Lining things up

It's been a busy January so far. I joined Theater Bay Area in the hopes of widening my circle of active theater workers in search of more opportunities. http://www.theatrebayarea.org/
This provides an additional listing for my acting resume as well as my job-job resume. TBA offers lots of great discounts, including a discount for healthcare, for Zipcar, and for a variety of local events.

I started my second class on storytelling, Intermediate Storytelling with Kirk Waller at Stagebridge http://www.stagebridge.org/aboutus.htm in Oakland. Check our Kirk at http://kirkwaller.com/

I'm taking the opportunity offered by South Bay director Dan Carlson www.SpiralMoon.com, to record a monologue on video. So, we shoot in the coming weeks. I am going to trot out the story I worked on in class with the wonderful Master Storyteller Jeanne Haynes. It's all about my recent adventures in real estate. I told it last time in class in about 10 minutes. Now I have to refocus it for the screen and shorten it. Dan is offering this opportunity to actors, performers, musicians, magicians, and more. For a small fee we will have our monologues linked into a new website called Talent23, which goes up soon.

And, finally - finally! I'm getting my acting reel together, after three years in this business. I have enough clips and bits and pieces, certainly, to get two decent minutes edited together. Now I have clips in English, Spanish, Spanish-Mexican accent in English, and French.

Soon I will also get new headshots. I look different every day. Is it the aging process in acceleration mode, then back in relaxation mode, all mixed up, hour by hour? It will be up to my wonderful photographer Eduardo Solér to help me figure out what look works now. The goal: to look my best, but within a range that, when I walk into an audition, people know it's me! Since I started playing with straighter hair, and my last set of headshots were curly, it's been interesting to observe casting directors' reactions. Listen, curls can always come back. Keeping hair straight is not that easy. (Did you catch Anna Deveare Smith's wonderful interview with Paula Zahn on PBS last night after the airing of the "Great Performances" version of her one-woman show, "Let Me Down Easy"? She has totally changed her look since her wild and curly days. Coincidentally, we did it around the same time. See my August 2011 review of the show at http://characteractress.blogspot.com/search?q=Let+me+down+easy )

I have an answer for this age-old question from Dr. Phil: "Are you excited about your life?"
Yes I am!