How did everyone I know, except me, get into Fringe this year?

I gotta use a pseudonym on the application.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

URGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

and so forth.

My solo show is presented on Saturday. This sentence is enough to make me lose both my mind and control of my bowels.

What a horrible word 'bowels' is. Appropriate though. Almost onomatopoeic in nature.

Anyway, I'm terrified and insecure, as per usual. Maybe this is just my natural state: terror. Maybe I never fully evolved from some kind of bush-dwelling creature crouching in panic and fearing wolverines. Everything seems to make me pretty scared. Especially things of an acting nature. I keep forgetting that there are these performative elements of being in an acting program.

The other shows (everyone in my class and the two playwrights all do one) are largely depressing. Their subject matter is, anyway. Rape, the economy, incest, abortion, abuse, break-ups, the Khmer Rouge, racism. Lots of terrible things about the terrible world we terribly live in. Mine is dark, and it's a war satire, but I've kind of gotten pegged as the token comedy, because it is largely comic. I was mostly inspired in trying to bring a cartoon to live action theatre. There are puppets. Of George W. Bush and Barack Obama...and an unmarried teacher that all my teachers here think is them. I wear my high school uniform and play a snarky precocious girl. And Jesus.

It is mostly funny. The ending is meant to be sad and to quickly turn the piece on it's head, but because I've spent fifteen minutes looking like an idiot, the funny stuff is what everyone remembers. I hate to equivocate comedy with superficiality, but that's the worry right now. That I'm just funny, but not particularly insightful. Clever, but not smart (this was written on an essay of mine in high school and has haunted me since). Why does 'creative' tend to mean 'self-indulgent' or 'sad'? Funny can be smart and dark and biting and terrifying. But it's those things and funny!

I do worry that I've limited myself. That I always get pegged as just the funny ugly girl, and then my one chance to break the stereotype, I do more of that. But that's just what comes out of me. It is so frustrating to be limited by your own narrow perspective and voice. I wish I had someone else's brain.

But really, I'll be in a state of cardiac arrest until Saturday at 10 pm when it will be done and it won't go anywhere because no one will really see it and it will just be one more thing I did that was kind of ok and didn't amount to anything because nothing I do ever amounts to anything and then it will be time to get a shitty part in the Shakespeare play and then I can sit in Toronto all summer with no prospects or potential or money or things to do and then die one of these days.

So it all ends ok.

Last night I had a romantic dream involving Tucker Carlson.

That can't be good.

Have lost all motivation.

Am completely demoralized.

Considering career in fast paced world of typing letters for wealthy businessmen while wearing short skirts and black rimmed glasses (aka considering a career in 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying').

Also considering crime.

Not considering theatre.

No longer considering theatre!

HATE THEATRE!

Need amaretto sours and dulcet strains of 'Womanizer'. Also embrace of good-looking and clever boyfriend. Oh right. Said boyfriend is fictional. Embrace of Oreo cookies will suffice.

Boooo.

P.S. Who got into Fringe? Have I kept up my five year losing streak? Nobody does it better...

I had a dream the other night that I became so frustrated with Christmas shopping that I began to steal gifts rather than purchase them. However, in this dream, I only stole items which should not or can not be stolen. Such as a chair so big I couldn't move it, and a wind chime, which I tried to surreptitiously stuff down my shirt. Every time I left a store, with the unlikely item somehow on my person, I would turn back to the shoppers, and, with one fist pumping the air, shout, 'Fuck you, Christmas!'

The theme music from the Grinch played in the background.

I don't really think I'm that bad, but I have definitely lost a bit of my Christmas cheer. I love buying great presents for people. I spend a lot of time working on gifts, thinking about what people I like, and making them, although my disorganization and clumsiness mean I'm not nearly as good at crafts as I like to pretend I am. But this means that I get incredibly frustrated when I can't get good gifts for people. And my family is notoriously impossible to buy for: my mother refuses to give me any kind of hint, and has no hobbies. My brother has a spending problem, so really will buy anything he likes for himself before he has a chance to tell anyone about it. My dad is...well, my dad is just impossible.

The christmas blues have struck me in the past 24 hours, after I was quite successful at keeping them away, even with a pretty legitimate reason to feel sad still buzzing around my brain. Hopefully they will drift away as quickly as snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes....

Back in Toronto. So glad for Christmas break. So glad to be away from the drama for one second. Of course, I always bring a spare supply of drama with me, just in case I run out. This time, it's been my computer crashing and losing everything I've ever written. Right now, it sits idly in some dive on College St., just waiting to be purged of demon viruses, but also my entire life and every scrap of creativity I ever had. There is a slim chance it can all be recovered, or that I backed it up. We'll see. We'll pray.

I'm on my mum's Mac. It's so pretty, but I feel like I'm cheating. Oh, my poor slow-moving and witted Dell Laptop, come home to me.

It's not the holiday season until I've seen the Charlie Brown Christmas and Muppet Christmas Carol.

I'm idly planning my summer and realizing that an English degree is no back up at all. Especially not to a drama certificate (NOT EVEN A DEGREE! PIECE OF PAPER SAYING I CAN PLAY DRESS UP AND REMEMBER WORDS FROM SONGS!). Worry worry worry worry.

I ran from school to the train station yesterday and hopped on the 6 pm train to Toronto. I'm missing school tomorrow (with permission), which will be the first classes I have missed since starting NTS. As much as I'm thrilled with my acting in a somewhat irresponsible manner, it's all for the shitty reason of going to the funeral of a friend who killed himself.

I can't believe I'll never speak to him again.

...

Me, who cries at everything, hasn't really had it in me to cry or feel much of anything. I guess this is shock. I had a moment of being overcome in Shakespeare class, just because we used to talk about Shakespeare a lot, but for the most part, I am just weirded out. And sad in a way that doesn't feel like it's going to leap out of me or shatter me in two, just in a way that kind of hangs there like a mushroom cloud.

I have very few people in my life. It's terrible that there's one less.

Tomorrow I'll run (really, I'll trip, because I'm wearing heels) from the funeral to the train station and go back for five more days of squats and angst.

I am in Ottawa, henceforth known as Bored-awa. I have been making this joke nonstop for the past two weeks that I`ve been here in Bored-awa (formerly Ottawa), but quite honestly, when you are in Bored-awa, there is little to do except make inane jokes and try to make the people around you go nuts before you yourself take that short trip to Crazy.

We`re working at the National Arts Centre on a project so pretentious and academic that even my book-loving 17 year old self would have been a little embarrassed. My current self, the one who hates any sign of artistic pretension and is realizing that her chief interest in theatre is seeing people suddenly appear and/or disappear, and that she really is more interested in becoming a magician, preferably Paul Daniel`s assistant (did anyone else watch Paul Daniels on YTV when they were young, or is that another of those things that`s just me), is drowning in Brecht. I like to say I`m shipBrecht. Or having Brechtfast. There I go with the inane jokes again. Tum te tum.

Essentially, we sit and watch professional actors read Brecht plays. Occasionally, we provide readings of such thrilling and vital characters as `Man`, or `Soldier 2`, or `Waiter`. On Tuesday, however, I have been given what is actually a real part. Except it`s in a musical. The fucking Threepenny Opera. And I have to sing. I feel a bit like I`m being set up to fail. The guy who was playing my father (he left, and was replaced by an opera singer!) was Stratford`s musical guy. He`s played the Baker in Into the Woods, the Emcee in Cabaret, Nicely Nicely in Guys and Dolls, and this summer is Pseudolus in Funny Thing. So I`ve been singing frantically in a vain attempt to improve. But I feel like I`m being set up to fail and the whole thing will end in me crossing the NAC off my Possible Places to Work list. Ugh.

My class is split up and we`re all commuting around the city, so we haven`t been together as much. A lot of us are fighting. As much as I don`t really feel very connected to anyone here, having that small amount of connection removed has been quite a devastating wallop of loneliness. Combined that with several plays positing man as a horrific beast and written under Hitler`s totalitarian regime, and you have a truly bleak November.

I`m staying with my aunt and uncle, who are lovely, good, kind people who truly care for me. They just would love me to work for the government, and don`t really seem to upset about the Harper administration. They also would like me to wear a lot of button down collared shirts and a sensible winter coat, rather than just wrapping myself in saran wrap and duct tape as I usually do come November. It has been interesting, to say the least.

I hate the cold, and the short days, and am keeping myself going with the fact that I`ll be home in Toronto soon, where I can go sledding! And watch Planet Earth with my brother! Also, more musicals tend to be on the TV around Christmastime. And more musicals is always a good thing. I`m also trying to find something really exciting to do over the summer. Really, I want to create and perform in a very exciting show. But I`m not sure how to make that happen. Not having people to work with is immensely challenging, and was one of the things I was most looking forward to about theatre school. It`s frustrating that everyone here has kind of paired off, and I haven`t really met my match.

I need something very exciting and big to happen to me and change a lot of things. Not sure what that is. I guess I will know it when it lands on my shoe or smacks me in the face. I hope it`s coming soon.

Daniel MacIvor won the Siminovitch.

We made him cupcakes.

We'll see if he finds this adorable or creepy.

I have to say, either way, I'm a little scared to try it.

One thing you have to understand about my class at the National Theatre School is that they love to hear us sing. It is kind of a big deal. We are extremely musical: I am one of the only two who does not play an instrument. I tried to rectify this with the harmonica, but didn't have the patience, a ukulele, but didn't have the ukulele (hopefully a Christmas present), and then a kazoo, which I inhaled the filter of onstage, choked in the middle of a show, and had to go to the hospital emergency room to get removed. Which it wasn't, because we waited seven hours but then had to go back to school. I can still feel the kazoo filter in my throat. I'm figuring out it will just become a part of me, like the piece of pencil lead in my hand from when I was 9. I'm sure one of these two things will ultimately kill me, but I can't see myself making it past 30 anyway.

Anyway, they're going to trot us out and make us sing for Danny Mac tomorrow and it will be horrifically embarrassing. We're very good, but there's something truly terrible about being paraded out to sing in harmony for one of your idols. And then we'll give him cupcakes. Dear lord.

I had an evaluation and was ripped apart, and was told point blank by someone, 'I just don't like what you do'. Although that's valuable as an artist and I have been told that message in not so many words a thousand times in a thousand ways, it's the first time anyone has just laid it on me that what I do is no t very good. I am trying to turn this into something that motivates me to show everybody just how talented I am, but so far, it's honestly just quite devastating. I continue to forget the reasons that I ever wanted to do this, and I'm starting to lose the will to fight this, which is probably the end. No one here is someone I see myself working with in future, which means I'm probably not going to leave the school with a company, or people to enter the industry with, which means I'll be on my own, creating work that no one likes and that I don't like, because I never like anything I do. I can't help but think that this bodes poorly for my future.

I really miss swing dancing. I was slow dancing with someone at the supermarket yesterday (whilst we shopped for things to buy for Daniel MacIvor: Happy Siminovitch!),and was amazed that twisting and triple stepping is still second nature.

My landlords continually break into my apartment. This used to make me anxious and furious, but I have kind of come to begrudgingly accept it, in the way that I accept winter, raisins and nut products in baked goods and chocolate bars, and most other human beings. It's kind of demoralizing to lose my fire, but it's probably better for my heart this way. But really, it is still pretty annoying, and I've taken to sitting in the school cafeteria and wandering the streets til late so that I don't have to come home.

It's snowing right now.

I'm trying to revive an orchid by soaking it in an alchemical mixture involving alcohol, sugar, and detergent. If it doesn't work, I hope it is at least a mild explosive.

There is a 24 hour bug going around the school right now, and everything smells like vomit and Benylin.

I've started cooking noodle dishes, but using only noodle substitutes to reduce carb intake. So far I have tried Tofu Shirataki noodles, bean sprouts, zucchini,and spaghetti squash. None of them taste like pasta, and this makes me so upset I often have to eat seven or eight croissants just to feel better about it. Actually the spaghetti squash is not bad, but with every bite it screams at me, 'I AM A VEGETABLE. NOTE MY CRUNCHY TEXTURE AND HIGH WATER CONTENT. I AM MAKING YOUR BOWELS MOVE RIGHT NOW. I AM A FEROCIOUS, GROUND-DWELLING VEGETABLE!'.

Everything I have written in this post is true. And that's a truly terrible fact.

this is a bad scene.

...a creative partner with a love of puppets and no allergies.
...time to stand still so that I can start working on a scheme with above need.
...the funniest joke in the world.
...the ability to do a handstand.
...the ability to sing.
...the ability to sing while doing a handstand.
...an escape route from drama school.
...talent.
...to be eight years younger and 8 million times happier.
...a train ticket back to toronto.
...heat in my apartment.
...food in my apartment.
...a reason to keep doing this.


Dear Lord.

I will not quit I will not quit I will not quit I will not quit.

I want to quit.

I am starting to think that maybe I missed my calling.

The DNC has inspired a level of excitement in me that is relatively rare in my quotidian routine, and my theatrical career.

Damn, tonight was good. Al Gore, the American people that they found to voice support, ('It's time for a president who cares about Barney Smith, and not Smith, Barney'? That was a good one. And snarky Pam, the lifelong Republican needs her own daytime talk show), and then Obama's speech? Wow. Loved the idea that it's not that McCain doesn't care about how most Americans live, it's that he doesn't know. Painting the opponent as callous, as a monster, reflects terribly on the accuser unless it's handled with remarkable skill. But painting the opponent as oblivious, as out of touch? That's both kinder, and a much, much deeper attack. And rings eerily true. It touches on both the issue of McCain's age, and the recent comment that he doesn't know how many houses he has. Great speech.

Watching Republicans on Larry King try to find something negative to say about the DNC and Obama's acceptance speech is equally delightful: they barely have a leg to stand on. Although I feel that they could turn it around, as they have done before. But it's going to take a pretty amazing conference to match what the Democrats just did.

Wheee!

Real life theatre.

http://www.nowtoronto.com/stage/story.cfm?content=164549

Outstanding new play.

Outstanding production.

Outstanding performances x 2.




Holla back.



Thanks to all those who came out....I was overwhelmed by support, especially from the 'Dream' crew, from all those years ago!

I've never been cited as notable in my entire life before.

Play going well.
Reviewed well.
Reviewed very well.
I have never been reviewed like this in my life. Neither the show I was in, nor myself.
Need more bums in seats.
Going to New York in a week.

Waiting for other shoe to drop in horrible explosion upon face and return self to normal life of blah and angst. All this positive stuff makes me jumpy. Someone spit on my neck already.

dust
Written and Directed by Jason Maghanoy

Presented by JSquared Productions
Featuring Brandon Coffey, Jess Moss

“Today I sewed up the hands of a prisoner… hands cut up by barbed wire. He thanked me. And that felt good.”

Abu Ghraib Prison. Jenny works in the office. Jonathan is a prison guard. They meet. They fall in love.

jsquaredtheatre.blogspot.com

Friday Aug 8 4:00pm
Saturday Aug 9 6:00pm
Sunday Aug 10 10:00pm
Wednesday Aug 13 6:00pm
Thursday Aug 14 8:00pm
Friday Aug 15 10:00pm
Saturday Aug 16 4:00pm

Theatre Passe Muraille - Backspace
16 Ryerson Ave.




Yes.

So. Much. Anxiety.

I forgot lines in rehearsal the other day. I don't forget lines. I especially don't forget lines with mere days until the show opens.

For some reason, theatre school has made me even more insecure about my acting. I guess it's the constant nit-picking about everything, that I'm now aware of my major speech impediment, my shitty posture, my emotional retardness, my inability to connect, my crap instincts and a litany of other reasons that I cannot possibly be an actor.

OH GOD IT'S SCARY!

I feel like Julia Stiles when she auditioned for Juilliard and fucked up the arabesque in 'Save the Last Dance'. Thank God her boyfriend came and reminded her to DANCE, dammit, DANCE.

With the end of both July and, really, the summer itself in sight, I feel more and more desperate to experience something that defines the summer and makes both it and my life seem not like a complete waste of time. It's hot, people have more time to sit on patios late at night, everyone is wearing less clothes: with all this, how are things NOT happening? But, really, so far it's been all the same. It's not that the summer has been bad at all. After the insane school year, it has been pretty crazy (and really great) not to have to deal with the tension and pressure which defines my NTS experience, although it really is all that I think about. The summer has been socially pretty desolate (which is a bed of my own making), but fiscally quite responsible, and involving a project I really care about. But there's something about endings, even ones that aren't really milestones in themselves, that makes me wish I could look back on the time that's just passed and go, 'THAT's what I did with that time. God damn'.

Especially with the arts. I feel everyone I know is wanting to make creative things happen, and most of those people want those things to take place in theatres, my drug of choice, and yet for all the talking and wistful imagining we do about it, nothing ever seems to happen. Not for me. I've never been good at making things happen. I don't know how to begin. I guess no one does, and other people are just brave enough to fall head-first into the unknown waters. I don't have that confidence, or bravery, or passion, or whatever it is. I would like to change this, and I don't know how.

I've been meeting more and hearing more about a generation of theatre artists before us, guys who are now 60 or so, and still working. They talk about doing theatre with no sense of entitlement: never expecting a grant to come, never wasting time wondering why I didn't get that part, or that job because there wasn't time to waste, they had to keep doing their own thing, living completely hand to mouth, doing thing in basements, because it was that important to them. And I say I can't do things because I have no money, I have no company, I have no people I could look to for support or who would want to get involved, I don't know how to start, I'm not a real theatre person yet... I feel, as completely frustrating as that revolution is, it's the one that needs to happen for me. To stop thinking about what my career should be and what I want theatre in Toronto to be and just forge ahead with stuff that I want to do. I don't really know what that is, but I feel inspired and passionate several times a day, so there have to be some shows out there that would make me squeal.

So many people at my school really just want to get into film. Theatre just seems to be the way that everyone stops, but everyone wants to move beyond it. I dont' have that right now. Maybe I will, but right now, it's what I care about doing. It makes me sad that so many people want to jump ship because there doesn't seem to be any hope in it anymore. Especially when they have more talent than me, and could be successful in it, whereas I'm sticking in by the skin of my teeth and a ridiculous inability to give up the fight.

We're all young, we're all sexy and confused and ridiculous, we all have things that get us out of bed (or into bed). It is insane that we're not putting all this to use and making things happen. GOOD things happen. Maybe things are happening and I am just not invited. That is probably more likely. And really, that's ok.

Blah blah blah. I don't know.

Anyway, I am doing something that challenges and scares me, and makes me think I'm a terrible actor. It's called 'dust' it's in SummerWorks, and it will be something. Please come. http://jsquaredtheatre.blogspot.com/.

I really like that 'Paper Planes' song from the Pineapple Express ads.

Back on LJ. See how long that lasts.

...i want to quit and come home...

So I figured out how to get excited about Montreal:

Have a shitty time in Toronto and realize there's no reason to stay!

(Kermit arms) YAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!

Seriously. Fuck this shit. I'm out.