chance of a lifetime?

So let me start out this post by saying I am sorry I am not very good at this. Or, really I mean that I'm sorry I don't really have too much to say as far as things going on in the outside world are concerned. I've got a lot going on here in Amanda-land.

First of all, I decided to go with "Anything Goes"- because I was cast as Bonnie! She is the gangster sidekick and has some great comedic bits and two fun songs. For "Annie Get Your Gun," I was cast as Dolly, which funnily enough I played in 8th grade!

me in 8th grade as Dolly in "Annie Get Your Gun" with Katie Ottman

Anyway, it was a hard decision, but I'm really happy that I chose "Anything Goes." And we're about three weeks into rehearsal! It's going to be awesome. If you want to donate to help us produce this show, please check out our fundraiser!

So what's the big chance of a lifetime, you ask?
Well, let me start with some backstory.

In high school drama, not a day went by without a story from Mr. Bromley. And one person he used to always tell stories about was a former student named Michael Minarik. Apparently he was Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof" and he didn't look at the right light when he was talking to God, and then his mother slapped him or something like that. He went on from Oakton to JMU, and then a few years in got cast in the national tour of a concert featuring Andrew Lloyd Webber works such as "Phantom of the Opera."

Michael came back to our school my junior year since he was in town playing Signature Theatre's "The Happy Time," which we went on a field trip to see. He also came to a rehearsal of "Into the Woods," our musical that year, and I think he saw the show during its run because he told us he had remembered seeing some of us onstage while we were at the talkback with him.

Since I was not sure where I wanted to go to school by my senior year when the academic acceptances were rolling in but the musical theatre acceptances were not, Ms. Gelinas put me in touch with Michael and he talked to me about JMU and eventually his advice along with a look at finances, the program and the campus helped me decide to go there. SO happy I did.

JMaddy and I are pretty tight.

I kept in contact with him this whole past year, at first thanking him about JMU advice and then to ask about a potential internship in production over the summer (he is now a producer as well as an actor).

Then I saw a casting call posted on Playbill for "Fat Camp the Musical," the new show he is producing. The call was for Equity overweight teens for the chorus of the workshop cast. Now, I'm not Equity, but I thought I would shoot him an email and see if there was any way I could audition. He got back to me right away and said that since I was not Equity, I couldn't get an appointment, but if I wanted to take the chance, I could wait around at the audition center and if they had time after the appointments, they would audition me!

So I'm going up on Wednesday of next week to the city and a blog of my adventures (of waiting in the AEA audition center for hours) will definitely be posted. :) wish me luck!

P.S. I saw Toy Story 3 today. It was awesome.

car rides

The worst thing that could ever happen while you're driving is the moment when you suddenly realize you have to pee. Not only do you have to pee, but you're on your way to Arlington which you know will be at least an hour in rush hour traffic. And you can't get over to the correct lane so you're having to turn yourself around a million times because of selfish people who can't let anyone into the other lane, even when they're not trying to take the exit. And by the time you get to the middle school where your rehearsal is being held, you have been holding a full bladder for about an hour and ten minutes, and the guy in front of you can't decide which side of the parking lot to choose.

In other news, the reason I was driving to Arlington (again) was because I am officially in the cast of Anything Goes! Yay :)
However, I still do not know what part I will be playing because we are still in a callbacks type of process... and I find out if I got into Annie Get Your Gun on Friday as well... so it will be decision time. Want to weigh in? Send me a comment.

P.S. The best part of driving is when it only takes you 30 min at 9pm to drive the same distance that took an hour and ten minutes in rush hour. :)

adventures of the first week of june.

So I began my travels this week with memorial day on Monday (MAY 31). Alla (my sister) had this concert on the next Friday and she needed a gold dress for her a capella solo in "Fame". But could she just borrow our cousin Tina's gold cami and wear shorts and call it a day? Nope. She needed to find a dress. Her original idea was to spray paint her clothing gold. That's fantastic, Alla. Brilliant. This kid is graduating from TJ next year and yet has very little common sense. So my grandma took us to JoAnn's, and we found this bathing-suit-y bright bronze-y gold material and a pattern. This dress took, count them, SEVEN hours to make. They give them more time on Project Runway. My grandma is basically the best seamstress ever. We were telling her that she literally will be wearing this dress for 2 minutes and it barely has to be functional. But my grandma wanted it to be perfect. The hardest part was turning the thin straps to the right side of the fabric (since you sew them inside out). That took an hour. It was extremely frustrating. We were using all these tools made especially for that- plastic and wooden dowels and tubes. It was a mess. But the dress looks like it's right off a designer rack. Also while at JoAnn's, Alla and I both bought patterns and silky fabric to make skirts so that is going to be my new summer project. I have been sewing since elementary school, but I have never done much more than repair already existing clothes or sew straps and ribbons onto ballet shoes. And one time I made a pillow. Ooh and I made the Jo doll for the collection of Little Women themed dolls I pulled together in 3rd grade (dorky fact about me #1). So this will be my first attempt at actual human clothing. Will post pics along the way!

Tuesday JUNE 1 was my birthday!!!! I went out to lunch with my mama at Red Robin, but since Alla was at rehearsal and Sam had to work, we still have not celebrated it! I WANT ICE CREAM CAKEEEEEE. WITH CANDLESSSSS. Oh and my dad scheduled himself to be an umpire for a high school baseball or softball game. cool.

Thursday JUNE 3 was the date of my second community theatre audition of the summer. Anything Goes with Encore in Arlington. Arlington is a pain in the ass to get to. It's supposedly 30 minutes away, but trying to be there by 7pm means leaving my house at 5:45pm, latest. Crazy. So anyway I get there ready with my song- I was going to sing "I Get A Kick Out of You" because it is awesome for my voice and fun to act. But I get there and learn that for our entire audition, we are going to sing the first line of the "Anything Goes" refrain and sing the second line on "bum." Which was kind of weird. But it was mostly high school and young college auditioning, so I thought maybe they did that just to help out the younger ones of the bunch. Anyway, that went really well and then we learned the first verse of "Friendship" so they could hear us harmonize. Love that song too. I recently got a version of it with Ethel Merman and Judy Garland singing a whole medley of Anything Goes songs that starts with "Friendship" and it is one of my favorites. And then after that we danced to the same part of "Anything Goes" and it was a standard audition dance- meant to see how you move. I got a call the second I walked into my front door (an hour later) that I was called back.

Friday JUNE 4 I was supposed to go to Alla's spring chorus concert (that the dress was for) but instead I went to callbacks for Anything Goes. The weird thing about these callbacks was that the callbacks were just going to determine who was cast in the ensemble. The actual roles are going to be decided next week by Friday. So if I get a call tonight (Sunday) then I will know I have been cast but I won't know what part until after the first week of "rehearsal" which will be a week of putting people in and out of the roles to find the cast. So callbacks day 1 started off with some acting exercises and improv. We played this game where one person draws the first line of the scene from a box and the second person draws the last line and has to steer the scene to end it with that line. Then we danced. I LOVED this dance. It was a really cute sequence to "It's De-Lovely" and we had partners. I had to be the boy because I was taller than my partner. Which makes me wonder if they are casting girls as lead/ supporting guys in the show because there were only four guys at the callbacks and I think one that couldn't make it. The weirdest part about it was that I seemed to be one of the most experienced at dance, which used to happen all the time at Alliance auditions but since high school and JMU, I am usually not the best dancer in the room. I was picking up the steps like I already knew them, which made the dance that much more fun! We'll see what happens if I get a call and go to a week of callbacks!

Saturday JUNE 5 was a loooong day. First, I went to audition number 3- Annie Get Your Gun for City of Fairfax Theatre Company. Which thankfully is only 15 minutes away. Until last night, I had not checked the website since Monday. Between Monday and Friday, they had changed the show (again) from Annie to Annie Get Your Gun. Which is actually pretty great because that means even more of a chance of getting the belty part because it's closer to my age. I have already been in Annie Get Your Gun in 8th grade. I played Dolly, the villain who tries to stop Annie from marrying Frank. It was a great character, but I sang in the opening song and the finale simply because a) that's how it's written and b) because it wouldn't have made sense for me to be singing in any of the chorus numbers like "I've Got the Sun in the Morning" because of my villain status. Hopefully I will be up for Annie this time around. I sang "I Cain't Say No" and did the Darlene monologue from The Diviners, both of which came from shows JMU did this year (I just noticed). It went pretty well and I should know by Friday whether I'm in or not. The director said they usually try not to do callbacks if they don't need to, so it's like the opposite of Encore!

Later, I went to see Julia and Emma at Tyson's Corner. Michelle was supposed to come down from PA as well, but she got sick and couldn't make it. Little did I know, Dan, Stephen, Glen and Linn were also going to come!! So it was a really fun time and I'm glad all of us fit into that weird booth. The waiters forgot about us and so they gave our real table to someone else. which was not cool, but they gave us the 6 person booth right there, so I guess it was good we didn't have more waiting to do. Also, Emma's camera is crazy ridiculous and made our faces purple:



Highlights of the dinner include: Emma and Glen trying to take an emo picture but laughing through it; Julia and I discussing our plaid bras and where we buy them; the story of the strawberry and how it got from the cheesecake to the end of the chocolate road on a really long plate; oh! and the tool-y kid that was wearing the same pink striped polo as Dan, except without the cast and with a backwards hat. He must have been like 14 or 15. Oh and his shirt was probably the same size as Dan's, so it went down to his thighs. Good times, good times. Can't wait for tomorrow/today because it is almost 2 AM.

Amanda

P.S. I still have not gotten any birthday cake. nor have there been candles.