gypsygirl

Left the window cracked in my car a couple of weekends ago and got rained on, and though it's nice and dry now, it still smells. I may go through an entire bottle of Febreeze to get the smell out. The car has been living on the roof of the parking garage in the sunshine with the windows cracked while I'm at work, hopefully that'll help too.

Finished stage managing Woman in Black this weekend. Dressed as a dead cowgirl for this year's Masquerade Ball (which for once actually fell on Hallowe'en!). I'm hoping to get some more photos from the others who were there, but for now there are a few on my Masquerade Ball page.

Have been able to get more work done on my recording projects since the end of the show. I've been putting a bit more effort into Dayspring (had been concentrating mostly on Clara Vaughan before); the chapters on that one are much longer than any others to date - I have to make sure I have a glass of water handy or I won't make it through.

Only it was the Heart of Texas Fair, not the State Fair. K, one of the girls in the Woman in Black, which I'm stage managing, was given some tickets at work, and she invited me and M, another girl from the play to go with her. She'd never been before, and really wanted to check it out, and since the fairgrounds are right next door to the theatre, we didn't even have to pay for parking.

When we got down to the end of the fairway, we came across the freak show booth; K had also never been to a freak show before, so we went in. For the most part it was a collection of live, stuffed and preserved animals of the conjoined twins gone more wrong than usual variety. One of the stuffed animals, however, was purported to be a chupacabra.

After looking at it for a couple of minutes M said, "That's just wrong. That's a deer butt, upside-down."

I was telling one of my coworkers about it, and he dubbed it the "chupacabr-ass"

On our way out, we saw one of those "Old Timey Photo" booths. Yet another thing K had never done (not that I had, either, incidentally... but then I'm not really one for voluntarily getting my picture taken). I agreed to join them in the photo under the stipulation that I was not going to wear anything frilly. They did have something in the Annie Oakley style, so I was happy.

We opened this past weekend. Got a pretty good review from Carl Hoover in the Trib. Friday and Saturday were almost full, Sunday's turnout was kinda pitiful, but at least they were awake and enjoying it (not always the case with Sunday crowds). Two more weekends to go. Hopefully they'll be completely sold out!

OK, so I don't often let people know when my birthday is, because, though I don't mind celebrating my birthday, I feel uncomfortable getting mobbed by well-wishers and being sung at, but thanks to facebook more people have found out when it is. I had to go to rehearsal on my birthday, and I was about two feet away from the back door at the end of the night, when I heard the rest of the cast start into 'Happy Birthday'. No one could see me, so I quickened my steps and snuck out before anyone could catch me.

The following night I had tickets to Broadway by Request with Betty Buckley at the Hip. The 'by Request' part means that as you go in, you have the option of filling out a form requesting her to sing a song from her Broadway or recording career. I went with Regan, and on our way in, we saw MB, who was ushering. About halfway through the concert, Seth Rudetsky, who was acting as her emcee, accompanist, and foil, pulled out a request form (she'd been reading them all up till then). He called MB's name and then read out her request: "It was my friend Karen's birthday yesterday. Would you sing to her?" So, Betty Buckley sang me happy birthday in an auditorium full of strangers (at least I didn't have to stand up!!!).

It was a fabulous concert, though.

I have a couple of minutes before my meeting begins, so this seems as good a time as any to update here.

I've been working on Little Shop of Horrors for the past few weeks in the ensemble. We open a week from Friday. It's been interesting... we rented a set of puppets from somewhere or other, but when they showed up, they were in pretty bad condition. The director ended up going to Louisiana to rent another set, only he didn't have room in his vehicle for the largest, so we're still having to fix up the largest of the other set (and try to make it look sort of like the other set). Other than that, it's been quite fun. It's a small cast, fifteen people, and the youngest person is 19 (a great relief after the huge number of teenagers in Brigadoon); everyone sings well, can do harmony, acts decently. All in all, a really nice group, and at least half are new to the theatre, which is always fun too.

Finished the two Montfort books for Catholic Audio Company, and am close to finishing Death of a Pope for Ignatius, and not too far off on the two for iPublish. Have been neglecting Secret Garden dreadfully, but after next week, I'll have my evenings free again and will be able to record more.

I've also been working on a sound booth, because since the weather got hot, I've pretty much been limited to recording first thing in the morning, because the crickets and cicadas are so loud. I build a cage out of half inch pvc pipe. It's tall enough in the centre that I can stand up straight. I bought a set of sound absorption sheets from Audimute to cover it with. I've attached two lengthwise along the sides with gromets and one inch binder rings. I've started attaching a third sheet to the top. I had originally planned to just hang the fourth sheet over the front opening, but quickly decided that wasn't going to be effective, so I've decided to build a door and attach the fourth sheet to it with the gromets and book rings like the rest of it. That leaves a section on the back wall between the roof and the top of the other sheets. I'm planning on attaching a couple of acoustic tiles that I had for the portable sound booth to a piece of muslin and hanging that over that hole. Once it's complete, I'm going to move the mic in there, along with a secondary monitor, keyboard and mouse so that I can continue to read off the screen, but without having to worry about laptop fan noise (and without having to move the laptop back and forth, which gets pretty old when you have as many things plugged into it as I do). I forgot to take pics of the work in progress, but I'm planning on taking some as I build the door, and then of the completed booth.

Betty Buckley is coming to the Hip this Saturday, and I've bought two tickets to the show. I've invited Regan to go with me, since she's a big fan of the Mystery of Edwin Drood in which BB played the title role. It's my birthday present to myself, and I had to do some wangling to be excused from rehearsal the Saturday before opening night (but I made sure to wangle before buying the tickets, just in case).

I finished the first of my two paid audiobook gigs last weekend. I just checked, and they've already got it listed on the website! http://www.catholicaudiocompany.com/current.html

This was actually the second gig I got, but it had an earlier delivery date, so I'd been pushing to get it finished. The other one, Clara Vaughan, is due by the middle of June, so it's time to start pushing on it.

At some point the publisher is going to post my profile on their website, but as far as I can tell, they haven't gotten that far yet. They have, however, posted the excerpt that was the first thing I read for them (it's available from their front page: http://www.ipublishpress.com/).

One more weekend of Brigadoon to go. It did finally come together (like, the night before we opened!), and it's going pretty well. Not the hugest crowds we've ever had, but not the worst either.

Off to the Amigos conference tomorrow morning. Just going for the first day, not both. They rented me a car from the library, and when I went to pick it up, they gave me a frickin' Hummer! Not exactly the statement I'm interested in making in life. Still, it's only for one day and then I can give it back (and thank goodness I get reimbursed for gasoline!!!).

I don't think I've ever before been so frustrated during rehearsals for a play. S, who was such a great director in Nunsense, turned out not to have... I'm not sure what's missing... discipline? organization? cojones? I don't know, but whatever it is that's missing, it's driving me crazy. The show opens this coming weekend and we've only just last night run the show all the way through (supposedly we were going to run it without stopping, but for no reason I could understand, she kept stopping to block scenes that had already been blocked. One more show like this would be enough to put me off theatre (or at least the WCT) for life.

I guess it doesn't help that I'm working on two paid audiobook gigs at the same time, so I really don't have much in the way of free time (hence the long gap since my last post), but at least those are coming along nicely. I should be done with the first one due within a week or a week and a half. The other I have another month to finish. I'll be able to really get busy with it once I finish the first one.

One thing I have been enjoying in Brigadoon is learning Scottish Country dancing. One of the girls who auditioned used to do it for a hobby in the last place she lived, and she's choreographed a couple of scenes. It's great fun, and several of us are trying to convince her to start a Scottish Dancing Society here in Waco.

I haven't written in a shockingly long time, but I have an excuse! I've been busy... with my new doggie, Lucy!

I picked her up from the local no-kill shelter in mid-September and since then we've been getting to know each other, doing some training and going for walks every day. She's an Australian Cattle Dog mix. Not sure what the mix is... possibly some sort of terrier or pointer.

Other than that, I'd been working on Children of Eden. It was fun, but I don't think I'll do anymore shows where Tommy is music directing by himself. He's much too vague without Lise. She's got the true teacher instinct (she should; she's a teacher!), so she makes certain that everybody knows everything they're supposed to know ad nauseum. Tommy was all, "I'm going to treat you like professionals, so you just study your music." All very well, except we're not professionals, and not everybody could read music! Still, it ended up being a decent show.

At one point I'd been interested in directing Dial M for Murder, which came after CoE, but I was having health problems around the time the proposals were due and it just didn't happen. I might have auditioned for it, but I learned that Scott was going to be directing A Christmas Carol, so I decided to audition for that instead. I was offered the role of the Plain Sister (in the scene at Fred's house), but around the same time, I got a couple of projects with January deadlines at work and thought it might be safer not to take the part, since I didn't know how much extra time I might have to devote to them. Tonight I got a call from Beth asking if I would please reconsider and take the part of Fred's wife (same scene) as they were having a bit of an upheaval in the show and needed all the people they could get. So... three and a half weeks before opening, I'm suddenly in the Christmas show (panic!). Well, at least it's not a very big part. I'll get to do some carolling in Act I, possibly be a background person in the Fezziwig scene, and then be Mrs. Fred in Act II.

The melodrama ran this weekend. We sold out Friday and Saturday and came very close on Sunday. The audiences really seemed to enjoy it and got into the whole spirit of the thing... Sunday's audience was very vocal with their cheers and jeers, but not so much with the paper wads (there was hardly anything to sweep up during intermission). And they loved Mayor Haggle!

Tonight's the first rehearsal for Children of Eden. Several people from the melodrama are going to be in that too, plus some friends from other shows, so it should be fun. Regan is going to be Mrs. Noah - I think, since Nunsense, she's going to start getting typecast whenever there's a gospel-type song that needs to be sung.

I've started working on baby projects for T. I've already made a little panda hat. I still need to buy eyes for it, but otherwise it's finished.

The other project is going to be a pullover with a train on it. I found a pattern, and I'm going to change up the colours to make it look like the Hogwarts Express. I had ordered the pattern a couple of weeks ago, but they had run out, and I had to wait for their new stock to come in. It finally arrived at the end of last week. Now I just need some yarn - I have some in my stash that I want to use, in red, black, white, and yellow, but I also need some grey, blue and green.

The melodrama goes up in less than two weeks. I'm not particularly excited at this point, but then, I hadn't wanted to direct to begin with. I wanted to be nice and rested when auditions for Children of Eden came along. Ah, well. We do get to use the theatre space as of tonight, which is a week earlier than we'd expected, so that's nice. Even though we don't get to do any set building as yet (the Children's Theatre are still officially in the space), at least the actors will get a feel for the dimensions and the acoustics.

I went downtown to watch the fireworks last Friday for the first time since coming to live in Waco. The closest I'd come to this before was hanging out with friends in one of the Baylor parking lots when I was an undergrad and setting off some of our own little ground based fireworks and then watching the big display from a distance. It was quite fun. I hung out with Beth and the 92.9 tent; and Eileen came and hung out with us too.

I've just started working on Anne of the Island for LibriVox. I had been working on Mr Hogarth's Will and Angelina, but I just couldn't get into them and I kept procrastinating and not doing any recording at all. I've turned Mr Hogarth's Will into a collaborative, and started up Anne as my new English solo. I feel sort of guilty abandoning Hogarth, especially because no one has shown any interest in it in the nearly two weeks since I turned it collaborative. But I've also started recording more often now that I'm working on a project that interests me. If no one picks up any of the chapters, I'll probably do one here and there just to keep it alive. Oh, and for the first time since, I think, my second project, someone beat Ans to signing up to PL one of my English solo projects!

I'm still working on Angelina too (more enthusiastically since I started Anne). Spanish is so under-represented in the catalog, that I feel it's my duty to contribute as much as possible, both in solos and collaboratives. I've currently got three collaborative projects going - part 6 of Aesop's Fables, Jose Martí's La Edad de Oro, and I took over part 2 of Don Quijote from Gesine when she needed some time off. Angelina is only the third solo Spanish work in the catalog, and one of the other two is mine as well.