More Shakespeare

For those of you who don't know, if I could point my career trajectory in a specific direction, I would either want to point myself toward becoming the Doctor, or I would want to try to position myself as a Shakespearean expert. I love the Bard. I love his language, I love his stories, and I particularly love bridging the gap between what he said back then and what it means to us now. I love bringing his plays to life and making them accessible to audiences everywhere. I love talking about them, too, so if you ever have questions about what's going on in a certain play, let me know. Figuring that stuff out and chatting about it is what I do. I'm not exactly sure how to position myself as an "expert," though, but I figure studying all of the plays and performing as many of them as I can is probably a good start.

To that end, I am thrilled to announce that I will be playing the role of Mariana in Measure for Measure with Hudson Warehouse. We had our first read-through yesterday and I can already feel myself falling in love with this cast and this production. There was so much great energy in the room. A serious group of dedicated artists who want to work together and have fun putting up this "problem play." What could be lovelier than that?

We open on March 5 at the Bernie Wohl Center on the Upper West Side. Tickets will be $15, or if you ask really nicely, I can give you a code to to get them for $10. The run is Thursday through Sunday for three weekends, closing on March 22. I think this is going to be a good one, guys, and I'd love to see you all in the audience.

Huzzah for more Shakespeare!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year, kids!

Last year was busy and crazy and I loved it. I am still grateful that I got to meet and work with so many talented artists and that my transition from Chicago to New York has been so rewarding. At the moment, I am out pounding the pavement, looking for my next non-self-created project and I'll keep you posted when I find it.

I had an interesting moment while auditioning earlier this week, that I think was an important one to discover as an artist. There are those who say you should go audition for everything in order to gain experience. But then we all reach that point in our careers where we have tons of audition experience and we start to learn what parts we are right for and we start to focus our audition efforts. Casting directors love this - as brilliant as you are, they would rather spend their brief audition time seeing people who may actually work in the project than people who are totally wrong for it. No offense intended. But if they need a 60 year old African American man, the 20-something white boys shouldn't even submit for the project. It's a waste of everyone's time. So we all learn at some point what auditions we should go to and what ones we shouldn't. 

The interesting moment I had, though, was what I think may be the next step in me getting to know myself as a performer. I went to several auditions this week, and I had a good time at all of them. No, I was not at the top of my game, but I can also pretty much guarantee that I was not the worst auditionee they saw. I made strong choices, even if they were wrong, and had a lot of fun. The people I was auditioning for were friendly and welcoming, talented and creative. But there was something about the vibe of a couple of the projects that just felt a little off to me. Not bad, just off. I got the sense that maybe these weren't the right projects for me. And wouldn't you know it, a couple of days later, I got the "thank you, but we will not be casting you at this time" emails from those projects. So not only were they not the right projects for me, but I was also not right for the projects. It was interesting to see it from the other side like that. That from both sides, this was just not the right fit. No hard feelings, no offense taken on either side, just the knowledge from both parties that this was not the right collaboration to pursue. It also gave me a little glimpse at my future - there may be a time when I am offered a role that I just don't feel right about and if that happens, I would be perfectly within my rights to say no. I don't know that I've considered that before, so it was an eye opener. And I thank the companies who saw me audition and did not cast me not only for inviting me in to audition (because I really did have fun), but also for helping me come to this new realization.

That said, I'm not sitting idle in the cold New York winter. I'm still out auditioning, looking for the right fit. And I'm working on a new solo project. It was stumping me for a while until I asked a very important "what if..." question of myself, and now the pieces seem to be coming together very nicely. I'm hoping to get the ball rolling as soon as this weekend on that one.

I hope your 2015 is off to a rousing start of self-discovery, self-exploration, and creative expression, too! Here's to a happy, healthy, fulfilling new year!