Thursday, December 14, 2017

Without Youuuuuuuuu I feeeellll INNNCOMPLEEETEE!

I hit the skids once again at the end of this semester. The straight dope: I crashed and nearly burned when I overworked myself. Thinking I'd be leaving in the middle of winter, I took on a nearly full time schedule at work to save as much money as possible for a move (in the city or elsewhere).  Nearing finals, I was weeks behind on work and exhausted and nowhere the mindset need for finishing strong, arranging a move in the city in the middle of winter, and . That's when my advisor suggested I stay until May, and revealed that you don't have to be registered full time in your final semester to keep housing.

And so, after semesters of emotional hell, I did the unthinkable.

I delayed graduation and I'm staying....by choice until the end of May.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

The Final Countdown

Hey everyone,
I hate to say it, but microblogging platforms...facebook and instagram have taken over. It's downright weird to read this blog after not touching it all for a year and a half.

Suffice it to say, a lot happened. Columbia attempted to financially expel me. I feel no remorse calling it that. I can't pay right now and my credit is trashed from the recession, it's been a problem since I got here, everyone in the admin knew about it. I was far from the only person going into debt directly to the school because private loans weren't an option. A lot of us left. Few of us found a way.

Mine included taking an unpaid internship that transitioned to a theatre management position at an off-Broadway venue in Hell's Kitchen. I love my job, I'm good at my job, and the money is good. Working this job allowed me to set up a six month deal for $4000 in payments to the school in exchange for being able to register for my final two semesters. I was within a week of being evicted from housing because of my situation and I'm going to keep fighting on behalf of my fellow student's because the current system is set up to let the less financially able, but just as talented - get in, accrue debt many times directly owning the school not private lenders,only to be told by the bursar that it's for our own good if we aren't allowed to finish/are forced to leave with a mountain of debt and with out completing our requirements.

TL:DR I got a job, earned money, ransomed my registration rights, and now - after 11 years, I'm completing my bachelor's requirements at the end of December. (I will not be allowed my diploma until the money owed school directly is paid in full, so I should see it so.metime around 2027.) The Course reqs are updated and....we're almost home free.


Saturday, February 27, 2016

Final Update

This is going to be the final update for a while. Here are my grades from the past two semesters.

Fall 2015
SHAKESPEARE I             B-
ELEMENTARY SPANISH II         C+
THEATRE TRAD GLOBAL CONTEXT    A-
ACTING SOLO PERFORMANCE      B+

Spring 2015
MASTERPIECES OF WESTERN M    C+
ELEMENTARY SPANISH I        C+
ACTING THE SONG            C
LIGHTING DESIGN            D
REHEARSAL AND PERFORMANCE    A

 

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Feeling Like a Tourist

"First, I'm trying to prove to myself that I'm a person. Then maybe I'll convince myself that I'm an actress." - Marilyn Monroe

I studied theatre and earned my associates in it three years ago. I have worked with theatre companies big and small, never in a performance role though. I continue to study at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and was awarded a solo-performance thesis. And yet...I feel like a tourist in my own industry. Why?

Body image and self-esteem have admittedly more to do with it than I like. Only recently have plus-size role models like Rebel Wilson and Melissa McCarthy come forward to usher in an era of being big and talented and ok with yourself, in the US. Somehow these women have figured out how to value themselves enough, to have enough confidence internally that they consider their work valuable to others. This leaves me about 20% envious and  80% curious. I want to investigate,I want to know how that happened, because while I cannot speak for all plus or curvy women, I know that many of us already consider ourselves to be a sort of other at base.

That's a harsh realization, but an honest one. One, that needs to be acknowledged before any sort of self-reparation can begin. And, not just with women, but men too - people, in the western world have so largely gotten caught up in the lives of "The Digital Jones'," that our own successes start to pail in comparison. So how do we get back?

I Am Not An Other

Saying these words are effortless. Especially for anyone with acting in their background. Just conjure up a vision of the most confident person you can think of an lie to yourself a little.  Actually believing this, is another matter all together.  Confidence despite flaws, including weight,  is so foreign an idea that it is used as comic fodder or applauded because of it's rarity.  An exoticness is tacked on to someone who deviates from the norm with detached and convinced bliss, and thus owning that you are not supposed to act a certain way because of how you look makes you rare, and in that rarity lies a power to control your options more. 

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Fall Grades and Redux

FALL 2014
B+   Global Urbanism - Global Core Req - 3 Credits
B     History and Practice of Producing - Major Req - 4 credits
C     History and Practice of Directing - Major Req - 3 credits
B-   Art Hum - Art Hum Req - 3 Credits

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The Moon is Big in the White Harlem Sky

They refer to us as apathetic....the worst generation. In reality, we are disillusioned - as disillusioned as they once were, but with the ability to fight ripped from our hands.

I didn't forget, I'm not ignorant of what this all means, I'm just not happy with any of the players in the bloodsport they refer to as American Politics.  What a fucking art form. The highest and most respected one in the land, certainly the best funded.

You want to send a message, create? Fine crawl through the mud, become a professional beggar for favor. Shakespeare did it. Bernini too...although he made sure to not let anyone remember his dissidence by writing anything down, lest the wrong patron be pissed off.

I can't revolt.

I can't fight.

Doing so would make me wrong and cheat me out of my own progress. You too.

Someone will be along to pick up the tab, shortly.

So we wait. We wait for the change the fear mongers and political spelunkers assure us is coming. Wait for relevance. Too much like the string quartet on a sinking ship, even the rats have abandoned.

We've lost. We've lost and worse, we aren't even sure what game we are playing.

Reverberation is nauseating.

I can't revolt.

I can't fight.

It would make me one of 'those people.'

Revolution is a precious commodity now.  How much for that Che Guevara shirt, those ripped jeans?

800,000,000 easy payments of $56, 000 should do the trick. Maybe.

Shut up you stupid cog. Here have a grant, a scholarship, a free gift with purchase, 10% off your next purchase of $17 trillion or more.  Yours now if you get the most retweets, the most clicks.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

And I And Silence

Silence makes me think of Silence Dogood, who I learned of from National Treasure. It was a pseudonym a young (like, 16 young) Ben Franklin concocted to write into his...brother's...newspaper to express his views on popular culture and politics ect.

The musings of a 16 year old colonial white male apprentice printer, are hardly to be considered worthwhile, and yet Silence spoke with such veracity, she received marriage proposals.

In Naomi Wallace's jarring sketch, we are presented with a reverberation of that tenacity. Two young women, Dee and Jamie, minor offenders locked up in what has become the generationallly, perpetual gray area of adolescence.  High School Musical meets Orange is the New Black, this isn't, however. We are also granted glimpses into the lives of the, now, women nine years on - post incarceration. 

It's 1959, as Older Jamie actress Rachel Nicks points out...in some nondescript corner of the semi-rural American south.  Not a good time or place to be a woman, where old world wealth and status standards still reign.  Not a good time or place in history for African Americans, where walking down the street to work means verbal abuse on a good day.

The setting and all of it's trappings create a sort of perfect storm for Wallace's two characters. With a steely undercurrent of the violability of their sexualities and the vulnerability of intimacy, Wallace has Jamie and Dee traverse the crossroads of what it means to be young, broke, and drowning in surroundings suffering the same fate.  By the play's tragic end we're left with a Willy Loman sense of remorse, except they don't even get the faithful spouse or regretful kids. A stark, nearly Shakespearean realization sets in, in death - no one will miss these girls.

Surely, no one missed them in life.




Friday, September 5, 2014

Directors and Producers of Work I've Seen Recently

So, my Directing professor posed an interesting question at the top of class and since I'm horrible with on the spot things, I came up with nothing...I wasn't the only one.  The question was name all the theatrical directors you know.

So doing my due diligence here is a list of the directors I've got in in my playbill collection. I'm including producers too, because I realize the same question was also relevant to Producing Class. Keep in mind this is only what I had playbills lying around for.

  1. And I and Silence -
    dir. Caitlin McLeod
    prod. Signature Theatre
  2. Juarez: A Documentary Mythology
    dir. Ruben Polendo
    prod. Theater Mitu/Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
  3. The Correspondent
    dir. Steven Brackett
    prod. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
  4. King Lear
    dir. Arin Arbus
    prod. Theatre For A New Audience
  5. Antony and Cleopatra
    dir. Tarell Alvin McCraney
    prod.Gable Stage, The Royal Shakespeare Company in Collaboration with the Ohio State University (Jeremy Adams)
    asso prod. Maria Goyanes
  6. Love and Information
    dir. James Macdonald
    prod. NYTW in asso. with Royal Court Theatre
  7. The Long Shrift
    dir. James Franco
    prod. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
  8. Phoenix
    dir. Jennifer Delia
    prod. Nicholas Jabbour, Julie Pacino, Poverty Row Entertainment, Rian Patrick Durham, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
  9. Inventing Van Gogh
    dir. Karla Hartley
    prod. Jobsite Theatre
  10. S'wonderful
    dir. Tripp Hampton
    prod. David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts
  11. Priscilla Queen of the Desert the Musical
    dir. Simon Philips
    prod. Allan Scott, Troika Entertainmenrt, Nullarbor Productions Ltd., in asso with MGM on Stage and Darcie Denkert, Dean Stolber Gary McQuinn, Liz Koops, Michael Hamlyn,
  12. Spank! The Fifty Shades Parody
    dir. Jim Millan
    prod. Michael Mills/Mills Entertainment
  13. Morningside Nights: The 120th Annual Varsity Show
    dir. Emily Feinstein
    prod. Allie Carieri, Ally Engleberg, Renee Kraiem
  14. Hamlet
    dir. C. David Frankel
    prod. Tampa Repertory Theatre, Hat Trick Theatre Productions
  15. The Ballad of Hipster McBigballs
    dir. Christen Petit Haley
    prod. Jobsite Theatre
  16. Night of Power
    dir. Kareem Fahmy
    prod. Meghan Long (Columbia School of the Arts Theatre)
  17. A Thousand Clowns
    dir. Jack Holloway
    prod. Hat Trick Theatre Productions
  18. The Physicists
    dir. Sina Heiss
    prod. Mia Shen
  19. All the Way
    dir. Bill Rauch
    prod. Jeffrey Richards, Louise Gund, Jerry Frankel, Stephanie P. McClelland, Double Gemini Productions, Rebecca Gold, Scott M. Delman, Barbara Freitag, Harvey Weinstein, Gene Korf, William Berlind, Caiola Productions, Gutterman Chernoff, Jam Theatricals, Gabrielle Palitz, Cheryl Wiesenfeld and Will Trice; Associate Producer: Rob Hinderliter & Dominick LaRuffa, Jr., Michael Crea and PJ Miller
  20. Twelfe Night, or What You Will
    dir. Tim Carroll
    prod. Sonia Friedman Productions, Scott Landis, Roger Berlind, Glass Half Full Productions/Just For Laughs Theatricals, 1001 Nights Productions, Tulchin/Bartner Productions, Jane Bergère, Paula Marie Black, Rupert Gavin, Stephanie P. McClelland, Shakespeare Globe Centre USA, Max Cooper, Tanya Link Productions and Shakespeare Road
  21. Wake
    dir. Mei Ann Teo
    prod. Mariana Ortiz
  22. Neville's Island
    dir. Gi Young Sung
    prod. Hat Trick Theatre Productions
  23. The Meeting
    dir. Alan Bomar Jones, Bryant Bentley
    prod. Hillsborough Community College
  24. Evening of Shorts
    dir. Jack Holloway/Kerry Glamsch
    prod. David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts
  25. Jeffrey
    dir. Keith Odums
    prod. Hat Trick Theatre Productions
  26. Titus Andronicus
    dir.Helen Tennison
    prod. University of South Florida School of Theatre and Dance
  27. And Then There Were None
    dir. Jack Holloway
    prod. Hat Trick Theatre Productions
  28. Musings of a Post Modern Romantic
    dir Matthew Ray
    prod. TRT²
  29. Twelfth Night or What You Will
    dir. Julia Flood
    prod. Eckerd Theater Company
  30. Hay Fever
    dir. David Jenkins
    prod. Jobsite Theater
  31. Wicked
    dir. Joe Mantello
    prod. Marc Platt, Universal Pictures, The Araca Group, Jon B. Platt, David Stone, 
  32. The Amish Project
    dir. Todd Olson
    prod. American Stage Theater Company

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Summer

Loads of little updates to the stat trackers, some I'm not thrilled or proud of, some I couldn't be more ecstatic about. However, the Florida summer has been kind. I'm brown, have a new hobby/sport, and I haven't experienced the usual fattening I usually do when I come down. About three weeks or from returning and I feel trepidation most of all. Being a native Floridian you never realize how much of a permanent vacation home is. It seems so incredibly easy and warm and pretty.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

BORED

Source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/63050463507588623/

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Paper possibilities
Politics of desire, choices of desire and the consideration of government leadership in Antony and Cleopatra. IRL Historical considerations. Cleopatra balancing being a head of state with corporeal desires and attractions.  Internal fight against her own weakness of desire.

Joni Mitchell A Case of You - Parallels to Antony and Cleopatra?
"Just before our love got lost you said,
"I am as constant as a northern star."
And I said, "Constantly in the darkness,
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar."


Joni and The Bard?

Ironic foreshadowing of 1.3.100-102: 
C: And all the gods go with you. Upon your sword
Sit laurel victory, and smooth success
Be strewed before your feet.
A: Let us go.

Come. Our separation so abides and flies
That thou residing here goes yet with me,
And I hence fleeting, here remain with thee.
Away.
Magical language attached to Cleopatra. Instances of supernaturalization of women in Shakespeare?


 

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Something New

I have indeed forged a lot of new territory this semester (check out the adventure recap to the right!)  Unfortunately, it hasn't all been city roaming and stellar academics.  I was very sick in January through February.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Resolutions

So I made three resolutions after putting some thought into what was truly lacking from self-improvement the past year.  First, I feel like I've been in the greatest city in the world for 5 months, and have seen next to none of it. So,

Resolution #1: Have one adventure day a month. Do this as cheaply as possible. Record and reflect.

I also felt like I wasn't getting to know my new city and that I could do so by giving back. So,

Resolution #2: Have a day of service every month in which I find a volunteer opportunity to engage in in the city. Record and reflect.

Finally, I felt like I was severely underread in the drama department in all periods so,

Resolution #3: Read/see one new play a week
Oh, hey look at that list up over there in the top left...

So that's it...
Self betterment? Maybe. Meet new people. Most definitely. Make new friends. Very possibly. I'm looking forward to this.

Friday, January 3, 2014

Something like a 3-oh...

Ahoy from Florida...it's a chipper 40 something.  I'm reading some Garrison Keillor fiction, and still utterly tired. I'm of a good mind to take the semester off to watch the spring come in on the beach.

That's no good though...

Forgive, I'm running a fever at the moment so my malaise is both dazing and exasperating.

Anyway, my last grade came in today (finally), and it's higher than I hoped.  The professor and I jerked each other around enough, I was just happy to be done with it.

Ballet and English Conference were both passes (P's), and as such don't count towards the GPA... :\
Western Theatre Traditions was a solid B
Advanced Acting Lab was a solid B
Arabia Imagined a B-

So, a 2.8680 ...call it a 2.9?  Which is something very close to a 3.0...right? Right?

Stats are updated, so is what's on deck.

Things really fell apart this semester...I fell apart this semester, and rallied but the damage may be done.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

I wonder...

what the Drosselmeyer house was like the rest of the year? In every production of The Nutcracker I've ever seen, I cannot picture it in any thing other than a perpetual state of "Christmasness."

http://www.gofundme.com/48ovzo

The Hour Still Starts With 3, Yet the Sun Doth Kiss the Horizon

This is verily screwing with my internal clock...and I think I got a sunburn from sitting in the same spot. That's one reason to be happy the sun's gone down.

http://www.gofundme.com/48ovzo

Fear and (self) loathing in Las Cruces...

It's been...bumpy.

A mass of text hath passed mine eyes and to much dismay, little if any has stuck.

I was called in to my adviser after my professor emailed her. I severely underperformed on a paper proposal, handing in five pages of outline and bibliography, when, as it turns out, he wanted a short version of the actual paper. It was (ludicrously) graded, and I was given a provisional "D". He's expecting a rewrite, well, the TA is expecting a rewrite.

After another will-call mishap, and needing time to focus on my two papers, I'm taking a couple weeks off from work. At a point, it's just too much and these are too important, I think I had forgotten that a little bit. No matter what the denoument of the semester is, whether I get the money to stay, have to return to Tampa because I don't, or take of...I need to have a decent GPA coming out of this semester not matter what happens.

http://www.gofundme.com/48ovzo

Thursday, October 31, 2013

I passed!

One class down, four to go.  Hey, Hey! Look over there >

Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Waiting...waiting...waiting...and with a surprising lack of change...more waiting...

So we got our Western Theatre papers back this morning...
Finally some hint at academic validation, my first real paper grade at Columbia...

W.B. handed it to me...lot's of comments...oo... Why did I leave that in?  I don't remember leaving that in. Not anachronistic, achronistic... ACHRONISTIC! damn auto correct. *le sigh* "Good Connection, but... *le sigh some more*  The TA is commenting a lot, W.B. isn't...why isn't he commenting? I...ugh...how is a Marx reference not obvious enough? How is the Locke reference not obvious enough? Everybody knows those theories. "Don't assume your reader knows anything."  But assume we do, eh? Ha. That wasn't that funny. Well...nah not that funny. Your citations are funny. Funny bad, not funny haha. Are citations ever funny haha?  Get to last page.

No grade.

Flip over. No grade. Class and Prof. long gone...
What's going on?
Where's my grade?

I...

Uh....what?


Dear God...
I was really tired. It was finished during an all-nighter, and every other sundry excuse ever used, by everyone, ever.

Was it that horrible? No, no-no. I mean he's not above just putting an F on a paper, right? Christ. Does he want me to rewrite? I'd love a rewrite.

*le sigh*

Emailed prof + TA. Waiting...patiently.

Oh, hey...look at that. This is my 100th post.