Leigha Horton :: Greenroom
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Tomorrow night I will be at the Mixed Blood Theatre performing a reading of The Book of Shin, a new screenplay by Michael Maupin. Here’s a blurb from the official press release:

High schooler Jason Bock is planning another summer of sleeping in and avoiding his parents – that is, until he and his snail-collecting buddy Peter Schinner are drawn into inventing a new religion, which leads them to dangerous and unexpected consequences. So goes “The Book of Shin,” by Michael Maupin, a screen adaptation of Pete Hautman’s novel Godless, which won the 2004 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

ScriptNight, a public reading series of Minnesota Screenwriters’ Workshop, will present a staged reading of the screenplay at 7pm Mon May 1 at Mixed Blood Theatre. The reading is made possible through a special arrangement between Screenwriters’ Workshop, Michael Maupin, Pete Hautman and his agent.

Please feel free to come down and take a listen! I haven’t yet read Godless, the book on which this screenplay is based, but the story conveyed by the screenplay is quite wonderful. Hooray for wonderful young-people’s literature and their screen adaptations! It’s no Flying Spaghetti Monster, but hooray nonetheless!

A week or two ago fellow Walker Art Center colleague, Reggie Prim, and I walked through the OPEN-ENDED (the art of engagement) exhibition presently on display in the Walker’s Target Gallery. While we would like to say that our visit was to fully immerse ourselves in the artworks, it wouldn’t be an entirely honest representation of our intentions. We walked in, scanned the room for the Catherine Opie photographs of icehouses, bee-lined for the accompanying listening-station, grabbed the headphones, giddily pointed to the didactic on the wall that bears our names, and gave each other big goofy grins while listening to our recorded voices.

Reggie and I had both narrated ice-fishing stories written by Minnesotans that accompany the photographs – you can now hear the narrations at the gallery listening station through June 18th, online (scroll down to “Art on Call Stops for OPEN-ENDED,” then click “play” to hear me on tracks numbers 2 and 3), or via telephone (dial 612.374.8200, then enter 1026. To skip the quick interview with Catherine Opie and get directly to yours-truly, press 1 – not that I would recommend doing such a thing).

In Your Eye
In the very near future the main leighahorton.com site will no longer say “coming soon.” I’m so excited, I could shout. The web-monkey has come up with a killer design, and it will have a bunch of downloadable goodies including my headshot, resume, and voice-over demo. Sometime after that main roll-out, sections for production-photos and press will be added. Yes, yes, I could shout.

In Your Future
I’m still desperately wanting you to hear the Lipservice podcast wherein I’m interviewed by fellow actor Steve Hendrickson and share a clip from the Twelfth Night song recordings – it’s really sweet. Alas, the Lipservice website is undergoing a huge re-design and I’m not yet allowed to link to the podcast location. Grrrrrr. Soon, though.

In My Dreams
I got cast at the Guthrie! Details to follow.

In Reality
Kidding about that last one.

I can’t remember who alerted me to this crazy little gem, but I uploaded my headshot to myheritage.com and it did a scan based on facial features and structure. It then returned the following celebrity face match:

67%: Nicole Kidman
66%: Cate Blanchett, Aishwariya Rai, Hillary Rodham Clinton
65%: Gillian Anderson, Liv Tyler, Jennifer Lopez
64%:Anastasia Myskina, Angelina Jolie

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I find my likeness to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Aishwariya Rai equally laughable.

Go play. Then share.

The Waiting Game sucks. It is a bad game and I don’t like it. The only thing I have ever liked about waiting is Bob Marley’s “Waiting in Vain” – one of the best songs on the planet. Ever. But that’s it. Okay, okay, there are some other things that are good to wait for, because the waiting makes the experience that much richer, but I am tired of waiting for things right now. Lord, looking back on my last few posts, I’m sensing a theme here. Let’s not have a therapy session right now and deconstruct what all this means, okay? Let us instead get to the task at hand:

So what is the task at hand, one might ask? I shall tell. I auditioned again last night (yes, it was only last night – bugger off) at callbacks for Gremlin Theatre’s production of The Petrified Forest over at The Loading Dock. The fact that I was even called back came as a huge surprise – I first auditioned last Wednesday night at 9 pm, which made me the last person they saw after two days of auditioning actors, and which I thought gave me a slim chance at best. Lo and behold, on Saturday I got a call (my caller ID displayed “GREMLIN” – how’s that for disarming?) – I answered to discover that I had made callbacks for the role of Gabrielle. Not bad, especially since I wasn’t waiting for the call.

And callbacks went swimmingly. The director was intelligent, pointed, and humorous and the only fellow reading for Squire was hauntingly good. I felt powerful and effective in my performance, the energy with the other actor was palpable, and the director’s feedback was insightful and promising. All of which, of course, furthered my investment, which is NOT GOOD. This is when the disappointment starts to matter.

Just a few examples of why it’s bad to be invested before the proverbial chicken-egg has hatched: I felt really good about Columbia, yet we all know how that turned out. Or how about two weekends ago when I auditioned for a feature film and the casting director went gaga over my performance and highly praised my audition right there on the spot, only to tell me again over e-mail that I did a great job, and oh, by the way, here are the names of the two people we’re calling back for the role (my name wasn’t on that list).

I’m not bitter. Really. I’m just trying to illustrate a point about the dangers of getting invested in something before finding out if I’ll even be involved.

I’ve been painting tonight to try and keep my mind off of it. Not bad with the right music and the thunderstorm lighting up the night sky. Not bad at all.

Things are gonna change, I can feel it. (thanks, Beck) And no, I’m not implying soy un perdedor, it’s just that every seven years or so I hear that first sentence over and over in my head for weeks on end. This is one of those times.

First and foremost, and because I’ve had several people ask me in social settings that quickly turned very awkward, I heard back from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism last week. Turns out that I have way too much potential in acting, and they think that I shouldn’t waste my time with diversions such as journalism just yet. Well, not in so many words, but, you know. Um, yeah. The only thing remotely funny about that terribly disappointing letter was that it was dated April 1st. Yes, April Fool’s Day. I was tempted to send it back with a note: “HA-HA – very funny guys! That was a good one! Okay, you can send the real one now!” Honestly, I’m extremely uncomfortable sharing this information publicly. It sucked and it hurt. On the other hand, I feel that it’s appropriate because my acceptance to, or rejection from, Columbia would drastically change a lot of things in my acting world. Moving on.

With the above in mind, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching. And a lot of compiling of press clips.

I’ve decided that I need to stop f*ing around when it comes to my acting career. Performing has always gotten the short end of the stick because I’ve always stumbled into one diversion or another – the promise of some new amazing career that will fulfill my basic and intellectual needs while still allowing me to perform. Sitting down with my stack of newspapers and weekly ‘zines and compiling all the articles in which I’ve been mentioned/reviewed into one press book has been extremely reaffirming. I have no negative reviews, and 28 pages so far that include reviews from the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, City Pages, Pulse, Lavender, Montreal Mirror, and the McGill Tribune among others – with a stack of about 20 more periodicals to weed though. The ultimate goal of this staggeringly narcissistic exercise (what’s worse? – doing it or writing about it?) is to start creating some great press kits to send along to The Guthrie, Children’s Theatre Company, The Jungle, Ten Thousand Things, The Penumbra, etc., etc., etc. Hell, I even ordered personal business cards a few weeks ago. They came in Monday’s mail, and they’re totally sweet.

So I’ve got some messages for the emotional freeloaders in my life: stagnancy, bugger off. Self-doubt, get the hell out of my house…if you insist on continuing to live here (which I know you will), you’re going to pay rent already.

WANTED: Benefactor.

Thursday night, Dan, the Twelfth Night guitarist, invited me to join him for a swanky shindig over at Splice Here to meet friends of his, the in-house sound designers. I had e-mailed them my voice-over demo a week or two prior, and it was a pleasure to finally meet them in person (especially since they had seen Twelfth Night and didn’t recognize me at first – damn that grease-paint mustache!) – anyway, they’re great guys and I’m hoping to work with them on some voice-over projects in the near future.

That evening made me realize that I can’t just sit around and wait for work to come to me. I need to actively get my voice-over demo (*cough* new link on the right side of this page, above the calendar *cough*) out to folks at the local media production companies, introduce myself, make sure they know that I’ll work quickly and professionally to make their project sparkle…yes, SPARKLE! Know any contacts at any of those places? It’d be nice to go in with an introduction from a mutual friend/colleague. Not necessary, but very, very nice.

Now for the mini-quiz. Before Thursday’s soiree, I had my first post-college singing lesson. Dude seriously kicked my vocal chords. I walked out of there tired and happy, and with a voice weak from the workout. All I wanted to do was grab my iPod and sing along to some tunes with my newfound breath and focus – but, alas, my voice was too tired to work any further, so I resisted the urge.

At the lesson I was given my first assignment, the goal of which is to assist in establishing appropriate audition repertoire – and this is where I need your help. I am to ask at least five people (of varying degrees of relation to me) the following questions:

1. What is an adjective (more than one is fine) that best describes my appearance and personality?
2. What jobs could you see me doing (any job – could be astrophysicist, window-washer, neuropsychopharmacologist, princess, you name it)?
3. Name a famous person (more than one is fine, alive or dead) that I remind you of, both in appearance and personality.

The point of this exercise is to find out how people view me – that way I can walk into an audition with material that fits that impression (rather than my vision of myself). This will keep a director from having to make a huge leap to see me as believable in the character I’m about to portray in song or monologue. So please be honest – being “nice” just for the sake of not hurting my feelings is not going to be helpful. If I remind you of Liza Minelli, fess up. If you could see me being a garbage collector, I want to know.

So there we have it – I’m looking for quiz answers and media production contacts. Feel free to respond in the comments, or if you’d rather keep it private, you can e-mail me or use the Contact form that is also on the right side of this page beneath the calendar. In return, you will get my undying gratitude. And good karma. Mmmmmm, good karma… Thanks, friends.