Thoughts and junk. Junk and thoughts. Stuff.
I suppose my life has been progressively picking up momentum. Or, well, got a little more interesting recently. For me. Not necessarily for you, sorry. Haha. Read at yer own risk, it's boring.
I'm ASM/Props for La Cosa Nostra's production of This is our Youth. If you know the show, you know it's interesting props-wise. Between the drugs and the suitcase full of 1960s memorabilia, I've got my work cut out for me. Anyways, I met up with FSU's props manager today to check the School of Theatre's (the SOT's, as in, ess-oh-tee) props closet for 60s toys and crap ('cause in theatre, esp. student theatre, you never buy it if you can borrow it. You also never throw anything out in theatre. Period). So, I walk into this props storage place in the Fine Arts Building (the FAB, as in, fab, short for fabulous) and it's f***ing incredible. It was loaded with the craziest stuff. I went into one little side room full of kitchen stuff and toys, and there were countless (I mean really, countless) plates and dishes and silverware, and there were old-fashioned sewing machines, and toasters, and an entire drawer of doilies (for everyone who was in Lost in Yonkers, hehe). Anyways, one of the toys mentioned specifically in the play is a Major Matt Mason doll (http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/167/major_matt_mason_boxart.jpg). He's an astronaut, and he's rather rare and expensive nowadays. I mentioned him, saying I was pretty sure I'd have to do a mock-up, or something. Erin agreed with me, and tried to suggest things I could use to create said mock-up. We were digging through a box of toys when Erin pulled out this random, beat up, little astronaut. "Oh, hey, there's an astronuat right there!" Erin said. I looked at this doll... and my jaw dropped. "Oh my God- I think- look at this!" I went to my bag and pulled out a printed picture of the Major Matt Mason doll. It was THE Major Matt Mason doll, randomly hidden in FSU's props closet. Beat up, but the real thing, with "MATTEL 1965" (or 68, or 66, or maybe even 85,6, or 8. It's hard to tell) stamped on the back of it. We couldn't believe the luck of it. It was a very exciting moment. I wanted to call the director and just go "You are NEVER gonna believe this..." I'm so pleased. It made an excellent morning, in addition to delightfully cool weather.
Just tonight, about 3 hours ago, I was in the actual, living presence of Colbert, with Valerie, at FSU's Homecoming PowWow. OMG, he was wonderful. And the crowd loved him. And I loved him. And Valerie was beside herself. She drove eight hours, got two driving tickets, and sat through an hour of Seminole-pride crap (inlcuding UM bashing), just to see Stephen Colbert. And I would say it was worth it. I clipped a picture of him from the FSU newspaper and stuck it to my bulletin board. It goes well with the Orlando Bloom calendar up there. :) Better yet, I successfully returned to the dorm and bullshitted, then turned in a paper 15 minutes before it was due for online submission. I pride myself on my quick working skills. All in all, today was an excellent day.
In the meantime, I'm really stressing about BFA Acting auditions. There are a lot of sources for the stress, but I'm coping, slowly. I am definitely doing the Phebe monologue from As You Like It. I'll get more into an explanation of my recently enflamed Shakespeare fetish in a moment. As a contrast, I am wanting to do Bella from Lost in Yonkers. I've been feeling an unease about it lately, though. It isn't working like I want it to right now, which makes me sad. I wanted to do that monologue because it's absolutely beautiful and it has never once failed to break my heart. I'm hoping I can make my audience's heart break, too. I'm relying on that to justify the monologue being slightly out of my age range and extremely popular. But it doesn't feel heart-breaking right now. I need to really pull together and focus on making it work again.
But I said I was going to tell you about my re-enflamed Shakespeare fetish. :) SO. I decided to do the Phebe monologue... for reasons unknown to me. I'm honestly in the dark as to why I picked that one. I think I closed my eyes and pointed or something. Anyways, I picked it, and I was working on it, when I felt a longing, an extreme longing, to make that text flow in that amazing way that it does when it's spoken correctly. I started digging around online, and I found that Strozier library had books on performing Shakespeare. I wandered into the library, virtually empty as it was game day, and picked up this book by a guy named Madd Harold called Performing Shakespeare: an Actor's Guide. It was amazing. I sat in the library and read for about two hours, before having the sense to take the book downstairs and check it out of the library. I continued reading in the dorm, and started to really marvel all of the wonderful and amazing things Shakespeare does in his text. He gives you absolutely everything you need to act his text, you just need to be able to find it and carry it out. So rich. So pleasing.
Well, a couple weeks later, we had Peter Bennett, who directed As You Like It at FSU, come into our Intro to Theatre lecture. And to make a long story short, he was very inspiring. I came back from class and had an instant need to go pick up that Phebe monologue again, even though I'd done it a ridiculous number of times already as a result of the library book. I swear, it was like getting horny and desperately needing ten minutes alone, pardon the analogy. I saw As You Like It, of course, and absolutely adored the production. It was just wonderful. I decided I needed to give my Phebe monologue some time though.
Well, this week in Intro to Theatre, Guy Molnar came in to lecture. Good. GLORY. The man said, "After food and sex, I think speaking Shakespeare is the most pleasurable thing on this earth." WHAT an incredible truth. And while the lecture scared the crap out of me, because I will never be able to do that monologue as amazingly as it can be done in the time I have before auditions, it was sooooo incredibly inspiring. He spoke maybe two or three lines of Shakespeare, and the sound of it just blew me away. Shakespeare sounds amazing when it's right, and you know when it's right. I adore it, and I want to learn to do it SO badly. You have no idea how badly I want to learn to speak it like that.
So, my new hope for the Phebe monologue is to a., make it as good as I can with the little info on speaking Shakespeare that I have, and b., to show that it's really something I'm dying (like, seriously, I'm wilting just thinking about it. I could swoon) to learn more of. And that I have the capacity for it. That's all I have to show; professionalism and talent/capacity for growth. OhGodit'ssoscary. It won't be the end of the world if I don't make it, but I want it now like crazy. I want the damn 18 hour semseter with the insane amount of performance classes... it's so exciting.
So, now that you've heard about my Shakespeare-fetish-equatable-to-sexual-lust-almost, I'm going to start drawing to a close, for now. It's getting very late, and I'm tres tired (it was a good day, like I said). I just wanted to briefly ponder how sorry I am that I waited until I was this far away from someone to really get to know him. He has become one of my best friends, through naught but online conversations. Funny ol' world, innit?
Mmmkay? K. I'm spent, fried, crispy, etc. Make peace and love.
-Jessica
I'm ASM/Props for La Cosa Nostra's production of This is our Youth. If you know the show, you know it's interesting props-wise. Between the drugs and the suitcase full of 1960s memorabilia, I've got my work cut out for me. Anyways, I met up with FSU's props manager today to check the School of Theatre's (the SOT's, as in, ess-oh-tee) props closet for 60s toys and crap ('cause in theatre, esp. student theatre, you never buy it if you can borrow it. You also never throw anything out in theatre. Period). So, I walk into this props storage place in the Fine Arts Building (the FAB, as in, fab, short for fabulous) and it's f***ing incredible. It was loaded with the craziest stuff. I went into one little side room full of kitchen stuff and toys, and there were countless (I mean really, countless) plates and dishes and silverware, and there were old-fashioned sewing machines, and toasters, and an entire drawer of doilies (for everyone who was in Lost in Yonkers, hehe). Anyways, one of the toys mentioned specifically in the play is a Major Matt Mason doll (http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/167/major_matt_mason_boxart.jpg). He's an astronaut, and he's rather rare and expensive nowadays. I mentioned him, saying I was pretty sure I'd have to do a mock-up, or something. Erin agreed with me, and tried to suggest things I could use to create said mock-up. We were digging through a box of toys when Erin pulled out this random, beat up, little astronaut. "Oh, hey, there's an astronuat right there!" Erin said. I looked at this doll... and my jaw dropped. "Oh my God- I think- look at this!" I went to my bag and pulled out a printed picture of the Major Matt Mason doll. It was THE Major Matt Mason doll, randomly hidden in FSU's props closet. Beat up, but the real thing, with "MATTEL 1965" (or 68, or 66, or maybe even 85,6, or 8. It's hard to tell) stamped on the back of it. We couldn't believe the luck of it. It was a very exciting moment. I wanted to call the director and just go "You are NEVER gonna believe this..." I'm so pleased. It made an excellent morning, in addition to delightfully cool weather.
Just tonight, about 3 hours ago, I was in the actual, living presence of Colbert, with Valerie, at FSU's Homecoming PowWow. OMG, he was wonderful. And the crowd loved him. And I loved him. And Valerie was beside herself. She drove eight hours, got two driving tickets, and sat through an hour of Seminole-pride crap (inlcuding UM bashing), just to see Stephen Colbert. And I would say it was worth it. I clipped a picture of him from the FSU newspaper and stuck it to my bulletin board. It goes well with the Orlando Bloom calendar up there. :) Better yet, I successfully returned to the dorm and bullshitted, then turned in a paper 15 minutes before it was due for online submission. I pride myself on my quick working skills. All in all, today was an excellent day.
In the meantime, I'm really stressing about BFA Acting auditions. There are a lot of sources for the stress, but I'm coping, slowly. I am definitely doing the Phebe monologue from As You Like It. I'll get more into an explanation of my recently enflamed Shakespeare fetish in a moment. As a contrast, I am wanting to do Bella from Lost in Yonkers. I've been feeling an unease about it lately, though. It isn't working like I want it to right now, which makes me sad. I wanted to do that monologue because it's absolutely beautiful and it has never once failed to break my heart. I'm hoping I can make my audience's heart break, too. I'm relying on that to justify the monologue being slightly out of my age range and extremely popular. But it doesn't feel heart-breaking right now. I need to really pull together and focus on making it work again.
But I said I was going to tell you about my re-enflamed Shakespeare fetish. :) SO. I decided to do the Phebe monologue... for reasons unknown to me. I'm honestly in the dark as to why I picked that one. I think I closed my eyes and pointed or something. Anyways, I picked it, and I was working on it, when I felt a longing, an extreme longing, to make that text flow in that amazing way that it does when it's spoken correctly. I started digging around online, and I found that Strozier library had books on performing Shakespeare. I wandered into the library, virtually empty as it was game day, and picked up this book by a guy named Madd Harold called Performing Shakespeare: an Actor's Guide. It was amazing. I sat in the library and read for about two hours, before having the sense to take the book downstairs and check it out of the library. I continued reading in the dorm, and started to really marvel all of the wonderful and amazing things Shakespeare does in his text. He gives you absolutely everything you need to act his text, you just need to be able to find it and carry it out. So rich. So pleasing.
Well, a couple weeks later, we had Peter Bennett, who directed As You Like It at FSU, come into our Intro to Theatre lecture. And to make a long story short, he was very inspiring. I came back from class and had an instant need to go pick up that Phebe monologue again, even though I'd done it a ridiculous number of times already as a result of the library book. I swear, it was like getting horny and desperately needing ten minutes alone, pardon the analogy. I saw As You Like It, of course, and absolutely adored the production. It was just wonderful. I decided I needed to give my Phebe monologue some time though.
Well, this week in Intro to Theatre, Guy Molnar came in to lecture. Good. GLORY. The man said, "After food and sex, I think speaking Shakespeare is the most pleasurable thing on this earth." WHAT an incredible truth. And while the lecture scared the crap out of me, because I will never be able to do that monologue as amazingly as it can be done in the time I have before auditions, it was sooooo incredibly inspiring. He spoke maybe two or three lines of Shakespeare, and the sound of it just blew me away. Shakespeare sounds amazing when it's right, and you know when it's right. I adore it, and I want to learn to do it SO badly. You have no idea how badly I want to learn to speak it like that.
So, my new hope for the Phebe monologue is to a., make it as good as I can with the little info on speaking Shakespeare that I have, and b., to show that it's really something I'm dying (like, seriously, I'm wilting just thinking about it. I could swoon) to learn more of. And that I have the capacity for it. That's all I have to show; professionalism and talent/capacity for growth. OhGodit'ssoscary. It won't be the end of the world if I don't make it, but I want it now like crazy. I want the damn 18 hour semseter with the insane amount of performance classes... it's so exciting.
So, now that you've heard about my Shakespeare-fetish-equatable-to-sexual-lust-almost, I'm going to start drawing to a close, for now. It's getting very late, and I'm tres tired (it was a good day, like I said). I just wanted to briefly ponder how sorry I am that I waited until I was this far away from someone to really get to know him. He has become one of my best friends, through naught but online conversations. Funny ol' world, innit?
Mmmkay? K. I'm spent, fried, crispy, etc. Make peace and love.
-Jessica