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

We Have A Director!

Our director, Paxton Williams, has returned from Illinois to reclaim the helm of our little production. I'm still getting to know him, but he is genuinely committed to the wellbeing of the show, and is totally open to input from the cast. He accepted all my suggested changes to the script, after careful consideration of course; he is after all, in charge.

As a cast, we are continuing to bond, and we are bonding very well. Paxton also shared some news with us tonight. A Shakespeare appreciation group will be attending our show (probably opening night), and has invited the cast to a fete after the show. I'll gloat more as I get more details.

Until then, enjoy a lovely piece. The subject of my current obsession, and my thespian hero, Ricky Gervais used this music in his latest work, Cemetery Junction. It is one of the most beautiful pieces I've ever heard.

Oooh! Bonus track! I had to sing along to this one with the windows down on my way to rehearsal. I think it's written in physics. You cannot remain silent during this track. It is physically impossible. You will rupture a testicle if you try to resist. If you don't personally own a set of testicles, someone else's will rupture. Why would you do that to someone? Sing, dammit! Louder! And don't miss the high note. ^_^

Whew! Plugs galore! No leaks in this entry!

Another Read Through

The cast is really starting to mesh. We spent this evening doing another read through mixed with cutting up and easy laughter. We even started keeping a half-assed tally of missed cues, strictly for harassment purposes of course. Geeb's suggestion to change my character's name from Christobel to MacBeth purely for the sake of me spilling my dessert and shouting, "Out damn spot!" was a hit, but I'm not so sure the director will go for it. I suppose we'll find out Sunday.

And because I heard this on the radio to the joy of one DJ and the dismay of his partner, a song!

Revised Script

We got our newly revised, beefier scripts tonight. No, they were not smeared with hamburger grease. It was turkey broth. The facts are important here if nowhere else, as my idol, Mr. Gervais, is finding in the April 2010 "Week one hundred and thirteen" entry on his blog. You'll find he is quite eloquent in his take on the subject. No one can cuss like the English. Well, I suppose you can, but without the accent, it sounds so...uncouth. Keep fighting the good fight, Ricky.

Wow, that was a tangent. Anyhoo, back on topic. With this rewrite, I now have one of the best lines in the entire play: We only know what we think we know, and we don't know what we don't know. And we may not really know what we think we know.

The line speaks to me on an intimate level of nuts. I love it.

Speaking of nuts...Song!

(What? One might say my taste in music is eclectic. I think eccentric may be more accurate, but overall, I prefer schizophrenic. Or else.)

First Read Through

Not a lot to report. We had our first read through tonight. The cast already seems to be meshing really well. We discussed some possible changes to the script, and the director gave us an idea of how the stage will look. Basic stuff, but it's exciting.

For tonight's musical selection, a number I performed to in Mr. Eden's Theatre high school Theatre class. Each of us had to act out a song of our choosing, but not by acting out what the lyrics said. Make sense? Good.

Role 1

Well, I got the call today. I'm both relieved and a smidge disappointed. I didn't get the female lead, Desdemona, and I'm totally fine with that. As I said, the audition went incredibly well for my first go in over a decade, so I had my hopes and trepidations up. I will be playing Chris, a narrator in this vision of Othello. It is set up like a frame story with me and two others relating the tale to each other while the rest of the cast performs the actual scenes.

It's a great part. I'll probably be on stage for the entire show. My only twinge about it is how it will read on my resume.

"Oh, you were in Othello?"
"Yes."
"Which role?"
"Chris."
"Uh, who?"
"Chris."
"There's no Chris in Othello."
"There was in this version."
"Um, was it a, um, a pornographic version?"
Sigh.

All career paranoia aside, I cannot wait to hit the stage again. Tomorrow is our first read through. The show starts in six weeks, so I expect to lose some ass fat that has become far too familiar with my backside. Yea for insane schedules!

On a final obsessive/stalkerish note, you may have noticed that this is being posted just after midnight. Well, I just watched my hero, Ricky Gervais, sit in for an interview with David Letterman. Nothing like a good laugh before bed. Okay, there are other things, but laughing doesn't make it hard to walk in the morning.

In honor of Shakespeare, here is a beautiful song from Romeo+Juliet. Enjoy!

Well, that year was...interesting.

Thank goodness for friends. If it weren't for them, I'd be committed by now. The highlight of last year: my family threw me under a bus with snow chains for the sake of the catastrophe that was my sister. She's still alive, but I say was because I disowned her. Okay, she disowned me first, but I've since shown her how it's done. But I digress.

I loved performing in high school. The auditorium was my home. Whether I was in a play or trying not to trip during a show choir performance, I only wanted to entertain.

Then came college.

I auditioned for a theatre scholarship at the local college along with three of my classmates. The three of them came away with tech scholarships. Mine was for acting. The very head of the department was assigned as my advisor, and that's when it all went south.

That troll of a man sucked every last ray of joy from the stage for me. He made performing a source of stress and overwhelming feelings of inadequacy in an already self-doubting teenager. He enrolled me in senior level courses then critiqued me as if I were a senior. I ran screaming from the campus after only one semester.

Then, I went to work. I did retail. I did sales. I worked at a utility. More retail. Collections. And finally, I landed a secretarial job in a hospital's maintenance department. I love this job. The people are fantastic, and I happily wallow in my work.

But something was missing. Oh yeah. My dream.

My poor husband has coaxed me out of bouts of depression brought on by watching DVD special features on more than one occasion. He gets nervous when I watch a behind-the-scenes anything. As practical as I try to be, my heart remains stubborn.

Then I became an atheist, and being practical lost some of its value. In realizing that this life is my only chance for happiness, and that that happiness is entirely my responsibility, I have returned to the theatre.

And finally, I'm to the point of these ramblings.

With Geeb in tow for immoral support (and because she wanted to giggle while I publicly searched for my long lost stage legs), I attend my first audition in over ten years. A local community dinner theatre is doing a production of Othello in six weeks. There is one more night of auditions before the casting calls go out, but I'm feeling optimistic. The audition went very well, and I think I may have a chance at a major role. Of course, after ten years, I'll be perfectly content to push a cart across the stage calling, "Bring out yer dead!"

Cross your fingers and break my legs. If this goes well, I'll be one minute step closer to my loftiest goal: an attempt at avoiding laughing while taking direction from Ricky Gervais.

In honor of Mr. Gervais, here's a song.

Fresh Year, Fresh Start

Last year, I spent most of my time concentrating on my health. It's not that I'm even remotely unhealthy; I've just been very conscious of my BMI and elevated triglycerides. I started 2008 with Tony Horton's Power 90 with fantastic results in the blood work department, but my already healthy frame didn't show any dramatic changes, which was fine. After Power 90, I moved on to P90X. Great workout, but I had a hard time forcing myself to carve out at least an hour everyday, and don't get me started on the hateful beast that is yoga.

Unfortunately, through all of my exercise and obsessing over nutrition labels, my writing fell by the wayside. I barely opened a Word file. I wrote perhaps thirty pages last year.

This year, will be my year of balance. I'm going back to school this month. I'm a general studies student now, but at this rate, I think I'll wind up as an English teacher in about ten years.

On January 1, I cracked open Tony Horton's 10-Minute Trainer. I'm sore as we speak, but it's a good pain. One that means my body is recovering from all the duff-sitting I've done for the last few months. I kid you not, I've gained ten pounds since I quit P90X. I think 10-Minute Trainer will be the right balance of Tony ass-kickery versus work and school scheduling. Now, if only I could figure out a way to make vegetables taste like brownies.

Yesterday, I curled up with my new HP Mini (the new love of my life, sorry hubby). I worked for a few hours in the morning, took a mid-afternoon nap, then hopped back on the keyboard until 12:30 last night. I managed to crank out 3,658 words. I just pray I won't turn around and declare them crap next week.

We shall see.

So, here's to the new year. May its fruits be as plentiful as its potential.

Balding

I'm pulling my hair out over this book. It's such a mess; I can barely bring myself to look at it. The more time I spend away from the limping, drooling, lobotomized, and beaten ugly-fest I call my book, the more I want to change it: adding in a trip to Earth, making bigger villains out of the gods the current deities banished, making grayer villains out of the mortals calling for the heroine's blood, and making grayer friends out of those she and I thought we could trust.

I've known that the blurring of lines between good and evil is a much needed necessity since I wrote 'The End' all the way back in November. The thought about a visit to Earth came about recently. It would add a transition between dimensions that opens up opportunities for ick to hit the fan. Unfortunately, I feel that it may add a major element of sci-fi where this is a fantasy story at heart.

I think I'm just going to have to start from scratch. AGAIN. But that's okay, each time through brings me closer to fully understanding my characters and lets me breathe more life into them. I just hope I have some hair left by the time we all come to an agreement.

NaNoWriMo

Well, since my blog has been revived. . . for now. I guess I should announce the completion of my first full draft of Blood & Crystals. I've been working on this story for about five years now, always getting just so far before scrapping my progress and starting over. Thanks to NaNoWriMo, I can finally settle into editing land. Okay, so it will be more like the abyss of editing hell, but at least it's editing.

I finished the draft at 9:07 AM on November 24th (Thanksgiving morning) with 63,403 words, and it is an unbelievable mess. I have loose ends flying around like an open barrel of monkeys in a clothes dryer. I need to sit down with some character sheets and further define my cast. I need to decide whether I'll leave the world as it is or alter it into the idea that has been tooling around my brain for the last week or so. Decisions, decisions. At least the story is on paper.

*does the gelatinous happy jig*

Tagged!

*blows dust off blog*

*nearly asphyxiates in the moldy cloud*

And this is why I almost never started a blog in the first place. I've never been much of a journal keeper. Whenever journals were assigned in school, I wouldn't touch them until the nights -- or classes -- before their due dates.

Anyhoo, Joely has taken the defibrillator to this site and tagged me.

1.) List five of your weirdest habits.

Hmm. . . Geeb, stop your snickering. I mean it. *evil monkey glare*

*First off, I don't eat processed meat. I don't care how lean it is, if flesh has been run through a grinder, it will not pass my lips. I attribute this to always being the only one at the table to find the hard thing in my hamburger. Talk about hitting the gag reflex. I also blame McDonald's chicken nuggets for the same reason. Now, if an animal has been tossed into a blender then handed to a kindergarten class with the instructions to mold it back into its original shape, I'm not eating it.

*This one may make some of you scream, "Too much information!" Hehehe. Anytime I go to the bathroom, I have to take off my wedding ring and sit it on the sink or bathtub edge. I just have this horrible feeling that if one of the prongs holding my sapphire in place is going to break, it will be my luck for it to happen over the toilet. That is the last place I want to go fishing for my rock.

*I can't read a book more than once. I can watch some movies time and time again, but when it comes to books, I guess I'm just not patient enough to sit through them twice. I don't care how much I love the story.

*If I spill salt, I can't resist throwing some of it over my shoulder. I feel like I have a demon crawling up my neck if I don't.

*I love listening to Ace of Base, that Swedish band that had two or three hits when I was in junior high. Some of the lyrics may be stupid or make no sense, but they're so much fun to belt in the shower.

*And as a bonus habit, the weirdest of them all: I hang out with Geeb. I know. I can't believe it either. *fruity giggle*

2.) Tag five.

O_o I don't know five bloggers that haven't been listed. Let's see what I can pull out of the air.

Prongs Rini
Becca Stareyes
dxgirly
Sisi
Koujis Wolf

Okay, so they're all livejournal folks. They probably don't even know I have this blog, but I do consider them friends, so the list is here for them to stumble across.

3.) Copy the list (and its links) below and post it with the TOP name/link removed and your blog/link added to the BOTTOM.

4.) Track back here to let me know you've done the dirty deed.

5.) Pass the whole schmeer on, including these lil guidelines.

I'm Just a Girl
third world county
Soliloquy -- Nancy Bond
Joely Sue Burkhart
Pesh's Nikra Wood

Mmm...fooood...

Ever since I became a housewife, sorry, domestic engineer (who comes up with this stuff?), I've felt like Donna Reed. I actually get off my butt a few times a week and run the vacuum, fold laundry, and find homes for our piles o' clutter-- I've even started doing dishes like an obsessed maniac. (Shut it, Geeb.) Heheh.

Yesterday, I found out just how bad I have the 50's housewife syndrome. I went to bed early on a Saturday night so I could get up at 7:00 AM to peel potatoes and carrots for a roast for five people. I also baked two dozen Texas-style rolls--frozen, but I brushed them with butter--and yes, that's fancy for me. I even baked cookies. Thank goodness, Geeb/Molly was there to help me fight the humidity that kept caramelizing the dough.

So now I'm sitting here, my muscles still burning from my morning Pilate's, eating chocolate chip cookies and milk, and wishing Grandma still made dinner once a week like she used to.

That woman puts Betty Crocker to shame. Her chicken and noodles could start a duel to the death for the last bowl. Her bran muffins are exquisite fresh from the oven with butter and jelly or honey, and they're excellent after a stop in the microwave and devoured without toppings. Her scrambled eggs are always fluffy, and practically vanish from the table. Her fried chicken makes any heart-blockage well worth it, and the mashed potatoes and gravy she makes to go with it...I can't even begin to describe.

I miss the 50's housewife--the woman who broke her back everyday with a smile to make home a place to be longed for after it is gone. Childhood antics and those precious few memories that are never forgotten are wondrous things, but women like my grandmother created a backdrop for those memories that warms the soul like none other.

I need another cookie.

Denied!

Well, I heard back from my first ever submission.

"Dear Betsy:

Thank you for submitting "Misguided" to ---- ----- -----. However, your story--while it has many merits--doesn't quite fit what we are seeking to include in the ---- ----- --- anthology. Your story is too blatantly moralistic.

May you have success in placing your work elsewhere.

Best regards,

Et cetera..."

I don't think I could ask for a better first rejection. It wasn't what he was looking for, but it seems to cast a vote of confidence in that someone else will want it.

I can live with that.

Umm...

*crickets chirping*

...

...

I knew I wouldn't be able to think of anything witty to slap up here. Heh.

I guess an introduction is in order. I write. I'd say I'm a "writer" except I've yet to land a paycheck. (I'm hoping this is because I've only ever submitted one thing to an editor and have yet to hear back from him.)

This blog will be my little hole in the web for me to rant and rave about blocks, characters revolting, plots twisting around my neck and squeezing, and all the other joys that come with trying to write a novel.

So, yeah, I guess that's an intro, and I guess that'll do for today.