WALES!!! And more...

OK, I know it's not that exciting for most natives of the UK, but this American transplant was thrilled to head to Wales for the long weekend! My friend and classmate, Miranda, is from Swansea (a beautiful town in Wales, also where Catherine Zeta-Jones is from) and she brought Olivia and me along for a visit! It was gorgeous and the residents of Wales have the best/funniest accents ever! I had never seen anything like it. Her family was so lovely and generous and we just had a jolly nice time! Here are some pics from the trip...
1. Olivia, Miranda & I in the adorable seafront town called, wait for it - The Mumbles!
2. The seaside cliffs of the Gower Peninsula - what? Just like New Jersey.
3. Olivia, Me & Miranda on the cliffs!




So, that was bank holiday weekend. The week before was a really interesting week for me at school. We had a very cool guy named Martin Gooch come in and teach us all about acting for tele (yes, TV). We crammed so much into one week and all feel a bit more clued into what it means and what it takes to work on camera. We filmed scenes from a General Hospital/ER-esque show called Doctors, learned all about cameras, angles, marks, lingo, castings, etc. It was awesome. And Martin was fly. Good times.

This past week saw our first read-thru of The Laramie Project. It is such a powerful piece and I am so excited to really get into it. We present our research findings tomorrow (we were split into pairs to teach the rest of the cast about a certain aspect dealing with the play) and we also get our castings. There are 65 roles and 16 actors - so cool, huh? We each will play multiple parts, obviously, and I am really looking forward to that.

I saw a play at the National yesterday. I was somewhat bored by it but it had some interesting moments. It was historical and a bit dry for my taste, but hey, you can't win 'em all. It was called The Reporter. For those of you who may know about him, the man that it centered around was a BBC reporter called James Mossman.

In other news...some of you know about this already, but it's now been made official. A director that I worked with on my last show in Seattle, Cynthia White, offered me the role of a lifetime. She offered me Ophelia in Hamlet at the Southwest Shakespeare Festival in Odessa, Texas this summer. It's an amazing opportunity and one that I was so honored to receive. I had to clear it with the University of Essex because if I wanted to do this show, I would miss the rehearsal and performance of my MA graduation project. This was huge because this part of how I would receive my Masters degree. It was a classic case of artists v. academics. My head of year was thrilled for me and said that East 15 trains you to go out and get professional work and we should just be able to say 'yes, go and do it!' However, if any of you have ever dealt with university politics, you know it's never that easy. So, after submitting a packet of paperwork, including forms, a personal statement of why this was important to me, literature from the theatre, a letter from my director, her resume, etc., the university finally agreed to let me use Ophelia as my own graduation project! Yay! So, my thesis, my portfolio, all of it, will be based on my rehearsal process and performance of Ophelia. So great. Whew! Texas in August has always been my dream. I will be there from the 28th of July through the 22nd of September. Wow.

So, that's the deal ladies and gents. Before I go, I have to wish happy birthdays to my beautiful niece Dana, who turned 5 on the 5th of May and to Val, my step mama, for the 12th of May. Oh, and Happy Mom's Day to all you moms out there! :)