Ara Nova

It always great to see someone is a show, but it is also great to see people live performing their own music. As a benefit for Ars Nova, John Gallagher, Jr. performed with Fran Sancisco opening (Brian Charles Johnson and Chase Peacock). I went with Molly, a girl I meet with her sister at the American Idiot benefit from work. The guys in Fran Sancisco were great and John Gallagher, Jr. was amazing. He is very similar in his performing, his mannerisms, as when he is playing Johnny in American Idiot.

You can hear some of John Gallagher Jr's music on YouTube and Fran Sancisco.

Hello America

This is out of order, but last weekend I went to visit my friend Michael in DC. It was my first venture on Mega Bus and I was very pleased with the trip. Getting in about 7:30, I meet up with Michael, a friend of his Ashley (who is a fellow Gamecock) and a friend of hers (no clue his name but he smelled). First stop was dinner. Michael picked this place called Nando's. It was really cool, you got a table number then went to the counter and ordered. You picked the size of chicken you wanted (1/4, 1/2, whole) then the sauce/spices. Then you pick the sides, great southern sides. Corn on the cobe, garlic bread, mashed potatoes. Yum! Then after dinner we went to Fro Yo, this frozen yogurt place where you could pick the flavor/flavors you wanted (there were 20 or 30) and then add whatever toppings from the topping bar. It was so efficient because you get as much or as little as you want and you can get multiple toppings without paying per toppings. You pay by the ending weight of it.

To cap off the night we took a tour of the Washington, World War II and Lincoln Monuments. It was so beautiful to see them at night and it was cooler and less crowded. Saturday morning we meet up with Ashley again (minus the smelly boy) and drove out to Old Town Alexandria. It was so calm and peaceful. One of the neatest things was at the old torpedo factory they had partitioned it off into individual studios with artists who worked with any medium you could image. There was also this really cool set up where this woman had the steps of how silk worms make silk. We finished there and went to the Mason temple. That place was so creepy and there are some rooms there that you know bad stuff has happened in.

Saturday night we headed off to Wolf Trap to see Idina Menzel. It was with Marvin Hamlisch as conductor and the first section was just the National Orchestra playing songs from various musicals. The second part was Idina Menzel and she, as normal, was amazing. Sunday was a short day, but we headed to the Eastern Market that had the neatest local artists and vendors and grabbed brunch before I had to get to the bus to head back to NYC.

Trust

On Friday I went to see the first preview of Trust, a new play showing at Second Stage. I have a ticket for a while because I'll go see anything that Sutton Foster is in. This is the first time I have seen her in a play, all the others were musicals. The synopsis is pretty vague about the show and that made it all the more intriguing. So it ends up that Foster plays Prudence, a dominatrix who runs into a guy from high school, Harry (Zach Braff). They end of grabbing coffee at the Tic Toc (which is the diner in my building!) and Harry invites her over to meet his wife. Harry sold his business for a ton of money (something like $300 million) and now just manages it through his foundation. His marriage is blah and does not know what to do to make it better. Prudence has a boyfriend who is controlling and abusive. To much disclosure and the four enter into a twisted web of lies and blackmail.

Recently I have become obssessed with set design. The picture shows the set before the show began, but each wall opened to allow other sets to come out: the sofa from an apartment, the bed for a bedroom and the office. The were chic and minimal and really helped to shape the show. I can't wait to see it again!

Long Story Short

One of the great benefits of being an intern is free tickets. The Theater Intern Group sent out an e-mail to get tickets to see Colin Quinn in Long Story Short, history of the world in 75 minutes. If only history had been this interesting in school I might have retained something. The show very comedically took the audience through the entire history of the world. It is hard to explain, but a great show none-the-less. And, as a bonus we got to meet Jimmy Fallon!

From their website:

Covering more than 2000 years in 75 minutes, Long Story Short is Colin Quinn’s hilarious look at the ups and downs of great civilizations gone wrong. In this one-man sendup, Quinn channels comedic personalities of nations past, offering satirical takes on the attitudes, appetites and habits that toppled powerful empires. Charting a comical course from the excess of ancient Rome to WalMart/Costco/BestBuy, Quinn proves that the forces undermining the American empire are as old as time. Directed by Jerry Seinfeld, the moral of Long Story Short is that the greatest Empires of history, like most people, have a basic approach to life and never really change, even if it is clearly leading them to ruin.

Neverland

How did Peter become the boy who could never grow up? Adapted from the book Peter and the Starcatchers, the play by the same name takes audiences through a journey that explains how Peter became the boy who could never grow up. I had read a script from June and then started in on the book, all in anticipation for the workshop reading on July 23. I loved the first script I read and was excited to see it performed. The show has a cast of 12 who play multiple roles and there are parts where they are talking to each other then they will address the audience directly. There is a also a person who reads stage directions. The show essentially has not props, a rope, pineapple and a few sticks.

All week we heard the cast upstairs rehearsing on the third floor. On Monday we got an e-mail that it could be possible that everyone wouldn't get to go to the reading, so it is an uneasy week until Thursday evening when we got confirmation that we could all attend. A couple people in the cast I was familiar with and I knew a few more when I saw them. Peter was played by Adam Chanler-Berat (Next to Normal), Black Stache by Christian Borle (Legally Blonde) and Molly by Celia Keenan-Bolger (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee).

Earlier in the week we got to meet with Alex Timbers, co-director with Roger Rees. I was surprised at how young he was, but it was wonderful to hear about his career path and how he got where he is today.

Seeing the reading was amazing. Since June, the script had been significantly re-written. Peter's character was probably the most evident change. He was much more lost and grew to become the leader through the course of the play verses being the leader from the beginning. Other changes were noticeable because of their uniqueness, like Molly said she skipped the odd years in counting her age instead of the even and they spoke Dodo instead of porpoise. The character that surprised me the most was Borle's portrayal of Black Stache. It was funny and engaging, something that didn't read that way on paper. His part had a lot re-writes as well. I am now excited for the spring when I can see it on stage.

Don't Fly Away

It a little overwhelming how far behind I am in blogging. Chelsey came to visit two weekends ago and then I went to DC last weekend to visit Michael. So far this summer I have been lucky in getting comp tickets, but also winning tickets. I won tickets to see Love, Loss and What I Wore and then I won tickets to go see Come Fly Away. I wanted to see the show but wasn't really interested in paying to go because I really hated Movin' Out and I didn't suspect I would like this show any better. Well, that turned out to be 100% true. I just can't figure out what it is about Twalya Tharps shows. I love the music and the dance is great, but together it is one blah night of theater. The most annoying was this asian american woman who couldn't act and her dancing wasn't much better. I'm hoping she was an understudy, but anyway I literally couldn't watch the show if she was dancing alone or it was just her and a guy, it was awful. Some of the cast was so talented but blah. And then you get to the second act and apparently the bar turns into a brothel/ sex scene and Victoria Secret made a lot of money on the barely there costumes. Just glad I didn't pay for a ticket!

harsh reality

It has been the most exciting and scariest summer yet. I have loved every minute of the city but come August 13, if I don't have a job I'm headed home. It's not that I don't love home. I miss it and I miss the people, but at the same time I can't do the work that I love there. Over the past few weeks I have been applying for jobs like crazy. Anything and everything I could find. Some dream jobs, so just jobs that would mean I could stay in the city, others that are not marketing but would let me work in other areas of the theater. It is funny because when you are in school they talk so big about how you can get a job if you intern a bunch or have all this experience and yet it still isn't enough. I also find it hard to think that someone has to get an idea of you from two sheets of paper. I don't know, I guess I just feel lost because for the first time in 23 years I don't have a class schedule to go to and being the planner that I am, I can't make any plans because of all the unknowns.

I don't really bring up my job searching much to my mom because I know she really wants me to come home or closer to home. She always talks about how she and dad moved to LA and how hard it was and I get that, but this is different. I am so much closer to home and I am in a city where so many people share my passion. I have friends here and more are moving up. I am not sure where it came from but tonight she brought up what I was planning to do. Couple that conversation with a lack of sleep and you get me crying on the phone as my mom talks about the reality I am dreading having to face. She mentioned that people keep asking what I was going to do and that it didn't matter that she didn't have an answer for them but that I really needed to think about things. Which let me tell you, I have done more than she knows.

It makes me made because I have applied for so many jobs that I am more than qualified for and I have all the experience that everyone at school made such a big deal about and it is getting me no where. A few minutes later my dad called. Where my mom was realty my dad was the voice of reason tonight. Sometimes he is a little harsh about reality, but tonight he knew just what to say, or just what I needed to hear. It was comforting to hear him tell me to just keep trying and when he came to visit we could talk things over. I am just hoping things will come together. I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life, but I know I want to work with the arts and even if I do go home, I want it to be with a few years experience here that will give me a leg up on the competition.

Love, Loss and What I Wore

Earlier this week at work we got an e-mail for Comp tickets to see the new cast of Love, Loss and What I Wore. I had the show on my list to see and what a better way to see it than free! The cast, which rotates monthly (usually) is five women telling stories triggered by the memory of clothing and accessories based on the book by the same name. The new cast includes Haylie Duff, Penny Fuller, Sharon Lawrence, Ashley Austin Morris, and Myra Lucretia Taylor. The stage is simple and they ladies are all in black dresses sitting on bar stools with music stands that have the stories for reference. What is so amazing is how much you have in common with the stories. I loved one that talked about choosing the right shoe, how you loved high heels but they hurt. It is hard to explain, but it was a unique concept that I really enjoyed. One character had images on coat hangers that showed the clothes she was talking about and at the end she showed the audience how to draw themselves. Here were her instructions (aka drawing for dummies):

draw two rectangles (one is the top; the other the skirt or bottom of the dress)
draw arms, but put your hands behind your back if you don't know how to draw them
draw an egg for the head
two lines for the neck
you can be sleeping, draw eyes and lots of mascara
an l for the nose
an m for the mouth and then add the lower part
add some hair
three lines for the legs
finish with the shoes
add detailing to the dress to match your clothes!

It's as simple at that!

A Short Week

This week felt like it went by really fast. I am in the process of applying for jobs, which is nerve-racking and daunting. Now that I have been in the city for a while, I do not want to leave. I love it here, the pace, the atmosphere, the shows. I have thought about looking for jobs in other cities, but I can 't figure out another city that I could work with the arts like I can here in New York. Slowly but surely I am getting to know people which is exciting. Probably the toughest thing about meeting people is that I am not a big drinker and that always seems to be weird. It's not that I am against drinking, but I have never cared for the taste of any of it, so I just don't drink it. I'm just as picky with food! My favorite drink is a champagne sorbet from Madrid, but that isn't easily accessible here in the states. I have found that I love strawberry margaritas. But most restaurants don't make them right. I want half regular margarita and half strawberry; the sour part of the mix but the sweetness of the strawberry - perfection. And not too much tequila. blah! But back to jobs...I have applied to a few. It is hard because they want a bajillion years of experience and I have great experience but most is in the form of an internship. What is frustrating is that paper doesn't begin show the extent of my work.

So Monday was a nice night to chill out and watch my Gamecocks dominate in Game one of the championship at the College World Series against UCLA. They won 7-1 and were is a good position going into Tuesday's game. Tuesday evening I went to see Next Fall. It was nominated for Best Play (and should have won). It was a brilliant play that tells the story of Adam and Luke that begins in the hospital waiting room and then flashes back to fills you in on how they meet, the growth of their relationship and their insecurities. When Luke is hit by a taxi and in the hospital, Adam is not allowed to see him because it is "family only." Luke had also never told his family that he way gay and they were not accepting of that type of relationship either, so he had never told them about Adam. The show made me laugh but also made me cry. Actually there might not have been a dry eye. Grown men sitting in front of me were brought to tears in the poignant, hard hitting issue. I wasn't familiar with the cast much going in, but Luke (PATRICK HEUSINGER) is on Gossip Girl and I grew up watching Connie Ray on The Torkelson's (played Luke's mom). Sadly the show is closing Sunday. I only wish I had time to see it again.

From their website:

NEXT FALL has captured the hearts and minds of Broadway’s toughest critics and most discerning audiences. In this contemporary love story, sparks of genuine humor lighten even the most difficult moments. The characters speak and act like real people; they have irrational phobias… conflicting beliefs… and lingering secrets. They are two men in love, two parents in denial, and two friends on speed dial. NEXT FALL weaves a story that’s as funny and infuriating and unpredictable as life itself – it will make you smile, laugh and perhaps even cry. Bring someone you care about, take a deep breath, and enjoy this bonafide Broadway hit.

Next Fall was over in time for me to get back to my place to see the end of Game two in the CWS. My wonderful friend Molly had been texting me game updates, but they were not what I wanted to see! We were losing 0-1 in the eighth by the time I started watching. Then we tied the game! I could finally breath. Next came overtime/ extra innings (as if 9 weren't already enough). Tenth inning, nothing, eleventh inning UCLA nothing, Gamecocks, a run! You could see the smile on his face as he ran in, knowing that they had just won. The University of South Carolina GAMECOCKS were the National Champions. It was amazing! Although I am not sure that my neighbors appreciated my cheering. And how are you supposed to go to sleep after that? I was shaking, so excited. So mark your calendars, but July 1 is Gamecock National Championship Day! These are the things that make me miss Columbia soooo much! But I am so proud on my Gamecocks!

Wednesday night I was invited by Chris (a friend of a friend) to join a monthly outing called Sushioke. I really had not paid much attention to the name, but I was excited to get to meet some people so I graciously accepted the invitation. Once I got there I learned that the name meant Sushi then karaoke and between to we stopped for ice cream (my kind of group!). It was nice to meet other people and the evening was lots of fun. New York karaoke is a lot of fun because unlike the south it isn't a country song every time and there isn't a stage per say, but people just sing where they are and everyone else helps. The first karaoke bar was pretty bad so we hoped in cabs and went to where they had gone previously. The cab ride was more fun than the first bar as we sang along to Lady GaGa's Bad Romance (much to the drivers despair!). Needless to say it was a fun night!