How We Do Things in Second Samuel

I have never been more uncertain about being a part of a show in my life. Please don't hate me for this part. I read the script for Second Samuel and almost died of the morbid sentiment. It was so cutesy that I didn't know if it really fit my acing style and was worth putting time into.  Even after the read thru I wasn't convinced. My previous experience with Park Players had not served me well in the friend department even though I loved doing the show. I came in with the fear that this show would go the same way. Luckily for me my first impressions were incorrect.

I can't exactly pinpoint it, but along the way I fell in love with the show and the people in it sometime near the discovery of the spider backstage. What I had taken for cheesiness was transformed into quaintness. I found the beauty in the show that the script itself cannot convey alone. It needs humanity breathed into it, and I was fortunate enough to be grouped  with an amazing assortment of actors and a director that gave me everything I needed to pull off my performance.

B Flat could have easily been an overdone narrator with an obvious mental disability and no depth. For me at least, the script gave very little in terms oh character development, so all of that was discovered in working with these other incredible people. It became one of the shows I will miss the most and one of the roles I will always cherish. It challenged me in ways that I could not imagine.

Clay, thank you so much for picking me because I ran around that outdoor stage two years ago. I would not have auditioned otherwise. You saw a role that was perfect for me and my abilities even if I didn't. You gave me the freedom to do what I needed and never pressured me into doing any vision you had of the character. Thank you so much for that ability to grow and work, and I hope I met expectations.

Brad, Nicole, and Mike, thank you all so much for the time you put into the show either in advertising and promotion, learning light boards, or giving me a high five and keeping up with props backstage. You are all greatly appreciated for your work that made the show possible.

Ken, due to your reclusiveness I don't even know if you'll read this, but you were an amazing person with which to work. I feel like you had a handle on your character so quickly and only grew from there. When I wasn't talking to myself onstage, it was often directed at you, and I could not have chosen a better scene partner. Connecting with you was easy and necessary for my angry monologue at the end to have any weight. The preparation you put into getting into character is admirable, and it definitely showed in your performance.

David Coker, you just have one of those names where I have to include the last name or leave out the first. I guess that works for a teacher. Anyway, thank you for how extremely positive you were about my work throughout the process. I don't need praise to feel like my effort is working, but your kind words after mediocre rehearsals were very welcomed.

Dianne, finally we work together! After years of a vague awareness of each other's existence, we actually got to know one another. I hate it took this long. I was so impressed with your ability to get emotionally invested in the show every night. I tend to get desensitized especially if I'm the one talking, but you were able to connect to it without fail.

Greg, I don't know if you felt this way or even would have considered it, but I realized the last week of rehearsal how important the scene between Doc and B Flat is. It's where B Flat decides for himself how he feels about Ms Gertrude being a man. Because of that, I started to play with the nickel you flicked, given it landed on the bar, before the first of many emotional monologues because it gave B Flat the strength to stand up for what was right. Thank you for that and for becoming such a wonderful, supportive friend.

Scott, you were the only person I had acted with before, but I don't think we really shared much stage time in Taming. It's not easy to play a character that everyone hates because you rarely hear if you're doing a good job, especially when your blocking involves sitting. Thus I want to tell you that you did an amazing job. I needed your bigoted lines to get worked up at the end, and you delivered.

Howard, OMG... . We may have never cleaned glasses in sync, but you had to be one of the funniest parts of the show. I laughed every time you said "toot" for the first few weeks, and your ad libs were as funny as your given lines. Even if you looked like a Solid Gold dancer, you delivered a great performance worth being proud of.

Steven, I'm glad I got to see you onstage for once instead of taking pictures. Mansel was a perfect part for you. You kept a character relevant that could easily have strayed into overdone randomness. I will always laugh when I think of the rehearsal when I couldn't open the bottle under the bar in order to sip and spit in time.

Becky, I think we need to look for some synchronized acting competitions, or if you ever get famous enough to have someone do you in drag I might consider impersonating you for money. Except not all. I'm glad you got to be the "hero" of the show and gave me a character worth reacting to. I'm also thankful that you laughed at my joke regardless of appropriateness and that you accepted my beer pong invitation.

Amy, I will never drink a Coke again! I could not imagine doing what you did, being one role and changing halfway through to another role that is completely different in personality. You did a great job challenging yourself to be someone that is so far from yourself, which is what acting is meant to be. Keep it up!

Karen, I will be eternally grateful that you got brought into this show. Our friendship grew with a dinner of Indian food and general life talk, and it's been all gifs from there. I hope we can work together even more and it won't involve you sending me to get bags of hair from the back. Thanks to me you didn't really have a full rehearsal until the end of July, and that's impressive. I'm glad you were able to conquer, at least momentarily, your insecurity with crying onstage.

Yes, that was in reverse curtain call order. Be impressed. I love and miss you all. Thank you for everything you taught me and helping me learn that people make a show more than a script does. It's rare in a show that you get to have moments with every actor on stage, so I am glad that I was blessed with that. I am honored to have worked with you, shared gifs with you, worn overalls and the tightest jeans in front of you, and made you cry with my stuttering of simple truths. It said on the cover of the script something like "laugh cry but don't leave unchanged." Even though the lack of punctuation and capitalization killed me, this statement could not be more true. I laughed everyday from something one of you did. I cried onstage that last night because of what it meant to me. I have not left the experience unchanged.  o.O

Off on a Toot

I can't believe I've been back from San Francisco for two weeks now. I had to wait that long for enough interesting things to happen to making posting worth it. We'll start with "professional" updates and go on to the more ridiculous.

I have a job like offer! I was getting nervous just because I had sent out a dozen resumes and heard NOTHING besides one company telling me that they only hire in destination countries. To which I replied, "How's that Antarctica trip working out for you?" Then a week ago I heard from Smithsonian Student Tours. They have partnered with EF Tours, a company with which I have traveled three times. After a phone interview, I am excited to announce that I'll be attending their three day orientation and final interview in Washington D.C. to hopefully work a tour during the Inauguration with hopes of full season employment after that. Someone else in my San Francisco class will be there as well, so I'm excited to catch up and hopefully impress them with more success than impressing McKayla Maroney.

Speaking of McKayla, I am doing my best to educate my fellow cast members of Second Samuel on the ways of the internet generally through the usage of abbreviations, emoticons, and memes. o.O has become a popular one due to the amount of awkward situations we find ourselves in. I am so glad I was given the opportunity to do this show. It's filled with great people, and I don't even mind wearing the overalls at this point. We're having an audience for our final dress tonight, so I hope it goes well especially since it's Greg's birthday and all....

In the Health and Wellness are of my life, Sarah Rogers and I are on top of our game. We recently discovered that both of our families purchased memberships to the YMCA near our homes. We decided to take advantage of this membership because we doubt either one of us will actually pay for a membership on our own. Today we thought it would be a good idea to get a total body work out by taking the Y Cross class at 8:30 this morning. In true mature fashion, we laughed through the entire thing because we are ridiculously out of shape and barely made it through the hour and half. There are no water breaks! The instructor encouraged us to stay for the second class immediately after. I would have been dead on the push-up ball.

To fill up some of my time, I have started volunteering at the Birmingham Jefferson Red Cross downtown. My first day there was quite an interesting one. It started with discovering a squished plum in my backpack that I had placed there on July 21st. I had been seeing all these fruit flies upstairs and internally blaming it on my brother for leaving food in his room. I guess that was karmic. Then I rush downtown to meet with the woman who will show me where everything is in the office, and she had left hours earlier. After thirty minutes of waiting for another staff member to come back, the woman answering the phones left and promised another man was coming to take her place. JK He never showed up, so I attempted to answer the phones, but they were much fancier than the Tuscaloosa model. I eventually figured it out, and boy am I glad I did. I called someone to ask them to complete a survey. They didn't answer, but their voicemail was as thus in the automated voice "You have reached the voicemail box of..." and in her voice "Baby Child."

Well, now I am really engrossed in finding out if Scooby and the gang will be able to capture the Snow Ghost and still enjoy their skiing weekend. If your in Birmingham, come see my show this weekend or next!