Oops. Every once in a while seven months go by and I realize, "I haven't been keeping my website updated!" So, here goes:
In the last half year, I've done several readings of different scenes at the PGE's Virtual Volumes, as is my beloved habit, and I've also appeared in two more live readings with UP Theater Company! In August, we did a new adaptation of Lysistrata by Kirby Fields, heavily influenced by the overturning of Roe. It was a really fun afternoon in Isham Park, conveniently only a hop, skip and a jump away from my apartment! 

And last night, at Buunni Coffee in Inwood, which is only a hop and a skip away from my apartment (no jumping required!), I performed in an evening of monologues called "My Body, No Choice". UP was one of over 20 theater companies around the country to present these same monologues in the two weeks leading up to the midterms, originally commissioned and produced by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. It was a very moving evening. All the monologues were in response to the overturning of Roe. I was honored to participate and read the words of Mary Hall Surface. I hope that more people will be able to hear these monologues, and I hope that they will lead to change for the better (eventually). 

So that's a little of what I've been up to lately on the acting front! On the activist front, I've done a bit of textbanking with my friends at Indivisible, and wrote over a hundred letters for Vote Forward, trying to get people to turn out for the midterms. We went backwards in time in this country this year. But it's not hopeless. Your vote matters. Your participation matters. Get out there and VOTE.

Recently (Saturday February 19, 2022, to be exact), I participated in my first in-person reading in quite a while! The play was Lost Sock Laundry by Ivan Faute. The reading was directed by Kirby Fields. It's a great play and I hope it has more life. I'd love to see a full production of this. And it was very cool to get to perform with Up Theater Company for the first time. Up is a professional theater company based in Northern Manhattan (my neighborhood!), and this reading was at Fort Washington Collegiate Church, which is an easy walk from my apartment! It was a good night. 

This Thursday, Oct 28 at 8pm Eastern, I'll be acting in a live YouTube reading of the first season of the web series This Encounter May Now Begin by my fellow PlayGrounder & New Ambassador, Perryn Pomatto. Facebook Invitation/Info here. It's super funny and I hope it gets produced! Come watch our zany antics! 

I have once again neglected updating this blog for several months! So much has happened since my last entry in April. I got vaccinated against COVID-19, huzzah! I am still trying to do my part in fighting the virus by limiting my social activities and wearing a mask indoors and all that, but it's still a great relief to be vaccinated. Please do your part too! Get vaccinated and WEAR A MASK!!!
In July, I was one of the playwrights in the PGE's 16th First Reads Festival and got a Zoom reading of my play Honeybees. It was great and very helpful to get some feedback & insights on my play. And now you can read the current draft on New Play Exchange! Here's a picture of me with my lovely cast for the reading:

And  the same week we were rehearsing for the reading of Honeybees, I was filming a commercial! It was super fun, I just got to lay on a couch and pop bubblewrap! And get paid to do that! You can watch the Roadway Moving commercial here. 

The last couple of weeks have been full of creative goodness: I organized an audio recording of my play, Florence the Firefly, with my dream cast and my amazingly talented brother working as sound engineer/editor. It will be many months before it's all edited together, but it's on its way! And it was a fun night. (Even though we were all recording remotely from our own apartments/bedrooms/closets...)

Then I took an Intimacy Captain workshop led by Ann James from Intimacy Coordinators of Color, and am now certified to be an Intimacy Captain, whenever we get back into spaces to do shows again! I highly recommend this workshop for anyone in the theater (especially relevant to actors & SMs who may become Intimacy Captains on shows, but informative for directors and other stage professionals too). I was educated and inspired by this workshop. 
More info here: ​https://intimacydirectorsofcolor.com/ 

Then I was honored to play the title role in Erin Moughon's Gertrude in the Dramatists Guild's Friday Night Footlights reading series (again, from my closet, but still). This is a juicy play that I would really love to get to do once we can do in-person theater again! 

And tonight I'm performing in a scene at the PGE, playing...myself! Ha! Matthew Menendez wrote me into his first play and I couldn't be more excited and proud! 

It's been a fun couple of weeks! 

Happy to report that The Last Cyclist has won two more awards at NYC's Chain Film Festival: Best Ensemble (woo hoo!) and an Original Ideas Award for our writer Naomi Patz! I am so glad that this film/play is receiving some of the attention it deserves and I am so proud to have been a part of this ensemble! We had a Zoom reunion the other week; it was great fun. 

My monologue was one of 25 chosen out of about 200 submitted for the PGE's 2nd Annual Faces of America Monologue Festival. Inspired by Julia Butterfly Hill and the novel The Overstory by Richard Powers, my monologue is called "Tree Sitter" and was absolutely beautifully & movingly performed by actor Mackie Raymond. You can watch it here. All the monologues are great! But mine is at approximately the 39 minute mark. 
I presented the next 15ish minutes of my Honeybees play at PGE's Volume 130, being blessed with terrific actors once again. I need to keep working on this play so I can give all these actors a full through-line with their characters! You can watch this work-in-progress here. My scene is around the 54 minute mark. 
And finally, The Last Cyclist will be streaming as part of Chain Film Festival Dec 4-10, (virtual tickets here) and The Jewish Renaissance gave us a sweet review here! 
​Good stuff!! 

Last night I had the great honor to perform in an online reading of Wallace Shawn's The Designated Mourner. That reading can still be seen on New Ambassador's YouTube page here. It's a very dark play of course (and has sadly never been more relevant in this country than now), but it was an absolute joy to rehearse & perform. We only had four hours total of rehearsal which can't even really scrape the surface when it comes to the writing of Wallace Shawn, but it was enough to remind me how very much I love to act, to work on a script, to delve into great writing & just play within the structure of the words. Ironically perhaps, this dystopian play reminded me to take time for joy. Because acting is the thing that brings me the most joy in all the world and too often I shove it aside for things I think are more important. Well, arguably, they are more important (like volunteering to get out the Blue vote, so that what happens to the country in The Designated Mourner doesn't happen here, or just doing the things I need to do to pay the bills)...but. But. Joy. Joy makes life worth living, right? I love Congresswoman Ayana Pressley's quote, "Joy is a necessary act of resistance." I am so grateful to Paul Pakler for inviting me to play and to New Ambassadors for producing the evening, and that I chose to take a little  time to do the thing that brings me the most joy. 

Thrilled to have some good news during these anxiety-ridden times. The Last Cyclist continues to play the film festival circuit and recently won "Best Cast Performance" at the Melech Film Festival in Tel Aviv! See the announcement here. And look who's prominently featured in the image for their announcement (spoiler alert, it's me):

And much more about The Last Cyclist here. 

In other news, I recently wrote and presented the next 15-ish minutes of my in-process honeybees play at PGE's Volume 124. You can watch that scene here! My scene starts at about the 42 minute mark, a auspicious number if ever there was one! (And actually, one of the characters in the play is called "Worker 42".) It's the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Anyway, very grateful for the PGE community for their support and my lovely cast of actors for this particular scene! And I have a feeling I probably won't finish writing the play until I've signed up to present at another Volume because external deadlines are extremely helpful! 

Take care, everyone. These are scary, sad times. But I do think some good will come out of it. I think some good is already coming out of it. All the consciousness-awakening. Meanwhile, I am working to Get Out the VOTE!!!! Please vote and vote blue, even if that blue is not as blue as you want it to be. And encourage others to vote. And tell your senators to extend the PUA. Artists and others are literally going hungry right now when our government could so easily help out. And tell your governors to CANCEL RENT.

Love, Peace, Understanding, and All That Jazz, 
​Kirsten