Well, it's been a long, been a long, been a long, been a long day...

On Friday I had the chance to be a part of Humber River Shakespeare's Sonnet Show.

It's a fundraiser they do for their summer season, which I'm looking to be a part of this year. Much like Trafalgar 24, which I did for Driftwood Theatre back in March, this is a 24-play event, but in this one, the writers have two weeks to work on their shows.



We were at Montgomery's Inn, where I'll be spending a lot of time this summer. Luckily, it is pretty.


I was in a fight show, but the fights were pre-cast and pre-choreographed, so I had quite an easy day. I've done four 24 hour events now, and I've never had to deal with performance jitters, because I've never had that much in any of them to worry about. Although for school 24 hour musicals, I had to do props and sets, and that is wayyy more stress for me than acting. But I was not that busy.

Which gave me lots of time to pretend I was a cast member on Road to Avonlea.


This is where I would turn Felix Prince into Felix King. That joke is not funny, but sums up my feelings for Avonlea's favorite son. Dear God.



We did a short amount of outside rehearsing.














I have lots of that to look forward to this summer, between Humber River, and the Summerworks show that I am crossing my fingers so hard they meld into one giant pointing device that I get to do it, because I really want to, but my schedule is difficult. They're both classical shows outside. I'm really excited for that! I'm not nature girl at all. I like being in darkened, enclosed theatres, communing with vermin and trolls. But for some reason, just tonight I was in my backyard at dusk, and I was really thrilled that I would be spending lots of time in the sun, and being outside for that beautiful time when day becomes night.

I will likely not feel this way when I die from malaria due to mosquito bites.

Dearly Beloved, We Gather Here to Say Our Goodbyes....

Tonight I went and saw a reading of Bertolt Brecht's 'Galileo'. It was at Convocation Hall.

Who says people don't go to the theatre anymore? Apparently they just don't go to theatre in theatres. Put it in a lecture hall and you will get yourself quite a distinguished crowd.

My new friend Jordan was there, and he said it was kind of like attending theatre church. It really was. There were so many people there I've looked up to for such a long time, and I really did come to worship at their shrine. It definitely felt like I was paying respects to people that I admire, and the place was so big, it did have that cavernous, church-y feel.

Plus the chairs were uncomfortable.


So many good actors! Ann-Marie MacDonald, Daniel MacIvor, Fiona Highet, Caroline Gillis...it was kind of amazing that they amassed this kind of cast list. It really could become some sort of regular thing: massive plays that are rarely fully staged because of their size or complexity or whatever, read by the best people. That sounds like something, doesn't it?







There are famous people in this picture, but you'll have to take my word for it.




I first read 'Galileo' in undergrad, and thought I would hate it. I had some longstanding Brechtian hatred, and I don't know what it was even based on. Mostly that his name sounded like some kind of sound you make when you have a lung inflammation. And that everything I had heard about him sounded boring. But I loved reading 'Galileo'. There is so much passion and excitement and beauty in that play, both inherently in the subject matter, about the rediscovery of where we are in the universe and what that knowledge means, and in Brecht's writing. It's very funny, outlandish and real at the same time. I then fell back off the Brecht wagon, only to go wayyyy back on after I did 'The Ark' at the NAC and got the chance to read a ton of Brecht. Man, I want to be in a Brecht play so bad. I think he's great. Most of the time. I was reminded tonight of what a good play it really is.

As much as I saw lots of friends and people I love, I saw some enemies too. I've avoided quite a bit of theatre in the past few months because of these enemies, and the way they make me feel: that I don't deserve to see shows because I don't deserve to be a part of the Toronto theatre community, and I am not allowed to be there. But again, a reading from the book of my new friend Jordan said that every time I go to one of those things, I win. That was encouraging. Have to keep fighting.

The Nausea Before The Game

Look at me blog! Two days in a row!

Too bad I have absolutely nothing of value to say.

I'm 'in between' projects right now. And really, I'm in a position of luxury: I am coming off two major and one minor project, and have two major projects coming up (in rapid succession: I keep having anxiety that everything will collapse in a disorganizational muckheap). Plus a far off distant project, and something in the works creation-wise. I have three and a half weeks where all I have to do is work, before I start rehearsing, and then don't stop for eight weeks (unless said muckheap occurs).

But I'm already feeling creatively barren and as if I will never act again. I feel irrelevant. I feel I'm not getting auditions and I'm not moving forward. I feel everyone is getting these auditions and moving forward and their projects are always better than mine and BLAH! I hate not getting auditions! I hate feeling that I'm not even a part of things!

Someone told me at the workshop that I have to get super-specific with the universe, and think about the things I really want and they will happen. I do not believe in The Secret, but I keep trying to do this. The thing is: IT DOES NOT WORK FOR ME. Which is a pretty horrible realization, if it is working for everyone else. The universe says 'Oh, shit, it's Jessica...pretend we're not home'. I thought so hard about getting the Barrie gig, I thought so hard about a few things I auditioned for in the fall, and it did not happen. I did good work for all those things, and I was positive, and it all did not happen.

Hello? Hello?

Yes.

I know that soon I will be super busy and stressed, and maybe while I'm doing those things my projects for fall will materialize, because work begets work, and so it goes. But I want at least ONE contract, paying gig before my contract, paying gig exactly a year from now. That would be absolutely excellent. More would be great. But if I can just get ONE, I will feel good.

DID YOU HEAR THAT, UNIVERSE?

That Wig Back on the Shelf.

I want so badly to be a blogger, but I am obviously not.

I guess this is probably true about being a writer. I think about writing a lot....I write a lot, but nothing ever comes of it. I think about blogging a lot, and how much I want to be a blogger who has this hip blog and cool life and people are interested in me. But really, I don't have those things, I am not those things, so it would be a fabrication, which is another word for a LIE. Which is obviously what I want to do when I write, I want to LIE but do so so skillfully that it is even more truthful than the truth. Ah. I am a poet.

But then I don't. I don't know what to say. So I am still not a writer and not a blogger, even though I want to be. This is because I have to live with my thoughts in my brain all the time, so it seems tiring to want to rehash them and make them public, because they even nauseate me, so why would I want to nauseate the no people who read this?

Ah well.

I need some more pictures, but I did not take any, because I am disorganized.

I did this amazing workshop last week and the week before. I got to be a part of Tout Comme Elle, with Necessary Angel, which is only this company that I have loved for years, and be directed by Brigitte Haentjens who is amazing and Siminovitchy. There were all these famous theatre women in it, and me. It was kind of nerve wracking. The first day I was afraid I would pee and it would be on Fiona Reid. Or Tanja Jacobs. Or other people that I have looked up to for so long AND NOW I'M IN A PLAY WITH THEM OH MY GOD. But it was really exciting and proud-making and inspiring and just really effing nice to get up and go to work ACTING for a series of more than two hours at a time, for which I am not paid and happens in some guy's basement. Professional actors are so lucky. Really. It was nice to be one for 8 days.

And it is a fun, sad, beautiful show that I think will be totally different from anything else, and that is exciting.

And now I'm working at Harry Potter and watching The Bachelorette and feeling like the farthest thing from an actor. I must not watch this show, I must not watch this show.

I am watching this show.

I have projects coming up for a bit, although my schedule right now is making me wig out and that makes me want to get in my bed and do nothing ever, which is the opposite of being super pro-active and fighting for the career I so badly want. I am not getting generals and that is a pain. Come on, theatre companies. See me. See me, THEN reject me. Hopefully these upcoming projects will be awesome and fulfilling and that would be just dandy.

So it goes.

Give 'em the old razzle dazzle, and shine...

I'm in a play.

It is tiring.

It is a really difficult piece and now I'm at the stage, where, after a long time of piecing things together, they seemed to be making more sense, and now, suddenly, they make less sense then ever before. Less than two weeks to go, it tends to seem like something that will never ever be done. That's how it goes: things end up being ok in the end.

But, its difficult because the pieces is really a gigantic poem, a dream or something, and it is a truly beautiful piece. Very theatrical. Very French Canadian. Ooh la la.

I am too tired to write more about it, although I have been meaning to for a while. So instead, here is a sped-up look at the build of the set. Hot shit.

Community Theatre from uwajedi on Vimeo.

New friends pour through the revolving door

I'm constantly battling my feelings about theatre. It really is my marriage: but it's like a George and Martha marriage, full of codependency and cruelty, while ultimately being something I can't walk away from due to the life of delusion we've created together.

So I go back and forth about whether I should be doing it, how much I enjoy it, what the fuck am I doing being in theatre at all?!

This year has been a particularly bad period of wondering about theatre and my relationship to it, due in total part to what we shall call, 'The Unpleasantness'. I've taken a big step back from it and, for a long time, wasn't putting myself out there in the same way as I used to.

One thing that I have done recently though, and that I'm so glad about, is being an actor with Theatre Kairos' writing circle.

Six writers were brought on this year to develop their plays with Theatre Kairos. After a few months of the writers doing exercises and working on their pieces, actors are brought in so that the pieces can be read out loud. I love cold reading: I think that's a bit unusual amongst actors, but I find it frees me to be pretty outrageous, and I like to work and think and speak quickly, to see how words and phrases taste in the mouth and work on instinct. Cold reading is an opportunity for that, for me. Good thing, because that's what I did in the unit.


It is a really great group of people. We just wrapped up the last of our group sessions, and while there is still a bit of time before the public reading of these pieces, and lots of development to do, we aren't going to be meeting in our group anymore, and that made me kind of sad. Hence the cupcakes. Because sadness and baking are made for each other. I really dig this bunch of people. The work is strong, I get the feeling that everyone really cares about supporting each other, but it is still a crazy amount of fun and I would usually have at least one giggly episode every session.















This is some of them. Aren't they cute?


I made cupcakes so they would love me. It was a medium success. The cupcakes spelled out the company name.



Here, Christopher and Brian try to find other words that can be made when people take random cupcakes away.



















I hope I can keep working on one or two of the plays in the next stage of devlopement, which is were dramaturges and directors get involved. My rehearsal schedule for The Queens might be getting in the way, but hopefully things will work out. It has been such a great great experience for me. I would like to be a writer in it at some time, but, again, thinking about writing wakes up my anxiety and insanity and I really don't know if I could do it.

Man, I love play development. It is so fun. It's nice seeing things be born! Like baby moose and ideas! Plus, I get to play lots of different characters and then get to share my opinions! Those are like my favorite things. And then I dream that one day the play will be published and my name will be in a book as someone who helped it become a real play. Such as what is happening with dust later this year. Holla.






Say it with cupcake, homies.

Doesn't hurt the story...story's pretty strong.....

On Wednesday, a play I wrote was read out loud.

Or, as we say in the theatrical world, 'performed'.

It was performed at Hogwarts.




Actually, the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. But it does really look like Hogwarts. It is quite impressive.



Avada Kedavra!

Just kidding. I, of course, am a good wizard, most likely of the house of Hufflepuff, where they put the fat, asthmatic kids with nut allergies. There's a lot of acne medicine in Hufflepuff. As much as I wish I was a Ravenclaw or a Gryffindor. Or maybe just the hat that says, 'GRRRRYYYYFINDOR!' as that is most certainly my favorite part of the movie franchise.

Anyway, actors performed my play.



It is a really terrifying thing to watch people deal with the crap you have created. I am a very nervous actor: I am an even more nervous playwright. Wow. I sat with my heart in my mouth and my stomach in my throat and nothing was where it should be. So scary!

I really want to write more, and this course forced me to commit to an idea and live with it and make it better, and see it through. So that was incredibly valuable. And I got to meet some super fun people. I'm so glad that I did it. But wow, the anxiety during the show is U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E.

I don't know what to do next, writing-wise. I can never get chosen for Fringe for some reason, and I don't have enough experience to do something cool like SummerWorks, and I don't have enough discipline to do much of anything, which is probably the first problem. I have ideas, but I start to hate them almost immediately, and really, I just write Diablo Cody-esque hyper-hypenated pseudo-intellectual dialogue full of pop culture references, and can't actually tell a story to save my life. So that's probably something to work on. Yes. Definitely.



And look, my blog has pictures now! I'm going to get better at a) taking more pictures, b) taking better pictures, and c) making sure said pictures go to my blog. And then someone might read it!