9.28.2006

untitled

Booked it. Ha! We shoot tomorrow night. Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner! Got a callback for the second audition, but haven't heard anything, so likely don't have it. Still, though, I'm battin' five hundred.

Lost my keys yesterday, on Granville Island, with my bike locked up there. Looked everywhere, turned my backpack upside down, twice, went all around the island twice, etc. Was a bit sad, walking home with my groceries. Got home, keys fell out of some magical bind they'd gotten themselves in somewhere on the outside of my backpack. Weird. Anyway, now back to the island to pick up the bike. I felt crazy when it happened, like...craaaaaaaazy.

I logged on thinking I would have more to say in a blog entry, because I hadn't entered one for so long, but I don't. I have some things I'd like to say, but it's possible that a public forum is not the place. I think I'll go write in my supersecretblog.

x
r.

9.20.2006

Like silly putty.

Mmph. Post Fringe hangover. Pissing pissing with rain, not helpful. But a bit cozy, to be honest. Though I have to go out in it. Remember last week when I had my first ever commercial audition? Did I mention it? No? Well, I did. Two of them in a row, matter of fact. Anyway, the first one has garnered a callback, so that is great. I wanna book it. Bad. Mama needs the dosh, you see. So that's today. Oddly, they're calling me back for two roles other than the one I originally auditioned for. I think that's a good sign. The casting director gave really good feedback to my agent, so that's good, too, cause it means she'll want to see me again for things. My horoscope has been saying (loosely translated from the flaky) that I should prepare for all the things to happen that I have always wanted, but that if I don't remain calm and do the work and instead get too excited I will never be able to reap the rewards. Which is exactly what I thought. So I am doing my best. Does writing about things in your blog count as getting overexcited? Maybe just this once it's ok. I scratch my head. Breathing seems to be very helpful, pretty much all day every day. Have you noticed that?

Did you hear that Fashion Week in Spain has been thrown into chaos because the local government pressured the organizers into banning any models that are too skinny from the runways? Excellent. Ha! They even put a number on it, saying no girls with a body mass index below 18.5. The BMI isn't the best way of measuring, but it's a start. Maybe everyone has finally had to see too many pictures of war torn and starving people and realized that that's what we're asking our women to look like. Ich. Let us be pink and round!

xo
r.

9.14.2006

Good Review

A Little Life "What a great concept: you get to be the studio audience for a talk show with a different special guest every night. In the show I saw, host Riel Hahn interviewed Vancouver actor Marjorie Malpass, with periodic interruptions from performers Jeff Gladstone, Tallulah Winkelman, and Tom Jones, who improvised scenes based on Malpass's memories of her (extraordinary) life. There was a family dinner, a walk through her first student apartment, and a glimpse of Malpass's future. Not every scene was meant to be funny, and the perfomers displayed impressive flexibility, even improvising a show tune. A remarkably intimate, playful and affectionate celebration of one person's life."

-Kathleen Oliver, The Georgia Straight, Sept. 14/06

So come see it, yo.

Thursday, September 14th, 11pm, w/ Jacques Lalonde
Saturday, September 16th, 2:45pm, w/ Alex Dallas
Saturday, September 16th, 11:15pm, w/ Jason Bryden
Sunday, September 17th, 2:45pm, w/ a guest chosen from the audience
Sunday, September 17th, 9:30pm, w/ a very special guest TBA

x
r.

9.08.2006

Fringeyness

We, the Stretch Mouth'd Rascalls, opened our show, "A Little Life", at the Vancouver Fringe Festival last night. It is excellent and new every single time. So much to learn! We have NINE shows left, so there's no excuse, really, for not seeing it if you are in Vancouver, or even near Vancouver. So look slightly to your right and click on "Riel's Upcoming Shows" or "Stretch Mouth'd Rascalls" and find a date and time you'd like to see it, then show up there, get a ticket, come in, watch the show, be amazed!

Smooches,
r.

9.01.2006

Water's boiling!

Phone's back on. In case you were wondering.

Apparently it wasn't not having a phone that was causing all my anxiety this week. I know that because my stomach acids are still in an uproar. My jaw is clenched, my brow furrowed, heartrate up, attention span short, all energy focused inwards. Have noticed myself gripping the arms of chairs as though suffering a rough takeoff in an airplane. I suppose I feel a bit like things are racing towards something, and, how unusual, I feel like there's no brakes and we're about to careen off a cliff or into a brick wall. I have dreams like this sometimes. And we do go off the cliff or into the wall.

It's all ridiculous, of course. I'm anxious because things are going well and the smell of success terrifies me. I mean, I have reasons to worry, but they should not cause me nearly the level of consternation and hand wringing I am experiencing. I will get over this. I will. But just at the moment I am freaking out that I won't live up to my own expectations or anyone else's. All these wonderful people believe in me so much, I don't want to fuck it up. I want to be very sure I'm making the right moves. I think I am, or it wouldn't be so scary. That's the thing, right, to choose the scariest path. Then you know for sure it's what you were meant to do. That's HOW you know what to choose.

So, here I am, following the scariest path, and someone told me today to relax and enjoy it, and I think I will, but not 'til the labour produces some fruit. Possibly as soon as the Rascalls Fringe Show opens...then...then I might relax. Maybe. We'll see. Currently not my strong suit. Tears and gnashing of teeth on an hourly basis. As soon as one person has me calmed down, I ramp up again and someone else has to talk me off the ledge all over again. It gets very real when everyone invests in you and you know that you have to produce returns on their investments. On my own investment. Gnash, gnash.

I still think, hope, that great things are going to happen for me. ARE happening for me. I get more and more scared the closer it gets. My people are telling me good things, reminding me that this is normal artist behaviour. Normal. Ha!

Everywhere I go people look at me with this funny look on their face. They stare, they cock their head questioningly. I told my friend Sparky that yesterday and she looked me dead in the eye and said in all seriousness, "It's because you're famous." I was like, not yet, and she was like, yeah, but they know you're gonna be! That was a pretty nice thing. Then Siobhan said, "Quit being so afraid of success." And I was like, I'm trying, but it's making me puke! What the fuck? I'm sure I'll calm down soon, I'm sure. So weird.

The whole experience of going where I always knew I would kind of takes me out of my body and into kind of a dream like state. In fact, it feels like dreams I've had. Just this sensation like I'm floating up off the ground. I need a tether. Eating and sex are a relief because they both require me to really be in my body, which makes me feel human again, and not ethereal. But the rest of the time...ghost city. I am vaporous. Vaporous? Is that a word? I can't tell, I'm made of steam.