Houston Day 248 - Happy (?) Australia Day!

So, Aussies, I gather that in y'all's time zone it's Australia Day.  Go tell Sam Neill you've eaten some lamb and played backyard cricket, drunk VB/Carlton/4X and thrown another prawn* on the barbie.  I have this craving to watch The Castle.  Maybe I'll try to do that in honour of Australia Day.  Ah, the serenity.
Actually it's not very serene here at all.  There's a big thunderstorm that came through today, and for some reason big thunderstorms here seem to come with tornado warnings.  I kept out of the rain today though, just had to step over some fallen trees on my way to work.
Last night was the State of the Union speech.   Tell you what, I'm so much more into politics here than I was back home.  I loved the State of the Union, but in my eyes Obama can do no wrong, other than making the mic give a little thumping noise every time he put his hands on the podium.  I also really really want Rick Santorum to drop out of the race soon, because he represents everything evil about America ("I'm going to nationalise my prejudices and call it American family values").
But I did get the overwhelming impression that America is all about protecting their way of life.  I'm pretty sure most countries are about that too, but America is the one I'm viewing with a outsider's eye right now (although becoming less and less of an outsider every day).  There's just this feeling that there's something sacred about going to college, getting a good job, owning your own home and being a citizen of the most powerful nation in the world.  Does anyone else get the sense that there's something wrong with this picture? What is it?
And the other question that is haunting me at the moment is this...whose backs are we riding on in order to live that life? Doing Freedom Train, reading "State by State" (a book Mum gave me about the fifty United States), thinking about Australia Day...these are all making me aware that very good things and very evil things are all mixed in together.  On Friday I left Freedom Train rehearsal, where I daily explore the fact of slavery, to go to Fredericksburg.  Then the next night in Fredericksburg we got to a little historical-ish restaurant that encouraged you to "go back and visit the 1800s", and they had an old cotton gin out the front....with some cotton fluff in it...and I thought, whose hands operated that machine?
Southern gentility, the cotton industry, the wealth of the South...all these things were really tied up with slavery.  It's the same with Australia.  We wouldn't be the country we are or the people we are without shitty colonialist attitudes, genocide of the Aborigines, and transportation, which I think we're all agreed was a low-down, unfair thing to do to a person.  I mean, Australia's great and all, but if someone wanted to ship me off to the end of the earth coz I committed petty theft, I'd say thanks but no thanks.
And yet, I'm proud of my heritage, and I know I wouldn't be an Australian of British descent if it hadn't been for the colonisation of Australia.  Even though I'm pretty sure I had no ancestors in the First Fleet, I buy into the legends and the mythology and the imagery - I am proud of my supposed convict past; drovers and Aussie battlers haunt my dreams; I feel that on some basic level I must be a stockman, even though until a couple of weeks ago I never held a whip in my life; I am a British settler bringing things like cricket and tea and hoop skirts to a harsh environment in order to maintain my way of life. I love my home country, I'm learning to love the country I live in, and I even really love the Motherland (please, God, let me live in London one day).  But there's been an awful lot of cruelty and unfairness in the past to make these places the way they are. 
And... whose backs are we riding on now in order to maintain them?

In honour of Australia Day, I shall leave you with some song lyrics to enjoy and/or ponder.  They come from a musical called Manning Clark's History of Australia.  A chorus of convicts sings this song early on in the show, and then in the finale every single character, including Henry Lawson, Dame Nellie Melba, Queen Victoria, and a bunch of other historical characters, reprise it together:

We are they who paved the way,

That you might take your ease today.

Convicts sent to hell

To make in the desert a living well;

To bear the heat, to blaze the track,

Crimson furrows across our back,

To split the rock, to fell the tree:

A nation is because of me.

Houston Day 247 - Happy Anniversary!

Lucas and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary last weekend! Our tradition is that we take turns every year in planning a surprise for the other one.  It was Lucas' turn this year, and he picked me up early from work on Friday and took me out to Fredericksburg, in the hill country about an hour past Austin.
It's a beautiful little historic town, and in the 1800s was the centre of German immigration in Texas.  We stayed in a little cottage with an outdoor spa, enjoyed the town's shops and restaurants, and also played Scrabble with the lovely wooden set that was my anniversary present from Lucas.  I was so excited to see some great Texas storybook stereotypes the further we got out in the country....an archway over a ranch with blue sky, little cows on little green hills; large men in plaid shirts with cowboy hats and enormous moustaches; women with twangy accents and big hair :)

Houston Day 239 - Learning how to wield power (and a whip)

Hey blogworld.  Freedom Train is all the fun and interesting-ness that it promised to be.  Firstly, I am advancing (if somewhat slowly, which is also good for me) in my linguistic efforts.  Multiple accents and languages in the one show? Bring it on, liebchen.
The big challenge, though, which I hadn't anticipated quite so consciously or articulately, is playing a whole new level of bad guy.  Being an ambitious reindeer was one thing.  The day we were rehearsing the slave-catcher scene, where I chase and am trying to catch Derrick (=escaped slave) and someone yelled "Props!" and put a whip in my hand...that's an entirely different thing.
I haven't ever played a character with that level of malice or inhumanity.  I have never been so aware of the power relationships between different characters.  I recognise that this is really good for me as an actor, but it's freaking me out and quite a challenge for me to hold that power, when power in this case is incredibly evil and destructive.  What helps is for me to remember that the other actors probably don't identify with their characters any more than I do, so I'm not actually hurting them.  And I see them in rehearsal, also aware of the power relationships, subjugating their characters where appropriate, yielding the power to my characters, giving me permission to do my job well.
Whoo, heavy stuff.  Happy Martin Luther King Day, everyone.

Houston Day 234 - All aboard for the Freedom Train

Rehearsals started this week for Freedom Train, Express Children's Theatre's Black History Month show.  It's a fascinating story, about how a family of slaves escaped their owners and ran away to freedom in Mexico.  It's quite the linguistic challenge for me.  I play a slave-owner (Southern accent) and a German immigrant living on the Texas/Mexico border helping slaves on their way to freedom (German accent with several German and Spanish words thrown in).
It's good to be back at work after the break.  The team is all the same as it was for Tom & Huck.  The funny thing is, though - I'm working a regular schedule, not too busy, and well-planned out thanks to the glorious Home Office...and I kind of don't know what to do with myself! Next week's busier though, with some more days at the Opera.
Lucas is home from work so I'm gonna sign off and hang out with him!

Houston Day 231 - easy like Sunday morning (yeah yeah yeah)

A couple of Houston friends very kindly suggested that they were happy not to hear from me this weekend and that it was more important to rest up and hang out with Lucas.  And rest we have.  Yesterday we slept in, had a quiet breakfast at home and then set out on Home Office Day.  We achieved the biggest task, which was to establish a new filing system for all our household papers so that my desk doesn't become a space for general household clutter.  With a little bit more work tomorrow I shall have a functional and fun place to work.  The other challenge is to train myself to stop thinking about work when I'm not "at work".  Lucas will often ask me what I'm thinking while we're snuggling together and the answer is often something like "I'm just trying to figure out what to sing at the Annie audition" or "I'm worried about my headshots" or "I'm nervous about x y or z..." I need to learn to compartmentalise my life just a little more so that my whole life isn't about my work.  Although bringing my work into the rest of my life has the humourous consequence of Lucas becoming my stage mum - my career is such a shared project.  "Have we done singing practice in the last few days?" "Have we learnt to prepare a little more for auditions next time?" "Doesn't someone need to go over her lines this evening?"
Speaking of headshots, the session went really well on Friday and I have some great shots.  It was all very America's Next Top Model, with the makeup artist coming in between shots to fix my hair.  At certain points I felt like it was just about an excellent photographer showing off the work of an excellent hair & makeup artist and while it all happened to be centred around my body, I didn't need to do much.  That was quite relaxing, actually.  Because there is a certain amount of just being a body as an actor - you wear someone else's creativity on your body, and you got the gig because you happen to have the right body for it.  The photographer knew the kinds of looks I was going for, so I just entrusted myself to her direction.

Here are a couple of my favourite shots.  If you like her work you can check out clairemcadamsphotography.com.

Houston Day 229 - some thoughts about Melbourne

I woke up this morning thinking about what Melbourne's "word" is.  In Eat, Pray, Love there's a bit where the main character is in Italy discussing what word describes the flavor, the values and the goal of each city.  She and her friends conclude that New York's word is "work", and that one of the cities in Italy (I forget which) is best described by "pleasure", and another's word is "sex".  I think I'm remembering that right.  After I read that book I got talking to my friend Bry, who recommended the book to me, about what Melbourne's word is, and I can't remember if we came up with one or not, but now I've been away from it for a while I think Melbourne's word might be something about "difference" or "special" or "uniqueness".  I'm not that well-travelled compared to some people but more than any other place I've been, it seems that Melbourne is full of people and businesses all trying to be special in some way.  Fewer people than here in the U.S. are content to live in houses that from the outside look identical to their neighbours'; most Melburnians dress in their own special style, or at least try to; and each of the millions of cafes and restaurants and bars manages to be different from most of the rest.  All of those tiny theatre companies that never get any money are seeking to be unique.  Everyone's trying to develop their own one-of-a-kind flavor and add it to the city's melting-pot.  So there's a certain amount of self-consciousness about that, but it also means it's an incredibly creative place to live.  Am I right about that? Or am I romanticizing Melbourne now I'm away from it?
I haven't got a sense yet of what Houston's word is.  Other than "hot".  Yesterday was so warm (although apparently about ten degrees cooler than L.A.) I'm worried that winter is over already and we're slowly inching our way toward a boiling-hot spring.
We dropped Lex and Monica and baby Chase off at the airport yesterday, with their six or seven large pieces of luggage.  Travelling with a child is not something I'm going to sign up to anytime soon.  But it's been so nice to see them.  And now it's back to work: I'm getting new headshots taken today, which should be fun although I'm a little nervous, Lucas is back at work today and tomorrow (Saturday) he's helping me set up my home office.  2012 is underway.

Lucas assisting Chase in his exploration of our backyard

To see all my photos from December, check out this link.

Houston Day 224 - Hello again!

Hey blog readers, bet you've missed me.  December is over, and whilst it was great, I'm definitely not planning on repeating that little stunt of hyper-busy-ness.  This year my New Year's Resolution is to give up complaining, and a larger goal is to develop a rhythm of work that allows me to 1) perform 2) get all the other stuff, like admin, audition hunting, play-reading & -writing, that allows me to perform, done and 3) see Lucas and also relax.  So as a step toward that, Saturday is the Home Office Setup Day.
We got back from Christmas in Idaho yesterday, and that journey was really good practice in exercising my New Year's Resolution :) We were both hungover from an excellent birthday/NYE celebration which involved many cocktails and crashing on Dave & Shannon's air mattress.
It's been a big year, culminating in a big month....we're both tired on a very deep level, and a little bit clingy and sentimental.  I have a couple of times in the last week cried for no reason.  It was so good to get home and sleep in today.  We went to pick up Lex & Monica from the airport (yay, more Aussie visitors - and they came bearing Tim Tams!!!) and on the way Lucas took me to one of his favourite lunch spots near his work.
Tomorrow I have my first voiceover audition at my new agent's.  A little unsure of how it's going to work - apparently they have a recording studio there but my studio experience is limited, plus I don't know if there's a technician or if I have to run everything myself.  Useful to find out though! First time for everything!