TONIGHT!

My fiance is going to be on Conan this evening - June 29th at 11pm (10pm C)... you should check it out. :)

Oh Ira Glass

I don't know if I ever told you, but back when I lived in NYC (that seems like such a trite statement) the girls of Bushwick Shakes and I met Ira Glass. At a bar.  

We were there before going to a party and we were multi-tasking - drinking and having a company meeting.  We were drinking white wine, had our moleskins out and were sitting in the back of The West Side Tavern.  We were chatting about shows and marketing and new ideas, I don't even remember seeing a table of 4 sit down next to us.  Next thing I know, there's this really tall man in thick rimmed glasses with a thick head of dark hair towering over my friend Tiffany and I.  He squats down next to us so that he could be eye level with us and says, "I'm sorry to interrupt you ladies, but what are you doing working at a bar?"  We then launch into the whole "we're an all female Shakespeare company working on our next show (and as I write this, it must have been Julius Caesar, eh hem, in which I played Cassius...Awesome good time).  He asks a bunch of questions, was really nice and friendly and an all around cool guy.  He asks what our names are, we tell him, he says, "I'm Ira."  Cool, great, see you later...and back to his table he went.

I never put two and two together until later, he was still sitting next to us, we were still working and he was literally 10 feet behind me when at the bar Lexi and I are ordering another glass of wine and I say (outloud) "Holy shit....that's Ira Glass. Like NPR Ira Glass." Lexi was shocked that a) I didn't know immediatly and b) that I was actually saying these things that he might hear.  Hello nerd alter!  I cannot tell you how excited I was.

I will never know if he heard me but I do know that when I get home, I went online and figured out how to get in touch with him.  I drafted an email re-intorducing myself and the company and said that we would love to have him and his team come to the show.  I sent a press release, everything.  I was even in touch with one of his production guys who said they were trying to figure out if they'd be in NYC during the run of our show. 

Alas, he wasn't able to come to the show...but he at least knew I was in one and I got to meet him.  I also found this today and its a good reminder.

opening night cookies!!

cookies. what better than chocolate chip cookies on opening night. everyone gets their own little bunch. i havent started baking yet and the current brain debate is: make them a 'normal' cookie shape OR make like chocolate chip cookie bars. sounds sort of incredible...i decided to try this out with molasses instead of granulated sugar (mainly cause i have a lot of molasses that is just sitting in the pantry but also, b.c it reduces the sweetness factor).  with a little research on that handy-dandy-world-wide-web, i learned that you a) should not replace more than half the sugar content in a recipe w. molasses, b) you have to add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda for every cup of molasses you add to the recipe, c) you use 1 1/3 cup molasses for every cup of sugar (*note: i replaced the granulated sugar b.c thats the more processed of the two sugars - brown and granulated) and d) reduce the liquid in the recipe by 5 tablespoons. (there's no liquid in the recipe so...i'm ignoring that step.) Ali (from Gimme Some Oven) suggests cooling the dough for 20/30 min to make sure your cookies dont go flat. on it!

i also have an affinity to dark chocolate and when you're making gifts for people...why not splurge a little. at whole foods i found sirius chocolate. its pure icelandic chocolate. i purchased 14.1 oz of their 70% extra bitter (damn...) i also borrowed this picture from someones website b.c i couldn't make sense of the actual companies website. doesnt this look amazing? Found here.

the packaging is even awesome.

so...i am taking my first batch out and they fell and look like chocolate on chocolate cookies...verdict will be the taste - i guess. verdict: they taste like molasses cookies w. a hint (slight) of chocolate. SO - if you dont like molasses cookies, don't make them my way. :)

Dad’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
(adapted from Gimme Some Oven)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup + 2 Tbsp. butter, slightly softened
• 1 1/3 cup molasses
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 cups dark chocolate chips (mini, regular, or chocolate chunks!)

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Beat the sugars and butters together until smooth. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and baking soda. Stir together the flour and salt, then mix them into the batter. Mix in the chocolate chips.  Drop by large spoonfuls onto prepared cookie sheets.

Bake for about 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until they look cakey.

heat

tonight (today, yesterday, this week) was one of those hot, sticky, gross new york nights. we're talking really, really hot and sweaty. i had rehearsal at the old stone house in a very hot, humid room...regardless it was a fun rehearsal and we had two audience members who stuck through the heat. 

what was great about tonight, not counting the cab we had to take because the subway shut down unexpectedly (im not being insincere) was the way everyone on my walk home was reacting to the heat. sure, fire hydrants gushing water is such a waste but when there are adults and teenagers running through it b.c thats the only way they can get cool. or there's a couple who while riding their bikes took a turn they weren't expecting and were now soaked and giggling. or every window is open and people are leaning out with fans in their hands hoping to catch a cool breeze from anywhere. there's something magical about that. there's something about it that says, only in new york. 

thanks heat. i hear you're back for another doozie tomorrow.

book of liz opens next weekend!

Yay! my show opens next weekend - if you are around....or in the 'hood....you should come!

The Book of Liz

by The Talent Family, Amy Sedaris  & David Sedaris
Directed by David A. Miller
Stage Managed by Nicholas Chacon

Piper Theatre Productions

John P. McEneny, Artistic Director

Saturday, July 10 at 8:30 pm
Sunday, July 11 at 8:30 pm
Saturday, July 17 at 8:30 pm
Sunday, July 18 at 8:30 pm
Saturday, July 24 at 8:30 pm
Sunday, July 25 at 8:30 pm

All performances are free and OUTDOORS at

The Old Stone House, Park Slope, Brooklyn

Subway: F/G/R to 4th Ave & 9th St or R to Union

things and stuff and things

so. this post is a shameless plug for none other than...ME! as you know, i act (duh). and as you also know, i'm part of the bushwick shakespeare repertory, which is an all-female collaborative focusing on giving women the opportunity to play roles from the Classics not traditionally given to women. which, as i can attest to, if awesome. and as you probably know too, cause i talk about it all the time, this past year of plays has been: romeo & juliet (the nurse) to as you like it (touchstone) to the cherry orchard (anya) to julius caesar (cassius and then some). needless to say it was a lot of classical theatre and lots of shakespeare. nobody blamed me for needing a break from shakespeare and boy was i desperate for something contemporary...

well, folks out there in blog world. i did it! i just got cast in a wonderfully silly production of the book of liz.  i am very excited about this show, mainly because its written by david and amy sedaris but also because it will be a good challenge. then, come to find out, i'm shooting this weekend with RADAR and a very cool guerrilla artist and i am doing background work on Rescue Me next week (will keep you posted on the airing). 

must say, i am pleasantly surprised and quite giddily happy.

xo

Reviews! NY Theatre Reviews!

we got 2 (!) for julius caesar.  its so exciting. and they both are so detailed and indepth.  i appreciate the time both of these women took to come see our show and the thought they put into their reviews! thank you thank you thank you!

THEASY.COM review

NYTHEATRE.COM review

one a day

day seven : morning light

day six : duh.

day five : bits of me

day four : window pain

geeking out over shakespeare

my shakes co just recently held auditions for an all female version of Julius Caesar which we will mount in Feb. (the 18 - 28th to be exact!). i am thrilled to be working on this project. when going into the audition, i was unsure of what the outcome, i only knew i wanted to be in the show.

i realized i was geeking out over shakespeare the night before when i was preparing all the sides for the audition w. my lexicon out and two different versions of the text. i love shakespeare. he feels so much more powerful than a lot of the shows i see or read now. i dont know if its that the language is so much more elevated or the context and content seems so much more heavy then what we discuss today. i mean, people die in shakespeare, come on people. i've loved the classics since college. i took a restoration comedy class in college and it was one of my favorite courses, reading all those texts and learning all that history. i have always been blow away by the language and the precision with which the authors of the time wrote. the fact that the word "china" has multiple meanings depending on the context and the fact that you can skew the meaning by how you use it and where you use it is so fascinating. maybe i should've been a linguist instead of an actress.

i'm playing cassius amongst a cast of 7 other talented women and our director and a.d. are fabulous....i am excited for this challenge. i know its going to be a lot of hard work, but well worth it... !

happy holidays!

the artist is C. Carey Cloud

the plays the thing

Stuff doing (and done): Tonight opens the second week of the Bushwick Shakespeare Repertory's run of As You Like It. And, boy are we excited!

The first week of the show was so great. It was a long week with a lot of hard work, some construction site snooping to find bits and pieces of our set, some neighborhood tramping to get our posters hung in local businesses and a morning full of bagels, coffee and doughnuts for a photo shoot before our Sunday matinee. All in all, we had really great audiences, good solid shows and an awesome time hanging out as a cast and crew post show. We've even gotten some great comments on Time Out New York's listing of our show! (Check it: here)

I'm looking forward to discovering new things and motivations for my character and as a cast as a whole. I imagine we'll all come back refreshed and recharged for some more hard/creative work.

Come see the show! (No one reads this, but on the off chance...)

weekend doings

Stuff done: Friday, my theatre company had a fundraiser and I must say, I was pretty impressed. We had a great party, awesome performers, yummy food, cold pbr and an amazing raffle. I was so proud of the way we all came together to make it happen.

(Shout out to unscene.com who posted our event. They have a pretty cool flier they put out on a regular basis and we were able to contact tons of folks for donations through the unscene: brooklyn. You should totally check it out; grab one if you see one. Shop and eat local!)

We had great donations for our raffle from places like monkeytown, northeast kingdom (who have AMAZING food, by the way), china grill, the ifpda print fair, casey fatchett, and diana pappas to name a few!

All in all, a huge success!

Also - I did a workshop with the NY neo-futurists; eff-ing amazing. I fell in love with the neo-futurists when I saw the Chicago crew perform too much light makes the baby go blind back in 2007 at the DC Fringe Festival. It literally almost blew my mind. They did this piece that was focused on our "War on Terrorism" and how we don't hear about those that have been wounded and have suffered. They simply had 4 people onstage with a bunch of papers with names on them. The names were of those wounded in battle but not talked about. They just kept flipping through hundreds of names, in silence; while one woman read a monologue and when she was done she left. But they kept flipping until they were done and then they left the stage. The papers with the names stayed on stage the entire rest of the show so we would remember.

Talk about working in a workshop. We did some exercises, then we wrote and created a piece and performed it and combined our work with someone else's before the class was done. It was so invigorating. It was fun. It was challenging. It was inspiring. Cannot wait until Saturday! Yee-haw.