Find Us On Twitter

Do you have a Twitter account? Our show does! Follow us on Twitter! @ChicagoBT

Click on the image above and it will take you right to our Twitter feed.

Until next time, have a Beautiful day!

Broadway World Chicago Awards

As I mentioned in my previous post, our director John Nasca and Michelle McKenzie-Voigt, who plays my mum in the show, have both been nominated for Broadway World Chicago awards.

John Nasca is nominated for Best Costume Design (Resident Non-Equity) for his work on Reefer Madness at Circle Theatre.

Michelle McKenzie-Voigt is nominated for Best Actress in a Play (Resident Non-Equity) for her performance as Sissy in Sordid Lives at Ludicrous Theatre Company.

Please take a moment and click in the image above which will take you to the voting website. There are a bunch of categories to get through, but you don’t have to vote in each one. (Please note that you can vote only once per e-mail address.) I know they – and I – would certainly appreciate your voting for them!

I am off to memorize more lines. Until next time, have a beautiful day!

Dialect Work and More…

Sandra (Michelle McKenzie-Voigt), Leah (Kiah McKirnan), Jamie (Robert Hilliard), and Ste (Charlie Wein)

Our dialect coach Jeremiah Davis stopped by our rehearsal on Friday to check our progress. We sat in chairs and ran the lines from all the scenes we have blocked to date; this proved surprisingly challenging. We’re used to running things on our feet, so keeping the energy and pace up while sitting down was a bit of a challenge. After we ran through each scene, we stopped to get notes from Jeremiah. We are very fortunate to have him working with us; he is doing an amazing job guiding us so our accents are authentic (and consistent).

When we finished working with Jeremiah, we blocked a portion of Leah’s acid trip scene, which is one of the funniest scenes in the entire show. It didn’t take very long to block and we had a good laugh doing it.

Our director and one of my castmates have been nominated for Broadway World Chicago awards; more on that next time.

Until then, have a beautiful day!

Headshots!

It has been a while since I had my headshot taken, so I thought I would get a fresh one for this show.

Please let me know which one you like.  Which one should I use in the playbill?

Have a beautiful weekend!

Headshot 1

Headshot 2

Headshot 3

Headshot 4

Headshot 5

(Photo Credit: Brian McConkey Photography)

We Got Postcards!

We have postcards!!! Well, we don’t have postcards yet, but they were ordered over the weekend. I just got my hands on the digital copy of the postcard designed by Tiffany Nasca; they’re pretty awesome!

Postcard – Front

Postcard – Back

 

Until next time, have a beautiful day!

Rehearsal Update

I must apologize for not posting an update recently; my schedule has been rather hectic. I promise I will post at least twice a week, more if I can.

“Leah” Kiah Mckirnan

Rehearsals are moving right along. We still don’t have a stage manager, but we are getting along just fine without one. That’s not to say that we don’t NEED one, I’m just saying that we have managed fine without one. If we don’t have a stage manager by tech week, I will start to get extremely nervous.

Each rehearsal we have been taking a few pages from the script and working on blocking and character. Aside from a few minor “bumps,” the blocking rehearsals have gone smoothly. The most challenging rehearsal to date came last Saturday when we reviewed everything that we blocked so far. We were asked to be off book for this rehearsal so we could focus on acting instead of looking down at our script. A couple of my castmates had their lines memorized, but the rest of the cast, myself included, needed to carry our script pages at various times throughout the rehearsal. We ran everything a couple times and for the most part it went really well. We are making progress!!!

Because of my big mouth, we now have a running cow joke at every rehearsal. More on that another time.

Until next time, have a beautiful day!

Video Blog Fail

I should really do my research before I promise something.  Due to the logistics of the website where this blog is hosted, I am unable to post a video as easily as I thought.  My schedule is jam-packed today, so coming up this week, I will fill you in on our rehearsals this past weekend.  I will also work on getting a video posted soon.
Until then, have a beautiful day!

No One Said Theatre Was Easy

Some actors spend a great deal of time doing character work, figuring out their every emotion and motive.  Other actors just do what the script and director tell them to do.  What happens when the director and actor don’t agree on a blocking or character choice?

At rehearsal last night for Beautiful Thing, we ran into that situation.  During the scene, my character’s mother is telling embarrassing stories about me as a child to everyone on stage.  It was initially blocked so that I stand with my back to her with an annoyed/embarrassed look on my face.  To me, this felt right.  Our director, however, wanted to try something different – now I was directed to look at Ste in a “help me out” kind of way, which felt completely wrong to me.  So I was faced with the decision of either voicing my opinion or letting it go.  In this situation, the decision was easy; I had to say something.  After explaining my thoughts about the new direction and exploring our director’s motivation for the change, we decided to try it a completely different way, and it worked.

This was just one of the many director vs. actor situations we have had/will have while working on this show, and that’s okay; these things happen in every production from Chicago to New York and all around the world.  I respect my director and think carefully before I challenge a direction he has given me, and I only speak up when I feel the action doesn’t fit the character or if the blocking feels awkward.  Even when I voice my opinion, I keep an open mind and allow the director to do his job.  There will be times when I don’t agree with the director or even other actors’ choices, but it’s not my place to make a fuss about it.

Acting – it’s a challenging but beautiful thing.

See you on Monday with my first video blog.  Until then, have a beautiful weekend!

Harsh Reality About Working In The Theatre

At last, here is a bit of behind-the-scenes drama for you.  We are now in our fourth week of rehearsals, but we don’t have a stage manager yet.  Want to know why?  Here are my thoughts…

Finding theatre work in Chicago is not very hard; we have hundreds of theatre companies throughout the Chicagoland area.  If you moved to Chicago today, I bet that you could easily have a job working on a show by Friday.  And if you’re good at what you do, you could probably book yourself for the entire year with theatre gigs.

But here’s the harsh reality: very few people actually make a living working in this industry.  All too often, people move to a Chicago or New York thinking they are going to land a theatre gig that will put a fat paycheck in their bank account, or even enough money to pay the rent.  It’s a great dream, but that is not the reality for many people.  I could go on and on about how tough this industry is and share my personal stories about making it in the business, but that is not what this blog is about.  (If you are interested in reading more about this, there are plenty of books and articles about this very topic. )

So why don’t we have a stage manager?  My guess is that the good stage managers are already booked, and stage managers new to Chicago are looking for that fat paycheck we can’t provide.  So we move forward with rehearsals in the hopes of finding a stage manager soon, one who is passionate about their work and isn’t worried about making a boatload of money to start.  Isn’t that why we do theatre in the first place, because it’s our passion?

Until next time, have a beautiful day!

Back Into Rehearsal

After six days straight with no rehearsal, we head back into rehearsals tonight.  This week, we have four rehearsals, the most in one week so far.

Oh, did I mention we have been rehearsing without a stage manager?  More on that tomorrow.  Until next time, have a beautiful day!