Totally Party!

So it's been a few years since I opened up this blog website. I apologize, a lot has happened. I got so busy with my school work and jobs that I didn't have the time I wanted to set aside and write this blog.

School has been a roller coaster of emotions. I became an extra in this season of House of Cards and I went to London the beginning of this year to see my favorite actor, John Simm in a play by Harold Pinter called "The Homecoming" it was a fantastic play and worth the scary plane ride. I'm sure if you continue to read my blog you'll hear a lot more of that name. I think the word adore is even an understatement. I idolize him. If you don't know who he is you can watch him in ABC's The Catch as Rhys, however the release date for season two has not been posted yet.(shameless plug, i know XD) anyway, I really feel like I owe him a lot. I was 6 hours away from anyone I knew and I lived in a bad part of the city so I either stayed at school or inside my apartment. So to pass the time and keep my homesickness at bay, I watched a lot of John's work and used it with my school work. Breaking down scenes and analyzing his characters. (I now know a lot about Sam Tyler lol) He also has done some smaller budget films, like Prey which used natural lighting and I used some of those techniques in my class shorts too.

 So after I saw The Homecoming, I entered my final semester of school. Things became overwhelming with looking for an internship, organizing, writing, directing, funding, producing, editing promoting and scheduling shooting times that worked with my actors and cinematographer, for my Senior project, "Trinity Lesions" as will as also trying to find different actors in between the hours of 3-6pm on weekdays for play scenes for my Directing for Theatre class. That was an extremely stressful class because my professor was very tough on me finding people and as I said before, I didn't really know anyone and I am extremely shy. I was also forced to act in other people's scenes in order to gain actors. I hadn't been much of an actress on stage because crowds made me nervous and I'd get stage fright and forget my lines. So I wasn't real excited to act in front of my nit picky professor who would beat you down and criticize you if you so much as cross center stage the wrong way while delivering your lines. 

  So I went home and studied my lines and John's acting and I went in and gave it my all. He liked it enough that he actually congratulated me on my acting.  But It was a lot for me because I know I shouldn't feel ashamed about it but I was battling depression among other things. So for my final project which was basically worth everything, I decided I was going to blow him out of the water and prove that even though sometimes I may look like or act like a blonde ditz because I get nervous that I know what I'm doing and I'm just as good as anyone else in my class. So I used a scene from the Homecoming because John makes me happy and motivates me and that's what I did and I did blow him right out of the water. I redesigned all the characters costumes, wrote their bios, analyzed  them, created a stage model, found decent actors and designed the stage and worked very hard with the actors to block and stage the "water scene". He was quite impressed. (It didn't leave much time for biology test studying though, my other professor was less impressed lol)  

  But let's flash forward to present time. So like I said, in order for me to graduate with my degree in Film, Video and Theatre I was required to take on an internship. It was a summer thing so it was harder to find a editing video internship and my deadline was coming up. Then as I always do I think what John might do and I remembered part of my degree is in theatre! (even though I took tons of theatre course my focus was more video which is also in a completely different building so I forget sometimes) So I looked into theatre internships in my home town rather than in Baltimore because 3 years was a long time. It didn't take long until I found one. But for safety reasons (and legal I'm sure) I am going to try not to name the actual theater I am in.

 So now that you know a bit about me and what I'm doing, the rest of my blogs will focus more on my experience as an Assistant Stage Manager from start of the production to closing curtain.

To start this off here's a picture of me the day I met John. I look a bit silly and my make-up wasn't as perfect as I wanted it since I was out all day and ran out of time to fix it, but I still tried to remain as professional as possible(which probably really loses all its credibility after you tell them "Sorry this has to be a selfie but I don't have anyone to take the picture" :/ ) I really was just trying not to die from over excitement.