I am in a show (a show that I really enjoy being in) as part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival (a festival that I really enjoy being in) and I’ve thus far posted nothing about it here (a situation that I really don’t enjoy being in).  And we’ve only one performance left (Saturday! 5:30 pm!).  And it’s been wildly popular (and somewhat controversial), so it might be hard to get in (a good problem for us to have, but still a problem).  And we’re in a venue with three other wildly popular shows (hooray for the Mixed Blood!), so we’ll probably not get the Encore spot (*sniff*), and Saturday will be your last chance to see it (for really-really-real).  I know, I know (I know).

For the sake of accountability or posterity or searchability or general curiosity or perhaps just good old guilt, I present to you – See You Next Tuesday, a new play by Steve Moulds, presented by Walking Shadow Theatre Company at the 2010 Minnesota Fringe Festival.

Experience recap, reviews, and performance blunders to follow ().

(photo of Christine Weber and Sid Solomon by Dan Norman)

1. Never, EVER tell your actors to “use it.”   As in, “hey, Director, I need to keep my phone on in rehearsal today because my sibling was almost murdered and I need to keep in touch with the family regarding his progress.”  And the director replies, “of course, Leigha – and how this relates to the play, well, you know – Use It.  Use that fear to relate to your character and what she’s going through in this scene.”  That is not directing, nor is it humane.  It’s a shitty reference to a persnickety, uninspired acting method that every performer learned about in high school, and it makes you look like a grasping, idiotic director who doesn’t know common sense from his ass.  Any questions?

2.  Never give your actors line readings unless they ask for it – and even then, seriously consider your options.  If the actor isn’t getting it, then you must guide them there until they DO get it.  For example, “I want you to enter the scene, pause for a second and a half, then say the line exactly like this, and then pause before saying your next line like this” (actor says line) “no, you’re not listening, I want you to say it like THIS,” that…that is not directing, it’s jealousy.  It’s the mark of a fumbling director who actually wishes she was an actor.  If you’re starting rehearsal this way – before you’ve even worked with the actor to get him to a baseline of understanding your vision – then you’re clearly in the wrong field.

3. Read the play before you start rehearsal.  Unless it’s a brand-new work that the playwright won’t start writing until you’re all in the room together, you have no excuse.  I don’t care if you were a last-minute replacement – MAKE TIME.

4. Don’t use big words if you don’t know what they mean.  Your job is to communicate clearly.  If you are regularly misusing words, your actors will have to spend more time deciphering what it is you actually mean to say instead of doing their jobs.  And, frankly, it’s profoundly counterproductive to your goal of sounding intelligent.

5. If the play resides outside of your knowledge-base, do your homework before you start spouting off.  Or get a dramaturg and delegate.  Persians are not the same as Parisians, even though, yes, they sound similar.  Not. The. Same. When actors ask you for historical references, do not offer suggestions of completely different political/social warfare from different eras with different cultures and motives.  Doing so just showcases how clueless you really are.

Am I taking a risk by posting this?  Yes.  But I hope that by calling “foul,” I will be a constructive contributor to the ongoing director/actor dialogue.  You see, it seems that everyone and their second-cousin-twice-removed has a list of Dos and Don’ts for actors, and yet no one is willing to speak up about directors.  At least no one who still wants to work in the field.  And so here I stand – on my little internet table with my bloggy cardboard sign in my hands, held high above my head.

And honestly, it’s a little scary up here.  But it feels right.  So pull up a chair, friends, and hop on up.

ONE – Fox Tax. These fellows know their business. They know artists. They specialize in artists. They’re affordable to artists.

TWO – Actor’s Tax Tips. Free! A brand spankin’-new blog by local actor and tax whiz and all-around responsible and intelligent guy, Mark Bradley.

THREE – The Actor’s Tax Guide. Not free! But totally worth it! Chock-full of industry-specific tax info for you, handy-dandy worksheets, organizational advice, AND tax-deductible! By the aforementioned Mark Bradley. And he’s local, so if he steers you wrong, you “know where to find him.”

FOUR – Backstage.com’s Actors’ Assets. I just found these articles today when looking up what it means to be a “Qualified Performing Artist.” They’re well written and quite informative. I must say, though, $16,000 cap on your adjusted gross income?! What a joke. Too bad “Qualified Performing Artist” and “Successful Performing Artist” seem to be mutually exclusive.

If you, too, have a little bundle of actor tax preparation secrets up your sleeve, by all means, do share. Misery does love its company, does it not?

The past year brought a load of work, a load of appreciation for the work I was getting, and one giant, lazy attitude toward writing about it.  Of particular note, midway through 2009 I was able to make a return to performing for a living.  “What?  What do you mean?    Actresses in the Twin Cities aren’t filthy stinking rich and famous?!”  Surprisingly, no, not so much.  See, periodically a girl like me is obliged to suck it up and take a part-time “day job” to keep some steady cash rolling in while filling in the rest with voice-overs and stage work.  What is this world coming to?

What happened was this: in June I was cast as Nurse and First-Class Stewardess Evelyn Marsden in Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition at the Science Museum of Minnesota, as well as joined the museum’s Science Live Theater cast. When at the museum, but not in 1912 costume, I bust out my mad knowledge of nanoscience to thwart an Evil Scientist From The Future, as well as demonstrate the important properties of surface area by blowing giant fireballs and discussing chemical reactivity.  It has been a joy to perform regularly for the (what by now must be) thousands of audience members taking an interest in science.  Additionally, I am responsible for coordinating and moderating public forums for adults about nanoscale science on behalf of NISE Net (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network).  Moreover, it’s less than part-time, and voice-overs and stage work really ARE filling in the rest.  Even in this wretchedly hobbled economy.  My stars are indeed lucky.  And I thank them regularly.

So here, for posterity, are my performance highlights of 2009:

January
Marketplace Events spots – Ty Pennington (that dude from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition) and me on TV and radio urging you to attend particular home shows here and there in the U.S.  TV commercials aired on HGTV and ABC and their affiliates.  Read more about my sister’s hilarious request.

February
Nothing of note – sometimes that’s a good thing.  Looks like I was in rehearsal.  Not always a good thing.

March

• Performances of Adam Szymcowicz’s The Captivity Plays at the Bryant Lake Bowl
• After 18 months of pain in the form of oral torture, treatment was completed and my braces were removed.  I was rewarded with awesomely perfect teeth and new-found confidence.  Join me in reliving my happy dance.
• Supervalu spots – radio spots for grocery stores around the U.S. – Albertson’s, Lucky, Supervalu, Shaw’s/Star Market, Cub Foods, Jewel-Osco, Kroger, Hornbacher’s, etc.

April
Nexxus spots – I don’t believe these were ever aired – just voice-overs for a concept by the ad agency for the client.  If it was approved by the client, the agency would then film 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.

May

• Played Nerve 123080 in full-length feature film, The System, with Voices Media, Inc. – the same folks who brought you the award-winning web-series Chasing Windmills.  Devilish early morning feats trumpeted here.
• Joined Twin Cities AFTRA Board.

June

• Caroline or Change, The Homosexuals’ Guide to the Universe, Tiny Kushner – now these didn’t involve me at all, save for my presence in the audience.  But I found the first two to be incredibly moving, incredibly powerful pieces of work.  And I was thrilled that Minneapolis was able to honor such a fantastic playwright in this way, and that such a fantastic playwright got to workshop a brand-new play in our fine city.
• Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition opens at the Science Museum of Minnesota.  This is my new “day job” wherein I get to spend part of my weekdays engaging with the general public and informing them about Miss Evelyn Marsden’s life and the hospitals aboard the ship in a darling English accent. Personal ship preparation stories here.
• United Health Care spots – my first political spots, something about calling your congresspeople somewhere in New England. Connecticut maybe? Urging you to take a particular stand on some kind of health care legislation.  Don’t remember the particulars, but got to work with the guys at Shout.  And I absolutely adore Mark Benninghofen, so it was a joy.

July
Joined the Science Museum of Minnesota to work on NISE Net (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) projects – both performing live stage plays and demonstrations that deal directly with nanoscale science, as well as coordinating and facilitating adult public forums about nanoscale science.  This is only 10 hours per week, and I love it.  And it makes me feel a little closer to my scientific heroes of audio over at RadioLab.  And to paraphrase the words of my delightfully brilliant colleague Michael Ritchie: I realize that my day job can never be bad, because I work in a place with musical stairs.

August

• Fringe Festival fail – this was hard.  This was very, very hard.  The Ministry of Cultural Warfare, the company I have both figuratively and literally sweat and bled for since 2000, planned to do a show.  Due to a Perfect Storm of really crappy circumstances, I had to remove myself from the process, and we ultimately had to back out of the festival at a late date.  It was heartbreaking, and the fallout was equally heartbreaking.
• Marketplace Events radio and TV spots – the plus side of August was that Ty Pennington had some more home shows to promote, so it was back into the studio to add my special female aural sparkle.
• The Minnesota State Fair – I spent an afternoon as host of the Labor Pavilion at “The Great Minnesota Get-Together.”  They gave me a wireless mic, put me in a Green building and the adjacent pavilion, and let me loose amongst the various Labor kiosks and the throngs of fair-goers.  There was trivia, there were hand-crafted on-the-spot copper roses, there were nurses and flight attendants and machinists and steel workers and everything in between.  At the end of my shift, they snapped a photo which made its way into the national AFTRA magazine.

September
I spent nearly half the month on the road, traveling to Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco – this was for my work with the Science Museum of Minnesota on behalf of the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), and it was incredibly inspiring.  It did indeed involve some performing, but it also involved meeting with social scientists to consider the social, political, and ethical implications of nanoscale science, and how to get audiences considering these aspects, as well.  We also met for the purpose of setting goals for years 6-10 of NISE Net’s grant funded by the National Science Foundation, and it involved learning how other organizations engage audiences in learning about nanoscale science.  Inspiring, and the locations were fantastic.  I love the Pacific Northwest.

October
Lead role of Hannah in Table Salt Productions’ inaugural show, Burned at the Gremlin Theatre.  Nothing like spending an hour before each performance putting glue on my face, letting it dry and manipulating it and coloring it to make it look like nasty scar tissue.  While it was a serio-comic post-apocalyptic tale, it was a joy to make a foray back into dramatic work.  Read a little more about it.

November

• Workshop and public reading of Dog and Wolf – an incredibly well-crafted, powerful,  and riveting play about a Bosnian refugee by Catherine Filloux, in which I played the lead, Jasmina.  This play is being produced Off-Broadway this February.
• My first public nanoscience forum about privacy, civil liberties, and nanotechnology.  It was a small group of about 15 people, but helped me get my feet wet.  Now that I’ve done something in the accepted mold, I can hack it and make it more interesting, accessible, and engaging.  Watchout Twin Cities – you’re about to get schooled in nano.

December

• more Marketplace Events spots – this time for home shows around the U.S. in 2010.
• Caribou Coffee spots – The tone and delivery in these spots makes me feel like we’re sitting on a front porch swing, lazing the day away.  And they’re all about handcrafted oatmeal.  And I got to spend some good time with my friends over at Babble-On Recording studios.  I love those engineers.
• General Mills spots for Tuesday Taco Night - you know you’ve made it when your VOs keep getting interrupted by a mariachi band.  Plus more time at Babble-On!  Whee!

Plenty to share for January already – but it’s a new year, so it gets a new post.  Here’s looking forward to a peaceful, prosperous 2010.  And I’ll actually work on getting all of these 2009 (and future) voice-over spots posted for your listening pleasure.  It’s not as hard as I make it sound, and yet here we are.  Soon, I promise.

I ought to go back to my resume and actually verify this, but I’m pretty sure it’s been a decade since I’ve played a dramatic role in a dramatic play – Queen Gertrude in a gender-bent version of Hamlet in college, directed by my favorite old salt, the recently departed George Poletes.  I loved that man.  Alright, hang on, a decade?! – that really can’t be true (searching resume) No!  Wait!  I played the lead in Behind a Mask for Hardcover Theater in (searching internet) 2004.  Thank you, internets!  So it’s only been half a decade.  Phew.  And by the way, I loved those plays – period costumes, wooing men in order of societal importance, deception, intrigue – delightful nefariousness!

But to my point: half a decade?!  Good lord.  That Comedy, she is a jealous mistress.  So either I could frame my present production as dusting off an old photograph – a little brittle, a little yellowed; or I could frame this as the whatever-it-is-that-makes-some-wines-awesome-with-age awesomening.  The goal is the latter.  Regardless of frame, me doing drama = rare bird.  So come see.

You’ve two weekends filled with eight performances left.  Even a show on Halloween if you’re like me and dress up for a living, so don’t really think much of Halloween and only get in costume if people pay you.  Ooooooo…..apocaaaaaalypse……spooooooooky!

For tickets and show information, visit Table Salt Productions.  For a barrel of monkeys post-show, visit me.

At the beginning of the semester, a pottery instructor divided his class into two halves.  Each student in the first half was going to be graded solely on volume – the instructor didn’t care about the quality of the pieces, he just wanted as many complete pieces as possible.  The other half of the class was going to be graded solely on quality – each student had the entire semester to complete one perfect piece.

At the end of the semester the students who were graded on quantity had multiple perfect and near-perfect pieces in their vast collections, while those who were graded on quality ended up with only mediocre and good results.  Those who were in the quantity group made mistakes, learned from them, refined their work, and kept producing.  Those who were in the quality group analyzed and planned and got stuck in their heads, and were ultimately paralyzed by their self-imposed restrictions (they didn’t want to waste time making a load of work and choosing the best from that – they needed to focus their energy solely on THE ONE).

Huh.  The quality group mentality sounds embarrassingly familiar.  Who doesn’t follow through on most of her artistic ideas for fear of failure?  Who doesn’t take risks and try new ventures for fear of failure?  Who stops the execution of ideas before she even starts them for fear of failure?  Me.  Me, me, me.  I am outright terrified of failing myself, terrified of learning that I’m not good at something I love; terrified of letting people bear witness to my weaknesses.  I understand full well that performing on stage is ephemeral and a living, breathing organism that changes based upon any number of factors – but in all endeavors, not just the stage, I want to take comfort that I worked hard and know my shit.  I want to be confident that I’ll succeed.

So if I can’t be assured that I’ll succeed, I should just stay home, right?  Artistic Paralysis – 1; Leigha – 0.  With that mentality, the art dies.  The ideas die.  It’s like shooting a foal because it can’t run immediately after it’s born.  Yes, my art is a little baby horse, and I kill multiple little baby horses daily.  Ideas that could fail?  chik-chik, ka-BLAM.  Wrong. So terribly wrong.

Thankfully, there are some artists who have made it beyond the killing fields and lived to tell about it.  There is hope beyond little baby idea carcasses.  Imagine that.

Elizabeth Gilbert, for one – the author of Eat, Pray, Love – gave a fascinating speech at this year’s TED Talks about changing our vocabulary from “being a genius” to “having a genius.”  It’s taking the pressure off of people and placing it on the work – no need for constant perfection, just a need to go forth and artistically multiply.  To be fruitful in one’s work, to try new approaches, to learn, to experiment, to revise, to explore, to revise again, to feel fulfilled in the process, and to let the work be what it is intended to be.  Nothing more, nothing less.

The director of my present production, Burned, is another.  His approach has lent itself beautifully to my tippy-toeing back to dramatic works – it’s been nearly a decade since I’ve done stagework with an overarching serious tone and this water is a wee bit chilly.  Sean’s advice to begin a renewal of trust – trust in myself and trust in the process, allowing the product find its own way, has been a gift.  It’s okay to be ugly, it’s okay to make grand mistakes, it’s okay to grope until I find my way.  The director is there to walk with me and encourage me in the right direction, to shape my work in a way that fits the vision.  My internal director can go suck it.

Last month Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition officially launched at the Science Museum of Minnesota, for which I am portraying Miss Evelyn Marsden, First Class Stewardess and Nurse for the First Class passengers.

Our preparation included regular improv rehearsals (it’s not as much of an oxymoron as it sounds) in addition to an obscene amount of hours researching on our own.  We were expected to spend at least 20 hours with our noses in books; and I’m nearly certain I, and everyone else on the crew, have easily topped 80 hours.  Piles of books, a 10-inch stack of homemade flashcards, online “Titaniac” forums, constant fretting over discrepancies between sources…the list goes on.

80 hours of mind-numbing minutiae and yet I still catch myself periodically weeping as I read or write about the events that unfolded in the middle of the North Atlantic the night of April 14th, 1912.  There is always some new discovery or some particularly moving imagery that strikes me, re-humanizing that night, re-humanizing the roughly 700 people who survived, and the more than 1,500 who did not.  They are not numbers, they are not historical factoids, they are people – each and every one of them – many of whom were the sole bread-winners for their families – concentric circles moving outward from a drop in the water.  An amalgamation of beautiful devastation.

If you’re interested in seeing the exhibition, we highly recommend reservations via phone or online.  Starting July 23, my schedule will generally be:
Mondays: 3-8 p
Tuesdays: 8-11a
Wednesdays: 8-11a
Thursdays: 1-5p
…but is subject to change, so if you’re dying to see me in particular, give me a holler first.  I can assure you, however, that you’ll have a great experience, whichever actors are in the room.

Another mark in The Column of All Things Cool is that I was given the shoes to take home and start breaking in.  I’m sure we can all remember my, um, “issues” with costume shoes.  Seriously – a month in advance – how often does that happen?!  I wore them this morning while I did the dishes.  I love our costumer.

As for things I don’t love – I do not love how harrowing the research can be.  I was reading A Night to Remember in bed Sunday night and couldn’t keep from sobbing – one chapter in particular just pushed me right over the edge, and it was a two-handkerchief ordeal from that point forward.  Accidentally woke my mate.  I have heretofore resolved to banish any and all Titanic research from the reading-at-bedtime ritual.  Jane Austen prevails.

While I find this whole process and the extensive research involved incredibly intriguing, I find it difficult to talk about this role in terms of a “character.”  Evelyn Marsden, whom I have chosen to study and portray, was a real woman with a real history and a real future and a real experience.  Yet at the same time artistic liberty is a necessity, as the information available about her is scant and the unexpected questions from visitors will be endless.  I think this lands squarely in the camp of Historical Fiction…a new venture for me.

We start rehearsals a week from today and I’ll admit I’m a little nervous.  I have a great understanding of the overall picture…it’s just that my retention of the details is not so hot at present.

That and my Australian accent needs some serious work; “CRIKEY!” will only get a girl so far.

On the other hand, since last writing here I participated in a two-performance run of Adam Symkowicz’ Captivity Plays, did eleven voice-overs for the Supervalu chain of grocery stores (Albertson’s, Cub, Jewel/Osco, Bigg’s, Shaw’s & Star Market, Hornbacher’s, etc., which should be playing all over the U.S. right now), recorded a tv demo for Nexxus hair care products, formalized my involvement in this year’s Fringe Festival, and started research for my role in the upcoming Titanic exhibition at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

And yet I still feel like it’s not enough; like I’m missing out on something. I’m ravenous. Insatiable.

Perchance this means it’s time to cut the excuses and dedicate myself to my craft; no more coasting.

Kids! Tune in next week to see how long this particular brand of inspiration lasts!