Last week I had the pleasure of performing in two short plays that were a part of New Ambassadors Theatre Company's Blurring Boundaries: 6 Short Plays Challenging Societal Perception. I was in "Prairie Fire" written and directed by Mandy Murphy (a fantastic young playwright who has been described as a "female Sam Shepard" and "David Mamet without the misogyny") and "Guns and Ammunition" by Janet Bentley and directed by David Adam Gill. They were both such strongly written plays and so very different from each other and it was so much fun to play both of those roles. "Prairie Fire" is about two old friends that are seeing each other for the first time in 15 years at a high school reunion. (And I did have to learn how to properly do shots for this play that is named after hot-sauce-laden-tequila shots!) "Guns and Ammunition" is a spoof on and a sort of love letter to the film noir genre, and all the main players, besides being noir archetypes, also happen to be lesbians. But one of them is "broadening her horizons" by seeing outside gender divisions and falling in love with someone who might be male and gets flak from her cohorts about it...
A picture from "Prairie Fire" is above on the left and I'm the hysterical blonde in the picture from "Guns and Ammunition" above right. (The actors seen here, from left to right, are: Sevrin Anne Mason, me, then me again (as a blonde!), Marie Elena O'Brien, and Elizabeth Jasicki. Sevrin is hidden by Marie Elena, but her shoulder's in that picture too!)
It was a blast performing these two plays and working with this group of people. 

...involves auditioning. A lot. And this is the time of year when regional theatres are casting their seasons and there are just a TON of EPAs (Equity Principal Audtions, which are basically open auditions for Equity members) in NYC right now. I think I've been to 11 so far this year. That's not that many compared to many of my actor friends but I try to target myself to auditions that actually are casting roles that I'd be right for and that I have appropriate material for (meaning the right cut of a song or a role-appropriate monologue), and of course I try to strike a work-life balance that will keep me alive, getting enough sleep, eating well and not hating myself. So maybe I don't go to as many auditions as I could/should, but I have my own personal goals that I work toward. And I am finding I need more downtime for my own personal health and sanity as the years go by. 
Anyway, auditioning is usually fun! And you get to run into actor friends! Today for example I ran into my buddy John Little who was in An Actor's Carol with me (and drove me each week back and forth between NYC and Cape May while we were doing that show), and my pal Nikki Ferry, who I met just going to these EPAs together so many times over the years. And there were many other familiar faces in the holding room today, too. We get to know the faces of our fellow auditioners over the years. And it's pleasant to chat with them. Someone asked me about my purty pink shoes and I started saying how well I got them at Nordstrom Rack so they were a little easier to afford and also that The Shoe Fund helped me out and someone else said, "Oh, I didn't know the Shoe Fund was still around" and I got to tell them that yes, thankfully, it is! The Shoe Fund, for those who don't know, is this wonderful fund wherein actors can get $40 back when they buy a pair of shoes that are under $100 once every two years. (It used to be every year, but I think they're running low on funds!) It was started in 1945 when an actor named Conrad Cantzen bequeathed his estate to the Actors Fund in order to help unemployed actors pay for shoes so they can look good at auditions! Thank you, Conrad. When you are just scraping by, as I am right now, and you desperately need new shoes, $40 is a big help. Learn more about the amazing Shoe Fund here! 
And yeah, an actor's job is really to AUDITION. And you don't expect to get most of the things you go out for. If you get a callback or book something, that's GREAT but that's not the usual! One of my favorite acting teachers used a baseball analogy. (And that teacher is David Nathan Schwartz! Who I just saw playing a dentist with halitosis on an episode of the hilarious I'm Sorry! If you're in LA and you want to take a great improv/acting class, you should definitely check to see if he's teaching one at the moment.) Anyway, the baseball analogy was this: Babe Ruth had the best batting average of all time at .342. But that means that out of 10 times up at bat, he only hit the ball a little over 3 times. And he was the best! So if we're getting 3 callbacks out of every 10 auditions, that's AMAZING! And if you get considerably less than that, even THAT can be considered really good too! Ugh, I think I'm phrasing this all wrong. Schwartzie put it much more succinctly I think. But anyway, that's one way to think positively about auditions. 
So anyhoo, the last few months have been busy with auditions for me, and I've also been challenging myself to write a play again. This time it's for a 10-minute play festival. I was sort of dry on ideas but this particular festival had very particular parameters that sounded like a juicy challenge to me. I think I'm just about done writing the play and am going to submit it soon! Yay me! Being all creative and stuff. Speaking of being creative, if you need inspiration, I cannot recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic enough. It was actually one of the things that inspired me to write Florence the Firefly. Speaking of which, I just submitted Florence to her first play festival! I know I need to do that more (submit it to more places to be considered being produced)...so I will try to get on that! 
Meanwhile I am paying the bills with teaching Music Together classes and babysitting and occasional random odd jobs. (Tomorrow I'm doing a focus group! Fun! I hope.) 
And I'm trying to stay politically informed as much as possible for my health and sanity. I find local politics much easier to swallow and also much easier to make a difference in. NYC just had a special election for Public Advocate--At first I barely knew what that position was, let alone the 17 candidates on the ballot, but I spent HOURS doing research and it was a FASCINATING education in how our city works. And only a few hundred thousand of us New Yorkers turned out to vote. No one can say that our votes didn't make a difference in THAT election. 
Besides the focus group, I'm also teaching a class tomorrow and doing a "Teacher Takeover" day on Instagram. Before today I had only ever posted one thing on Instagram so I am pretty Insta-illiterate. We'll see how that goes! I may not be great at the social meeds but what I lack in technical know-how I hopefully make up for with PASSION. I am PASSIONATE about THE POWER OF PLAY and the POWER OF MUSIC. You can check out my day of Instagram tomorrow on ​https://www.instagram.com/eswsmusictogether/ Hopefully I can make something of it. Please follow ESWS Music Together! Especially if you have young children on the UWS or UES! Or if you know people who do! Or if you just want to see the kinds of things I do for a living. Ok, that was the Life of an Actor for today. Peace!

I've been having a blast living in Cape May, NJ every weekend the past several weeks performing many roles in An Actor's Carol. I've been so busy with the show and exploring Cape May's beaches and shops and history and of course holiday shopping, that I'm only now updating my site about this show. D'oh! I gotta get better at that! Maybe someday, if anyone actually tells me they read this, I will! Anyway, I get to play a ton of characters in this show & it's a lot of fun. We still have two more weekends of performances! Check us out here. OH! Also, we got a positive review in local paper Exit 0. 

On June 13, 2018 I had an informal reading of my very first play (well, the first play that I've written as an adult, anyway), Florence the Firefly. We performed in a rehearsal studio after the teensiest bit of rehearsal in front of a small invited audience of friends. It was the first time I'd heard the whole thing and performed in the whole thing all the way through. And it got good feedback from those watching and those reading. And I think it only requires the bare minimum of adjustments here & there. I think it's a pretty solid play and I think it's funny and sweet and quirky and represents who I am really well. I got all my lovely actors from The Playground Experiment.
And I just want to point out that the wonderful Sharlene Hartman was playing a skunk (Sylvia the skunk, a role I actually wrote with her in mind) and she came dressed in black and white. I love her. I love all the actors I got to come play with me. And I love my play. Stay tuned to see what happens with it next!...

A couple of weeks ago I had the joy of performing in the Warren/St. Marks Community Garden in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was a weekend of site-specific performances curated by Emerie Snyder, and the short piece I was in, "Leafy Dreams", was co-written by Emerie and my old pal Nick Lewis. It involved me listening to the plants and telling the audience what the plants were dreaming about. It was so much fun! And the other pieces that were part of the event were varied and weird and wonderful. They included dance, music, puppetry, a ritual, comedy, and chickens. I loved them all. Especially the chickens! If you're ever in Park Slope, you can go visit them in their coop! Also, on June 2, as part of the garden performances, I got to participate in a NELKEN-Line. (It's part of a dance choreographed by Pina Bausch but it's simple enough that even non-dancers can join in. It's about the four seasons and I didn't know how much fun it would be until I actually participated in it! I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance. Or you can create your own NELKEN-Line event!) Anyway, I am grateful to have spent about a week developing & rehearsing & performing outdoors in the beautiful forest-y garden. 

Ok. Woah. I have not updated this site in waaaay too long. I haven't been inactive, though, really! I've been super busy with stuff. Lots of stuff. Good stuff. Some personal stuff, some survival stuff, some amazing ACTING stuff. But for various reasons I didn't feel the need at the time to post about said stuff. But NOW IS THE TIME! One of the things I've been busy with in the last year or so has been acting in many, many readings as part of this wonderful playwright/actor community/forum called The Playground Experiment, or The PGE for short. You can find out more about PGE here. And see just a small sampling of what I look like in action at the PGE here:

Looks fun, right? You should come check us out sometime! We're currently doing readings at Think Coffee Mercer St on the 2nd and 4th Monday of every month at 7pm.

Another thing I did was, I shot a movie! (The Last Cyclist.) But I figured I wouldn't announce that until the movie got finished and put out somewhere where people could see it. But then I looked at this site and realized it looks like I haven't done anything for three years. So, I'm announcing the movie early. Ta-dah! I was in a movie. I haven't seen the finished product yet, but here's a few stills from it (featuring moi):

So those are just a few of the things I've been doing in the past few years. I'm still acting. Still in New York. Still doin' my thing. Hire me to act for you. I'm awesome. I'll try to update this site more often. Ok. To quote Love Actually, "Enough now. Enough." 

Just added a few pics from Leap of Faith to my "media" page! The show is over but the memories live on! This one is my favorite: 

This sums up the relationship between Jonas and Marla to a T. He's being charming even in jail and she's rolling her eyes at him. (Side note: I had no idea I rolled my eyes at this moment. Oh the fun things you discover when you're caught on camera.)

And when I say the reviews are in, I mean the review, singular, is in. Ha! Small town. But it was an overall positive one. You can read it here. I'm "appealing" as Marla. I figure that one word isn't quite worthy of putting on my "reviews" page, but heck, I'll take it! 
Last night was my first real experience with what it's like performing in the Tent when it's pouring rain. As our music director Heather Luellen said, I have now been baptized into the magic of the Tent. This is how I recounted the experience last night on Facebook: 
"It was the kind of night where a DOWNPOUR starts at a dramatic (and pretty appropriate) moment in your play and you want to acknowledge the rain but you know you can't really because it's actually supposed to rain in the show two songs from now…and then it keeps raining so hard that there's a mist coming in on the stage and you can barely hear your scene partners and your music and you're not sure the audience can hear you, but then when it gets to the part where there's a thunder sound cue and we can all finally act like it's raining, the audience LOSES THEIR MIND and when the lead character says, "The rain came!" they applaud and laugh and LOVE their live theatre in a tent. Yeah. It was that kind of night."
And as fun as that experience was for the audience, and as big of a laugh as we got at the end, I am hoping it doesn't rain that hard again while we're performing! 'Cause that was LOUD, man. But I guess I'll take that over a tornado warning or a lightning storm when you have to stop the show and evacuate the audience! (Because I've heard fun stories about that happening from cast members who have done Tent before.)  
It's been drizzling on and off today so we'll just have to wait and see what tonight will hold. One thing I do love about the outdoor-ness of the Tent: The fireflies floating around backstage!

Tonight Leap of Faith officially opens! I can't say anything about this show without getting teary-eyed (or just outright sobbing). I've loved working with the whole Tent Theatre team, and I've just relished working on this role and singing this music. (So I've got to thank some people I don't personally know: the writers: Alan Menken, Glenn Slater, Janus Cercone and Warren Leight. (If anyone wants to get the word to any of them that we're doing this show out here, and they should happen to stop by, I'll make sure they get a seat. Just sayin'!) And yes I may have stolen a few acting choices from the person who originated Marla on Broadway, Jessica Phillips, but I only steal from the best! Thank you and I hope I get to meet you some day!) Feeling incredibly grateful right now. Ready to go out there and take that leap...

I'm currently in Springfield, Missouri rehearsing for Tent Theatre's production of Leap of Faith. (I'm getting paid to sing Alan Menken songs for a month! If my 10-year-old self could see me now!) And fun fact: I first (and last) worked with our director, David Ollington, almost a full decade ago when he choreographed Seattle Children Theatre's Seussical. (HOW WAS THAT A DECADE AGO??!! Time flies fast!) Anyway, I'm thrilled to be playing Marla, who is a small-town Kansas sheriff, mother of wheelchair-bound Jake, and possible love interest of the charismatic con-artist Jonas. Stay tuned...