Houston - the professional year in review

Gigs

Express Theatre

Freedom Train
Children's Hilltop Theatre Festival

Main Street Theater

Pinkalicious
A Little House Christmas

Ohana Theatre Company

Awesome America

Voice-Over

IELTS Preparation Material

Highlight

Pinkalicious.  Such a blast.  Great cast vibes (I'm remembering the "Call Me Maybe" dance parties during intermission to cheer us up on bad days), fun and challenging material, fabulous company to work for (inc. clear chain of command and efficient use of time), rock-star status among children, not bad money.  A summer to remember.

Lowlight

I'm obsessive about theatre.  I find it hard to enjoy a show that I'm not throwing myself into full-time with almost impossible challenges to make me grow.  Which is a big reason why the small part in the once- or twice-a-week rehearsal situation of Awesome America was not a highlight for me this year.  But in line with the adage that there are no small parts, only small actors, I tried (not always successfully) to give my character a full backstory and be wholeheartedly present in every performance, which made it a lot more fun.

Auditions

A little (very little) statistical analysis of my auditions page...This year I auditioned for a video game, Theater Under the Stars, Masquerade Theatre, Main Street Theater, Texas Shakespeare Festival, industrial videos, Express Theatre, Unity Theatre, Ohana Theatre Company, Houston Grand Opera, a radio commercial, two TV commercials, the Houston Theatre Alliance, Classical Theatre Company, Ensemble Theatre, an animated web series, a live-action web series, Alley Theatre, a network TV show, Texas Repertory Theatre and Perseverance Theatre.  Thirty-five auditions all told, of which four got me the gig (11%), plus I got cast in two projects without auditioning, and I don't know how to factor that in.  This is compared to 35% in the second half of last year (with one casting without audition), so that explains why I'm feeling frustrated, but I'm going for (and occasionally getting) higher-level gigs than I was last year, so I guess I'm still on the slow rise.

Highlight

Auditioning for, and coming runner-up for, a role in Life Is a Dream at Main Street Theater.   Believing I will get the gig is an interesting mind trick to play before an audition. It helps me stand up for myself and go after what I want (like inviting myself to these auditions), be calm inside the audition room and listen and respond to the director, even when my interpretation of the show was totally different to his! Having that confident energy helps me believe in myself, and I think it also makes the audition panel believe in me too.  So this all led to me getting multiple callbacks, and feedback from the director after the auditions (totally unheard-of!) saying he thought I did a good job.  BUT the downside is that mentally the role is mine when I take that approach and so I crashed hard when it turned out not to be mine.  And it also means that I feel like I'm tilting at windmills a little bit.

Lowlight

The follow-up to Life Is a Dream was the next show that Main Street Theater was auditioning for, Henry V.  I was a bit rubbish.  Doesn't help that really the only role that suits me in that show involves speaking French, which I can't do.  So I read for a male character and found myself in a very blokey scene with three other men in which I really couldn't hold my own.  I think I was also a bit star-struck, because I was auditioning for, and reading with, a whole bunch of people whose work I absolutely idolise.  I was nervous and unfocused and threw out some of the technical stuff I'd been working on with the Shakespeare.  
I lost my "I'm gonna get this job" confidence after being rejected for a bunch of stuff I really wanted that week, including a head-spinningly fast and awful taping for a network TV show, and no less than three shows at Main Street Theater.  That week took a long time to get over.

Training

This year I took classes/trained in ballet, dialects, jazz, Meisner, running, screen acting, Shakespeare, singing, tap, how to prepare my tax return, and yoga.

Highlight

Meisner and Shakespeare classes at Kim Tobin Acting Studio.  Kim and her husband Philip are my new gods.  They have such a wealth of experience and are excellent at communicating it and meeting their students where they're at.  When either of them go off on a tangent (or one of Kim's rants) you get out your notebook or your laptop or your phone and freaking write it down and memorise it, coz it'll be gold.  I would probably move in with them if they let me.  Aside from training me in the technical aspects of what they do, they push me to amazing new levels of vulnerability in performance, which is exactly what I go there for.  As Philip said, "We begin to trust the unexpected as we progress.  And we like it."

Lowlight

Screen classes.  The classes themselves are excellent, and I love the people there, but it often feels like a fruitless labour because I get so few screen auditions and zero jobs.

Other Work

Hope Stone - teaching and blogging

Main Street Theater - substitute House Manager

Houston Grand Opera - lightwalker

So that's my year at work! The bulk of it has been children's theatre, which I continue to love, with some auditions taking me out there into the realm of the big boys.  I still feel very new in the Houston theatre scene, but I'm looking forward to next year, which will begin with my playing the fabulous Ms Frizzle in Main Street's touring production of The Magic School Bus.  Even better news than that is that I will be touring with some great friends, including Leslie, who just landed her first gig at Main Street!  May 22nd marks our two-year anniversary in Houston, which I had tied to some professional goals, so we'll see if they get met or not! Should be an interesting year!

Houston Day 559 - your afternoon Stanislavski

What Stanislavski & Meisner are teaching me about life

I'm in the middle of preparing a scene for class tonight with Kim Tobin.  I recently moved up into her advanced class and I'm a little out of my depth.  We'll save the psychoanalysis as to why that scares me so much for another day.
The scene I'm working on is quite a challenge (which is good - I think I feel like anything that's not a challenge is just bad writing, which is a whole other challenge in itself).  I've been struggling to articulate my character's objective so I reached for my Stanislavski book for some help.  Before I found any tips on articulating objectives, but I found this quote:

An actor must work all his life, cultivate his mind, train his talents systematically, develop his character; he may never despair and never relinquish this main purpose - to love his art with all his strength and love it unselfishly.

To be honest, I struggle with that last bit.  I just realised today how many harsh and bitter things about other actors I let slip out of my mouth.  That's also a personality trait of mine - I have managed "cut people off at the knees" as my mum says, to friends who aren't actors just as well as to people who are - but I think it's time to recalibrate the balance between honest and kind.  I am becoming ungenerous.  My selfish love of the theatre, as if it's some kind of finite resource I need to keep to myself, of course comes from my own insecurities.  But as I'm learning in Kim's Meisner work, things are just a whole bunch better when you take your eyes off yourself and get invested in what someone else is doing.

You must leave all of that alone and put your energy into one thing, doing the work.  (Larry Silverberg - The Sanford Meisner Approach.)

Not only in this circle, but also in life.  (Gayla Miller - see Lessons in Theater and Life on the Hope Stone blog.)

Houston Day 542 - Obligatory Thanksgiving Post

Random Thoughts on the Thanksgiving Day Parade:

• The Rockettes: the missing link between the Ziegfeld Follies and cheerleading.
• NYC parade: spectators in coats and gloves and scarves and warm hats.  Houston parade: people in jeans and t-shirts.
• There were two Australians in the parade! Anthony Warlow (playing Daddy Warbucks on Broadway right now): you have my undying love and admiration forever.  You are what is good about musical theatre.  Cody Simpson: you're alright too.  Your blond, surfer-derived image reminds me of home.
• I love a good celebration, but I sometimes think that celebrations are less special when this country is so goddamn affluent.  And so over-the-top! Fake snow to end the parade?Weird.  It's a far cry from saving up for a special feast because that's the only decent meal you've eaten all year.  I still sit so uncomfortably with that and I am still figuring out what to do about my feeling that we just have far too much money.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to moving into my Simplify Challenge tomorrow. 
• I think I just saw a character who looks like a weird Santa-Jesus-Pilgrim hybrid.

Thinks I'm Thankful For (Random Sample):

• My family and going home for Christmas! Four weeks, y'all!
• My adopted family, the Nickerbekahs, with whom we are eating Thanksgiving dinner.
• That Lucas and I come up with fun hybrid names for couples.

P.S. : The National Dog Show on TV after the parade.  Hilarious.

Houston Day 541 - The Player's Sonnet

I have been reading tons of Shakespeare recently to prepare for some upcoming auditions, to the point where I'm beginning to think in iambic pentameter.  The following is my attempt at writing in Shakespearean style (and continuing to process what the hell it is I do).  I began it when I was having a working/drinking/reading lunch at Onion Creek Cafe and finished it tonight with John Denver on the sound system and Lucas baking pumpkin pie in the kitchen.  Happy Thanksgiving all, and especially to my Houston community of artists.

The Player’s Sonnet

The same way I can look at that cursed table,

And see not just a panel of blank faces

But my true love, or hate; so I am able

To see them in a made-up world of spaces.

I play to them my piece, to achieve my aim,

And in that same way I will play my life.

I will traverse the highs and lows of fame,

(And somehow manage still to be a wife).

Just as I fancy, I will land each role

Then play it, then let it go; but what will stay

Is my integrity, my joy, my soul,

My willingness to play another day.

This piece is hard and sometimes unforgiving;

But I am a player; so I play my living.

Houston Day 538 - Your Silence Is Rich

Sunday Scribblings: Silence

This is inspired by the Sunday Scribblings blog and by some conversations I had with my cast members between shows yesterday.

I sense rather than see the longing in your eyes.  Your voice has just a shadow of sadness.  (Will all this striving be in vain?) I recognise it because it is in me, too.

And yet you hold your tongue and your dignity.  Your silence is rich.  We are masters of self-possession and fake-it-til-you-make-it (will we ever make it?), and from somewhere you find the strength to witness your own disappointments.  You are your own counsellor.  There is an easiness in your posture.  You have learned to wait, with enough love and money to continue, and the unrequited hope still gently bleeding through.

Teach me how to find your silence.  Because the drive won't go away.  And the questions are insistent.

(What if the story of my life just disappears in the noise?)

Houston Day 536 - more insomniac blogging

It's 4am and I am awake (not for the rest of the day, I hope) so here's a little update on life in Houston.

A Little House Christmas

...is super-fun.  We've been open for about a week now.  The schedule is (disappointingly?) light so far, with usually only one show a day.  Again, I could sing the praises of Main Street all day - how instead of just making do when the sound design computer crashed during tech, someone popped out during lunch and just bought a new one; how when one of the actors had a previous contract with another company for one of our performance days understudies were prepared well in advance; and the fabulous costume designs of Macy Perrone.  I love working for a company that says that anything less is not good enough.  In an ideal world every company would work like that, but that's not been my experience so far!

A Little House Christmas cast members: me, Lauren, Natalie,
Chioke, Curtis and Scott

The cast is large (ten) and fun, and we seem to be going out for lunch together most days.  And there's that lovely feeling of being in a Jane Austen novel when you're dressing for a period show - the women's dressing room is all petticoats and lace and corsets (well, a corset).

Hope Stone

Our teen theater class has entered phase two of this year's plan - the Simplify Challenge.  Inspired by this year's performance theme of "Simplify" every student and Leslie and I are giving ourselves the challenge to simplify our lives in some defined way for a defined period of time.  Last night most of the kids gave their commitments to their challenges.  We've got water-drinking, some restrictions on internet usage, a few variations on the theme of minding your own business, dog-walking, a few variations on meditation and intentional living, cleaning and organising stuff, being grateful, being positive, getting on top of schoolwork, and a couple of people trying to keep calm in their relationships (man, I remember being a teenager - that was hard).  My challenge is to do yoga/meditate every morning, and to eat breakfast sitting down in a calm environment with no multitasking.

The Hope Stone blog continues to be a fun extra activity in my life, and I'm also beginning to think about pursuing other blogging opportunities as well.  The new Hope website will be up soon, which will see me blogging with more regularity.

TMJ Syndrome

It was when I realised that I was avoiding eating because it hurt to open my mouth more than about a finger-width that I decided to do something about it.  My chiropractor has beaten me up and wrangled my jaw a couple of times in the last few days and I'm going back again after the weekend.  Other Little House cast members have been comparing their experiences of TMJ with mine, and I didn't think that mine was associated with any stress, as theirs was.  But then the chiro said it was phenomenal amounts of neck and shoulder tension that were putting my jaw out, along with some pretty regular teeth-grinding, and asked me what I was stressed about.  Then I got home and Lucas grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes and asked me what I was stressed about, and I realised that maybe I am worried about a few things.  Then the next day with my jaw loosened up by the chiro I realised that a tense jaw is my defense mechanism and I spent the whole day painfully aware of how I wanted to grind my teeth and clench my jaw and just generally tense up all the freaking time.

So I'm feeling pretty vulnerable (the chiro took away my defense!) and bruised (her assistant beats me up pretty good during those massages) and worried...she took away my coping mechanism! Another yoga cleanse is in order, I feel - I think I'm going to start that the day after Thanksgiving, along with my Simplify Challenge.  More boring food and meditation and other slightly odd but awesome ayurvedic practices.

Awesome Friends

Ashley and Lindsay looking adorable

Speaking of Thanksgiving, this year we are spending it at Nick's aunt and uncle's place with Nick and Bekah.  They continue to be very dear friends to us, although this week is tech week for Bekah so we won't really see her til that's over!  I also love teaching and doing life with Leslie (wish her a happy birthday!), and my regular walk-and-talks with Ashley, and hanging out at Ashley and Lindsay's apartment.

And an Awesome Husband

Leslie commented last night that it's an awesome marriage when he can look me in the eye and ask me what I'm stressed about and make me realise it.  I am so grateful for Lucas! His field trip a couple of months ago made me realise just how much I need him around.

He continues to love his job, which is ramping up again for another lease sale early next year, and he's totally gotten me hooked on playing Magic, and he also was very excited that the new Halo is out.  Although he's finished it already - I think that's an anticlimax but apparently it's not.

Houston Day 531 - Lucas' birthday!

Lucas' Birthday

...was yesterday, and he turned the ripe old age of thirty-one.  In the tradition of his family, where they got to celebrate their birthdays in both the Australian and American time zones when they were kids, we went out for dinner Friday night, his "Australian birthday".  It was to a fancy restaurant we'd never been to before in the Heights called Glass Wall.  Roasted brie, delicious meat, lovely dessert wines.

The day itself involved breakfast at Yale St, Lucas seeing our first public show of A Little House Christmas, and a pub crawl on White Oak, organised by the inimitable Josh Ulla`, who works with Lucas and who seems like nothing so much as a youth group leader on steroids.

I also gave Lucas tickets to go and see the Texans play the Colts in December.  Yes, I am a good wife.  And we have good friends who are going with us to see them play as well! Lucas' fanship of the Texans is just one of the many symptoms of his sudden-onset (about a month after we got here) and hilarious passionate Texan patriotism.  Another is his belief that he is the reincarnated spirit of the James Buchanan who fought and died at the Alamo.

Houston Day 530 - my latest Hope blog piece

...can be found here!

Houston Day 525 - the best show in Houston this season, and Lucas in a lumberjack costume

Lucas and I just got home from seeing "Body Awareness" by Stark Naked Theatre, and I'm still trying to put my heart back together. So I'm going to process out loud and y'all can read it.

I've mentioned the classes I've taken with Kim Tobin and Philip Lehl in blogs before (Days 254, 269, and 476, among others), and this show offers more proof that they are actually gods.  Stark Naked Theatre is their baby, and Philip directed this show and Kim stars in it.

Kim and Philip are married (to each other) have such wisdom and experience that when they go off on a tangent in class, you pay attention, coz it's going to be either hilarious or freaking gold.  Something funny Kim said in class once (I'm putting it in quotation marks but of course I don't remember it word-for-word):

"You fall in love with people on stage.  It's an imaginary circumstance, and to a certain extent an imaginary relationship, but a real emotion.  So I tell my husband all the time - I'm in love with this person, is that ok? Coz I need to tell you that I'm in love with this person in this play.  And he'll say, "Honey, can I just sit and watch the play?" and I'll say, "Oh, no, you're directing the play." "

I see so many shows, but I've only seen a few other shows since leaving Melbourne that even came close to how good this play is.  The script is brilliant.  It's by a playwright that this company loves called Annie Baker.  You know how some TV shows are overwritten and they dumb it down by explaining things that don't need to be explained, and you know how (if you've ever read an early draft of any of the few plays I've written) you sometimes think "I don't understand what's going on; this is totally underwritten?" Well, for me this show had just the right level of "writtenness".  Beautiful, complex moments and symbolism and relationships that touched me to the heart without bashing me over the head.

Whenever anyone asked me what this play I was going to see was about (feeling a little awkward because of the juxtaposition of the company name and the show name) I wasn't really sure what to tell them.  You can read the blurb on the company website, so essentially I burbled that back at whoever was asking.  I really was only going because despite my best efforts I'd never seen Kim or Philip's work on stage yet.  But as I was watching it I went "relationship drama". That's how you describe it as briefly as possible.  And as I learned from Kim's classes, what makes for thrilling theatre is authentic relationships.....well, I couldn't take my eyes off the actors for a second.  The character of the son (who spends the whole show protesting too much that he doesn't have Aspbergers) is repulsive - a very unpleasant human being - but fascinating, and very funny, and although tears threatened a lot during this show, he was the one who finally made me cry.  Kim's character (his mother) and her partner are both beautifully drawn and performed.  You know when you are with a couple or watching a show about a couple and you recognise which role in the relationship you play? Well, I spent about half the play thinking "Oh, I'm so like Joyce" and the other half thinking "Oh, I'm so like Phyllis".  They were both just such real beautiful characters and I recognised myself in both of them.  And the fourth character, who isn't as touching because you don't really go on a journey with him as much, was still fascinating and enigmatic and great to watch.  And the set, costume and sound design were all great and served all this stuff really well.

The issues in the script make my head turn.  The male gaze, self-awareness, how language shapes how we think, the nature of art, the nature of relationships, gender stuff....it all sounds academic, and it was, but in such a way as to be painfully personal as well.  There was an art exhibition on the female form in partnership with the show, which to be honest felt a little conflicting (how do you look at some of those pieces of art and not get angry, as the character of Phyllis does, about being complicit in the patriarchal system, and then see the other pieces grouped with them and feel that those too are undermined and made more complicated?) ....God, that sentence was so long I lost track of it.

Anyway, I think I'm just about done processing for the moment.  In a complete non sequitur, and because Sass requested it, here is a picture of Lucas' Halloween costume.  If you don't get the reference, go to youtube and search "lumberjack song".

From the sublime to the ridiculous.  :)

Houston Day 522 - Happy Halloween!

...and, also, given that I'm writing this post on the 1st of November, happy All Saints Day.

Has Halloween become more of a thing in Australia since I left? Here it's enormous.  People of all ages are in costume all throughout the day, and grownups are also in costume on the Saturday before at big parties.  And trick-or-treating is for real, y'all! TV doesn't lie.

Last year we had more trick-or-treaters because our old house was more welcoming (you could see the front door from the street) but this year I got into the whole costume thing more.  And evnWe were in Austin last weekend checking out the Texas Book Festival with Sam & Katie (Sam works at Exxon) and saw many fun people out in costume.  Yesterday, on Halloween proper, Little House had a costumed rehearsal and so I went as a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who! It was an interesting test of our concentration to be doing A Little House on the Prairie with Morticia, Kermit, Barney Stinson, a Woopie Cushion and a Starbucks coffee cup.

The day ended with our regular "family dinner" with Nick and Bekah, and Bekah (who is delightfully childlike even on her normal days) was on a sugar high from so much candy that it was quite hilarious.  And then she crashed and so they went home fairly early.

Bekah after too much sugar

So today is All Saints Day, which we have kind of celebrated already, at....church....yeah, we went to church.  And then we liked it enough to go back.  And now we're planning to go back again...and I'm having lunch with the pastor this week....we hesitate to say "yes, we're definitely joining this community" but it is at least a place where we feel like we could belong, which is a HUGE step.  Their name is Zeteo, which is Greek for "I seek" and you can look at their website here.  We first went with Heidi and Joel McKerrow, who were visiting us on their world travels (that was good for the soul), when Joel was asked to perform his poetry at their worship gathering.  We had dinner at the pastor's house afterwards, and she explained to me that central to Zeteo are Jesus, the bible and communion.  Not - and this is my favourite part - that you have to believe anything in particular about those things, but you must engage with them.  And everyone agreeing and believing all the same things is not their aim.  So anyway, the first service we went to at Zeteo was All-Saints-themed, in which we celebrated people - living or dead - who are points of light in our lives.

Joel & Heidi - two of my favourite people in the world!

So happy All Saints, everyone.  I hope you have light and hope and that you share that around.

Houston Day 508 - Your Suggestions Please!

The season is, haltingly, and in a Houstonian fashion, but nevertheless definitely is, changing.  It's cooler in the mornings, and periods spent outside longer than ten minutes during the daytimes are less likely to make you want to commit suicide. And A Little House Christmas opens in two weeks, sending me back into six and a half gloriously busy seventeen-show weeks. After which we jump on a plane, endure literally countless hours (it's true, I can't do the math) in transit, and head right into Christmas celebrations with the fam, beginning with Boxing Day shopping with my sisters at 7am (I have been hanging out for that for a year and a half now).
But this all means that I need a serious plan for not getting very sick and ruining said Boxing Day shopping with exhaustion. This plan needs to be hefty, multi-pronged, and, it goes without saying, effective.
I welcome all suggestions from other actors, asthmatics and just plain people about how to invest in one's health. Nothing is too crazy. Nothing is too boring. How does one stay healthy and busy and/or on a plane at the same time?
(But if not in direct response to this blog, your suggestions will be treated as unsolicited advice of a personal nature, which will probably result in me buying that herb you rave about and throwing it in your face.  I'm gracious like that.)

Houston Day 483 - my top two reasons for wanting to naturalize

I can't change my address on my driver's licence online like the average Texan because non-citizens are not allowed.  Apparently not being born in the glorious nation I now call home means that government agencies are allowed to cast aspersions on my ability to use the internet.  I have two words for you, United States of America: INTERNET BANKING.  Discover it! Wow, turns out people outside your country use the internet, and they do it more effectively than you do.

Zing, take that, enormous and very powerful nation who won't listen to me coz I can't vote.  Take that.

Houston Day 480 - can't sleep, might as well blog

It's 1.30am.  I should be sleeping, coz I know Lucas is going to want me to be awake tomorrow morning before he leaves.  He and I have very different attitudes to sleep and alarm clocks, and I'm surprised it's never been a source of conflict before now, given that we've been sharing a bed for well over five years now.
The man leaves in the morning for "Flagship 2: Fundamentals of Stratigraphy" or something to that effect.  ExxonMobil have these training courses that for reasons of pomp and pretence are called Flagship courses, and Flag 2 (as those in the biz call it) involves my man being away from me in the deserts of Texas, Utah and New Mexico for two weeks.  I think I can't sleep coz I'm feeling pre-emptively lonely!
Might as well be honest and say that the old marriage has been through some pretty rocky days since the move.  Actually the move was good - it was once we started feeling at home here that things got tricky :) I read in The Happiness Project that you're more likely to recall experiences that match your current mood, which makes total sense to me as I can never figure out for sure whether there are more good or bad days, because my memory of their respective proportions seems to be constantly shifting.  When I'm depressed about anything, I'm more likely to declare that I've never been happy ever in my life, but it's like the characters in Doctor Who came out of the TV and put a perception filter on my happiness.
In other news, the house is a mess, and I'm bored and not busy enough.  You'd think that I'd put those things together and be both less bored and surrounded by cleanliness, but it's pretty apparent that we all know how to sabotage our own happiness.  If anyone in Houston is reading this, come over and have a cleaning party with me.

Houston Day 477 - a list!

I'm reading The Happiness Project, lent to me by Ashley.  The woman who wrote the book is a list-maker almost to the point of making me suspect she has OCD.  Her lists often have really fun titles, like "Splendid Truths" and "Secrets of Adulthood", which reminded me of Janet's habit of creating mental lists titled "These Things I Know to Be True", and inspired me to write my own list today.  (It also reminded me of when I shared a flat with my friend Jana and I posted on the cupboard a list of "Small Things that Make Amy Happy".  This had the lovely results of Jana knowing how to cheer me up and people giving me small thoughtful gifts!)  Some of these items are things I have discovered myself, some of them are things repeated to me by my parents or friends I look up to.  One of them was the best piece of practical advice someone gave me about making life in Houston comfortable...can you guess which one?

"Advice Amy Attempts to Live By"

If it is not a finite resource, don't treat it as one.

Suspend your judgement.

Do not buy or accept for free clothes that do not fit perfectly.

Advice is sought much less often than it is given.

Money changes situations and people.

If you understand how the public transport system works, you can own the city.

Always carry a sweater in your handbag.

Most people are doing the best they can most of the time.

If you're someone's guest, you don't have the right to complain about how they do things.

Look behind you when you leave.

If it's mine, it's yours.

"No day but today."

Anything is possible.

What do you think? What advice you do attempt to live by?

Houston Day 476 - chit-chat catch-up

So apologies on the slowing down of the blog posts. I get distracted. Also, I write other stuff: check out my latest post on the Hope Stone blog!

Have also been rehearsing for Awesome America, taking a Meisner class with Kim Tobin which is freaking blowing my mind, redoing my audition portfolios, and watching copious amounts of Doctor Who. We are discovering that ExxonMobil really mean it when they boast about their super work-life balance options, so because America moves in to the theatre this week, making me busy every evening, he went in to work late this morning and will work later while I'm out this evening, and he'll do the same on Thursday. Hope Stone classes started again last week, and my dear friend Leslie is my intern, which is great.

In other exciting news, Joel & Heidi from Stone Stoup are coming to visit soon, AND....WE BOOKED OUR TICKETS TO AUSTRALIA! We arrive Christmas Day.

 Ciao for now!

Houston Day 465 - Hurricane Isaac

So registering as an Australian living abroad has its benefits.  I just got an email from DFAT reminding me that there's a hurricane coming to the U.S.  Not quite the same as Julia Gillard flying here in a superhero cape to personally put me on a QANTAS flight home if I was in danger, as I had hoped.  Or maybe she would do that if the hurricane ends up being terrible and I were in Lousiana.  But still, nice to know that the system works.
In order to assure you folks back in Aus., we're not in the path of the hurricane - it's headed toward Louisiana.  The official warning covers Louisiana and east to the Alabama-Florida border.  If your geography's not up to the task of picturing that, have a look at this map.  You will see that Houston is west of the area under concern, which is spanned by the blue line. And my thoughts are with those guys who are in the area of concern.  I heard on the radio the other day that all the government money funnelled into New Orleans after Katrina has done a lot of good, and that the city will be much more able to withstand the storm.      Of course, if you're living outside the city, like the people in that movie I saw the other day (Beasts of the Southern Wild), it'll be a struggle.
And on a different but related note, we are indeed registered with DFAT so if we are struck by any enormous disasters or our telephones stop working, give them a call to see if they know where we are.  Their response will no doubt be, "No worries, Mrs Garner, the PM's just getting on her cape to go get them now."

Houston Day 461 - blues and brownies, and more about biscuits

I am ever so slowly climbing my way out of the post-show blues.  Running around Houston's gorgeous Hermann Park with Ashley is helping.  And I find that, as I did last time I was in this emotional place and I discovered I can make bread, I have this urge to bake.  There's something lovely about holding something hot and fragrant and yummy and knowing I achieved it, because it's at this time that I suddenly question my ability to do pretty much everything.  And baking (at the level at which I do it) is only slightly challenging and doesn't take too much mental acuity (e.g., I can drink while I do it!) and doesn't break anyone's heart, least of all mine, if I screw it up.  So I've made brownies, and biscuits (the American kind: see my English Around the World page!) and right now there's a banana loaf in the oven.  So the post-show blues are slowly being replaced by delicious baked goods.  And frustration that I can't find my electric beater.

Houston Day 436 - time differences rear their ugly heads

Just realized I hadn't thought about the time difference and so my flight to London leaves a whole day earlier than I had thought.  Glad I picked up on that minor detail now and not at the airport.  I mean, if I'd thought about it for two seconds I would have realized that arriving in London Wednesday morning means leaving Houston Tuesday night, but I haven't really been in the space to think about anything for two seconds.  Shows closing always messes with my head.

Houston Day 429 - manic at midnight

I was asleep, and then I woke up and I suddenly felt all buzzy and like I had to go for a run or something.  I won't, because it's midnight, although running is something I do these days, a couple of times a week, with my friend Ashley.  So now I'm up, and blogging, and not really sure what's going on.  I think it is the steroids (Mum, I know you'll ask....not a high dosage but forgot to take some earlier today so took them at night and that's why I'm a bit crazy).  Asthma has been playing up....body is a little burnt out from the month.  But on the mend now.
Also, body is a little burnt out from the Pink cast party on Friday night....yes, a little odd to have a cast party before the season's over but some people couldn't do it the final weekend.  I very rarely get super-drunk and party all night but a great cast party is one of the few times I do.  However, I am officially too old to do that and just bounce back the next day :) although I do get super-woman points for delivering two excellent shows on about the same number of hours' sleep.
On a completely different subject, Lucas' new obsession is the game Magic - the Gathering.  It's a thing he did when he was a nerdy teenager and our friend James brought it back into his life at his birthday party last year.  Now a whole bunch of them who play are getting together, and I play it too (although perhaps a little more than I would if Lucas wasn't into it.  No wait, make that way more.)  It's fun, but I'm rubbish at strategy games.  So Lucas slaughtered me with his army of zombies before we went to bed tonight.
Umm, what else is going on....rehearsed today with Express for the Hilltop shows this week.  As always, they're disorganised but a whole lot of fun.  Also had lunch with Adrianna from Pink.  One of those beautiful, long, wide-ranging, honest conversations that left us both feeling refreshed in our souls.  I'm almost sad that she doesn't live in Houston all the time (from a small town in East Texas, and moving to New York in the fall), but that would mean I'm not super excited to see what her journey is.  Also, people keep saying we look alike, so she'd be beating me out for roles all the time if she lived here :)
Speaking of roles, something on my to-do list for when life calms down post-Pink and post-England-trip is redo my audition portfolios.  Which means I'm thinking about what work suits me, what kind of work I'm going for, what are my go-to audition pieces.  I just sent out an email to a whole bunch of people I've worked with in Houston to get their perspective on me, but if you, oh blog readers, would like to do the same, please answer the following questions in short, snappy, incomplete sentences made only of keywords:

1) what roles would you cast me in based purely on my physical type?
2) what subject matter do I communicate really effectively?
3) what colours/flavours/tones do I emit?

I'm sitting in my newly set up home office where I've just put up some photos of some of the shows I've done since moving to Houston.  So if you were going to answer question 1 with reindeer, nun, German-Texan abolitionist or stay-at-home mom who dons pink princess dresses and tiaras in moments of epiphany, thanks but I already have visual reminders that I know how to do those :)

Houston Day 424 - on storms, allergies, old houses, and my current work situation

Well, this summer is totally different to last summer.  Last summer was unusually dry and record-hot.  This summer is still pretty bloody hot (Mum barely went outside at all the whole time she visited us recently!) but it is storming almost every afternoon.  Storms here are something else.  They're more regular, more dramatic, and more likely to end up in flash flooding and even (apparently, although we haven't seen this yet) tornadoes.  I got my first experience of being trapped by water this weekend just gone, when I called my stage manager in a panic because I had tried several roads and couldn't make it to the theatre.  He had other things to worry about, though, because although there was water everywhere there was no running water in the building.  That was an interesting show :) I found a road that was clear, made it to the theatre, and just had to hold on to my pee for several hours until I could get home to a functioning toilet.
We survived the two sixteen-show weeks at Pink, although barely, because I got sick a few days after it stopped.  My doctor tells me I need to consider the possibility that like most people in Houston I suffer from hayfever (usually just generically called "allergies" here) and that until that's under control I'm going to get sick pretty often.  But neither sickness nor work stopped me from enjoying some good QT with Mum...she just came to the show three times so she could see me!
I now have the lovely problem of too much work to allow me to fully rest.  Have had a couple of big auditions in the last couple of days (am still keeping my "Auditions" page updated, for my records, and your interest), and was called in by Express to perform in their Children's Hilltop Theatre Festival at the Miller Outdoor Theatre next week.  Plus Pink goes til the end of the month.  So today I am taking advantage of nothing on my schedule to rest and learn lines for Hilltop.
Lucas and I are enjoying our new house.  It's a bit smaller than our old house (and also older than our old house, if that makes sense).  It's a good size - we like it that it's smaller but has more rooms.  So I get my own office :) and it feels cozier.  Because it's older it has lots more things wrong with it, but I'm trying to pretend that there's no chance of any serious flooding because this house would absolutely not stand it.  Which is, of course, a blatant, breezy lie, but never mind.

Well, back to it.  I leave you with a photo of a doorknob from the Capitol Building in Austin, which Mum and I visited last week.  You will note (because I told you to) the Lone Star on said doorknob.  And if anyone can explain to me why Capitol is spelt with an "o" I would appreciate that.  Cheers.

Houston Day 392 - my favourite and least favourite rooms

My darling sister Sarah (who I miss like crazy) asked me to get on Instagram recently and take photos of my life so that she can see what my life here looks like.  So I've been trying to take one photo a day so she (and whoever else cares to) can get a visual impression of my life.
Two photos I've taken so far set themselves up in interesting opposition:

My least favourite place: the audition waiting room.  Filled with strangers, acquaintances and people whose names I should know but don't.  Even worse, filled with people whose names I only know because their reputation precedes them and who therefore intimidate the crap out of me.  Associated with feelings of nervousness, boredom, insecurity, panic.  Leaving these rooms is always like leaving a first date:  what did he mean when he said this? what did she think I meant when I did this? how did I come across? WHEN IS HE GOING TO CALL??? Recently I leave these rooms feeling like I did ok: I didn't blow anyone away, but I didn't embarrass myself either.  I am having a good run of fairly solid auditions, which is much better than this time last year when I was having a run of awful, embarrassing auditions and I left the waiting room holding in the tears that would come when I got home.

And now for the other end of the spectrum:

My favourite place: the dressing room.  Filled with friends.  Home.  The place of the daily ritual: chatter, makeup, hair, get in costume, warm up, chatter, calls from stage management, leave, come back, rest, fix makeup, leave again, come back exhausted, resume normal clothes and appearance and leave for another day.
People both here and in Melbourne have been asking what the differences are between the Houston and the Melbourne theatre scenes and I think I'm finally beginning to get a handle on it, although it's hard to describe.   Money really makes a difference.  Much more money finds its way into the arts here, because Houston is a very affluent city, and because once you get outside of Australia you realise it's true that the arts are in general not valued as much there as in other countries.  So I'll try and tell you about the differences, but please remember that this is my experience and someone else's may be a bit different.  And the categories I make may be a little less cut-and-dried than I make them seem here, but they're useful for comparison.
On the bottom tier of unpaid theatre money still makes a difference.  Many amateur shows in Melbourne would, with a little change of attitude, be paying gigs in Houston.  Some Houston companies at this level have more money than the quality of their productions merits.  Another big difference at this level is that Melbourne's fringe scene is much bigger.  You're less likely to find a hybrid circus-burlesque-cabaret show performed upstairs at a bar here.
Taking a step up into professional theatre, and here is where Houston shines.  Money attracts people who are good at their jobs.  There are plenty of opportunities here, and more to the point, plenty of opportunities here for me.  There are more straight plays than in Melbourne, which is great.  At the recent Alliance auditions, just under forty companies attended, of which about twenty were capable of paying actors the salary required by Actors' Equity.  If you're non-Equity, like I am, the money is not great, way worse than this kind of job would be in Melbourne, but I think in Melbourne there are less of these jobs for more people.  The work produced in Houston is interesting, good quality, and often fairly new and diverse.  Sometimes the shows' content even gets that awesome label, "important".
One more step up into the world of big, commercial Broadway shows.  Melbourne is far better at this than Houston, premiering a few big musicals, and casting local talent in seasons of shows like Wicked and Jersey Boys that run for years.  (My cousin is a stage manager on these kinds of shows and is enjoying a very successful career.)  Now that's not of a whole lot of use to me, given that I wasn't performing at this level in Melbourne - I had just begun to go to these auditions and never ever got a callback.  There are only two or three companies here that do shows at this level, and they often, although not always, cast out of New York.  Their seasons are much shorter.  I have been called back for one of these companies once.  There are also national tours that come here for a few weeks at a time.  Because these kinds of opportunities are relatively thin on the ground here, actors often don't spend the peak of their careers here in Houston - they start out here, or move here later after they've spent some time in New York.  I'm not sure what that means for me - maybe a little later I'll get the opportunity to move to New York or London or maybe even back to Australia at a time when that would be awesome for my career.  Maybe I'll be happy to stay in Houston.  We'll see.  But for the moment, I'm enjoying the tons of opportunity here, and enjoying my new home in the Main Street Theater dressing room.

Houston Day 391 - shall the blog continue??? and fun with wordplay

Hey blogworld! So obviously posts have been getting further apart.  Mostly because as I settle more into life here and each post becomes more about my everyday life, I feel like there's less to write home about.  So I'm thinking about the future of this blog and wanting to hear your thoughts! Do you want to keep reading? How often? About what? If you're happy to let this be the end of an era, let's say so long, farewell, it's been swell, see you in a spell! But if you want to keep reading, and would mind more than a little if the blog were to cease, let me know! Blogs are a little one-sided, so give me some love over here and communicate back a little!
Exciting news on the blog front is that I'm about to join the ranks of those who blog for a job (and then go for a jog with a fob, what a slob! He couldn't be Rob, they said all agog as they lifted the giant man out of the bog....sorry, I got carried away playing with the words there.  This grandma had a huge night last night, meaning I drank more than half a glass of wine and wasn't in bed by midnight, so I'm just a touch crazy today....)
Anyhoo, Hope Stone have asked me to be their resident blogger! I'll be writing posts about the programs and people there, reviewing the shows, talking about their mission statement "Art for All".  Apparently it would be good for Hope's internet presence if I blog here about the blog there, so maybe that's a reason to keep this one running.
Let me know, kids!

Houston Day 377 - the whole wide world is PINK

The Pink set

I have been living in Pink land the last week.  We open tomorrow so we've had long hours teching all week.  I also just got back to full strength this week after being sick for two weeks so I had a lot of ground to cover after missing a rehearsal and just not being fully present even when I was there.  It's been a fun week; hard work, but in the best possible way.
Working at Main Street is awesome.  They're a well-organised, well-funded, well-put-together organisation and just make everything so easy and stress-free.  I have idolised these guys and wanted to work for them pretty much since I got here and the experience behind the scenes does not disappoint.  We had our final dress rehearsal today and took some promo footage - watch this space! - and we open tomorrow! Yippee!!

View of the backyard and the "lakehouse"

In other news, we just started the lease on the new house.  It's an awesome quirky house with a pond in the backyard - the yard is really the highlight of this place - and I like it, although I think I don't love the house as much as our current one.  The location, however, is a big plus - close to a road with many more restaurants than our own little 19th St has, and also further south, so further away from Lucas' work but closer to mine.  I can even cycle to Hope Stone from there!

Houston Day 370 (1 year + 4 days) - Pink update

Nick (not Nick as in Bekah, but Sound of Music and Pinkalicious cast member) has complained that I haven't blogged enough about Pinkalicious.  Personally I suspect he just wants to read about himself, but the other non-Nick members of my audience may also appreciate hearing about this wonderful opportunity, which I really hope will be the first of many at Main Street Theater.

The auditions were months ago, so I've been looking forward to this for quite some time.  Most of the cast members got in touch with each other before the rehearsals started on facebook and meeting each other at other auditions, so the excitement has grown collectively as well.  I did an excellent job at the auditions of concentrating really hard on remembering the choreography - so much so that I didn't pay any attention to anyone and therefore returned some pretty blank looks when people said to me "I met you at the Pinkalicious audition!"
So we finally started rehearsals three weeks ago.  There are eight of us in the cast - Ashley, who I had seen onstage in the Coast of Utopia shows; Nikki & Adam, who adorably have been friends since they were little boys; Nick, who was in Sound of Music with me last year; Adrianna & Teresa, who both come from the Music Theatre program at Sam Houston State University and are really excellent chicks; Marco, who's been doing impressive amounts of theatre in Houston considering he's only 23 and he also has had some bad luck with shows getting cancelled; and me, who you know.

Teresa

Jimmy, Pat (Costume Designer) & Ashley

Nick

The music is great but irritatingly catchy (all cast members have reported inability to sleep because of tunes in the head, and the music even intruding on a couple of people's dreams).  The choreography is flashy and really fun and also really hard work.  Jimmy the director has this funny habit of asking if it's possible to do something really simple, like walk on stage to a slow count of eight, and then firmly informing us without asking that we'll be doing something really quite difficult, like finishing a song on top of someone's shoulders. All the cast members are great at what they do and working pretty hard.  We're all young and relatively new and anxious to make a good impression.

Teresa, Marco, Adrianna and Nikki

These photos are all from our costume fitting the other day.

Houston Day 367! One year and one day after arrival in Houston

Well, we made it through a year! We had a celebratory drink in our lovely little breakfast nook a couple of days ago, almost exactly a year after we were sipping pre-flight champagne in QANTAS Business.  It was a much tastier drink this time around, mostly because last year it was alcohol before noon on a Sunday, when we'd had only two hours' sleep the night before, from a combination of a long-stretching last dinner at the James Squire Bar (where Lucas told Sarah Chadwick about twenty times that he loved her....oh, Sass, I miss you!), having to pack our bags yet again, and sleeping in a hotel right on St Kilda Rd.
This time, as we drank Lucas' inventive version of a classy fruit punch, we discussed the highlights and lowlights of the last year.  We both agreed that my brief spiral into depression for our first four months was a definite lowlight.  The highlights include how much we enjoy getting to know Houston and Texas, how much fun and adventure and meaningful goodness we have encountered together, and our new friends.  There are a handful of people I still can't believe that most of my Australian friends don't know yet - how could good friends who are so much a  part of me not know each other? - but it's particularly been a blessing to have the friendship of Nick and Bekah.  It's just wonderful to have the support of fun people who are exploring this city for the first time too!
So it's pretty much gone as we have expected.  When I think about the details of our life here, there's not a lot that would have surprised me a year ago.  The most surprising thing to me is that we own bikes.  And we use them as transport.  Who would have guessed :)

My bike, a fabulous 90s number from Blue Line Bike Lab.  I call her Jessi.

Houston Day 358 - queerdom and Christians

Still, a lot of people are talking about the North Carolina ban on gay marriage and President Obama's support for it, and about homosexuality in general, and about how that interacts with people's faith and peoples of faith.  (Just FYI, gay marriage is illegal here in Texas.  Last year a judge ruled that a woman and her husband were not legally married, because the woman was not born a woman, although in every other legal situation she was allowed to identify as one.)
Googling stuff about the Biola Queer Underground group, where according to their website queers and their sympathisers seem to live in a lot of fear, led me to explore other tangential issues and I came across this: "Christians are an army that shoots their own wounded".  I am brought to tears.
I feel like I've swung to the middle about the church.  I'm definitely not in love with it anymore, but I think I've moved past the rejection phase.  So please in reading the following remember that although I like everyone have biases, I don't think I feel compelled to either defend the church or condemn it.  I also recognise that "Christian" can mean a wide variety of people, including people who don't identify with a/the church.
Back to that powerful statement.  I'm not going to deny that people have felt that way.  I can even think of a member of my family who might use those words to describe part of their experience with a church.  I have also known and loved a few Christians whose dedication to trying to eradicate sin has caused them to prioritise judgment over compassion, and to call that love.  I have been one of those Christians - particularly towards myself, when I have so often crippled myself with judgment.  So I can totally see how that statement could be true, at least in part, at least sometimes.
I can also see that rejection of and reaction to the church can be hurtful as well.  Christians also feel misunderstood.  Everyone's got those teachers in their life who shape them big time, often without even trying, right? Well one of mine was the Head of the Classics department at Monash Uni.  She was a lesbian first-wave feminist, who'd experienced her own epiphanies in walking away from the church, and I often left her classes feeling ostracised for being straight, white, and religious.  I think I probably hurt some people at Murrumbeena when later, under that same teacher's influence, I was in the throes of trying to figure out what the hell was going on in my faith.  But I'm pretty sure that's nothing compared to the hurt and abuse people have suffered from others "wiping out sin" in the name of Christ.
My hunch is that judgment, i.e., determining whether what's going on is right or wrong, is helpful sometimes but not nearly as much as many Christians I've met seem to think it is.  I think of the story of Jesus avoiding the issue when asked to stone a woman caught in flagrante delicto.  My recent cleanse-induced foray into the bible was about Romans 3:22-23: "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  And having read that verse dozens of times over the years, a new realisation jumped out at me.  I think, taking that passage in context, that the most important part of the sentence is "there is no difference", not the "all have sinned" bit.  Grammatically it's the main clause, at least in English.  The point is everyone's equality and salvation and righteousness, not everyone's sinfulness.  I'd love a radical shift in focus in faith communities.  "How important, really, is it to judge in this particular situation? What would happen if we bypassed the right-or-wrong issue?"
So I renew the challenge to myself: Respond with compassion.  Respond with humility.  And I'm sorry to those I've hurt in my judgment as a Christian, or of Christians.

Houston Day 557 - politics and art cars and other good American things

So I don't know if this made it on the news in Australia or not, but this week President Obama came out in favour of marriage equality (yay).  My impression (which may be incorrect) is that the campaigns have made it into the news less since the big three Republicans stopped battling and it seems all but sewn-up that Mitt Romney will be the Republican Presidential candidate.
It's in politics that I think the differences between the U.S. and Australia are most apparent.  There's so much more rhetoric here about ideology.  People's political opinions seem so much more to be based on symbol and philosophies and tenets of faith than on what actually happens day-to-day.  I think that's why "socialism" is such a dirty word here; improved access to healthcare and education would be excellent but people dislike what that represents ideologically.
I suspect that the difference between people's attitudes to politics in Australia and the U.S. are the legacies of the different histories of each country.  The U.S. as a nation was founded upon ideals (the Founding Fathers get brought up a bit), and they fought for those ideals.  Then that history about fighting for ideals continued in the Civil War.  Australia, on the other hand....just kind of evolved.  I've heard it said more than once that it's a good thing that voting is mandatory in Australia because otherwise not many people would care enough to vote.  I personally follow politics more here than I ever did back home...I think because it's more interesting here!

It's a quiet Sunday morning in the Buchanan house, mostly because Lucas is still in bed.  Also, the house is clean, because we finally paid someone else to come and clean it.  I can feel that this is going to be a long blog post (just FYI, in case you had other plans).  It's been a great weekend so far.
Yesterday morning I had my last Shakespeare class of this session (you sign up for sessions of four classes).  I've been working on a Mercutio monologue from Romeo & Juliet and it's in pretty good shape.  Going to class is excellent, because I just don't have the skills and the experience and the objective perspective to get out of my head and do this level of work on my own.  Plus it's fun to watch everyone else create their performances too, and learn from what they're doing.  Everyone in this class is preparing for the upcoming Classical Theatre Company general auditions.  We've just started the slew of summer auditions, where most companies begin to cast what they're doing in the next year, so that's exciting.  Keep checking out my auditions page to see what I'm up to!

After class yesterday Lucas and I cycled to see the 25th annual Houston Art Car Parade.  It's a wonderful weird tradition that we missed out on last year because we didn't arrive in Houston until the day of the parade.  People either decorate or paint existing cars (and there are some beautiful, intricate paintings on these cars!), or trick up gorgeous old classic cars, or completely make from scratch a work of art that moves by the use of wheels and an engine.  Houston is a very diverse city (not at all what people think of in caricatures of Texas) and this was reflected in the diversity of "statement" cars: no animal cruelty, support our troops, anti-war, pro-environment, anti-oil, yay America, yay Texas, awareness of breast and ovarian cancers, and an interesting and very complex car, owned by a Hope Stoner named Kirk, which makes some statement about Christianity that I haven't quite figured out.  This was accompanied by a guy on a scooter dressed up as Jesus wearing a crown of thorns and an ape mask.

Later in the day I  dropped off a cheque for our lease application fees to a realtor.  We have to move out by the end of June because the landlords are selling our current house, but we're in the process of securing a very quirky bungalow off 4th St (so still in the Heights).  On the way back I went grocery shopping in Whole Foods and it was very reminiscent of our early days here where I could rarely go shopping without homesickness and stress and tears overwhelming me.  I was on a mission to buy items I had never heard of before such as chuck beef and Polish sausage, and still completely exhausted from our first week of Pink rehearsals.  But the day finished nicely with a spontaneous invitation from James and Aria to have dinner with them at their favourite Italian restaurant in Montrose.
Today we are going to see Richard III at Main Street, directed by and starring the guy who played Bakunin in the Coast of Utopia trilogy.  He's doing a talkback after the show about the artistic process, so that should be awesome.  This production also has my Shakespeare teacher's recommendation, and I'm keen to see what Main Street do with Shakespeare.
Tomorrow it's back to work, and I should really try and figure out how to manage my energy levels.
Happy Mother's Day to all mamas, whether your child is a person or a project or a community.  Especially grateful to my own mum right now for booking her plane tickets to come and see me in Pink, and for always being my biggest fan.  (Well, until Lucas came along, and now they fight over that honour.  I am too blessed!)

Lucas and Mum and I on the NASA tour when she came to visit us last year

Houston Day 339 - Hello from the Zen center

So this last week I have joined the countless Texans who regularly go on a "cleanse" (because the everyday diet is so unhealthy for many Texans!) but not the kind of cleanse where you just drink lemonade for two weeks and try to pretend you're not hungry (one of my fellow reindeer during Rudolph did that and to be honest, it seemed awful).  It was a program outlined in the Yoga International magazine that I read.  The basis of it was doing yoga every day and eating a very restricted vegan diet.  I wanted to do it as a kind of spiritual discipline: to take this time as I come to the end of this season of a very light work schedule to settle a little deeper into myself, to balance out my physical and mental health before I head into Hope Stone tech week and Pink rehearsals straight after that.  And it's been great.  I feel very zen, and balanced, and rested, and in touch with myself.  Am also experiencing a hunger for spiritual challenge and community that I haven't felt in ages.  I got out a bible this week! Just coz I felt like it!!!
Other stuff going on in our world...I've been taking screen acting classes, as well as some more Shakespeare classes, and have learned & improved a whole bunch.  We went to see our first TUTS show last night, with Nick and Bekah, and also marked the first time the four of us have been to a show together and not just Nick, Bekah and Lucas coming to see my show or Nick, Lucas and I going to see one of Bekah's shows.  The show was La Cage aux Folles and it was brilliant.  Brilliant.  Brilliant.  A great show, and a really top-notch production.  Makes me feel good about the state of the theatre in Houston (although I think all of the actors were from New York :-/ ).  After this week Lucas should finally be done with the lease sale stuff at work, so that takes a load off.  His not-yet-functioning car Lance (the 1980ish Subaru brat he's been working on) got towed to the mechanic, so hopefully at some point we'll have two cars.  Life is filling up to the point now where that is becoming necessary.  And pt is ok here but not amazing...it took me an hour and a half to go to Main Street today to drop off my contract and pick up my Pink script (which, by the way, looks great - I can't way to start!)
Lucas is now home from a long and stressful day at work, so we're going to sit on our front porch and enjoy the mild evening sunshine lighting up the street.

Houston Day 330 - yay, I got cast

Just  a quick note to inform y'all that I went to an audition last night for a new theatre company called Ohana and had a great time and got cast in their first show.  (A last-minute decision to use a slightly dodgy English accent was, apparently, in the director's words, "inspired".)  It's an evening (well, a handful of evenings) of one-act plays called Awesome America!!, and each of the four plays is set in a different random American tourist attraction.  I'm in Perspectives on the John which is about the toilet seat museum in San Antonio (which apparently does exist).  Apparently the company is part of a larger plan to make the east end of downtown Houston the next big thing.  So that's a fun thing to be part of.  I also got rejected by Houston Grand Opera for Show Boat, but let's not focus on that one.

Houston Day 327 - reflections from my library

Teach me how to be someone

Whose heart can explore

While still staying here.

Let this be the year we both travel.

("Goodbye, my Love" from Ragtime)

I'm sitting on Auntie Lallie's old couch on the wide landing in our house that we've designated our library.  It's a beautiful place to be in the early evening because the sun comes through the enormous window over the staircase opposite, and it's also usually pretty tidy, so unlike the rest of the house, I can enjoy the space without having to clean up first.

We didn't decorate it this way on purpose, but I am surrounded by momentos from our travels and from around the world.  In front of me is the wall-hanging Lucas bought in Tibet, beside me is a painting of the outback that used to belong to Grandma, and to my left I can see souvenirs and gifts from Japan, England,Thailand.  There's also a picture in an ExxonMobil frame of us sitting on a longhorn; 3D Jesus; greeting cards; photos, posters and awards from shows I've done and seen; the "bimbo" toy that was made for my first birthday; and one of the many crocodiles given to Lucas during his PhD.  Plus also a billion books (the ones whose quantity made the packers complain).  And that gorgeous photo of me and my sisters taken on my wedding day that reminds me how much I treasure them every time I see it.  This is an interesting room to be feeling reflective in.
In some ways I feel like we've been here so long I'm getting twitchy (gosh I have a short attention span sometimes) and in other ways I'm reminded gently of how new we are here.  When I meet new people and tell them how long I've been here they usually react with a comment about it not being very long.  But I think the twitchiness is mostly due to the six weeks of underemployment (ending in two weeks, YAY)....and also, ironically, I think not being as fully grounded and embedded here means that my mind is not fully engaged all the time.  Sometimes in my life I feel really quite stupid, and then sometimes I am amazed about how much my mind is just always begging for more.

Houston Day 319 - from my new home at Hope Stone

Yesterday, after the lovely Tausha from Citywide Massage dealt with my back, I went to Hope Stone....actually, now I think about it, I've fairly been living at Hope Stone these past couple of days.  I helped out Amy, the 2IC of everything, doing office drudge work for a few hours, then I had coffee (well, roast almond tea) with Jane, the 1IC, mama of Hope Stone at Bungalow, my new favourite coffee shop.  Today I went to two classes, and now I've just checked in the little kids (please God, I hope I've done it right - I still don't get the way admin works here) and the teens are slowly trickling in.
In between all of that, I've been watching a hell of a lot of "Downton Abbey" and doing some fairly hardcore thinking.  When my life slows down between shows, I have time to look around and see how the rest of my life's doing, and often need to do a fair bit of emotional homework on stuff I've ignored while I've been busy.  It's fairly taxing, but good.  Part of what I'm thinking about is trying to decide whether I'll pursue a particular work/day-job opportunity that's come up, or whether I'd rather stay as available as I can for shows, or whether I'll end up letting everyone down trying to juggle multiple commitments.  Hmmm.  I'm also, as per Bekah's improv lessons she's giving me in return for singing lessons, trying to pay attention to what my body language, particularly my feet, are communicating in any given situation.  Think about it - if your weight's back on your heels, and you've got one foot pointing to the side, you're not communicating full alertness and engagement in the situation you're in.
Tonight we're off to see Ragtime at the Miller Outdoor Theatre (yes, this is the one I considered auditioning for way back in December).  Shemica and Vincent are both in it, so that'll be fun to see them.  Once Shemica and I figured out how to understand how the other one talks ("Are you having a go at me?"="I know you ain't comin' for me, bitch!"), we've become pretty good friends.
The Miller is a beautiful theatre - think Sidney Myer Music Bowl.  We've got friends coming, we've got many many cheeses from Houston Dairymaids, and it should be a good night.  And it's Ragtime! I'm so excited to see this show! I hope the production's good.