...

faith-based arrogance is the worst type of arrogance.

They made me take off my toe rings!

It's been nice being at home.

Before we left for our break, I kept dreaming of what it would be like to do nothing. To have one day just to do nothing. Well I got my one day, and now about 10 more, and I feel I'm nicely stocked up on days of nothing. I've really enjoyed my time at home, but being in the house all the time has finally gotten quite old. A winter in California will be welcome.

I feel really good when I'm out and about in pike county and other various surrounding old stomping grounds. At first I was thinking "Am I really this homesick for this place?" But I realized I think it just feels great to be absolutely familiar with everything around me. My fleet manager would scream if he heard me describe the idea of "zoning out" when you drive, but knowing where you're going is a much more relaxing way to drive than constantly be on the lookout for the next mile marker, exit sign, and constantly counting the miles it is until you reach your unknown destination.

Also, it reminded me how much fun I had when I was in high school. I really did enjoy driving to Washington, doing plays at Veale Creek, the plays at Pike Central, our late nights out. And around Christmas that was all more frequent and even better, not to mention other traditions specific to the season. I had alot of fun.

But I don't miss it. I'm glad to keep on rollin. I thought to myself yesterday "Wow, my problems have gotten very adult." Debt. Jobs. Where in the hell am I going to sleep at night? Its not THAT scary.

Still haven't heard from the WWE. I probably won't. But I wrote a letter. A real, snail-mail, type-print-seal-stamp-send to a desk letter. Hopefully that'll make me standout. It's Christmas so I suppose they'll be slow, if in the office at all. I really want this job.

Merry Christmas anyone who reads this. Thank you for having enough time to wonder what I have to say about anything.

Writer's Assistant

I just applied to World Wrestling Entertainment for a dream position.

I know I won't use this Yellow Luggage.

12-12-2008

Over the past few days, I've been trying to figure out just exactly how/what I should write on my blog. There are a few events others might find interesting, so I'm going to just list them here.

Thanksgiving Break, Chicago/Tim Meadows
Ice Storm
Rest of Tour
Casey's Show

Alright, so the rest of the tour finished up very strong. Some of our best weeks. At time though, I know my patience was running thin, especially the last couple weeks. Occasionally my correction of a kid's behavior may have been unnecessarily strong or quick. I try to always stay fun in between to try to make up for it. I'm using the break to cool down and re-collect my self. We have a long tour coming up. We have gotten a string of great reviews sent into the office on us though, which is VERY uplifting.

After leaving Spring Creek, NV I headed home for Casey's show. She had already left early, and I finished up our week with a replacement partner. It was a fun experience, and he was a great guy. I enjoyed it muchly. At any rate, I was able to get back to Louisville basically on time. I took an earlier flight, and had a short delay at my layover in Atlanta, but because I chose the earlier flight I very nicely made it into town.

Keep in mind that I have the most horrible travel luck of any person you've ever met. A quick rundown:

Going to London in 2006: My passport arrived a day late, I had to change flights, spend a night by myself in the Louisville Airport before arriving and walking to the hotel alone. My laptop was stolen by the hotel maid on this trip.

Driving to St. Louis in 2008: We hit the biggest ice storm to hit the midwest in 100 years. We were forced to take an evening in the hotel. After we woke up and headed out our car spun off of I-64 onto an embankment. THAT didn't break the car, but it did slide off because it was already broken. After spending that afternoon at my house, luckily we weren't far we took off on a Greyhound to St. Louis that picked us up at 2:30 A.M. (My mother claims the site of the 5 of us running towards the Greyhound when it arrived should be use in future greyhound ads.)

Leaving Missoula for our break this fall: Casey had her ticket from Missoula paid for by Hanover. I had to buy my own out of spokane because it was cheaper. Again, a greyhound trip would get me there. It was 2 hours late. That made me late for my plane. I had to buy a night at the ramada. Out 100 bones. I left the next day. Both planes were late. On the return flight, my plane went up into the air, lost a radio and immediately landed. We got on a different plane.

I'll get to Casey's show in a moment. It was good. On the way back, we missed our flight (my fault). We got onto a later flight on standby, so that was ok. We made it to Salt Lake City around 7:30. One of our bags was lost. We went to get our truck and picked up the bag at Midnight. It was 2:00 A.M. eastern time. We decline our 3 hour drive and stayed in a motel 6 that night, wasting the 70 dollar room I had already paid for in Pocatello, ID. The next day we decided to get a room in Billings, rather than drive a full 13 hours to Glendive, MT. Luckily we made it to our final tour week in Glendive just in time for our show.

That show went well, and we had alot of fun with the kids and the folks in Glendive.

But in Hanover, I got to see the production of Slaying the Dragon, Casey's original play. It was great. The actors did a great job. And everything went really well. Although their ejudication seemed to go very well, they weren't slected for performance at the festival. Though three of them got well deserved Irene Ryan nominations.

I'm really proud of my girlfriend. Her writing has grown, and she is really doing really well. I'm actually lucky to be an aspiring director and actor and be linked with such a talented playwright. We're planting the seeds of mounting her next play in Chicago sometime once we're there.

So, after Glendive was over we headed out on our road trip to Sacramento for our flight home. (Sacramento, because that's where our next tour starts.) I thought it curious that every map service I checked and double checked sent us directly through Yellowstone National Park, but I checked and double checked and assumed the highway went through and it'd be ok. Once we go to the gate, almost running over a caribou, not joking, we saw that our highway was closed, and is closed, every single year from November to April. Its the most popular freaking national park in this country, and the map services don't know their schedule? Grr. So we drove 60 miles back up to the Interstate.

And that's when we hit the snowstorm. Eventually, we ended up in Big Sky, Montana. The highest point in Montana, stranded in a snow storm. We stopped, and paid for a hotel room. A $120 hotel room. We also wasted the $65 hotel room that I'd already bought in Idaho Falls, ID. The next day we drove 15 hours to Reno. Reno was fun. I played in a poker tourney there, lost, but lost with great cards, played well, and learned alot.

We headed to our contact's place in Sacramento, she was nice enough to give us some delicious Chicken Fajita soup, and send us on our way. Unfortunately before leaving I scraped the truck against a small wall near the garage where they were letting us park the truck. It's a big ugly gash, and since its my second scrape, I'll have to pay for half. That makes me sad. But tis life.

And after all this,

I'm so glad to be home, on break. I drove down to Denny's the other night, and it felt great to drive familiar roads. The 2 days that have already passed on this break already make it feel like it's flying by too fast.

If you're around, I hope to see you.

Lately...

Things've been busy. There'll be a much better post when I'm home in a couple weeks.

My greatest fear.

Is probably the possibility of ever leading my life suffereing from dimentia.

But related to that, is probably my second greatest fear. Becoming "old."

Now, I know I'll age, and I actually don't mind that. I've wanted my hair to turn white since I was a very young man.

What I'm afraid of is becoming "old." Becoming one of those people who decides the world must now respect me, and I have no reason to change with it. I never want to be too afraid, too smug, or too unaware to just let the world pass me up. I dread the possibility.

I really have very very little patience for those people who behave in that way. I think again it comes from theatre (and my ever constant love-hate relationship with it.)

In Theatre it seems that everyone has an age where they decide they know everything about how it all works and they will never ever do it differently again. They'll never take the time to look at themselves and see how they might improve the way they do things. They simply continue, giving themselves the benefit of the doubt that all their "experience" and "knowledge" must make them absolutely infallible in every instance. I've worked with more than one person like this. I've worked with many people like this.

Theatre is no doubt where it comes from in my life, but also all my years in church does not help. Essentially after being a very steadfastly believing, extremely faithful Christian for many years, those sort of people destroyed my faith. I've really held alot of resentment for them ever since.

It's like a pair of goggles. Once you're old enough to have them on, you never believe you need to self-evaluate, notice the way things are now different, the way the world has changed. I really really am scared that I'll ever wear those goggles. I really hope that with everything I do, I find a way to keep myself active and aware even in my advanced years.

On a happier note, Casey is in Hanover to see her play, Slaying the Dragon, and she was very excited about how the run went last night! I'm happy for her.

Political Debate

I like it better when its an improv game.

I keep getting in a heated political argument with some fellow message boarders at a forum I frequent.

The gist: I believe that liberals need to calm down their blood-thristy attitude towards the right and start moving towards unity and tolerance of those on the right, those that we don't think are smarter than us, and those we disagree with.

Their arugment: They know they're bitter, but its absolutely justified, and they're in the right. They never argue that they AREN'T bitter.

So, we're really not disagreeing are we? Politics are annoying.

Seems like I should post.

Hey all. There really isn't ALOT to post about. I mean, I've been doing exactly the same things I always have been. We've had a couple of really excellent weeks. It's all just been going well in general with the job.

Next week will be interesting.

Life has been very focused on Casey and her play being performed at Hanover lately. Stress has been roller coaster-ish with it. She's been reading some things in rehearsal reports she doesn't like, and doing her best to put in her two cents to try to be a little more pleased with things. She's usually faced with a lack of cooperation, for various reasons, so she's been up and down about it.

The word from everyone involved at the moment is very good though, so I'm hoping the best for her. It's been...a process.

I have had to resist my urges to want to jump into the process somehow and defend Casey and her feelings (it is her play after all) and put my 2 - 4 cents in and assert my feelings...but I've resisted. There's plenty of things that I've disagreed with and felt very strongly about from my position, but I realize its important to let Casey experience the struggles and obstacles on her own.

I'm proud of myself for the resistance I've shown. I'm very...passionate in such issues, and at one time not long ago was far too quick to assert my positions and do my best to push...whether appropriate or not. I'm still that way instinctually, but have devloped a much better meter for portioning it properly.

This week is going to be....a struggle of sorts. Its a first time town, we're doing our first ever assembly workshop, and I'm driving 4 hours to Salt Lake City on Wednesday night so she can be on her plane early thursday morning. I'm gonna stay with her that night, and head back the next morning and meet my new temporary partner Josh.

Then I'm going to go to Salt Lake City myself after our performance on Saturday night (which our fleet manager does not prefer, but I have little choice) and sleeping in the terminal (i've done it before, makes me feel alive! ;)) before boarding my early morning plane and barring any delays seeing Casey's show at Hanover that evening.

It'll be a whirlwind. Which will pay off with 2 days in my favorite city with my favorite people. Ahhh, Chicago.

Now that it's over,

I'm officially done with:

dogging John McCain and his campaign.

hearing about Sarah Palin.

(and because of the two above)

watching MSNBC. (They can't, rather, won't move on.)

(added later) and also: witty people who put "hussein" as their middle name on facebook.

This election turned liberals into blood-thirsty hate mongers. Sure, that's the way so many McCain supporters were behaving, right up to their "booing" at Obama's name during McCain's concession speech, but isn't the point of liberalism to reject that intolerant, snappy, quick-judged behavior?

I'm glad the election is over, because liberals were seething with hate...all while their candidate was representing the utmost of humility, courage, and cooperation. I hope now, quickly, the image of democrats and liberalism can go back to being what it was. Tolerant of all ideas, supportive of all rights...which includes free speech, whether you like what they're saying or not.

The battle is over, let's wash away the bloodshed now. Please?

Home? Again?

We've been in Missoula this week. Our homestay is...interesting. But being here is always very nice. It's great to have a week off...with no rumpelstiltskins and no kids. And today's my birthday! Yip.

23...they add up to 5! For whatever reason, 22 still felt young, and 23 feels real old. I'm not totally sure why.

I got to see Jesus Christ Superstar tonight for the very first time. It was a very nice production. Of course there were faults, and Hanover trained me well in the over-analization(sp?) department. I'm very jealous of this theatre being able to call itself a "community" theatre. It's incredible what they're able to do. Truly amazing.

I couldn't help but think how similar the Jesus Christ story is to that of Barack Obama's. Take away the miracles (which I doubt are true, BIG TIME, anyway) and they're even more eerily similar. I sent in my absentee ballot today, and I voted for him, but I've never fully trusted him. I get an eerie feeling when I look at him. But, as the show I got me thinking about it, I'll point out my feelings. Jesus came on to the scene quickly and strongly, filling people with "hope" more than anything. Soon they became frustrated with him, and were the cause of his eventual downfall. If Obama wins the election how long until everyone's disappointed with him? Most of his suppoters are the eternally disappointed types. If he's elected will he last a second term? Will he last 4 years? Worst of all, might he be assassinated?

The show was beautiful. I'm proud of working for this company.

After the show, we went to a bar for some karaoke and festive-ness. It was fun. Casey and I sang "baba o'reilly" by the who, and it was alot of fun. On top of it, we killed apparently, at least all the compliments we received seem that way.

All in all, a good way to start my birthday off...the whole bar sang to me. How cute. We're going to a corn maze in Hamilton, MT tomorrow. Should be fun.

Wassup 2008

Remember the Budweiser "Wassup?!?" Guys? Here they are 8 years later.

It was like a little wooden oasis that you couldn't escape from...

So, I've been without real stable internet for oh say...3 weeks now.

In Circle, MT I stayed in an old lady's house and if I sat in a certain chair with my computer hiked up at a certain angle I could get the internet.

The next week, in Williston, ND, I connected to what I believe was there home wireless router. Unfortunately, my area was the basement, and so it was very slow and unstable there.

Last week....let's talk about last week.

The shows went well...two shows on Friday, at 3:00 and 5:30. The new times were a different thing for us. I liked it better.

We stayed in a beautiful house. An amazing house. It was brand new, spacious...oh so many things. There was no phone, and no internet. So that sucked. But it was REALLY nice, and I miss it already.

Now in Missoula for a week off, I'm staying at a hippie's house. She's a real hippie. No TV, her fridge is filled with nothing but organic greens, and she has a meditation room.

She has internet, which I'm using currently, but she'll be home over the next couple days and then its back to sitting in a certain chair to connect to a vaguely strong wireless connection.

The name of the network is "bliss."

How are we going to rip his arms off?

Our week ere this week has been going smashingly, even if I can't write letters to give the parents for shit. I just keep making small mistakes in the letters. Good thing is, the people here are so friendly and nice, they've began thinking its funny. And not in that "we're acting like its funny but completely dissapointed in you way." They're extremely understanding, and have been at it a long time, so if the letters say something they're not used to, they just assume the ltter's wrong, and they're usually correct.

I'm a very paranoid person as far as my job performance. I feel like every contact has a shortlist of things they hope for me to accomplish. I probably spend alot more time thinking about the evaluations that the contacts fill out after we're gone than the average person who does my job. I've always been that way about anything. I think every tiny mistake I make is getting written down and sent to my boss where they spend time talking about me and how terrible I am. Well, I hope they don't.

It's amazing the feeling that you get when you have a good week, after a really bad week. Last week was by far, our worst. (And I know I say this alot, but its very true in this case.) This week, is by far-blow our other weeks away, scary good - best week ever. The ease of this week compared to the last few weeks just brings me so much joy. Casey and I feel like we're floating, its excellent. Quite excellent.

A Bad Show

Our show on Saturday was bad.

For lots of reasons, here's one:

There's a young 6 year old. The principal was against us casting him from day one. We cast him, because our numbers were right. We probably wouldn't have cast him if we did cuts. But we didn't do cuts, so he got cast.

We handled him pretty well during the break. He quit every day at some point, but Casey and I were able to talk him down. He quit during the dress rehearsal on Saturday, but I talked him back into being in the show.

I'm not sure what he deals with at home, but he's really a sweet kid. I talked to him for a long time as I was convincing him he wanted to be in the show. he told me that he "plays the guitar, and likes to write songs" He explained that he watches movies with songs and then writes new songs for them, and he had written a funny song for the dogs from Fox and the Hound 2...and that he'd also written a new song for the Bees in Rumpelstiltskin.

Its called "Sugar Bee" Lyrics follow:

Sugar Bee
Sugar Bee
Come Dance with me

He said he hadn't written down the rest cause the rest was very long. we had a nice conversation, and I kept him back in the show.

During the show, he quit again, i did my usual, walking up to him, telling him he couldn't quit. Then he tried to run, again normal. But this time, he couldn't go out into the lobby...there was an audience, so I kept him from going there, so he ran somewhere else...almost on stage...but I kept him from there. He tried to jump over the counter in the cafeteria. There was definitely something mentally unstable with him, the boy had snapped. I picked him up to keep him from flying over, and to try to calm him down.

As I set him down he ran through the cafeteria picking up bags with people's clothing in them and yelling at me "bag head!" then he'd throw water bottles "Water head" and lunch boxes "lunch head"

Finally, to keep him from making any more destruction, I picked him up...he began kicking me in the balls, and smacking me, and finally pulling my beard yelling "I got his beard!" Keep in mind, all the bees are laughing at this the whole time...I don't blame them "Bag head!" I'd probably have laughed if I wasn't the bag head.

So I had an AD go get the principal out of the audience. Keep in mind, the principal isn't a very nice woman, and especially not to this little boy. She very forcefully pulled the boy from the cafeteria and sat him in the lobby. He wasn't going to finish the show.

I felt like a failure. I couldn't handle this kid. This is my job.

Mom and Grandma were able to talk him down, and he did eventually finish out the show...thought getting him ready again caused all the bees to be late for their entrance, among other issues.

But...that's a story, isn't it?

Theatre

I broke into theatre in high school. I was taking a shakespeare class with an English teacher at Pike Central. There were only 7 of us in the class, and we basically spent all of our class time reading scripts outloud and trading off roles. (I believe we did Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer, Othello, and...a couple others, I can't remember what they were) At any rate, it was at this time that they were doing auditions for the fall play, and an exchange student from Australia talked about trying out for the play one day. My teacher suggested I try out as well, and the Australian girl agreed. I thought about it, reluctant to, because at that point I didn't realize the school even did a play AND a musical and in those days I didn't want to sing.

But i did, and I was cast. The way this particular play worked, All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten it gave Hays, our director, some freedom in casting. The show has a hard-line cast of 5...but its not a linear play, just a series of very vaguely intertwined vignettes. So he passed out the scenes and characters to the different people. Our high school theatre was very hierarchical. Seniors received, and still receive highest priority for the largest roles, and it doesn't hurt to be one of Hays' favorites. Two of Hays' favorites, two seniors received 7 scenes a piece. The third favorite received 6. He cast me in 7. I am still proud of that. I was nervous as hell, but very proud of it.

There is this particular monologue he gave to me in it about listening to a Beethoven symphony to lift me out of an emotional funk. It was very long, and relied solely on my shoulders as a performer. I think writing this blog at all came out of thoughts I had about what it would be like if I were to be given that Beethoven Monologue again to perform. Of course, it would seem i could do it even better now, with the experience and knowledge I've gained since then. But another part of me wishes I could go back to the raw, innocence of how I approached it the first time.

I know now if I were handed the monologue. I'd be dissapointed in it, because its not a good monologue, its not well written, its boring even. But I never had a thought like that then. I didn't know plays could be anything but exciting. Part of me is afraid that I know that part of me is gone completely.

I did 5 more shows at school, and 5 more shows at neighboring community theatres before I graduated high school. I had found this thing that made me happy, and it seemed maybe I was actually good at it so I leapt on it and I wouldn't let go.

When I got to college I was very green as far as theatre, but so very excited to be going there and learning new things about it and was so excited for it my freshman year. My mentor there, Paul Hildebrand reminisces often about an e-mail I sent him before I got there about how excited I was to do theatre, and how I wanted to do it anywhere I possibly could, and how I couldn't wait to get started at Hanover.

I was still riding the high horse after the first year at Hanover when I felt like I'd learned so much and was able to go back home to direct The Music Man with this wealth of knowledge that I didn't have before. It did really help with The Music Man and that show was very successful for the theatre (I belive its still might be the biggest grosser for Veale Creek...but probably because we had about 2 more performances than they normally do) I went back to school my sophomore year and started to get a little bit in the doldrums at the school...maybe for a lot of reasons. My closest friends from the year before mostly started to become affiliated with greek organizations...which, whether they liked it or not, was not good for our friendship. I was also becoming more pretentious (Hanover College is a pretension factory, doing its best to shoot you out in four years a stuffed-shirt, pretentious, liberal thinking reactionary) that year as I was taking classes I'd never thought about before like theology and philosophy, and was riding the high of The Music Man thing and everything else in theatre going so well.

Sophomore year I was still eager for theatre, though getting bogged down in getting all my other stuff done at the school was slowly creeping its way in.

Then I worked at Shawnee Summer Theatre for a summer. It was here that I received a most rude of awakenings. I suddenly was a tiny fish tossed into the sea with people who had trained at better schools, and had been going at it longer, and doing it better for sometime. I met some real actors, worked with the winner of Division III Irene Ryan, who's become a good friend, and was left to do a lot of thinking about where I was in theatre. In short, it made me bitter as hell.

Had I picked a horrible college? I didn't put a lot of thought into it. Why don't get to do things that they do? Why do I still, to this day, know nothing about the Meisner technique? Why didn't I hear anything about the Alexander technique until my final weeks at the college? What are all these things these people are learning that I am not(I could go on)? Thankfully I used alot of it to improve, learning alot of new things from my friends at Shawnee that made me a much better actor going into HC that year. The department recognized it too, I was cast as the lead in 2 of 4 plays, and was told by the director of a third that I auditioned best for a lead but he knew I was going to be the lead in another one and wanted to spread the wealth.

The mix of this success and the sudden bitterness over my (lack of) theatre education blew my head up. I became very temperamental and judgmental my junior year. Not to mention I was getting more and more tired of Hanover itself. If i hadn't gotten a job that I really loved at a local winery that year, things could've been much worse. It provided distraction from the theatre department I was beginning to severely dislike, as well as just gave me a different environment to get away from school at. (Not to mention, tasty wines.)

i became a person that year that I deeply regret now. I even got into a verbal confrontation with one of my closest teachers/directors over his "lack of organization" I was a prick. Thankfully that very teacher was the one that called me out on it at the end of the year, and it really hit home to me. I understood exactly what he was saying, and maybe hadn't realized until then just how I'd let things blow up.

Another summer at the Shawnee and senior year at Hanover...I was more balanced. There's a part of me that I've retained that is demanding of the people I do theatre with, but is not bitter or as confrontational as I once was. I did end up quitting the production of Oedipus I was cast in that year, so some of that negativity obviously still remained. But, I've never regretted my decision to drop out of the show, and the reasons were far less personal than they must've seemed.

At any rate, while I still came out of my very bitter Junior year with a jaded opinion of the theatre education one receives at Hanover, I was able to function without letting that bitterness be what was ruling my work in the building. I was also becoming more and more distanced from theatre. I wasn't in love with it they way I was before...(then stepped in Improv and the trip to Chicago, but that's another blog)and I'm probably not as in love with it now as I was. (Might explain why I wrote all this out.)

It is another bog, but doing improv had stepped in and become something I loved and still love now as much as i did then. This helped harbor a friendship with the two men I consider my best friends(besides Casey of course) at Hanover, Jon and Brandon. And in Spring term, I had the definite best days of my life at Hanover. Every night Jon, Brandon, and I were having fun. Improv was going wonderfully.

But most of all, I made up with the man whom I'd focused most of my negative attention towards at Hanover. We never really spoke about it outright, but both I and one of my professor's (different from the two mentioned before) had an unspoken dislike for each other. We were tolerant of one another, but I had no respect for him, and he had little interest in me. But, something about the class I took with him that last term, maybe it just finally broke. It was clear that we were tired of harboring such negative feelings for eachother, and just become collaeagues. Friends, even, I hope.

I graduated in not only a better place, but the best place emotionally I had been at Hanover in four years, and carried that into my current job.

I'm still not sure how I feel about theatre. I love it, I hate it. I enjoy it. Its my job. I love my job. But is it really theatre? The entire world of theatre is very pretentious. Its hard for it not to be. I mean, its playing pretend. Its aggravating.

I know right now, I'd rather do improv. I might wanna go to grad school. I mostly wanna teach high schoolers, teach the type of kids that are like me when I was their age - so excited to do theatre, so eager to learn about it. I got sick of myself when i was a bitter theatre person. I don't want to be around many of those anymore.

If you read all of these words, you're a saint. I really wrote this blog entry for me, as it had been all over my mind the last couple days. Feel free to comment on any part if you'd like. I always wonder if others have similar experiences in theatre as I do.

Blogs, Tour, Etc.

I don't know why I've become so lazy about this blog. I enjoyed doing it at first. I still do, really. I just never get around to doing it when I'm online. (Except when I'm stealing Internet...more on that later.)

There's things I wanna talk about. I badly wanna talk about football. I have alot of opinions about the NFL...but I think most of the people that read here, don't really care about the NFL....so I don't. But I've thought about opening a blog over at FanNation...which is a sports blog site. But then I think, i don't even update my own blog...so I don't.

I have a twitter...which I also don't update enough. But, I do tend to update it more than I update this. And if you dont' have a twitter, you should get one. They're fun and quick. They're supposed to be a mini-blog that tells people who follow your twitters exactly what you're doing at any given moment. They encourage you to quickly get on and just say "at the store" "shaving my body hair" etc. Of course, most people don't just say that. They're little glimpses into a person's personality. Well, mine can be found here.

Maybe this tour's just not interesting? But it is. Maybe the towns we're in aren't as interesting as the summer. They're not. But, there is still interesting stuff going on. We've had tougher weeks, and maybe I'm just more fatigued.

I wanna tell you to keep checking here, I'm going to update more often, I promise! But....I don't know that I will. I really HOPE I will. I like the idea that people wanna know what I'm up to, or enjoy an update on me, just because I feel the same about them, and anyone who may read this...I'd like to know what you're doing too. But, for whatever reason, I don't update this like I should.

At any rate, we're in Circle, MT this week. It's even smaller than Bridger was. We spent alot of money on GROCERIES. So we can cook our own meals. We're staying in an old lady's house. She isn't home. They just gave us a house. So we've been cooking. That's nice. No internet. Unless I scoot just to the left on the air mattress. Then I get internet. That's where I am now.

Where are you?

We keep it poppin' at the holiday inn...

I don't even know if that's an accurate lyric from that song.

At any rate, its been a real long time since I said anything on this blog. Mostly because I've been way out in mountain country the last couple of weeks. Our first week back was in Livingston, Montana. A pretty bizarre little town that produced alot of good times. It was our first homestay, we stayed with an awesome family. The family mom also happened to be our contact, she cooked enough dinner for us to join in anytime we were there in the evenings and packed or bought our lunch for us everyday. She also had a great farm with sheep, chicken, turkeys, ducks...that week went pretty well all around. We also met an old TAD who lives in the town and works at the theatre we performed at. we shared stories and he gave us some old tips and tricks from his 3 1/2 years. He also told us about the strange celebrities that live in or near the small montana town. Peter Fonda, Dennis Quaid, Jeff Bridges.

If you watch Real World/Road Rules Challenge on MTV, you're familiar with Abram. He grew up in Livingston. He was in the same coffeehouse as us. I didn't speak to him, because he was in the middle of doing something private, and possibly embarassing. But I will tell you that I only vaguely thought it was him, and was looking at his myspace page to try to confirm if the two men did indeed look alike, when I overheard his conversation partner call him "Abram." My suspicions confirmed, I closed his myspace page and remained reality-star struck.

He also pointed out to us that we don't have to have dress rehearsals on Fridays. I have no idea why we did that. I don't know where we go the idea that was right. But, we did it, every week until last week...but we had a Friday show, so it didn't count. But this week, we're not goign to do it, and see how it changes our weeks. It'll probably make our shows that much better. It makes me really wonder how good some of our shows could've been, considering first dress rehearsal sort of kills trying to have a real rehearsal.

Our second week was our toughest yet. It was in Bridger, MT - a town the size of my thumbnail. Literally, there were 6 to 7 businesses total, and they were all on mainstreet. Their high school has 67 people total. We've directed shows with bigger casts. I don't know how many students were in their elementary school, but it was small. It was also depressing. It was obviously a very poor community, and...money just makes me upset. It really has so much indirect effect on things. A cheap county equals a cheap school which equals cheap teachers which (in most cases) equals bad teachers which equals poor students which equal a cheap county and over again. Believe me I know they cycle, I grew up in one. But, Bridger was worse than PC ever was.

The kids were...unfocused to say the least. I never got the idea that many of them really wanted to do the show...it was never clear why they were there. I guess they enjoyed themselves. Also...its REALLY hard to do 4 hours of rehearsal with kids who've been to school from 7-3 already. We did our best, and from the reviews we got from parents we were "the best missoula show we've had so far." So that makes me feel good. I hate how competitvely natured I am deep down, but it also makes me feel good to be a little bit better than someone at what I do. I mean, I never want someone to do poorly or be bad at something, but if I'm better and someone lets me know, it always soothes the ego a bit. Hopefully not too much.

We were in the luxurious Bridger Motel that week. No internet there. Heh. We ate a the same place every night...the Garage/Buckeye Bar. Its a bar across the street from the Motel. Casey and I wondered what the best decision was as far as going to a bar every night, but when we realized that 90% (no exaggeration whatsoever) of the employees of the bar had kids in the sbow (The cook even bought his daughter's shirt at the bar after the show on show night, with his tips) we weren't so worried. Then, the fact that many of the other parents were patrons of the bar. Like I said, the town is small, this bar is the only thing there is to do. And its actually a damn good bar. I loved the place. They gave us a token for a free beer after the show.

Not to mention they played live Texas Hold 'Em. I lost 30 bucks playing, but I always consider money lost at poker and investment on poker lessons. I really am getting more and more into the game lately, and feel like I'm turning into a marginally skilled player. I did all the right things in the game at the Buckeye, just lost on luck.

But anyway, Bridger was both depressing, but sort of comforting at the same time. Maybe I just feel good when I'm in small towns...I really enjoyed seeing the same people at the bar every night, almost becoming friends with them. Then having great conversations playing poker with them that weekend.

Now we're in Thermopolis, Wyoming...it has a considerably higher amount of life to it, and we're in a hotel with internet finally, so that's great. The kids are young. Only K-5 this week...the tour report tore them apart...but we didn't have to cast all this year like they did last year and so we got to be choosy. Also, this town is the home of either the country's largest or oldest hot springs, but I can't read the mountain in the dark. Also, from what we've observed, its home of the some of the best damn moustaches in all the Rockies, and maybe beyond.

Oh, and just because I forgot about it earlier, I want you all to take note of a picture of the accompanist from Livingston that I'll put on my picasa in the next few days. Then I'll dedicate a small post, just to him.

Fall tour. Huzzilly.

Fall Tour Resolutions

- Improve my TSD Timeliness
- Improve my Dental Hygiene- that old roller coaster
- Figure out how I'm going to buy that damn ring.
- Save more money.
- Try not to look tired at the beginning of the week, even if I'm exhausted.
- Really take in what Autumn in Montana will look and feel like.
- WORK OUT STUDENT LOANS

That's all I can think of for now.

Tragedy at Pike Central, again.

I heard the news today that one of my teachers in high school, Marty Deputy, was found dead this morning in his home, of self-inflicted hanging.

His first year teaching at school was my senior year, when I took him in a biblical literature course. I enjoyed having him as a teacher, and thought he was generally a pretty good guy. He left PC the next year to be the head wrestling coach at Jasper, before coming back to PC the year after that to be the head football coach at PC.

Its sort of incredible to me the cycle of tragedy that Pike Central goes through so often. Maybe other places go through the same sort of cyclical line of events and I only am informed about my own, but it is truly sad. Pike Central will keep going though, becoming a stronger school afterwards. I remember when a young man committed suicide my Senior Year and the struggles and sadness everyone went through afterward, but PC really came out of it improved in many ways.

Rest in Peace, Coach.

It's been a long time now.

Hey blog,

I'm sorry I've not updated you in so long. I'll begin turning that around now.

Jake

So, I've been home for a week after an interesting trip to get here. I took a greyhound from Missoula to Spokane. But, it was two hours late, causing me to miss my flight. They couldn't get me on a plane until the next day and I had to stay in the hotel in Spokane. The airport in Spokane is the most remotely located building I've ever experienced. It's surrounded by nothing. There are two hotels, and only one was remotely close, so I had to spend the evening at the Ramada. So I had to spend way too much on it.

But, suffice to say, I've gotten home to Petersburg, and gotten to spend some good time with all of my old friends. So that's been nice.

Tomorrow, its off to Hanover to see some of those friends and support Casey as she begins workshopping on her play they're producing.

I hope anyone who reads this is doing well.

"My kids were very embarassed by me."

What an excellent little show these kids put on here at Randolph Air Force Base. I'm really proud of our last week. We had a great show to finish out our summer tour.

So, with the summer tour over, I'm looking at some real worrysome money issues over the next few days. Hopefully all will take care of itself in a timely fashion and we won't have to stress out too much.

Even though I'm so worried about that, I still can't find myself being unhappy. Its been nice reflecting on the last 10 weeks, what a great job I have, and what an excellent set of experiences this summer has brought. I had the thought today, that I wasn't dreading starting work again...even though I haven't started my vacation yet. I'm thankful for that.

This week's question during our call-in was "What is your favorite moment of the summer?" Unfortunately, Casey and I's responses were both pretty goofy, rather than anything genuine and sympathetic, and sweet, touching, etc. Really, our season has been somewhat devoid of those moments. There hasn't been that special case where a girl came off stage crying with excitement or anything like that. Great kids, no really special stories.

Then this week, the Gnomes got such a resounding applause when they left the stage they could hardly contain their excitement. Of course, I had to promptly shush them, but they were jumping, clapping, and celebrating with each other the instance they got off stage. It was great to see.

Randolph Air Force Base has featured some of the nicest, most cordial people we've worked with all summer. On both Tuesday and Wednesday we were invited over to some parents houses for some great dinners. Both made a spicy chicken entree...different ones, and both pretty good. The second one especially...I should've gotten the recipe. Damn was it good.

Another mother bought us Subway for Lunch on Tuesday, and brought us each those Oscar Meyer Deli Creations (which are AWESOME) on Wednesday. Casey and I normally don't eat lunch, we drink Slim Fast in the mornings and skip lunch in the laziest attempt at weight loss ever known to man.

There was one particular mother that must be blogged. On Monday, we cast her Son (as Rumpelstiltskin) and her youngest daughter as a bee. Her middle daughter didn't make it. She tried some very stringent negotiation with us after the rehearsals. I held strong against her. Before she asked "Well, if anyone drops out, will you put her on a list or something?" Having had no one drop out at all this summer, and knowing that this would put the button on her tactics, I replied, "Yes, if anyone drops out, I'll absolutely call her first." Before they left, they spent a long time in the corner, the 4 of them in the family. I'm pretty sure she tried to convince her son to drop his role of Rumpelstiltskin so the middle daughter could be in the show...(She told us the middle daughter wanted to be there the most, and he the least.) They didn't come back and talk to us, but Rump was late to the rehearsal claiming "there was some stuff...but, I got it taken care of."

Well, eventually her daughter was cast, because we had a few drop outs. Then, on show day, Mother dearest, while intruding in our dressing room made her daughter switch dresses with another girl because hers was too big. They're all too big. We told her that, she switched them anyway. The other girl ended up deciding to play a boy because the dress was so big. (It was more sutied to her to be a boy anyway.)

Well, after all this...after the show was over, this mother came up to us and said. "I know I'm difficult, thank you for putting up with me, my kids were all very embarrassed. They told me I should apologize." We accepted.

Speaking of how nice this residency was...our contact got us free tickets to Schiltterbahn Water Resort...one of the biggest water parks in the country to go to on our day off this week. We went today and really had alot of fun, even though thrill rides/slides aren't Casey's thing..I did a few things by myself while Casey lounged in the rivers, hot tobs, wave pools and the like. Then, the sky opened it up and it began to rain. So not only did we spend our day off surrounded by even more children, it got rained out. We waited for about 2 hours as everyone got on shuttles and such to get to their cars...and just as we got to the other side of the park (its seperated by several blocks, spread out over 65 acres) the clouds cleared up and the rains stopped. Even though the ride I really wanted to go on was back where we just were, we took advantage and I rode some of the tube rides I'd missed earlier.

People make me really upset sometimes. While we waited in line for the bus, there were two people who attempted to cut in line behind us, in front of way over 150 people. Another women kept rudely yelling at the people working. Also, another man was complaining about how they weren't filling up all the seats...he even had the audacity to yell at the workers once he was boarding the bus about it. There well over 1,000 people all waiting for the busses out in the rain, and these select few felt they were special enough to insist their problems on the staff. Who do they think they are? I enjoyed putting sunblock on in the rainstorm, trying to give the disappointed kids and parents around me a laugh. After all, they'd paid for their day.

The process of check-in in Missoula and getting home now begins...

Viva Sunita

This is an Indian short film, starring my friend, Chandan.



Its been selected for the Manhattan Film Festival which is the first step for an international short film towards being considered for an Oscar nomination.

"I need some serious touchin' up!"

What a show day.

When we finally got into our performance space, for the first time the whole week, we're shown our dressing rooms. They're antique, and we can only allow 10 people in them at a time.

This made changing into our costumes quite a drag. It took a very long time. So long in fact, that our dress rehearsal...our first on this stage mind-you was cut short. Not to mention the fact that because they're a union house, they had to open the house a half-hour earlier than we're used to. They didn't tell us that until it was time to open the house.

Well, if anyone can handle it, these kids can....Well, maybe. Our afternoon show at the downtown Paramount Theatre in Austin was our worst show of the season. They needed a rehearsal, so they took it. They took their chance to make mistakes, miss cues, and drop lines...it was just unfortunate that their happened to be an audience there. There were so many little things, the biggest of which being that one character didn't come out at all during a three person scene between he, myself, and one of our leading ladies. I did my best to cover for him, but his absence really confused both the girl and myself, and we stumbled over the scene, ruining the pace of the show to such an extent that it never really picked back up. (They audience stopped clapping after songs after that scene.)

This was the most talented group of kids we worked with yet, and they handled the issues well. It was really too bad that they didn't get the chance to rehearse in the space until the day of the performance. If they were rehearsing in the space all week...my goodness, I can't even imagine how incredible the performance would've been. I described the situation like this: In some celestial universe controlling room, my boss tapped on the shoulder of God, who sits at my boss's right hand mind you and proclaimed, Jake and Casey are mere rookies on their first tours, they don't deserve the best show in our company's history. We must throw them a wrench. If it weren't for that wrench, what a show we could've had.

And the evening performance was almost there. It went smashingly. As our lead girl put it "well, that one was really like a rehearsal." Apparently the kids needed to get it out of their system. The kids were incredible in the evening for, thankfully, a much larger audience. What lines they missed earlier were back, where we stumbled previously, we now soared. I was very proud of them, and they were very excited to have put on a great performance...but there is one priceless story from the second performance that must be heard.

So, the busy bees, our youngest group, wear these large pillowly "bee bodies" complete with stingers which are worn in the back. Well, after about a verse and a half into their song, the audience just slowly starts giggling, louder and louder, and I'm unsure what's going on as I'm singing. I turn around and look at the bee next to me, and I notice one of her arms is tucked into her body and she's working on tucking the other. As the giggles build, my eyebrows clearly question her. Seeing this, she holds up the front of her bee body...her stinger hanging between her legs. Then, she tugs on the stinger, holding it up for me to see...which the audience of course roars at. I just turned out, my face slightly more cherry tinted and laugh my way through the rest of the song before sending them off. I'm glad our summer tour didn't end without a blatant phallic reference from a 6 year old.

At this point, knowing I have a few other things to talk about, I'll warn you that this is a longer post than usual. Maybe that can make-up for my lack of posts the last couple of weeks.

It was a terrific experience working with the Union technical crew at the Paramount. They were so efficient, polite, and friendly with us as they helped us set up and tear down. Tearing down was especially funny. I explained to them, as I always do the helpers that we don't pack our steel base plates into our boxes before we put the boxes in the truck because they're too heavy to carry. They scoffed at that idea, and explained, "See, when that happens to us, we have two people carry it." The enjoyed joking about how heavy the remaining items were for the rest of the load-out. It was actually a lot of fun. I always think Techies are a lot more fun than most of the artistic types.

Last night, we rushed over to Coldtowne, an improv theatre in Austin. We got to see a couple of their teams, one of them a group of students, the other one of their house teams, and the artistic director of Coldtowne's favorite improv group. I could see why. They were an excellent team. What stood out to me first was their patience: their form was very loose, they had one main scene that their other scene ideas drew from. They started as a group of four roadies working for the band "skeetercat" and for, what was probably 20 minutes or so stayed in that scene before jumping into anything else...simply because the scne was producing some great watchable moments as it was, and nothing had jumped out to go to a different scene. Never once did it feel slow, old, or like they were rushing to find something. The show kept going that way, they'd jump to a scene based on the main framing scene and when they were doesn't, they'd just go back to the main scene. Plus, they were so incredibly smart, remembering and incorporating comments made form each scene, peppering them throughout the evening. They even managed to work a drunken heckler's additions in the show.

What was even more inspiring to me, was the theater itself. It was a very small building...the lobby area of which was being built to be a bar, it was a large area, with a nice bar in the corner. The theatre's fairly new, and their application to vend alcohol was hanging in the window. The charge for tickets was "$7-$10" $7 gets you in, but if you have it and wanted to give more, we'd be happy to take $10. I'm sure they wouldn't object to a bigger donation. They also said, its BYOB, so feel free to pick up something at the gas station next door and bring it over. The stage was made out of four 4x8 platforms, their seats were folding chairs and couches. They had a projector, a screen, and a desktop computer that served as both the projection system and the sound system. They lit the stage with 5 lights, and lit the house with 3 others.

So basically, they built an improv theatre for under 1,000 dollars. Under 500 if they didn't have to buy those lights. I can't wait to do that myself somewhere. It was great.

I probably had more to say in this post, but i don't remember. I started writing it on Saturday, and then kept closing the browser. Good thing blogger keeps things. Lucky for you.

"Do you know what weight you have in each costume?"

Oh, today. What a funny day. We had a great rehearsal, working in things like scene changes...introducing the busy bees to everyone else, the magic wall, etc.

Then we took a little break in the afternoon and answered some questions about costumes, show day, etc. and so forth. It was a good break, longer than normal, but these kids are so awesome...it really didn't matter in the least.

We did an over-the-top rehearsal after the break, which produced some hillarious moments, the most hillarious of which was when "Cameron 10" - whom we call Cameron 10 because Gnome 9 is also named Cameron. It was his suggestion. He's 6. His line is "yup." Well, he said "yup" and I told him to do it real big over the top...he exclaims "Yup-a-daba-do!" I can't describe how funny it was.

So, Casey's been getting really into the X-Men lately. She always liked them, but she got sucked into the world of their comic books at long last. Comics can be a crazy world, producing hell-bent obsession, and fanatical collections. It can also be alot of fun. I've gotten alot more into the "No, now you need these issues to complete this story." It's like a scavenger hunt. It's fun. So I'm sort of getting into it as well. Eek. The fact that we found an awesome comic book store with some really nice folks working there..The owner of which, has not seen "Dark Knight" yet. He must be the only one. I overheard him tell someone, "I have so much comic book stuff in my life that when I go to the cinema (no lie, he said cinema) I just prefer to see something else." Sort of an unusal sentiment from a comic nerd.

I have officially put Texas on my grad school list. Austin is one of my favorite cities in America, and possibly number 2 right behind Chicago. They've got an incredible independent theatre scene, its just the sort of place that works well for the type of theatre I want to do. Almost every coffee house has a theatre upstairs or down, and there are ALOT of coffee houses. There's improv, too. Plus, for a long time I've wanted to go to a grad school with a great D1 football program. And it's freakin' Texas! Hook 'em.

More later on me loving teaching more and more.

Bats!

This week in Austin is just going so well. I can't tell you how exciting it is. I'm getting very anxious to go home, and see some old friends for a while. Should be alot of fun.

Not a whole lot of grand stories coming form this week, other than just an absolutely incredible group of kids. This week is going so easy. There is one little complication in the fact that we can't set our set up until Saturday morning, because there's a crew working on the roof of the paramount theatre...where we're performing.

In the mean time, we're rehearsing in the State theatre, a theatre right next door. This theatre is INCREDIBLE. Though it doesn't look it, its the type of theatre I dream of having as my own artistic vehicle some day. It has a clasroom set up upstairs, and a great stage. The decor is so contemporary...the only thing I'd add is a studio theatre set up, which could easily be installed somewhere. This place is so incredibly cool. I feel awesome working in it.

Our contact doesn't trust us. But i think he's one of those people who thinks he's smarter than everyone he meets. He's not putting a damper on this week.

It wasn't the kids that bothered me this week, it was just all the scenarios.

Well, I was just thinking a couple weeks ago how Casey and I had gotten lucky without our share of problems: cushy hotel rooms every week, without a single home stay, the whole summer - good kids, not a single small cast...only one cast all even....I was thinking about how unfair it was that we were getting all these great residencies. After reading about other people's adventures, like Sam and Emma's in Oklahoma.

Well, things still aren't mice in my room bad. They probably won't be...but damn if things haven't been aggravating the last week/today.

So, our military base's contact was new to being a contact, and new to the base...the lady who was supposed to be our contact, and had been a contact before got promoted shortly before our arrival.

We did 11 workshops. One day we did 3 of them in 2 hours. They last 45 minutes each. Figure that out. On show day, the kids had to leave for their snack break. Those snack breaks on show day last 15 minutes. They took an hour. Then they opened the house without checking with us first and audience was flooding in as we were putting the kids make-up on on stage. Plus, they lost our mail. But the show went well, and what people were there (perhaps I'll get a chance to talk about the weird relationships military base kids have with their parents later)seemed very proud of what they saw.

But, no worries. Next week was Austin, TX. Downtown at the Paramount theatre. A huge town, with lots to do, lots to see...the Radisson hotel. The Radisson! Awesome. I can't wait.

Then we get here. They have our reservation. They don't have a credit card for it. I call our contact. He has nothing to do with our reservation...its another lady. I have her number. Oh wait. Its a fax machine. Next number. Work number. I could've guessed. I'll call our contact back..he's a cool guy. Whoops. Phone dies. Battery rained after a day of GPS usage. As I grow angrier and angrier I pull out my debit card, and lay it on the counter. "Charge 1 room to my card tonight, we'll get it straightened out tomorrow."

The bellhop gets our luggage as I park the truck and go up the elevator thinking about how much I love that $190 bucks of mine will be locked up until Thursday...even after they transfer the room charges to the theater's account. I think about how wonderful a week it is for such a thing to happen, with my having to buy my plane tickets home, and hotel for check-in this week.

But at least I'm in a REALLY nice hotel. A bellhop with my luggage, a fish-tank littered lobby with access to TGI Friday's and Starbucks at either side. "The room is to your left." I think the cielings are awfully low. I open the room...hmm, sort of small. The smallest room we've been in so far in fact. Well at least we read that the bed's were sleep number beds...those'll be comfortable. Wait, no controls for the fancy beds. Call the desk. "We do have some rooms that don't have sleep number beds, and your room is one of those." Oh well...I like my mattresses on the firmer side anyway. Now, I'll just get on the internet for a while and....$9.95 a day for in-room internet access? I have to make sure of this. Let's look in the book...no free breakfast, free wifi if I want to sit in the lobby. I guess the fish may need to check their e-mail.

Pfft. Forgive my tenses. And, honestly? Anything that happened here is pretty small fish. Who am I to be dissapointed? What sort of luxury do I expect? Its really not all that bad. What makes me the most upset is the fact that there was a reservation made...but no credit card with the reservation. Originally I thought "The lady that made this reservation was either doing something really stupid, or something really shady." Later as I cooled down slowly, I thought well, hotels actually make a lot of mistakes. I hope when I pressure to also pay for the Internet access in our room, she'll oblige..considering the complications this whole thing has caused.

And as far as this hotel goes...apparently you're paying for the glass elevator and the fish in the lobby...this room is the smallest we've had so far, with the fewest amenities...cheap coffee...no fridge...no extras in the bathroom. Keep in mind, I don't really require or care about all of these sorts of things...but this is also the most expensive hotel we've stayed at so far. So if you travel alot. Just remember that.

I miss posting here.

...but I've just been flat-out beat this week.

Normally, 3 workshops come with a residency contract.

This week, we're doing 11. Most days, we've done 3 in the morning, then rehearsal in the afternoon.

We're making extra money for each of them...but boy are they tiring.

But, an improv workshop with an on the younger side did produce this pricless quote from one of the kids playing a gnome, he was playing Beyonce in a scene with the easter bunny:

"You did not just hop at me bunny. Somebody's about to get socked up in this limo. Put em 'up!"

It was brilliant.

Lots of planning and staring at budgets going on lately. Planning on how to get home in a few weeks...then how to get to Chicago/home for Thanksgiving as well. Alot to do, worry about, save for, and hope for...but i'm confident all will work itself out.

Life on an army base is strange. But the prices are cheaper. So I'm getting used to that.

Too tired to keep going. Hope you've had enough...post more soon.

This is my Job?

Sorry its been a while since I posted...this week was very routine...without a whole lot of ultra-bloggable instances.

But show-day always produces a few good tidbits.

Today's biggest happening would probably be my losing my voice to such a capacity that Casey had to perform for me. Yesterday my voice started going again, and this morning I woke up and knew it might be very close, and once I sang the first stanza of the first song, I knew I'd never last. I handed over my lute, hung my head, and stepped off the stage. I really wanted to perform this week. Oh well.

A 6 year old peed her pants again...but this time she was very sweet. There's only one moment during the show where the littlest kids are asked not to go to the bathroom unless its an emergency (if, of course, there is bathroom access backstage) and during that time I always go to shoo off the little ones that are no doubt in line for the bathroom. Something about those lights, and all those people watching them must just make them have to piss like Seattle Slew - they're always rushing to the bathroom when they get off. There were 3 little girls lined up, and I asked them if it was an emergency. Two of them said it wasn't, and went back to sit down. The third, a beautiful little indian (like jewel-on-head, not loo-loo-loo) girl said "It is very ugent for me. I have to go now." So, I waited with her for the bathroom to empty out. The noises form the inside were indicative that it was almost her turn: the flush, the sink on, the sink off, the air dryer, the little girl saying "uh-oh"....wait, that was this little girl, not the one in the bathroom. "I just peed in my pants." "How much? Like a little bit? ...or like, all the way?" "Oh, just a little." "Well, hold it off. It's almost your turn."

I gave her a new pair of pants and sent her on her way.

I had more feelings of "this is my job?" today...its just so unbeliveable that I can enjoy what I'm doing so much. I'm so glad to have this job.

Good news! I'll be home in August! I do get to go home after all. Which is exciting.

OH BTW, I saw Step Brothers last night...the reviews for it haven't been great...pretty down the middle. I think if you love Will Ferrell and John C. Reily enough to forgive them for making a movie filled with immature jokes...you'll love the movie and have a good time.

A FULL Opinion on The Dark Knight

Casey and I turned in our rain checks and finished the movie tonight. We arrived at 7:15, and got tickets for a showing at 7:15, and slyly snuck into the showing that started at 6:15, which was just a few moments before we got cut off on Sunday.

First and foremost, let me say that The Dark Knight IS a very good movie. For whatever reason, I have a tendency to fall asleep during action movies. I intensely involved in this movie throughout, and enjoyed almost every moment.

And now, this: If Heath Ledger were not dead, neither this movie nor Ledger's performance would garner the sort of attention and acclaim it is receiving. While Ledger's performance certainly does not deserve any sort of negative comment...whatever special thing everyone else has seen in his performance never registered for me. I also feel, that the movie did not require the type of approach he insisted on for that particular role. His performance, emotionally effective, was, like his Ennis Delmar from Brokeback Mountain, a physically focused work: it started with the voice, continued with the shoulders and worked his way through his body. Psychologically, I saw little more than a focused actor, balancing a nervousness over doing well, with a confidence that he was, in fact, doing well.

Heath's performance would not stand out, however, if not for his death. That isn't so much a statement on Ledger's Joker, as it is a compliment to the other performances. I found Bale, Oldman, and particularly Eckhart's performances just as, if not much more effective. (Definitely more so in Eckhart's case...I wish his performance would be recognized as the break-out.) Heath Ledger would merely be a player in a superbly cast, and excellently written film if not for his passing.

Speaking of the writing...even more than his untimely death, the writing of the film, the joker character in particular, is what really is affording Ledger so much credit. This script's treatment of Joker is as rich a characterization as I've seen on film. What makes watching him in this film so enrapturing is his wit and dialogue. Ledger's often cartoonish portrayal would have fallen short if the character were the least bit shallow.

I really did find the movie really excellent overall...and I won't try to pretend I'm not jaded by the attention that Heath and really the movie itself has been getting. There is, I'm sure, a part of me who is being extra stingy with my criticisms of him, but the sentiments above are my true opinions of the movie. Go see it if you haven't yet...and if you haven't yet, who are you?

I expect responses from everyone.

So, in liu of a post about what's going on...week looks good...good auditions today. I pose a couple questions for you to think about and respond to, based on observations I've made lately.

Does it seem logical to you to back into a parking space so you can pull out of it frontwards later? What exactly is the advantage of this? Why would you choose to back into a space between two cars, so you can pull out into a more open, less obstructed path forwards, when you could have more control and pull forward when you're close to the objects, and back into the open space? Why do people do this?

Second: Have you ever heard of anyone who hates Morgan Freeman? I mean, I don't know of many people who really LOVE Morgan Freeman either. But i don't think I've ever heard an ill-word spoke about him.

What a frustrating afternoon.

So Casey and I got to our hotel before check in today, and we decided to go watch The Dark knight to kill time. Halfway thorough, the power went out in the building. A good movie, cut short so early...just as it was beginning to take off. How ironic. We have rainchecks, so I suppose an evening this week will be dedicated to finishing it.

Then, we went to the hotel, only to find out that the reservation for our room has not been made. I haven't been able to get a hold of our contact, but we held tonight's room on my debit card...which, if my gas purchase from last night posts before Tuesday will create over-drafting problems on my account...but, Chase will quickly and easily take care of that, because they are the best bank in the country...however, my credit will still drop a bit if it overdrafts. We'll see how that goes.

All in all, I'm not as frustrated as I probably should be today. I'm feeling pretty nice, sitting here in a wonderfully nice hotel room, enjoying myself quite a lot actually.

"We welcome Lady Lorna, who is here from the Realm of Texas to celebrate her 9th birthday. It is my honor to present her with this princess cap."

Offically Medieval Times was awesome. Casey and I cheered for the Black and White night, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. You should try to see this, if you can.

Just a quick update tonight to let you know I added the wax museum photos to my picasa album, along with some pictures of the New Mexico scnery. I also added pithy captions to most of the pictures...so, you can check those out.

http://picasaweb.google.com/MillerJAllen

Acting Theory

So, this was an unplanned blog. But I as I began to be more and more bombarded with this weekend's obsession with Batman, The Dark Knight, and Heath Ledger's performance of the joker.

I have some things to say about Batman, and how they'll get excited about ANYTHING Batman, whether its dark, light, bad-ass, good-ass, or whatever...but I don't wanna get into that.

I wanna get into the praise being heaped on Heath Ledger's performance. Granted: I HAVEN'T SEEN IT. I want to make that clear.

Even folks very close to me have dedicated a lot of time talking about how special Ledger's performance is. I'm sure it is quite entertaining and quite effective. But, I wonder...what's the price of art?

It is apparent that Ledger's approach to his work had a large hand in the activities that eventually killed him: drug abuse. He was said to have developed a reclusive lifestyle during the filming of The Dark Knight as a way of getting closer to his character. He died, alone, naked, on a mattress on the floor. One of his most recently acclaimed roles is the starring role of Candy, a film about a heroin addict (Ledger) in love.

Emotional memory is one of the fundamentals of modern acting theory, but I've always been uneasy about it. I think you'd have to be pretty skilled and careful to tap into memories that have a powerful affect on YOU, and then be able to bastardize them, literally: cut them off from your own personal connection, then transform them into a tool to entertain, enlighten, or what have you. It seems you'll either tap into something you really shouldn't get into, for your own good. Or, the audience will have front row seats for a psychiatrist session between the actor/patient and the good Dr. Stage (or camera.)

For me, acting is about exploring the text, the actions of a written character, and then filling those with life. If you do that, the character will blossom.

The alternative is, an approach like Ledger's, a head-strong attempt to become one's character. In this case, a reclusive, demented, killer. His praises are flowing from every direction. He isn't hear to enjoy them.

So, should we be talking about what a good job he did? Maybe we, as audience, should be thankful that a man would be willing to go so far to entertain us. Maybe, we should re-examine the whole thing, and see a man so dedicated to a harmful approach to his work, that it killed him.

I have a hard time reading comments complimenting him on "becoming" his character. What he gave up to "become" the joker, ultimately affected his life in such a way that he died before he was 30.

He's gonna spew, because he ate too much earlier.

That was said by our contact, after witnessing our A.D. who's 12 and probably pushing 250 lbs., working on his 4th corn dog, while holding the other three empty sticks between his fingers. Welcome to Texas.

Speaking of Texas. "Y'all" is not lazily enunciated "you all." It is, in fact, a word all its own. It is chosen, very carefully, and never used out of context. It is also occasionally placed into a show written by Montanans, by a sweet little Texan playing our Queen. I thought it gave the show character.

Leave it to Casey and I to have our best shows yet be a Friday-show week. (We normally perform on Saturday.) Today's kids, were the loudest, most enthusiastic kids we've had on the job so far. They did a GREAT job, and I don't think we could ask for a better Friday, and not for a much better Saturday performance.

I would attest our success this week to two things. I had been thinking that Casey and I are great from Monday to Wednesday, as at our jobs as anyone could expect. However, from Thursday to Saturday...we just didn't pick up the intensity as much is needed to really succeed at the height of our potential. Well, with the Friday show, we were forced to. Our show day today was as close to perfect as I can think of. Our intensity, the things we went over, the things we said. The show made a gigantic leap between yesterday afternoon, and today's performances.

Also, the staff of the Kids Unite camp that brought us in. We essentially had an entire staff, aside from our ADs as assistants during this short week. They were constantly reinforcing our rules, and making doubly sure that everyone was in the right place, and everything was running smoothly.

We'll not have a nicer week this summer, and maybe this year. Our fellow TADs should fight, scratch, and claw to go to Weatherford, Texas. I will miss it.

As I said before, Casey and I went to Louis Troussaud's wax museum and Ripley's Believe it or Not museum in Fort Worth. That was a very fun trip, Casey and I had more fun at the wax museum than Ripley's, though there are some really fun, cool things in the museum. You'll see the pictures of both in my picasa album as soon as I update everything. You'll note when you see those pictures that, for whatever reason, the wax artist thought it appropriate for Rutherford B. Hayes to wear an expression as if he had just wet himself.

I also got to see the new Cowboy stadium going up in Arlington, which is just ridiculously emmaculate. It'll be quite a sight when its complete. (But not nearly as awesome as Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianpolis ;)

Tomorrow Casey and I are fulfilling one of my major goals for this job: go to Medieval Times.

Subj..................

I want to write a blog. But, I'm exhausted.

If I did write a blog, it would talk about Casey and I tripping to Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum and Lord Trussaud's Wax Museum in Ft. Worth today. Maybe I'll talk about it later. It was alot of fun. They'll be pictures in my picasa album soon.

Also, I'd talk about my recent nostalgia dives. Maybe its the fact that reading Mick Foley's third book has gotten me thinking about wrestling again, a staple of my high school days. Maybe its the fact that I've been talking to Jacob, one of my best friends most nights this week. Maybe its the fact that I talked to Rachel this week too. Maybe I just miss those days. Those high school days, which seem...SO gone, so forever gone at this point. I hope to have a few attempts at rekindling them in my life, though I know it will never be like it was.

That's more words than I thought I'd muster. Off to zzzs. Get some sleep you.

"the bottle said generously"

Well, its officially started. I can't keep track of what city I'm in at the moment. I kept calling it "Allen" in my call in to the home office today, which is next week, and in my brain, I keep calling it "Taos." "Weatherford" just never registers.

At any rate, these kids in Weatherford have definitely been our most eager and quick to learn so far. we were worried about it at auditions on Monday, because they seemed very tentative and....well, not very talented. These aren't theatre kids, they're just kid kids, at a camp. We're not even the first or last thing they do each day. There's a myriad of activities for them provided both before, and after rehearsal is over. They're just regular kids doing a theatre activity during the day.

So its nice to have kids who aren't jaded. They were so excited to set up the set with us today, and are noticeably having more fun this week than any of our last three residencies, who were all old hats at theatre and our shows.

Texas is, unsurprisingly, miserably hot. On the illness front, Casey is still sick, though I've gotten better. Our hotel room is covered in pharmaceuticals and supplements, Emergen-C, Vitamain C supps, echinacea, Tylenol Cold daytime, Theraflu Nighttime, Mucus suppressants, pain relievers, acid reducers (for my seperate, constant, and equally as annoying acid problems) If only we had sudafed, we'd probably be the most suspicious guests here.

Speaking of suspicious......





Only a cap full next time.

"Oh God, It Smells of Skunk!"

So that's what it feels like to drive 13 hours in a single day.

It actually wasn't all that bad. I wasn't the least bit sleepy a single time, which is a good thing. We have safely arrived at our Holiday Inn Express in Weatherford, TX an outskirt-ish suburb of Ft. Worth.

When we arrived, Casey and I did our usual "which room will we stay in" check. We each get a room, but ended up really only using one. We always check to see if there are any differences between the two rooms before settling on one. Casey laid in her room while I went to see mine. Mostly the same. Then I went to the bathroom.

Room 203 is a hot tub suite. Sweet.

This is a great room to come to after a long drive. Soft beds, a nice sofa, coffee table, fridge, microwave, wifi for me and dataport for Casey. Nice.

No crazy stories from the road. Just a long day, glad to be here safe. Hope you are too.

Red or Green?

I prefer Christmas.

Back in Loveland, whenever the company CEO visited. He said "something may be fundamentally wrong with your discipline. Mainly, because no matter how bright our kids are, we can't get them to shut up. It was the same issue this week. We just can't get them to be quiet backstage. I hope we find the magic trick we need to find to accomplish this better soon.

Other than the chatter from backstage being too loud at times...and don't get me wrong, this wasn't the EASIEST group to get quiet. For as much as I gushed about the older group at the beginning of the week, the younger half was the opposite. For example, our middle-aged children had been a healthy mix of genders. This week there was 9 boys, 9-11 years old mostly. And the most Tomboyish of Tomboy girls. (So much so that the younger girls would object loudly when she changed in their dressing room.) They were by far the rowdiest group, and I have been my most stern this week. When I asked "Are you embarrassed? Because I am." I felt so Adult. Sort of made me ill.

Anyway, this afternoon's show was good, with a rough patch here and there. One of which was completely my fault, and I felt terrible. I have a hard time separating "director" and "actor" - the pianist had hit an improper button which caused all the songs to be playing in a higher key. And of course she didn't notice. She was a handful.

Speaking of ill. Casey and I were both ill this week. Her, early in the week, and me currently, today, and right now. We're hoping its not something as contagious as strep. But its definitely a throat-attacking whatever-it-is. I sounded very interesting by the end of the two performances today.

Here's a couple good stories from today. One of the bees ended up pissing himself waiting to turn his costume in. The mom proceeded to get angry at Casey for it. M'amm, if you feel your child responsible enough to send him to rehearsal with two people in their early 20s everyday for a week, then he should be smart enough to hold it, pinch it off, or get to a john. Thank you.

After the show, Casey and I went to a store to supply what has become an after-show day cocktail tradition. I bought a package of 4 Bailey's minis and some milk and coke so we could drink some white russians. (with a splash of coke...colorado style) I was of course carded, which they seem much more strict about in these areas. My driver's license has a crack in it...has had it for some time. The lady was hesitant, because there was "physical damage near my picture." My picture is obviously me. Obviously. You could put a huge cracking crack down the nose of this picture, and you could see it was me. The crack is through my hair. I said, without any intent to incite a confrontation. "It's only a crack. No one's ever had a problem with it before." Her response was "No, I can refuse you service if I choose to."

I was a little bit shocked to receive such an aggressive response from her. I believe she must lead a very boring life, to be so excited to jump into such a trivial confrontation. I very nicely say "I'm well aware within your rights, I wasn't implying you weren't." She made me show her my social security card, before selling me the $11.00 pack of 4 Bailey's minis.

As I signed my receipt, she muttered under her breath. "but you do need to get a new id, as quickly as possible."

You need to find a new personality.

Equate brand...

Maybe Zantac will help my chest not feel like its on fire.

My diet doesn't help.

something so sour that it makes my eyes tear is not refreshing

9 packets of sugar, and 2 packets of Splenda.

I ordered a glass of Lemonade at dinner tonight. When the waitress brought it to the table, and said "hold on, I'll bring you some sugar" I thought something was unusual. Have you ever, ever in your life heard of unsweetened lemonade. It tasted like straight lemon juice, which was wonderful for my throat, and horrible for my acid reflux. The above mentioned sweeteners were what it took to sweet it to a barely drinkable level. I also kept dilluting it with water to finish it. There's still a burn in my throat. The Chicken Picatta, was delicious. Savory lemon butter sauce. So savory.

Nothing too out of the ordinary today. Rehearsal went well, if the yahoos were a bit scatter-brained all day. We haven't had the terror-fridays that have been described by other TADS, but this week might be the week. They're getting loopy by Wednesday. I'm gonna have alot of fun performing in this show, with these kids. Most of the high schoolers stayed after today to help the put up the set, getting to know them was really cool. The majority of this group is into Anime and rock music. Casey says its weird knowing that if she were their age, they'd be the kids she'd hang out with. We had so much fun with them that we stayed and chatted for a while after we set up the set, and when they saw our truck parked at the laundromat, they came in to invite us to go salsa dancing at a local club tonight. Unfortunately, fraternization like that is against the rules, but if it were otherwise...I'd go, though I wouldn't dance. I can barely foxtrot. Let alone Salsa. I mean, really.

Taos Yum

The subject title was the name of a dessert at a local restaurant here in Taos.

For the record, I love food. Not just like everyone else does. Casey often makes fun of my "tasting face." I love trying the local specialties. (i've gotten green chilies on as many things as possible here in New Mexico...you can get them at Subway) I like craft beers, artisan wines, even home-made sodas. Pizzas, sausages...whatever, if its local, if its unique, i wanna try it and pretend I'm Anthony Bourdain.

At any rate, we ate at a place called Taos Pizza Out Back. On my half of our medium was pepproni, capicolo, green chilies, and smoked cheddar (along with the mozarella) Casey tried mushrooms, artichoke hearts with basil pesto sauce, rather than traditional.

The pizza was excellent. The crust was a sesame seed style, which was interesting and delicious. But, the real exciting thing was the salad. Anybody who knows me, knows that its really interesting thing for me to love a salad.

More background: I used to hate salad, and despise lettuce. As a sidenote, I used to also gag when looking at onions. I've been forcing myself to get over these sort of foibles as I get more and more into food, cooking, and chefery. (It's my new word, get over it.) This salad had a house basil parmasean dressing and was one of the tastiest things I've ever had. I'll go back and get another salad. A bigger salad.

I apologize for that part. I really don't know if anyone would find that interesting.

Taos has been, in 2 days, our best residency thus far. We have yet to be this far ahead of schedule. This show will feature the most talented cast thus far, easily. Take for example the young man playing the title role. He has Tuesday off, because, in truth, his role is not the largest, though its the title role, and he learns most if not all of his stuff in one session on Monday. He was very concerned with the fact that he was the title role and not called on Tuesday, so much so that Casey came up with a wonderful gem. "Tuesday is your memorization day, because your the title role and you have so much responsibility that you need to take a day to work on everything at home." A fabulous ruse, IMO, and one that isn't entirely untrue.

It apparently backfired on her though, because our actor and his mother walked into our second session today. He claimed he wanted to watch the Assistant Director go through his part, because while running through his stuff at home, he realized he'd forgotten part of his blocking. Luckily, the kids move so fast that we were ahead of schedule, so I just plugged him into a couple of the few things he hadn't done yet. We're VERY ahead of schedule. One of the CEO's advice points when he came was "I'd rather you let them out 5 min. late than 5 min. early. In fact, I'd rather 5 min. late that on time." Its been a struggle to fill up those last minutes so far.

Another addition I have to tell any other TADs that might read this (though I think, Emma is the only one.) We might possibly have the best freckle ever this week. Our two Knights sing a weird song in the show that is supposed to be a bit of a spoof glam rock and roll scene, as they end in full on rock-star mode along with the minstrel at the end of the song. Today during Lunch, one of the Knights was jamming with the other kids on his electric guitar hooked up to a mini-amp. Naturally, we were excited to ask if he wanted to play it in the show during the scene. Comic gold will ensue as he one ups me and my tiny guitar, so what if its totally anachronistic? And, as it turns out, the other knight has and plays an electric guitar as well, they were choreographing their big finish with some extra time today.

This week, literally, rocks.

"Oh, God!"

Raton, NM

...

I don't know why anyone wants to live there. There is NOTHING in the town. 2 ATMS, a Movie Theatre that shows one movie, a BIG K mart, and a group of fast food restaurants that does not include Taco Bell.

It was wonderful to see friends, and the price of the room we were in (zero dollars and zero cents) was well worth the week, but Casey and I found ourselves staggeringly bored, completely out of our minds. More power to the folks who enjoy living in Raton(from what I could see, average age was about 65). There is alot of talk there about this "RACINO" contaption, which I think is something like a state-funded casino...and putting one in Raton. One piece of literature I read mentioned the fact that young people are leaving the area in droves as quickly as possible. It shows. What young people there were working at fast food restaurants and such seemed very unhappy. Not for me.

Their fireworks show though, was quite satisfactory...especially their finale. So that was nice. I would've been very upset to have seen mediocre fireworks on my week off.

Speaking of a week off...I wish it would've come later in the summer. Casey and I had just gotten rolling. We both missed doing our job this week, maybe it was because we were so bored in Raton, but I really think it was more because we really are enjoying our work. It'll be nice to get back tomorrow.

A story: As we were driving from Loveland on Sunday, we came abouts a Renaissance Fair in Larkspur, CO. I can have fun doing just about anything as long as its spontaneous, and going to my first renaissance fair on a whim was excellently spontaneous. Casey and I walked up to the gate, lamenting our lack of costumes...when it dawned on us that we have a giant stock of costumes in the back of the truck...(that are, as it turned out, slightly earlier than Renaissance style) So, I donned the minstrel costume and Casey put on a villager dress...and we locked my pants in the truck...with the keys in the pocket...and my wallet...and my phone...so we had to call a tow driver to come unlock our door, us dressed like medieval folk. It was a fun little trip. Becasue we couldn't use our Ford roadside assistance, normally we wouldn't have to pay, but our Fleet Manager thought our story so "unusual" that we deserve to be reimbursed. I love Guido.

Anyways, we're here in Taos now which seems a little more popping than Raton was. The drive from Raton to Taos was absolutely, without a doubt the most beautiful 90 miles I've ever experienced. Its tough to describe the beautiful Mesas, rocky cliffsides, evergreen slopes...it was wondrous. I'll have some pictures up on my picasa site soon.

I sincerely hope you're all doing well, and hope your world wasn't crushed without an update this past week.(:-/) Internet was also quite scarce in Raton.

"He gave you a pepper-jack hug"

Our kids that were so wonderful at the beginning of the week, turned out to be really spacey kids by the end of the week. So much so, that we ended up leaving the conclusion of the show out of our first performance...you know, where they guess his name. Pretty important. We just went forward like it didn't happen.

The last performance was pretty good as far as the performances when the actor's were on stage. Then, the villagers were always so behind on their entrances that a running joke about "spinover traffic" ended up being added into the show. Though, we had LOTS of compliments on that, people thought it was hilarious. I wonder how old you have to be for mistakes to be cute and hilarious, instead of annoying and unwanted.

But, that's not to say bad things about a really wonderful group of kids. They're kids. They're gonna get bored and distracted. These were great kids and I'm proud of him. Also, I'm not trying to skirt responsibility completely for the problems we incurred. There are things I could improve on, Casey could improve on to fix some of the things that hampered us this week.

But, that's very minimal. Really. The kids were great.

Casey and I were able to have a few drinks(which I'm feeling the effects of) at the bar in the hotel here tonight, and opened up some nice conversation with the other patrons. That was nice.

Casey and I are looking forward to seeing Tom, Barbara, Ian, and Robin in Raton tomorrow, and the next week. It'll be nice to have a week off with some good friends.

"Yes, I Do"

As we've been stationed here in the southwest, I've been given a much better experience with the immigration "issue" in this country. Literally, I haven't gone a day since crossing into Wyoming without hearing Spanish. Being an at least politically interested person, I have an opinion on things like that.

I'm really really glad that these people are coming here, and finding ways to provide for themselves and their families in a situation that is better than their home. I just wish their kids would learn English, so they can function better here as they grow older...

And today, I finally realized...those kids probably can speak English. Probably better than me...their mother just can't. Today during our Improv workshop (which I may talk about later, making this a long post) we were doing an exercise called "radio" in which people who were selected had to say something that might be on a radio station(an altogether vague description, my apologies.) The point, one of the girls who is playing a lead role in our show was called upon and began rattling off fluent Spanish for her station.

She probably comes from an entirely Spanish-speaking home...but she communicates with me fine, reads her script fine, says her lines...fine. (I overuse ellipses.) (And parentheses.) The girl playing the same role last week was in the same boat too. There's a good chance that many, if not all of our future actresses in those roles will be the same way. I like that. Alot. I'm glad they've found themselves here.

Company CEO did show up today, and talked to us after our rehearsal...we passed with flying colors! (YAY!) He thought it was our second week alone, rather than our first, and was even more pleased when he realized it. He wasn't without a host of helpful tips, but was altogether pleased with our work. That made us feel good. I enjoy his company a lot. To be 22, just out of college, and have a job in which I enjoy my work, my co-workers, and my bosses...I consider myself very lucky.

One important thing he said, as he was giving us notes he asks me, "Have you directed before?" "Yes, I've directed alot, actually." "I thought so."

It felt very good to have done work where that was recognized by a theatre professional, one whom I've quickly grown to respect very much. It makes me thankful for my college time, and the learning I received there. I'm glad that I've developed a skill set that puts me at an advantage...a recognizable advantage with this job. I wasn't always the happiest with my life at College, and still have a hard time giving everything there a glowing review, but I am grateful for the way it shaped me. Thankful, that those marks can be recognized.

The improv workshop: So, it was not long into my senior year before I realized that after all the theatre I've done, it was Improv that provided me everything about theatre I loved the most: the chance to teach, the chance to perform, the chance to make people laugh, and the chance to cherish your partners in art, simultaneously. The dreams of my future began to revolve around a life in Chicago, taking classes, performing, and hopefully eventually teaching there...in both improvization and the formal theatre. As I graduated and performed my last show with my beloved EPZ (campus improv group) I was sad that I'd hang up my improv hat for a while. Then I got to training and found out an Improv Workshop is part of our many offerings to the communities we visit.

We did our first today, with some wonderful kids, and had a great time. It felt electric and wonderful as always, and I LOVED offering it to our students. What a great feeling.

As I finish this, it makes me think that I hope anyone who reads this can find a way to be as happy with the ways of their life right now as I am. I feel like I'm almost rubbing it people's face. I'm sorry if I am.

Here's to you, my good friends. Hope all is well.

Also, comments are encouraged. I'd love to hear from anyone who checks up on me.