Summer 2017 week 3 & 4: May 29-June 4; June 5-11, 2017

Give Me My Summer vacation

I'd run into a couple of annoying things that I didn't want to do but had to in the past week. My idea of a "vacation" or a "break" is to be able to do only the things that I want to do. That idea crashed down last week. Just because I'm on vacation doesn't mean that life is going to stop, and life takes on many forms. The hard thing for me to accept is that at times it will not conform to my ideas of how it should go.

NEW HEADSHOTS!

I was lucky enough to work with Todd Estrin this summer to update my head shots. I haven't had one since 2015. If you're in New York City and considering to get a few you should definitely check out his website.

Photo by Todd Estrin

http://toddestrinphotography.com/

immersions

As you may have noticed in my previous post, I've been doing a lot of reading. The two novels I'd bought are currently taking a back seat as I got immersed into reading a number of plays. I've also attended this panel discussion at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting called "The 'Other' Box: A Conversation About Mixed Race in America" and it was very interesting. We talk a lot about race in Group 48 and a number of times I've found myself lacking a vocabulary to articulate my experience. And so me attending these kinds of events are ways for me to equip myself when these kinds of conversations come up.

I've also been reflecting a lot on the kinds of women I've played in the past four years (last two years in the Actors Company and my first two years at Juilliard Drama). As I continue to read plays I've been eyeing the range of experiences and points-of-view that I haven't embodied before.  I've also been reflecting on the kinds of stories that I want and need to tell, including my own.
It's so good to have a summer and a down time to reflect on all these things! I wouldn't have had that space during the school year when I'm busy walking around trying to get things done.

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Finally and incidentally, it is the desire of an artist to work in new forms, however awkwardly at first, to break down barriers of what he has done before and what others have done better before and after and to crash, perhaps fatally, into some area that the bell-harness and rope would like to forbid him.
-Tennessee Williams