Studying Oklahoma!

Preparing for a role is my favorite part of a play. Except actually performing. That's saying a lot, too, because I even like tech rehearsals. (The only thing I don't like about performing is the initial meet and greet, where the very excited production team meets the actors and tells us what makes this experience unique. After signing a contract, getting measured, meeting the cast and getting my script, I can save the socializing and stories of past productions until the production is up and rolling.)

Yesterday I checked out a book on Oklahoma Territory. I've read Green Grow the Lilacs to find some more interesting character traits (there are tons), and I've also checked into what books were published within 15 years of 1906 to find out what her influences may have been. Or which ones I'm choosing them to be. I've looked up movies set in Oklahoma besides Oklahoma! to get a real accent started as I learn lines, and I've started developing a back history and motivation for Laurie based on interchanges in the original play that didn't make it into the musical. I know who Curly is, how much older he is than she, how long she's loved him, and how long he's known she existed. I know where she grew up, what happened to her parents, and why she escapes into dreams and is so frightened of something bad happening.

The audience won't be aware of any of this, of course, but it helps me to know all of this about her, making her more than a two dimensional musical theater ingenue.

My script has several pages of post it notes in it, and I spent the other evening with a pot of tea and a yellow highlighter going through my script. I love my job!

I have news! I got a callback for Meet Me In St. Louis at Village Theatre! Next Saturday!

I put on eyeliner today for the first time in ages. I wear makeup every day. The same makeup, with the same routine, at the same time each morning. Today everyone comments on how pretty and glamorous I look. Hmmmm.

I got off work at 3, and had a rehearsal at TPS at 5. So I wandered through the streets of Seattle through the sunny day and 70 degree weather, talking on the phone to the oldest member of the blessed company. I had a molasses cookie from my favorite Pike's Place Bakery, The Three Girls, and a lovely stroll with my SPF 50.

Rehearsal went well. My second readthrough of a new play. We're reading it for a group of playwrites on July 6. It's still too long, but either the exhaustion or my newness to the genre enables me to slash through paragraphs of lines. Someone today called my cuts "fearless." They aren't really. After getting up at 5am, I lacked the energy to maintain that level of emotional disbelief for 9 pages straight, and opted to cut down the scene. It really was too long, started too high, and then had nowhere to go. I think my note was "shrill." Which I can be. Especially in a French accent.

And here's my excerpt of the parody script of the filming of A Face For All Occasions:

EXT. CRAFT SERVICES TABLE - DAY

Rachel, grumpy, tries to get a box of safety pins open while she waits in line for coffee. Staci approaches.

STACI
Rachel. There are ten more extras who don't
have wardrobe. I need them on the set in 5
minutes.

The safety pins spill.

RACHEL
I hate you, you evil, evil woman.

Rachel's hair stands on end. Her eyes burn. Constance puts a cup of coffee in her hand. Rachel drinks.

Transformation. Rainbows. Sunshine.

Sweet, fashionable Rachel turns back to Staci.

RACHEL
I've got everything I need with a few table
cloths and these safety pins.

Going out on a high note

Well, I did my last audition of the season today for Seattle Children's Theater. Everything I've heard about them convinces me that I'd love to work for them someday. And this season they're doing the Jerome Robbins Peter Pan, which I've always loved, plus more of their fantastic original shows.

In the spirit of getting back on the horse, I decided to do the song I didn't really get through for the 5th. I knew I could do it, and knew also that if I didn't nail it now, I'd chicken out forever. So before the audition I went to TPS and did my audition half a dozen times through. I walked over the SCT and nailed it. I hope they call me back next season. They asked about my current projects and availability for next season, so I'm hopeful that they're interested. But they run auditions for more than a week, so they have a lot of people yet to see. Including Zandi and Susan, who I've worked with in Leavenworth.

I've only got a week and a half left of the double job phenomenon. May 27th I will be down to just waitressing for the summer...and rehearsing two shows...but I'm letting my brain think for a few days that I'll be less busy. I've got to learn a Oklahoma accent soon (different from the Texan accent I can put on at the drop of the hat) and also a French-speaking-English accent. I've got a lovely cast member with a spot on French accent from her studies in England, and I've asked her to coach me. Mom and Dad know plenty of "Okies" for me to call and have them read lines to me. For starters, my Grandparents will be up from Tulsa in a few weeks for Allie's graduation. (I can't wait to go to rehearsals and tell my directors that my Mammaw is from Claremore - the setting of Oklahoma!)

I'm opening the restaurant today, and must be up in a few hours, but my occasional insomnia caught up with me an hour ago. Oh well. I'm working a short shift, and there's always espresso.

I've finished two pieces for my line. I have another top started that I should finish tomorrow, and several more works in progress. One top has been dismembered twice and still isn't quite right. I went to an antique clothing store this weekend that had always been closed by the time I got off work. I left early on Thursday et voila, open! And she had a box full of vintage patterns to rifle through. I bought three. A blouse and two dress patterns.

Well, I'm back to bed now.

It's international week at Pike's Place Market. Actually, every week is. For the past month, though, most of the tourists have been British or Canadian. Lately there have been fewer, but more Eastern Europeans, and French and Germans. Sunday morning I waited tables on a lovely French couple who spoke almost no English. So, gamely, I walked up to the table and asked "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" (Which, anymore, I'm not sure if it's rude, or incorrect, or just plain bad, but it got the point across at least) "Deux cafes. Noirs, et granola avec le fruit." "Oui. D'accord." "Merci." And then the woman told me (I think) that my accent was good, I just needed to practice. Which was nice of her, since in conversation I told her that "I study french in University but I don't speak well now today." This would be a passable sentence in Khmer, which only has one verb tense, but it's annoying that I can't think of how to say "I studied."

Europeans are great customers. Once they order. Taking their order is a melange of waters without ice, lattes, juice, meals, fruits, breads, and finally a double espresso to finish off the meal. Which usually lasts upwards of an hour. It takes a tremendous effort to get everything to fit on the table, but on the plus side, if you forget to put their order in for twenty minutes, they're fine. They think food comes to quickly anyway.

New Yorkers are by far the worst people to wait on here. Seattle is a pretty laid back town. Except in our coffee ordering we're generally pretty chill with whatever shows up, so long as it won't kill us. And if the wrong thing comes, we're game for the adventure. New Yorkers must exist in an entire ordering culture of exceptions. Every single woman I've waited on that MUST be from there, accent alone, much less the shoes, wants a half-caff vanilla soy latte with a dollop of foam, and can I bring one regular sugar and one splenda. Then a water with three ice cubes, a juice with no pulp and NO ice cubes, and an egg-whites only, vegetarian omelet with no onions, extra bell peppers, and do you have bacon? No? Well then add a sausage patty. Is it pork or beef sausage? Organic? And can I have a side of salsa, no potatoes, and if I don't get fruit can I add avacado to the omelet? One slice wheat toast and one slice white, extra crisp, and can I have one extra pat butter. And can you just "warm up" my latte with drip coffee?

I heard an Eastern European lady explain tipping to her friends like this: "Well you pay for the food, and then if the service is really good you leave a little extra." Hmm. Someone needs to give her a ballpark figure. She left me $6 on a $70 tab. Actually, with most Europeans, if they remember to leave anything at all, I'm impressed. If I go to Europe someday, I'll probably offend waiters in a trail all over the continent because I'll be petrified NOT to leave 20% at the table.

I have yet to meet any Cambodian tourists. As a whole, I suppose the country really isn't up to foreign vacations quite yet, but I'm aching to practice my fading Khmer on somebody.

The only downside to waiting tables - and I mostly love the industry - realizing my hair smells like breakfast.

And here is the link to another film screening at the SIFF that I may have made a brief appearance in. Acting with my eyes.

Here is the link to the short film I costumed when first I moved to Seattle. It won Best Actress at the 168 Film Festival in L.A., and is now screening at the Seattle International Film Festival. That cape was a character all by itself.

So, in other news, I have accepted one more of the roles I was offered. I will be playing Judith Claudel in a live reading of a play about the life of Rodin. Judith was his assistant. It will be a project with minimal rehearsals, since there is no blocking, but I will have to work on a French accent of some sort. I'm quite excited to get a play and a musical on my resume in the same summer, and hope the project will go well. If one of my friends who was at the audition got cast, I hope I can beg her to give me accent coaching. She learned her French accent studying in London.

I'm still waiting to hear whether my scheduling will be too tight to take on the third project, which runs the weekend before tech rehearsals start for Oklahoma. I did have to turn down the fourth.

I'm off to bed. Waitressing tomorrow at the crack of dawn. I hope this storm blows itself out by then.

So, I'm Laurie in Oklahoma! for sure. I may be able to futz two of the other three offers into my schedule also, if all the rehearsal and performance dates work out.

I've done all but two of my scheduled auditions. I felt good about Village. The 5th wasn't great. I prepared, and then ran the audition this morning before work and nailed it each time. I dried out waiting for my audition though, and didn't make it through the high Eb I've been doing solidly for a month. Disappointing.

Perhaps my acting will make up for the singing. I actually belted better than I did the legit song. It was a very backwards audition. Wierd. But I have one or two more to do in the next week, then I'm done for the season. All in all I felt very good about my auditions this spring. I'm well prepared, choosing better material, and having fun doing them. I've found monologues and learned how to perform them well - which was always a weakness for me. Now I've got some good upcoming projects to do. And if I don't get a callback for the 5th this year, I'm going to take this song, work on it for a year, and nail it next time around.

So there.