It has been an insane past week. I was at a film shoot all day on Saturday and Sunday for a student film. I always forget how long it takes to make a film – film people just run on a different time zone. It was a hard shoot on Saturday – all day in one small room with lights aimed from every window and even more on the ceiling – plus it was our first sunny day in quite some time. I sweated like a pig which was embarrassing and sort of started a snowball effect. Awful – it had me looking up facial antiperspirants that night. But I stayed in there and hung on. Even during the sex scene. Which, by the time we got down to it, was incredibly tedious. Trying to be erotic with that many people in the room is quite a challenge. More shooting on Sunday – this time I was there for four hours to run across a kitchen shirtless for under thirty seconds. Like I said, I love film.
Mierka’s show opened on Saturday and it is fucking awesome. She recounts dropping out of DePaul after she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis – it is crazy to think that Mierka – this vibrant super-charged badass of a girl was nearly wheelchair bound for many months. She is in remission now but her mom has been diagnosed and Mierka has started a foundation to support artists with MS, Mookie Jam. The show is hysterically funny and left me in well-placed, well-deserved tears – not till the very ending did she get sentimental – totally classy. Let ’em cry a little and then black out. If you’re in Chicago. Please go see it! If you’re not and no someone who is in Chicago – tell them to go see it! If you know anyone whose life has been touched by multiple sclerorisis – please pass the website on to them.
I took Tommaso with me to Mierka’s show. I noted that this was the first time I’d brought a guy-date with me to an event with the rest of the gang. He did well among all of my crazy and drunken friends. We went to a birthday party for one of his friends on Sunday. It is so strange – our dates are usually around other people – I joke that ‘it’s like dating a fucking Mormon, always being chaperoned.’ But it does keep the emphasis of our time spent together as light and fun and playful. I’m usually get-down-to-business but hanging out and talking? Gay romance? Who knew!
Last night we had our first night of auditions for The Baum House productions of The Wine Seller (written/directed by Jason) and Sinister (written and directed by me). I finised a final draft of episode one today here at work. Two is ready to be re-typed and three is formative. I like to re-type a play instead of editing it – it gets you in the flow of your writing and I think makes for more organic drama. Sinister is a strange beast. Three episodes with two plots that don’t intersect. My logical side screams at me that I should have written two separate plays. The plays do intersect a few times in terms of staging and plotting and dialogue but they do not share the same reality – just the same stage space. It is odd. And I’m thinking of this play as a ‘lesser play’ anyway so I’m a little more off-guard about ‘making a statement’ which is fun. I’m focusing on writing fun and actable scenes for actors to blow it out with. Our auditions were huge last night. There must not be much summer theatre going on. We were packed with actors for the three hour cold-reading call. Many great women and some great men as well. Lots of good minority women, which is good. I’m trying to cast outside my usual cadre and and also trying to get some pigment into my usual ensemble since we’re all basically whities from Ohio. The roles are not ethnic-specific. I figure ethnicity – or at least a white male playwright writing about it – will come from the performers themselves – their own unique flavor and identity – of which their ancestry is just a small piece of the pie. It’s like I have a lesbian couple – I haven’t observed many lesbian couples – I’m just trying to write well written scenes of two women struggling in love and let the actresses bring the right energy to it. It is funny to see the cold readings of a scene I wrote just two weeks ago. Eerie. Page to stage never ceases to amaze my little Indiana mind.
Getting new headshots in two weeks. I’m showing a little maturity now that I’m 26 (a few eye wrinkles whispering their arrival) – my old ones look way too boyish. Need to add some more mature 20s looks along with some corporate sexy with glasses type shots. Might see if we can do some body shots as well – we’ll see.
Workouts going well. I’ve gone from three times a week to two lately – running on the lake has been marred due to shit-ass weather but I’m getting back on the horse or if not then doing a quick 20 minute interval run a la Body for Life. Trying to lower carbs lately and increase protein intake. I figure I’m where I’m at now and if I just dedicate a little more I can really be something to drool over.
The world of full-time employment is exactly the same as the world of independent contractor employment. Monday and Tuesday are going to be hard days – we’re beta testing a web app from a third-party developer. The best part is that I’ve never designed user-testing before. The way it work here is if it involves computers then Andy (who ‘knows about computers’) does it! It’s sort of funny. I hope the testing goes well but we’ve had some bad experiences in the past. I’m suspecting things will be fine but a few hiccups between the scripts I’ve prepared for the testers and the actual app – which we don’t get released to us until Monday morning.
Mom and dad are leaning on me to go to the beach for a few days – I dunno. I might fly down for the weekend or something. I think it is in two weeks though. It would be nice. I do deserve it – just don’t know what my vacation schedule looks like.
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