Just One Step

I know...I should be severely beaten for letting the blog go to sleep, but life on the TheatreWorks road has been long, exhausting, time consuming, and rewarding.

I can see the end of the road with the last show approaching this Wednesday. I will wait until then to post my after thoughts on the whole experience (and that sounds ominous but reads exactly as written with no entendre).

However, I do have a spot of good news to announce. This week has been the craziest week I have had in NY so far (including the week I went on three auditions a day like a mad man).

So late last week I got an e-mail from a composer I worked with in A New Brain (Tim Rosser). He played in the pit for the show and I later saw and loved his material at the end-of-year BMI performance about 6 months ago. So I was thrilled when he asked me to come in sing a song for the project he is working for this year.

The trick was finding a way to get from York, PA (the then show location) to New York for the performance and then back again for the next day's show. Easy. Done. Rent a car.

Thank god for the last two weeks being local because I was around to meet him for a rehearsal. Loved the song and just love his music in general.

I got a bonus when a fellow actress with whom I shot The Stoop, and who works as a casting director part-time, called me about a great opportunity for The Culture Project. Serendipitously, the audition was on the same day as the BMI bit. Thank you, oh gods of the stage...

So the week went as follows:

1) Woke up early Tuesday morning to pick up the rental car at which point I was told I could not rent the car because I did not have a credit card not attached to a bank account. Who the hell does that? They would not even let me pay with cash. Huh??? Some clever planning netted me a back up plan which worked well.

2) Got to NY at 1:54. Got home at 2:02. Got situated, dressed and ready to go by 2:32. Hit my audition at 3:15 with 15 minutes to spare. Met the director, did my sides, got some direction, did em' again, and off I went.

3) Headed uptown to rehearse at 4:30. Learned a new section. Lost an old section. Went over the lines before the song. Went to the BMI space by 5:30. Did it. Left to head back home to then head back to York.

4) Checked a missed call message and the CD wanted me to come in and meet with the writer because the director loved me (props to ye stage deities again). But...too much time had passed. After some calling backs and some schedule finagling, I got something set for the following day when I would be back in the city.

5) Went home, re-packed and headed back to York.

The callback got rescheduled the followin day to the day after, which gave me a day to breathe and look over the sides a little more. Thursday, I went to the callback, met with the writer George Packer, whose work I love. Audition felt odd and off and I could not find myself. I do much better at cold auditions than when I have time to mull over the sides and overthink them (a product of my over-education). Found out about a rehearsal for a demo song for a composer friend of mine, Jeffrey Campos, whose music I also love. So headed over there after the callback and sang through the material.

Missed another call...but this time...it was fan-friggin-tastic news. I booked the show!!!

The show is called Betrayed and will run after the first of the year. It is the first full-length play I am doing since arriving in NY in February (hard to believe it has still been less than a year) and the first play in a long time. I love the piece it is based on, I love the issues, I love the voice, the non-preachy message. I am just looking forward to kicking the shit out of the material and working with the amazing directing staff.

There is some other great stuff attached with the project but nothing I can definitively talk about. Sufficed to say that if the fates are kind, the project could explode into something bigger.

So, I am thankful, to say the least, for this next job (God, I hate calling them that) and looking forward to the next step I will take on this path.

Sidenote: How proud am I of a high school friend, David Blue, for finally being recognized and landing a recurring role on Ugly Betty as Cliff? Nearly fell off my chair when I saw him on TV, but just beamed afterwards.

And now to catch up on some reality TV and sleep.