Friday, September 21, 2007

Such a poser.

I am playing a confident woman right now who wants to maintain her youth and glamour and who wants to have fun. She sees herself mainly as a sexual commodity. Her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. She feels a little trapped in her town and I've been exploring the physical aspect of this character-- how she would stand and move.

The self is so fluid: I had trouble shaking this woman off at the end of the day. This evening as I sat on a box waiting for the C. An educated looking older man said to me as he passed "That's quite a pose." I was slumped with my legs crossed leaning back on my hands with my shoulders thrust high to my ears in a posture that said "slightly contemptuous female alpha dog in heat."

Normally I would be much more self-conscious and would have had on the New Yorker "Don't approach me, I'm no one to bother about" mug that we all practice daily. But this evening-- without knowing-- I was still the prettiest girl in town surveying the peasantry of my Sicillian village.

That whole line about how theater allows the audience to live out dangerous sides of themselves in a safe way... imagine how we feel! Who knows where this girl came from...

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

In the mean time.

Funny that singing thing. We want it all, we want it now. I wanna sing every role in my rep at every house and whenever I hear of anyone else doing same, though I may respect her immensely as an artist and know and love her as a person, a tiny part of me goes, "Humph."

Hilarious, huh? I was in the middle of tragically musing "Oh, I'm in this tough transition right now where no one's helping me." and generally whining to the Please Hire Me Gods when I realized I have thirty minutes to get to the subway to go to the first stage rehearsal of a great role in a fantastic opera with an A house that I respect, among colleagues who sound amazing.

That old underdog sense dies hard.