I woke up feeling very blah this morning. The weather is blah, my energy levels are blah, work is blah. Blah. Have I said blah enough?

I’m looking forward to my class tonight though, and hopefully some good feedback from the casting director running it. Hopefully I will manage to stop being so blah by the time I have to read for her, as that would make my chances of getting called in to an audition rather small.

Un-blah thoughts, please!

Blah.

Last night I workshopped a scene with a directing student at Columbia University, in preparation for filming the scene next month (and hopefully the full short film at some point too). Most of the time, I’m directed by students and their level of detail and ability to effectively direct an actor varies wildly. I’ve worked with some amazing directors, who have a natural ease when it comes to communicating with actors and getting the best out of them; I’ve also worked with directors who do little more than block the scene and spend the rest of the time thinking about the technical stuff.  It’s a crapshoot, basically.

So on the rare occasion I’m being directed in a class as part of the shoot prep, I try to learn as much as I can from the professor, usually someone with many years’ experience in directing. It’s as much an opportunity for me as for the student director to absorb wisdom from the teacher. Last night was awesome – the professor was fantastic, and with a few thoughts and suggestions to me and the other actor, completely changed the tone, speed, intent and emotion of the scene for the better. He said very little to me in ‘direct’ terms, but suggested some thoughts and encouraged me to slow down and trust the silences in the scene. It was revelatory; my understanding of my character evolved immediately and the relationship between the two characters in the scene transformed. I had a wonderful time in the class. Even though we only spent 40 minutes working, it was an incredibly valuable 40 minutes that informed my work. I’ll remember his advice and apply it when preparing scenes in the future. In fact, I’ll use it in preparing for the class I’m taking tomorrow with a great casting director, who I am both excited and a little nervous to read for. The CD is someone who casts the kind of films I want to be in, so I want to do the absolute best I can. It was great to get the extra ammunition to go in there and have a great time.

It’s nice to feel like there’s some momentum in my acting again, after having a bit of a hiatus at the start of the year. I auditioned for a short film on Thursday and managed to book the part ten minutes later, and tomorrow I’m reading for a friend who is directing a new show in June. A class with a casting director I’m psyched to work with is coming up next week, and I just saw another AWESOME-looking class I want to take in May, if I can save up the money. I’m back on the submitting bandwagon, trying to send off submissions every day too and do as many auditions as I can to improve my technique.

Coupled with a gig on Saturday night with Coyote Love, a haircut tomorrow and a rehearsal for this new film project, I’m feeling rather sunny despite the grey skies outside. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Dear me. I feel like I’ve been back from tour for hardly any time, and a whole week has gone by without me blogging at all! How rude of me.

Since I got back I have half-attempted to write tour blogs, but the mood has not yet struck me to finish them. I worked all the rest of the week and was happy to spend last Saturday doing absolutely nothing, at home watching TV on the sofa all day. It’s pretty rare I do that, so it was a nice treat. I did make it out to an audition for a short film on Sunday and spent all of yesterday in the freezing cold, wind and rain in New York filming background for a new pilot called ‘Person of Interest’. It’s got Jim Caviezel (aka Jesus) and one of the blokes from Lost (which I never watched so his fame was ‘lost’ on me….fnar) and a skinny blonde chick playing some kind of guest role. I made friends with another background girl called Judith, and as we both have short, dark hair we talked for a while about the kinds of actresses we see getting the guest roles on these shows. More often than not it’s a tall, slightly undernourished (usually) blonde girl and to me, they all end up looking vaguely the same. There’s not much diversity in casting in primetime unless it is an obvious ‘oh look, we’re doing diversity casting’ moment. For not-very-tall, regularly-sized women, there ain’t much going in TV. Even the ‘regular-looking’ stars are actually very skinny when you see them in person, so the ‘skinny’ ones are terrifiyingly tiny. I’m always shocked when I see a celeb up close and realise how much their bones stick out, but more than ever I know that I never want to be permanently underweight and hungry just to get on TV and perpetuate those stereotypes even more.

I digress.

We all suffered in the crappy weather without umbrellas, as it wasn’t raining “in the scene”, and by the time we’d walked around the same plaza in front of an office building in midtown for three hours, my feet were frozen blocks of ice and I was hobbling along like I’d had my feet bound. A few hours later, we finally cut for lunch and everyone made a dash for the nearest soup shop. I had to buy extra socks because my feet were so cold, but it didn’t do much to help. However, I had a great time and kept myself in a giggling state of silliness along with Judith, rather than give in to misery, but I was very glad when we wrapped at 7.45pm and I could go home to a very hot shower and a large, large glass of wine.

Today I woke up feeling like an old biddy – creaking, aching joints – and I’m half-asleep, but at least I’m earning money sitting in a warm office. Tomorrow I’ll be working from home, and I might even get around to doing my laundry from tour (which has been sitting in a massive pile on the bedroom floor since I got back, much to Vince’s annoyance I’m sure). Oh, the glamour!