Toys and Tea

My mind seems blank, frozen over like the ground outside covered in a light crust of icy snow. It's completely burnt out, shriveled up, and blank...wiped clean from an entire semester's worth of work. My brain has been stuffed to capacity, left to revel in its exhaustion and information overload. I look forward to this holiday season to make sense of everything my brain has encompassed over the past semester, and apply all of it to my life. I wait by the window, staring at the sky hoping to see at least a single snowflake. I wait for the ground to be full of fresh powder, not this icy shell that makes the Earth seem dark and dreary. Once my mind recovers, it will snow again, and the lights will reflect color and radiance in beams of droplets and icy webs. It's almost that time of year.

And it began a couple of weekends ago with the opening of The Toys Take Over Christmas which I worked on as one of the lighting designers this year. It was a little sad to be seeing the show in a different angle, all I could think about was last year and all the fun I had performing in the show, but then I really got into seeing it in a visual way and had just as much fun with Toys. It was a fabulous weekend after the extremely stressful week that came before it with all the work that went in to designing those gosh darn lights. Who knew it was so stressful to turn a light on and make it work? Not I sir, not I. I have a much greater appreciation of the art of lighting. My parents took my niece Iris to the show and she absolutely loved it. Granted, she's one year old but she was laughing during the whole show which is a very good thing.

That weekend also came with the Hairspray reunion production party which was held at this club overlooking the lake. It was a pretty gorgeous venue, and it was amazing to see the whole gang again. I still can't believe almost four months out of this semester was spent on working on Hairspray. It was an amazing, rewarding, and yet tiring experience that was so worth it. I've been telling everyone that when I look back on this semester all I can see is bronchitis (Why did that have to happen on top of everything else??) and cans of hairspray. I loved working with those people, and I'm proud of all of the work I've put in during the course of this semester.

It was a weekend full of surprises and candycanes. I started the weekend with a packet of green tea in my pocket, thinking I'd use it at some point during the day, but I ended up being so busy that the packet of green tea stayed in my pocket all weekend. I found it late Sunday night when I emptied my pockets and pulled out this wrinkled green tea packet, saturated and dirty.

Now as the semester draws to an end, I feel like I am that tea bag, saturated with knowledge and experience and dirty from hours of labor. It's time for a break. It's time for a very merry Christmas.

We exchanged presents last night at the Casa de Meg Ashley Ryan last night:

Oh! And check out this amazing book I've discovered! It's called The Terrible Underpants. It's a pretty special book about a girl who has some nasty underpants that she doesn't want to wear because all the kids laugh at her when she hangs upside down on the monkey bars and they can see her underpants. Also she has a pet wombat. Duh...

Pick this up at your local library. I don't know why this isn't on Oprah's book club list yet...

Hope you have a very happy start to your holiday season!

Peace out!

Occupy My Life

As we walked up the sidewalk, Megan and I hoped and prayed that the Marche (one of the very few late night dining options at UVM) would be open so there might be a chance at snagging some Ben and Jerry's for the night. Just as we came close, I could see through the windows that the lights in the Marche seemed pretty dark, and one of the door cages was down. The placed was closed. It had to be closed. But maybe there was a chance it was open. It was probably closed. But it has to be open. Ben and Jerry's depends on it! I ran up to the door in the harried hope that maybe...just maybe a miracle would happen and the door would magically be open just so I could get my hands on some creamy, sweet, and delicious Ben and Jerry's ice cream to relieve my stress. But when I pulled on the handle, the door wouldn't budge. I wept. I literally started crying as we walked back to the car, and then I thought to myself:

I'm crying right now because the Marche was closed so I couldn't get Ben and Jerry's. What is wrong with me?

Then I looked at my life, and looked at my choices, and realized that there was a lot wrong with me. Things have been pretty hectic in my camp with school and as one of the lighting designers with UVM's The Toys Take Over Christmas. It's been crazy, and there's been quite a lot of crying the past three days. The good news is the show is this weekend, so all the work we've been putting in will come to a head. Maybe soon I'll get a chance to finally occupy my life instead of being a bystander to all of the stress going on around me.


More good news: I got Ben and Jerry's tonight and the smell of frosty Christmas is in the air. Happy December!

My Christmas tradition: this song on repeat. 'Tis the season!


Peace out!

(It's) Hairspray!

Good evening! I've been on a bit of a hiatus from the blogosphere lately because things have been extremely busy here in Burly World. This past weekend was the wonderfully amazing run of Lyric Theatre's Hairspray which I was so lucky to be a part of. I was extremely excited to finally be performing the show after months of rehearsals, and especially to be performing on the Flynn Theatre stage in downtown Btown, but now that show is over I'm really missing the cast and those same people I've seen everyday for the past four months. Like I said, though, we had an amazing run. Our audiences were fantastic and the show was awesome.

Here's a little story from opening night:

I had two major quick costume changes in the show. They were super fast so I had a dresser backstage to help me. She helped me get my pants on while changing my shoes, and this time I was especially nervous because it was opening night. Major pressure. I get the pants on and I'm just zipping up the fly as my dresser pulls out my hot pink neckerchief. I lift my head just as she pulls it from her pocket and BAM! her fist meets my eye. My dresser has successfully punched me in the eye.

I start swearing profusely (in my head of course just in case my microphone was on), and I clutched my eye.

"I'm so sorry!" my dresser pleads. Bless her heart. She didn't mean to.


"It's okay..." I say as the music for the song starts. I have to come on extremely soon.


And this is how I know I'm a true theatre kid. The first thing I thought of when I got punched was not "OH MY GOD MY EYE COULD BE SERIOUSLY INJURED!" but rather it was:


"OH MY GOD MY EYE IS WATERING! MY MAKEUP IS GOING TO RUN!"


I rushed to one of my cast mates and asked her if my makeup was running. Thankfully it wasn't, and the rest of the show went off without a hitch.

I decided that my momma name in the show was Shirley. She had a pretty well developed character even though she was only on stage for about two minutes.

Opening night concluded with an awesome opening night party with tons of food and drink and wonderful company. The weekend ended with strike which we all helped out with, and while it was long it eventually got to the point where I was dancing with a mop to "Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing on the bare Flynn stage. Pretty successful.

Thanks to everyone who came out to see Hairspray! You made our show a tremendous success!

Peace out!

Ryan Performs in Places: Hairspray

I was in a flash mob this weekend to promote Lyric Theatre's Hairspray which opens next weekend on November 10th. I am in the show, and the cast and crew is super talented. This is going to be an awesome production especially since we've been rehearsing since August.

Here's a promotional video done by local Vermont newspaper Seven Days:



Hope you can make it to the show! See you there.

Peace out!

November 1st Is Christmastime, Okay?

Our Halloween looked a little something like this:

JESS! 

The Doctor is partyin'

Too cute!

The Doctor and Velma are on the case...

And now it's November 1st which means it's Christmastime. Obviously.

Peace out!