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.)