This weekend, I had the privilege of performing with my improv group, Devil's Dancebelt, at Gallery X in New Bedford, MA, and at The Provincetown Theater in Provincetown, MA. After the Provincetown show, the members of Devil's Dancebelt taught an improvisation workshop to audience members interested in learning how to do what we did for them. It was an absolute blast filled with memories. :)

 

 
April 10, 2006 (Monday)

This morning I attended an open call for the films The Nanny Diaries and Enchanted hosted by Grant Wilfley Casting.

 

 
April 22, 2006 (Saturday)

Things are getting exciting for me. I'm getting ready for the tempered re-release of my acting career. It's been nearly two years since I've made it #1 in my life, retiring it to a #2 position to allow me the creative energy to focus on the writing of my book on improvisation. I've reached a place in writing the book that I feel comfortable inviting a rivalrous discipline into my life to compete for my time and attention. And I'm excited at having acting back in my life, as spending time around actors during the shooting of Perfect Stranger made me realize how much I miss it.

I have a few soft goals for now that I will flesh out and harden up more after the wedding of my brother and his fiancée in early May. The goals are getting new color headshots, reproductions of said headshots, taking a highly recommended monologue class to increase my audition repertoire, and getting cast in a juicy role in an NYC Fringe Festival show. I realize that in two years the industry has advanced and I need to learn about how it operates right now, whcih is different than how it operated two years ago. For one, color photography is popular in NYC finally, the internet is used for casting much more regularly, and text messaging has become a means of communication. Becoming part of this new world requires an open mind and a generous pocketbook, both of which I have to extents but also could use some assistance. I have a couple of jobs with Yahoo! coming up that sound very exciting, and hopefully additional gigs in the buzz marketing realm that will help seed my acting career.

Other goals include an increased dedication to the pursuit of commercials. I am baffled by my low exposure to commercial casting directors in my time in NYC, esp. in light of my strong interest in commercials, an interest that generated my entire acting career to begin with at the youthful age when G.I. Joe commercials made me want to be in them.

I am looking forward to defining myself, and redefining my mission statement. I am looking forward to networking, to being an important part in an artistic, acclaimed theater project, and to being a respected artist inside a special theater company. I'm looking forward to seeing more theater, especially of such a high quality that I leave inspired. I look forward to an immersion that is satisfying but also allots for a satisfying life outside such career pursuits. A well-rounded life, you might say, but one much more weighted in acting pursuits and such creativity than I've had the energy to dedicate in the last couple years given my book.

Hopefully such added pursuits will spell the speedy conclusion of my book, which has been both immensely rewarding and immensely frustrating. I've gone insane in the process of writing it, and recovered from the insanity, and have been able not only to live to tell it, but I've also been able to describe it in rich detail that few can account for with any pragmatic, non-chemical or non-genetic language. I didn't literally go insane, but very close to it: I tend to say I lost my values, but I've been able to recover them, rediscover them, and with such rediscovery understand them even better.

Some of my frustrations include my email list, a feature that hasn't worked consistently for a year, a frustration that has led me to use it less than I'd like to and find valuable. I need to consider whether I can get it working how I want it to and operate it freely or pay for a service. I would like to find a self-hosted program over paying for a service. Something to find!

Overall, I feel really, really good. Some of the goodness involves Matisyahu, Fiona Apple, General Semantics, Cassius Keyser, Thomas Schelling, Devil's Dancebelt, improvisation, plus those positive people in my life with wonderful, loving energy and a beauty whose value I can explain little better than just that it appeals to me.