Sunday, January 14, 2007

The Great Salty Roadtrip if '07, or SALTY! The Bus & Truck

The Salty Bitch may be coming to a town near you!

At the end of October last year, I left a job I enjoyed quite a bit in order to return to my practically abandoned theatre career. The Riverside Theatre in Vero Beach, Florida (the place where I cut my teeth as an Equity actor several years ago, where I worked frequently for a while, and where I had the opportunity to play many interesting parts) called me out of the blue and invited me to come play the Ghost of Christmas Past in their new musical version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. A blessed phone call and an exciting opportunity! So I extricated myself from my “steady” job and made the decision not to return there when I was done with my five-week-long acting gig. This was a huge step down the Boho path for me, and it felt really good to make that decision. While I was in Florida, in an effort to drum up more theatre work and continue living la vie boheme, I set up auditions at various regional theatres around the state. I had a great deal of momentum and excitement behind my pursuit of this new work, and I felt poised to take some more steps forward in my acting career.

Then in early December all that great forward momentum came to a crashing halt. During the last week of CHRISTMAS CAROL, my father died suddenly and unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. I found myself having to leave the show abruptly in the middle of the night to travel to Canada in the middle of the winter. The auditions had to be cancelled. There in the great frozen North my poor decimated family and I began a long process of mourning, grieving and eventual (we’re hoping) healing.

And in the depths of my mourning, an idea took root and began to grow. I took the work I had been doing for myself in Florida and extrapolated it to a larger scale. I conceived a huge roadtrip, traveling from Florida home to New York City and stopping to audition at as many regional theatres along the way as would have me. As the grieving process continued, I started work on this trip. The energy and momentum I had put behind my earlier endeavor came flooding back in and the roadtrip began to take concrete form. It felt great to be throwing myself behind my acting work this way, to be doing everything I could to try to create opportunities for myself. Tres Salty! Tres Boho!

Over the next few weeks you can tune in here to get updates on where I'm spreadin' the salt around.

2 comments:

Alison Mesrop said...

Waiter, there's some salt in this bitch.

jae_ant said...

Hey baby! So glad you decided to salty up the Eastern seaboard. Love the blog. Your vie boheme is tres inspiring...cya sweet pea!Salty J