A Year In Review

Friday the 18th marked the 1-year anniversary of the completion of my degree. It's weird enough to graduate. It's even weirder to have graduated a year ago. When I left college, I was completely exhausted and plans for the coming year aside from "move" and "get a job" weren't really taken into consideration. I have my momentum back and I am going to take this anniversary as an opportunity to review the past year and create goals to reach before next November 18th.

I've never conducted an annual review, so I have been referencing some of Ben Whitehair's posts from Playbills v. Paying bills (here and here) as well as his source, Chris Guillebeau here (includes a spreadsheet template for your own annual review) and here.

Looking Back
Stats 
7 Auditions
1 Call-Back
1 Role

34 Blog Posts, including this one (approx. 1.6 per week)
Approaching 2,000 pageviews

?? Headshots dispersed (several hard copies and plenty of digital copies)

What Went Well
I did well this year to take advantage of opportunities (sometimes unexpected) that came my way, including my time as a camp counselor. During that time, I tapped into skills I didn't even know I had, leadership and working well with kids, which I hope to continue to develop. There is also something to be said for getting an acting job while living with my mom in the middle of nowhere. Not only am I proud of getting the role, I am also proud of my performance. While I was working on the show, I developed a strong relationship to the artistic director of the theatre and I think the relationships I've formed and maintained have been a highlight of the past year.

What Did Not Go Well
It has been a challenge to find ways to motivate myself to work at full capacity, knowing there's nowhere I need to be in the morning, no due dates, and no professors who's respect I want to earn. It's just been me, sans schedule and time restrictions and, while I have gotten some things done this year, the level of my productivity is disappointingly low. I also had every intention of being in Chicago by now, which may have been possible with better planning and budgeting. The extra time at home will inspire more restlessness, I think, but possibly also generate a little more money for when the time does come to move.

Looking Forward
Guillebeau suggests creating categories and setting 3 to 5 goals for each one. So here it goes:

Acting (artistic):

• Read the rest of Shakespeare's plays.
• See 15 plays.
• Enroll in an acting class. (Auditioning?)
• Bring monologue repertoire up to 10 total (5 classical and 5 contemporary). 
• Journal every day. Yeah. Every day. I think about acting that often, therefore I can write about it that often. 

Acting (business):

• Increase blog postings to twice a week, possibly add interviews and reviews.
• Increase tweets to 2+/day
• Send out mailings every quarter.
• Send out professional email every quarter.

Financial:

• Create a budget and stick to it.
• Set up retirement fund and contribute $20/month.
• Set up credit.

Health and Fitness:

• Run a 5k.
• Flexibility--To be able to sit and bend at the hip with elbows resting between legs. To be able to hold bottoms of outstretched feet.
• Join a soccer team.
• Largely replace snacks with more protein and veggies and less salt and fat. (So this one's not really measurable. Whatever. You know what I'm sayin'.)

Friends and Family:

• Send friends mail or goodies at least once a month.
• Return home for Renaissance Fair and/or Christmas.
• Date night with Chris once a week, even if we stay in.

 Other Jobs: 

• Set up etsy site and have steady supplies of cards and coasters.
• Put out advertisement for baby, pet, and house sitting every 2 weeks.
• Add self to care.com.

Habits To Pick Up:

• Knitting
• Sewing
• Get back to writing fiction and poetry. 
• Driving (No, I still don't drive. Don't make fun of me.)
• Paper crafts/Collage

I realize that some of these goals are subject to change, as I will soon be in a new city with new challenges and there will be a lot of adjusting in many aspects of my life. Many of the goals are created specifically for once I am settled in Chicago. I didn't quite make it there this year, but when people ask when I'm moving, I say "In the spring" or "April or May." I no longer preface my answer with "Hopefully" or end it with "...but we'll see." It has been set in motion. Another post coming soon about the steps I'm taking to prepare, but until then, let me know your goals for 2012 or in general!

Going To See The Elephant

Way back in April, I did an audition for a little theatre here in the Blue Ridge called Ensemble Stage Company (Check out that post here) and, naturally, I assumed that I wouldn't be hearing back from them after I had waited a good while. I set my winter/spring audition marathon in the past and went forward, which ended up with me in a uninsulated cabin in the Rockies taking miniature actors and dancers under my wing. But not so fast! The last week at camp, I got an email from Gary at Ensemble Stage asking me to be at callbacks for 'Going to See the Elephant', the last show of their season, on that Sunday. The fact that I intended to be leaving Colorado at the time of the callback resulted in frantic email writing and nail biting while waiting for a reply.

But all was well. I went to alternative callbacks on Wednesday with a couple other girls. (And you know what? I have no idea what I wore. Sorry, not my usual M.O., but things have been a little crazy!). The callback was with Gary, as the audition was, and he had us reading from three or four sides and swapping out characters. I ended up lagging behind for a chat with Gary as the other ladies left, which resulted in him offering me the role of Etta.

Wait, would that mean... My first professional role? Why yes it would!

There we are at our first read-through! I'm the mess on the left. Photo by Jeff Eason.

 We had nine rehearsals. Count 'em. NINE. Not only am I used to leisurely rehearsal periods, I also usually get parts like "MacDuff's Child" with only 10 lines. It's a bit of a different story when there's only four women to share 50 pages of dialog. I was hoping to really apply the Practical Aesthetics technique (read A Practical Handbook for the Actor by Bruder, Cohn, Olnek, Pollack, Previto, and Zigler) but ended up doing a truncated version of the script analysis for the sake of time, since the technique is usually very particular and nitty-gritty. So, to be honest, I don't think I've ever used any of my "as-if's" from my work, but outlining my objectives (or "actions") was definitely helpful. The whole thing desperately made me wish I had that pocket-sized version of my teacher that I always joke about.

What has been very beneficial and worth the time I put into it has been my physical work. Good ol' Chekhov. I love him so much. A little "contracted with hope" here, a touch of the largest circle of awareness there, plus avoiding eye contact... It's gotten me pretty far in nine rehearsals and just as many performances. Except I have weird knots in my back now because of Etta's physicality.

Photo by David Rogers. Again, the mess on the left.

 

 

One thing I really love about this show is that it's about women, by women, with a female cast and (in our case) a female director. And yet it doesn't scream angry feminism and burning bras. While men aren't present on stage, they are present in the characters' lives, and are spoken about in honest, often loving, ways. But having the men offstage or "in town" allows an opportunity to show what women are capable of and what they did regularly as pioneers--coping with trauma, putting a beloved cow out of misery, making their children's pants out of flour sacks, nursing the weak and burying their yucky dysentery stool, and somehow managing to find some joy in a piece of ribbon or a book of maps. They were absolutely against all odds. They lost hope, children, peace, but Kansas is settled, as well as everything west of that. It makes me wonder what else we can tough out, what else we can pioneer--women and men alike.


The show closes tomorrow. It's been such a joy to work with the cast and with Lisa and Gary. The hilarious rapport Gary and I have built will hopefully continue through future projects, perhaps a children's acting camp on Saturdays, and who knows what all. It's been a whirlwind--a hurricane if we want to be more appropriate for the season--of a process. I couldn't be happier with the play or the people that have been my first professional show.