Sunday, June 20, 2010

What Daddies Do Best

So I was getting all ready to post pictures from my London show -- Metamorphosis -- and then realized, it's Father's Day! I should do a Father's Day post... a Father's Day flashback post to be precise!


{Daddy and I: same chair, different places}


{Every Saturday morning we would have Daddy play-time.
Sometimes we went to the park... sometimes we played shop
and made up lots of silly characters, like "Mrs. Fall"}



"I believe that you are, and always will be...my little princess."
-Captain Crewe, Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess


And can't forget Grandpa in a Father's Day Post!



Even if he does spend a lot of time lounging around...



HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Oh and one more... sorry Dad, I just could resist ;)




Regards,
Freddie

Monday, June 7, 2010

A garden. I've stolen a garden.

Today I accidentally discovered a beautiful little garden between Avenues A and B.



"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so...And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt the Springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden. That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of pure heavenly goodness the spring came and crowned everything it possibly could into that one place."

-- The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett



{target t-shirt, cardigan and scarf, old navy skirt, second hand belt, keds}

Photobucket

Today was full of a lot of little city adventures - some as a part of my first day of NYC tour-guide training and some, like the garden, on my own. I also learned how to properly pour beer from a tap.

This past weekend was spent enjoying (mostly) lovely weather in the Berkshires where I got to drive my "new" Volvo which will be coming up to school with me in the fall.

Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play was the highlight of last week. It was a truly epic, moving, creative piece. Backstage gives a nice review. I got to see it the evening of the post show discussion and so I also got to meet Ms. Ruhl herself and get all starry eyed and tell her she was my favorite playwright (true) while she signed my playbill ;)

The photos from the show I was in in London (an adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis) also arrived. They are pretty sweet if I do say so myself. Perhaps I will share some soon.

Regards,
Freddie

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Oh hi.

Anyone remember me? No. That's ok. In fact, maybe that's good. It's been a while, but I keep writing blog posts in my head. Funny because they always come out really well when I'm walking down the street or on a bus or plane or train (which I seem to have been doing a lot of lately) but when I sit down to write they're pretty shit. But that's ok. I still want to write. I guess it has something to do with what a wise Brit told me not too long ago. In a BADA masterclass, Kelly (I'm too old to play Goneril but am still a bomb actress) Hunter said: you have to stay creative. This business [acting] can drain you and it's so important that you stay creative, no matter what you do: whether you write, or paint, or sew, stay creative for yourself. And that's what I want to do.

By the way I totally did not pick up all this Britishisms living overseas. I've just been watching too much Skins since I got home. Do you ever find that when you've been reading/watching or whatever something a lot you starting talking, writing and even thinking in their style. Like after reading Shakespeare I start to think in Shakespeare language. And sometimes even in verse after Moliere. Just me? Ok.

Anyway, I've been a lot of places these past few months:

London


Rome


Florence


Venice


Paris


Cambridge


Bruges


Brussels


Ghent


Amsterdam


Antwerp


New York City

Ithaca

Evanston

Chicago


(Eyjafjallajoekull caused an unfortunate bypass of Madrid, Barcelona, and Copenhagen)

And seen a shit-ton of theater (some amazing and some not so):
Twelfth Night
Nation
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(with James Earl Jones)
Licking Wounds
Every Good Boy Deserves Favor
The Misanthrope
(with Keira Knightley)
The Caretaker
Waiting for Godot
(with Sir Ian Mckellen)
Red
Greta Garbo Came to Donegal
The Habit of Art
Jerusalem
(with Mark Rylance)
Dunsinane
A Midsummer Night's Dream
(with Dame Judi Dench)
Money
King Lear
(with Greg Hicks)
Taming of the Flu (at Second City)

{I could expound open these for ages but I kept a journal for that in London and it's late and the list is long. Therefore I will refrain}

But, anyway, I think I've spent a lot of my time, especially since term ended, running away. Yeah, I learned a lot over there, about acting and about myself, and I'm happy to say that I am more confidant and comfortable with who I am, or at least moving in that direction, and I don't know if that would have happened without going abroad, but, since April 15th, I've been facing something terrifying looming ahead of me: an empty summer. I have never in my life had an empty, unplanned summer. There was always summer camp, or internships, or at least a steady babysitting job and some classes all set up for me to do before school was even out. Sure, I would get a little vacation time, but there was always something waiting on the other side. Granted, unlike my many recently graduated friends, I do have school -- one final year -- waiting for me at the end of August, but I have four, now three, empty months of summer in between. Sure in some ways I used the last month productively, but it was always with a clause of going away for the weekend which somehow prevented me from planning anything permenant. I've been away 3 out of 4 weekends so far and am gone this next weekend too. Then I have jury duty... and then, what? I suppose in many ways my summer is filling up as it goes. I have thus far managed a few auditions (which nothing came of of course) and bartending school among plenty of fun times with friends. But to look at my calander and see it almost completely empty beginning in mid-June is frightening. Perhaps because it is giving me a glipse of what things may look like next summer, when it is all for real. Because, if I don't actually find a job or something useful to do with myself this summer, it's not such a big deal afterall. If I don't next summer... then what? I suppose it is good that I am having this realization now. Getting a practice run for the real world. But it still scares me.

Point being, or at least one of them, that one of the ways I want to fill this great void is with creativity. Because I have a need to make things. I have a need to make blank spaces full. On my calander, on a page or computer screen, whatever. Even if it's crap, it's crap that I made. I have these need to feel like when the day is done, I've left something behind. And the only way to do that is to create.

Aside, when you're busy being scared about voids and other things of that matter it sometimes helps to have two new kittens to curl up with and make you feel comfortable and unconditionally loved.

{Darwin and Orwell}

And that's a fact.

So here's to a summer of creativity, kittens, and maybe a few more episodes of Skins every now and then.

Cheers.
Freddie