Unscripted

I feel like I've been living in a thick cloud; a cloud of stress, schedules, and failed plans. I've been trudging through this cloud sending emails, mailing resumes, and doing homework that I had procrastinating like crazy on. A couple of weekends ago, Megan and I traveled to Castleton to catch up with Jake and Kate and see their Spring show Chicago. We had a great time, and the weather was so beautiful it was almost like nothing could go wrong.

Also, I was wearing my piano key suspenders for the win.

That was when everything started to go crazy. It started when the job I had been lining up this summer, the one I held last summer that allowed me to stay in Burlington for free, completely fell through because the 18 days I'm going to be in Europe this summer on Eurotheatre are too much to take off. Suddenly, I felt lost, and entirely without a plan. I can't live without a plan. What was I going to do without a job for the summer? Where was I going to get money to apply to grad school? So many questions were racing through my head about what this summer is going to look like, and what next year is going to be like especially since Megan got accepted to the University of New Hampshire for graduate school. It's entirely too much change for me to handle. I'M NOT THAT GOOD AT IMPROVISATION! WHAT DO I DO WITHOUT A SCRIPT???

Then Megan took me out on a drive and a walk around downtown Montpelier, just to talk, and to bitch about how crazy life is and what I'm doing with it. That was when I realized...I have so many more skills than I give myself credit for, and there is no reason why I can't use them. Why can't I get a job doing what I love? It's so not impossible, despite what people may say about theatre majors. Theatre, movement, creating, performing, writing, teaching...that's what I'm good at, it's probably all I'm good at, so why am I not using it to my advantage? Why don't I write my own script? So that night, I emailed a bunch of different theatres, and I received a few replies back, and I sent out my resumes, and you know what? I'm going for an interview next week.

I'm not saying that everything's all good now, because it's really not. Rehearsals for the senior directed one-act I'm starring in are going so well, but I'm still super nervous. This will be the biggest role I've had in a show at UVM, and it's thrilling but at the same time terrifying. I'm also worried about setting everything up for next year going into my senior year of college (yikes!) like being a new Program Director in the Living/Learning residences, some opportunities in the works, and my honors thesis project I'm going to be working on that I seem to be churning out ideas about everyday...and what's going to happen after next year when I have to look for another new school. I'm still so stressed about the logistics of this summer, but there are a few things I do know: I'm going to Europe in June (YES!!!), I'm going to be taking a summer English class to take some of the load off myself next year, and I'm going to have some kind of job somewhere that some sort of amount of money (I don't care how much...it's something) doing what I LOVE and what I'm good at. Because I'm better than being stuck in a rut, and I'm better than the same old scripts that have been written for me before.

I'm adding in a PLOT TWIST.

Peace out!

Ryan Performs in Places: Mama Shirley

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to a character I created when I was in Lyric's Hairspray this past fall. Her name is Mama Shirley. She is the sassy mama of the nicest kid Tammy, and she is very proud of her baby. This just goes to show that I'm willing to do anything for theatre. Anything.

So without further or do, some exclusive backstage footage from Hairspray:

Commitment.

Peace out!

The Night I Was a Secret Agent

This is how my life works:

I like making the minute details, the little things and situations, the finite moments, into exciting adventures and fun situations. It makes life a little more fun, and it keeps my imagination rolling. Maybe it's an exercise in acting, but either way I enjoy it.

Take tonight for instance: I wanted to go use the computer at the college in Lville after hours. I was on a quest for wi-fi, a miraculous thing that always alludes me when I'm home on break.

The American version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a surprisingly very good movie.  America actually didn't ruin it, even if it had a couple of flaws. Rooney Mara deserves some kind of award for her performance as Lisbeth. Anyway, I totally felt like a secret agent. This badass.

The engine shudders into silence as I pull the key out of the ignition. The amber lights of the parking lot cast an eerie hue over the empty lot which ripples with snow, and my shadow as I slowly make my way towards the dark building is elongated in the evening light. I sling my bag over my shoulder as I pass into the entryway, the heels of my boots clicking on the pavement. Through the glass door I can see the faint fluorescent lighting in the distant hallway. I cautiously swing the door open and enter. The entry hall is silent---too silent---my breath echoes in reverberating gasps along the high ceiling. I gingerly walk across the glistening, newly waxed floor towards the end of the entry hall. Below the single fluorescent overhead light sits a staircase descending to the basement and across from that stands a grated door. In an instant I decide on the door---the basement would be too much effort---and pull on the grate. It slides open to reveal a small room, longer than it is wide, filled with black chairs and a small wooden table. I rush to a large chair in the corner of the room and pull out my computer just as all the fluorescent light switches off. I am plunged into darkness, only augmented by the faint glow of the moon as it passes through the row of windows behind me. Quickly, I flip my computer open and stare at the tiny icon in the bottom right hand corner as it turns from a red "X" to five white bars in a row. Target acquired.

Being a dork makes life so much more fun. Going back to Btown next week! 

Peace out!

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!