Since the beginning of March, I have been taking classes in combat for screen with the excellent Jared Kirby from The Art of Combat. He is extremely experienced with fight choreography for stage and screen, hand to hand and knife skills, longswords, you name it – he can do it. I’ve always wanted to get fighting experience for my resume, especially given my ‘look’ – as an actor it will be an asset in my castability for projects.

I was asked by Jared to work on a film project with a student at SUNY Purchase, who is looking to film a short action film. Basically, my character gets abducted by some Russian thugs who are trying to get information out of me, but unfortunately for them it turns out I’m a super-badass ninja assassin and I take them DOWN. We’ve been choreographing it for the last month and we’re filming this weekend. It’s going to be boss. Once it is completed and edited, I will get a copy to use as my stunt reel and therefore bring me ever closer to a role in Game of Thrones. I’m slightly worried, however, about my propensity to bruise and injure myself in my enthusiasm though, as I’m already sporting quite a few purple, black and green bruises from class and I pulled a gluteal muscle which has caused me to get bad sciatic pain in my right leg. Ooops. Ibuprofen, icing and stretching should see me through the weekend and then I’m off to a physical therapist to make sure I didn’t permanently injure myself.

After that, I’ll be hobbling round the Village on Sunday from 12pm onwards with Literary Manhattan, co-hosting an author tour for Edna St. Vincent Millay. She is one of my favourite authors on the Literary Pub Crawl I host, and this is all about where she lived during her time in New York. Will be lots of fun, so come along if you’re free!

After that, it’s all go for a mini-tour to the Catskills region of New York, playing three gigs in two days with Coyote Love and also making an appearance on the local radio to promote our new blues album. We’ll hopefully be giving the first song being released, ‘Bettin’ Dirty Water’, its first radio play as well as doing some live tracks in the studio.

Once that is done with, I’m into full triathlon-training mode for the Philadelphia Triathlon, which I will be competing in at the end of June, and going into rehearsals for the July production of The Rover with Hudson Warehouse. Vince has been an Artist-in-Residence with this company for a couple of years and they produce incredibly high-quality productions, for free, in Riverside Park every summer. Check out their website for the details. I’m looking forward to being in this bawdy Restoration Comedy – although it will be my first foray into acting in a classical play while using an American accent. An interesting challenge!

I also just got cast in a cool, sci-fi/fantasy concept short film that will be filming at some point in the summer in between rehearsals and performances for the Rover. I had a great audition and I love the script so I’m hopeful that it will be a fun experience.

Did you get all that?

Well, kinda. I mean, yes it is about all those things – my very favourite part of being an actor is telling a great story, and learning something new about myself by playing a new character – but, ultimately, we are all what I refer to as praise whores. We love praise. We love being told we were ‘amazing’, ‘fabulous’, ‘so incredible’. We love when people are moved by our work. We love when we win things for our acting. We love acting all modest and surprised when we are praised after a show. In reality, we are DESPERATELY hoping you are about to tell us we were good.

I’m not saying this to knock actors down. I am absolutely someone who needs this kind of stuff after a show, and I recognise that it’s sometimes a little ludicrous. You do need to have a sense of perspective and a smidge of self-awareness, otherwise you will disappear up your own arse, but it is a great feeling to know you have entertained your audience – I mean, that’s a big part of your job. Actors who say they don’t care about being praised, that it’s all about the work: well, I call shenanigans. Self-awareness also means knowing that you are a just a little bit shallow too. I aspire to a happy medium between wanting to do well and be told when I am, and being able to take constructive criticism and use it to make me better. We need both carrot and stick.

All this to say, I got a lovely email from the director of The Haamenschmeil Substitute, a really fun comedy I shot in 2010, to say that it was screened at the Garden State Film Festival and he was told by multiple people after the screening how much they enjoyed my work in it. Given that I am on my third day of a temp job where my only responsibility is to stuff 4,000 envelopes with tax documents, this much-needed boost to my ego/confidence/whatever you want to call it came at the perfect time, when I was having one of those ‘why am I doing this again?’ moments.

So embrace your inner praise whore, actors. You know you want to.

However, there was another actor on the shoot (who shall remain nameless, mainly because I have forgotten his name) who boggled my mind. There were only three of us filming that night, and he had perhaps 7 to 10 lines to speak. The lead actor had quite an emotional arc during the scenes we filmed, and had to break down during the film. He was very professional, had all his lines down and did a great job with his shots.

Boggled-my-mind actor, however, proclaimed to me within 15 minutes of us meeting, ‘I don’t learn lines’. This was followed with an explanation that because it is film work, there is no need to bother learning lines as you can hold them off-screen or only do a couple at a time. I was speechless. He was true to his word as well, being incapable of remembering his 7-10 lines even after filming them for MORE THAN FIVE HOURS. Seriously. Then, once his shots had been (tortuously) filmed, he proceeded to screw up Lead Actor’s shots by needing his script in front of him so he could film one long take of the scene, and kept rustling his papers or moving them into frame. WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK. Lead Actor is valiantly working his thing, having to cry on cue and get into a broken-down emotional state, and Boggle Actor is screwing up the shots. Not his own, the other actor’s. He was also complaining about the way they were filming because it meant he couldn’t have his script in front of him. REALLY.

As a small character in the film, I really didn’t see it as my place to say anything, but I was appalled. I felt that he was embarrassing me as an actor with his unprofessional behaviour, to say nothing of being disrespectful to his co-actor and doing nothing to support him during a pivotal moment in the film. AND he had the gall to be the diva on the set too. It made my blood boil. I’m sure if it wasn’t 4:30am by this point and we had to get everything done as fast as possible, the director would have loved to tear him a new one. I was furious, and it wasn’t even my film.

Anyway, I had to rant about it because it’s been driving me nuts for the last week or so, and now I feel better. Note to actors: don’t be this guy. If I see him on a set again, I’ll make sure I tell the director how he works. The answer is badly.

To end, here’s a photo of me with my super-awesome-fun gore FX from this film. First ever job as a waitress. Think I did ok?

I’m sure every actor, musician and creative type has had this feeling. The main thing is to push past it. Once you get stuck here, you definitely don’t go anywhere – so I have been writing my determinations for what I want to achieve this year. I went big with them. If I don’t, I won’t get it, right? Time for a virtual kick up the arse. I have two EPAs in the next two weeks and some filming in Mid-February, plus Coyote Love are going back to the Caribbean in March for a small tour. All I have to do to get to those things is continue plodding through the rest of January. One day to go.

I was able to go back to the UK for the whole of Christmas and New Year, which was fantastic. There was much drinking and eating and merrymaking, but Vince and I consciously decided to not stress trying to see EVERYONE while we were home, and just meet up with people if the timing worked out. Sorry if you were one of those we missed; we would have loved to see everybody but rushing around from one thing to another does not a restful holiday make. I really want to get back some time this year, so fingers crossed the money gods smile upon me once again. The year started with a holding-in of breath on that front, as I only got one day of paid work last week, but it seems to be picking up again so I am slowly exhaling.

I also did a great class/industry event last night with Brette Goldstein, who is absolutely my favourite casting director in the city. If you are an actor type, make sure you take a class with her at some point. She manages to do a brilliant balancing act of encouraging you and making you feel good, while offering great advice and direction to improve your reading of sides, scripts etc. It’s quite impressive. She also works in the independent film industry a lot, which is exactly where I want to be, so I’m glad that someone who I like casts the projects I want to be in!

EDIT: I totally forgot to mention how/where you can take a class with Brette. Sorry Jagger! Go to the exceptionally awesome CnC Studios and look at the schedule. The classes are the best price in the city and, in my opinion, the best classes full stop.

A new development this year is that I’m starting to experiment with gluten again. Having been wheat-free for over 2 years, and completely gluten-free for nearly 2, I have never felt better and my health has improved drastically as a result. However, I miss Guinness like you wouldn’t believe. Most other things I can find good alternatives for, but enjoying a nice cold pint of the black stuff is one of life’s greatest pleasures and I mourned the loss for a long time. Right before the holidays however, I accidentally ate some wasabi peas that I didn’t realise had wheat flour in them. Ruh-roh. My fears that I would be stricken with stomach ache for the next three days proved totally unfounded though when I merely got a slight stomach ache and bad brain fog.

Hmm.

I wondered over Christmas if my strict diet for the last couple of years has ‘reset’ my system and I can begin to slowly reintroduce gluten to my diet. So I’m testing it out (carefully). I’m starting with beer because a) it’s the thing I miss the most and b) I never had a strong reaction to barley. It did cause me pretty bad acid reflux, but I never got the terrible problems that I did with wheat. So over the weekend I drank a couple of beers (OH TASTED SO GOOD) and so far, I’ve been fine. I had a beer last night and got a bad case of indigestion, but I think that was from the curry I ate, not the beer. So I’m going to continue testing it out – will give it a few days and maybe try again over the weekend – and if after a month I’m not feeling any ill effects, I’ll move on to wheat. Maybe I’ll never be fully ok with it – I can’t really see myself eating a bowl of regular pasta ever again – but not having to be quite so rigid about every item of food that passes my lips would be amazing.

I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve had very consistent work through my temp agency for over a year. Generally, if I want to work, I get work. Very occasionally, there’s an odd day where I get nothing and I enjoy an unexpected day off. To finish the year in style, I made a big determination about a financial victory that I have had for a long time, and was really making a point of believing it was possible (instead of a pipe dream). So what happened? I didn’t get any work for three days. The universe decided to remind me to appreciate what I already have, and also take a look at whether I was serious about my goal. Give up and cry defeat, never going to happen, or fight back and not give up? Before, I’ve caved. I compromise on what I really want and start making excuses in my head about why it isn’t going to happen. We’ve all done that. But this time, I was done with that crap. If I want something to happen, nothing is standing in the way except me. The question is: how much do I believe I can achieve anything?

I’m happy to say that I am working today, and I hope to work the first half of next week before I go home for ChristmaHanuKwanzaSaturnaliamas. Those three days not working have hit my already precarious finances hard, being that December is an expensive month of present-buying, AND I’m not working for ten days at the end of the month. But I’m still determined to have that victory. I have no idea how. But I decided it’s happening anyway. Until it does, I am really appreciating my survival job, and how fortunate I am that all the people here are so supportive of my goals and tell me to keep pursuing them. Plus I get health insurance. There’s a lot to be grateful for.

Last weekend, I went to Florida to attend a study conference at my Buddhist organisation’s Nature and Culture Centre. Having the opportunity to refresh my faith in such a beautiful setting, to receive wonderful guidance and do a lot of studying came at the perfect time. It’s definitely marking a milestone in my life and I used it as a chance to redetermine to achieve all my goals, no matter how impossible they may seem. I’m the only one who can prevent them from happening, so I’d better get a move on I suppose!

Happily, I’m on that road already with some good auditions coming up, Coyote Love’s second tour in the works for next March and rehearsals for the newest episode of Unlicensed in full swing. I’m having so much fun on this show and really love being back on stage with the Dysfunctionals. I’d like to keep doing more theatre next year, as I realised how much I missed the fun and the training of indie theatre in recent months. Breaking down my tendency to procrastinate instead of taking action for my career is going to be my biggest challenge next year – but one I am convinced I will break through. Part of that is recognising all the work I have already put in, and appreciating all the support and protection I get from my family, friends and the universe in general. Towards the end of the year, I am chanting with a renewed sense of appreciation for all the wonderful things in my life.

So happy birthday to me, and thanks everyone for all you do for me!

However, after I had struggled for the last couple of years with losing my voice at the drop of a hat – particularly when I was tired, which was not very helpful as I’m usually always tired – I got fed up and decided to take a multi-pronged approach to fixing the problem once and for all. As we play more and more gigs, and are planning another tour in the Caribbean next March, which last time became an epic battle to keep any shreds of voice intact for the last gig, I knew it was time.

Firstly, I needed to take care of it better. I can’t drink while I’m performing as much as I used to – it dries out my throat – and I have to warm up before our gigs, even just a couple of minutes. Secondly, when I get a bad throat, I started gargling hot salt water – not the most pleasant thing in the world, but so unbelievably effective and better than pumping over the counter or prescription medications into myself when a natural remedy works just as well. Thirdly – I really decided to want it. Everything we achieve (or don’t) comes from our own sense of determination, and I had never truly focused my determination on having a strong singing voice. So it was included in my list of goals on my Buddhist altar, and I have been chanting regularly to improve for the last few months (and increasing the amount I chant every day helps both spiritually AND because it’s exercising my voice – bonus!). It’s amazing what changes when your attitude does.

This morning, after getting home at 1am and then rising at 7 to get ready for work, I was happy to note that I am not croaking like I used to be after a late gig night. Band practice tonight is working on a new cover song that is all vocals, and we’re doing about an hour of warmups singing Bach chorales first, so the old shouty box is going to be in tip top condition by the end of this week.

(A blog post on that is coming soon on the Coyote blog, which I will link to when it goes up.)
UPDATE: Here’s the post on our weekend gig.

So the band is going along pretty well, and that is highlighting to me the woeful lack of film work this year. Either there were lots of people looking for short-haired actresses last year, or I was just in a groove, because this year it’s been rubbish. I’m submitting as much as I can – but the volume of roles available to me seems so much less and of those, I’m not getting as many auditions. It’s becoming a source of frustration because I want to be working. However, I also had a realisation that I’ve let my big goals this year – feature film work and freelancing with agents – slip by because of procrastination and self-doubt. I had a little tantrum about this the other day and am now working on getting over myself and sending out my headshot to agents. By the end of the year, I will have sent it to 10 suitable agents and have monologues prepared for any meetings I get. This is my determination. If I write it here and publish it publicly, it means I actually have to do it.

So there you go.

Coyote Love – Why'd You Have To Do It Now?

Not bad, huh? This is going to be on our upcoming blues album, so if you like its insane catchiness, make sure you download it when it’s released in 2012. In the meantime, we’re jamming, working on new covers and originals, and planning our second tour in the Caribbean next March. Feeling pretty rock n’ roll at the moment.