Work is it's own cure. You have to like it better than being loved. - Piercy

I'm doing a reading of Cymbeline with a company I've never worked with before: Shakespeare Saturdays.

I got the audition appointment at the last minute. A Shakespeare company I had worked with before sent out the notice to its email list, and I received it at almost midnight the night before the audition. I emailed the artistic director, and thank goodness for blackberry culture* sometimes, because she had checked her email and let me know I had the appointment before 11am.

I went to work (a children's birthday party in Westchester) and then flew down 87 to upper Manhattan. The audition was less structured than I was used to, and certainly less formal with some polite chitchat (email, facebook culture, headshots). I did my Shakespeare monologue (Desdemona), and she asked me to sing sixteen bars a capella and I went with the tune in my head "I Remember". She asked me to dance as I sang the second time, and it was so much fun and my voice was so much more resonant.

And I was cast! I was asked to sing The International Year of Astronomy Song (Up, Up in the Sky) for a Planetarium Lecture Series. And I'll be playing Guiderius in Cymbeline. Quite exciting.
The performance is on March 28th at 1pm.

Soon after I found out that a surprise party, my wedding shower, had been planned for the same time. I've always wanted a surprise party, but I also want to continue to do great theatre work and I had committed to this show. It was an obvious choice for me, and now the date's been rescheduled. Some family didn't understand- it's a major life event! it's a surprise! But the people who understand my passion understood.

I twittered about it, surprised and excited.
And then the other day, the same company asked me to perform in their concert. I was so tickled to have been asked. Until they told me the date: the same date as my wedding.
This was a no-brainer in the other direction. I couldn't cancel my wedding for a concert.

I'm sure that it's not always this easy. But this time, it was.

*Is the plural of the device "blackberries"? or would it be "blackberry's"? Notice my convenient rephrasing.

Year-In-Review

This year, I became quietly happy with what I am, realizing in a deep way that I could be no other. Perhaps Celine in "Before Sunrise" says it best:

If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Something large and new for me this year was realizing that there's hardly ever mastery, except in the demonstration of attempting something beautiful (either a play, something new, or some deep understanding). The act of doing is as vital as the act of the accomplishment. We have never made it, we have only begun to understand what making it would mean.

So while I have not succeeded in the sense that I am not solely supporting myself from my acting work, I have succeeded in that I have the freedom to explore and engage with what I really want to do. Every time I attempt, I succeed. That is really nice. And a new perspective.

This year, I kept working to make my theatre dream happen. I went on many auditions. I started a serious acting class. I applied to an actor training school and didn't get in. I spent half the year working on a play with a deliberately cruel director, something which I will never do again. I also professionally stage-managed an Equity reading (Virtuosa), was paid to help produce an original musical(Love, That Four Letter Word!), underwent trial by fire on how to run spotlight in a regional theatre (Westchester Broadway Dinner Theatre), directed in the Bad Musicals Festival (Virgin Dictator, on an impossible timeline and a budget of 0$), fundraised hundreds of dollars for charity with two concerts (one with The Artist's Crossing and some incredible Broadway Stars, the other with a friend's company (Group Therapy) on Long Island) and ended the year performing The Velveteen Rabbit in community theatre (Talegate Productions). In the last role, a young fan gave me a doll dressed as a bunny, which is currently decorating my very first Christmas tree (that's mine as an adult, in my house).

In 2009, I look forward to continuing my actor training, dancing and singing as much as possible and generally making magic happen. That musical theatre magic, where things wrap up with polite pithy sentences. Just before a song.

I intend to