Tonight, I went to the Georgia Theater in downtown Athens to see Ben Bailey, the host of "Cash Cab," do a stand up set.  "Cash Cab" is arguably the finest trivia show ever to grace the airwaves in my opinion, and this is coming from someone who has actually appeared on a television trivia show, so I know what I'm talking about. 

Here's the part where it gets cool, though...  There were a couple of drunk, belligerent fucktards in the audience, disrupting the opening comedian as well as Ben Bailey, and I personally felt awful about it all.  Since the opening comedian had said in his set that he was from Boston and having lived there once myself, I felt as if it was my solemn duty to apologize for the shittastic behavior of some of the audience, so I went to talk to him.  After a brief conversation, I find out that he knows the Improv Asylum and that my dear friend Tim was actually one of his instructors in their training center.  We talked about mutual friends and laughed and then I finally got to apologize for the ridiculously drunk asshats in the audience.  He said "It's OK, I've seen worse."  Then I remembered...yeah, he would have.  He's from Boston, too.  Boston comedians are bulletproof. 

Oh, and Ben Bailey is wicked funny, too.

...to drive an actual car after playing Mario Kart for a few hours.  The pedestrians and other motorists of this world had better pray that I never get Grand Theft Auto.

I was in Omaha for six days at a conference and spent a goodly amount of time in public places where the radio and/or Muzak was playing in the background.  NOT ONCE did I hear a song that was written or performed after 1989.  In some ways, it was bliss.  I mean, it was like the whole city was playing music just for me.  But in other ways, it was not.  Omaha was cold and rainy and lonely and really bleak. 

So here's my question, would you rather listen to your favorite songs played perpetually in a town that is the civic equivalent of a cement bomb shelter or would you rather listen to loathed music in a lovely place? 

Stay tuned for the second part of my experiment when I embark on my fourth summer at Improv Acadia.  I will force myself to listen to my husband's entire library of trance/house music while hiking through Acadia National Park.  Somehow, I think Omaha will come out on the losing side...

As an actor, I find myself at the mercy of someone else's whim disturbingly often. I am cast or not cast based on the personal bias or vision of someone that I, most likely, do not even know. I am accepted or rejected based on my hair color, eye color, height, weight, inseam and resemblance to the director's ex-girlfriend/wife/mother-in-law/psychologist/gym teacher. Casting, in other words, is completely beyond my control and is totally arbitrary. Imagine if the hiring trends in fields like accountancy were as blithely random. We'd have a lot of pretty, thin accountants who may or may not know how to do math.

Lately, though, I have re-discovered an artistic outlet that I've kind of always thought of like some sort of vestigal tail or creative third nipple. I've put my writing skills out for the public to judge again. Last year, I agreed to be a part of a couple of departmental showcases for new works as a kind of whim, like adding a fetching but unnecessary scarf to an already fun outfit. This year, though, after having won a prize in one showcase and receiving acclaim for the other, I felt pressured to submit more of my writing for the same two showcases. My pride had gotten invested in writing again. I searched through old pieces, reviving such chestnuts as "the Baby-eating sketch" and wrote new ones. People said they liked the sketches I wrote. I began to think of myself as a hyphenate: actor-writer.

Tonight was a test of a different kind. Our Graduate Acting Ensemble members each had to perform an original solo show as part of our final project in one of our classes. The idea for my show had come to me a couple of years before, but I had never done anything with it, so this was my golden chance to write the show I had been wanting to: "A Pictorial Tour of the Freedom Trail or I Fucking Hate My Ex-Husband." Love it or hate it, it turned out just the way I wanted it to.

That's the lovely thing about writing. There's a point when you look at it and say "There. I am happy with it just the way it is." You put the paper down. You finish. You walk away. You can't really do that with acting. You're not supposed to stop growing and changing your performance during a show with a long run. Also, with a written piece, you have tangible evidence of your labor. Your little paper baby, just waiting to be performed. All anyone ever has of their acting performances in the theater are memories. And, let's face it, even if you illegally recorded the show, it'll be crap anyway. The sound is NEVER any good on those recordings.

I should point out that there were 8 other shatteringly lovely, funny and wrenching performances today by our Grad Acting Ensemble. Every time I work with these folks, I am humbled by their talent and grace. Sometimes you get lucky, getting to work with the kind of people who inspire and move you. I sure did.

Even more than the one about that guy from Nantucket:

Hate Poem

Julie Sheehan

I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates everything about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped
     in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.
Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.

Look out! Fore! I hate you.

The blue-green jewel of sock lint I'm digging
     from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you.
The history of this keychain hates you.
My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases
     hates you.
The goldfish of my genius hates you.
My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.

A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious
     symbol of how I hate you.

My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.
My pleasant "good morning": hate.
You know how when I'm sleepy I nuzzle my head
     under your arm? Hate.
The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit
     practices it.
My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning
     to night hate you.
Layers of hate, a parfait.
Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,
I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one
     individually and at leisure.
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity
     of my hate, which can never have enough of you,
Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.

from PLEIADES, vol. 24:2
Central Missouri State Press

A collegue of mine and I are embarking on some really exciting adventures in learning this summer.  Turns out, those adventures are also really expensive.

I was given advice by a few people that I should solicit donations (yes, Brian, I said "solicit") from friends to augment my budget for these trips and I dare say my collegue has heard the same thing.

Here’s my question for all of you...  Is it possible and ethical for an individual, not as part of a larger, not for profit organization to solicit donations for educational enrichment?  Part-time jobs are out of the question because the terms of our assistantships state that we are not to work outside of our assistantship duties or we will have our funding AND tuition waivers yanked (yes, Brian, I said "yanked"). 

If you think it IS possible, ethical and not skeevy, how would you suggest we go about padding our incredibly modest means?

I spent the early part of this week feeling my heart race whenever my phone rang as I waited to hear from Georgia Shakespeare regarding a summer internship.  Even if the call was from a recognized number, I still found ways of rationalizing that it might be GA Shakes.  "Well, maybe they were travelling through rural Minnesota when their car broke down on a seldom-used country road and they hiked all the way down to near the end of a weird side road passing several other houses on their way and wound up at my parents’ house and asked to use the phone and called me right after they called a tow truck.  Yeah.  So this is totally not my parents calling.  It’s Georgia Shakes!"

As always happens when I’m waiting for an important phone call, my phone rang an inordinate amount of times, making my heart hammer wildly every time.  Apparently telemarketers got hold of my cell phone number for two days early this week, too, making the torment even more hellish.  "Hello?!  YES, this is Amy!  What?  WHAT?!  No, I don’t want another credit card and I hope the devil eats your family’s souls and takes a shit in your mouth."

Then, about Wednesday, I checked my email and found a brief, yet terribly polite email saying that I was not selected to intern with the company this summer.  And, you know what?  I was really Okay with their decision.  I like the company, I have nothing bad to say about them or the audition process and I don’t feel badly about myself because I know I did a good job.  How do I know?  They said so in the audition.  Plus, this frees me up for so many other opportunities I will likely never have again.

I will go back to Maine and be part of Improv Acadia again, which is the single greatest delight I can think of for the summer.  Every time I go there, I come away refreshed and enriched by my experience.  I do, also, come away with about ten pounds of lobster weight, but that’s a small price to pay.

I will also be able to travel to two conferences that Augusto Boal will be attending, which means that if I can scrounge up enough money, I will get to take workshops from a Nobel Peace Prize nominee during his last trip to the United States (or so he has said).  One of these conferences, it just so happens, is in Denver, so I can also spend some quality time with two friends I have not seen in years.  I can also have some decent Mexican food for the first time in nearly ten years...

So maybe God closed a door, but he opened up a pretty big set of French windows.  And I’m really quite OK with that.

I've been doing some Bruce Lee ruminating lately and it has led me to a sort of "at peace" feeling with how my life in the coming year may shake out.  I put "at peace" in quotes because "peace" for me still involves a lot of activity, stress and cartons and cartons of cigarettes.  Yeah, remember when I quit smoking?  Hmmm, neither do I.  Here's my conclusion:

So what if I don't get the internships I auditioned for?  So the hell what?  I have innumerable opportunities waiting for me if I don't.  See, when I get into trouble is when I think I have no options, when I pile all of my eggs in one basket, despite the fact that there are numerous other, just as attractive, baskets lying around, waiting for me to put an egg in.

About ten years ago, just after rejections from two grad programs, I was leaving a meeting for another grad program that I really had no interest in attending.  I walked through a slushy snow in Boston Common, where I happened upon a statue of an angel, arms outspread in either a sowing or gathering gesture.  The base of the statue, which was also a fountain, said "Cast your bread upon the waters."  It's a fragment of a Bible verse that ends with "...for you shall find it again after many days."  It's a verse that is all about karma.  What you cast upon the waters of the universe will come back to you in kind, over time.  I stood in front of the statue, wearing a black beret and wool coat: a crow against the gathering snow drifts.  "You know, I wouldn't need grad school if I had some kind of community to feel a part of," I said to the statue, more of a rebuke than a request.  A short two months later, I auditioned for and was accepted into the first cast of the Improv Asylum.  I found my community.  I found my second family.  I found my home.

So I guess I'm feeling a little bit of the same anxiety that I felt standing in front of the statue of the Angel of the Waters (that's her name...I think I'll call her "Brenda," though).  I learned how to find community, so that's not the issue.  What I'm looking for now is a sense of fulfillment.  A knowledge that I have started to negotiate the terrain of my true path.  I always knew that I was supposed to be involved in theater, but now I'm realizing that the specificities of this calling have eluded me.  I've spent the last year and a half in grad school (and several of the years before that) trying out various niches in the theatrical world.  Voice overs, improv, straight acting, Shakespeare, on-camera, theater of the oppressed, radio dramas, writing, teaching, creative training, directing...  I feel like a Goldilocks in the house of the bears where none of the chairs are too hard or soft, but they're only ALMOST just right.  Never quite the perfect fit.

I'm still looking for my path, but I'm confident it's there.  And if I have to face a little rejection in the course of finding it, so be it.  As the immortal Bruce Lee said: "To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities."