In 2010 I made my living in front of an audience and behind the mic.  And for that I am so deeply in awe.  So deeply grateful for my fortuity.  While our economy is not nearly as bad as 2009, it’s still in terrible disarray and record numbers of people are still unemployed.  Even so, I was able to make a modest living via my profession; a modest living that didn’t require me to engage in morally questionable behavior (the kind where one would accompany a raised eyebrow with ‘actress’ in air-quotes).

Without further ado, my performance highlights of 2010:

January

• Voice-overs for ParentAwareRatings.org (listen).
• Voice-overs for St. Catherine University (listen).  Turns out a friend heard the spot multiple times and never realized it was me until I mentioned it on Facebook.  I kind of like it when that happens.
• Finished the six-month run of Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition at the Science Museum of Minnesota.  I spent part of my weekdays engaging with the general public as Nurse Evelyn Marsden – sharing, in a darling English accent, her experiences aboard the ship in the first-class cabins and hospitals.  I was sad to say goodbye to her.
• Voice-overs for Marketplace Events -  2nd year in a row (listen).  Ty Pennington and me on national TV and radio urging you to attend home shows all around the U.S. (watch)  TV commercials aired on HGTV and ABC and their affiliates.

February

• Began rehearsals for the Science Museum of Minnesota’s next exhibition – The Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World, wherein we would perform a three-minute introductory monologue for visitors every 7.5 minutes.  In all honesty, it was mind-numbing, but the visitors were mostly appreciative.
• Interviewed by Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Roberts about my line-memorization techniques – ultimately compiled into a clever on-air story and accompanying slideshow with fellow actors Steven Epp, Mo Perry and Clarence Wethern.
  
• The Big Oscar Crunch 2010 – wherein I try to see as many of the Oscar-nominated films as humanly possible before the awards ceremony.  The fun of doing it that way is not only seeing excellent movies, but actually feeling invested in more than just the red carpet.
• Started rehearsals for Spring of Freedom/Summer of Fear – a new Iranian play by Ali G. Ravi , produced by Table Salt Productions.
• VO gig for Carlson Companies – got to put Nurse Evelyn Marsden’s darling English accent to good use.

March

• Devastated to drop out of Spring of Freedom/Summer of Fear due to a harrowing family crisis which, because it apparently wasn’t bad enough, led to a nasty case of shingles.  Yes, shingles.  Probably the worst three weeks of my adult life to date.
• Called in by the lovely Barbara Shelton at Bab’s Casting to audition for a new WB pilot Mike and Molly.  The network was looking for someone 30 pounds overweight.  I was exactly that (not anymore, thanks to a newfound love of yoga), and so happily went in.  Between the script (and the eventual casting choice), it became quite clear that LA thinks 30 pounds overweight is the same thing as obese.  Surprising?  Not really.
• Called in by the Guthrie Theater to audition for the role of Eunice in Streetcar Named Desire.  Almost missed the e-mail because I assumed it was Guthrie marketing spam and was about to delete it.  Didn’t recognize the sender’s name, though, so opened it.  Close call.
• VOs for Nexxus demos/animatics.  These are voice-overs for a concept by the ad agency for the client.  If it gets approved by the client, the agency then films the spots.  Since I almost never watch commercial TV, I have no idea if these ever made it though the pipeline…my guess is no (especially since many of these were the same as, or similar to, the ones I did in April 2009).

April

• VOs for Nexxus demos/animatics – two more sessions.
• Public reading of Casa Cushman, a new work by NYC’s Tectonic Theater Project (the folks who brought you The Laramie Project, at the University of Minnesota Nolte Center.

May

• Crickets. Both figurative and literal.  Aside from live science demonstrations at the Science Museum of Minnesota, it appears that I did nothing performance-related in May.  And I went camping.
• On Tuesday, May 11, amongst of a jumble of scheduled meetings and things to do, I found written in my calendar, “Hell-cat Maggie and Slops McConnell.”  I have no idea what that means, but I think it’s funny, so thought I would share with anyone who is still reading by this point.  Kiss, kiss.

June
More crickets.  Figurative.  See May.

July

• Started rehearsals for See You Next Tuesday, my very first show with Walking Shadow Theater Company.
• Three-day script workshop of Trista Baldwin’s stunning Forgetting at The Playwrights’ Center.

August

• 2010 Minnesota Fringe Festival, and my performance in Walking Shadow’s critically acclaimed See You Next Tuesday.  I was so excited to be back at the festival that I advance-purchased an Ultra Pass, with which I ended up only seeing three shows due to an emergency hospital visit and an emergency vet visit.  2010 was not turning out to be a great year for health.
• VO spots (more, again) for Marketplace Events home shows with Ty Pennington – TV and Radio (listen).  Continued airings on HGTV and ABC.

September

• VO spots for General Mills – TV tags for Totino’s Party Pizzas (listen).
• Attended the (somethingth annual) Ivey Awards – Minneapolis/St. Paul’s version of the Tonys.  Very, very swank.  Very, very inspiring.
• VO spots for General Mills – TV tags for Progresso Soup (listen).

October

• Obscenely busy month that had almost nothing to do with performing.  Included business travel to San Francisco for continued work on behalf of the Science Museum of Minnesota for NISE Net (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network), with a little leisure travel to San Diego and LA on the side.
• No! Wait!  Because of my General Mills VOs in September, this is the month that I was required to join the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG)!  That’s right, I got my SAG card in October.  October was not an actorly loss, after all.

November

• Started rehearsals for a three-week, 30-hours/week workshop of Casa Cushman – in collaboration with NYC’s Tectonic Theater Project, choreographer Carl Flink, University of Minnesota Department of Theater Arts and Dance, a couple other U of M departments that I can’t recall at the moment, and The Playwrights’ Center.
• Sent live the brand-spankin’-shiny-new leighahorton.com.

December

• Performance of Casa Cushman at the Northrop Auditorium.  This was a wild ride, and at the end of it all, despite some crazy-cray-cray, it was kind of awesome.  And I kind of loved it.
  
• VOs for General Mills (42 in total) for Progresso Light Soups, Yoplait and Yoplait Light Yogurts, and Big G Cereals national TV spots.  I just about died and went to heaven.
• VOs for Marketplace Events Home Shows with Ty Pennington – third year running!
• Authored and published a children’s book for NISE Net, Alice in Nanoland, which, as you read this, is being mailed to 200 informal science education institutions (science museums, children’s museums, etc.) across the nation in the 2011 NanoDays kits.  What a curious little experience that was.

And there we have it!  The months of 2010 demonstrate both feast and famine and average out to healthy; December being, by far, the most entertaining (well, for me, anyway).  I continue to stand, mouth agape, at the wondrous profession I have chosen and the beautiful trajectory it has taken thus far.  I cannot wait to see what delightful paths await!

Several months ago I was between shows and figured it would be an excellent time to try out a new mehndi design on my hand.  Mehndi, for the unindoctrinated, is the art of painting on the skin with henna – a natural plant-based dye.  The practice is rooted in Africa, India, and the Middle East, and used on the skin to create temporary tattoo-like designs or to dye the hair or scalp, usually for wedding ceremonies and the like.  Or if you’re me, it’s used to create designs on the skin that last a good two-plus weeks with no hope of getting them to fade early, no matter what you try.

Now, I am no stranger to mehndi.  I implemented my first design in the summer of 2008:

And I loved it.  The process is slow and meditative, and something I thoroughly enjoy if I have loads of time and can limit movement to allow for everything to dry properly.  The result is, to me, a secret delight – it’s usually hidden by footwear, but one can catch glimpses around the edges of my mary-janes if they’re looking hard enough.

So I happened to have loads of time, a good book, and some bravado available one day, and decided it was time to give it another go, this time on my hand.  Far more bold, far more daring; my own little joy and a temporary eff-you to societal norms.  And achieved a rather striking result:

Which would have been juuuuust fine, had it not been for two things:

1) I stupidly didn’t realize how much I talk with my hands – especially when giving science demonstrations at the museum. File that one under “Horton, Duh.”  And as we’re all well-aware, little dudes like to ask questions about things they don’t understand in loud voices.  So in an effort to be encouraging of constructive dialogue about differences, I ended up explaining the science of henna as often as I explained the importance of surface area in chemical reactions.

2) the call I got from my agent the next week, requesting I audition for the lead in a new network sitcom pilot (more about this in another post).  You see, the thing with henna is that when it fades, it doesn’t do so uniformly – so when it gets to a certain point of faded-ness, one looks like a burn victim and unintentionally alarms the kindly, beloved casting director.

And thus the lesson I learned the hard way is this: not all of us have the privilege of outwardly flying our freak flags.  Therefore, I must keep it (whatever “it” happens to be after any given flight of fancy) in a place where it can be covered.  Even if it’s only temporary.  Bah.

I found myself pained by the dilemma this caused: during the second half of the filming dates I was scheduled to visit my family in San Diego, and introduce my beau of 1.25 years to my California Parents. Plane tickets were purchased, rental car was reserved, lodging was secured, and California Parents were counting down the days.

Either the vacation with my far-off folks had to be shelved, or the possibility of filming had to be shelved. There was no room for compromise.

Turns out the braces-in-my-faces ended up making the decision for me. I was told that the movie was set in the mid-60s. I was aware that the casting director was calling me in based on my headshots – both of which feature a closed mouth. On purpose. I hated my teeth when those were taken, and had every intention of getting braces. I now have those braces (just eight more months to go – thank god). I can’t imagine that braces in a movie would be a big deal, except for the fact that the braces I have today were not invented until 1972. NINETEEN SEVENTY-FREAKING-TWO. I would have walked onto the set with a giant anachronism epoxied to my face. I shared that with my agent, who then politely declined with the casting director on my behalf.

Ahhhh, braces – fixing my teeth, and fixing my dilemmas. While I hate dilemmas, I still hate the braces more.

The speech has haunted me for weeks, not only because of my generally-hidden passion for science as related to quantum physics and the consequent implications on the human body and psyche; but because it finally provided a clear, scientific answer to what I experience while performing on stage – the interaction between actor and actor, and the interaction between actor and audience.

First, for context, an excerpt of Bolte Taylor’s speech detailing the primary functions of the human brain:

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.

My left hemisphere is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past, and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment. And start picking details and more details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information. Associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It’s that little voice that says to me, “Hey, you gotta remember to pick up bananas on your way home, and eat ‘em in the morning.” It’s that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it’s that little voice that says to me, “I am. I am.” And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me “I am,” I become separate. I become a single solid individual separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you.

With these brain functions finally delineated in a way I could understand, I’ve been far more cognizant of how I experience the world – my surroundings, my relationships, my interactions. All in all, I tend to embrace and honor my right brain-ness, yet have a constant undercurrent of streaming left-brain narrative and evaluation.

That said, I found myself rather shaken after having what seemed to be a wholly right-brain experience at an audition the week before last. I was in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, participating in what turned out to be a six-hour audition. It boiled down to about 4% actually auditioning on stage in front of a director, 28% working scenes with audition partners or reading the sides over on my own, 32% chit-chatting with other actors, and 64% tedium.

There was one actor in particular (and thus to the point of my story) with whom I was assigned to read. We worked our scene multiple times, and then got to talking in generalities. The more we talked, the more we realized we had similar experiences with some of the same people, and thus, a connection was formed. Energy was shared. I didn’t realize the benefit of this exchange until we were in the audition room and our scene took on a whole new level of familiarity and spark.

When we were paired again later in the day, without the opportunity to first read over the scenes together, I was not concerned – it was like being at home on stage because I somehow trusted this actor implicitly. And he gave a powerful performance, and with it the finest gift – I felt this rush of strength and wisdom and insouciance being directed at me, and in turn it gave me license to summon up the same in myself and return it to him. He gave me the right to shine unabashedly, without censure. At one point, I had even put down my script because my character was done speaking but still on stage – I used that time to make physical discoveries, and to just live in the space. I did all of this without internal narrative – it just…happened.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like rays of sunlight burst out of my chest and destroyed the onlookers, a la Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hell, it probably didn’t look like anything special to anyone beyond our little sphere of interaction. But it felt important.

And I got cast.

Thursday, December 20 – 9:30 pm
Agent calls – still no confirmation of time. Cue sinking gut feeling. Dredge up memories of the Qwest commercial I landed back in June, but lost due to a script issue that went missing in the bowels of their legal department.

Friday, December 21 – 9:30 am
Agent says they’re still working on it. I am optimistically cynical – brain abuzz with trust that great things will come, yet tempered by bitter memories of former gigs lost.

Friday, December 21 – 1:21 pm
Agent calls to say that Client has decided to save money by going with an internal employee, without ever hearing my pipes. Saving money = no job for me, and deeply-Minnesota-accented telephone system for them. Turns out there is lining, however, and it is silver – Marketing Firm is very, very disappointed at Client’s decision, and looks forward to working with me in the future.

Friday, December 21 – 4:41 pm
Agent calls to say that I lost one…but gained another. I am wary. Yet I love my agent. Pensive Horton Happy Dance ensues. I’ve landed a voiceover for the Kansas Lottery, wherein I get to talk about my boyfriend in Topeka. Topeka. Topeka, Topeka, Topeka. It’s a fun word to say. Try it. Seriously. I’ll wait. See? It’s right up there with “button” and “pocket.” I imagine it’s going to be even more fun to get paid to say it.

Anyway, the recording is slated for late next week, but has yet to be confirmed… I shall hope for the lack of a theme here.

If you’re cast, we’ll teach you the secret handshake and you’ll learn what we drink to keep ourselves looking so fresh and vibrant – I am 429 years old, after all.

AUDITIONS DEC 16-17:
Ministry of Cultural Warfare is looking for funny actors for a double-bill of Chekhov parodies for the Twin Cities Chekhov Festival at Bryant-Lake Bowl, February 2008.

A Rain of Seagulls, written by Meron Langsner, directed by Leah Cooper, explores nearly every Chekhovian theme known to man in roughly 40 minutes—meaning that, of course, the cast is heavily armed and rather morose.
2 women ages 20-30
1 woman age 40-55
1 man age 20-30
3 men age 30-45

Our Vanya, Ourselves, written by Matthew Foster, directed by Reid Knuttila, is a mash-up between Anton’s Uncle Vanya and “Sisters and Other Strangers,” a classic episode of The Golden Girls when Dorothy’s cousin Magda visits from Czechoslovakia after the fall of communism.
3 women: 35-50
1 woman: 25-35
1 woman: 55+

Rehearsals January 14 through February 6. Performances February 7, 22 and 28.

All the details at the MoCW site. Sides will be available for download there soon also.

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.

Q: What do you get when you cross National Public Radio with competitive reality TV?

            a) the open (re)casting call for Eric Stolz’ character in Mask;

b) fodder for the newest edition of The Culture of Narcissism, with a postmortem foreword by the author (this was just too good to stay dead for);

c) The Public Radio Talent Quest (to which I have submitted an entry and thereby opened myself up to yet another* opportunity for nationwide criticism);

            d) All of the above.

Of course the answer is D. Of course it is. That being said, I humbly request that you listen and vote (yes, voting requires registration, but you won’t get spammed, I promise). Besides, if you take a gander, you’ll get the meaning behind today’s title.

There’s part of me that thinks this is completely silly. But there’s also part of me that thinks I have a fighting chance. They’re looking for “hostiness” – and dangit, I think I can give it to them.

Yes, it (just barely) paid enough to make ends meet; but it didn’t pay enough to honor the work that actors do as artists, and the value of one’s time.  The pay was reasonable for stage, but not for screen.  And certainly not for such an established company.  Not for something that will continue to generate strong revenue for them long after the actual performance is over.  Not for aspects of performance that they can re-use as stock footage for future projects, without paying royalties.  I just can’t sell out like that. 

It makes me sound like a jerk, right?  “She was offered a somewhat-decent paying gig and she turned it down – who the hell does she think she is?!” 

I’m still trying to figure myself out, but this much I know is true: I am an artist that just took one for the team.  I am an artist that took a stand for a reasonable wage.  Yeah, I did it for me, but I did it for everyone else in this town, too.  What had to be explained to me by a friend, many times, very clearly, is that if artists keep accepting mediocre-at-best wages for their work, it drives prices down.  Companies know that they can get other actors at a fraction of a reasonable wage, because there are actors out there desperate enough to do it; but what they don’t realize until after the fact is that the actors they get are less qualified.  In our economy, you get what you pay for.

And god, believe me, I wanted to do it.  Badly.  I had a great time at the audition – I thoroughly enjoyed everyone that was in the room – there was a great rapport.  But I had to respect myself enough not to accept their final offer.  And that was really, really hard.  It took the guidance and encouragement of a friend/fellow artist.  It took three (yes, three) books on negotiation techniques, one of them specifically aimed at artists, another specifically aimed at women.  It took time.  And in the end, it took a good cry in the privacy of my living room.

A couple of weeks later, and I still think about that job.  I still think about the what-ifs.  But in the end I still know, deep down, and sometimes after a lot of searching, that I did the right thing.

Integrity versus Gig: 15-love.
 

I e-mailed my dear friend, sometimes-director, and always strikingly-brilliant Cooper who had, just days prior, returned from a 3-month life-adventure touring South America, and begged her to help me choose my two audition monologues and direct me in them. Stories of exotic fruit, impoverished children and harrowing Latin-American border-crossings would have to wait (kidding – we had already met over drinks and a guilt-ridden over-abundance of food by that point – I’m not that self-centered). She proved herself worthy of sainthood for the seventy-sixth time and agreed to help.

The result? Never have I been more prepared, nor, ironically, more nervous for an audition in all my life. I guess it’s because now there’s something at stake – I never really committed before (five+ years clinging to a day-job, anyone?), and now I am so committed it kinda burns a little. I want this. Badly. And when I want things, badly, I tend to be disappointed – that’s just the way things roll in my world.

But this time I’m not bogged down by should-haves – I know I was prepared (okay, okay, I could have started preparing a lot earlier than I did – but I still did a hell of a lot more prep than I’ve ever done before). I did my homework. I got real direction from a real director. I don’t regret much other than my nerves, and overall that’s a pretty sweet feeling.