Up With The Sun

It's 6:45am Toronto time.....and for the life of me, I can't sleep! Why fight it then? So here I am in front of the old lap top in my faded "Degrassi High" t-shirt - a favorite for sleeping. Oh yeah - I just realised, it's my birthday today!!! Maybe it's good that I'm up so early then - I can make the most of the ENTIRE day.....

There having been five months since my last post - there is surprisingly little to tell....

Hilights include attending the 2005 Gemini Awards, dressing up and rubbing elbows with the "cream" of Canada's television industry.( I was in fact a "nominee" in the category of "Best Ensemble in a Comedy Series" for the Joe Blow Show - which was a pilot for an improv/soap/musical - type thing directed by Linda Cash. Unfortunately it was never picked up - but still nominated. Only in Canada, I guess....) The entire evening was extremely inspiring actually. I was surprised and delighted to realise that I knew many, many of the people who were there. I was also thrilled to have been on the nominee list with two of my oldest friends: Roman Danylo and Peter Oldring! Who ever would have thought on a Sunday night, 17 years ago, while the three of us waited in the vauum at the old Loose Moose Theatre company, that in some distant future we would be attending the Geminis on the same night - as nominees!!!??? It was fun to play dress up and be part of a gala evening. Bruce and I ended up sitting in the nominees row behind Sonja Smitts - so we were on camera a lot - much to the delight of friends and family out West. I came away from the whole evening feeling proud to be Canadian and feeling that, "Maybe it IS possible to stay in this country and have a career." It certainly seemed a lot closer that night.......

Of course, none of those feelings last forever and I now find myself "unemployed" and wondering, like every non-working actor in the world, "...if I'll EVER work again?!" What a yo-yo this crazy business this is! I'm convinced that a huge part of "making it" is simply staying IN, against all common sense and mental health indicators, and stubbornly outlasting everyone else you started with!

My unemployment has freed up my time in order to tackle some of the items on my "Goals" list though! I just finished my first ever, "Improv Boot Camp" last night! 6 actors, 10 hours of improv class and then BOOM!!! - one improv show for invited guests! They were GREAT!!!! What brave souls to jump in like that. The audience was warm and generous and the show was wonderful, charming, humble and lovely. Folks had a hard time buying that, before last night, most of them had never improvised before. I will be doing more of those for sure!

I'm also taking a solo-theatre class with the fabulous Tracey Erin Smith. TERROR!!!! It's so hard to face your fears...:-( But, it's a good idea for the development of one's character.....so. By the end of the class we will each perform 5 minutes from our "one person" show. I'm finally getting past some of my blocks, like: "Hmmm....I have nothing to say.", or " I have a few things to talk about - but maybe people will hate me afterwards, or think I'm ridiculous...". How tedious that the voices that plagued us in Junior High are still riding our backs so many years later! I have been writing about my Mom's death - which has been difficult and good....I'll see how is goes in class tonight. There's something fitting to me about talking about my Mom's death on the day of my birth - a connection of shared experience: she experienced my birth, and I her death.....

Steps have been taken towards the dream of "someday we'll have a theatre"! Bruce and I purchased a lighting board and 10 theatre lights!!! Not that I had ANY IDEA what I was buying when the opportunity came up! Luckily a few of our talented technician friends have come over and given us some "Lighting 101" time. We had real theatre lighting for the show last night and it was a WONDERFUL feeling! We also have a riser....and 50 chairs...OH - and a set of flats that we kept from the Life Game at World Stage Festival....So - we're building a theatre from the inside out. For now we have the simple accoutrements....someday a building! ( if only lotto Super 7 would stop playing hard to get!)

I expect to experience a "Crucifixion" at some point in the next year - it's only fitting, this being my "Christ year".....which means I also have some sort of re-birth to look forward to. It's nice to look back at my December posting and realise that I am indeed moving FORWARD in my life! When you're in the day to day, you don't always see, or feel the progress. I have to work on that so it's not always a retrospective! Finding myself unemployed always leads me to question my worth in the world.....Maybe this year I'll let some of that go and accept that my value as a person has nothing to do with who does, or doesn't hire me!!! It's a good theory.....

;-)