant that I was involved in all of the melodramas as musician at one point or another!), and saw some really great theater, met other artists, and had an overall really great time. It was really inspiring to see such a huge amount of creativity converge in one place: definitely worth all the hard work and extra rehearsals required to get there.

Before that, we did the final presentations as a class, which were a kind of "best-of" of the year. We had four nights of work, with the serious pieces (platforms, melodramas, etc.) in the first half and the comic pieces in the second half. I got to perform an acrobatic routine with Peep (my clown) and a chair on two of the four nights, and it was really fun! Definitely inspired me to get back into doing circus.

And that takes us back to the break, which was really wonderful. I spent it with my mother and Roger in Crete visiting Nikos and Emmanouela, and then Germany with Hilde, Andrea and Sebastian. It was wonderful to stock up on rest and relaxation with such wonderful people before the nine weeks of slogging that lay ahead. In retrospect, it was one of the nicest breaks I had during my whole time here.

I think that just about catches us up! Next up is a nice long plane ride to Austin, some time visiting family and friends, then back to my new home in Texas! It's kind of scary suddenly not having a set purpose in life, but I'm going to try and see it as an adventure. I will definitely miss London, its amazing public transit, intelligent television, the theater scene, and of course the incredible international community that is LISPA. But new things await, and as always I will try to keep y'all (yes, ya'll... Texas here I come!) updated about the goings on. Until next time!

Bring on the funny!

We're in funny-land now! After a blissful break in Austin, which involved lots of good food, furniture-purchasing, quality relationship time, and general happiness, I'm back at LISPA trying (desperately?) to get some laughs.

We started the term off as children, which involved wearing ridiculous clothing and playing even more ridiculous games. We then moved on to grotesque creatures, who had strange bodies made of tights and stuffing, cardboard, duct tape, and other supernatural materials, and who came from other worlds and were therefore very confused about all the crazy things that happen here. Next was social grotesque, or "pouring acid on the head of the high-ups": my group decided to make fun of technological addiction, so we were a group of teenagers at a rehab center, learning things like how to make eye contact and not answer a ringing phone. My character was a goth, and boy did I have fun with it! And now we've moved on to clown, which I've basically been waiting for for a year and a half. Each of us got to go to "the dead zone", where you stand in front of the class wearing a clown nose and do "nothing". It's absolutely terrifying, and inevitably something comes up (usually the last thing you expect), and there's a clown! My current clown is extremely shy, ultra-sensitive, and easily scared: she wears rainbow wellies, huge blue trousers, a tiny black shirt with a technicolor Tinkerbell on it, and a rainbow earflap hat. Her name is Peep. We're also exploring cabaret, and the outrageous, for which I'm planning to return to the goth character and explore what happens when she's asked to be the godmother to a baby. I've already purchased a baby doll and made some fake blood. ;)

And that's the term so far! I'm really having a lot of fun with the comic territories, more than I thought I would actually. It's also a lot of hard work, since comedy is probably the most difficult territory due to its demand for precise timing and control. There's a reason why we do it last. It's also mind blowing to realize that there's only a week and a half of classes left! The last two weeks of this term are devoted to rehearsing for our final presentation of the term, and then next term we pull together a "best of" for our public presentation, and then the last month or so is devoted to our final individual projects. Crazy how time flies! I'm happy with the work we're doing now, looking forward to the various final presentations, and also looking forward to Austin. Life is good! :D

I'm so tired...

It's the end of term 2, and boy am I exhausted. We've been working extremely hard to pull together an in-house presentation for the first-years, with our melodramas and various chorus pieces we've worked on over the course of the term. I'm in three pieces, two melodramas as musician and a big chorus that supports an excerpt from Mein Kampf.

I guess I should explain exactly what these territories are. Melodrama, or epic story, is about the struggle of an individual to make a difficult choice against a background of political and/or social upheaval. I'm still involved in the post-WWII story about a womens' de-Nazification camp, and I'm also doing the music for a group that's dealing with a strike and subsequent fatal collapse of a mine in the southern US. I really like being the musician, and I think I'm good at it: being a foley artist is lots of fun, and it requires a precise timing that's really gratifying when you get it right. These pieces have required the most "standard" theater approach that we've used so far at LISPA, that is having actors, a director, writers, etc., and it's been interesting going back to such a segmented approach after having devised freely for so long. It's hard to tell whether either or both of these pieces will "work", since we radically changed the structure of one piece today (two days before the presentation) and I haven't had a chance to rehearse with the other group yet. We'll see how that goes.

The choruses are really interesting as well, and I'm really excited about the one I'm in, which really goes to the dark place that dealing with Hitler requires. We have dim light, shadows on the wall, blood, dismemberment, stomping ritual circles, and more: it's one of those pieces that is (I hope) deeply discomforting to watch and really really fun to do.

I'm flying to Texas on Saturday morning, but at this point that flight feels like it will never come. LISPA is all-consuming, and my classmates and I are running on fumes toward the finish line. Wish us luck!

Term II: my un-melodramatic adventures in un-tragedy

We're in the territory of melodrama (where you try to make the audience cry), fast approaching tragedy, and (surprisingly perhaps) I feel great! For some reason, constructing and playing these sad things is a lot more fun than it sounds. I'm currently part of a piece about the "silence camps" run by the Russians after WWII, where they tried to "de-nazify" the Nazis. One of my group-mates had a great-aunt that was actually in one of these camps, and we're working with a highly fictionalized version of that story. I get to be the musician, which means I'm get to move gravel around in a box with a spoon to make the sound of grave-digging, and also play (hopefully) heart-rending tunes on my classmate's violin. I picked up that instrument for the first time in about eight years with much apprehension, but I'm re-discovering a kind of love for it. I wish you could all see our piece, I think it's going to be quite good.

In domestic news, the new apartment continues to be absolutely wonderful, especially now that we have a shower curtain! I also signed up to receive organic fruit and vegetable boxes every week, and it's really nice to get carrots that still have the dirt on them, and strange vegetables like fennel that force me to broaden my palate. My housemates are wonderful, and I can utter a genuine sigh of relief getting home to my cosy little room. It's heavenly.

Tonight I saw a play by the master director Peter Brook, and it was a good opportunity to reflect on how much I've learned over the past year and a half. When I first got to London and started seeing shows, I had a vague notion if any of what was good and bad in theater, and no real sense of how to describe what I liked or didn't like, or why. Now, I'm able to look at a work, and not only comment on it, but describe the particular things that didn't work, and even think of ways that they could be made better. In a program that prides itself on constantly pushing the limits of what we can do, it's easy to lose sight of how far we've come, and it's nice to have a reminder now and then.

(In case you were wondering, the Peter Brook piece was beautifully staged, and the actors all had good presence, but the rhythm was very flat, and a lot was explained that, I think, should have been shown through action. Plus the story wasn't interesting on a gut level. But that's just my opinion.)

On the threshold of term 2

Tomorrow I start the second term of my second year of LISPA, which will be an adventure. I'll write about that when it happens.

Today, I'm looking back on the break I just had at home, which was one of the happiest times of the past few years. It was really nice to see family and friends, work just enough that I didn't feel guilty for not doing anything productive, knit things for loved ones and their loved ones, and of course spend time with my dear fellow coot-partner. It was also nice to be home, fall back into old patterns, and yet not feel like I was falling back into my old self. I got to cook for my family, watch way too much Gilmore Girls, wander around Boston in the freezing cold, see my grandfather, eat out at my favorite restaurants, play board games with everyone, and much more, all with a sense of being in the right place at the right time, utterly content. I would stay in that break forever if I could.

But all good things end, so here I am, back in London, fortunately in a lovely apartment with lovely housemates. I spent the better part of yesterday decorating my rooms, driving myriad nails into the walls, which is definitely not allowed on our lease (massive spackle attack in like 7 months!), and now it really feels like home again.

Today I saw Avatar and really liked it. The plot was Pocahontas with blue folks (no really: http://www.buzzfeed.com/reddit/james-camerons-pocohontas-err-avatar), not really worth mentioning, but my goodness, the world they created is phenomenal! So much bioluminescence... If you can see it in IMAX 3D, do: this is one of the first movies in a long time where I would have been willing to spend the 15 bucks to see it in the best possible quality. The only thing I wished they'd done differently was that the Na'vi were pretty clearly human beings, elongated and painted blue with some cat features. I would have loved to see what they would have looked like if they'd actually been back-engineered (not the right word, but you get the idea) from actual big cats, like as if the sentient beings on this planet had evolved not from monkeys but from cats. That would have been cool.

And then I went home and butchered a raw chicken for the first time. I kind of thought it would be harder than it was, and I'm definitely doing this from now on. I mean, a whole small chicken costs around 3 pounds or less, and if you want an equivalent amount of meat pre-packaged, it would probably run you about 5 or 6 pounds. Incredible.

And now I'm off to find a recipe for something decadent and chocolate that goes with raspberries. Don't you all wish you were visiting me in London? ;)