Reading

I know I have asked this before....but when did "staged readings" become the standard?

Readings.... I love readings. 

You know the sitting around a living room, or sitting at a table, or doing it in theater even...at a music stand...but a reading.  You know...a reading is a chance for a writer to hear what they have or for a director or theater to hear it out loud to see if it's a piece that works.

What a reading is NOT...is a way to do a "production" without giving anything to the actors.

When you throw production elements into a reading...you give the audience the assumption that this IS a production.  But yet, the actors are given either no or very little direction.  So who loses in this concept of a reading...as usual..the people who are the face of the said reading...the actors.


We are left floundering....audience expecting a full performance....with out the investment of time and energy in the actor's part of the process.

It's why I always ask, and probably why no one asks me to do readings anymore, "Is this a REAL reading? Is this in a living room, at stands?"


I've had 2 reading of the piece Rod and I are working on...and we made it CRYSTAL CLEAR that they were readings...the second time, we even told the audience that we were trying out some of the physical stuff, but that it was still....A READING.....

Ok.  Sorry....I know I am yelling...but please stop using actors like this.....sigh....Rant over.

Weird

2 weird things....

Had yet another weird audition experience...I am baffled by auditioning for things that require a lot of physical movement....when everything is fixed...mark, camera....I think I get even more frozen physically than in a regular audition.  You know it's that feeling like "I know I am supposed to be moving here...but I can't."

Baffling.

And yes, I have done audition workshops...but they always just tell you to ask if you can move...but mostly there is no room to do that. 

So...yeah..it's weird and funny...and well...that's just how it is.  So dang...I applaud all you actors who nail these kinds of auditions....

I have a game this weekend...Aztec...should be a shit show for throwing, but my goals are to remember what my goals are right now....which are not throwing based.  So there ego...take a fucking hike.

I have had a weird year throwing....2 lifetime personal records. Sheaf and Braemar of all things. Came close to a PR on Heavy Weight too....Not been training much...health scare the first half of the year and then the incredible gift that came my way with the show.  So, I think those throws were just fantastic flukes! And paying attention to tiny details and well.....not getting obsessed with numbers. 

Ok....there is something I probably should not write about, but I am going to just a tiny bit.

So....if you have PTSD type triggers...here's your warning to quit reading.


Ok?

Ok....

I had a bad bad bad, no good very bad day yesterday.  I heard some second hand news that sent me into a tail spin, the likes of which I haven't (thankfully) experienced in quite sometime.  It surprised me just how visceral it was....and it was hard to recognize that I lived in that state for so very long.

I learned a couple of things...firstly...yes, even this passes.  Secondly....ah....I use food to find some sort of peace and more than that...food brings me back into the now...so it wasn't THAT terrible a coping device.  Thirdly....the fear really is a liar.

The spinning stories are just that stories....about myself...about the past....about what might happen....about all the things that will NEVER happen.

I backed up and realized that some of the things that I was spinning out about, I have people around me who will make sure those things never happen....that and really...it is just fear talking.  He doesn't know me anymore and I don't know him. 

The last thing I learned is about my "personal bubble."  I have never thought of mine as keeping people at a huge distance, but sometimes my personal bubble really does extend out over at LEAST 2 states...if not 3....

And now?  It's getting closer to my audition reward....Dead Lifts!