Sunday, October 17, 2010

9 Show Week Down, Charlie is in town

10-17-2010

Hey Everyone,

The last 3 weeks of dracula are all 9 show weeks and we just finished the first one. Hoooray! It's crazy to think about it ending, its been going on for so long. It hit me today that I've been performing it for a month. Over 30 performances. Crazy. So we're headed out to Knoch Bar to celebrate the beginning of the end. :)

CHARLIE IS IN TOWN

Charlie, is Will's brother, and as far as I can tell from the hour Ive hung out with him, just as great. He's here until Tuesday so I'm gona try to spend a bunch of time with him and Will. Will talks about him all the time and I felt like I kind of already knew him when he showed up today. It was kind of great. So, I'm stoked that he's here. Will is elated. They're best friends and its really neat to see that.

No word on Christmas Carol yet - couple more days I guess.

At any rate - thats whats up!

Talk to you all soon,

Oh - we went camping last sunday night and monday  - and it was great - More to come on that

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Exhausted - Life Is At Our Fingertips

October 16th, 2010

I've been up till 3 am rehearsing a mock audition scene all week. Kerri Alexander is my partner and we don't have time to rehearse except for after both the shows are done at night. So, by the time we meet up and start working, its like 12:30, 1, and then I crash at like 3 am and get up at 7. Too many days in a row haah. We just had a back to back 2 show day where we had 1 hour between shows and I'm exhausted.
Nate, Sarah, and Cory were here this weekend and when I got home tonight, they had left me a note on the brown paper that is taped up all over my room saying how proud of me they are and how much they missed me and I just started crying when I saw it.

I've been really trying to let myself experience my emotions when they come along instead of just pushing them back for the sake of it. So I just stared at it and said to myself, "I miss you too, and thank you so much for coming to see me." and cried for a little bit. I looked around at my room, full of Solo Mio work generation, realized why I was so tired (because I've been working my ass off on this scene all week and because I just did a two show day at one of the Mainstay regional theaters in the States) and just said, "I love my friends. And I love my life. This is my life."

We auditioned for Christmas Carol 2 days ago and I was one of the 2 or 3 guys to get called back for Young Scrooge and I nailed the audition. I mean when I walked out of that room I wanted to do a jumping, praying mantis kick because I felt so damn good about it. So, we haven't heard anything yet, but If I don't get it, it will be alright, because it wont be because I didn't show them I could do it.
I don't ever want to leave an audition without that feeling, because it's ultimately freeing.

Will's brother Charlie is coming into town for the week and I can't wait to meet him, because if he's even 1/3 as wonderful as Will, Its gona get crazy great around this apartment complex.

My dad and I were talking the other day and he said that he and mom decided that this apprenticeship is just an extension of college, with all the partying and learning you could handle in 9 months. I think thats pretty accurate. It's like being back at college, but its more than that. And maybe its just where I am in this part of my life, but I'm going to be different when I walk out of here. Not just in theater, not just my career, but this place, these people, this atmosphere is changing me and changing how I look at things. Like, saying its ok, and lovely to cry when you feel it coming on. And realizing if you want something, all you have to do is start doing it - Life is at my fingertips.

Life, is at all of our fingertips.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Another day at the office

Hey everyone,

Just got a new phone! Yay!
I literally danced the other one to death. By that, I mean, it was in my pocket while I was dancing at a bar, and it broke. :( But now I have this new slidy/flippy one thats purdy neat. So, no biggy.
Nothin crazy is happening right now. This weekend, 26 of us are all going camping in a 3 bedroom cabin at Red River Gorge, however.

So, we're all kind of briting at the grind to get out there. Well, I am at least haha.

We're officially halfway through this enormous 59 show run of Dracula. We have a dance party on stage every friday night before the show and the song was, Livin on a Prayer by Bonjovi. So there were about 20 people jumping up and down yelling, "OH! WE'RE HALF WAY THERE OH OH LIVIN' ON A PRAYER" haha. It was great.

I'm seeing The Mystery of Irma Vep tonight. Its Actor's next mainstage production. It sounds crazy funny. Its a 2 person show, and there are like 15+ characters.

Thats all for now!
Ryan

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Luther at Dracula

Hey all yall,

I just wanted to post this picture of Luther after the show at Dracula!

He doesn't stand a chance.

Waffle House, a Road Trip Without a Map, and a Pumpkin Patch, and an Apple Orchard all in 36 hours.

10-4-10

Ok. So, the last 36 hours of my life have been incredible. Like, absolutely perfect - These past hours, they're what dreams are made of.
So - Last night we get done with Dracula and I'm sitting there with Will in the green room and Havalah and Emily walk in and offer to take us home, and maybe to a dance party at their house that the four of us were going to create. . . haha. Well, we stopped at the gas station, Havalah got gas, I got a 12 pack of Busch Light, King of beers :) and as I got back in the car Havalah says, "Oh my god guys can we please go to Waffle House?" Will and I were super stressed out from a meeting we had had about 20 minutes ago and weren't totally in the mood to go but the puppy faces on Havalah and Emily convinced us. :)
So, as we're driving to Waffle House, which is in Indiana, Will and I crack some beers. Now, I don't know if it is legal in Indiana to have an open container in the back seat or not, but Havalah was driving, and she didn't drink a drip, so I'm not gona worry about it.
The trip there was amazing. Emily was playing DJ and pulling out some crazy sexy songs like Bonnie Ray's, Love Me Like a Man the whole way. We got to Waffle House, ate, and as we were walking out Havalah says, "So, I really feel like driving out to the middle of nowhere to find some stars." We didn't go home. :)
We just took off. Will didn't know yet. So we'd been driving for about 20 minutes before will sees a sign for Indianapolis and says, "Oh, we're not going home are we?" and I said, "Nope, adventure time" or something crazy like that.
So we're driving for what feels like forever and I look at Will in awe and say, "This is our life man. This is our life." then Havalah shouts back at us, "East or West?" "West!" I say, cause It always feels right to be heading west for some reason.
We get off the highway and get onto this backass road and drive till there are no lights. Then get out of the car, it was prolly 40 degrees. It was the first time I've seen my breath in the air all year, and we just stargazed. All four of us. Talking about everything.
Will and I got on this huge tangent about where the north star was and that the two out points of the big dipper's dipper point to it. We could see the little dipper, but there were too many stars to see the big dipper, we thought. Eventually, we came to the conclusion, that the big dipper was down past the horizon, and headed further around the other side of the planet. About this point, Havalah and Emily start cracking up because Will and I had left on our own little Bromance stargazing discussion and were getting really into it.
I know it doesn't sound funny, but just imagine two dudes, standing there in the freezing ass cold talking about where the hell Ursa Major is in relation to the horizon.
We got in the car, and drove home using back roads. I mean we just said, "We're north west of Louisville so lets just keep going north west till we hit the river." We had no maps, no phones, no anything to guide us. I just kept looking up, finding the north star, realizing what direction we were headed and we'd turn the way we needed to go. Havalah and I both had a really good sense of where we were at and we just kinda tag teamed the rout home. We got home around 3.

I woke up at 10, (This is October 4th now, the next day) and we met several other apprentices at about 11:15 to head out to a pumpkin patch/apple orchard in Indiana where you pick your own stuff.
So Me, Havalah, Lizzy, and Marc Bovino (Plays Renfield in Dracula) hop into Mama MJ.
Mama MJ in Will's van. There are no seats in Will's van, just a matress in the back. So mark is in front with will and Havalah, Lizzy and I are just hanging out on the mattress. It was like a rollercoaster ride. Especially once we got int other back woods, winding roads.

We hit the farm and ate at this fantastic mom and pop place there. It was huge. Like, tables big enough for 25 people all over the place. I got Fried Chicken. My first, actual fried chicken from Kentucky and it was suuuuuuuper. Just like, greasy, and a little spicy, and yum. Just yum. They had these rolls that they deep fried and they gave you apple butter. Like a huge, ketchup bottle full of apple butter. They'd bring out a basket and they we're gone in a minute.


After we ate, we went and found pumpkins. We rode a tractor out to the other end of the farm and stopped at this pumpkin patch that was bigger than any I'd seen before.
(From left to right: Dinah Berkley, Mark Bovino, Brandon Peters, Emily Kunkel, Devin Olsen, Ellen Haun, Lizzy Schwarzrock, Will Steele, and Me)
Hundreds of pumpkins all over the place. It took me a good chunk of time, but I finally found the perfect pumpkin, and I love it. haha. Its almost perfectly round, and a bright orange color with a bit of yellow in it with green speckles on one side.

The apple orchard was right by it and there were probably 60-80 apple trees. So. Many. Apples. All. Over. I got like 13 I think. They were super cheap. 69 cents a pound. And they're the best apples I've ever had.

We stopped by the Soda Pop Shoppe on our way out and I got a Carmel apple and a pumpkin flavored ice cream cone to share with  the group. It tasted like pumpkin pie with ice cream. Perfect.
Then 5 of us snuck into the back of this corn maze for kids and walked through it. It wasn't a real corn maze. The corn stalks were like 2 feet apart, but it was for kids, so I get it I guess. BUT COME ON! I WANTED A REAAAAAL CORN MAZE hahah.
We got to the middle of it and cut through the field to this enormous water tower. Like 30 feet in diameter at least, and 11 stories high. It was the biggest damn thing I'd ever seen. just massive.
When we got back to the car, we were all pretty tired, so we were crashing in the back on the mattress and Will put on Bethoven's 6th Symphony. The whole drive home, watching trees and faded leaves fly by in the windows we were listening to Bethoven's 6th Symphony. It really was incredible. I felt like I was in a movie montage. Everything was so beautiful and the violins were blasting in my ears and I was just so happy. So damn happy.
When we dropped Marc off, our first stop, the Symphony ended as we stepped out. We listened to the entire thing, and it ended in synch with the end of the trip. Blew my mind.

We got home, dropped our pumpkins off at the apartment, drove Mama MJ back to the parking garage and on the way back, we started talking about my solo mio. I won't get into the nitty gritty, But I finally know what issues I want to tackle. One, being that It's really hard for me to accept that I am a good person, despite my past. That the fact that I cheated on Ashley doesn't make me an all around bad person. It does mean that I made some terrible decisions, and its part of who I am but it doesn't make up the whole of who I am. It's really hard for me to believe that, but I've gotta get there. There are two other issues, but that's the main one.

After that, I played him a song I'd been working on, and while I played it, I finished the last two choruses off the top of my head. Some times it just comes out, and thats what happened. It was fantastic.

So, 2 songs on the album are basically in the bag. :)

Now, off to movie night.

I'll post Pictures of the farm later tonight.
Later.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Juggling

October, 2 2010

So -
One of the apprentices, Shawn Michael Palmer, knows how to make balloon animals and how to juggle. He brought all of his gear into the theater about a week ago and I learned how to make a balloon animal dog. Its amazing. Its name is Francine.
I also asked to borrow his juggling balls yesterday.
I started thinking about the parallel between juggling and lying.
The more items you juggle the harder it is, and the more lies you tell the harder it is to keep track of them.
So, in my solo mio exploration and work generation - I'm learning to juggle. I'm going to juggle for at least 30 minutes each day and then write down what happened, what was hard or easy, and where I am in the process for two weeks.
I started yesterday and I juggled for about 2 hours and I can now juggle 3 balls for roughly 20 tosses. Its super addictive. I can't stop haha.
But there are some interesting things popping up -
Like, when I'm juggling I wither have this soft focus where I'm not focused on anything, or I am focus only on the balls, each of them at different times. Its almost impossible to look past them at anything.
Also, I've learned that tossing them in a triangle formation really helps. Something about seeing the triangle being formed in the air keeps me focused. Triangle as in an arch, but you can see the start, middle, and end points that make up the triangle.

So before I go, let me give you a recap of yesterday, cause it was great.
    I got up, went to the company meeting at 9 - came home made ramen noodles, cleaned the entire kitchen spring cleaning style, memorized one of the sides(scenes) for the audition for the understudy parts for Barefoot in the Park, went to an art fair for two hours, ran home in the cold, wonderful fall rain, LEARNED TO JUGGLE 3 BALLS, did a show, came home baked cornbread, and hung out with will till about 1:30 while he made upwards of 5 dozen cookies.

Amazing day.

Talk to yall soon!

Ryan

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Been gone 2 or 3 days. BACK 10-1-10

Whew. Ok. Im back. Sorry I was gone for two days. Was it two days? I'm in a time warp here. its like one long day with a break on Mondays. Sleeping doesn't really separate things because I don't do it regularly enough for it to define a schedule haha.

So - Hopefully I'll have the video of the scene Dinah and I did within 2 weeks. Thats what I'm hoping for.

I've decided that I'd really like to get rid of this belly of mine. (As much as I adore it) I'd just like to see what my bdy looks like without it. So, I'm meeting with Alex Hernandez, one of the apprentices who is also interested in becoming a personal trainer tomorrow morning. We're going to discuss goals and time frames and come up with some goals I can manage, along with a workout, and possibly a diet plan I can do without paying for a gym membership. Cause I'm poor as hell. :)
Also - I'm gona teach Alex to play guitar as payment for him being my trainer.

I've basically stopped drinking for the moment. I've had 1 beer in about 10 days and it was bought for me, tonight. I just can't afford it. I'm figuring out really fast that there's basically no money to drink haha.

WERE GOING CAMPING NEXT WEEK!
17 apprentices, 3 bedroom Cabin ( Thats right, we reserved a cabin) 117 acres, national park, 3 hours away, 1 night, 1 entire day ----Its going to be incredible.

I'm out.
Ryan