Houston Day 642 - life right now

A Typical Day

...is a little crazy.  I am joining the ranks of Houston actors who work multiple shows at once.  This is a typical day at the moment.

6am - alarm goes off.  Lucas and I are trying a little trick to help us feel more connected to each other, which is spending four minutes at four points in the day focusing on nothing but each other.  The first point is supposed to be as soon as we wake up, which is very challenging and neither of us are very awake.  Or if we are, we're not very pleased about it.

7am - call time at Main Street Theater.  Get in the tour van with stage manager and five other actors.  Do hair (wig prep) and makeup in the van.  One of the lovely things about touring with a stage manager (which I didn't have in my tour job in Australia) is that they drive, and I can zone out.

9am - one or two shows at an elementary school.  Contemplate fabulous patent-leather bright-red high heels and quell voice in back of brain that says it's too early in the morning for such shoes.  Don said shoes and wig and become Ms Frizzle.  "Have you heard of our teacher, Ms Frizzle?....the Magic School Bus...come with us on our bus and we'll learn about it....tiny stuff matters....the way it could be (imagine the world you're determined to see)...going green....our wonderful world!" (See, you just got your own little private performance right there.)

11am - on a high from performance, get out of costume, throw hat on to cover wig hair, reload van, hop back in it, still laughing and joking with other cast members, and drive away.  At some point, my body comes down from that high and I get cold, tired and ravenously hungry.  Laughing and joking peters out.

noon - get back home.  Spend the next few hours in a daze.  I'm not entirely sure what it is I do in the afternoon.  Go over music for Company rehearsal? Theoretically, yes.  Work on writing/casting/preparing Hope Stone Kids show? Theoretically, yes.  Sleeping, binge eating and watching The West Wing? Definitely, yes.

5pm - teach weekly class at Hope Stone.

6pm - begin the trek out to Texas Repertory Theatre in Houston's famous traffic.

7pm - rehearsal at Tex Rep for Company by Stephen Sondheim.  Enjoy but also get frustrated by the challenge of such difficult music, with a bunch of actors (myself included) who find it very hard to remember that the world is not all about us, and that therefore my comments/questions/jokes about every single bar of music is possibly not as useful to a congenial rehearsal atmosphere as we think it should be.

midnight - get home, go to bed.  Find it difficult to sleep with the opening bars of Company so loud in my head I think Lucas must be calling me Bobby.

I am so grateful for the opportunities I have to work in Houston (getting paid to do Sondheim? Whaaaa-?), but right now am finding it difficult to manage said workload! I'm not the only person in Company to also be working a kids' show during the day, and in fact I'm not even the only person in Company to also be in Magic School Bus.  And that other person somehow manages to work at a costume shop in the afternoons.  And have fabulous hair while he does it.  Damn you, Zack.
Lucas has been challenging me recently to be more present and not always focused on the next task, because it takes away my enjoyment of each moment, and also makes him feel like I don't value time with him.  I will make this work, or alternatively just be in a daze until Company closes in April.  See you all then!

Houston Day 633 - Feliz anniversario!

Magic School Bus opened today! We had a great show for a great audience, with only tiny mistakes to remind us we're alive.  I remembered that one of the beauties about kids' theatre is that there's an audience there that you can play directly to and have some fun with.  Ms Frizzle's first entrance was marked by applause, which of course set me in a good mood for the rest of the show!

Beautiful Colorado!

Lucas in Boulder (literally)

We continued our tradition of taking turns surprising each other with anniversary holidays this year, with me taking Lucas to Boulder, Colorado.  We flew to Denver and then drove to Boulder, and ate and drink delicious things, and hiked (very slowly) up a mountain, and wandered around Boulder's lovely shops and bookstores.  And Lucas gave me a fabulous present, which was.....he's organised for us to take Spanish lessons together! We start this Saturday! Feliz anniversario!

On our hike we visited a very old, very Little-House-on-the-Prairie, abandoned log cabin!

Houston Day 620 - financially better off?

A Financial Comparison Between Texas and Victoria

So I've come to a conclusion, based on some bad maths and a drive through East Texas this last weekend.  I think the average Victorian (that's my home state in Australia, for all you Yankee readers) is wealthier than your average Texan.

I've suspected this for a while.  As in Melbourne, there are a range of areas and a range of people who live in them, with varying amounts of money.  The poorest neighborhoods in Houston look a lot worse to my eyes than the poorest suburbs in Melbourne.  Is it just that Americans really know how to build ugly and boring towns and/or that having grown up in Australia I prefer the aesthetics of Melbourne? Because my drive through a different neighborhood last week, where I couldn't find the building I was teaching in for ages because barely any buildings were put together enough to have a street number, might suggest otherwise.

There seem to be so many more
abandoned houses in Houston than back home:
evidence that the GFC hit this country harder than Australia

We personally enjoy a lot more money here than we did back home, mostly thanks to an ExxonMobil salary.  And we're not alone - Houston has a lot of wealthy people and a lot of industry money and I've commented before on how that means a lot more money in the arts.

A typical house in River Oaks,
one of Houston's wealthiest neighborhoods

This subject came up again in my thoughts as Leslie and I were driving home through East Texas after an audition in Kilgore.  I noticed a surprising amount of abandoned or smashed-up houses and asked Leslie if that was normal for country towns.  She said yes, but that the houses further off the main roads would be nicer.
So I did some research.  Now we're getting into some areas that I am not naturally very switched-on about, like the difference between the average and the median, how to factor in the exchange rate, tax, etc.  But I tried.  And it seems to me that while the cost of living in Australia is astronomically higher than in the USA, you're still financially better off being an Australian resident (the kind that gets access to Medicare) than an American one, unless you're the kind of American resident that moved there to get an excellent, above-average job.
Add to that the factor that college loans and healthcare are a far greater financial burden on Americans than they are on most Australians, and I think my hunch is correct.  Anyone wanting to do the maths themselves (please, you'll do it much better than I) can look at these websites:
Texan Census
Cost of Living Comparison
Median Income in Australia
Melbourne's Worst Suburbs
A Guide to Houston Neighborhoods
Something Quite Complicated from the Australian Treasury About Tax

Houston Day 615 - Australia Day

Happy Australia Day/Happy Survival Day! Like everyone's favorite Aussie, I still call Australia home.  (What's that? ... You mean Peter Allen has not always been our historically-and-still-sometimes-very-homophobic-nation's favorite ambassador? Well, strike a light.)

I do still call Australia home, and the homesickness levels have been pretty high after returning home from our trip home.  Yes, my emotions are exactly as confused as that sounds.  Being in rehearsal this week has definitely helped.  My brain is totally fried after only three days of learning new choreography for Magic School Bus.  We ran my solo number toward the end of rehearsal today and one of the runs involved me doing the cute hip-shimmy choreography, opening my mouth to sing and then just laughing my head off because my brain froze up and couldn't remember the words.  I've been wondering why I'm so mentally tired and realising that while the aforementioned homesickness is probably not helping, part of it is not having done a musical for six months.  The director made a comment today about me being a musical theatre actress (as opposed to a straight theatre actress) and my consequent supposed ability to speak dialogue and dance at the same time....we'll see, Andrew.  We'll see.

After rehearsal I treated myself to some sweetened condensed milk and a read of A Year of Biblical Womanhood, which I'm reading for the Zeteo book club.  Brilliant book.  In particular, it has reclaimed Proverbs 31 for me into something I can read without feeling guilty or unwomanly.  Check out her blog where she touches on it here.  And then tonight I am cooking and cleaning the car and packing for my road trip to Kilgore, TX, where there's a whole lot of nothing, but an excellent Shakespeare Festival.  I think they should employ me, and I'm going to do my darnedest to convince them of that in my audition.

Houston Day 613 - all aboard the Magic School Bus!

The Magic School Bus Live!: The Climate Challenge

In keeping with what appears to be a developing tradition, starting the New Year with some kind of transport-themed show, I started rehearsals for Magic School Bus this week.  Last year was Freedom Train ("you got your ticket?"), and maybe next year I will have learned from this year's show and be taking some kind of alternative-energy-powered transport, just like we have progressed since last year and are not currently enslaving anyone in this year's show.

Right now we're learning the music, arranged and harmonised by our wonderful MD Kathy.  The confusion of learning six-part harmony/counterpoint (totally for our enjoyment only; I think the kids in the audience might not fully appreciate it) is magnified when she keeps on confusing me with one of the other cast members, whose name is Claire.  It helps (or maybe doesn't help) that, as siblings often are, I have been trained from a young age to answer to "Claire" (or Sarah, or sometimes even to my mum's sisters' names).

So it should be a good show, provided Claire and I can play the right parts. And turns out we do have a show that our family and friends can come to see, at Main Street Chelsea Market, 7pm on March 18th.  I think it costs $5.  And you will learn all about how

"We see CO2 and we see CH4,
And every day we see a little more.
Molecules are small, but they can add up fast:
Tiny stuff matters."

Sciencey.

Houston Day 607 - our trip to Australia

Ten Things I Learned on Our Trip Home

1. I will always care about my Aussie friends.
2. My sisters are two of the best people I know, and my family is pretty damn special, and my mum is a fabulous sixty-year-old.
3. About a third of my friends are significantly more pregnant or parental than they were when we left.
4. It's not Christmas without some family awkwardness.
5. Eton Mess is all the rage in Australia right now.
6. Ballarat changes, and yet it really doesn't.
7. Sausage rolls are everything they are cracked up to be.
8. These kinds of "visit home" trips are pretty emotionally exhausting.
9. Les Mis actually works better as a film than as a stage show.
10. Roger Federer's wife chooses to stay at Crown Towers.  Where my sister Claire saw her in the spa.  And then that was the first thing she told me when she came across the lobby to meet me.

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!