Leigha Horton :: Green room
• • • • •

Me. Not the web site. And no, I’m not talking about plastic surgery or physical, um, augmentation (lord, like I need MORE? – definitely NO); I’m talking about my pearly whites. I have finally taken the financial plunge into getting the braces that I should have gotten when I was a teenager. Yes, braces. As an adult. Whoa boy.

I somewhat liken it to road repair – the road is in questionable condition, but they have to make it worse before they can make it better. My worse? Well, in addition to the braces themselves, they had to do a little rearranging on my bottom row. Which involved removing a perfectly healthy tooth. IN THE FRONT. Jesus. Someone on YouTube said that I looked like a hick – well check me out NOW, sucker! YEE-HAW! C’MERE AND GIMME A KISS! GLAUGHLLLLALAGGLALAAaAaaa…

Gross.

I have to admit that I felt rather violated having a perfectly healthy tooth removed – I don’t have a single cavity, and I don’t drink coffee (ever) or soda (well, rarely), so these puppies are in primo condition. I talked my dentist into letting me keep the extracted tooth. I don’t know why I wanted it or what I intend to do with it, but I have it, and that makes me feel better.

So here’s the plan – standard braces on the bottom teeth; the glory of Invisalign on top:

8/28/07 – I get separators installed between my lowers in addition to the Invisalign impressions for my upper teeth;

9/11/07 – The brackets go in, begin 18 months of metal-mouth torture;

10/8/07 – The Invisalign trays arrive and I start the oh-so-clear straightening process for my uppers;

11/13/07 – Roughly the date that the tooth they pulled will be fully replaced by the tooth waiting beneath it, thus quelling general feelings of hickness;

3/11/09 – ¡LIBERTAD!

And what have I learned from this experience thus far?

Acting Professionally : Vanity :: Vanity : Pain.

Therefore…acting professionally equals pain? Yep.

After reading an interesting article on the ongoing Great Headshot Debate (color vs. black-and-white), I decided to expand my portfolio several months back with a color photo for on-camera auditions. I’ll still keep my black-and-white for stage, but want to mix things up a little.

This here is the result of a little in-studio visit to killer Twin Cities photographer Craig VanDerSchaegen. Dude is the master of natural lighting:

Is it wrong that I feel kind of obligated to write a novella now? This thing just screams dust jacket.

I have somehow gotten myself onto the mailing list for the Guthrie’s press releases. And it’s been really quite fascinating…I enjoy getting notice of the upcoming seasons, masterclasses/lectures and whatnot. But it’s also a bit spammish, in that it’s never provided me anything more than information about shows that I had desperately wanted to be in (*cough*Jane Eyre*cough*); until early this week. I was the lucky recipient of a complimentary ticket offer to check out Private Lives on the Guthrie’s proscenium stage. Score!

When I arrived at will-call to claim my tickets, they were accompanied by a press folder and card. I suddenly felt dishonest…like those tickets weren’t really meant for me unless I was intending to write publicly about the show. And I don’t want this blog to become a place where I review other shows, because then that makes me a critic and people will treat me differently – they’ll be interested in me not because they want to cast me in something, they’ll be interested in me because they hope that I’ll give their show some (good) exposure (lesson sadly learned firsthand from hosting the Minnesota Fringe Festival Podcast back in aught-five).

Alas, in the interest of easing my guilty conscience, I will give you my impression of the show Thursday night. Do with it what you will:

Overall, I thought the production was a good slice of pure entertainment. Total fluff, but mostly well-done fluff. The actress who played Amanda was fittingly cast and oozed divine languidity – and her comic timing was impeccable. Adversely, I was disappointed by the characterization of Cybil. I think that the actress in the role is exceptionally talented, but that she was poorly directed – it just didn’t appear that the director really knew what to do with the character. And granted, Cybil is supposed to be milquetoasty, but I think there’s a way to do that without resorting to a paper-thin caricature. On the production front, the second of two sets heavily outweighed the first in its “wow” factor – quite beautiful – and despite one of my best friends being a professional lighting designer for some fancy-schmancy outfits, I still don’t know how to critique lighting. On the whole, it looked just fine to me. All in all, I had many, many good, strong, sincere laughs and thoroughly enjoyed my evening there. Recommended.

Okay. All better.