Unscripted - A Blog for Actors - Backstage

2008 Sucked?? Where Was I?

This is my last post of the year, and I'm writing it before rushing out to a New Year's Eve party that begins in 2 minutes (7PM is waaay too early anyway, IMHO).  As 2008 draws to a close, I'm hearing a lot more negativity than I usually do this time of year.  A lot of "Good RIDDANCE, 2008!"  Despite the dip (okay the plunge) in the economy, I can't say it was a bad year.  At all.  Where have I been?

My Sordid Love Affair : Manhattan

In between the traffic, the graffitied buildings characteristic to a pre-Manhattan Queens, and outer traces of smog... I can spot the Empire State building, nestled in the skyline.  One of my favorite feelings in the world, hands down, is the one I get en route to New York City after being away for an extended amount of time.  Or any amount of time, really.  Glimpsing her spires again as my luggage-toting Yellow begins to crest the highest point on the Queensborough Bridge... I'm home.

Before too long I'll get teary eyed at random Manhattan-ness as we pass the delis, the bodegas, the signs that read "24 Hour Delivery".  Damn the emotionally-opening up Meisner training.  My entire family thinks I'm weird.

The first thing I'm going to do?  Throw on some non-Floridian clothing (i.e. black, leather, and severe), trot down to SoHo and shack up in a coffee shop with a novel.  I can't face work just yet... I have to reinstate the love affair I have with the city first.  An experience of which cannot be more sordid than cafe and good literature. 

Ah.  Good to be home. 

Smiling in the three hour traffic jam, Ashley Avis

New Year, Same Old Crap (But With Hopefully Some New, Better Stuff On It's Way, Too).

A friend just forwarded me an audition notice from the director of a new show that he wants to build from scratch - with the actors in tow.  Which just spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.  Unless you're a big, accomplished producer and you have a list of known talent and some idea of what you want to create (and at the very least know if you plan to pay instead of meekly offering up the dim hope that "pay may be involved"), then throwing a bunch of directionless strangers into a show that has no real structure yet might work.  Otherwise... I foresee a lot of pissed off actors and a show that either A) never gets put up or, B) a really bad show that should never have got put up.

The Law of Inertia

I am such a slug right now.  I feel like I should be putting together my career plans for 2009, but I have been sleeping like it's a full-time job instead.  I don't know if I just really need it, or if I'm turning into an unmotivated, lazy, bum, but I have been just lying around unless i absolutely HAVE to do something.  I'm giving myself a pass because it's still the holiday season, but I can't carry this into the new year... can I? 

Goodbye, Despotic Reality : A Song with R.E.M...?

\ Whewwww... posts on six glasses of wine are always delightful.  It's the "New Years" evening with my family, as tomorrow I leave on a plane from 85 degree, uber-sunny St. Petersburg, Florida to return to the -3 less-feasibly-islandy-of-all-the-islands Manhattan.  Utterly delightful. 

I'm thrilled at a few different return-to-work prospects at the moment.  Something occurred literally the day before I left on a very awakening cruise (of which I shall pen about at a point other than which I am slightly intoxicated, as it warrants far more than unintelligible Pinot-inspired blubberings).  An old producer of mine, whom I'd worked with back when I was a mere seventeen "slash" eighteen and in pursuit of all things musical... emailed me out of the blue on December 17th. 

"Hey, Ashley... doing this CD with R.E.M. and Journey, you don't have a song dealing with [very touchy psychological topic] do you?"

A Beary Good Bathroom Break

This last week the Spring Awakening kids and I headed to Rockefeller center to see the big Christmas tree and to help BroadwayWorld.com celebrate the Christmas season.  Once we got done taping our holiday greetings for the website, we still had a couple hours before we all needed to start getting ready for the show. Super Swing Morgan, Super Star Alexandra, and Super Duper Me decided we should head to Virgin Mega Stores to get a couple of last minute Christmas presents.  We got some hot chocolate and started towards Time Square when Morgan suddenly stopped us, ”Wait a minute!” he shouted as he stepped in front of Alexandra and I.  “I have an idea…Does anyone have to...go to the bathroom?”  Morgan’s eyes were lit up in a way I’ve never seen before.

Silent Nights...

I've been home for 5 days now - with little to do except catch a cold and pass it to the rest of my family (you're welcome and Merry Christmas).  There was 1 bit of acting work I meant to bring home during my vacation - 2 comedic monologues I wanted to firm up - but I left them on my work PC.  Dammit.  So much of my time has been spent baking and cooking and watching movies on TV.  But it has been educational.

A Zest-Renewing Plot : 2009

What a Floridian evening.  Open windows, Beethoven-inspired crickets, and far too many palmtrees to stare listlessly at as I ponder all sorts of ponder-worthy things.  Two thousand flippin' nine... I'm ninja-determined to make this year a big one.  Yes.  Ninja determined.   Can you imagine an uninspired, lackadaisical ninja?  I certainly can't.

I know we all make resolutions that we consistently break, thus I'm eschewing the make a list / subsequent loudly voiced faux-promises thing.  However, I am going to try to up the ante of pursuit about 127% this coming year... namely, getting the "marketing package" thing straightened out, potentially looking at a stronger agent, and most of all... networking. 

I don't think this post warrants a long, drawn out stream of consciousness riddled with various random descriptions of food (my indulgent usual), and I fear my head is stuffed with far too many other things to produce anything terribly illuminating, either.  So I'll wander off to find chocolate with this...

Pinteresque

 Well, I'm back from Christmas in Philadelphia, and the trip was pretty durn good: I finally found the time to obsessively watch every episode of Mad Men I possibly could.  All Jon Hamm drooling aside, the holidays were good (as I hope yours were too!)  But, before I go on to babble about myself as per usual, let's take a moment and eulogize Harold Pinter, the ever-revolutionary playwright and inventor of the modern pause, who died this past week.  Sometimes, it's all too easy to forget revered great writers like Pinter, or Beckett, Ibsen or Chekhov were ever really living, breathing humans, capable of pain and happiness like the rest of us mortals.  An ironic thought, since that was the topic they all wrote about.  

Pause.  I wish I could write like Pinter.  Then maybe I wouldn't be killing myself over writing a full draft of my scene for the play I'm in. 

Chop, Chop!

What's a girl to do when she's struggling to change her life for years and years, only nothing has really happened?  She wakes up every day and mails and auditions and takes classes and auditions and writes and draws and works and auditions... and nothing has changed, really.  She wants it to change and is actually working very, very hard towards making it change... but nothing is changing...  What's a girl to do?