This is Life

I have to get better at this blogging thing. I fully believe in the importance of documenting life, things that happen, and processing what goes on through free writing and reflection. When life gets busy, it becomes impossible to be able to comprehend the greatness and also the struggles. But I think that in order to maintain a clear head, a healthy heart, body, and mind, I need to spend some time processing it all. This has been a really tough semester, both in school work, and in life and what a better day than the day after Waggies to think back about it all and write.

First of all I need to talk about Goddess Wheel. It was a really wonderful experience. It's been hard for me to grasp it all because even though we spent so much time working on the show, it seemed to go so fast. I feel extremely lucky to have been part of that process. I learned so much and got to work with so many wonderful, talented, generous, kind hearted people. There was a great collaborative energy amongst  the cast, crew, and creative team. We turned into a giant family. It was beautiful and I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world.

Working on an original project is unlike any other process in this business. It gave me a different perspective on casting and how to work on a show. First of all, casting is always objective, and it's never personal. This isn't new information to me, but I was seeing it from a different angle and it had a whole new impact on how I think about it. Not to mention, it's always good to be reminded of the basics because they're important and there's a reason why they're called "the basics." Secondly, I will never work on a role the same way again. Before rehearsals began I did a lot of research and character pre-work at home. I started off the rehearsal process with a whole back story for my character, a movement profile for how my character would walk and stand and for a while I was determined to stay true to these predetermined qualities. But then I realized, that's not acting and I allowed my character to change. Once I made that decision to live in the unknown, everything got more exciting, more rewarding, and more fun. Especially when you're creating a character for the very first time, when nobody has ever played that character before, why not make some mistakes, go out of the box, and make discoveries. (Although you should be making mistakes and discoveries no matter what character you're playing - I was reminded of that old rule too). By the end, my character was a completely different person than the character I started out with. She had a different name and I brought more of me into it. There was a merging of Becky and Curvacius that I could play with every night and learn and grow from.

I also have a whole new respect for writers and lyricists. They have a really difficult job. They give us, actors, the materials to work with. We're only the secondary artists, writers and lyricists have to come up with the material themselves. I always knew that it takes a long time to write a musical and have a "finished product" (whatever 'finished' means) but I have a whole new understanding of that process now. And I hope that I'm lucky enough to be given the chance again one day to witness another pair of brilliant writers develop another new project. I give Matty Selman and Galt MacDermot a huge round of applause for the hard work they put into this piece. I also want to thank them tremendously from the bottom of my heart for allowing Rusty Curcio and the students of Wagner College Theater to bring their show to the stage. If it wasn't for them, none of us would have had this experience. I know I've given my thanks multiple times already, but I really can't say thank you enough.

Moving on, to audition days, and that's another difficult thing about theater. I closed one show on Sunday and two days later I was auditioning for next semester's main stage season. No time to think about anything, be sad that one experience was coming to an end, no time to process - a reason why I think this blog is so important. I was proud of my auditions for both Putting it Together and Legally Blonde. Regardless of how casting goes, I feel like I accomplished something. I've been sick all week, vomiting, headaches, congestion, possible fever, but Brian Patrick Murphy, the director for Legally Blonde doesn't believe in sickness and so I adopted that attitude and did my thing to the best of my ability in that moment. And that's where being thankful comes into play yet again. After my Putting it Together audition I realized that I would not have been able to get through that day if it hadn't been for everything I've learned these past two years in my performance classes. I've learned warm up exercises, audition techniques, I've been training my body to focus and live up to standards no matter how sick or tired I feel. That's where acting turns into a skill. I've always recognized that acting is an art, but this is where I begin to understand that it's a skill and a craft, as well as a business. It's in the craft, the skill, and the technique that allowed me to get through both my auditions and be proud of what I did. And now regardless of how casting goes, I can be proud that I put up a good fight when by body was just begging me to go to bed.

Last night was Waggies. It was fun and I just want to say this: I fucking love my class. We're cute, fun, good looking, and a really good group of people. I can't wait to continue to spend the next two years with you guys at Wagner!!