gypsygirl

I’m in the middle of rehearsals for The Man Who Came to Dinner at the WCT. I got cast as Lorraine Sheldon, bombshell. The thought still makes me giggle, because I so don’t think of myself as the bombshell type. I wasn’t actually up for the part originally. The director only had one person read for it the night that I auditioned; but when she got up there and started to read (in the same normal voice she had used for all her other readings), I happened to glance at the director and saw her shuffling her papers, shaking her head and muttering to herself in reaction. Well, based on the description she’d given us of the character and the fact that her first word in that scene was “Darling” I had a decent idea of what she was looking for, in the voice, at least. So at the end of the night, when she asked if anyone had wanted to read for a part and hadn’t gotten to, I raised my hand and asked to read for Lorraine. The producer told me later that the director cast me in the part as soon as I started reading. It’s been a fun show, quite apart from playing a vamp, because Tredessa’s in it too (as the female romantic lead), and it’s always fun to play with her! Plus in this show we play rivals, so even more fun.

I’m working on two projects at LibriVox right now; I’m still working on Pride and Prejudice (on the sly, so to speak). I’m more than two thirds of the way through it. And for my “public” project I finally decided on a compilation of short stories by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. I have one left to go, and it’s the longest in the bunch, so I’ve broken it into three sections, to keep the file sizes manageable. I’m thinking of going back for more Scarlet Pimpernel after this; specifically, the Elusive Pimpernel, which is the book that comes between the two I’ve already done. My output has dropped lately, though, as I’m spending my evenings at the theatre and can only record on the weekends.

I went out to CHS with MB last Saturday to see Mandy’s production of Seussical. It was fun to compare similarities and differences in the costumes, because Mandy costumed the production we did at the WCT a few years ago. It was lots of fun, anyway. And Mandy played Mayzie; I’d always wondered how she would have played the part if she’d auditioned for our production (because I’m pretty darned sure she’d have gotten that part), and it was fun getting to see.

I spent part of the weekend finishing my Hallowe’en costume. I had wanted to go as Tigger, to co-ordinate with MB’s Pooh, but, although I was able to find a pattern that would work to make the costume, I couldn’t find fabric in the right colours that wouldn’t kill me from heat exhaustion. So, I had to find something else instead. I went with a Regency period dress - I’m going to be Lizzie Bennet.

I found a fabulous dark purple cotton fabric with sort of roses (or some other flower) in lilac all over it. All I have left is to tack down the seam between the bodice and the skirt, wash it (it’s stiff and itchy from the sizing they put on the fabric) and iron it! I’ll post a pic from the Masquerade Ball next week. I think I want to change the sash a little bit too - it’s a little too wide for my taste right now, and I think I might also sew it onto the front of the dress so that it just has to be tied at the back. I just had another thought for it… maybe I’ll do some gathers on it to narrow it, rather than cutting it down. I’ll have to see how that looks.

It was a very busy weekend, quite apart from sewing. I went to a Barrage concert on Friday night with Eileen. This is the group I got to see at Disneyland with Pabis. He was mesmerized by them, and is going to be horribly jealous when he finds out I got to see them again. I think I’ll get him one of their DVDs for Christmas. On Saturday I went to look at houses during the day, and ushered for and watched Amadeus in the evening. Good Gad that show was long - three, frickin’ hours!!! It didn’t help that I kept wanting the guy playing Salieri to turn into F. Murray Abraham (not his fault, he did a decent job… but he’s no F. Murray Abraham).

I’m considering auditioning for the Christmas show tonight. It’ll be the first time I’ve acted in one of the Christmas shows (though I stage-managed last year’s). I’ve heard conflicting accounts of what it’s like to work with that particular director, which is why I’m only “considering” right now… but I probably will, because I don’t expect to do any of the other shows until the spring musical, Nunsense. The director for Steel Magnolias asked me to audition for that, but it’s right before the musical, and I hate overlapping shows.

So after everything I said about the WCT being somewhat picky about casting the leads of plays, I have to take it back. I watched Annie the weekend it opened, and ended up leaving during intermission. Like Once Upon This Island, the casting of the leads left much to be desired. I will say that the three people cast as Miss Hannigan, Rooster and Lily St. Regis were fantastic. They were the only leads who seemed confident onstage and with their lines, songs and choreography. They were also the only leads who seemed to be having fun with their parts (not really difficult with those).

My main objection was to the poor child who played Annie (well, the one I saw that night… the role was shared by two girls). It’s not her fault. I’ve worked with her before and heard her sing, and know that she has a very nice voice, but someone made the decision that she should belt all her songs… and they just weren’t in her belting range, so the result was that she sounded strained and painful.

I decided not to audition for Amadeus after all. I’d only just regained enough energy (after the stress of adjusting to the new job) to get back into my LibriVox project, and I’m on a roll with that, so I wasn’t willing to give up my evenings just yet.

I’m still working on El Dorado, but I’m not as blocked as I was before. The focus hasn’t been on Armand as much as it was in the beginning, so he’s not driving me crazy like he was. I’ve also started two other projects - A Little Princess and Pride and Prejudice. I’ve been wanting to do both for a while, and doing chapters in those was a good motivation to deal with Armand. I haven’t put P & P into the catalogue yet, I’m just working on it on the side for now, but I’m five chapters each away from finishing El Dorado and Little Princess , and I’ll be taking it public once I do finish them.

I learned of a knitting group here in Waco a few weeks ago. I’ve been thinking of visiting it. I’m a bit shy of going because I only know one person… and also because I don’t have anything particularly interesting on the needles just now. I’ve got that scarf I started for Ethel last winter still going; and a hat for the Dulaan project. I had bought a whole bundle of a particular yarn… ooh, probably two years ago that didn’t turn out to be how I expected (it said worsted, but it’s much thicker than that), so I figured I could use it up making hats and things for the Dulaan project.

And now I’m off to eat lunch in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.

Life’s been pretty busy since my last post (hence no posts since then).

So, first off, I started the new job. It’s been fairly quiet for these first few weeks. The whole first week and part of the second all I did was read, because they’d ordered me a new computer (a nice, shiny new macbook!) and we were waiting for it to arrive. The rest of the second week I spent trying to install Windows and Linux on it (some of the things I’m going to be working with run on Mac, some on Windows and some on Linux, so I have to have all three OS’s). Then I went on vacation for a week, but I did finally get the various operating systems running when I got back. Since then, they’ve slowly been getting me started on some of the things I’m going to be dealing with. Oh, and kind of cool coincidence, one of the first things I worked on was a problem a professor was having with his website, which he was running with wordpress… so this blog? Not just for fun! Actual work related learning experience gained from it!

Now back to the vacation. I went out to Mum’s for ten days. This is the first time I’d been out there since she moved to Palmdale and Paul brought the family up, so I got to see the new house, and of course, all the family. The times at home were fairly quiet. The boys are sort of between activities right now, so they spend most of their time online or playing video games (sometimes both). Mum and Natalie and I had fun though. Mum and I usually try to get out to the Hollywood Bowl whenever I visit during the summer, and this year Natalie came with us. We got to see South Pacific, with Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell. It was awesome! Then a few days later, we went to see Wicked. I’d been wanting to see this since I first found out that the book was being turned into a musical, so I did a quick search to see if the touring company might happen to be in the Los Angeles area during that week, and found that there’s a permanent (well, probably semi-permanent) production at the Pantages! I treated Mum to both shows for her birthday present. Natalie came with us to this one too. They didn’t know anything about Wicked, but they were excited to be getting out of the house for something other than work. On the Friday before I came back Natalie’s daughter Debbie was playing in the orchestra for a community college production of Once Upon This Island, so we went to that too. Needless to say, after South Pacific and Wicked, this was a bit of a letdown. Maybe if we’d seen that one first. I mean, it wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely an amateur performance (I like to think that we’re a little pickier about our lead roles at the WCT… but I’m terribly afraid we aren’t always).

I haven’t been doing much outside of work since I got back. Though yesterday was my birthday and I did get taken out for lunch. Apparently, the Preservation people adopt whoever works in the office across the hall from them, regardless of what department they’re in, so Eric and I get included in all they do. It’s fun, and I’m enjoying getting to know that group better. I used to see them some when they were on the first floor, but we’re in much closer proximity here and it’s easier.

Annie opens next weekend at the Civic. I got cast in it, but then I found out that Linda had cast about 60 kids! I told them that I’d just started a new job and we were starting a big project and that I wasn’t sure how much spare time I was going to have in the evenings (all of which is true), so thank you but I was going to have to turn down the part. I will be ushering, though. Beth is playing Miss Hannigan and I’ve heard that she’s hilarious, so I’m looking forward to watching her.

I’m still working on El Dorado for Librivox. It’s an interesting story, but I keep putting off recording because Armand, from whose perspective most of this story is told, is driving me spare. He’s being such an absolute infant that I keep wanting to smack him upside the head. This one’s longer than the other Orczy book I did too, much longer. I originally picked it because it’s the other book they generally use when they’re making a film adaptation, so I know parts of the plot.

I got the job!!!

Yes, yes, I know I usually agree with PTerry on multiple exclamation points, but this is a special occasion.

They finally called me Wednesdy evening to offer me the job. The HR lady who likes me had told me to expect the call, and to pretend to be surprised. So I pretended, and needless to say, I accepted! I’ll be starting Monday week, but I still don’t really know what it’s going to involve… other than some amount of programming. I suppose they’ll get to that eventually.

I went to see HP5 Tuesday night with some friends from the theatre. MB bought the tickets ahead of time, and at the last minute a couple of people had dropped out, so I invited Eileen to come along with us. It was pretty good, considering it was the shortest movie so far - and based on the second longest book. They left out ridiculous amounts of stuff, but what was there was good.

In other news, I’m going to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) at the Hippodrome this Saturday. It’ll be the first time I get to see the Cachinnator act; Don Boscoe is also going to be in it, plus a third guy I don’t know. I’m going with MB… Sherry was up for it, but was going to be out of town that day. Also, we’re finally going to have our Music Man intervention this coming Tuesday. Huzzah!

So, I still haven’t heard back on the job I interviewed for over a month ago. There’s a lady in HR who likes me and is rooting for me, so she’s been keeping me up to date on where they are. She asked me for one final piece of paperwork this morning, and said it was the last thing they needed before they can make an offer. Needless to say, I had the form in the mail within five minutes of getting her email (I’m just ready for the waiting to be over, either way). She said I might hear by the end of tomorrow. Please, God, let me hear (preferably a job offer and not a “thanks for applying, but…”).

In the meantime, it’s time for One Acts again. Carlos is directing alone this year, as Mark has moved. He asked me to assistant direct for him, as he’s taking classes. I agreed, as long as I get to do lighting design again (I had fun with that last year). I’m going to be in one called For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls, which is a parody of The Glass Menagerie. There were enough women who tried out (who were good) that he didn’t have to double cast, so that’s the only show I’m in this summer. Some of the men did get double-cast, as (as usual) there were fewer men who tried out than women.

No sign of Kelita this year, though Carlos said Jack knew auditions were coming up; if he hadn’t said that, I would have guessed that she hadn’t checked her email in a while. But we’re getting some old friends back - Mandy (for sure) and Larry (if he can). Yay! Haven’t worked with either of them in a couple of years at least.

The show ended last Sunday, and now I’m feeling at a bit of a loose end. This is normal; it’ll take me at least a week to get used to it. This is the first show I was in where we had to have stand-ins for three different actors (as opposed to understudies, who are prepared to take over from the beginning of the run). In each case, it was illness in the family of the actor that pulled them away from the show. There was a rumour running around that someone mentioned the name of the Scottish play early on in rehearsals, and that’s why we had so many problems; others said it hadn’t actually been mentioned, just talked about without using the name. Lise mentioned something about “reverse luck” or “reverse superstition”; I can’t remember her exact phrasing, but the idea was that we’d been really careful to observe all the usual theatrical superstitions, such as not whistling in the theatre, not mentioning the name of the Scottish play, etc, and still ended up with awful luck.
We had one fabulous audience the second weekend, that was everything one could wish for in an audience; responsive, not afraid to laugh aloud, enthusiastic… and, of course, every audience after that seemed a let-down (though there was one that would have seemed dull even without that comparison. Good grief, it was like pulling teeth to get any sort of reaction out of them!).

I’ve pretty much given up trying to find a grown-up job in Waco. I heard back (unofficially) on one of the two remaining applications I had in at Baylor, that it had been offered to someone else. So, since most of the family is now in So. Cal. (Alondra and the boys moved up to join Paul and Mum last weekend!) and not planning on moving to OK, as they had been for a while, I’ve started applying for jobs in the Pacific states, to be closer to them. I’ve been looking at jobs in universities in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. I always did say that if I ended up leaving Waco, I’d like to move somewhere with a cooler climate. I’ve got four applications in so far, and that’s just in Washington, some in teaching and some in IT. We’ll see how it goes.

Life seems suddenly much more relaxing. The show opened last weekend, and I think it went quite well. We haven’t sold out any of the performances so far, but we’ve had decent sized crowds. One of the cast members, whose only previous experience at the WCT was Fiddler, was disappointed at the size of the crowds. It took some talking to convince her that Fiddler was a special case, that not every show sells out every single performance! While Once Upon a Mattress is a very fun show, it’s nowhere near as well known as Fiddler, so there’s not as great a demand.

I’ve also just mailed in Team Steve’s final project to the professor, so the only thing left for class is the presentation on Thursday. I’m so glad that’s over - being in a team of five people in which only two and a half are doing any work is no fun (two and a half because of the amount of work involved by the half compared to the two). We got the results on our finals back last week and I somehow managed to get the exact same grade on it as I did on the mid-term… right down to the decimal. Weird, but good, because I hadn’t expected to do as well as on the mid-term. There were several things I wasn’t able to get working properly, but he seemed to think that what I did do was very strong work regardless. I’m not going to complain!

No, it’s not Talk Like a Pirate Day (that’s in September). It’s just finally sinking in that Once Upon a Mattress opens in eleven days! Eleven!! We still don’t have a full set or most of our large props, including the main one, the bed! But worse than that, we have yet to have a rehearsal with the full cast! Eeek!

I just finished four Java programs in two hours! Talk about catching up on the homework!

I figured I should at least look at them, considering I’m going to be tutoring one of my classmates on these two chapters tomorrow. Good motivation to get the work done, I’ll tell you that much.

Now, if I could just find some motivation for recording the rest of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare! I don’t remember them being this dull when I read them as a kid. Perhaps it’s because I’ve since been introduced to the full glory of Shakespeare’s works, and just can’t do with this cut down prose anymore.

And speaking of Shakespeare’s plays, I had an idea this afternoon when I was having lunch with Jana. We were talking about the upcoming season at the theatre and I mentioned how much I miss doing Shakespeare. She told me she’d done her best to get some into the new season, but without success, and then we moved on to talking about studio shows. And that’s when I got the idea to submit Twelfth Night as a studio show.

I must admit, part of the appeal is because, completely selfishly, I’d cast myself as Viola!

Jana has bagsed Malvolio. *lol*