Just Call Me Fairfax, Gwendolen Fairfax.

That's right, folks. Mission #2 accomplished. As of tonight, I have added another role to my resume, that of Miss Gwendolen Fairfax, the would be fiancee of John 'Jack' 'Ernest' Worthing, in the Stone's Throw Dinner Theatre production of The Importance of Being Ernest.

^_______^

The main reason I auditioned for Othello was to get my stage legs back under me before auditioning for Ernest. I cannot thank Paxton enough for including me in his show, and the same goes for Becki and Bill for casting me in theirs. Thank you all from the cockles of my heart and other pieces of it too.

The fact that I landed a major role is the icing on the cake, but the diabetes-inducing flowers that stain your teeth blue are working with Bob and Tom again! Bob is playing a major role as the lovely Cecily Cardew. Tom will be wooing a lady of his own as Dr. Frederick Chasuble. Watch out world, Bob, Tom, and Pesh ride again! I wonder if Becki knows what she's in for.... She must. She even invited my most favorite chew toy, Geeb, to paint the set.

I love this troupe.

Everyone should start placing bets now on how many bald patches Bob and I will acquire in this production. We will only have three and a half weeks to rehearse, and I can't wait!

In other fantabulous news that warrants a complimentary ear-fuddling, the Geeb is celebrating the release of her first novel tomorrow!

Yea! And the crowd goes wild! Right before they run away to read their dirty novels in private! Woohoo!

That's right folks, pick up your e-copy of My Gigolo: The Care and Feeding of a Male Prostitute at Samhain Publishing. I know I will. I'd better see you in line. Elbows will be nibbled should you fail in this mission. You won't like it when I nibble your elbows. I drool. And I nibble at an angle that will make said drool run into your armpit. Just buy the book and save us all some moisture.

On a final note of good news, tornadoes didn't eat the theatre tonight!

I'd say this was a good day.

Watch out, Ricky, I'm one toe closer to kicking down the doors of your casting calls.

In honor of Geeb's finest hour to date, I present a song.

And for the purists, a less silly version.

Cue the brainy stuff!

"Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally." ~David Frost

Edit: My cat just tried to eat my hair. Just thought you should know. There will be a test over the matter.

Ah, Direction!

Paxton was unable to join us for rehearsal tonight, so he left us in Raven Micale's capable hands. Talk about a change. Paxton sees the production as a collaboration of artists. For the most part, he leaves us to our own interpretations of the script. He lets us ad lib and edit as we generally see fit. Raven is totally hands on. She seeks the motivations behind the characters and dunks the actors' heads in buckets of emotion. Paxton is fantastically relaxed in his approach, which makes working with him very easy. Raven has a vision and makes sure every actor's brush complements and flows with all the other strokes coming into play.

As an actress newly returned to the stage after a decade-long hiatus, I have to say I prefer Raven's approach. Her direction and insight have swept away a lot of the doubt and second-guessing I tend to do when left to my own devices. She made suggestions that I never would have thought of and they just feel right. The lines and emotions are more comfortable and it radiates through the production. I find myself clinging to such guidance as I find and strengthen my stage legs.

Raven reminds me a lot of one of my most influential mentors, a coworker named Patty. Patty was blunt, honest, and one of the most deeply caring women I've ever known. She could force feed you the most jagged nuggets of truth in a way that not only made them go down, but also grew sweeter after the bitter shells melted.

Raven also told me she thinks I have talent, which means so much coming from someone who has been in the biz for years. The frog that crept into my throat at those words also clung to the observation she made that has been told to me many times throughout my life, I need to trust myself. It's true. My confidence is crap. It's getting better. I can join a new group of people like I've always known them, but I still require constant validation of my own ideas. I hope joining this troupe has set me on the road to correcting that detrimental flaw.

This entry is sorely lacking my usual dosage of fruit.

Mangoes.

Meh, that's only marginally better.

Ooh! Bob's going to prom tomorrow night! Remember, Bob, keep your knees together! Wow, that sounded dirty. Really, I only meant that she should keep her knees together when she's dancing. Vertically. On the dance floor. With chaperones. Not with chaperones. Dancing vertically with chaperones watching. Wait. Crap. Bob is going to dance alone with her knees together while the chaperones watch.

Oi.

Bob, if you must go to prom, make sure the chaperones at least give you tips. I mean money! Not advice! If the chaperones are going to watch, they should at least pay, not tell you what to do. This is all going very badly.

Bob, just have fun, and dance with your legs crossed and your Everlast securely locked. (All joking aside, Bob's a dear and would never do anything to jeopardize her future for something so silly as a boy and hormones, or else Duh Pesh will pinch her ankles.)

Song!

Wisdom!

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ~Attributed to Howard Thurman

Progress!

I realized this afternoon that as of last night, I have made more blog entries since my return to Theatre than I did in the years spanning 2005-2009. I think this means I'm on the right track. I'm interested in my own existence again. I enjoy writing, I really do, but it's not my passion. It excites me, but it doesn't make my heart sing, more like a jaunty hum. Incidentally, since I've returned to acting, I've had more ideas churning in my head than I've had in a long time. Geeb and I are finding a collaborative dynamic that is going to take us to exciting places creatively, maybe even physically. (If our script gets rejected on the local circuit, I say we film a bit and hop a plane to London. ^_~)

Anyhoo, back to the real topic of tonight's post. Leave it to me to start with a tangent. Okay, back on track! Roland, another narrator for the play, expressed his discomfort with Bob and me wearing knickers if we were to be women. He took it up with Paxton, and together, we convinced him that Bob and I should be presented as men or wear dresses. Thankfully, Roland has been issued a mission to check with the troupe in Lamar for possible dresses, or we may approach the Joplin troupe for some loaners. This pleases me. I don't mind playing a male, but I am a woman, and it would be nice to feel pretty for my comeback show.

Now for your regularly scheduled glimpse into my psyche with a song. Don't stare directly into the psyche, you'll be sorry. And you'll have those green blobs blurring your vision for a few minutes. If you must stare into the psyche, please avoid doing so while driving.

And a closing thought for the day: "If the light in your life has changed to yellow, I recommend you floor it. It's safer than the alternative." ~Will Rogers

(I didn't pick the driving-related quote because of my psyche-related rambling. It was just a happy accident that I noticed when I was half-way through typing the quote. See? I told you I'm on the right track.)

So Tired....

I'm tired, but in a good way. I'm pouring all my reserves, and most of my evening hours into something that I love. I would rather die on stage than rot in living flesh at my desk. Poor Geeb is feeling the hours burn away too. Between working nights and juggling life during the day and heaping in a dose of chronic insomnia, it's a wonder she's not rocking herself in the corner of a padded room. Though, I'm not entirely sure what she does with her off hours....

Both of us are riding waves of creativity. We're working on a collaborative project with the determination to start reaching for something better, perhaps even bigger than sane folks should dare to dream. Sanity has always been a forgone conclusion for us, so why not take the bet? We, like so many living in our town, or any small town for that matter, have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Once again, I am listening to this beautiful piece, but I like to keep things changing, so try this track on for size. (Thanks, Bob, for inspiring tonight's choice with your Cheap Trick t-shirt.)

Tonight's quote comes from The Office, and it is the other half of my top two mantras. I like to spout this one when I'm trying to get my loved ones off their asses. Dawn said, "Tim's advice is that it is better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than half way up one you don't." Too true.

And since I'm not a properly obsessed fangirl if I don't mention him at least once every couple entries: RICKY GERVAIS!

That is all.

Costumes!

Tonight we listened to some excerpts of various performances of Othello throughout history. One in particular gave everyone goose bumps, which is why I'm convinced that Iago belongs in the top three of everyone's 'Best Villain Ever' list. You know you have such a list. Don't lie. You'll never be as good at it as the characters on the list that you know you have because you're a nerd.

We also spent the majority of the evening trying on costumes from the theatre's stock. I pushed for Bob and me to wear dresses. Bob's a girl. A biological girl, not a post-op girl. She'd be very at home in a dress. Without practice.

Anyhoo, I pushed for us to wear dresses as I'm fairly certain women did not wear pants of any variety in the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, due to a lack of resources, and the strain it would place on our brave seamstress--Bob's mom, and no, she didn't pick the name--we settled for tunics and either knickers or hose. I got a good puffy shirt, and I like my tunic, especially since it seems to have belonged to a bad stripper in its past life.

What? Lewd things make me smile.

This tunic was strange in that it had a pleated skirt attached at the waist, with Velcro. It would be easy enough to remove, but the Velcro runs the circumference of the tunic, and you have to step out of the skirt after all that detaching. It could be done in a lewd manner, but I doubt the tips would be worth the effort. It's a costume that would belong to the stripper waiting in the parking lot to clean your windshield as you try to leave.

How was that for a tangent?

How is this for a song? Yes, it's a song from a video game, but it's both beautiful, strange, and fun for inspiring action scenes. I figure I have strange covered tonight, so let's keep the theme going, shall we?

On a final tangent, I've been putting a lot into my self-motivation lately as I've come to realize how little was handed to me in the formative years of my confidence, quite the opposite actually. I've started collecting quotes that make me want to get off my ass, no matter what the outcome. I've decided that even if I fall down the stairs of my dreams and rip off my face, rupture my tongue, skin my knees, and twist my toenails, it will all be worth it just knowing I tried. I will NOT wake up on my sixtieth birthday and take a double-barrel dose of iron when I realize that the only person who let my dream die was me. Though, if I twist my toenails, I might consider getting comfy with that explosive antidote. Side effects be damned.

Ahem, the quote (this one has become my mantra):
"Chase down your passion like it's the last bus of the night."
~ Terri Guillemets