Ryan Performs in Places: Little Voice

If I wanted to, I could stand and breathe in the sunny air, letting it fill my lungs with the cool ripple of the sheer water's surface. I could open my body to the space and sing so loud it would fill the whole bay with notes and words and soul so it would fill the whole bay all the way to the mountains in the distance and reverberate to the heavens. But for now I'm a tiny voice sitting on the rocks, waiting for an opportunity.

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!

Ryan Performs in Places: Witches and Leaves

The forest smelt of spice and moisture settled on fallen leaves. The air filled with the murky dusk which settled like an ominous force upon the earth. All around were the noises of nature created a perfect harmony with the song which drifted on the evening wind. Drop, drop...a gentle rain cried upon the layer of mud and leaves, and over in the tallest tree sat a lone mourning dove whose throat gurgled in sadness. The birch trees showed their thick, white skins, radiating the reflected light from the cloudy atmosphere. In an act of surrender, the trees reached their branches to the sky. Along their bases drifted the misty lights of several fireflies in a vain attempt to illuminate the dusk.

From the darkness, the witches emerged to play. Their tiny feet pranced and trampled atop the matted forest floor, dancing between and around the trees, smacking the trunks with their calloused and withered hands. The slaps extended in the cold air to reverberate above the dark arms of the sky. It was a gathering, a nightly meeting consisting of numerous witches whose cries of joy and celebration filled the air. Their skin was several shades of green and brown, and they were covered in warts. Their grey hair flew up in fading locks around the brims of their pointed, crumpled black hats.

All at once, their singing grew into a chorus which shrieked over all the trees and the hillocks and the noises of the forest. Each yellowed smile of the witches joined into the jubilee, making the ruckus into a party. They danced closer to a dilapidated cabin which was overgrown in underbrush and forestation. It was very small, maybe no bigger than a closet or a doghouse, but it had a tiny window and a shingled roof which made it almost homey. The witches moved closer, sniffing the air and embracing the dusk. Each holding the hands of her nearest sister, the witches formed a circle around the cabin.

One of the hags stepped forward and grasped into the inner blackness of the cabin. With a grunt and wrench of her poor old arms, the witch pulled an enormous black cauldron from the depths of the cabin. Together, the witches brought the cauldron into a nearby clearing as the sky grew darker. One of the sisters bent down beneath the cauldron and exhaled upon the molding leaves upon the ground. Slowly the leaves dried and sparked so that the fire burned heavily to heat the cauldron.

As the firestarter stepped back in to the circle, another came forward placed her hands above the cauldron. A pool of green liquid began to form at the base of the cauldron, bubbling and boiling upwards until in was level with the brim. The witches cheered as the fireflies circled overhead, dancing and mingling the sparks from the fire so that they seemed one and the same. Bluish-green smoke rose of the hot liquid and curled to meet the tree branches. The witches were pleased with their work, and raised their arms in appreciation of the night, of life, and of creation. With a sweep of their arms, all of it disappeared. They vanished, and all that was left were the trees and the noises of the night.

Peace out!

My Everything Hurts

...and within a period of two days, I was packed up and moved out of my wonderful single in UHeights to the tiny double in Wills, but it's not all that bad. Somehow I found a way to take the lofted bed and fit Megan's loveseat under it. It created quite the batcave effect, which has been a pretty awesome addition to the room so far. I'm just waiting this week out now until Joe arrives on Sunday and school starts.

I'm so completely ready for school to start. Everything is in order, schedules have been made, books have been bought (In 14 different orders on Amazon as well as one from UVM.), and supplies have been organized. Megan and I just talked about how exciting it's going to be to pack up our backpacks Sunday night before  the first day of school. I could not be more pumped and ready to go. I'm also super excited about being a TA and doing Hairspray rehearsals.

These all came today.

I actually had quite the stressful day right before getting completely moved out and going home for the weekend. It began when I went to the UVM Residential Life office, like I was told to do, and waited for ten minutes at the front desk until someone came out into the lobby to ask me if anyone had been helping me. Since no one was, the woman went back in and got me the key to my room. Once I was packed up, I moved a bunch (basically everything I owned) to Wills. When I went to lock the door, however, the key wouldn't turn in the lock. After swearing profusely, I ran to the front desk of my new dorm where the office manager was just about to take off for the day. She got me the right key all the while wondering why ResLife gave me the wrong one and where they got it. Needless to say that key worked.

Then, when I tried to turn my computer (Bertha) on to see if there was wireless in my new dorm, the screen fizzled out and went dark. I screamed and raced to the Computer Depot in the Davis Center with my baby clutched in my arms. There they hooked her up to another computer and determined that the problem was probably physical, so I had to send it in to the company. After talking with a thickly accented Indian customer service representative for an hour, we determined that there was definitely something wrong but my warranty had run out. It was cheaper to buy another computer.

Moment of silence for Bertha...........


Now enter Marcus, my new computer, who is very sleek and runs with Windows 7. I'm hoping Marcus will serve me well. This is my first blog post with him, and it's working quite well. Thank you, Costco! (Yes, we got my new computer at Costco.)


This weekend I also got the chance to go see Chase's directorial genius in Hairspray at the Haskell Opera House. I really missed that place from last summer, and I especially missed Lissy (who was amazing in the show), Chase (who needs a Broadway stage, stat), and Kat (who continues to astound me with her stage managing abilities). It was great to see everyone and take in an awesome show.

It was weird to watch the show and then come back to Burlington to start rehearsing it. But rehearse we did. Matt and I have been carpooling to rehearsals and totally rocking them. Hope you can all make it to the show! There will be links up soon over in the right sidebar. ------------------->


In the end: my back, my neck, my arms, my abs, and my legs are killing me. The dances are hard and I was totally drenched in sweat on Sunday but it's totally worth it. I missed working this hard for theatre so much. I felt so broken from lack of theatre (yet again) after having it the whole time last summer, and having this opportunity to perform on the big stage at the Flynn is absolutely amazing. For people like me, and Matt, and Chase, and Lissy, and Kat, anything is worth it for theatre.


And sweat is worth it.


Here are some more pictures from Megan and my drive yesterday to the Champlain Islands. It was a lot of fun and we found some Vermont nut free chocolates!

Another highlight from this weekend:





Peace out!

Ryan Performs in Places: Blackbird

Hey ya'll! I'm starting a new series called Ryan Performs in Places. I'm basically going to go to places and perform. It could be singing, or dancing, or acting, or whatever I feel like and it could be anywhere...I'm like that kid who dances in Apple stores except not really. I will post my favorites on Youtube. Anyway, for my first performance, I sang The Beatles' "Blackbird" under the tree outside University Heights. Give me a little bit of credit, okay this is my first time posting a video like this. I was a tid bit nervous...Enjoy!

Peace out!

Megan's Birthday Blizzard

It rolled in like a drunken rager on a Saturday night in Burlington. It was The Great Blizzard of March 2011. Right at the beginning of spring break last week, a giant snowstorm engulfed Vermont, sending four feet of snow our way. It was also Megan's 21st birthday on Monday, the day the sky pooped a million pounds of snow. As Megan put it, Mother Nature totally stole her thunder.

The house was almost buried in snow.

I had to trudge through all of this to get to the deck to shovel it. I sunk  into it up to my hip. Awesome.

My Monday began at five in the morning when my dad woke me up to help him dig his car out of the driveway so he could get to work. Apparently when my mom tried to go to work at four in the morning, her car got stuck at the end of the driveway so my dad went out and snow blowed the driveway out while my mom walked in the crap to work. After over half an hour, we still couldn't get his car out of the driveway so he dug out my mom's car and took that to work.

Yeah, this storm was that intense.

There were some silver linings to this giant storm, however. One of which was that Megan got a new (used) car for her birthday!

Look at that, she's totally a proud owner. Megan named her Space because it totally looks like a space car. Two doors with a secret third door in the back. And a sunroof. Score.

Also, Megan's mom and gram took us on a road trip to go shopping and to Foxwoods resort and casino. We had some fun on the car ride down:

I think what stunned me the most about Foxwoods was how it was in the middle of nowhere. It was especially interesting when the GPS told us to drive the car off the freeway in order to get there. We went to the casino and ate at Fudrucker's (a name which is very easy to turn into an induendo) and ate fantastic gelato (WAY better than normal ice cream). Then Megan and I had a fun swim in the pool. Then Megan's mom found a knife under the sofa bed in our room and we went to bed. Totally normal.

There was a shower cap in the room. Sexy!

In the morning we traveled to Mohegan Sun for an amazing, and the MOST EPIC BREAKFAST BUFFET ever. I had a cute little Asian lady make me an omlette.

"What you want on your omlette hun?!?!"

"I'll have bacon, tomato, and onion."

"Hokay! How much cheese you want!? Little or a lot?!?!"

It was a fun trip, and no one lost too much money, so I would say it was successful. Now we're back in Burlington, and Space was able to make the trip back. Time for some more excellent adventures in Btown and with the new member of the family, Space the space car! Happy Birthday Megan!

Peace out!

It's The Little Things

and then we went on a little trip to Toys 'R Us...

It's Barbie's black friends!

Slutty Barbie waits for Ken to come home...

Megan is a Stormtrooper.

Beyblades! Jake I used to love to play with these!

These stuffed animals sang different pitches when you pressed them. and their mouths moved. Weird.

I wanna drive this around!

The Biebs loves to be played with by small children...

It's the small things that entertain us. Happy Birthday to me! (Tomorrow)

Peace out!